A Ghost at the Door

by Michael Dobbs

  As they spilled out of the car they could see what that something was. It was lying in the road. A young buck fallow deer, its antlers not fully grown, its chestnut flanks mottled and its foreleg broken through the skin.

  ‘I didn’t see it,’ Jemma gasped. ‘It just jumped out . . .’

  They could see the gaps in the hedge that the deer used as their crossing point. No deer born in the last five years would have expected a car to be passing here.

  Abby began to moan in distress and Jemma put an arm around her to console her, and to comfort herself. The animal was twitching in pain and terror. Harry moved forward and bent to inspect it. The dark eyes stared wide and swollen, filled with shock, its eyelashes almost human while its dark-rimmed nostrils flared as it tried to suck fresh oxygen into its lungs. A dry, hoarse cough came from its throat, past the tongue that hung listlessly from its gaping mouth. It was in its death throes, but for how long would it linger?

  Harry left the deer and walked back to the women. ‘Take Abby down the way a little, will you?’ he asked Jemma.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Nothing you’ll want to see. Please.’

  The two women retreated down the track until they found the shade of an old tree where Abby stood, crying softly. Jemma put her arms around her once more, shielding her from any sight or sound but all the while staring back down the way to Harry. He was looking at the whimpering deer. It was far too large to throttle and he had no faith that with his left arm he could hit the deer hard enough or accurately enough, with the car jack perhaps, to dispatch it swiftly. He reached inside the car and retrieved his jacket, walking back to the deer and laying it gently across its head. Whatever he was about to do, the deer should know nothing of it. Then he climbed back into the driver’s seat and put the car in reverse once again, and on a summer’s day with the light dappling through the swaying trees, their branches laden with fruit, their roots surrounded by sweet-smelling wild garlic and the eyes of red campion, with as little sound and as much care as he could muster, he backed the car over the neck of the deer, then quickly repeated it, again and again, until he was sure. When he went back to lift his mangled coat, the soft eye stared back at him sightless.

  The death of the deer stripped them of any sense of adventure they might have had. They kept to the task for several more hours until even the most optimistic of souls would have had to declare their mission fruitless. There were simply too many grassy tracks, too many overgrown lanes to have any chance of making a thorough search of the near twenty miles of road that led to West Bay and its neighbouring town of Bridport. They fell silent as the sun hid behind a bank of clouds, taking their hopes with it. Harry was driving, tapping his fingers on the old leather steering wheel, when he turned to Abby. ‘Did your father drink?’

  ‘You suggesting he was an alcoholic?’

  ‘No, not at all, but I was wondering whether he liked a pint occasionally.’

  ‘No, not occasionally. Dad was more of a four-pints-a-night man.’

  ‘So he would have known the pubs near where he was staying. And they would have known him.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘We stop driving blindly around the countryside and go to the pub.’

  So they stopped off at every pub they came to, showing photos, asking their questions. But the men and women of Dorset are not like the Greeks, they don’t throw open their souls at the first sight of a stranger, and all they gave up was a distracted shake of the head. The day grew more depressing and soon it was gone eight.

  ‘OK, decision time. Do we carry on with this and stay over or head back to London? Try another day?’ Harry asked.

  ‘One more pub, see if they do B&B,’ Abby proposed. ‘If not . . .’

  The Gathering Storm was a little off the main route, down a side road and traceable only by an old sign that leaned precariously at the roadside. A locals’ pub, not one for the tourists. Everything seemed to lean. The horse chestnut beneath which they parked sagged and creaked, the old walls were buckled, the front door was barely a match for its tilting jambs, but it had the sense of having been much like this for at least four hundred years. The half-dozen drinkers inside all stopped talking and stared as Harry, Jemma and Abby walked in; it was almost as if they’d interrupted a gravedig-gers’ convention.

  ‘Do you do bed and breakfast?’ Harry asked the stout woman behind the bar.

  She continued polishing glasses as she inspected them. Her eyes snagged on the henna tattoo on Abby’s wrist. ‘How many rooms?’ she asked in a tone that suggested she suspected them of several kinds of debauchery.

