A Ghost at the Door

by Michael Dobbs

  ‘You up to a few questions, Mr Jones?’

  ‘Depends how many.’

  ‘Quite a few in your case.’

  ‘And I suspect none of them is what I want for breakfast.’

  ‘Breakfast? It’ll soon be time for tea.’

  Harry blinked, focused more sharply. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Inspector Hope. Inspector Delicious Hope.’

  He began to splutter; her eyes flashed in warning.

  ‘You and me, we’ve got some talking to do, Mr Jones.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘Accidents. Maybe arson.’

  He was about to protest that it wasn’t any sort of bloody accident when some instinctive hand held him back. He had no idea what sort of hole he’d jumped into, except for the fact that it had almost got him killed. He trod with caution. ‘You said arson?’

  ‘That’s what it looks like. Too early to be sure but there are signs an accelerant was used.’

  ‘And Miss Ranelagh?’

  ‘Yes, that’s something else we’re rather keen to ask you about.’

  ‘She’s . . .?’

  ‘Disappeared. We haven’t finished searching, haven’t been able to touch the basement. It was sure one mother of a fire.’ A significant pause. ‘We’d like to know what you were doing there.’

  ‘Me? A family friend. Called on her yesterday, she invited me back today.’

  ‘Can you prove that?’

  ‘Why should I need to?’

  ‘Because we have a suspicious fire and a little old lady who’s suddenly gone missing.’

  ‘And I’m helping you with your enquiries.’

  She bit her bottom lip and exposed startling white teeth. ‘Let me put it this way, Mr Jones, you’re right at the top of my list. I’m just not sure about you. You’re either a hero or some mean arsonist and maybe even a murderer. I’d like to know which.’

  ‘Somewhere in between, I guess.’

  ‘You up to this?’

  He nodded. He concentrated on her shirt and after a momentary struggle the sharp creases on her breast pocket came into focus. He decided that was a good sign, even though it caused the inspector’s eyes to narrow in irritation.

  ‘How do you know Miss Ranelagh?’ she asked.

  ‘I didn’t say I knew her.’

  ‘You said—’

  ‘A family friend. Of my father.’ He stirred, managed a wiggle of his legs and groaned as they transformed into a river of fire. He twisted his neck stiffly to look around him. ‘I had a photograph . . .’

  ‘This one?’ She held it up gently by its corners. It showed every mark of its ordeal by fire and water yet it was still clearly recognizable. ‘I’m afraid the frame didn’t make it. I’m told they took pieces of it out from between your ribs.’

  ‘You’ve been through my things,’ he sighed.

  ‘Of course. We needed to ID you. And, when we had, I made you my prime suspect. In fact, at this stage you’re my only suspect.’

  ‘Inspector, I think you need a little more imagination.’

  ‘And you perhaps have a little too much of it, Mr Jones,’ she said, holding his eye as it threatened to wander back towards her breasts.

  ‘That’s Miss Ranelagh in the middle,’ he said, getting back to business. ‘And my father sitting next to her.’

  ‘This one?’ She pointed at Johnnie. ‘Guess I can buy that. The family resemblance. Stubborn chin.’ She sniffed. ‘So explain the fire.’

  ‘I can’t. It was already like Guy Fawkes by the time I arrived.’

  Her face remained serious, a furrow of suspicion digging in between the eyes; he decided it didn’t suit her, wasn’t her natural pose.

  ‘How do I know that?’ she demanded.

  ‘Look, Inspector, if I started the bloody thing, what was I doing hanging around?’

  ‘Making sure, perhaps.’

  ‘Dashing in and out? Lighting more matches?’

  ‘OK, so what were you doing?’

  ‘Looking for Miss Ranelagh, of course.’

  She sucked at her lips as she considered what he’d said and slowly the official mask began to slip. His story wasn’t too difficult to accept, several witnesses had said much the same but she still had to check, particularly with the old woman missing. ‘Hero, then.’

