The Smile of a Ghost mw-7

by Phil Rickman

  The door was on a chain, a strip of light sliding out over the concrete landing and her teeth bared at him in the gap.

  ‘Never get the message, do you? You’re not wanted yere, you was never wanted. Got nothin’ to say to each other. Not at half-past one in the morning, not any time.’

  Half-one? Was it really? How time flew when you were plugged in again.

  Aye, he’d accept it was a bit late to be calling on even your closest living relative. But he’d seen the lights on, guessing they stayed up half the night and then went to bed till the afternoon: the half-life of the worthless.

  ‘Just wanner talk a while, Angela,’ Mumford said calmly. ‘En’t gonner keep you more’n half an hour. Just some things I need to get sorted out.’

  ‘Well, you can fuck off,’ Ange said through those guard-dog teeth, ‘and you leave us alone from now on. I don’t wanner see your fat face ever again, yeah? Clear enough?’

  Mumford nodded. Fair play, he’d started out politely enough, telling her he thought he should inform her it was Mam’s funeral on Tuesday and listening, without comment, to the expected response — not even bothering to wipe what had accompanied it from his face. Being imperturbable.

  He could smell the spliff from here, knowing that the reason Ange instead of Mathiesson had come to the door was that Mathiesson would be busy flushing it all down the toilet in case Mumford wasn’t on his own. Probably a few ounces of blow wasn’t the half of it, but when the boys raided the estate they’d likely let this particular flat alone, thinking mabbe this family had suffered enough and Mathiesson was only small-time, anyway. Bliss could be thoughtful, on occasion.

  ‘Well,’ Mumford said, like his feelings were hurt, ‘if that’s how you feel, en’t much more I can say.’

  Backing off as he spoke, his eyes on the tension in the chain, and when he saw it go slack as she was about to slam the door in his face, he turned his shoulder and met it with the full force of his fifteen and a half stone.

  Ange’s screech was simultaneous with the splintering of wood as the chain came away, pulling out a wad of cheap Plascarreg door frame, the door flying back and Mumford going in there fast, grabbing her as she spun away, desperate to stop her falling because she was, after all, pregnant.

  Holding her arms tight to her side, he manoeuvred her backwards into the living room. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of making her scream again, but he held on because, if he slackened his grip, she’d have one of his fingers between her teeth before he knew it.

  She was her father’s daughter, was Angela.

  Mumford gave her the heavy-lidded, level stare.

  ‘’Fore you says a word, I’ll pay for it, all right? I’ll leave a hundred on the table when I go. And you can tell that scum he can stop flushing, ’cause I en’t remotely interested in what he puts up his nose tonight.’

  Ange breathing through her teeth, eyes black with what Mumford took as hate. He went on staring into them, imperturbable.

  ‘All right?’ He saw her mouth working on the saliva, and he gave her a little shake. ‘No. Now you listen to me… no, listen!’

  ‘Your level now, Mumford, eh?’ Mathiesson standing in a doorway, stripped to the waist. ‘Pregnant woman?’

  ‘You wanner dispense with the heroics, boy, seeing as we’re in your place and it’s all your stuff that gets broken?’

  Looking at the stuff in here, this was no bad deal he was offering. Sony TV size of a double wardrobe, screening some slasher-horror DVD with the sound down. Had to be ten grand’s worth of hardware. A subtle hint here that Ange and Mathiesson were existing on a bit more than the sickness benefit from Mathiesson’s famous bad back.

  Mumford thought about Robbie Walsh’s broken neck and his snapped spine, and a surge of the old volcano went through him, and he caught himself hoping that Mathiesson would try and take him. But Mathiesson didn’t move and Mumford turned back to Ange.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘either I holds on to you the whole while, or we all sits down nice and quiet and you answer my questions, in full. On the basis I en’t a copper no more and nobody gets nicked, or—’

  ‘We got nothin’ to say to each other no more,’ Ange said. ‘Not that we ever had much.’

  ‘—Or I go down the station at Hereford and have a chat with a few of my old colleagues. Who’ll mabbe see to it that you’re a single parent, for a while, this time around.’

  Ange looked at Mathiesson, and Mumford kept on looking at Ange. She was wearing a red towelling robe, the wide sleeves falling over his hands where they gripped her arms.

