Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

‘Laurence… this is the whole point: we can’t find Mumford. His wife says he went out yesterday, saying he was finalizing arrangements about his mother’s funeral, and didn’t come back. He phoned – would you believe? – a neighbour, asking her to convey to Gail that he was OK.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘He doesn’t like confrontation. And whether he thinks we…’ Bliss shrugged helplessly. ‘I don’t know, Lol. He’s not himself. Or maybe he is himself, and he shouldn’t be any more, because he’s fuckin’ retired. Gail is, consequently, frantic. Gail knows how he’s been lately and how far he might go.’

‘Compulsory retirement’s like a jail sentence in reverse, and probably just as stressful,’ Lol said. ‘He’ll have something to prove, if only to himself. Maybe he won’t feel able to come home until he’s done it.’

‘I agree,’ Bliss said. ‘But it’s worse than that. OK… our colleagues in Shropshire had Robbie down as accidental death – no evidence to the contrary, no suicide note, no one else involved they knew of. Mumford seems to have thought there was more to it, and this was getting to him.’

‘Because he thought, as a copper, he should have seen it and stopped it.’

‘Exactly. And it looks like he could be right. Knowing what we now know – thanks, it seems, to Mumford – there’s reason to think the lad was so terrified of going back to the Plascarreg he topped himself.’

‘And what is the reason to think that?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘And frankly I don’t really want to know,’ Lol said. ‘But it might help Merrily.’

‘You think he’s still in contact with her?’

‘None of us is in contact with her – she went out without her phone. The thing is… Do you want a cup of tea, Frannie? Glass of cider?’

‘No, ta. I want to know what the thing is.’

‘I can’t tell you that,’ Lol said.

Bliss smiled. ‘Bastard.’

Lol shrugged.

‘All right,’ Bliss said. ‘You first.’

‘She went out with Mumford to the Plascarreg, and she got hurt.’

Bliss half-rose. ‘She got hairt?’

‘Bruised face. Black eye. Some kids. Mumford found Robbie’s computer, and they were seeing what he had on it there – in this garage. These kids evidently thought there might be something on the computer that could incriminate them, so they… smashed it. Mumford got attacked, and Merrily was hurt trying to get some kid off him. Kid was trying to choke him with a chain.’

Bliss leaned back, breathed down his nose. ‘And she didn’t report this incident to me because…?’

‘Because of Mumford.’

‘Don’t.’ Bliss stood up. ‘Don’t say another word, Laurence. I encounter Mumford, I’m likely to nick the bastard meself. I just urge you, if you talk to Merrily, and she’s in contact with him, to tell him to…’

‘Give himself up? I mean, what’s he actually done?’

‘Impersonated a police officer.’

‘Impersonated himself, in fact.’

‘It’s what he could do,’ Bliss said.

‘To whom? I think I need to know, don’t I?’

‘Yeh,’ Bliss said. ‘All right, I’ll have a glass of cider, please. This looks like being a long day.’

‘Holy shit!’ Eirion said. ‘You bastard.’

Somehow, Jane had expected him to have calmed down since last night, but it was clear that his usual chapel-whipped, Welsh-speaking caution had failed to re-engage. What if going out with her had fatally damaged his equilibrium?

Still, she could see that J.D. Fyneham’s home office, occupying the upstairs of what seemed like a whole wing of a very sizeable house, was something to inspire strong feelings – envy, lust, that kind of reaction – in the male of the species.

The room was dotted with pinpoint lights and underlaid with a low hum. It had this blue-mauve ambience, from concealed lighting with daylight-quality bulbs. Most of the stuff in here, Jane was unsure what it actually did. There were three computers – one was an Evesham, and they didn’t come cheap – on plush, kidney-shaped workstations, a cluster of printers and scanners and other hi-tech-looking items of hardware which seemed to be connected with… well, desktop publishing, she guessed.

Like, on an industrial scale.

‘You could…’ Eirion seemed to be having respiratory problems. ‘You could produce bloody Vogue up here.’

‘Pays its way, Lewis, pays its way,’ J.D. Fyneham said.

The way he kept calling Eirion ‘Lewis’, it was like that sneering way that Inspector Morse talked to Sergeant Lewis on the TV. He was wearing a deep purple rugby shirt and black trousers in this kind of snakeskin leather.

‘That’s all you need to know,’ he said. ‘Now what do you want? I’m busy.’

‘Obviously,’ Eirion said bitterly.

‘Look, we were a bit pissed last night, all right?’

‘It’s not about last night,’ Eirion said.

Jane had wandered over to a side table stacked with A4-sized glossy magazines. The top one had a picture on the cover of a black and white village that she was sure she ought to recognize. Beside the magazine was a stack of flyers.

‘Come away from those!’ Fyneham snapped, but Jane had grabbed one.

Do YOU want to make your parish magazine into a genuine going-concern – a professional publication that every parishioner will want to buy?

‘Well, well…’

‘It’s a legitimate business,’ Fyneham said sulkily.

‘Jane?’ Eirion walked over.

‘JD seems to be the guy behind Parish Pump, Irene. It offers a service to vicars and parish councils, to turn their parish magazines into, like, Hello! ’

‘Oh, please,’ Fyneham said. ‘I’m offering to teach them the basic craft of journalism.’

‘I don’t know anything about this,’ Eirion said.

‘He probably hasn’t hit Wales yet. Mum got the package, but decided people wouldn’t want to see pictures of the parish council in the nude and, like, read about the churchwarden’s private habits.’

‘You may take the piss,’ Fyneham said, ‘but seven parishes have already signed up for the introductory package.’

‘And what does that do for them, exactly?’ Eirion said.

‘They learn the basics of journalism. How to spot a story, how to write it. I spend a couple of weekends in the parish and sub the first issue for them. Or produce the whole thing, for a fee. It’s a shit-hot idea, Lewis, and it’s working. If a parish magazine looks halfway decent, local businesses are more inclined to advertise, and they can charge more for display ads. That way they get the new steeple before the rest of the church falls down.’

Jane was forced to concede that it wasn’t such a bad concept.

‘You do it all yourself?’

‘So far, but I expect I’ll soon be able to employ some of the guys from the media studies group on a part-time basis. Not that Lewis would be interested…’

‘This is all your dad’s kit?’ Eirion said. ‘He produces real glossies – trade stuff, right?’

‘Nah, this is just overspill. He’s got a proper plant down in town, with a few staff.’ Fyneham shrugged. ‘We help each other out.’

There was a noticeboard at the end of the long room, with some magazine covers pinned to it: Microlite Monthly. You and Your DigiCam. The Clinical Therapist. International Readers’-Group Forum. What Hereford Council Can Do for You.

All crap, really.

‘Tell the truth, the old man hates what he does,’ Fyneham said. ‘He’d rather be a real journalist any day of the week, but real journalists don’t have a pad like this with five acres and a pool. It’s swings and roundabouts, Lewis. The old man goes on about secure income. If I have this to fall back on, I can go out there and, like, soar.’