  He shook his head, delighted to discover that to do so no longer left him in agony. ‘No,’ he said sadly. ‘It was just the wrong place, wrong bloody time.’

  Her chest heaved as she seemed to exhale the last of her doubts. ‘Been checking up on you, Harry Jones. Right Hon. George Cross. Military Cross. Quite a few other bits of ribbon, too.’

  ‘That’s me. I keep forgetting to run away. Bloody idiot.’

  ‘So what made you go off the road?’

  His torn ear was still screaming caution. Three total strangers had tried to murder him and they’d come prepared with a plan and a bloody great baseball bat. Professionals, he guessed, so who had paid them? Miss Ranelagh, maybe? She’d been almost the only person who knew he was on the island and there had been no doubting her fear of him. But why? Why was she so afraid? And where was she? The questions tumbled round in his mind until his head hurt even more, but he was functioning again. He knew if he admitted any of this to the inspector it would tie him up for days. Attempted murder? Could even be weeks. ‘Go off the road? I got dizzy, I guess. The smoke, shock, maybe.’

  ‘Perhaps you just got careless,’ she suggested, her tone dripping incredulity.

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘What I do say is that you’ll have to hang around a while.’

  There it was. His instincts had been right. ‘No, thanks,’ he said. It slipped out too bluntly, like a challenge.

  ‘Don’t think you get much choice in the matter, Harry. I’m no doctor but your body looks like it could do with a little downtime.’

  She was staring at him and for the first time he became aware he was naked from the waist up. He also saw that her eye wasn’t entirely professional. They had at last established some common ground.

  ‘And we got to get into that basement, be certain Miss Ranelagh’s not there,’ she continued. ‘This could still be a murder case.’

  Suddenly, Harry sat up with a jerk that made him gasp, but the pain he felt was dulled by the onrush of insight. Miss Ranelagh wasn’t dead. She’d been terrified of him, put him off for a day, but now he saw she’d never had any intention of meeting with him again. ‘I don’t think she’s in the basement,’ he declared.

  ‘So where?’

  ‘Check to see if she got on a plane today, will you?’

  ‘What, you suggesting she flew out and left breakfast burning on the stove?’

  ‘That she started the fire?’ He couldn’t imagine why, except that terrified old ladies can do strange things. ‘Just humour a beaten-up old hero, will you?’

  ‘You want to play policeman, Harry?’

  ‘Just let’s say that I’d be happy to help you with your enquiries.’

  She puckered her lips as she tried to make up her mind about him, aware of the ambiguous undertones in his invitation, then reached for her phone. While she gave instructions to someone on the other end, Harry tried to clear his mind, glad that some of the numbing effect of the painkillers was wearing off. No, Susannah Ranelagh would never have burned the house that held all her memories. What would be the point? And he doubted she knew enough about murder to arrange for his. But what he did know was that something had happened between Miss Ranelagh and his father to leave her fainting in terror simply because she’d found Harry standing outside her door.

  Delicious was finished and was tapping the tips of her fingers together as though in applause. ‘Harry, you can join my team any time. Nail and head. Seems Miss Ranelagh left our island this morning, went through Wade International on the early flight to London via New York.’

  He took a deep breath of satisfaction and with every breath found his strength being slowly restored. ‘So, what
do you reckon, Delicious? That I may not be an arsonist and murderer after all?’

  She smiled, nodded. ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘Then I’m free to leave Bermuda.’

  An ember of provocation flickered behind her eyes. ‘Don’t be in such a damned hurry, Harry. This is a great island we have. Do a little healing here.’ Then the slightest but most meaningful of pauses. ‘Be happy to show you some of it.’

  ‘That would be great, Delicious, in another life.’

  He spoke softly, and the ember in her eyes died as she realized he wasn’t a sole agent. ‘Some other life, then, Harry. But don’t go rushing into it, OK?’

  ‘What flight did you say Miss Ranelagh caught?’

  ‘Early one.’

  ‘How early?’