  ‘You’re hurting me,’ Ange admitted.

  ‘Your decision.’

  ‘He’s on his own,’ Mathiesson said. ‘No witnesses.’

  Mumford let Ange go and moved away quickly and went to stand next to the Sony. Ange sat down on the big cream sofa, rubbing her arms, then pulling her dressing gown tight across her chest, not looking at him. Mumford turned to Mathiesson.

  ‘You ever work — if that’s the word — at the old Aconbury Engineering factory, Lenny? Edge of the Barnchurch?’

  ‘Never heard of it,’ Mathiesson said.

  ‘I see. So that’s gonner be the level of our conversation, is it?’

  ‘It’s closed down.’

  ‘Well, aye, been closed down eighteen months, far as engineering goes. Far as preparation and distribution of crack goes, it was turning a tidy profit until… oh, the day before yesterday?’

  ‘If I was involved, I’d’ve been arrested, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Well, mabbe it’s not over yet, that part,’ Mumford said, and Mathiesson’s jaw twitched.

  Ange snatched the remote from the arm of the sofa and snapped off the TV.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mumford said. ‘Now I’m gonner come clean, Angela. I’m gonner be dead straight with you. Wasn’t the ole lady responsible for what happened to Robbie.’

  ‘Look,’ Ange said, ‘I was upset that night. What you expect? I was lashing out.’

  ‘’Course you were. And you were in shock. But you were lashing out at the wrong person. Only one member of this family’s responsible for the boy’s death, and it wasn’t an ole lady with rising senile dementia.’

  ‘I’m pregnant!’ Ange yelled. ‘I get tired. I didn’t have no time—’

  ‘I mean me, Angela,’ Mumford said. ‘I was responsible. Me.’

  For the first time, Ange shut her mouth.

  ‘I could give you a lot of bloody excuses about pressure of work, but the fact is there wasn’t much pressure at work that last week. No point in giving a man cases he en’t gonner be able to see through to a result. Truth was, I just didn’t wanner hang round with my family, ’cause that looked too much like the future. First time, I didn’t pick Robbie up, start of his holidays, and take him over to his gran’s. Know why? ’Cause I couldn’t face the ole man leering at me — one of us, now, boy, a pensioner. That’s why.’

  ‘Ole man never had no tact,’ Ange said. ‘Anyway, we put Robbie on the train. Lenny took him down the station.’

  ‘Normal way of it, see, Robbie and me, we’d have a chat on the way there. Hard goin’ sometimes, mind.’

  ‘Hard goin’ for anybody,’ Ange said, low-voiced, eyes downcast. ‘Unless you was a professor of history.’

  ‘Truth of it was,’ Mumford said, ‘Mam told me at least three time how the boy couldn’t wait to see me. I didn’t understand. I thought she was finding me a bit of retirement work. Child-minding.’

  Clenched his fists, hearing his mam on the phone.

  Robbie, he wants to show you all his favourite places in the town, don’t you, Robbie? He’s nodding, see. He’s always saying, when’s Uncle Andy coming?

  ‘I never went. I was angry. Insulted. Scared, too. Scared of the future.’

  ‘Couldn’t throw your weight about no more, eh?’ Mathiesson said. ‘Couldn’t kick the shit out of nobody when you was feelin’ a bit frustrated. You poor ole fuck.’

  ‘Shut up, Lenny,’
Ange said quietly.

  ‘Now I know exactly what he wanted to talk to me about,’ Mumford said. ‘Question is, did you?’

  Ange said nothing.

  ‘I been for a chat with some people tonight, see. Former neighbours of yours. The Collinses.’

  ‘Collinses are as good as dead,’ Mathiesson said.

  ‘Not the wisest response, Lenny, you don’t mind me saying so.’

  ‘Thought you said this was off the record.’

  ‘It is. But see, there was someone else knew what was happening at the old Aconbury Engineering factory. I’m saying factory — not much more than a workshop, really, a starter-factory. Nice secluded site, though, since they stopped building any more due to nobody wanting to run a business so close to the Plascarreg. Nice quiet site, next to a little pine wood.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

  ‘Or mabbe there was a funny feeling about the place,’ Mumford said. ‘Being as it used to be the site of the civic gallows. Or, at least, that’s what some folks reckon.’

