Caroline Graham - A Ghost in the Machine

“I wonder…would you happen to be Miss Lawson?”

Polly gave the man a suspicious stare. “Why?”

“There is a parcel for you at the desk.” He stepped back, stretching out an arm, indicating that she should precede him. And, as the lift had suddenly stopped and now seemed to be returning to the stratosphere. Polly did so.

Joining his colleague behind the vast polished counter, the porter took a small Jiffy bag from one of the pigeonholes. Although neither man as much as glanced at each other Polly sensed what she was convinced was shared contempt.

“Do you have any identification, miss?”

Polly slapped her credit card down. She had now decided not to risk the humiliation of a journey in the lift to an empty flat. “Do you have any idea when Mr. Slaughter will be back?”

“Probably not at all,” said the second porter. “He doesn’t live here.” He observed Polly’s suddenly white face with trepidation. The last thing they needed on the premises was a fainting female.

“Doesn’t.”

“That’s right. Just stays occasionally.” The first man took down a large, lined ledger. “Being a friend of Mr. Corder.”

“Corder?”

“Who does live here.” He opened the book and offered Polly a pen. “Would you sign, miss, please? For the package.”

Polly found it hard to get a grip on the pen but managed to scrawl something on the page, if not actually on the line. She took the Jiffy bag and her card then, totally disoriented by shock, turned the wrong way, blundered down another corridor and found herself in a large room with lots of comfortable chairs and low tables. There was a bar at the far end and the place was full of people. Mainly men who began staring at her but not in the way she was used to. Polly realised why when she caught sight of herself in a long mirror. Staring, unfocused eyes, a tangled mat of hair, sick all down the front of her shirt. She looked filthy and mad.

Even so, she attempted, when leaving, to walk the walk. Her proud walk to the exit doors and down the steps to the street. But the force field of her confidence had vanished and Polly knew she appeared merely grotesque.

In the street outside, in the baking heat and dust surrounded by surging tourists in souvenir hats, she began to cry. Running dangerously into the road she flagged down several taxis, planning to dodge the fare by jumping out at the lights in Dalston. But though some of the cabs were for hire, none of them stopped. Polly turned, doubling back past the Ministry of Defence, turning towards the Embankment, looking for a cash machine. She found one in the Tube station but it flashed, in bilious green: “Unable To Process This Transaction” and spat out the card.

She had to get home to open her envelope. Quite why was beyond her understanding but she knew that she absolutely must not realise the contents when other people were about. Though muddled and afraid, Polly was quite sure about that. Briefly she played with the idea of finding an abandoned underground ticket to brandish, waiting till the pushchair/heavy luggage gate was busy and slipping through. But then she’d have it all to do again at the other end and might well get stopped. While she hesitated, the decision was taken for her when someone on the staff shouted, “Oy! No beggars.”

Eventually she got home by catching a series of buses, travelling till the conductor came for her fare, then asking for a destination in the wrong direction. Flustered and apologetic she would then get off, catch the bus behind and repeat the procedure. The journey took five changes and lasted over an hour.

Back in the flat Polly prepared to open the package from Billy Slaughter. She had been gripping it so tightly her fingers had stiffened into claws. She sat down on the bed, reading her name, immaculately written in authoritative black script, again and again. Then she squeezed the bag. Tracing an outline of something hard and rectangular, Polly’s breath caught in her throat. The news lately had been all about letter bombs; of certain ministerial departments where explosive experts were permanently on call to handle any suspicious mail. But such items were planted by stealth, surely? Not brazenly couriered by someone unmasked and known by name.

Polly tore the bag open and turned it upside down. A tape fell out wrapped in a sheet of A4. She smoothed out the paper and read:

My Dear Polly,

Remember these things. Rumours as to an upturn in commodities are easily started. Insider dealing is a criminal offence, whether loss or profit results. Computers tell the truth as much and no more than the person operating them. If you thought I bought shares in Gillans and Hart you were sadly deceived. Play the tape. And consider carefully before you ever speak to anyone in such a way again.

BS.

With trembling fingers Polly rammed the cassette into her Walkman. The first words recalled the occasion precisely, even though at the time they were spoken she had been very drunk. She had just begun to grasp how frighteningly deep was the financial pit into which she had fallen. When Billy Slaughter had read out the small print on the agreement she had so casually signed and pointed out her legal obligations Polly had laughed. She thought herself immune from the slightest form of pressure, let alone genuine unkindness or bullying. He was mad about her – everyone knew that. Then slowly, as the net tightened, she had begun to understand how things really were. It was shortly after this that he offered to cancel the debt if she would go away with him “for a few days.”

Polly, consumed by disgust and rage at the thought of being at any man’s mercy, least of all a revolting creature like Billy Slaughter, then made the telephone call to which she was now listening. She had rung him in the middle of a sleepless night encouraged by several glasses of Southern Comfort.

She had assumed he would be there and perhaps he was. Just not picking up the phone. Not giving her the satisfaction. Black hatred coated Polly’s tongue with a dreadful fluency. She dwelled on his appearance—the sweating abundance of his greasy flesh, the graveyard stink of his breath, the ugliness of his thick-lipped, piggy countenance. On the fact that his arse was better-looking than his face and his genitalia were such as to make him a laughing stock wherever two or three women were gathered together in a City wine bar. She described the vile sensation as of crawling maggots when once his hand had brushed her arm. She jeered at his loveless existence. At the pretence that he chose not to have friends when the truth was that to know him was to loathe him. Take away his money and what was left? A noxious heap of stinking blubber, and so on and on and on…

Now she switched off the machine and sat on the bed, shaking. What a fool she had been. What a fool to think the straightforward repayment of a debt could draw the sting from an attack of such venomous ridicule. Of course he would seek revenge. And what a revenge. She had lost her entire inheritance. And more than that, and worse. She had lost money that was not hers to lose.

At this point Polly began to weep in agonised frustration. She howled and wept until she felt physically ill. Then tumbled into wretched sleep, woke for a while before escaping again into the dark. This cycle continued for what she recognised afterwards to be several days. She dreamed of revenge, longing for it in the hopeless, helpless way an abused child will. Drifting in and out of consciousness, picturing the form it might take. You could have people killed for as little as five hundred pounds – she had read that in a Sunday paper. Or, better still, maimed. Shot in the spine, Billy Slaughter could live for years, paralysed in a wheelchair. Better still, he could be blinded or scorched with acid or cut with knives so fiercely that people would shudder and turn away, crossing themselves at the sight of him.