The Smile of a Ghost mw-7

by Phil Rickman

  Wee Willie Winkie

  Running through the town

  Upstairs, downstairs in his nightgown

  Rapping at the windows

  Crying through the lock

  Are all the children in their beds?

  It’s past eight o’clock.

  Sandy Gee was up against the wall of the fat round tower in the Inner Bailey. She had a rubber-covered torch, kept nervously testing its beam on the stonework, having sent one of the uniforms off with a plastic Pepsi bottle, to find a tap.

  ‘And salt,’ Merrily said.

  ‘Salt?’

  ‘Holy water involves salt.’

  ‘Maybe we should hold it in one of the bloody restaurants,’ Sandy Gee said.

  ‘I wish we could hold it in there.’ Merrily nodded at the round tower. ‘Plenty of room, and apparently it used to be the medieval chapel of St Mary Magdalene. Not an option, however.’

  ‘It certainly isn’t. We need to do it now, in that dirty little tower.’

  ‘Erm, a warning,’ Merrily said. ‘The aim of this is to bring release and create calm. But we don’t know what we’re dealing with. And if there’s any kind of… if you want to call it energy… in there, and the kid’s in a position where she’s very close to a long drop…’

  Sandy shone the torch beam into her face. ‘I hope to God you’re not suggesting this might actually have the reverse effect? Longbeach said you knew what you were doing.’

  Siân Callaghan-Clarke cleared her throat. ‘Inspector, I think what my colleague is saying is that this is not an exact science.’

  ‘Or a science at all,’ Merrily said. ‘Perhaps, under cover of the service, you or one of your officers should move closer so that, in the event of any unexpected reaction…’

  ‘You often get unexpected reactions?’

  ‘There is no expected reaction,’ Siân said. ‘It’s about faith.’

  ‘Christ,’ Sandy said.

  48

  Running Through the Town

  Sam said, ‘Was that you in the paper?’

  ‘It’s a lousy picture, isn’t it?’

  Merrily was standing in the beam of Sandy’s torch. All she could see of the girl was a silhouette against the opening in the wall. It was cold and damp in here, colder than outside, a rank and clingy cold.

  ‘Why aren’t you wearing… you know?’

  ‘I—’

  ‘Sam, it’s like the police,’ Siân said. ‘Inspector Gee isn’t in uniform either. Inspector Gee and Mrs Watkins… When you reach their level, you don’t have to wear the uniform.’

  Merrily glanced at Siân, stone-faced on the fringe of the torch beam.

  Wow.

  ‘How do I…?’ Sam inched back, towards the window. ‘How do I know it’s not a scam? Why you doing it now?’

  ‘It’s taken a lot of preparation,’ Merrily said. ‘We don’t take it lightly. We’ve had holy water and things to prepare. And I have to walk all around the area, sealing off points of access. We don’t want to let bad things seep through.’

  There was silence — and then Sam said, ‘I’m the bad thing.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘She won’t let me sleep,’ Sam said.

  ‘Who are we talking about, Sam?’

  Siân whispered to Merrily, ‘Give me a moment?’

  ‘OK. Two minutes, Sam? Some final things to organize.’

  Around the corner, in the one-time great hall, Siân said, ‘I don’t know if what Nigel managed to elicit from her might help?’

  ‘Anything might help. I don’t see this as a cosmetic exercise any more.’

  ‘In which case… Nigel, I think, also became aware that we might be dealing with something unexpected, to which counselling might not provide a complete solution.’

  ‘He admitted that?’

  ‘I said, I think he became aware of it.’

  ‘Ah. Go on.’

  ‘The Pegler girl was a bully. It’s hardly unknown for someone who is herself subject to emotional bullying to find someone else on whom she can inflict stress. Pegler was taunted by her peers — boys, mostly, I would guess — for being overweight and unattractive. She initially sought solace with Samantha — a slightly younger and somewhat malleable neighbour. But Jemima was a very angry, rather vindictive person, and soon began to control Samantha, making her do things she would not normally have considered at all appropriate behaviour — like experiments with pills and shoplifting. And then, seeing how far she could push it, Jemima lured away Samantha’s boyfriend, with sexual favours, thus enhancing her own power and her superiority.’

