Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

‘Maybe you just want to be an enigma,’ Merrily said. ‘The mad woman of Ludlow who walks in the night and sings her old songs to the moon while sitting under this… age-old symbol of life and death and immortality, wearing… wearing a bloody shroud…’

Bell Pepper started to laugh. ‘I really think you’re the first to notice.’

Oh God, and she’d been hoping it wasn’t. She stared out, past the lantern, at the ominous black forestry across the river, towards the Welsh border.

‘I didn’t think they made them like that any more. They seem to use paper now, or the body’s dressed in ordinary clothes.’

‘They don’t make them like this any more,’ Bell said. ‘I had a friend, an undertaker. He found them in a stockroom. Six of them. Old stock. Years old, even then. Probably post-Victorian, nineteen-thirties, I don’t know.’

‘I see.’

‘This was the guy who did the arrangements for my baby, if you were wondering.’

‘Your baby died…?’

‘My baby… had no life outside of me. When they pulled him out, he was dead meat.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No need to be. It works both ways. Ever since – over twenty-five years – a part of me has been where he is.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Merrily said, ‘I’m going to have to stand up, my back’s starting to seize up…’

She rose awkwardly and walked out of the penumbra of the yew. She was surprised to see the sky like deep copper foil over the Hanging Tower. It didn’t mean dawn, just another mood of an increasingly crazy night.

‘Do you want to come home with me, Mary?’

Bell Pepper was at her shoulder, the musical-instrument case at her feet, her hands around its stem.

‘I… I’ve got a daughter at home, I…’

‘How old?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘Hardly a problem, then. You’re obviously not as comfortable here as I am. Come back to The Weir House.’ Bell touched her arm. Her fingers felt like the wet tips of icicles. ‘You want to know, don’t you? About Robbie?’

Merrily didn’t reply.

‘I was entirely shattered when he died.’ That dark, translucent voice, the poshest pop star since Marianne Faithfull. ‘It was like – for me – some awful kind of retribution.’

Merrily turned to her. ‘Why?’

‘Because Robbie Walsh was my son,’ Bell Pepper said.

THE PHONE WAS ringing. Jane woke up under the duvet on the sofa in the parlour, Ethel on her feet. She was fully dressed, more or less. Padded through to the scullery.

The clock said two-fifteen a.m. She’d unplugged the answering machine, so the phone was still ringing, and she snatched it.

‘Mum?’

‘Jane…?’

‘Lol!’

‘What’s wrong?’ Lol said.

‘Wrong?’

‘All the lights are on. I’m sorry, I’m becoming the neighbour from hell. Maybe it’ll be better when I get a bed. I woke up on the sofa and I felt something wasn’t right, and I went to the front door and… all the lights are on in the vicarage. Well, not all the lights, just… more lights than usual. Sorry.’

‘She got called out to Ludlow. Belladonna was… assaulted.’

Jane explained. She was wide awake now. Waking up had never been a problem and she thought it was good, in one way, that Lol had noticed the lights. He cared.

Well, of course he cared.

‘She left her phone behind. I don’t think it was intentional, she was in a hurry. But I’m a bit pissed off, actually. I was supposed to be going with her tomorrow to sort out Belladonna.’

‘She was going to expose Belladonna to you?’

‘Maybe she senses I’ve mellowed. Do you want to come over for some hot chocolate or something, Lol? We could sit by the phone together.’

‘Not a safe thing to do in this village at the moment, with your mum conspicuously not at home. If we’re awake, someone else will be. Then you happen to trip up outside and cut your lip, and I’m back on Victoria Ward, and—’

‘Lol!’

‘You could give me a discreet call when she comes in. Or do you think I should maybe go over—’

‘Certainly not!’

‘You’re right. That would be… intrusive. Unforgivable. I need to keep my nose out.’

‘You don’t like Belladonna, do you?’ Jane said.

‘I don’t know her.’

‘You don’t trust her, then.’

‘Well, not from what I’ve heard, no, but we shouldn’t always believe rumours, should we?’

‘No. Lol’ – Jane sat at the desk, flicked on the anglepoise ‘– about that. The rumours. Do you have any idea who’s been spreading them?’

‘Not really. As long as the right people don’t believe them, I’m not going to worry.’

‘You heard from Q magazine yet? When the piece is going in?’

‘Should I have?’

‘You could ring them and ask.’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t like to miss it.’

‘Eirion gets it, doesn’t he?’

‘Yeah. So he does.’

‘Is this small talk, Jane?’

‘Bit late for that,’ Jane said ambiguously.

With no chance of getting back to sleep, Jane made some hot chocolate and took it back to the computer. Put Belladonna into Google and found, like, six million mentions. Put in Belladonna/religion and got it down to a couple of thousand. What it seemed to amount to was that this woman had tried everything and rejected most of it, including forms of paganism, mostly eastern.

When she found herself back in the Departure Lounge with Karone the bastard Boatman, Jane typed in: You still here, Karone? Suggest consult own website and act accordingly .

She Googled The Weir House, where Belladonna lived. There were three mentions, two negligible, one cursory. Essentially, a new house created authentically on the site of a fourteenth-century ruin, with a connection to the Palmers’ Guild. Jane Googled the Guild and came up with this fairly detailed article about a quasi-spiritual organization that had played a major part in making Ludlow what it was today – well preserved and not short of a few quid.

She printed it out and read it twice. It tied in fairly well with what she already knew, from A-level history, about the medieval social system – the need for wealth, status and godliness in equal measures. Like, forget all that rich man/eye of the needle crap; if you had the money you could provide for an afterlife. Jane was reminded of ‘Stairway to Heaven’, the ancient and interminable Led Zeppelin song that Eirion had in his anorak’s collection. Apparently, Tony Blair knew all the chords. Figured, somehow.

She tried Belladonna/Ludlow and hit on a short item from one of these Heat -type celeb magazines, which included this little gem:

‘Do you know how many ghosts there are in this place?’ Bell has been saying to friends. ‘Dozens. Everywhere is haunted. This town is like a resort for the dead.’

She printed this out, too, sensing some significance here, and then checked the e-mails. There was one from Eirion, marked For Jane .

Cariad: If you get this before you go off to play pagans, I couldn’t sleep, due to underlying blind rage, so put some checks in, and I’m 99% certain JDF and Q are not any kind of item. I’m now going to find out where he lives so as to plan dawn raid. Well, OK, half-elevenish raid. Will keep you informed.

The e-mail was timed at 1.55 a.m. Chances were he was still vaguely conscious. Jane rang his mobile.

‘Yes, I’m very nearly naked,’ Eirion said. ‘And, sadly, alone. Are you in bed also, your body glistening with oriental oils?’

‘You sound pleased with yourself.’

‘I’ve found out where the shit lives. It’s one of those Georgian piles behind a ten-foot wall at Breinton, overlooking the city.’