The Smile of a Ghost

Robbie Walsh would walk these streets in a state of near-ecstasy. He was happier than any child I ever saw. She felt she was inside Robbie again, seeing images of how things were, how they worked, the nuts and bolts of medieval life. Looking at now and feeling then, as if, in some mystical way, this might point her towards Bell.

‘Mrs Watkins!’

A man was wading through the crowd towards her, a brown overall flapping around his knees like the uniforms of shopkeepers when she was a kid, his eyes glittering under the jutting shelf of his forehead. A prophet from a children’s Bible.

Duss, duss, duss.

‘Mr Mayor.’

‘We told that boy to keep on playing.’ The Mayor nodded towards the busker, who also had a guitar and a harmonica, but it was the drumbeat that carried, like plodding boots, across the square. ‘Anything to make it seem like a normal Saturday.’

‘You haven’t seen Bell, have you?’

‘I don’t go looking for her, Mrs Watkins. Besides—’

‘You’ll have seen the papers, I suppose.’

‘Now, look, there was nothing I could do about that. I’ve had three radio stations on already this morning — that’s why I left the house. And now this. My God, Mrs Watkins, is there no end?’

‘About the petition,’ Merrily said. ‘I think it’s time you—’

‘Aren’t you going in?’ He stared down at her.

‘In where?’

‘You only just got here, or what?’

‘I… more or less, yes.’

‘You mean you don’t know about the girl?’

Before Merrily could ask him what he meant, George Lackland had taken her by the elbow and was steering her towards the castle gate. Where, for the first time, she noticed that nobody was going in, which probably accounted for the excess of people on the square. The big gates were open, as if to let vehicles in and out, but the way was blocked by police, two men and a woman, George striding over to address them.

‘Where’s Steve Britton?’

‘Gone back in, Mr Lackland.’

‘Only, I got Mrs Watkins here, from the Bishop’s office.’

The male cop’s expression said, So? Merrily saw that the gift shop, where visitors normally paid their entrance fees, was closed, unattended stands of booklets and postcards, pottery, tapestry, stationery all half- lit.

Again?

‘Top-heavy with clergy already, you ask me,’ the policewoman muttered. But George Lackland wasn’t listening.

‘Can we come in or not?’

The policeman thought about it, maybe remembering George’s top-table seat on the West Mercia Police Committee, but then he shook his head.

‘Can’t, sir. Sorry. Can you wait for the sergeant?’

Merrily followed George Lackland back towards the big cannon and the pollarded trees outside the walls.

Again…?

‘They got scaffolding up, see,’ George said. ‘On the inside of the Hanging Tower — idea being they’re going to bar them windows, stop this happening once and for all.’ His accent was broadening under stress. ‘Fellers doing the work, they gets here ’bout half-nine, so obviously nobody could get up while they was there. Girl — teenager — must’ve known that, too, waits till they breaks for lunch, and then she’s up the scaffolding like a monkey and well up on the ledge before anybody spots her.’

The square seemed to tilt like a giant board game.

‘And she…’ Merrily looked up. This close to the curtain wall, the only tower visible was the Keep, from which Robbie Walsh had fallen. ‘The girl’s still up there?’

‘Far’s I know, aye. They blocked off the footpath, back of the castle. Somebody told me she’d warned ’em if they brought the fire brigade with a ladder, she’d… well, she’d go off.’

‘She’s threatening to jump?’

‘Oh aye. Oh, bloody hell, yes.’

‘They know who she is?’

‘I don’t. They got this psychiatrist there now, reckons he’s got it all worked out. Reckons she’ll come down if they keeps it low-key. Police got all the visitors out, and there’s an ambulance standing by.’

‘This psychiatrist…’

‘I dunno who he is, but what I reckon is, you should be in there.’ George sank his hands into the pockets of his slacks, looking at the ground. ‘It was me rang Bernard, see… I wanted him to come over. But he wouldn’t.’

That was no surprise. Bishops didn’t do hands-on. Certainly not in a situation this public, this critical. And who, apart from George and a handful of cranks, would think it was anything at all to do with the Church?

She looked at the crowded square with a new awareness, saw that most of the shoppers and the tourists knew exactly what was going on but were putting on an act of responsible British disinterest, not glancing at the castle walls at least until they were past the police. And the animated sense of community… that was simply locals and tourists united in veiled voyeurism.

The local kids were less circumspect, small gangs of them gathering, a boy of about eight dancing around the policewoman on the gate.

‘Kelly, how will we know if she jumps, Kelly?’

‘You’ll hear a big bump — now go away.’

Same laconic policewoman who’d dealt with Bell after Phyllis Mumford drowned. The boy looked mildly shocked for a moment, then let out a cackle of laughter.

‘Kids,’ Merrily said. ‘All heart.’

And thought, Bell?

Realizing then that she’d been aware, for some moments, of a familiar BMW sports car parked near the Castle Bookshop. She could see a notice in its window, guessed it would say Doctor on Call.

Well, of course. And she was in no position to say anything. While claiming she was on leave, she’d gone behind Saltash’s back and, worse, Callaghan-Clarke’s, and had had a meeting with George Lackland to discuss the possibility of an exorcism-of-place — must be true, it was in the papers, with a nice big incriminating picture. Merrily Watkins, Deliverance Consultant, had lied from the beginning.

And she couldn’t, in her own defence, mention Bernie Dunmore’s role in the deception because, after she fell, Bernie was likely to be the principal target. All she could do now to save him from an ignominious exit — and the diocese from the possibility of a disastrous successor — was to resign quietly. Take on the extra parishes and disappear.

Just around the corner at the end of the block, an elderly man in a hat and a woman in a pink Puffa jacket were standing outside the Assembly Rooms, a placard made of corrugated cardboard stretched between them, its message scrappily written in thick fibre-tip.

THE INNOCENTS ARE DYING. ONLY THE POWER OF GOD CAN STOP THIS NOW.

‘Friends of yours, Mr Mayor?’

‘I know them.’

‘Mmm.’

‘What you saying, Mrs Watkins?’

‘Why did you want Bernie here, Mr Mayor?’

‘You know why. Because, whatever he says, he believes there’s something evil here.’ George looked over Merrily’s head, across the town. ‘He’s seen it, after all.’