The Smile of a Ghost mw-7

by Phil Rickman

  ‘Take a look, Mrs Watkins. See what’s left of Robbie Walsh.’

  Merrily walked around the oil. There were about a dozen wine boxes from supermarkets. Warily, she opened one.

  Books. She pulled one out, large-format: Everyday Life in the Middle Ages, in Pictures. Heraldic symbols in each corner. Once a paperback, its covers had been stiffened with card, the way you did to prolong the life of a book that you really loved, one that was well used, day after day. It flopped open where a page had been torn out, none too carefully, fragments of it still flapping from the spine. The facing page was headed: TRIAL BY ORDEAL.

  Mumford prodded a box with his shoe.

  ‘All his books are yere. Stuff on castles… armour… weapons. Guide books to historic houses people gave him… all off to a boot sale at the weekend — outside of town, they en’t daft.’

  ‘They’re selling all his stuff?’

  ‘Need the space. Another baby on the way — boyfriend’s this time, just to prove he can.’

  Merrily put the book back in the box and closed the flaps. It felt like pulling a sheet over a body.

  ‘What happened to Robbie’s father?’

  ‘He came to the funeral. Not a bad bloke.’ Mumford opened another box, pulled out a turquoise baseball cap, put it on his own head, where it almost fitted. ‘This was always too big for Robbie, see. Poor little devil never realized why folks were laughing. Tried for street cred, never got close.’

  ‘You’ve got kids, haven’t you?’

  ‘Two girls. One in New Zealand, one a veterinary nurse, living with a vet down in Newport. They done OK, considering.’ Mumford took off the cap. ‘When you make CID, you’re as good as lost to your family. “Oh Dad, you’re not working again, we never sees you.” “Look,” I’d say, “I’m protecting you and your mother, that’s what I’m doing.” Any old excuse. See this?’

  He’d opened up a book he’d evidently been using as a mouse-mat for the computer. The Tudor Household. Something had been scribbled on the front and then scribbled over. Through the top scribble they could still make out crude black letters: Walsh is gay.

  ‘Jane tells me the word’s become an all-purpose term of abuse now, among kids,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Abuse,’ Mumford said. ‘Aye.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  Mumford reached into the book box, pulled out a paperback with a white and sepia cover: Castles and Moated Sites of Herefordshire. It looked new, except for the brown tape holding the spine together. A pamphlet fell out: South Wye History Project.

  ‘Looks like the book was ripped in half, ennit? He was real careful with his books.’

  ‘What you’re saying is he didn’t do this.’

  ‘That’s likely what I’m saying.’

  ‘The boyfriend?’

  ‘Or it could be Ange. When he was little, if he left toys around after she’d told him to put them away, she’d throw them on the fire. I’ve seen it. This was when she was still with his dad and they were living out at Kingstone. Marital tension. Always felt I… oughter do something for the boy. Couldn’t think what.’ He put the book back carefully in the wine box. ‘Hell, he was never abused, I’m not saying that. Just never encouraged. Which is how he became a loner, up in his room with his books.’

  Mumford turned away, stood very still, hands in the pockets of his dark tweed jacket.

  ‘Andy—’

  ‘Let’s have a look at the computer.’ Mumford brought out his glasses case; his hands were shaking very slightly. ‘Never got to see the boy much since she moved in with Mathiesson. They never liked me coming round. Not with both neighbours on probation. No excuse, is it? I could’ve done something.’

  He put on his glasses and gripped the mouse, began dragging the cursor over icons on the computer desktop. Mumford — Merrily had noted this before — was surprisingly at home with computers.

  ‘Seems likely the only time the boy ever went out on his own was in Ludlow. Just walking the streets. In his element.’ He clicked on an icon, bringing up a photograph of the ornate oaken façade of the Feathers, in Corve Street, against an improbably Mediterranean blue sky. ‘What he’d do, see, he’d download documents and photos from the Net, compiling his own files. Switch on his computer, straightaway he’s back in Ludlow. Street maps, architectural plans, the lot.’

  ‘Virtual heaven,’ Merrily said, aware of her own voice giving way. She coughed.

