The Smile of a Ghost mw-7

by Phil Rickman

  ‘What are you saying?’ She had a full view of his throat now, red and purple and swollen and lacerated. At least his wife was a nurse.

  ‘Funny Ange en’t come back, ennit?’ he said. ‘Funny we en’t seen nothing at all of her feller, Mathiesson.’

  ‘You think they put those kids…?’

  ‘Could be they all had reasons for making sure we never got to see what was on that computer. The kids too.’ Mumford’s eyes were pale and hard. ‘Tells us why Robbie was afraid to come back from his gran’s, mabbe?’

  We was his best mates, dad. We had some laughs with Robbie.

  ‘As someone trained always to see the best in people, I confess to having a problem with those kids,’ Merrily admitted.

  ‘Let’s not dress this up, Mrs Watkins,’ Mumford said. ‘They killed him. As good as.’

  And she was in no position to dismiss it. When they left, stepping under the door into the dark and the damp, she noticed Mumford stuffing the crushed turquoise baseball cap into his jacket pocket. Then he picked up the computer.

  ‘Long shot,’ he said. ‘But it’s possible the hard disk might not be totally destroyed.’

  Jane woke up so suddenly that Merrily had to hold on to the chair to stop it tipping over.

  ‘Sorry…’ She held on to the kid’s shoulders. ‘I didn’t realize you were—’

  The scullery was lit only by the computer. Merrily felt she’d had about enough of computers for one night. She had to have a bath. She felt exhausted and aching and soiled and useless.

  ‘Why haven’t you gone to bed?’

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘How long have you—?’ She saw what was on the screen. ‘You fell asleep online?’

  ‘Oh shit… listen, it’s been twenty minutes max. Anyway, it doesn’t cost much at night.’

  ‘Forget it, it’s my fault.’ Merrily switched on the anglepoise lamp and turned off the computer. ‘I should’ve rung — except I thought if you’d gone to bed— Don’t look at me like that. Things were… difficult. I realize it’s unlikely I’m looking my best.’

  ‘Shit…’ Jane breathed.

  ‘Jane—’

  ‘Things really were bloody difficult, weren’t they?’

  ‘I’m OK. I’ll tell you about it in the morning. In confidence.’

  ‘So, like, did Mumford do that?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Was it Mumford gave you the black eye?’

  ‘What?’

  Merrily stumbled out of the study, through the kitchen to the mirror in the hall, slapping lights on. From the framed print, Holman-Hunt’s Jesus Christ regarded her with sorrow and pity and eternal understanding.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Merrily said.

  When she came back to the study, holding a cold sponge to her eye, the computer was back on and Jane was in front of it. Didn’t even turn round to reinspect the injury.

  ‘Mum… take a look at this.’

  ‘You know what time it is?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Listen… The suicide chat-rooms, OK? I got into this one, and it seemed to be just, like, crap. There was this guy in Nevada, and— Anyway, I logged on under a false name—’

  ‘Sadgirl?’ Merrily leaned over the desk. ‘That’s you?’

  ‘And Belladonna was there. Or least her music was, but Lol said somebody might have just ripped that off. And there was a song she covered, a famous suicide song, where lots of people connected with it topped themselves. It was Hungarian originally, composed in 1933.’

  Merrily dabbed at the eye, wishing now that she hadn’t brought Jane into this. ‘Sounds a bit tenuous.’

  ‘Except Belladonna’s boyfriend also committed suicide, just like the original composer, by — get this — jumping off a high building?’

  ‘Well, that’s… it’s tragic and everything, but it’s not exactly an uncommon method.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I was trying to find a stronger connection. I dropped in the name Belladonna and got a nasty reply from this bastard, Karone, which is what he seems to specialize in, and then — this must’ve come in while I was asleep, right?’

  ‘OK, let me see…’

  Merrily eased Jane away from the screen. Sneery message from someone called Karone the Boatman, and then someone called Dolores had written,

  Sadgirl, you have to understand Karone is a technical adviser and inclined to be abrupt. i think what he’s saying is you need to go back and think things out. this is the biggest thing you have ever done or will ever do. i myself know, because of my condition, that i’m going to have to do this thing sometime, and all that is important to me is that when the time comes i do it efficiently and quickly and without leaving an unsightly mess for my folks to clear up. you sound like your problems are emotional and i beg you to go away and think again because it will surely pass.

