Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

‘Now that’s a lie, ennit, Jason?’ Mumford said, back on his feet, strolling nonchalantly towards the vermin. ‘No way, see, that you’d leave a body in a shed next to a crack factory.’

‘Nah, that was gonner be over, anyway,’ Jason said. ‘Couldn’t trust that unit no more. He might’ve told somebody. Might even’ve told you, dad.’

Jason backing off the whole time, along the edge of the water. Knowing he was safe, with his long legs, from this overweight old bastard. Telling Mumford that if his fat face was ever seen on the Plascarreg again it was gonner get sliced off.

Bringing his hand down like a guillotine.

‘Sliced off like a side of bacon, dad.’

And it was as he was saying these actual words, making the gesture, that he backed into an empty petrol can with one of his heels and turned round too quickly and lost his footing and nearly went in the river.

Thank you, boy.

Mumford – brain inflamed with the images of Robbie’s suffering that Jason had so lovingly invoked, and moving pretty near as fast as when he was a promising athlete in his teens and early twenties – went to rescue the boy, at the same time taking him down with a sharp little knuckle-punch to the throat.

Jason retching pitifully, but all Mumford could hear was him saying, with his casual, hard-boy confidence, We was only his very best mates, dad. We had some awesome laughs with Robbie.

The last laugh being at the top of the Keep, at Ludlow Castle.

All added up. They wouldn’t have known about the significance, to Robbie, of the Hanging Tower. The Keep, with steps all the way to the top, was so much easier. What was also useful was that, instead of landing on the public footpath outside, for all to see, the body would drop privately into what they called the Outer Bailey, all locked up for the night.

Jason or, more likely, two of them – Jason and Chain-boy, say – would’ve hidden out somewhere in the castle with Robbie till the place was closed and then taken him up there, thrown him off, quietly vacated the premises, with all the time in the world. No, they weren’t amateurs, these boys.

So why hadn’t Robbie told anybody about the hanging?

Or had he? Could be Robbie had told Mathiesson. Mumford could hear the toe-rag laughing. Gotter be a man… stand up to ’em. Telling himself that Robbie had exaggerated the story. Not telling Angela anything.

Mumford drew back his foot as Jason tried to get up. Pity it was only a trainer.

Still, Jason was cowering away, his eyes alive with fear. Or mabbe it was the look on Mumford’s face that did that – Mumford listening to his poor drowned mother.

And 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?

Uncle Andy, who could easily have gone that very morning to the house opposite Tesco’s and had a long and meaningful chat with Robbie, probably ending with a full statement and Robbie not having time to go to the castle that afternoon and therefore still being alive.

Had this not been the same Uncle Andy who just couldn’t face the thought of his old man formally welcoming him to the wonderful world of retirement.

Another time, another place, Andy was going to weep.

And he wasn’t stupid. Knew that what he was doing now was no substitute, was unlikely to make him feel any better.

But at least Uncle Andy was finally here for Robbie Walsh and all the other Robbie Walshes who would be hanged, cut, beaten by this scum who had every reason to think the useless, bureaucratic, CPS-constricted police service was never gonner touch him.

Mumford looked down at him.

‘This river, Jason, the Wye. When I was a boy, much younger than you, folks used to say the River Wye demanded a sacrifice every year. Used to say the mothers was always scared to let their kids go anywhere near the water till somebody somewhere had been pulled out dead. You yeard that one?’

Jason said nothing. There was drool all over his mouth, and his eyes were wet. His famous jacket, with all the zips, had split under an arm.

‘Some very old man was considered best,’ Mumford said. ‘Or a drunk. Or a tramp.’

Jason snuffled and rolled away from the water’s edge.

‘Or anybody that wouldn’t be missed,’ Mumford said, thinking how primitive and tribal this had been for the 1950s.

‘But we was told we better be good kiddies else we might be the ones wouldn’t be missed.’

A few minutes later, as he began a more formal interrogation of the suspect, the possibility that this would not end with Jason’s death and disposal in the River Wye had dwindled to a minuscule point of light at the end of a very long tunnel already fogged with a suffocating rage against a world that had no further use for the imperturbable Detective Sergeant Mumford.

SHE LOOKED SO lonely when he found her, this small figure hunched up in the fleece with the torn pocket. She’d been trying to get it over to a policewoman on the castle gate that the girl in the castle was linked with the last one, Jemima Pegler, and the policewoman had looked at her like she was just another voyeur determined to get in on the action.

‘Thank you,’ the policewoman said coldly. ‘They know.’

That was it, a blank snub: you are irrelevant to this, you’re as useless as the people with the power-of-God placard. You are wasting my valuable time.

Go.

Nobody else wanted to talk to her. She said she’d been looking for Belladonna, but there was no sign of her either.

This was Merrily Watkins: any responsibility going spare, she’d accept it.

Lol virtually dragged her into the Assembly Rooms. There was a café upstairs, with big windows from which you could see the edge of the square, and they sat close together like sad young lovers, watching the light beginning to fade, although it was still two hours to sunset.

‘You shouldn’t have come all this way.’

‘You shouldn’t have forgotten your mobile,’ Lol said. ‘Who poisoned the local cops against you? Saltash?’

He was watching her eat, guessing this was the first time today. She was forking up salad in a desultory way as though, if he turned away, she might empty her plate into a pot plant.

‘And where is Saltash?’

‘In the castle. Dispensing psychological wisdom.’

She’d explained about Jemima’s e-mails to the girl called Sam and told him a lot about Belladonna, as if she had to justify her continued presence here even to him.

When Merrily was starting to seem less fraught, Lol ordered some more tea and told her about Jonathan Scole and the killing of the Ghostours man’s parents.

She pushed her plate to one side, staring at him. Bombshell.

‘He said they’d died in their car. I was thinking, road accident…’

‘Don’t know where the car comes in. Unless they were shot getting into it after leaving the café.’

‘The police think Jon Scole killed his own parents?’

‘Couldn’t have done it himself – he had an alibi,’ Lol said. ‘But the proceeds of the robbery were so meagre, the shooting so professional, that the cops were thinking cut-price contract killing. He just seems to have been the only one likely to profit from having them dead.’

‘What about…’ She scrabbled around. ‘I dunno, protection. Maybe they refused to pay protection money. Or a rival café-owner with a grudge?’

‘Sure, or they were dealing drugs under the counter. But you’d expect the police up there to have checked all those angles, wouldn’t you? Do you like this Scole?’

‘He’s…’ Merrily was looking around – for ashtrays, he guessed, to see if it was OK to smoke in here; apparently not. ‘He’s driven. A lot of energy, enthusiasm. Yes, he’s likeable. Someone who could have both his parents killed? A monster? No.’