Caroline Graham - A Ghost in the Machine

As Ashley recovered the bleakness vanished from his gaze and his sluggish skin began to glow. His eyes were once again warm and lively and when Judith held his hand his own grip was strong.

Loving him constrainedly for so long she now fell in love all over again and couldn’t help wondering how soon it would be before they slept together. Every night she would sit on the balcony of her room, picturing how it would happen. What they would do. What they would say. How passionate his caresses and kisses would be.

There were some boutiques in the atrium of the Mimosa, full of horrifically priced merchandise, and she had bought a semi-transparent nightdress of smoky grey lace and chiffon, loosely tied with satin ribbons. Unable to resist showing it off she had taken the box along on her next visit to the hospital. Folding back layer upon layer of silvery tissue with trembling fingers Judith had drawn out the lovely thing and held it against her heart, the gossamer folds tumbling to the floor. She couldn’t quite make out Ashley’s reaction. For a fraction of a second, (blink and you’d miss it) she could have sworn he looked alarmed. Then there was a certain awkwardness, which Judith was quick to reason away. It had been a long time; he had been very ill. She should have been more patient. Then he said something nice, though the feeling of uncomfortableness still came through. She had forgotten the exact words.

But eventually it would all come right. It must or she would have cheated and lied and turned her whole life over to the bad for nothing. White-collar crime, they called it, as if this made it somehow cleaner than the other sort. As if stealing money by tapping a keyboard wasn’t as serious as grabbing some old woman’s handbag and frightening her half to death. Frightening people by remote control must inevitably be less traumatic.

Anyway, it was half expected these days, the way things were. Every day, workers with pension funds woke up to find they had halved in value, if not worse. Insurance companies actually trained staff in how to avoid paying out. Honest investors lost thousands through companies still paying their directors obscene bonuses. If that wasn’t theft, what was?

And surely the reasons behind a crime should be taken into account? In her case they were admirable ones. She had stolen for love. It had seemed to her a matter of life and death.

Not so her partner. She had regarded his involvement as purely a matter of greed. He denied this. For him the robbery had been a question of freedom. “Call me a freedom fighter!” he had shouted, laughing and half drunk, not long after their first meeting in the Peacock Hotel.

He had delivered her from a terrible assault. On the pretence of setting up a business meeting a repulsive man had lured her there; wedged her into a tight corner and urged her to have sex with him. When she’d refused he’d almost climbed into her lap, all the while pouring depraved and filthy suggestions into her ears.

Shaking and on the verge of tears, she’d caught the eye of someone about to buy a drink, who saw the man off. That was when it all started. Overwhelmed by gratitude she was surprised to find her rescuer knew who she was. He had seen her, apparently, at Carey Lawson’s funeral, though they had not been introduced. Somehow this seemed to make it all right to talk to him. A couple of brandies later and Judith had told him everything. She had described Ashley fading away before her eyes; clients disappearing, her desperate need for money. How she had sold nearly everything they owned that was sellable and now there was only the house and that was mortgaged.

He too had a tale of woe. Married to a gorgon of a woman who doled out pocket money for services rendered and if he couldn’t she didn’t. Humiliated by being forced to sit in an office all day, pretending to be of use when everyone knew it was only because his wife owned half the business he was there at all. The other half – well, he assumed Judith knew Dennis Brinkley? Could there be some way she and himself could help each other? Why not start by sharing their strengths and weaknesses?

This didn’t take long. It quickly became plain that Judith had all the strengths while Drew, as he had asked to be called, owned up to all the weaknesses. However, as the conversation developed, both terms proved inappropriate. Knowledge, it seemed, would be the counter with which to play the game.

There was little Judith didn’t know about offshore accounts, tax dodges, stock exchange fiddles and money scams generally. All accountants pick up such information along the way. Only the bent ones make use of it. And computers held no mystery for her. She had been working with them all her life.

Drew knew nothing of such matters. What he had to offer was access to lots and lots and lots of money via a key to the street door and main office of Brinkley and Latham, plus the combination to a safe that held the passwords for all the main office accounts. For good measure he also threw in cautionary tips on how to avoid detection. Mainly this seemed to involve keeping a sharp eye out for the nosy fishmonger opposite when entering or leaving the building. And speed, once inside, must be of the essence. Shift a lot of stuff in two or three visits max, casting the net wide. Smallish amounts from lots of accounts, suggested Drew, soon mounted up and were less likely to be detected. Judith explained that detection would take some time anyway, as false entries would have to be made to cover the debits, however small. Drew was impressed.

They talked and talked, getting more and more exhilarated. He bought a bottle of cheap sparkling wine. They saw it off and Judith ordered another. Later, though, getting out of her car and stumbling up Trevelyan’s garden path, the intoxication began to drain away. And by the time she had taken off her coat and drunk several glasses of water, she could not imagine what on earth had possessed her. God – she must have been mad.

Running a bath, pouring in lots of scented oil, she attempted to wash away the dirt from the infected early part of the evening and the insanely dangerous fantasy of the final two hours. Eventually she crawled into bed, falling into an uneasy sleep. Her last thought was, he must be feeling just like this. It was the drink talking. Tomorrow it will all seem like a crazy dream. But in the morning, when the phone rang and he asked if it was still on she said “yes” straightaway.

They met only twice after this although they spoke several times on the telephone. Everything worked smoothly. As Judith did not have access to Dennis Brinkley’s private office, his fatal accident hardly caused a blip on the screen of her activities. But as the police had been involved, albeit tangentially, she decided it would be safer to extricate a final amount to bring them near to their aimed sum for balance and quit.

Not reading the local paper, which she rightly described as illiterate rubbish, Judith had missed entirely the fact that a self-styled medium, boasting a knowledge of Dennis Brinkley’s death, had herself passed away in somewhat mysterious circumstances. This item hit the national press as she and Ashley were boarding Swissair at Stansted. And even if the news of what would soon be recognised as a double murder had been brought to her attention, she would never have linked it with the man she knew only as Drew. Judith had sized him up pretty thoroughly at their first meeting. Weak, desperate, good-looking in a faded, second-division soap star sort of way. Wouldn’t hurt a fly.

The new owners of Kinders considered the name rather an affectation and restyled the building the Old School House. He was a banker, she did graphic design, working from home. They had three children and a live-in nanny. Their architect had transformed the place. Four bedrooms, two bathrooms and living rooms, and a crescent-shaped kitchen that ran halfway round the ground floor. The arrow slits had been bricked in and replaced by huge windows. The interior was now flooded with light and there was a shiny new red front door.