Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

‘Look,’ Ange said, ‘I was upset that night. What you expect? I was lashing out.’

‘’Course you were. And you were in shock. But you were lashing out at the wrong person. Only one member of this family’s responsible for the boy’s death, and it wasn’t an ole lady with rising senile dementia.’

‘I’m pregnant!’ Ange yelled. ‘I get tired. I didn’t have no time—’

‘I mean me, Angela,’ Mumford said. ‘I was responsible. Me.’

For the first time, Ange shut her mouth.

‘I could give you a lot of bloody excuses about pressure of work, but the fact is there wasn’t much pressure at work that last week. No point in giving a man cases he en’t gonner be able to see through to a result. Truth was, I just didn’t wanner hang round with my family, ’cause that looked too much like the future. First time, I didn’t pick Robbie up, start of his holidays, and take him over to his gran’s. Know why? ’Cause I couldn’t face the ole man leering at me – one of us, now, boy, a pensioner. That’s why.’

‘Ole man never had no tact,’ Ange said. ‘Anyway, we put Robbie on the train. Lenny took him down the station.’

‘Normal way of it, see, Robbie and me, we’d have a chat on the way there. Hard goin’ sometimes, mind.’

‘Hard goin’ for anybody,’ Ange said, low-voiced, eyes downcast. ‘Unless you was a professor of history.’

‘Truth of it was,’ Mumford said, ‘Mam told me at least three time how the boy couldn’t wait to see me. I didn’t understand. I thought she was finding me a bit of retirement work. Child-minding.’

Clenched his fists, hearing his mam on the phone.

Robbie, he wants to show you all his favourite places in the town, don’t you, Robbie? He’s nodding, see. He’s always saying, when’s Uncle Andy coming?

‘I never went. I was angry. Insulted. Scared, too. Scared of the future.’

‘Couldn’t throw your weight about no more, eh?’ Mathiesson said. ‘Couldn’t kick the shit out of nobody when you was feelin’ a bit frustrated. You poor ole fuck.’

‘Shut up, Lenny,’ Ange said quietly.

‘Now I know exactly what he wanted to talk to me about,’ Mumford said. ‘Question is, did you?’

Ange said nothing.

‘I been for a chat with some people tonight, see. Former neighbours of yours. The Collinses.’

‘Collinses are as good as dead,’ Mathiesson said.

‘Not the wisest response, Lenny, you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘Thought you said this was off the record.’

‘It is. But see, there was someone else knew what was happening at the old Aconbury Engineering factory. I’m saying factory – not much more than a workshop, really, a starter-factory. Nice secluded site, though, since they stopped building any more due to nobody wanting to run a business so close to the Plascarreg. Nice quiet site, next to a little pine wood.’

‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

‘Or mabbe there was a funny feeling about the place,’ Mumford said. ‘Being as it used to be the site of the civic gallows. Or, at least, that’s what some folks reckon.’

‘You lost me way back.’ Mathiesson came into the room, draped himself over the back of the sofa, started playing with Ange’s hair.

She shook him off. ‘This is Robbie, en’t it?’

‘What’d he tell you?’ Mumford said.

‘I never took much notice.’ Ange sat up, holding her dressing gown across her throat. She looked cold, though it must’ve been ninety degrees in the room. ‘He… got on your nerves, sometimes, poor little sod. Yeah, I do remember he was real excited – few weeks ago… months maybe, I dunno. Said did I know they used to hang people round the back of the flats. Said he’d worked out where it was.’

‘There’s still a mound, apparently, on the edge of the pines. It was covered over by trees until they started extending the Barnchurch. That’s the most likely site.’

‘I didn’t take much notice. He was always going on about something – usually it was something in bloody Ludlow, so I never even took it in. I probably only remembered this because it was yere.’

‘Told his mate Niall Collins all about it. Niall said, you don’t wanner go messing round there, they en’t gonner like it. Doubt if Robbie even took it in, what the boy was trying to tell him. All these years he’d hated the Plascarreg because – not just because it was tacky and run-down, I don’t reckon he even noticed any of that – but because everything was so new. Now at last here’s some real history on his doorstep. Wasn’t nothing gonner keep him away.’

‘I don’t even know where he got that idea from,’ Ange said.

‘The gallows? Local history venture, Angela. Somebody got a Lottery grant to run a local history project in the South Wye area of town. You probably didn’t notice.’

‘Yeah, we… something came through the door. Robbie took it.’

‘This?’ Mumford reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, brought out a printed pamphlet: South Wye History Project . ‘It was with his stuff. Project starts end of May. They were asking for volunteers to help produce a booklet on the history of the area. According to Niall, Robbie seems to have met one of the archaeologists in charge, who made him copies of old documents, and Robbie started doing his own research. Either he found the old execution site or he didn’t, but poking around that workshop with a spade night after night, threatening to bring the whole team down for a dig…’

Ange shut her eyes, began softly pummelling her knees, going, ‘Shhhhit, shhhit…’ very quietly.

‘I don’t suppose they’d understand what the boy was after,’ Mumford said. ‘Mabbe somebody else had a quiet word with him – told him seriously to keep away. Somebody like Jason Mebus. He afraid of people like Jason, Angela?’

‘You’d think he would be, wouldn’t you?’ Ange looked up. What he’d taken for hate just looked like tired black circles around her eyes. ‘Truth was, I don’t reckon he even noticed them. He just went his own way. Read his books, messed about on his computer and went off on his own.’

‘Seems to me,’ Mumford said, ‘that Robbie’s enthusiasm for history and the past and that stuff would prove stronger than any quiet warning to stay away.’

‘So bloody innocent, he wouldn’t even have known what they was on about.’ Ange started to cry. ‘I never had time…’

‘You know what they done, finally, to make him understand?’

Ange shaking her head, hands over her face. Mumford stopped and turned away. Saw someone walking past the window, not four feet away from where he was standing. No getting away from anybody here. This was what Niall’s dad, Mark Collins, had told him; it was like being in a cell block, but without any prison officers to protect you.

As soon as he’d left that house, Mumford had realized that he’d finally blown it. By now, Collins would already have talked to Bliss or somebody less sympathetic about the lone cop who’d come to question young Niall at their temporary home in Malvern.

They’d never asked to see Mumford’s ID. Nobody ever had, even when he’d carried a warrant card. Wasted exercise; Bliss had once said Mumford looked like a copper the way a sheep looked like a sheep.

Just hoped he hadn’t dropped Karen in it.

‘What I think,’ he said to his sister, ‘is Robbie tried to make them understand how important it was, this discovery he’d made – actual site of a Middle Ages gallows. Showed them a picture of it in this book he had. Somehow, the relevant page got ripped out. Niall remembers Jason Mebus had that page.’

‘What page?’ Ange looked at him through splayed fingers. ‘I don’t—’