  ‘You lost me way back.’ Mathiesson came into the room, draped himself over the back of the sofa, started playing with Ange’s hair.

  She shook him off. ‘This is Robbie, en’t it?’

  ‘What’d he tell you?’ Mumford said.

  ‘I never took much notice.’ Ange sat up, holding her dressing gown across her throat. She looked cold, though it must’ve been ninety degrees in the room. ‘He… got on your nerves, sometimes, poor little sod. Yeah, I do remember he was real excited — few weeks ago… months maybe, I dunno. Said did I know they used to hang people round the back of the flats. Said he’d worked out where it was.’

  ‘There’s still a mound, apparently, on the edge of the pines. It was covered over by trees until they started extending the Barnchurch. That’s the most likely site.’

  ‘I didn’t take much notice. He was always going on about something — usually it was something in bloody Ludlow, so I never even took it in. I probably only remembered this because it was yere.’

  ‘Told his mate Niall Collins all about it. Niall said, you don’t wanner go messing round there, they en’t gonner like it. Doubt if Robbie even took it in, what the boy was trying to tell him. All these years he’d hated the Plascarreg because — not just because it was tacky and run-down, I don’t reckon he even noticed any of that — but because everything was so new. Now at last here’s some real history on his doorstep. Wasn’t nothing gonner keep him away.’

  ‘I don’t even know where he got that idea from,’ Ange said.

  ‘The gallows? Local history venture, Angela. Somebody got a Lottery grant to run a local history project in the South Wye area of town. You probably didn’t notice.’

  ‘Yeah, we… something came through the door. Robbie took it.’

  ‘This?’ Mumford reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, brought out a printed pamphlet: South Wye History Project. ‘It was with his stuff. Project starts end of May. They were asking for volunteers to help produce a booklet on the history of the area. According to Niall, Robbie seems to have met one of the archaeologists in charge, who made him copies of old documents, and Robbie started doing his own research. Either he found the old execution site or he didn’t, but poking around that workshop with a spade night after night, threatening to bring the whole team down for a dig…’

  Ange shut her eyes, began softly pummelling her knees, going, ‘Shhhhit, shhhit…’ very quietly.

  ‘I don’t suppose they’d understand what the boy was after,’ Mumford said. ‘Mabbe somebody else had a quiet word with him — told him seriously to keep away. Somebody like Jason Mebus. He afraid of people like Jason, Angela?’

  ‘You’d think he would be, wouldn’t you?’ Ange looked up. What he’d taken for hate just looked like tired black circles around her eyes. ‘Truth was, I don’t reckon he even noticed them. He just went his own way. Read his books, messed about on his computer and went off on his own.’

  ‘Seems to me,’ Mumford said, ‘that Robbie’s enthusiasm for history and the past and that stuff would prove stronger than any quiet warning to stay away.’

  ‘So bloody innocent, he wouldn’t even have known what they was on about.’ Ange started to cry. ‘I never had time…’

  ‘You know what they done, finally, to make him understand?’

  Ange shaking her head, hands over her face. Mumford stopped and turned away. Saw someone walking past the window, not four feet away from where he was standing. No getting away from anybody here. This was what Niall’s dad, Mark Collins, had told him; it was like being in a cell block, but without any prison officers to protect you.

  As soon as he’d left that house, Mumford had realized that he’d finally blown it. By now, Collins would already have talked to Bliss or somebody less sympathetic about the lone cop who’d come to question young Niall at their temporary home in Malvern.

  They’d never asked to see Mumford’s ID. Nobody ever had, even when he’d carried a warrant card. Wasted exercise; Bliss had once said Mumford looked like a copper the way a sheep looked like a sheep.

  Just hoped he hadn’t dropped Karen in it.

  ‘What I think,’ he said to his sister, ‘is Robbie tried to make them understand how important it was, this discovery he’d made — actual site of a Middle Ages gallows. Showed them a picture of it in this book he had. Somehow, the relevant page got ripped out. Niall remembers Jason Mebus had that page.’

  ‘What page?’ Ange looked at him through splayed fingers. ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Picture of a gallows on it,’ Mumford said. ‘Or a gibbet. Picture of a feller being hanged. And a detailed picture of a working model.’