  ‘Sorry, that’s not the one.’ Jane scrolled down. ‘I feel really bad about Dolores. She’s obviously got something really horrible wrong with her.’ She put a forefinger on the screen. ‘This one.’

  REVENANT

  Sadgirl, Belladonna understands.

  Death is eternal life without pain.

  Know that we must make our own eternity.

  20

  Old Ludlow

  ‘Canon Callaghan-Clarke is looking for you,’ Sophie said, without glancing up. ‘She’s rung here twice already. Claiming your answering machine isn’t switched on.’

  ‘Can’t believe how inefficient I am sometimes.’

  Merrily dumped her bag on the desk, pulled out the chair opposite Sophie, who was addressing an envelope by hand with a fountain pen. Glasses on the tip of her nose, Sophie put the envelope in a tray, for the ink to dry, and started on another.

  They’d talked on the phone soon after nine, when Jane, clear-eyed and superficially undamaged by minimal sleep, had carried off a slice of toast and marmalade to the bus stop. Merrily had told Jane a certain amount, not everything, about last night. She’d told Sophie — because there were probably confessionals less secure than this office — the whole situation. More or less.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Sophie said. ‘On the filing cabinet — this morning’s Daily Mail.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The paper was folded at page five and a fuzzy picture of Jemima Pegler at a party, collapsed in laughter, with two other girls holding her up. The circumstances of her death had come to light too late for yesterday’s morning papers to indulge in more than straight reporting.

  What a difference a day made: on the other side of the page from Jemima was a line drawing of a woman in a medieval robe and headdress.

  A leap across time… Eight centuries separated them. But now Jemima Pegler and Marion de la Bruyère are united in tragic death.

  Obvious the media would discover Marion. And nobody waited for an inquest any more; the police line ‘no suspicious circumstances’ was a strong enough pointer to suicide. The story said Jemima’s death had the hallmarks of a copycat suicide, but who was she copying — Robbie Walsh or the death-plunge of the twelfth-century woman whose ghost was said to haunt the castle?

  The story is certainly well known in Ludlow, according to Jonathan Scole, who runs Ghostours, which organizes lectures and guided walks around the town’s haunted buildings.

  ‘Our tours are getting increasingly popular, and this poor kid may well have come to one. We do occasionally get groups of teenage girls.

  ‘Marion is a very romantic figure, and one of the highlights of the tour is gathering under the castle wall at the precise spot where she fell.

  ‘It’s intended to be pure entertainment, and I’m afraid I do tend to ham it up a bit.

  ‘Naturally, it horrifies me that the story could have had this kind of impact on someone, but I doubt it did. If we’d had a multi-storey car park, it’s quite possible she would have jumped off that.

  ‘I think if someone’s determined to die, they’re going to do it somehow, aren’t they?’

  But an experienced psychiatrist wh
o is studying the Ludlow deaths, said that a second fatal fall at the castle was disturbing because it indicated the formation of a behavioural pattern.

  ‘Saltash.’

  ‘He does seem to be cornering the market in what one might call soundbite psychology,’ Sophie said.

  ‘He might be right, actually — the teenage pack-mentality, the need to feel that, even in death, you’re not alone. Anyway, someone has to be around to do the psychobabble.’

  ‘How far have you read?’ Sophie murmured.

  ‘What?’

  and teenage girls are particularly susceptible to the fantasy world of ghosts and the supernatural as an escape from the ordered world of school and the prospect of exams,’ said Dr Saltash, who is also a special adviser on mental health to the Diocese of Hereford, which includes Ludlow.

  ‘Special adviser on mental—?’ Merrily let the paper drop to the desk.

  ‘You notice he doesn’t neglect an opportunity to file psychic phenomena under the general heading of fantasy,’ Sophie said, ‘thus detaching it from the Church’s official area of belief.’