  ‘Nine-thirty. As I said, she changed in New York. Didn’t wait for the direct flight. Must have been in a hurry.’

  ‘I’m sure she was. Do me a favour, will you, Delicious – no, two?’

  ‘Tempt me.’

  ‘Call the nurse. I need to get myself sorted.’

  He bit his lip to stifle the pain as he hauled himself into a sitting position on the side of the bed. There wasn’t much to hide his modesty; she had noticed. He challenged her with his eyes; she threw it straight back at him. ‘And that second favour, Mr Jones?’

  ‘Call those nice guys and gals at British Airways. I need to change my ticket, fly home before the weekend. Without any penalty. You could pull a little rank, ask them to do that, couldn’t you?’

  ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting an upgrade next.’

  ‘Make that three favours.’

  She burst into laughter. ‘You and I would make a good team, Harry. You ever come back on the island, you let me know. Spend a little time. Play good cop, bad cop.’

  ‘And I bet you can be a very, very bad cop, Delicious.’

  ‘Seems you’re never going to find out.’

  Their eyes held and tangled, their imaginations dancing in another life.

  ‘What plane you want to catch, Harry?’

  ‘First thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Hot damn, she must be really worth getting back to.’

  ‘She is.’

  But, even as he raised her, it wasn’t Jemma he had so much on his mind as Susannah Ranelagh. If she had caught the nine-thirty flight there was no way she could have set the fire herself. She had neither the time nor the motivation. No, there was someone else in all this, someone who wanted him dead. It wasn’t Susannah Ranelagh, but she would surely be able to point him in the right direction.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It had been a long flight, stretched by the need to change at JFK, every moment filled with the cackling of demons. Susannah Ranelagh was familiar with demons: they’d been an integral part of her Irish upbringing in the hills around Lough Leane, instructed by the priest and exaggerated still more by her own narrow-minded mother. At one point in her younger days she’d even considered escaping from the fires of Hell by retreating to a convent but that had never been a realistic option. She’d never been able to open her heart or close her mind sufficiently to accept God. It was the same with men. When she’d arrived at Oxford she’d been determined to lose her pent-up innocence and had set about it as much out of intellectual curiosity as physical need, and had quickly identified a Classics scholar in his final year for the purpose, but the experience had left her desperately unfulfilled. Too little finesse, too much thrashing of limbs, and all that inevitable Catholic guilt. Susannah Ranelagh wasn’t by any means a prude but she was intensely private and self-contained. She was also stubborn and had persevered through a succession of sweated encounters only to find her heart broken on every occasion, just as her mother had warned her it would. Revel and regret, until eventually her life had been devoted simply to regret.

  Except for one man. He had been a constant part of her life ever since they’d met at Oxford, along with Johnnie Maltravers-Jones and the others. She’d slept with him all too fleetingly, and only in those early days, but theirs had been the one relationship that she’d convinced herself might succeed. She’d held to that through all the ensuing years, through all the other men, even after Oxford, even after he had married. Marriage didn’t always last for ever, even her pious mother had been forced to admit that, and so Susannah had waited. Patience had become her faith.

  And, as she walked through Heathrow’s Terminal Five dragging her small suitcase, there he was, waiting. She was in her sixties yet still she felt herself flustering, the colour beginning to rise and stain her pale cheeks. Why, he could have sent a driver, or met her at the station, but no, he had insisted! ‘I’ll be there for you, Susie,’ he’d said. ‘You always have been,’ she’d whispered in reply. Now he stepped forward from the crowd and she thought she would trip over the tangle of her emotions that surrounded her. Ever since she’d found Johnnie’s son on her doorstep her fears had been pursuing her like a headless horseman, but here he was to take her in his arms and sweep all the terrors away. He held a large bunch of fresh roses in his hand and, if they were of assorted colours rather than the blood red of devotion, what did it matter? And what did it matter if, in the process of throwing herself too eagerly into his arms, just like all those years ago, she crushed them? She was never going to leave him again, not till the day she died.