  ‘And then Sam meets Robbie, and, although she might not particularly fancy him, he certainly represents a more innocent, less pressured world. It’s literally a holiday.’

  ‘But is it less pressured?’ Siân said.

  ‘Robbie’s fallen in love, maybe for the first time — at least the first time with someone who’s not been dead for centuries. And he wants Sam to share his world. Even calling her Marion. That’s pressure.’

  ‘Our feeling was that Samantha was finding it disquieting to be associated with Marion, the ghost of a young woman who died in a situation of appalling violence. She’s not particularly interested in medieval history — certainly not even close to Robbie’s level of obsession — and when he kept appealing to her to come back to Ludlow, to spend weekends with him, visiting historic remains she… eventually rebuffed him. And then, unfortunately, he died, and she — already feeling horribly guilty — was unwise enough to share her anguish and became the target for personal taunts by her peers at school. And then… all this came to the notice of Jemima Pegler. Did you see the pictures of her?’

  ‘I saw some party pictures.’

  ‘Not those. Nigel had a school photo, in which she’s glowering and looks… almost demonic. You know that famous Myra Hindley photograph, with powerfully hypnotic eyes? I would guess that’s the side of Pegler to which Samantha was exposed. The tactic is that, after stealing the boy, Harry, she professes shame and self-hatred, to wheedle her way back into Samantha’s life. Once she’s there, however, she’s worse than ever. We thought that, at one stage, Sam was on the verge of admitting that the girl had been physically assaulting her. She was certainly a violent person, subject to mood swings and severe depression — of which her parents, by the way, were aware. And, in fact…’ Siân moved away into the darkness, ‘she had been receiving medical attention.’

  ‘She was seeing a psychiatrist?’

  ‘For a time, Nigel discovered, she’d been prescribed medication — Seroxat, we understand.’

  ‘Where have I heard of that?’

  ‘You probably read about it in the papers.’

  ‘Serotonin?’

  ‘Increasing serotonin in the brain as an antiodote to depression. Seroxat was given to thousands of children in the UK. It then began to be linked with suicide and self-harm in some of them.’

  ‘I’m with you.’

  ‘Nigel’s initial, somewhat superficial suggestion that Jemima Pegler’s suicide was a form of escape from the mundane…’

  ‘Was bollocks, basically.’

  ‘Was a premature reaction because he simply wanted to be involved. When he found out more, it became clear that Jemima’s suicide — as the very circumstances, with an overdose of heroin, suggest — was an act of terminal aggression. And it does seem to have been related to this legend of the woman, Marion — who herself committed an act of extreme violence and then killed herself. Exploiting Samantha’s vulnerability to taunts in the wake of Robbie’s death, Jemima sends her distressing material from a suicide website. Samantha, a little unbalanced by now, sends Jemima in return the Internet material she’s received from Robbie relating to Marion — to which Jemima reacts by suggesting that they “leave behind their bodies”, or some such… I’m probably not putting this very well.’

  ‘You’re putting it brilliantly,’ Merrily said. ‘What we’re looking at, if we go along with it,
is Jemmie first attempting to lure Sam into what might be a suicide pact. Maybe bringing along enough heroin for them both, and then, when Sam doesn’t turn up…’

  ‘We can’t know what was going through her head. All that matters now is what’s in Samantha’s head.’

  ‘Which is Jemmie, superimposed over Marion. Sam believes Jemmie is still out there and demanding Sam fulfils her side of the bargain. She’s taken up residence in Sam’s subconscious, she appears in dreams… I think we’re looking at a severe case of bullying from beyond the grave. How did Nigel propose to deal with it?’

  ‘In the short term,’ Siân said, ‘my guess is he had absolutely no idea.’

  ‘Now we can talk,’ Bell said. ‘Now I feel safe.’

  Just looking at her turned Lol’s stomach cold.

