Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

‘Oh yes,’ Bell said. ‘He’d compiled quite a dossier on the woman who’d deprived him of a life in various mansions… the California coast… the company of rock stars… unlimited lines of coke, strings of delicious girlfriends. Leaving him with a dreary business-studies course and a future serving burgers to fucking truck drivers.’

‘And then he followed you here…’

‘He’d attempted, indirectly, to contact me before he came here. An approach was made, through some agency, to my solicitor from someone claiming to be my son. I told her it was a try-on because my son was dead. Anyway, I refused to meet him. What was the point? I gave birth to him, that was all.’

‘And gave him away for a career.’

‘Lol…’ For the first time her face registered pain. ‘I gave him away because I didn’t expect to see him grow up. The one certainty in my life had always been premature death. What he didn’t know was that I’d made financial provision for him. My will’s always included a substantial bequest to my surviving son.’

‘It wasn’t money he wanted, though, was it? He had money. Like you said, he just wanted to be part of your life.’

‘Well, I didn’t want him . Certainly not after meeting him. He was crass, he was—’

‘Probably the greatest living authority on you. He got to the heart of all your obsessions. Putting himself in a situation where your paths were bound to cross. Buying into the ghost-walk.’

‘No! No, he—’ There was a small breeze like a puff of breath. Bell looked up, smiled faintly. ‘Here’s someone…’

Lol blinked.

‘Listen,’ Bell said, ‘he never told me who he was and I… even when I suspected, I said nothing. There was no future in it. Every time I saw him I saw Eric. Besides, I hardly wanted a murderer—’

‘You really think he was?’ Hadn’t seemed like a murderer to Merrily. Not even a murderer by proxy. He’s… driven. A lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm… likeable . ‘Rather than just a victim of rumours?’

‘He was…’ Bell came to her feet and teetered forward as though she was on stage, a little stoned and about to grasp a mike stand. ‘He was a despicable murderer. He destroyed the most important thing in my life.’

Lol didn’t move. Bell’s voice dropped to a hiss.

‘That boy wouldn’t fall off the Keep. He knew every stone of that castle. He was as sure-footed as a goat. And the suicide theory – that he was afraid to go back to the bullies in Hereford – that’s shit, too. His mother must have told him about our arrangement. His mistake was to tell Jonathan.’

Bell plunged her hands into the pockets of her long coat and wafted it tightly across her, turning away and making the candle flames shiver as if the tower itself was shaking.

Lol thought of what he’d learned from Merrily and what he’d read. It made sense: Jonathan Scole watching Bell form an increasingly intimate relationship with the history boy – whom he had introduced to her, whom he’d made a part of his ghost-walk just to get close to the mother who’d rejected him. Rejected him twice, and now…

… Now the final insult: the adoption of a son.

Lol thought about Andy Mumford and his Plascarreg theories. If this was true, then Mumford was sailing dangerously close to the wrong wind.

‘Bell…’

She turned towards him, strands of white-gold hair across one cheek.

‘When exactly did you come to this conclusion?’ Lol asked.

‘I don’t know. Been staring me in the face for… It came to a head last night. I fell. I was walking… in the churchyard, among the yews, and I fell. Hit my head on a root. I was half stunned and suddenly bitterly angry. Everything was falling apart, on this night of all— I decided on impulse to go to his flat and confront him and… and he was drunk. I told him I’d been attacked in the street. He thought… the crass bastard thought I wanted to sleep with him – so like his miserable father. He said he was going to phone your… Mary. So I walked out.’

‘And then Merrily came.’

‘Found me singing under the castle. It’s the only way I stay sane on nights like this. Singing to Marion. Singing “Wee Willie Winkie” to… Anyway, he must have followed us back. He saw me put the… the mandolin case in the yew tree. And then he came back with a crowbar or something and he forced his way in and he took it.’

She bent down and moved the tray of candles to one side. Not much left of some of them now, flames shrinking down into half an inch of hollowing wax. And Lol saw that the tray had not been on the floor itself but on a small black musical-instrument case, which she lifted now and cradled in her arms.

The mandolin case.

She took it to the battlements. It was almost dark now.

‘You’ll have to go soon,’ Bell said. ‘I can’t let the candles burn away.’

‘Bell… it makes no sense.’

‘It’s all the sense there’s ever been,’ she said. ‘I’ve always had what I regarded as a temporary life. All I’m looking for in death is a kind of permanence.’

She was on her feet, the heavy coat hanging open to reveal a long, cream-coloured dress, soiled now with large, conspicuous stains, their colours indeterminate in the candlelight. Standing close to the wall and hugging the mandolin case to her breast, she began singing, in a tremulous little-girl voice.

Wee Willie Winkie

Running through the town

Upstairs, downstairs in his nightgown

Rapping at the windows

Crying through the lock

Are all the children in their beds?

It’s past eight o’clock.

Sandy Gee was up against the wall of the fat round tower in the Inner Bailey. She had a rubber-covered torch, kept nervously testing its beam on the stonework, having sent one of the uniforms off with a plastic Pepsi bottle, to find a tap.

‘And salt,’ Merrily said.

‘Salt?’

‘Holy water involves salt.’

‘Maybe we should hold it in one of the bloody restaurants,’ Sandy Gee said.

‘I wish we could hold it in there.’ Merrily nodded at the round tower. ‘Plenty of room, and apparently it used to be the medieval chapel of St Mary Magdalene. Not an option, however.’

‘It certainly isn’t. We need to do it now, in that dirty little tower.’

‘Erm, a warning,’ Merrily said. ‘The aim of this is to bring release and create calm. But we don’t know what we’re dealing with. And if there’s any kind of… if you want to call it energy… in there, and the kid’s in a position where she’s very close to a long drop…’

Sandy shone the torch beam into her face. ‘I hope to God you’re not suggesting this might actually have the reverse effect? Longbeach said you knew what you were doing.’

Siân Callaghan-Clarke cleared her throat. ‘Inspector, I think what my colleague is saying is that this is not an exact science.’

‘Or a science at all,’ Merrily said. ‘Perhaps, under cover of the service, you or one of your officers should move closer so that, in the event of any unexpected reaction…’

‘You often get unexpected reactions?’

‘There is no expected reaction,’ Siân said. ‘It’s about faith.’

‘Christ,’ Sandy said.

SAM SAID, ‘WAS that you in the paper?’

‘It’s a lousy picture, isn’t it?’

Merrily was standing in the beam of Sandy’s torch. All she could see of the girl was a silhouette against the opening in the wall. It was cold and damp in here, colder than outside, a rank and clingy cold.

‘Why aren’t you wearing… you know?’

‘I—’

‘Sam, it’s like the police,’ Siân said. ‘Inspector Gee isn’t in uniform either. Inspector Gee and Mrs Watkins… When you reach their level, you don’t have to wear the uniform.’