  ‘Aye. Look…’ Mumford brought up a series of short histories of different buildings; some, like The Reader’s House, she’d heard of. ‘This is what I wanted you to see.’

  THE WEIR HOUSE

  Name adopted, since recent major restoration, for this onetime farmhouse on an elevated site below the castle and overlooking the Teme. Origins believed to date back to the early fourteenth century, when it was acquired by the Palmers’ Guild, or earlier. Timbers extensively replaced, but one original cruck-beam is preserved and the central fireplace, believed fifteenth-century, remains a significant feature.

  NOT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

  ‘That’s her house,’ Mumford said. ‘Mrs Pepper.’

  There was sweat on his forehead, a small mesh of veins like a crushed insect twitching below one eye.

  ‘But it… Andy, it seems to be one of over a dozen old buildings he’s got listed there.’

  He shook his head. ‘All the others are key historical buildings. This Weir House, it’s just been done up from a shell. It’s the only one on the list that’s not important. And not really in the town itself.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘It’s only there ’cause it’s hers.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Ludlow. The one place he thought he was safe…’ He clicked to a photo of the Buttercross, staring at it as if he could get the full story out of the stones.

  ‘Safe from what?’

  ‘Where he thought he was free, then.’ He stepped away from the monitor. ‘You have a look, see if anything occurs to you.’

  Merrily went over to the computer keyboard. ‘You checked his e-mails?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No e-mails at all?’

  ‘I reckon they been wiped — by Ange or Mathiesson, just in case.’

  ‘In case of what?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘You been through the deleted mails?’

  ‘Bugger-all. See for yourself.’

  Under deleted mails, Merrily found one that said GHOSTOURS. Re half price. She clicked on it.

  Hi Robson!

  Thanks for your mail and your interest in GHOSTOURS. Yes, it certainly is half-price for children. However, we don’t usually allow anyone under sixteen to go on the walk unless accompanied by a responsible adult. Mind you, it’s usually the adults who are most scared!

  Is there a parent or relative who would come with you? If so, we usually gather in the Bullring on Friday and Saturday evenings, at 8.00 p.m. But pop into the shop when you’re here and we’ll see what we can do!

  Cheers,

  Jonathan Scole,

  Ludlow Ghostours.

  ‘That’s months old,’ Mumford said. ‘Boy making plans for his holiday. This is the ghost-walk feller the Pepper woman paid to take her round. Would she have made a responsible adult for Robbie, you reckon?’

  ‘Andy, that—’

  Merrily turned round. A boy had squeezed under the metal door. He looked about ten or eleven. She tapped Mumford on the shoulder, gave the kid a quick smile.

  ‘Hello.’

  The boy said nothing.

  Mumford eyed him with naked suspicion. ‘What d’you want, sonny?’

  The kid moved further into the garage, baseball cap pulled down. ‘What you doing?’

  ‘What’s it look like we’re doing?’ Mumford said. ‘We’re playing computer games.’

  ‘What you got?’

  ‘Sonic the Hedgehog,’ Mumford said. ‘Before your time. En’t you got something violent to watch on TV?’

  �
�That Robbie Walsh’s stuff?’

  Mumford clicked off the e-mail. ‘Makes you think that?’

  ‘Their garage, ennit?’

  ‘You knew Robbie Walsh?’

  ‘You his grandad?’

  ‘No I en’t, you cheeky little sod.’

  ‘Ange said we could have a look at his stuff, see if there’s anything we wanted.’

  ‘Aye, I bet she did.’

  ‘Honest!’

  ‘All right, goodnight, son,’ Mumford said. His tone had hardened. His hands hung by his sides. Mumford still had police presence. The kid backed off, ducked under the opening, then stuck his head back in.

  ‘Don’t want none of that shit, anyway. Robbie Walsh was gay. I’d get Aids or some’ing.’

  And disappeared, laughing. Mumford said nothing, but went over and pulled down the metal door, leaving a much smaller gap at the bottom this time.

  ‘He probably doesn’t even know what it means, anyway,’ Merrily said when Mumford came back to the computer.