  ‘This isn’t going to stop, is it?’

  Merrily slumped down next to the window. It wasn’t warm out there, but there was enough early-afternoon sunshine for a few people on Broad Street to be wearing dark glasses. She took hers off just as the phone rang and Sophie looked up.

  ‘Ah.’ Sophie’s hand froze over the receiver. ‘I thought there might be some minor aspect of last night that you hadn’t mentioned.’

  ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Merrily tilted her head to the window. The sunlight hurt. ‘Purplish last night, now a delicate bottle green.’

  ‘What are you putting on it?’ Sophie picked up the phone.

  ‘Just the glasses.’

  ‘Gatehouse.’ Sophie tucked the phone between shoulder and chin, just above the pearls, leafing through her letters. ‘Yes, Bishop, I’m doing them now, they’ll be in the lunchtime post… Certainly… Well, yes, she’s here now as a matter of fact… I will.’ Sophie put down the phone. ‘He’s coming over later. He wants to talk to you.’

  Merrily had started to roll up the Daily Mail into a stiff, tight tube. She stopped, sensing the change, and saw that Sophie’s face had hardened and darkened in a way that… just didn’t happen.

  ‘God almighty, Merrily! What the hell are you getting into?’

  ‘It was— OK, it wasn’t exactly an accident, but it—’

  ‘You do know that’s what’s known as assault causing actual bodily harm? What did they do to Mumford?’

  ‘Some…’ Merrily let the paper unroll, shaking her head helplessly. ‘Some damage. Nothing serious. We hope.’

  Before leaving home, she’d talked on the phone to Mumford’s wife, Gail, who’d sounded cold and guarded, saying Mumford could hardly turn his head this morning. Hardly the first time he’d brought injuries home, but that was supposed to be all over now, wasn’t it?

  Sophie wasn’t letting it go, either.

  ‘Did he even think about what might happen to you last night, when he took on these savages?’

  ‘I don’t suppose he did.’ Merrily reached for her bag; a woman with a painful black eye was allowed a cigarette. ‘With hindsight, I think he was quite happy when they invaded the garage. He was on home ground. Recognized one.’

  ‘Can we at least assume this will bring him to his senses?’

  ‘Sophie, we both know it’s going to make him worse.’

  Blokes like Mumford — the bag-carriers, the local-knowledge men, the stoical, taciturn, imperturbable, down-beat, low-key, salt-of-the-earth types — when those guys started to come apart, it was like landmines: you were never sure where the next one was going to explode.

  ‘We now have — or we had last night, it’s destroyed now — evidence that Robbie Walsh was scared to go home to Plascarreg. We have it from his e-mail correspondence. Also his letters to… We also know he fantasized about Marion de la Bruyère. Saw her as some kind of a confidante and wrote to her.’

  The postcard she’d seen, next to Robbie’s sketches, was now making perfect, heartbreaking sense.

  Sometimes I pretend you are walking next to me and we are holding hands and it’s brilliant!!!! Everything is all right again, and I never want to leave cos this is our place… I was so miserable I didn’t think I could stand it till the end of term. Its worse than ever there. I hate them, they are stupid and ignorant and they are trying to wreck my whole life. The nearer it gets to the end of the holidays the sadder I feel and don’t want to go back.

  ‘If there’s anything that makes me feel a very unchristian hatred, it’s bullying. From cruelty to animals to…’ Merrily drew in too much smoke, suppressed a cough as colliding clouds sucked a sunbeam from the desk between her and Sophie. ‘We even know who some of them are, now. They as good as admitted it. But bullying’s not quite a crime, and neither’s suicide any more. Three people dead, and none of them crimes. Doesn’t make them any less dead.’

  ‘This woman,’ Sophie said. ‘Mrs Pepper…’

  ‘I don’t know what to think about that any more, Soph. She’s a woman who makes mournful music, evidently chosen as a suicide soundtrack by people who run unsavoury websites and chat-rooms. There’s undoubtedly a cult — or cults — of suicide operating on the Internet. If she is into all that and she talked to Robbie Walsh — as we know she did — and he was suicidal, is it remotely conceivable that she would actually have encouraged him to jump off that tower? I mean, I hate bullying, but I can understand the spiritual vacuum it comes out of. But this…’

  ‘There are Internet sites that are actually urging people to take their own lives?’