  She was sitting up on the wall between two raised battlements. She’d slipped off her shoes, the way she used to do on stage, and she was rubbing her bare heels against the stone through the hem of her long dress.

  She’d casually leaned the mandolin case against the wall and then… he couldn’t believe how lightly she’d swung herself up there. Couldn’t believe how anyone who wasn’t a seasoned steeplejack could sit where she was sitting, with her back to that drop.

  All she had to do was tip herself gently back — a hundred and thirty-five feet to the street.

  Unless some jagged stonework broke her fall and her spine.

  ‘They let me hold him,’ Bell said, ‘in the hospital. Private hospital — my father paid. I had a room.’

  ‘The… dead one.’

  ‘I’d asked for a guitar, to take my mind off what was to come, but I found I couldn’t handle one over my huge pregnant belly, so somebody brought me a mandolin. I couldn’t play it properly, but I could fumble out simple tunes, and when they brought him in I laid him there and played to him: “Wee Willie Winkie”.’

  ‘When did you know there were going to be two of them?’

  He had to keep her talking now.

  ‘I became aware of a death having taken place inside me.’ Pulling the mandolin case up onto her knees. ‘Turned out that one baby was strangled, I think, by the cord — I didn’t ask too many questions, wasn’t about to become a student of obstetrics. I know they were non-identical, or apparently they might both have died. I didn’t want to see the survivor, he was going to be someone else’s. But this one… he’d died inside me. I’d absorbed his spirit, you see.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course you see. You’re a sensitive soul, I’ve always known that from your songs. So, yes, I played to him. He lay dead on the bed, and I played to him and told him that one day we’d go to Wee Willie Winkie’s town.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand that reference,’ Lol said.

  Bell leaned forward. ‘When I was a baby, I had a book of nursery rhymes, and each one had a full-page coloured picture, and the one I loved the most was of Wee Willie Winkie gliding through an old, old town with tall chimneys and houses of warm brick and timbered gables, and lights shining in mullioned windows. I would look at it for hours, entranced. It was where I wanted to be. Often, I’d dream of floating through that town. It was this town. Soon as I got out of the car, that magical connection was made with my earliest memory… I think I wept with happiness.’

  ‘You kept the baby’s body,’ Lol said. ‘How was that possible?’

  ‘When I was a little older,’ Bell said, as if she hadn’t heard the question, ‘and I began to realize there was something wrong with me and it was quite serious, I said to my mother, What happens when you die? And she said, You go to heaven. And I said, What’s heaven like? And she said, Heaven’s like the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen. So there you are…’

  She lifted the mandolin case and folded her coat over her dress and began to swing backwards and forwards in the air, with the case across her knees, and all Lol could hope for was that somebody down there would see her and…

  And what?

  ‘I got to know the undertaker. We had a big, phoney funeral. The undertaker was a fan — a Nico fan, actually. Do you remember Nico? She was with the Velvet Underground.’

  ‘Gothic… Teutonic. Played the harmonium.’

  ‘Deliciously doomy. That’s how it happens, you know. You move on from nursery rhymes to Grimm’s Fairy Tales… and they have the same kind of pictures: ancient, moonlit towns with spiky churches and towers and cobbled streets. Only it grows darker. And all the children who love the Wee Willy Winkie picture rather than the Jack and Jill picture with the green fields and the big sun, they’re the ones who become goths. They’re the ones who grow to love death.’

  ‘Willie Winkie had a candle in a lantern.’

  ‘And his nightgown was like a shroud. You’re right, of course. Willie Winkie was death… a ghostly presence. I recorded the song once.’

  ‘I remember. This heavy, bombastic, thunder-and-lightning rock and suddenly it all stops, and there are these little, light footsteps, and…’

  ‘Wee Willie Winkie, running through the town…’ Bell giggled, her face upturned. And then she frowned. ‘Some soulless philistine in the NME wrote that it was sexual. A song about a sexual predator. They spit on innocence.’

