by Phil Rickman
‘Come on,’ she says. ‘You almost pulled it off, didn’t you?’
Ozzy doesn’t turn to her, but he can surely see her in the mirror.
‘I mean, what was I supposed to do, Ozzy, once I knew?’
He stands tossing the bottle from hand to hand, shaking out a smile. Directly in front of the false wall, he’s huge in three screens.
‘I think what we’d all like to know is why you did it? M’self, I really don’t think it was just to prove you could get away with it, and I… we don’t want you to go, Ozzy.’
Three cameras record Ozzy Ahmed bowling the wine bottle overarm at the two-way mirror. In two of them, his arm hides his face, its expression. Looks like slow motion, Grayle thinks, like he’s feigning it, until the bottle full of green candlelight leaves his hand.
Three boom mics and two personals snatch the sounds of exploding glass, but the pictures are just splintering abstracts, the only coherent one showing Ashley clawing at her face and the blood and glitter between her fingers.
59
Last fruitcake
FROM HER WINDOW at the pop-up, she sees a line of grey in the north-eastern sky. It might be pre-dawn; it might be a false dawn, just like all the others.
It’s too hot in here for near-winter. She takes a short shower, sits on the edge of the bed in T-shirt and briefs, calls Marcus. She’s promised to call him, however late, but won’t push it. She’ll let it ring twice and then hang up.
‘So how many left in there, Underhill?’
‘Jeez, didn’t even hear you pick up. Where are you?’
‘Downstairs. It’s all downstairs in the bastard bungalow. Anderson has the defibrillator plugged in. Time is it?’
‘Four a.m.… sometime around there. Maybe five. Who cares? What did you say?’
‘How many left in the house?’
‘Three. Helen, Herridge and, uh, Cindy. Defford said they had to go through with the vote. Jo thought with Ahmed out, that would suffice, but Defford said they had to stick by the rule. End of story.’
End of Sebold. Hardly went out with good grace, but what did he really expect? Oddly, Max figured it wasn’t the viewers’ general feeling that he was party to Ahmed’s scam that did it, it was implying that Helen was a lush. Everybody likes Helen. Sebold should have known that. Helen’s your older sister, ageing gracefully, wiser but never throwing it at you.
‘Where’s the duplicitous Ahmed now, then?’
‘Luxury block next door. Soon’s he comes out the tunnel, Defford’s waiting for him. I don’t know all of what was said, but Defford got what he wanted, which was a promise from Ahmed that he’d go before the cameras tomorrow – today – and explain. Different person when he was out of there, according to Jo.’
‘You weren’t there?’
‘I was at the gate with the cops. Maybe it was on the news?’
‘Not that I saw.’
‘Too late, maybe. What happened, hundreds of people phoned the cops, accusing Ahmed of assault… malicious wounding… worse? Never stand up in court, but he’d still’ve faced a night in the slammer if Ashley hadn’t gone out to the walled garden insisting she wouldn’t be pressing charges. Standing there wrapped in some guy’s sheepskin coat. “No, truly, officer, I’m fine”. Blood seeping through the dressings. Marcus, a mirror, for God’s sake? She coulda lost an eye.’
‘Ahmed have any idea what he—?’
‘Says it was an accident, he didn’t plan to let go of the bottle. Deeply upset and traumatized. Yeah, right, but also denying the woman in white was a scam. Tells Defford he didn’t know where she came from. Doesn’t believe in ghosts, God or Allah, but he doesn’t know where she came from. Defford thinks he’s lying. Even I think he’s lying. Why, why why?’
‘Where’s Palk?’
Ashley’s overnighting in the pop-up medical suite, but insisting she has to go back in the house else scepticism will be seriously under-represented. Grayle rocks back on the bed.
‘Jeez, Marcus, I am more than a little sick at heart. Over six months of my life. Six months.’
‘Could’ve told you it was a hiding to nothing. We’re not—’
‘Not meant to know, yeah, yeah. Never gonna work. But, hey, the show’s still a major success story. Viewing figures doubling. No wonderment, no sense of the world being bigger than we thought, but what’s that shit matter?’