  ‘I know what it means.’ He didn’t look at her. ‘Means the boy was different. Sensitive. Bit academic and didn’t hang around with whatever gangs operated on the estate. An outcast, in other words.’ He picked up the book with the damaged spine. ‘Therefore a target.’

  ‘He was being victimized? Bullied? That’s what you think?’

  Mumford didn’t reply. He put the book back and laid a hand on the mouse, running the cursor from icon to icon.

  ‘Try Internet Explorer and click on History,’ Merrily suggested. ‘Find out where he’s been lately.’

  But Robbie’s most recent ventures on the Net amounted only to Ludlow tourist sites, Ludlow historical society documents. Nothing unexpected. Nothing that looked like a suicide chat-room. After about fifteen fruitless minutes, Mumford went back to the desktop, where nothing looked promising unless you were seriously into medieval history.

  It was cold in here, and Merrily was no longer sure what they were looking for. It all came down to Mumford’s feeling that the boy had been in need of help and he hadn’t noticed. Perhaps thinking he’d got off too lightly with his own daughters, to whom nothing bad seemed to have happened.

  ‘School Projects,’ she said. ‘Try that. Sounds boring.’

  Mumford looked at her. A vehicle went slowly past the garage.

  ‘Maybe a bit too boring,’ Merrily said. ‘Do you think?’

  Mumford clicked on it. An e-mail appeared at once.

  Dear Robbie,

  Thanks for the stuff you sent me. It was great. It’s cool that we’re interested in the same things and OF COURSE I won’t stop writing to you.

  But DON’T WORRY! I know things can seem really bad but like my nan says it’s always darkest before the dawn and I know this is going to work out for you and you’ll get away from that awful place. Just HANG ON IN THERE and thanks for sharing this with me, I feel really privileged.

  Look, Robbie, I’ve got a lot to do with exams and stuff coming up, so if you don’t hear from me for a bit don’t think I’ve forgotten, all right. Love and GOOD LUCK!

  Merrily read it again. There was no signature.

  ‘Well done, Mrs Watkins,’ Mumford said.

  ‘It looks like he’s copied the e-mail onto a document, deleting the signature and the e-mail address. He’s hidden it away where nobody’s likely to look for it and if anyone finds it they won’t know who sent it.’

  ‘Mabbe scared of his mother or Mathiesson getting into his computer when he en’t around.’ Mumford scrolled up. ‘Hang on, here’s another.’

  Dear Robbie

  You’ve made me cry. I just wept when I read your mail. Those bastards! You can’t let them do these things to you. You have to tell someone, do you understand? You could even tell the police, never mind about your stepfather or whatever he is. You’ve got to do something, do you understand? I’ll tell the police for you if you want, I don’t mind. Just DO SOMETHING!

  love

  ‘I take it all back,’ Merrily said.

  ‘You didn’t say anything.’

  ‘I thought it. I thought you were making something out of nothing.’

  Mumford scrolled up again. No more e-mails.

  ‘We need to go through everything, Mrs Watkins, no matter how unpromising. He’s probably got stuff scattered all over the place.’

  Merrily read the last one again. ‘Obviously a girl. A boy would never admit to crying. It’s also someone close to his age…’

  ‘Because she talks about exams.’

  ‘And if we assume the last one was sent first…’

  ‘Then he’s replied to it, obviously,’ Mumford said. ‘He’s replied and deleted his reply from his own computer. He’s upset he’s made her cry, and so he’s saying, Oh, things en’t that bad. And he’s told her something. And he’s sent her something.’

  ‘ “Thanks for sharing this with me”… what’s that mean?’

  ‘Sounds like he’s told her about some plan for getting away. Right.’ Mumford straightened up, rubbing his hands. ‘I’m taking this computer home. Then I’m gonner come back tomorrow and talk to Angela. You agree? I en’t overreacting?’

  ‘No, you’re not overreacting.’

  ‘Accident — balls,’ Mumford said. ‘That boy killed hisself.’

  ‘It’s starting to look more like it.’