  ‘Two.’

  ‘I got a twin ’n’ a single. Nice rooms. Clean.’

  ‘En suite?’

  She went back to polishing as if the question offended her.

  ‘And perhaps something to eat?’

  She nodded and at last let go of her polishing cloth.

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ Harry said, trying to establish some form of human contact.

  The landlady led them up the leaning stairs, along a passageway of uneven floor and threw open the door to a room with a sloping ceiling supported by buckled beams. ‘The twin,’ she announced as if revealing the secrets of the Shroud.

  At the end of the passageway was another door. She made no announcement as she opened it, and none was necessary. It was clearly a bedroom only inasmuch as it had a bed squeezed inside so tight that the door was unable to open fully. The window was small enough that it might once have been used as a dovecote. Abby knocked her hat off as she tried to get through the narrow door and sat on the bed. It had more lumps than a pile of broken bricks. Jemma’s silence screamed rebuke.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Harry declared, his heart sinking as he knew what he had to do. ‘I’ll have this one, you girls can make yourselves comfortable in the twin.’ Abby cast a net of pity that all but smothered him.

  ‘The bathroom’s down other end, hot water seven to nine, morning ’n’ night,’ the landlady declared.

  ‘And food?’

  ‘I’ll see what I’ve got,’ the stout woman sniffed, disappearing downstairs.

  An hour later, as they sat at their table in the small dining area, the welcome had warmed. The offering of meat pie or fresh fish had been excellent, the crumble was homemade, and while it wouldn’t win awards their meal had restored their spirits. What did it matter if the table legs were so far out of true that Harry had to stick his foot under one to keep the plates from sliding off? When Abby complimented the landlady, she got a brief nod and smile in return.

  Harry seized the moment. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something, Mrs Butt,’ for that proved to be her name. ‘We’re down here looking for a friend.’

  ‘Friend?’

  ‘Actually, Abby’s father. You see, he used to come to these parts very regularly.’

  ‘He’s gone missing. I’m worried about him,’ Abby added. ‘I do hope you can help.’

  Mrs Butt stood her ground. Harry showed her the photo on his phone and it was clear from her expression that she recognized the face. She looked closely at them once more, her suspicion returned, then went to the door that led to the bar area. ‘Bert!’ she cried.

  Albert Butt appeared through the door. He was as stout as his wife but his face was weaker, his drooping eyes and shambling gait those of a drinker, his thin hair plastered to the sides of his head.

  ‘These got questions,’ his wife barked.

  ‘I’d be grateful,’ Harry said, ‘but maybe we can do this over a drink. Can’t enjoy a good meat pie without something to wash it down. A pint, perhaps? And whatever you’re drinking.’

  ‘I’ll get ’em,’ the wife said, and disappeared back through the door.

  Bert drew up a chair. The girls made a fuss of him, thanking him for his kindness. Unaccustomed to such praise, he gave his mouth a cautious wipe with the back of his hand.

  ‘This man, Abby’s father,’ Harry began, pushing t
he iPhone at him. ‘His name was Findlay, probably called himself Finn. Used to come here regularly, I believe. But only in the autumn.’

  ‘Tha’s right.’ They appeared to know as much as he did; there seemed little point in denying it.

  ‘And last autumn?’ Abby asked eagerly.

  The man considered. ‘No, not for a while.’

  His wife returned with Harry’s pint and a remarkably generous whisky and ice for her husband.

  ‘Do you know where he stayed when he was down here?’

  The landlord shook his head. ‘But couldn’t be far, not the way he used to drink. Didn’t say much but he knew ’ow to swallow.’

  ‘He rented somewhere, didn’t he? Must have done. We’d know if he’d bought,’ his wife chipped in.

  ‘I reckon he rented a place on the old Farleigh estate – sure he did, come to think of it. Most times used to walk here and stumble back, so it’s gotta be local, and the Farleighs own most of what there is round these parts. Old man Farleigh’d know.’

