The Smile of a Ghost

‘We’ll see about that,’ Mumford said.

Driving home, with the rain starting up, Merrily wondered how much was actually known about Marion de la Bruyere, ‘a lady of the castle’. You thought of flowing robes, one of those funnel-shaped headdresses, with a ribbon.

But Bernie Dunmore had been right. You were probably talking about a child. Those precious teenage years were also very much bypassed in the Middle Ages; by Jane’s age you could be a mother of three. Marion was probably about fifteen herself when she died, or even younger. Young enough, certainly, to be fooled by a smart operator she thought was in love with her.

Jemmie Pegler, staving off chronic emotional starvation, maybe profound loneliness, had been in very much the right mental state to imagine that Marion, disaffected, betrayed — a kindred spirit — would be holding her hand as she jumped.

Merrily said to Jane, ‘What sort of state do you imagine someone would have to be in for the idea of suicide to become appealing… exciting?’

‘Look,’ Jane said. ‘Suicide chat-rooms — my basic feeling is that most people who go into suicide chat-rooms are never going to top themselves. It’s just titillation. Like running across railway lines, bungee-jumping. Real suicide, that’s when you just no longer want to be alive. When it seems like there’s absolutely nothing worth hanging on to. You don’t care how you do it, do you? As long as it works.’

‘Jemmie Pegler went through with it. In a way that suggests she cared very much how it was done.’

‘Yeah, that’s weird. And what about Robbie Walsh?’

‘Possibly killing himself? Mmm. I think we’re all starting to have second thoughts about poor Robbie.’

‘Well, thanks, anyway,’ Jane said.

‘For what?’

‘For not saying, “Look, flower, if there was ever a deep source of depression in your life, I hope you wouldn’t hesitate to—” That’s the phone.’

Merrily pointed a menacing finger. ‘Don’t go away.’

By the time she got to the scullery, the answering machine had caught the call — as was intended, to ambush the people who made a point of phoning at night because it was cheaper, to bend your ear for an hour on some parish issue of awesome triviality.

‘Mrs Watkins, if you’re there—’

She sighed and picked up, switching on the anglepoise lamp.

‘Andy.’

‘I’m at my sister’s. Robbie’s mother?’

‘Andy, do you think maybe you need to relax, just a little?’

‘I got Robbie’s computer.’

‘Oh.’

‘Thought you might wanner know. When my sister told Karen the boy hadn’t got a computer, she lied, nat’rally. Which Karen would’ve guessed, of course, but she was hardly in a situation to push it.’

‘I’m sorry — why would your sister lie?’

‘Two reasons. One, they was worried about what he might have on there that p’raps a good, caring parent ought to have known about. Two, they thought they could sell it for a couple of hundred. Taking it to a car-boot sale, along with the rest of his stuff. ’Course, she also tried to tell me they’d already got rid of it, but I remembered the lock-ups.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Garages — a number of which don’t contain cars but serve as storage for various items that residents of the Plascarreg might not want found inside their houses. Sometimes using each other’s garages — or the garage of some harmless old lady with no car — to confuse the issue.’

‘The Plascarreg. Of course. Are you bringing the computer out?’

There was a pause. ‘I could spell this out, but you’re an intelligent woman. My sister’s here on her own. The boyfriend’s down the pub. I got till he comes back to check this over. Not that he scares me, but if I can get away without a scene, that’s best. So I’m gonner go over the hard disk on site, as it were.’

Merrily looked up at the wall clock: 9.05 p.m. Over the phone, she could hear vehicles revving, the tinny sound of hard rain splattering a car roof.

‘Would it help if I came over?’

‘Couldn’t ask that, Mrs Watkins. Not the Plascarreg.’

‘This is Hereford, Andy, not Brixton. What’s the number of the flat?’

‘One thirty-seven.’

‘OK.’ She wrote it down.

‘I can’t ask you to do this,’ Mumford said. ‘Not at night.’

‘You didn’t ask. I’m electing to come. I’m interested.’

‘You’re stupid,’ Jane said. ‘You can’t see what he’s doing to you.’

Merrily standing in the hall, pulling on her coat, Jane in the kitchen doorway, doing the slow head-shake that conveyed superior knowledge.

‘Make this very quick,’ Merrily said.

‘OK. Lol will doubtless confirm the psychology at a future time, but essentially Mumford is a subordinate, officer, right? He never rose beyond sergeant… because he was totally reliable but never had the spark of inspiration that make guys like Bliss — and don’t you ever dare tell Bliss I said this — into a bit of a star.’

‘No worries there.’ Merrily unbolted the front door. ‘Bliss would not believe you’d ever said that.’

‘And now Mumford’s lost Bliss, right?’ Jane came into the hall. ‘He’s floundering. He’s out of his depth. He can’t make decisions. He can’t function without a governor. And so, like, whether he realizes this or not, he’s put you into that essential role…’

‘Jane, that’s—’

‘It’s spot on, vicar, I’m telling you.’

Merrily stepped outside, then turned back. ‘Would you actually like to help?’

Jane’s eyes half-closed. ‘What?’

‘Go on the Net and see if you can find any links between Ludlow and suicide sites and, erm… anything else.’

Jane looked surprised. ‘Yeah, OK.’

‘Thank you, flower.’

‘Any time. I’ll, er… I’ll see you later, then… guv.’

17 Outcast

In the city the rain had stopped, leaving the roads blurred and gleaming, the white-lit restaurant complex in Left Bank Village like an ice palace beside the River Wye, as Merrily drove across Greyfriars Bridge.

This was tourist Hereford, only seven minutes’ drive away from the Plascarreg Estate, where no tourists went except by mistake.

Plascarreg: Welsh for place of the rocks. If what she’d read some months ago in the Hereford Times was still valid, the only rocks here now were crack-cocaine. Plascarreg was flat-pack brick and concrete housing blocks just off the road between Belmont and the Barnchurch Trading Estate, its windowless backs hunched against the west wind and the city. Half-lit in sour sodium, it looked like a vague idea half-thought- out.

Merrily drove in slowly, on full beam. The derelict land opposite had been scheduled for an extension of the Barnchurch site, suspended through lack of investment or perhaps because someone thought derelict land reflected the Plascarreg ethos better than fields.

The second block was three storeys high: flats behind covered walkways. There was a parking area crammed with vehicles, with just one space free if you put two wheels on the kerb. She reversed in, next to an