  ‘And if I—’

  Mumford spun round as the garage door came up suddenly and violently, like a car crash. Breath shot into Merrily’s throat and she toppled a box with her elbow, spraying books across the floor. She saw still figures in the gaping night.

  Silence except for a metallic chink.

  There were four of them. One, in a hooded top, had something like a dog-chain doubled up and stretched between his fists, and he kept pulling it tight, letting it go, snapping it tight.

  Chink.

  18

  Departure Lounge

  The claustrophobia in the Departure Lounge was so intense that Jane had to go into the kitchen for a glass of water. Didn’t like this at all any more.

  Dipping into the Internet was sometimes like lowering yourself into hidden catacombs or potholing. Going down… click, click, click… one site dropping into a deeper site, crawling through narrow tunnels, until you found you’d sunk so far that, when you looked up, the patch of light over your head had totally vanished, and the air was too filthy to breathe.

  Of course, she knew what this was: too many bad experiences with confined underground places linked with death — the cellar at Chapel House, the crypt of Hereford Cathedral. It was close to phobic, and she resented that but it still didn’t mean she could handle it.

  She filled a tumbler with sparkling water. All she needed now was a bottle of old-fashioned aspirin to wash down. Twenty should do it, right?

  Naw, twenty is nowhere near enough, Karone the Boatman, from Nevada, had written for the benefit of Dolores, from Wisconsin. Ya don’t just wanna be sick…

  Jane had started with the new teen-oriented search-engine I Wanna, which dealt mostly with shopping wannas. Shopping to topping yourself was quite a long and tortuous trip and meant circumnavigating all the agony-aunt sites that wanted to talk you out of it.

  But she was getting better at this, nearly as good as Eirion now at knowing what to look for. Which was how she’d wound up with the disgusting Karone the Boatman in the Departure Lounge.

  Welcome to the Departure Lounge. Take a seat. You are among the best friends you have ever had, perhaps your last good friends. Help yourself to a drink (see our wine list, left). Listen to some music (see our selection, right).

  As you can see, the Departure Lounge has two doors. You may leave at any time, through the door on the right. Or you may choose, if invited, to enter, through the left-hand door, into the Inner Lounge.

  If invited? It was confusing. The walls of the Departure Lounge kept shrinking and expanding, and the doors on both right and left would alternate from black to white, and sometimes they we
re both grey. This was technically quite a sophisticated site. More sophisticated, at least, than some of the sickos who hung around in the virtual lounge like virtual pimps.

  Karone the Boatman, from Nevada? Jane guessed he’d taken his name from Charon, the boatman who ferried the dead across the Styx in Greek myths… only he’d never read any Greek myths; someone had probably just told him the name, mispronouncing it, and he’d never even bothered to check it out. She pictured some earnest, humourless, semi-literate, burger-munching git in a sweaty baseball cap, who was arrogant enough to imagine it was his mission in life to help other people end theirs.

  Karone kept printing up a link to his personal website, on which Jane had tentatively clicked, thus learning how to make a foolproof noose. Shutting down the site at this point, before slime could start oozing through the monitor.

  She went back and perused the music selection: some classical stuff and a few names Jane hadn’t heard of. Plus Leonard Cohen’s ‘Dress Rehearsal Rag’, which it said Cohen had banned himself from singing — was this a joke? — and a song called ‘Gloomy Sunday’, which definitely was not a joke.

  God.

  ‘Gloomy Sunday’ — also known as ‘The Hungarian Suicide Song’ — had been written and recorded in 1933 by Rezso Seress after breaking up with his girlfriend.

  In the song she dies and he decides to follow her. The actual girlfriend later killed herself, leaving a note saying only ‘Gloomy Sunday’. Rezso Seress himself jumped to his death from his apartment in 1968.

  ‘Jumped to his death.’ Jane found that she’d whispered it.

  She was starting not to like this. She learned that the song had been banned by the BBC and other broadcasters because it had been linked to so many suicides, some within the music business — one of the more recent had been one by the Scottish duo, The Associates, who’d recorded it in 1980.

  But the most sinister version remained the original, which had recently been cleaned up. It was said to promote nightmares, depression and irrational fear in listeners, but was not available for downloading on this particular site.