Marcus doesn’t laugh either.
‘You know why that is, Underhill? Why nothing’s come of it? Two sides. Eloquent and reasonably well-educated people with opposing viewpoints. Neither wants a reason for doubt. But neither wants to show weakness in front of the other, so nobody takes it seriously. Just a game. Except for the poor Starke woman, and look what happened to her.’
‘Worse than that, Marcus, it turned into the competition it was never gonna be. Now, at the halfway stage, we have what looks very like a winner. Let’s hear it for fragrant atheist, Ashley Palk. Whom, against all my instincts, I’ve actually kind of grown to like. Listen, I better try and get some sleep. People to interview. Maybe even Ahmed.’
‘Wish they’d let me interview the little shit.’
‘Yeah, that would be, uh…’
‘I’m sorry, Underhill.’
‘Hardly your fault. And you don’t even get paid.’
She still hopes to give him half her money, help get him and Andy out of the bastard bungalow. She doesn’t think she can tell him anything from the Knap Hall experience to make his book worthwhile. A haunting isn’t cold spots and vases falling off shelves, it’s what happens inside people, and that doesn’t translate to the screen. If the cameras had been working when she was alone in the Ansells’ bedroom and she saw what she would later come to think of as Harry Ansell’s hanging body, heavy with regret, sagging with sorrow, liquid grief in dead eyes…
… all you’d see in the live gallery would be different views of broken bedposts and a woman with a white face.
When Marcus has gone, the sky in the window slit is the colour of tar. The white line has disappeared from the northeast.
Grayle lies back, shuts her eyes on it all. Will the last fruitcake in the tin please pull down the lid?
60
Script over it
SOMEHOW, SHE SLEEPS, for maybe three hours, and when she awakes, to a banging on the door, the day’s started without her.
Jo Shepherd, in her TV-fatigues, is outside, displaying the kind of anxiety that doesn’t usually come before nightfall.
Grayle peers out. This is worse than nightfall. There’s dense mist, dark autumn mist, no sun behind it. Jo’s almost screaming through it.
‘Ahmed?’
‘What?’
‘You seen him?’
‘Jo, I saw enough of the bastard last night to last me the rest of my life.’
‘I’m serious. We left him in his room with tea and drinks and whatever he wanted, and he seemed tired but calm, said he’d talk to us – that’s you – on camera this morning. We’ve fixed up a small sitting room for it, in the unused part of the house, near Max’s office.’
‘Great,’ Grayle says dully.
‘But he’s not in his room in the pop-up, and we’ve checked the restaurant and all the obvious places. I thought maybe you and he…’
‘What?’
‘Were talking, before the interview. I don’t know.’
‘Can he get off the site?’
‘Anybody can get off the site, Grayle, it’s not a bloody concentration camp. But he hasn’t got a car here, and we still have his phone.’
‘But not his credit cards, I’d guess.’ Grayle yawns. Fucking Ahmed. ‘Lemme get dressed. Where you gonna be?’
‘Out looking for a new job, if we don’t find him.’
Ten a.m. finds them in Defford’s executive office: Defford, Jo, Kate Lyons, Max,… and Grayle. Funny how, when the shit’s all over the fan, you’ve become part of the core team, one of the need-to-know circle. The windows are opaque with grey mist, all the lights are on
.
‘I wouldn’t want to scare you,’ Grayle says, ‘but it isn’t far to walk into Winchcombe. He could easily get a cab there. Or even a bus.’
‘Thanks for that.’ Defford’s pacing. ‘Why would he want out? What am I not getting? He knows full well that pissing off before it’s over puts him in clear breach of his contract.’
‘You think he cares about that?’ Grayle’s gaze floating up to the ceiling. ‘He just doesn’t want to tell us why he did what he did.’
‘Shit, Grayle, he was always going to have to, at some stage. He knows that, too.’
‘Naw, think back, Leo. What Ashley did, what she sprang on him, on all of us, he was so not expecting that. Far as he knew, she was there just to piss off the crazies, not her fellow sceptics. Soon’s he sees they’re not on the same side any more, all his wit and his gags desert him. You could see him, like whaddo I do, whaddo I do? No obvious answer presents itself, so he’s like get me out, get me out. Remembering he’s on live TV.’
