Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

‘You really are psychotic, aren’t you?’ Lol said.

The policeman by the gatehouse looked up.

Saltash smiled. ‘Oh, no, Mr Robinson. I’m not the one who, consumed by jealousy and a sense of inadequacy, attacked my girlfriend, causing at least one serious facial injury. For which, with regard to her social position, she will no doubt have attempted to concoct a plausible explanation, but, of course, it fools nobody in her parish, certainly not my good friend Dr Asprey. Do you think that policeman’s about to come over?’

No need to go back into town, George Lackland said, there was a quicker way to Jonathan’s place. He led Merrily through the churchyard, down a path with yew trees either side, six of them, through a garden with the small stones of the cremated, flowers everywhere, and the ancient Reader’s House opposite.

An entry led down to an inn yard where horse-drawn coaches must once have been unloaded. It was enclosed by black and white brick and timbered buildings, given a mauve cast by the evening sky.

‘The Bull Hotel.’ George strode across the courtyard and then they were on Corve Street, close to Lackland Modern Furnishings and Tom Pritchard’s hardware shop, so much a part of the town that she hadn’t noticed it before, only its swinging sign, like a pub sign, with a painting of a shire-horse on it.

‘Oldest-established ironmonger’s in Ludlow. Eighteenth century, maybe earlier. And a farrier’s before that, same site.’ George stopped. ‘What’s going on, Mrs Watkins? I been straight with you. Told you the truth, before God.’

‘George, I don’t know. Most of it’s in Bell’s head. She’s feeling persecuted… betrayed.’

‘By who?’

‘You… the women who may or may not have assaulted her in the streets last night…’

‘In the streets? When did—?’

‘I don’t know if that even happened. Forget it. And by me. I spent some time with her under… under false pretences. Then she sees that nice picture of me in the paper, and now I’m the enemy. And the person who introduced me to her – therefore the real traitor – is Jon Scole. There’s a hollow yew she’s had a door put into, with a lock, where she keeps items of importance to her, and it was broken into last night and something was stolen.’

‘She thinks that’s Scole?’

‘Even I’m beginning to think it’s Scole.’

And, oh God, it was true. Who else would have followed them last night?

His own song started playing in his head:

Tuesdays on Victoria Ward,

We always hated Tuesdays.

Reminding him how that song, those opening lines, had conquered his concert-block at the Courtyard in Hereford, because of the suppressed rage behind them… the spontaneous reaction of the audience making it suddenly all right.

Someone’s got to pay

Now Dr Gascoigne’s on his way

And it’s another

Heavy medication day…

The police constable who’d been walking across to them had stopped and had begun talking into a radio or a mobile phone. Lol looked at Saltash, with the round tower behind him in the middle of the Inner Bailey, with its Norman arched doorway. The tower was roofless, hollow, a shell.

‘It’s not enough, is it?’ Lol said. ‘It wouldn’t hold water. There’s no way you can touch me, you arrogant bastard.’

The sky was low and tight and red-veined, and he was aware of his own voice, crisp and contained, like in a recording studio with acoustic panels.

‘And Gascoigne – he’s not worried about that song, because, even with the very remote possibility that the album got into the outer reaches of the charts, the song doesn’t really say anything apart from describing his fondness for handing out pills. It’s what’s not in the song that he’s worried about. And I really wasn’t going to do anything about that – not my place. Especially with him out of hands-on psychiatry… which, considering some of the places his hands went, is no bad thing—’

‘Constable!’ Saltash shouted. ‘Excuse me, Constable!’

The policeman was still talking. He looked up, lifted a hand to Saltash.

‘So I suppose, normally, I’d just have left it at that,’ Lol said, ‘glad that at least the poor sods who’d been sectioned were no longer exposed to his attentions. Especially the women. Like Helen Weeks.’

‘Because I don’t have time to deal with you now, Mr Robinson,’ Saltash said softly, ‘I might simply tell the police you’re a journalist who’s talked his way in by assuming a false identity.’

‘I used to wander around the hospital as much as I could,’ Lol said, ‘watching ordinary people – people who worked there. Just to stay familiar with normal behaviour, the outside world. Helen Weeks was schizophrenic, so nobody ever believed what she said. She was very pretty and heard voices, and sometimes what the voices were telling her to do, she needed to be protected from that. So, yes’ – in case he was wondering – ‘I did see Gascoigne giving her a special consultation that wasn’t exactly my idea of protection. I climbed on a chair to look over the horrible frosted glass of his office and through the clear glass over the top.’

‘You sad little man,’ Saltash said.

And Lol finally hated him enough to start lying.

‘Well, Nigel, I don’t think that’s how they’ll see it at the Three Counties News Service. You know them? News agency in Gloucester, serving national papers – the Sun … Mirror … News of the World ? The thing about the Three Counties, it’s all about money to them. If one paper turns it down, they’ll try another and then another, until everybody knows. Or, a story like this, they’ll maybe just send it all round.’

‘Not if I obtain an injunction to prevent you—’

‘You’re too late. A friend of mine has a long e-mail that we put together, detailing the full story, including a phone number for Helen Weeks and her sister who looks after her and two former porters we contacted who knew of other cases. If this friend doesn’t hear from me by ten tonight, the e-mail goes to the Three Counties.’

Lol looked into Saltash’s eyes and felt a surprising calm in his spine, like a soft shiver.

‘Try me, Nigel. Have me thrown out. Attempt to have me detained. Sectioned. Oh, and you’re in the e-mail, too, of course, in an attachment – transcript of a recorded conversation with Jack Fyneham. I think he’s – God forbid – your godson, isn’t he?’

‘Is there a problem, Dr Saltash?’ the policeman said.

‘And the Dean of Hereford,’ Lol said to Saltash. ‘He’s quoted too. Quite extensively.’

Saltash’s smile was like glass. ‘Everything’s fine now, officer, thank you.’

‘Always knew there was something not quite right about this boy,’ George said, low-voiced, when they were in the alley at the side of the shop. ‘Someone that age just turns up in town, goes round the estate agents inquiring about flats to rent, cheap, and then he takes a shop at the kind of rent would turn me pale.’

‘How do you know that?’ Merrily asked, but he was walking up the steps with the wrought-iron lamp at the top and didn’t answer. She thought, Masons, or perhaps some Old Ludlow traders’ network that was even more mutually supportive and exchanged intelligence on outsiders.

George took the steps two at a time, and she had a picture of him not going up the steps of the church tower that overheated afternoon, but coming down, very fast, and collapsing against the wall at the bottom, blinded by shame and some forbidden, guilt-gilded exultation that he didn’t, to this day, dare acknowledge.

‘Jonathan!’ Banging the door with a knobbly fist. ‘We’d like a word, boy. Councillor Lackland and Mrs Watkins.’