  And he decided there and then that he wasn’t gonner say any more about this aspect of it. Poor bloody Ange. She’d been a crap mother, but it was clear enough now that she hadn’t known any of this. Whether Mathiesson had and had chosen to keep quiet about it was something to be considered later. For now… well, there’d be enough shadows over Ange for the rest of her life without the details Mumford had finally got out of Niall Collins — the kid refusing to talk about it until Mumford had applied the kind of emotional pressure that had brought Mark Collins and his wife rushing in and would undoubtedly be relayed to Bliss and probably Annie Howe.

  Which was why Mumford couldn’t go home until this was finished.

  ‘What I wanted to ask you,’ he said, ‘was how well known was it that Robbie went to Ludlow during his holidays?’

  Ange looked up at Mathiesson, his tattoos gleaming with sweat.

  ‘Don’t look at me — I never told nobody. Why would I?’

  ‘It en’t far to go, is it?’ Mumford said. ‘My original thought, see, was they was just bullying him ’cause he was a bit of a swot, didn’t fit in. And mabbe they made his life such a bloody misery that he couldn’t bear to come back yere and so, last day of his holidays—’

  ‘Stop it!’ Ange started rocking from side to side, holding herself and Robbie’s unborn sibling. Mathiesson straightening up in shock, suddenly getting the point.

  ‘They wouldn’t! Shit, they wouldn’t kill him, Mumford, just keep him quiet… wouldn’t top him just to keep him out their hair…’

  ‘Mabbe it was an accident, Lenny. Mabbe they just wanted to put the fear of God into him. But, then again, I always said it was only a matter of time with Jason Mebus.’

  ‘The Collins boy told you this?’

  ‘It don’t matter where I got it from. But what you got with the likes of Mebus, see — and wossisname, Chain-boy, Connor — is kids who’s up here with the excitement of it. Wanner prove themselves as hard men. You been through that phase, surely, Lenny…’

  Mathiesson said nothing.

  Ange said, ‘If you think Lenny had anything to do with it, you’re wrong.’

  ‘And I’d like to think I was,’ Mumford said, ‘for your sake if nothing else.’

  ‘He had every reason to keep Robbie alive.’


  ‘Ange…’ Mathiesson gripped her shoulders. ‘There’s no need. He en’t a copper no more. You don’t have to—’

  ‘Sit down, Andy,’ Ange said, real quiet.

  34

  Old Stock

  When the singing stopped, Merrily was aware that the warm night and the foliage had come alive, but not with foxes or badgers or bats or rats.

  Unease made her stop on the edge of the path, looking all around her. Over her shoulder the top of the church tower was visible, its weathercock spiking a cluster of mushroom-coloured night clouds. And somewhere, although the singing had stopped, she could hear voices, rushing through the undergrowth like blown leaves. When a giggle crept up behind her, she spun round. Shadows were moving among the bushes, skidding feet.

  A girl’s voice squeaked, ‘No, Nez, don’t!’

  What sounded like a beer can bounced off the castle wall, and somebody shouted after it, ‘Mad ole slapper!’ and Merrily became aware of a bunch of them at the side of the track, about ten yards away. She felt a glow of very basic fear. But it couldn’t be the women who had attacked Bell; these were just kids.

  Just kids.

  We had some awesome laughs with Robbie.

  ‘What do you want?’ Her voice coming out cracked and coarsened by twenty years of smoke. She started to cough, muffled it with an arm.

  A kid said, ‘Whossat?’

  ‘Police,’ Merrily said, with determination. ‘This path is closed. Now push off, the lot of you, or you’ll be banged up for the night.’

  ‘Aw, get lost, you’re not the police.’

  ‘Then you’ll be able to pretend in the morning that you’re not having your breakfast in a cell.’ Remembering the mini-Maglite torch she’d stuffed into a pocket of her jeans before leaving the car, she started fumbling under her fleece. ‘Now, do you want to go in the van or—’

  The little torch was bugger-all use for hitting anybody, but it was very bright. She flashed it at head height, found a girl in a shocking-pink top who looked about thirteen, and the girl squealed and backed off, stumbling.

  A boy said, ‘You’re never protecting that mad ole slapper, are you?’