  Harry’s welcome at Heathrow two days later turned out to be considerably less enthusiastic. Jemma was waiting. She’d rushed, got there early, driven by excitement and his early return, was jumping from sneaker to sneaker to catch first sight of him, but when he emerged through the throng she was appalled. He was hobbling, his body bent, his right arm in a cast and sling. The skin on his forehead was scorched and raw while his right cheek had a revolting bruise that had spread to his eyes to a degree that even the sunglasses couldn’t hide. She gave a yelp of dismay and rushed towards him, only to discover that getting up close was even less reassuring.

  ‘Damn you, Jones!’

  ‘Sorry, Jem. Didn’t want to upset you by telling you on the phone. Fell off my bike.’

  She swore once again, unsure whether she should try to hug him or break his neck. Despite his reassurances, there was no way she could be casual about it and during the next hour she discovered that he was anything but relaxed either. It wasn’t just the pain that was still making him wince or the after-effects of the anaesthetic: he seemed distant, distracted, elsewhere. He told her little except to say that he had met Susannah Ranelagh, pushed away all her other questions until she came to the conclusion he was avoiding her.

  ‘I don’t believe you, Harry,’ she said when at last she had settled him at home on the sofa.

  ‘Believe what?’

  ‘That you fell off your bike.’

  He didn’t dispute the point.

  ‘I deserve more than bullshit, Harry.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he sighed in exhaustion, and sank back into the pillows.

  ‘And if you ever want to sleep in the same bed as me you’d better get on with it.’

  ‘Don’t think I can sleep with you, not with this.’ He stared at his plastered arm, which was resting on a pile of pillows, in an attempt to deflect her, but Jemma was having none of it. She stared with a mixture of torment and fear that was so ferocious it could be rooted in nothing but love. It was why she was so blind with anger. He sighed and surrendered, and for the next few minutes took her on a canter around the course of his last few days, sparing her nothing: the fire, the fall, the cars that caused him to swerve, everything except for admitting to the deliberate attempt to kill him. She didn’t deserve that. ‘So she’s in Britain,’ he concluded. ‘Susannah Ranelagh’s here. I’ve got to find her.’

  ‘No, you haven’t. This has got to stop, Harry.’

  ‘I can’t. Sorry, Jem, but . . . I can’t.’

  She’d always known there was a darker side to Harry, that his past had led him to alleyways down which no ordinary man would ever willingly wander. He had killed, in the A
rmy and since, and put his own life on the line. She’d heard him muttering through his dreams, sometimes crying out, calling names. He’d never be conventional or often even comfortable; that was part of his appeal, the mystique of Harry Jones, and she was sensible enough to know she couldn’t change him. Yet she couldn’t deny her hope that she might help him move on, to a future they both could share. But this wasn’t it. It was one thing for a woman to know that the man she loved had hidden depths, quite another to watch him drowning in them.

  ‘We’re supposed to be getting married, Harry. Stop this – please. For my sake.’

  ‘You must understand, I have to find this woman. To know what happened to my father.’

  ‘Forget your father. He’s dead.’

  ‘Jem . . .’ He was about to protest that she’d been the one who had set him on the trail but the pain in her eyes told him there was no point in trying to win the argument with logic.

  ‘Harry, it’s you and me. The present. Our future. Damn the past.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Jem.’

  She stood up. ‘Correct. Full marks. Top of the class. I don’t. First fucking thing you’ve got right since you got back!’ She disappeared into the bathroom and made a point of slamming the door behind her.

  There had been a further surprise for Susannah Ranelagh in addition to the arms full of roses.

  ‘You’re staying with me, Susannah,’ he had announced.

  ‘I’d thought . . . a hotel. As always.’

  ‘I wouldn’t hear of it,’ he said as he placed her bag in the back of his Mercedes. She’d arrived with her life teetering on the brink of damnation and yet within minutes he had brushed the clouds away. As, somehow, he always had.