Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

No answer.

‘Try the door, George.’

Recalling how it had sprung open when she’d flipped the handle from inside, and how glad she’d been because Jonathan had been coming on to her, in the wake of his apparent rejection of Bell’s advances. She’s all over me. Hot and… you know. Anybody could see she were burnin’ up …

‘It’s open!’ George went in. ‘Jonathan? It’s Councillor Lackland!’

She heard him tramping around, a door opening inside. A muffled ‘Jonathan?’ A silence. By the time she was halfway up the stairs, he was out again.

‘Let’s go,’ he said hoarsely.

‘George?’

He gripped the iron rail and then breathed in sharply and let go of the rail as though it were white-hot. He drove her down the steps, waving both arms as if he was herding ewes.

‘Go down.’

Her first thought was that he must have walked into something of a sexual nature, but then, when he began to step carefully down himself, keeping close to the wall, away from the rail, she saw the blood on the hand that had touched it.

There was a bulge like a knuckle in the Mayor’s forehead, and it was pulsing.

‘Some things a woman shouldn’t see,’ he said.

‘LOOK, SIÂN,’ SALTASH said. ‘Martin’s here.’

They were in a high but roofless space, some one-time great hall, with the remains of huge fireplaces, one above the other, time-blurred stone heads projecting from the walls along with the weeds. The sergeant, Steve Britton was there, too, as Siân Callaghan-Clarke’s pewter-eyed gaze flicked across to Lol and then back to Saltash, where she must have caught a warning look.

‘Hello, Martin,’ she said, finally.

A woman with presence and authority, Lol thought, but not comfortable here, in her dark grey business suit over the clerical shirt and collar. Not at home in ruins.

‘Look.’ Saltash jangled keys or something in a trouser pocket. ‘I’m afraid I shall have to leave you for a short while. I need to make some phone calls.’

This time Siân didn’t need a signal; she followed him out. Saltash’s calls would be to Lord Shipston, the Fynehams, his friend the Dean. Plans to make, defences to erect. Only the jittery keys expressing nerves.

‘I don’t think the Canon’s happy with this,’ Steve Britton said.

‘No.’ Lol saw two lightless, narrow openings; one of them had to be the way in to the Hanging Tower.

‘Mr Longbeach, let me be frank with you.’ Steve Britton’s hands moved as though he was hefting invisible weights. ‘There’s a very disturbed little girl in there, and we don’t want it to get dark on her. We don’t want to have to bring lights in, make a circus of it. So what I’d like to know – are you the bloke who does this stuff? I mean, I don’t know what you do, and I’m pretty damn sure that kid in there doesn’t, either. You know what I’m saying? If you haven’t got the full bell, book and candle with you, just…’

‘Fake it?’

‘Fake something.’

‘We don’t need to fake it,’ Lol said. ‘There’s someone—’

‘Not liking this, Steve.’ A plump woman in an orange fleece with a reindeer motif had come through one of the dark doorways. Black Country accent. ‘I thought we were getting somewhere, now she’s gone back into herself. Getting just a bit spooky again, if I must use that word.’

‘This is Mr Martin Longbeach, Sandy,’ Britton said. ‘Another, er, colleague of our friends out there. This is Inspector Sandy Gee, from our family liaison unit.’

Sandy Gee narrowed her eyes at Lol. ‘I’ve seen you somewhere before, haven’t I? Never forget a face, Martin. It’ll come to me. Meanwhile, I hope you’re prepared to do something. Thought we were getting somewhere, but I’m getting a teensy bit anxious. I think the doctor was right about her being delusional, but if we have to go along with a delusion to save her life, let’s do that, eh?’

Lol nodded at the opening from which Inspector Gee had emerged. ‘She’s on her own?’

‘Hell, no. Female paramed’s in with her. More than two people, she feels threatened, moves further into the window space. We’re trying to keep her talking because once or twice she’s nearly fallen asleep. Now you’d think that would mean we could nip up and snatch her, but she’s so very close to the opening it could just as easily mean she’d rock backwards and… gone.’

Sandy Gee shuddered. She was about Lol’s age, had frizzy hair, dyed a deep red, and earrings like joined-up multicoloured paper clips. Family liaison: was this the halfway point between policing and social work?

‘What I’d like to do,’ he said, ‘is bring in someone—’

‘To be quite honest, Martin, for the reasons I’ve just outlined, we really don’t want the world and his wife in there.’

‘One person…’ He hesitated. ‘Merrily Watkins?’

Sandy and Steve swapped glances. Sandy said, ‘Dr Saltash and the Canon—’

‘Have changed their minds about her,’ Lol said. ‘They’re probably discussing it now.’

Sandy Gee sucked in her small mouth, thought about it.

‘All right, go and find her, Steve.’ She turned to Lol. ‘Both of them were very firmly of the opinion that any kind of ceremonial would only fortify the fantasy that Sam’s constructed. Dr Saltash insisted that the only sensible strategy would be to gradually make her aware of the reality of her situation.’

‘And the fantasy is…?’

‘She seems to think that a number of… I don’t know, spirits? Dead people want her to join them. That’s over-simplifying it. It’s a lot to do with guilt at what she thinks she’s done, which Dr Saltash tried to tackle. But, in the end, she feels crowded by… influences she can’t get rid of.’ Sandy glanced over at the entrance to the tower. ‘We’ve managed to find the parents now, and we’re bringing them across, although she insists she doesn’t want to see them, but we’ll argue about that later. You know she was Jemima Pegler’s best friend?’

Lol nodded. ‘I know about the e-mails.’

‘Do you know about the boyfriend situation?’

Lol shook his head. Sandy took his arm and guided him up to the main way out. A police van was parked in the Inner Bailey now, near the separate round tower.

‘Jemmie Pegler, the only friend she had was Sam. But then she stole Sam’s boyfriend, Harry, so that was the end of that. Sam says Jemmie was letting him have sex with her, which Sam wouldn’t. This obviously gave Jemmie a feeling of power – short-lived when she heard what the other boys were saying. Jemmie was fat, you see, like me and, when you’re a fatty at school, life is hell, your self-esteem’s rock-bottom and you absolutely know you’ll never find a boyfriend because you’re so disgusting. If anybody ever got round to compiling statistics on this, I’m pretty sure they’d find that well over half the teenage pregnancies are fat girls. We don’t want to be chubby and mumsy, Martin, we want to be lithe and slinky and do parties, but in the end we go for what we think we can get.’

‘Sam and Jemmie had a falling out?’

‘Sam didn’t like her any more at all because Jemmie, even before she pinched Sam’s boyfriend, had been going well off the rails for a long time. I think Sam was getting frightened of her at this stage. Big girls, when they cease to be jolly and philosophical, can be very dark and threatening. Doing drugs doesn’t help. Nothing heavy at that stage, in Jemmie’s case – Es and whizz, a bit of blow, but she was moving up, you know? Also hitching rides with stupid little younger boys who’d nicked cars – very ominous. Taking risks. Doesn’t care what happens to her – maybe hoping something will happen to her. Jemmie was coming apart, no question about that.’