‘That’s what Sebold says. Sebold says he was having a very public breakdown.’ Defford fists his desk. ‘And why the fuck did we let him out?’
Sebold is already threatening to lay this on the media, saying there were clear signs that his friend Ahmed was going through an emotional crisis.
Only there weren’t any signs, Max, the shrink, keeps saying.
‘I could give you a list of obvious symptoms he wasn’t displaying. Well, you probably don’t have time to hear them…’
Defford’s expression agrees.
‘Put them in writing, in incontestable shrink-speak.’
‘Though I do think Grayle’s right about last night,’ Max says. ‘Previously, when Ahmed was clamming up, you could see that was deliberate – he was being enigmatic. Last night was the first sign that he was not in control. And that’s not where Ozzy likes to be. He’s like you, Leo, he plans ahead. No heckler ever walks out of a gig uninjured.’
‘And who did he think was in control, Max – Big Other?’
‘Maybe he did,’ Grayle says.
And gets stared at.
‘Well, maybe Eloise was right. Maybe he was, to an extent, in denial. The idea that something he doesn’t believe in is screwing him up…’
‘Do me a favour, Grayle,’ Defford says. ‘Don’t go there. Don’t go anywhere near there. Not today.’
‘Leo, it’s what the damn programme’s about!’
‘You really haven’t learned much since you’ve been here, have you, Grayle?’
Grayle shuts up. Least it wasn’t anything she did that drove Ahmed out of the house, off the entire site. No one saw him leave but that’s no surprise. The firm handling security is more concerned with anyone getting in.
Defford has people discreetly checking out cab firms, train stations. He’s awaiting a call from Ozzy’s agent. Only Defford could know what to say to Ozzy’s agent in a situation like this. Sebold’s also been asked if he can think of any friends Ozzy might go to. London-based staff are keeping an eye on Ozzy’s north London home.
‘If it’s not a breakdown,’ Jo Shepherd says, ‘it has to be concealing something heavy to make him throw it all away.’
‘He didn’t throw it away,’ Defford says. ‘Ashley blew it all apart. And then here she is, being all nice and sympathetic and “don’t go, Ozzy”. Smug bitch. Even I’d smash the bleeding mirror.’
Grayle jerks. Bleeding mirror. Something about that climactic moment still disturbs her in a way she can’t work out. Maybe she’ll get Jo to play it back. Sometime.
‘I’m not panicking at this stage,’ Defford says. ‘We have three days to get him back. Somehow we’ll do it. Meantime, we just script over it, and we rebuild tension in the house by letting some of the background in.’
Grayle looks up at him.
‘Trinity?’
‘Been out of the picture for too long.’
Grayle lets her eyes close on him.
Never really was in it, Leo. It’s the wrong picture.
‘So much unplanned drama here now, it won’t be long before the media find us. I don’t want them blowing our cover. I want us to be seen to do that, at our own pace. So we start feeding it in, slowly. Katherine Parr, then Trinity. All right? Jo, let’s start working on that.’
Grayle opens one eye.
‘Would help, surely, if somebody had picked up on any of it.’
‘I doubt any us thought that was going to happen. It was a device. A conceit. We’re never going to prove there are ghosts here. Or that there ever were.’
‘I see.’
‘Nonetheless, it demonstrates how you can give a concept a whole new lease of life by introducing a blanket theme.’
‘So, uh, what is Big Other?’
‘Well, that’s it. Big Other is the theme.’
‘Oh, right.’ Grayle turns to Kate Lyons. ‘Kate, do you – or anyone – have a list of the viewers who rang or emailed to say they could identify the woman Ahmed may or may not have been seeing?’
Kate looks down at her iPad.
‘We should have. If we do, I can email them to you within the hour.’
‘Good. Yes,’ Defford says. ‘Let’s get Max to talk about that. Nice example of how viewers can be conditioned. All right, most of these people are basket cases, still…’
‘We should understand each other then,’ Grayle says.
