Caroline Graham - A Ghost in the Machine

Now, eating Mars bars at the kitchen table, Roy and Karen were going through Loot. Things were amazingly cheap. And barely second-hand at all, according to the sellers. Roy, having moved off his shelf and out of his hutch, was looking for a bed. Karen, quicker at reading, described what was on offer. Nearly everything said “Buyer Collects,” but there were also lots of ads for drivers with vans so that wouldn’t be a problem. So Karen wrote down telephone numbers and Roy pictured good-as-new divans with sprung mattresses and stripped pine headboards, bunk beds, antique-style beds and even an inflatable one you could let down and take on holiday.

Meanwhile Doris was once more on her way to Rainbow Lodge. You could almost say she’d never left it, for she had thought of little else since Roy’s heartbreaking story had left her reeling. She couldn’t get it out of her mind. She had even dreamed of the newly motherless child and the never-wanted, desperate boy. As for that awful house…

Choosing her moment carefully, after Alan Titchmarsh but before the snooker, she shared some of this concern with Ernest. She barely told him the half of it and tried to sound casual when suggesting they might come round for a meal sometime, but Ernest was not fooled. He knew his Doris. Having no family had been the greatest disappointment of her life. When she was younger all the love she had to give was lavished on the children of her sister, who became so spoiled it had almost caused a rift between them. So now Ernest said it was fine by him if Roy and Karen came to tea. It would be nice to have some youngsters around the place for once.

Doris had packed a basket before she left. Just a few things from the larder – home-made jam and chutney, a coffee cake from the WI stall and some vegetables from her neighbour’s allotment. She also picked up a bottle of children’s aspirin from the Spar, having been concerned yesterday about the little girl’s headaches, which hardly seemed to stop before another one began. Not that Karen complained. It was Roy who was worrying himself silly over what he called “Karen’s heads.” One aspirin every twenty-four hours, Doris had been assured, wouldn’t hurt. Really she would like to take the child to a doctor but these were very early days and she planned to tread carefully.

The second she got inside the front door of Rainbow Lodge Karen ran up to her crying, “We’ve done this amazing drawing. On a machine!”

“What’s that all about then?” said Doris. She thought how sweet Karen looked in her new jeans and a white T-shirt showing a basketful of puppies.

“And Roy’s painting my room. Come and see.”

They went upstairs and Doris admired the Princess Pink colour and lovely new duvet.

Roy said, “I’m going to paint next door all white.”

Walking back along the L-shaped landing Doris peered around the corner of the leg, finding a pile of cushions and pillows on a thin mattress and a wooden shelf holding magazines. Seeing that she was puzzled, Karen explained.

“That’s Roy’s room.”

“Or was,” said Roy.

Doris carried on downstairs, not trusting herself to utter a word. She believed in never speaking ill of the dead but there were no rules about thinking ill and she thought very ill of Ava indeed. Call that a room? Doris had seen roomier egg boxes. Downstairs she put the kettle on, made the tea and cut Roy an absolutely huge slice of cake.

The next morning the news that Ava Garret had been deliberately killed had made not only the local radio and television bulletins but also the Causton Echo. Give it twenty-four hours, thought DCI Barnaby, and the tabloids’ll be swarming all over the place. The landlord of the Horse and Hounds won’t know what’s hit him.

The chief inspector had been in the incident room, almost empty but for the civilian telephonists, since half-past seven, working through yesterday’s house-to-house reports. As he had expected, given the passage of time since Dennis Brinkley’s death, they were bare of any really useful information. No one had seen any person or anything unusual in the village on the day in question, as far as they could recall. The feedback on Brinkley’s general demeanour and personality bore out what little Barnaby had gathered already. His general civility stopped a little short of real friendliness. He kept himself to himself but gave generously at the door and always contributed a handsome prize to the local fête’s tombola. His relationship with Benny Frayle was indulgently regarded. The landlady at the Horse and Hounds offered a kindly if slightly patronising summation: they were nice company for each other but everyone knew there was nothing really going on.

Ava Garret was something else. Only a few people admitted to knowing her but those who did had plenty to say. The way she treated that poor little kid was a crying shame. The child was afraid of her own shadow. Plus Ava’s airs and graces were enough to make a cat laugh. No one believed her story about being married to a man who’d been to public school. What would he want with somebody whose dad was a navvy and mother a toilet attendant? As for her heavenly powers – the general opinion seemed to be that Ava was no more psychic than the dog’s dinner. No one questioned admitted to attending the Church of the Near at Hand.

Throughout, the village opinion on any personal link between Garret and Dennis Brinkley remained firmly in the negative. As one crusty old gaffer in his retirement bungalow put it – he may have been weird but he weren’t barmy.

Also on Barnaby’s desk were a large stack of pictures showing Ava as she had appeared on the night she died. Quite unrecognisable when compared to the vampiric photograph pinned up on the board.

The chief inspector closed the files, pushed his swivel chair back and took a moment to savour the cool, refreshing atmosphere. Ah – the joys of air conditioning. He recalled the heat of last summer when the room had still been fitted with heavy ceiling fans. Wooden blades the size of aircraft propellors had languidly agitated banks of stale air, barely disturbing drifts of assorted insects. Progress – you couldn’t whack it.

He checked his watch. Twenty minutes to the nine-thirty briefing. Just time to nip downstairs for sausage, egg and bacon. Definitely no chips. Or fried bread. And when he returned replete and in good humour there would his team be, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and raring to go. In your dreams, Tom, as the saying went.

The briefing didn’t take long. The new pictures were distributed; allocations to be covered shared out and off they went. All but DS Brierly.

“So, Audrey,” said the DCI. “Well done, getting Priest to come in yesterday.”

“It wasn’t difficult, sir. I think they both enjoyed themselves actually.”

“How were things at Rainbow Lodge?”

“I’m not really sure.” Pulling a chair up to his desk. “She’s a strange little soul.”

“Karen?” He recalled the child, frightened and wistful with her transparent skin and colourless hair. Like some manifestation in a ghost story. “Yes, that’s a good description.”

“I checked things out as well as I could without seeming to. The house is clean. There’s plenty to eat. And there’s someone looking after them.”

“Oh, good.”

“An Aunty Doris, by all accounts.”

Audrey had been extremely relieved that the aunt was present. She had not gone alone to Rainbow Lodge but had carefully chosen someone totally unthreatening – a young constable, barely three months into the service – who would have been pretty useless in the role of supporting adult.

But DC Cotton had not been entirely a waste of space. Admiring the newly decorated rooms, talking about football, bemoaning the lack of any decent clubs in Causton, he had got on very well with Roy while remaining blissfully unaware that Roy thought him a complete and utter wanker.