Caroline Graham - A Ghost in the Machine

He muttered: “We gotta think like they’d think.”

Karen said, “The social?”

“Yeah. First…” He pictured them pushing in, staring round. Looking for things wrong so they could pick on him. “We clean this place up.”

“I can do that,” cried Karen.

“And we’ll have to buy some stuff to eat. If there’s no food in the house we’ll be in deep shit.”

“Roy? Could we have some flowers?”

“You can’t eat flowers.”

“I could pick some.”

“Yeah, OK. Now, money. I’ve got…” He ferreted around the pockets of his Levi’s. “Seven pounds and…forty-three p.” No good asking what she’d got. On the other hand, seven quid wouldn’t go far. The next question was obvious. Obvious but, no matter how you put it, tricky. At the home the minute a room was unoccupied you’d naturally go through it, helping yourself to anything worth having. You’d be a fool not to. But somehow the idea of doing this now, of searching the house, made him feel uncomfortable.

“Um…I wonder if…d’you know…?”

“There might be some money in the toffee tin.”

“Where’s that, then?”

Karen opened and closed her mouth, swallowed and tried again. “Wardrobe. I can’t.”

“No worries.”

Roy pushed his chair back and made for the stairs. But on the threshold of Ava’s room he hesitated, not understanding why. After all, he was only doing a quick straightforward search. Not prying or reading personal letters or anything. And the place was empty. Wasn’t it?

Roy, who had put one foot across the threshold, stepped back. A vivid recollection of just what sort of person Ava had been possessed him. A person with extremely powerful psychic gifts in constant touch with the world beyond. A person who had only just passed over. So what if her spirit was still lurking? Roy drew in a sharp breath over teeth suddenly cold and achy. What would it think, that spirit, seeing someone going through all its possessions? More important – what might it do?

Roy had heard stories about what happened to people who robbed the dead. About how tomb raiders in ancient Egypt were followed forever after by the Curse of the Pharaohs, eventually to meet terrible ends. And once he had seen an old-fashioned film where a little boy in rags stole the coins from a corpse’s eyes and was straightaway run down by a horse and cart.

He heard Karen downstairs, turning the taps on. Getting ready to clean up. Putting her back into it. Disgust at his own cowardice propelled Roy into the room. He walked quickly over to the wardrobe and opened it, spotting the tin straightaway. “Sharpe’s Toffees,” it said on the lid. Green letters dancing over a stout old man, cheeks bulging with sweeties and wearing tartan trousers. The tin was empty.

Roy replaced it and stood quite still, breathing quietly and carefully for some minutes before he realised none of this caution was necessary. He was completely on his own. No atmosphere, no creepy feelings, no bony fingers click-clacking along the radiator. Just him and the empty bed and a not-very-nice smell, which he recognised as Ava’s hair spray. To celebrate the complete absence of any presence Roy flung open the window and let the sunshine in.

Then he went back to the wardrobe and checked out Ava’s clothes, his fingers flicking in and out of every pocket, quick as lightning. Pushing the things back and forth released more smells and a puff or two of dust but no money. Roy gave the dressing table a quick once-over. Jars of pink stuff and browny liquid, powder in boxes and lipsticks, crystals, brighter colours in little pots, necklaces hanging from the mirror.

Ava’s platform wig was on a stand next to a large photograph of herself wearing it. She had told Karen that this must be the first thing she saw each morning when she opened her eyes as it helped her hold the dream. Roy remembered her saying it because, straight after, she had burned every other photograph like a snake shedding its old skin. Now, sorting through a large chest of drawers (jumpers, underwear, tights) Roy thought what a good idea that was. Making yourself over, it was called. He had just started to dream of what his own makeover might involve when he spotted Ava’s handbag.

It was lying on the floor on the far side of the room, halfway between the door and the bed. A black boxy thing with gilt stick-on initials. Roy thought seeing it there was pretty strange. She hadn’t been the tidiest person in the world, but just to chuck it on the floor…Still, didn’t that tie in with her not even bothering to get undressed? She must have been paralytic. Either that or already ill. Roy pushed that thought away. Stamped on the mental picture of Karen fast asleep, with her mother dying just across the landing.

He picked up the bag, sat on the side of the bed and opened it. So much stuff—why did women carry all this rubbish about? Letters, bills, hairbrush, scribbled-on bits of paper, aspirins, half a tube of Polos. No sign of her mobile. A make-up bag was unzipped and Roy got some black stick all over his fingers. He wiped them on the sheet before opening Ava’s purse. Money—lots of money. Nearly fifty pounds. Roy had just finished counting it when he noticed a thin, official-looking booklet with Ava’s name on the cover. A Causton District Borough Council rent book. Seemed Rainbow Lodge cost Ava Garret (Mrs) all of sixty-five quid a week. Sixty-five quid? Roy’s jaws gaped wide. He flinched against the weight of injustice so brazenly revealed. For over a year he had been sleeping on a mattress no wider than a baby’s cot in a hutch roughly eight feet square and existing on scraps while paying a big enough screw to rent the whole house. Greedy cow. He had spoken aloud and didn’t care. He didn’t care and he’d do it again.

“You’re a greedy fucking cow!” shouted Roy, on his toes now, dancing about and squaring up to the empty air with bunched fists. “Come back and haunt me, right? Just try it. Try it and I’ll bloody kill you.”

In the middle of the afternoon of that same day DS Troy parked on the far side of Swayne Crescent and the two policemen walked across to Rainbow Lodge. Barnaby looked disapprovingly at an old red Honda straddling the pavement.

“Not much of the rainbow left,” said Sergeant Troy, scraping at the painted arch on the worn garden gate. The orange and green had nearly gone and the purple was flaking fast.

“Not much of a lodge either.”

DCI Barnaby followed his sergeant up the concrete path, looking about him. His green-fingered soul winced at the scrubby, neglected garden. He ached for the parched lupins and frazzled snow-in-summer. Why plant them in the first place? Why not just pour concrete over the lot and have done with it? Knowing he was overreacting did not improve Barnaby’s temper. He attempted to calm down. He was about to enter a house of sudden death and, for all he knew, genuine grief. Though in his job you’d be wise not to bet on it.

Troy, having knocked once, waited. He noticed the curtains, black velvet patterned with stars and whirling planets, give a little twitch. Encouraged, he knocked again. The door opened slowly, an inch at a time.

The sergeant’s gaze met empty space.

“Hello.”

Troy looked down. A child stood there. A bony, skinny little thing with colourless squinty eyes and hair like straw. She whispered: “Are you the social?”

“No,” said Troy. Then, gentling his tone, “Actually we’re policemen. D’you think we could come in for a minute?”

“Show her your card, Sergeant,” said the DCI, who had already produced his own. Thanks to the glories of television even toddlers seemed to have got the hang of the correct procedure in these matters. Barnaby thought that was a good thing and was only sorry people weren’t as canny when it came to checking out double-glazing cowboys and tarmac touts.