Wonders how much of her pay they’ll dock if she quits tonight.
Outside, she sees it’s not just ground mist, this is fog. This is what happens sometimes in the fall when there’s no wind and no rain. She checks her phone, hoping for Marcus, but finding a number from the past, calling it back from under the ash tree.
‘Who told you, Fred?’
He laughs. HGTV are supposed to have a hush-agreement with the cops, who don’t want the lanes clogged with sightseers either. But Fred Potter’s police contacts seldom get their names on press releases.
‘Nobody got arrested,’ she tells him, ‘and Ashley’s injuries aren’t life threatening. So no story.’
‘Glad to hear that.’
‘No, you’re not.’
‘Anyway, this is just a reminder that we still exist and have all the background beautifully written up. First sign of anything leaking, we have to press send.’
‘Always made sense to me, Fred. Press it now, if you want.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘I’ll explain one day.’
She’s being signalled. Kate Lyons’s head around Defford’s door.
‘What’s Mr Ahmed’s mood this morning?’ Fred says. ‘Just to keep me up to speed.’
‘Uh…’ Grayle stares into the greyness. ‘I guess he seems a little out of it today. You know?’
‘Sebold,’ Kate shouts. ‘Five minutes.’
This is the small sitting room Jo talked about, in the part of the house that still looks like it used to be a hotel, the furniture in here too comfortable to be Tudor, the wall panels too regular to be handsawn from a tree.
‘Can’t wait for it all to be over, actually,’ Sebold says. ‘It’s not at all what I thought it was going to be.’
She knows he wants her to ask him what he thought it was going to be, so she doesn’t.
They’re both wearing personal mics and there’s a cameraman – just the one – behind her, focused on Rhys on the sofa. Which means, dear God, that for editing purposes they’re going to ask her to do questions and noddies. Hell, no. Forget it. No way is she appearing on TV looking like she’s here to clean the toilets.
‘What did you feel when Ashley revealed Ozzy’s scam?’
He’s in a Western-looking cord shirt and khaki pants. He looks relaxed but alert, tipping his head to one side.
‘How do you know it was a scam?’
Rhys in his familiar I-ask-the-questions mode. Trained journalist – what he does, what he is. Except he isn’t, Grayle thinks, feeling qualified at last to have an opinion. A trained journalist must never appear to hold a point of vi
ew. Hard to avoid Sebold’s.
‘You think it wasn’t a scam?’
‘I never thought it was a scam. It wasn’t funny enough. When Ozzy says something that isn’t funny, you start to wonder if he isn’t feeling well.’
‘So when he said he wanted out…’
‘He’d reached breaking point. I keep telling people this.’
‘Why do think he agreed to come on this programme?’
‘You want the truth, look at his background. His father was an immigrant. Immigrants come here to work and they work harder than anyone. They don’t stop.’
‘But Ozzy’s dad’s a doctor… an eye-surgeon.’
‘And they don’t work hard? Are you kidding? He told me his old man was appalled when he said he thought he could make a living as a comedian instead of having a normal career, a respectable career. Which explains why Ozzy, from the start, would take every offer on the table. Even when he was earning more than his father, he couldn’t stop. He’s…’ Rhys sitting up, tapping a palm with two fingers ‘…the most successful of anyone here. Progressed from comedy clubs to major theatres in the major cities of the world. Regular on all those TV shows in which a panel of celebs swap allegedly unscripted jibes. He works all the time. He couldn’t stop. I’m going, Ozzy, take a fucking holiday. He couldn’t. It was like an illness.’
‘That bad? Really?’
‘After two days he’d be performing for the guests in his hotel to convince himself he hadn’t lost the ability to entertain. I think he saw this as a break. The only kind of holiday he could handle – one where he was getting paid serious money to sit around making smart remarks. But that would never be enough.’
‘Rhys, that doesn’t explain why he was creating ghosts.’
‘You’re not… you’re not listening. “Performing for the guests in the hotel”. I think it was just instinct. He wakes up, he thinks am I working? Am I earning? Before he knows it, he’s invented something he thinks is expected of him, and then he has to keep it going. It’s an illness.’
