Phil Rickman - The Smile of a Ghost

‘Jemmie was clearly a dominant, parasitical presence,’ Lol said. ‘From whichever side of the fence you want to see it, that doesn’t necessarily go away with death.’

‘You’d know better than me. But this morning it’s in the papers about the exorcism and, like Steve keeps saying, she’s seen the films. She’s convinced she’s haunted.’

‘Convinced herself she deserves to be haunted.’

‘Exactly. By Jemmie and by Robbie Walsh and by the very thought of this place. So she’s caught a train and she’s here, and she’s in the famous Hanging Tower, saying, why aren’t they doing it? So don’t you tell me to wait any longer, Martin, because it’s going dark and when it’s dark there’s even less reality, isn’t there? And I’m afraid you’re the only priest we’ve got.’

MERRILY DIDN’T KNOW what she’d expected, and she’d walked into the doorway of Jon’s flat before she could change her mind, and the smell – the mixture of smells – came out at her, so dense it was like a smearing of dirty colours on her face.

Oh God, God, God…

What she saw… she had nothing to compare it with. You could live in the countryside for years but contrive never to enter an abattoir.

‘Don’t go in,’ George Lackland whispered. ‘Please don’t go in.’

‘No.’

She stood in the doorway. No need at all to go in. Stood in the doorway for… how many seconds, minutes? George’s echo-chamber breathing behind her. And no breathing, no movement at all, inside. Only silence full of stench, as if the atmosphere itself had congealed around it – something so terminally extreme that it had to be environmentally contained.

Oh God, God, God.

What made it worse was that Jonathan – it was Jonathan, wasn’t it? Keep looking, be certain, be absolutely certain – appeared to be naked. No clothing to soak up the blood and obscure the wounds. Only the paper, scattered like toilet tissue in a public lavatory when the drains were blocked.

‘I can’t use the phone in there,’ George said.

‘No. No, we mustn’t touch anything.’

She saw that the papers were newspaper and magazine cuttings and also photocopies of news cuttings and printouts from websites, and there were scores of them… Hundreds, in fact. Most of them about music.

All of them about Belladonna: pictures of her and words about her. Belladonna’s high-grain, monochrome face soaking up the lifeblood of Jonathan Scole who had been Jonathan Swift and was now…

She must have sobbed – it was what happened to your breath in moments of immeasurable stress. Felt George’s hands gripping her shoulders.

She said, ‘Not in my worst…’

The papers had been torn and slashed. Like Jonathan, who was curled on his side, foetal, except for the angle of his head where his throat had been pierced, his face flung back and opened up like a blood orange. A face of multiple expressions, now, like double exposures, like a portrait by Francis Bacon.

Torn-up news cuttings had been scattered over his lower body, glued to it by the blood where Jonathan had been cut and stabbed and slashed, and cut and stabbed and slashed, over and over and—

With the full acceptance that if she was any kind of a real priest she should be saying a prayer for the eternal peace of the savagely, senselessly slain, Merrily stood back and kicked the door shut.

With a wheeze like an explosion of breath, it sprang back, and there was Jonathan again, the wafting of air lifting a piece of newsprint from one of his eyes as if he’d blinked at the repeated intrusion, and Merrily slammed a foot flat against the door and pushed it hard away from her. Keeping the foot clamped there, on the stained panelling, as if she was holding back a tide of blood, until the door clicked. And then she stood at the top of the steps, with George a few steps below her, and just took in air.

‘Whoever did this…’ George looking up at her, the knuckle-bump in his forehead gleaming like a big pearl, ‘must look like… like a bloody butcher. How can she be walking the streets?’

‘In a long coat.’ She followed him down the steps.

At the bottom they just stood there, and George said, ‘Are you all right?’

‘Well, no,’ she said. ‘Not exactly.’

‘Come to my house.’

Merrily sagged. Her lighter fell from the torn pocket of her fleece and bounced on the cobbles.

‘I made a terrible mistake, George.’ She bent to pick up the lighter, but denied herself a cigarette. ‘The worst mistake I’ve ever made, and, by God, I’ve made some.’

‘Mrs Watkins—’

‘I have a qualified, not to say eminent, psychiatrist I’m supposed to work with. And, because I didn’t like him much, I kept him completely in the dark about most of this.’

‘Mrs Watkins, we all kept people out of this. I wanted Bernard to see to it, as a friend, and Bernard passed it on to you. It was all in confidence. I wanted to keep the lid on – that’s the top and bottom of it.’

‘And I resisted’ – putting a hand to the top of her chest to try and stop herself panting – ‘every inclination to think this woman was clinically insane.’

Even as she’d stood clamping the door shut with her foot, she’d been resisting it. Thinking, could this have been someone else? Some enemy from back home in the north? Someone who’d been trying to find him? If his parents’ murder had been contracted…

Oh, sure. And plastered him with Belladonna cuttings. There was no story-book twist here; it was as messy and unfathomable as any open-and-shut killing. The level of rage that could have driven a woman to this was beyond all comprehension, but wasn’t that always the case? Dear God.

‘We’ll go to my house,’ George said, as though he was helping a child to cross the road. ‘Phone the police from there. Come on.’

They came out of the alley into Corve Street, into George Lackland’s town. Plenty of people still around in the powdery dusk, Tesco’s still open. A tourist coach waiting at the lights.

Over the gravelly sound of the coach engine came the church clock chiming eight. Instinctively, Merrily glanced up to the tower and glimpsed movement at the top: a figure in Palmers’ Guild blue moving across from one corner pinnacle to another. Or the distinctive blue of a stockman’s coat.

They had reached the first narrow window of Lackland Modern Furnishings.

‘George,’ she said, casual as she could manage. ‘Do you think you could report it?’

‘I was going to.’

‘I mean without mentioning me. Not yet. Please? I need some time.’

He stared down at her. ‘You’re feeling ill.’

‘No, I’m—’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘Do you think I could borrow the keys to the church? I have to… work something out.’

As if she meant she needed to pray. She hoped he would understand that. And anyway, he’d know the truth of it soon enough.

Everybody would.

Lol leaned against the wall outside and knew why Merrily smoked.

He felt faintly sick. He wanted to be on the other side of these walls, looking for her. She would not just have walked off. She would wait. She was good at waiting. He needed her, and the girl needed her, needed someone who could…

… legitimately intercede.

The movements of police and paramedics around the Inner Bailey were becoming shadowed. The Keep, now the gatehouse, was a charcoal monolith.

‘I hope you know what you’ve done, Mr Robinson.’

He didn’t know how long the woman had been standing by his side.

‘Where’s Saltash?’

‘He’s gone.’ She didn’t look at him. ‘I don’t think he’ll be coming back tonight. He suggested I might be wise to leave also. Let Mrs Watkins’ – the name was expelled like prune stones – ‘take over.’