The Smile of a Ghost

Cathedral, back when Mick Hunter was Bishop and Mum was a novice exorcist. It had followed one of the biggest rows they’d ever had, and it seemed like half a lifetime ago, and it was good to think how much more adult they both were about this kind of thing now.

‘Look,’ Mum said, ‘it’s not that I feel particularly insecure about assuming a role which admittedly is in… explicit denial of my Christianity… if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘Didn’t say a thing.’

‘OK…’ Mum put a hand to her forehead. ‘I’m probably lying. Of course I feel insecure. And I really don’t know if it’s a good thing to have you along or not.’

‘I can watch your back,’ Jane said. ‘You know me.’

Mum rolled her eyes and winced at the pain this evidently caused. The swelling had gone down now, but it was still conspicuously a black eye.

The phone rang. They both stared at it.

‘Might be Lol?’ Jane said.

They carried on staring at it, because this was late for any kind of call, until the machine cut in. Then there was a man’s voice Jane didn’t recognize, a Northern kind of voice.

‘Mary… if you’re still up… Shit… I got a problem here. With Bell. I didn’t know who to—’

Mum picked up.

‘Jon?’

Jane could hear a sound of apparent relief, then a lot of gabbled talk, Mum listening, the computer screen turning her face mauve.

‘What about the police?’ Mum said. And then she said, ‘Isn’t there a cottage hospital?’ And then, after about half a minute, she said, ‘All right, I’ll come over,’ and put the phone down and stood there for a moment with her lips set into a tight line.

‘What?’ Jane said.

Mum let out a breath. ‘Jon Scole, the ghost-walk guy. She turned up on his doorstep, about half an hour ago. He’s got a flat over his shop, and there’s an alleyway and some steps, and she was on her hands and knees…’

‘Belladonna?’

‘She was doing her… walk, and they were waiting for her, where The Linney goes down towards St Leonards and the river. Dark, narrow, secluded…’

‘Who were?’

‘Seems to have been girls — women. They were waiting for her, and they started hurling abuse. And then they… they just beat her up.’

‘The women did?’

‘And she won’t have the police brought in, and her stepdaughter’s away for the weekend, and Jon Scole doesn’t know what to do.’

‘We’re going over there?’

‘Looks like I’m going,’ Mum said.

‘What about me?’

‘You get some sleep. I’ll be back as soon as I can. And we’ll still go back tomorrow.’

‘It is tomorrow,’ Jane said.

And sensed that everything was about to go seriously wrong.

When the phone went again, not five minutes after Mum had left, Jane didn’t even have the heart to do the spoof-answering-machine bit.

‘Ledwardine Vicarage.’

‘Is that Mrs Watkins?’

‘She’s… not available. This is Jane Watkins.’

‘It’s Gail Mumford here. Andy Mumford’s wife.’

‘Oh, yeah, I know.’

‘She isn’t with my husband again, is she?’

Jane smiled. It was like Mum and Mumford were having some kind of torrid affair.

‘I can honestly say she isn’t.’

‘You haven’t heard from him, have you?’

‘I…’ Jane had picked up some serious strain in this woman’s voice. ‘No, I’m pretty sure we haven’t. He’s out somewhere?’

‘He’s been out all day, I think. I don’t know what’s the matter with him. When he was with the police, at least you— Look, I don’t know how old you are—’

‘Old enough,’ Jane said. ‘Look, Mum’s had to go over to Ludlow. I don’t think she’s expecting to see Andy there, but I’ll give her a call, and if…’

Jane noticed Mum’s mobile, left behind on the sermon pad. Bugger.

‘… If I get to speak to her, and she knows anything, I’ll get back to you. Will you be up for a bit?’

‘Of course I’ll be up.’

‘OK. And, of course, if we hear from Andy meanwhile—’

‘If you hear from him, you tell him he might not have a wife here when he gets back,’ Mrs Mumford said.

33 Lift Shaft into Heaven

Merrily left the Volvo outside the health-food shop at the bottom of the row, just up Corve Street from St Leonard’s chapel, and walked up to Lodelowe, its small window misted crimson from a lamp burning in the recesses. It made her think of shrines.

The alleyway next to the shop door was unlit and made her think of the Plascarreg Estate, and that made her want not to enter the alley.

The night was mild, almost warm. She peered into the shop window, over the painted plaster models of timber-framed houses, a stack of tourist pamphlets: Haunted Ludlow. No movement in there, and — she backed off and looked up towards the centre of town — no movement on the street, either, apart from shifting shadows and the glimmer of street lamps and the waning moon in old windows and the traffic lights near the crest of the hill. Always an eeriness about traffic lights in the dead of night, when there was minimal traffic, as though the lights must be a warning of something else that had always travelled these streets, silent and invisible.

She stumbled over the kerb as a ribbon of female laughter unravelled from somewhere not too close. She thought of women and girls binge-drinking in packs, beating people up. Was this a twenty-first-century phenomenon, or was it happening just the same when this town was young, in the days of Merrie England, when street violence was part of the merrie system? And therefore the apparent growth of civilization was all illusion — God seeing right through it, looking down with weary cynicism, the oil running low in his lamp of eternal love.

Night thoughts. Merrily stepped back as a light was put on, and all the bricks in the alley came to life.

‘Mary?’

‘I’m here.’

She stepped into the alley. Jon Scole was standing at the bottom of some steps, under an iron-framed coach lamp, his leather waistcoat undone over a black T-shirt, a bunch of keys hanging from his belt, like a jailer’s keys.

‘Hey, listen, I’m sorry, Mary, I did try to ring you back.’

‘Damn.’ Patting the pockets of her fleece. ‘Came out without the phone.’

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘she’s gone now.’

‘Where?’

‘You better come in.’ He stepped back for her to go up the stairs, which were concrete, a kind of fire escape.