  ‘The undertaker…’

  ‘It’s not really illegal. Some health regulations might have been infringed, that’s all. He squared it with some guy at the crem, and they burned a coffin with a doll inside. And the baby was embalmed and sealed in the mandolin case, and I kept him in yew trees. Nobody could understand why I’d buy particular houses — ugly houses in unsuitable locations — but there was always an ancient yew tree with a hollow big enough for a mandolin case, and I’d seal him there and know his spirit was being kept alive. He’d have been buried here, though. I thought we’d both found a home.’

  ‘Robbie had his spirit… is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘It seemed so right. If I died, it didn’t matter any more. The spirit would go on. And he’d keep seeing me. Just like he saw the others. Robbie Walsh saw life in four dimensions. The thought of Robbie Walsh seeing me, growing up to administer the trust, with the money to conserve the environment in which we both…’

  ‘This heart condition,’ Lol said.

  ‘I don’t know. Haven’t seen a doctor in years. I don’t want to know.’

  ‘Why did you take the baby with you? On your walk through the town. Last night. You don’t normally do that, do you?’

  Bell smiled. ‘It was his birthday.’

  ‘Yesterday?’

  ‘Today. The early hours. Caesarean. They wanted to do it in the daytime, I said no, this is a night baby. Cost extra.’

  She looked down. The cluster of candles was about a foot below her feet.

  ‘Bell,’ Lol said. ‘Should I move the candles?’

  She laughed at him. Then she was serious. ‘I don’t want you to see this, Lol. You are sensitive. You’ll never forget it. Please go down. Go down now.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’ll be very quick, I promise you.’

  ‘Bell—’

  ‘The Beacon of the Marches — did you know they called it that?’

  ‘I… possibly.’

  ‘I’m going to make it a beacon again. Bright light and no pain. When it kicks in I’ll smile and I’ll wave… and flip over. Like a fireball. And become, in that one climactic moment, a brilliant part of history.’ Her voice softened. ‘And fly like Marion.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘There’s nothing left now, but this.’

  When he moved towards her, she put up both hands.

  ‘You wouldn’t make it, Lol. Can’t you smell it?’

  ‘Bell—’

  ‘The bottom of my dress is soaked in lighter fuel,’ Belladonna said.

  49

  An Intimate Eternity

  Merrily said, ‘Lord, you gave your Church authority to act in your name. We ask you therefore to visit tonight what we visit and bless whatever we bless… and
grant that all power of evil may be put to flight and the Angel of Peace enter in. Defend from harm all who enter and leave this door… doorway. And give us protection in our coming in and our going out.’

  People had come in and people had gone out, using the two narrow openings. There was so little room in here. Sandy Gee, hands together as if concentrating on prayer, had moved next to the scaffolding, within just a few feet of Sam. One of the paramedics was a Christian and he’d joined them, and so had Steve Britton, holding up a hurricane lamp.

  No harsh light, if possible, Merrily had said. No criss-crossing beams.

  Quiet light.

  The kid had her eyes wide open, her back to the window. She was calm, and looked a little shell-shocked and vacant. She’d refused to have her parents in, said she’d tried to tell them about it and had been accused of making it all up to get out of school.

  It would be necessary to talk to the parents afterwards — preferably with Sandy Gee present, because people were suspicious of religion and you could easily be accused of indoctrination and mind-bending. If Sam needed personal attention… this was usually a long-term process, with repeated sessions.

  ‘In the faith of Christ Jesus, we claim this place for God — Father, Son and Holy Spirit.’

  A minor exorcism of place was not enough. Merrily looked around for Siân, but she must have stepped out of the tower. It was already crowded in here. And perhaps she was still doubtful about this: exorcism would never be Siân’s thing.

  Her gaze met Sandy Gee’s and Sandy’s was saying hurry it up.

  Heightened pressure now, Sandy getting some hassle from CID. Before they began in here, she’d said the DCI was on his way from Shrewsbury in connection with… something else? Did Merrily just happen to know anything about something else? Well… yes, she did. Had they spoken to Lol?

  Lol?

  Martin Longbeach, Merrily had said. At the church.