  ‘Can you tell us how we can find Mr Farleigh? We’ll go and have a talk with him first thing in the morning,’ Harry said.

  The landlord began laughing. ‘Go find him? No need for that,’ he said between chuckles. ‘Why, he’s sitting in the next-door bar.’ He took a swig of his whisky. ‘But you be careful now, you hear. He don’t take kindly to most, specially women. Can be a prickly old blighter.’

  Still chuckling, Albert Butt picked up his drink and disappeared.

  More than a hundred and twenty miles away and earlier that day Edwards’s phone had sparkled into life. He’d fished it from the depths of his jacket pocket and his wrinkled face had brightened as the tracker app flashed insistently at him. He had pushed aside his bacon butty and stained coffee mug to clear a little free space on his crowded desk and bent over the flashing dot as it had moved down the M3 motorway heading southwest.

  ‘Oh, my little beauty!’ he had cried and had begun pounding his desk in delight so that the others around him had turned in curiosity. ‘On! On! Straight into your Uncle Hughie’s hands!’

  Friday evening, gone nine. They hadn’t met face to face for several years. Distance takes root, grows, particularly when a close group is torn apart. Those who are left often feel a sense of shame, of guilt for being survivors, and there were so few of them who had survived. That was why the two men had chosen a spot where their emotions couldn’t be put on display, a spot that was public yet expected of them some measure of reserve. The Royal Academy.

  The Academy was one of the most respected art galleries and institutions in Europe and only a few minutes’ walk up Piccadilly from the bishop’s set in Albany, but by the time the other man arrived and had gained entrance he found Wickham already there, sitting quietly on a bench, studying an extravagant bronze of St Sebastian, a modernist piece with many twists and turns of its dark metal construction that seemed to mimic the agonies of the martyr. The bench on which he sat dwarfed Wickham. He appeared to have shrunk since the last time they had met. Now he was bent, leaning over his catalogue. They were all getting old, so old that they surely didn’t deserve this, the past coming back to haunt them. The man settled down on the bench, his eyes cast at the bronze.

  ‘He knows everything,’ Wickham whispered hoarsely from the corner of his damp mouth, not looking at the other man, like a guilty schoolboy.

  ‘He knows nothing!’

  ‘The croquet club, the reunions. Knows almost every one of us. Not you, of course, but Christine and Ali. Asked what had happened to Finn.’

  ‘Faces from an old photograph.’

  The bishop shook his head defiantly. ‘He promised he would come back. He’s out to get me. I’m not sure I can take any more.’

  ‘What does he know about you?’

  ‘Not a thing! Except . . . He saw too much in my home.’

  ‘You let him in?’ the other man snapped contemptuously. ‘You were stupid enough to let him in?’

  ‘I had no choice!’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘Nothing! But . . .’ A gasp. ‘I think he suspects.’

  ‘Suspects what?’

  ‘My collection.’

  ‘And . . .?’

  The bishop made a choking noise. The lips moved but didn’t work. His head sagged.

  ‘Damn you, you always were so weak, Randy. Made yourself so vulnerable.’

  ‘I’ve done none of that for years,’ Wickham sobbed in protest.

  ‘Of course not.You’re too old. But your age is unlikely to generate a lot of sympathy for a man who spent so many years getting sucked off in a surplice.’

  The bishop clenched his fists, the knuckles white with tension. Tears began to fall, one by one, onto his hands, like drops of acid.

  ‘We’ve got to deal with it, Randy.’

  The bishop’s head slowly came up, his eyes beginning to glow with hope that there might be a way out.

  ‘You must deal with it, Randy.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Your problem. Your fault. You lied to him. Caught you out.’ The voice was hard, an edge that cut through the bishop’s hopes and left them once more flapping like old sails. ‘If Harry talks, you’re ruined. You’ll end up just like that bloody bronze.’

  In front of them St Sebastian’s limbs and entrails seemed coiled in eternal agonies.

  ‘You’ll burn in whatever very special Hell is waiting for you, Randy, and the only relief you’ll get is when all those righteous men you once thought were your friends gather to piss on you.’