  ‘That’s the implication, according to Jane. And chat-rooms. Bit like the Samaritans in reverse, isn’t it?’

  Sophie’s expression didn’t alter. Sophie was a Samaritan.

  ‘Merrily, if you think this woman might be connected with one of these organizations, it’s surely our duty to expose it.’

  ‘In what capacity? It’s not a Deliverance issue, is it?’

  ‘Isn’t the woman fascinated by ghosts?’

  ‘That isn’t, in itself, a Deliverance issue, either. Anyway, if I follow agreed procedure and consult the Deliverance Panel, are they going to let me get within ten miles of Mrs Pepper? Mumford’s already been warned off by Annie Howe, with whom Siân Callaghan-Clarke says she “gets on well”. Probably attend the same kick-boxing classes.’

  ‘This is a mess, Merrily.’ Sophie folded her reading glasses, snapped them in their case. ‘Everything seems to be a mess at the moment.’

  The Bishop arrived before lunch. He looked pensive. He sat on the edge of Sophie’s desk, picked up a pen and kept tapping its top into the palm of his left hand.

  ‘George Lackland, Merrily. You haven’t met him, have you?’

  ‘Mayor of Ludlow.’ She had her sunglasses back on. ‘Vice-chairman of the Police Committee.’

  ‘That’s the one.’ He unbuttoned his jacket, and his purple shirt strained over his stomach. ‘Long-standing county councillor, magistrate. George is… the epitome of Old Ludlow.’

  ‘And your old friend.’

  ‘Yes. An honourable man. Conservative in every conceivable sense of the word, of course. Retails traditional furniture, as distinct from so-called antiques.’

  ‘He sounds… very influential,’ Merrily said.

  The Bishop looked pained. ‘I realize that, to you, attaining power and influence means being as bent as… as…’

  ‘A crozier?’

  ‘Thank you, Merrily, I’m all too conscious of the opportunities for personal gain afforded to an unscrupulous bishop. But some of us do our best, and so does George Lackland.’

  ‘Sorry, Bernie.’

  ‘Anyway, he’s been in touch. Called me last night, and we spoke again this morning. As you can imagine, George is very concerned — as are many people in the town — about these deaths at the castle. Everything that happens in Ludlow, he
takes personally, always has. It’s that kind of town — people feel privileged to belong to it.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘That part of the castle — the Hanging Tower — has now been closed to the public, for obvious reasons. But already, sightseers have been turning up on the other side of the wall — where this girl fell. Can’t do anything about that: it’s a public right of way.’

  ‘What sort of people?’

  ‘Young people, mainly. A group of them were observed last night. They’d gathered with candles. Singing and chanting. There’s an old yew tree. They were clustered around it. Near where she fell.’

  ‘Jemima.’

  ‘And, ah, the other one.’

  ‘Robbie?’

  ‘Marion,’ the Bishop said.

  ‘Why would they gather there, Bernie?’

  ‘Would you expect a coherent reason? Everything seems to become a shrine these days.’

  ‘Well, perhaps if they knew the full facts, they’d find it less romantic.’

  There’d been nothing in the Mail or anywhere else, presumably, about the heroin overdose.

  ‘They’ll draw their own conclusions, anyway. As some people in the town are now doing.’ The pen was going tap-tap on the Bishop’s palm again: agitation. ‘You see, George Lackland’s always been a man of the Church. Senior churchwarden until his civic duties became too onerous. Seen by many of the older residents as something of a figurehead, and not only in a temporal sense, especially with David Cook still in convalescence. So George has… been approached.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Don’t look at me like that, it’s how things are done there. People worried about the town’s reputation have made… approaches.’

  ‘Tourist association?’

  ‘Well, yes, but also church people. All kinds, not just us. The RC church, various Nonconformist chapels. Individuals who fear for the spiritual health of the community. People who might feel happier talking to the Mayor than to each other.’