  ‘No!’ Wickham burst out, shifting on his seat. Only the public surroundings enabled him to keep any sort of hold on the torment that was ripping him apart.

  ‘Then you’re going to have to stop him, Randy.’

  ‘But how?’

  They sat in their huddle, yet at a great distance from each other, talking until the attendant announced that the gallery was about to close.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Jason Farleigh sat on a bench in the bar with a younger man who was clearly his son, their backs against the wall. The sleeves of the older Farleigh’s faded cotton shirt were rolled up tight, exposing weather-burned forearms that might also have hidden a deal of grime. Everything about him appeared frayed, from his stiff hair to his greying stubble, his limp collar to the pockets of the smock he wore, even in this heat. His eyes suggested a temper to match; they were old even for his fifty-odd years and stared straight ahead, pugnacious, discouraging any form of interruption. Beside him the son sat with eyes downcast as though afraid of what he might find if ever he looked up.

  Despite the warning in Farleigh’s manner, Harry had to risk it. ‘Mr Farleigh? My name’s Jones, Harry Jones. I’m hoping you might be able to help me.’

  The old eyes, filled with caution that ebbed into suspicion, locked onto their target slowly as if taking aim. He said nothing.

  ‘My apologies for interrupting, rude of me when you’re relaxing. Look, can I get you gentlemen a drink? Least I can do.’ Harry produced a crisp red £50 note from his emergency supply in his wallet and hovered expectantly, dangling the bait.

  The farmer eyed it, ran a tongue around his lips. ‘Since you’re offering. I’ll have a large whisky,’ he muttered in a broad Dorset accent, downing the remnants of his half-pint of bitter and staring at the cast on Harry’s arm. ‘Peter here will get ’em in, don’t want no spillage, do we?’

  Harry handed over the note and pulled up a stool so that only a low table separated them. Peter gathered up the empty glasses and disappeared.

  ‘I’m looking for a man named Findlay Francis,’ Harry began, pushing his phone with its image across the sticky varnish.

  Farleigh looked at the image, sucked a tooth as though looking for scraps but offered no other reaction.

  ‘I’m told you might have given him some help. Some informal help. He was a very private man.’

  ‘Private is as private does.’

  ‘Yes, of course. He
came down here to get on with his work, to do his writing.’

  ‘What’s this man to you?’

  ‘He was a friend of my father. And I’m down here with his daughter. No one’s seen him for many months.’

  ‘Like you said, if your man was private. No crime in that.’

  Harry sighed inside. This old bugger was going to take some breaking down. The son returned with the drinks, old man Farleigh’s whisky and half-pints for himself and Harry. He glanced at the photo of Fat Finn and lingered on it, but a glance from his father warned him off. He placed the substantial amount of change in a pile near to Harry. Harry pushed it into no-man’s-land between them, as if it were waiting for further business to be transacted.

  Old man Farleigh picked up his glass, inspected the contents as though he might have been given a short measure. He looked across the rim of the glass at Harry, provocative, mean, then he downed the whisky in a single gulp.

  ‘It’s very important,’ Harry pressed.

  ‘So’s my peace and quiet.’

  ‘Mr Farleigh, I’ve already apologized for disturbing you once. Where I come from, once is enough,’ Harry said, meeting the challenge but not raising his voice. ‘But since you’ve already finished your drink I think the least I can do is get you another.’ Without taking his eyes from the other man he produced another £50 note from his wallet and laid it on the pile of change. ‘Peter, would you mind getting your father another?’

  The son didn’t move, waiting for the sign, like a collie. Then his father gave the slightest hint of a nod and the younger man disappeared once again.

  ‘We don’t much care for strangers sticking their noses into private business in these parts,’ the farmer muttered.

  ‘I understand. And, whatever your business with Mr Findlay, it will stay private so far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘I didn’t say I had any.’

  ‘You must have met him. He drinks here. Not the busiest of pubs in the world.’

  The farmer stared. ‘Don’t take much notice of others.’