The Smile of a Ghost

Merrily watched a fire engine rumbling onto the square, no speed, no lights, no warbler. The emergency services apparently did not take their instructions from a disturbed teenager.

And here was the Mayor of Ludlow, still publicly hanging all this on an 800-year-old ghost rather than a living woman in a period shroud — an increasingly pitiable woman who, for some reason, he regarded as his Nemesis. Why?

‘If you’re a real friend of the Bishop’s, George,’ Merrily said, ‘you won’t mention that ten-quid bet ever again.’

Another policeman was approaching the castle gateway from the inside.

‘Ah, here’s Sergeant Britton,’ George said. ‘Let’s see if we can get you in there.’

But she was uncertain. This was no time for a confrontation with Saltash.

And was it really a young girl up there, or…?

Do something, Lucy Devenish had told him. How many times had Lucy said that?

Lol drove due north, up the Welsh border, under an unsure sky in which clouds would gather and then fall away like discarded underwear. Spring was an unbalanced time, made him nervous. He didn’t really know what to do, apart from act as some kind of messenger boy. All he was doing as he drove was thinking about Andy Mumford, without whom none of this — not least that perfidious eye-injury — would ever have happened.

Thinking about Mumford — not something that enough people seemed to have done over the years. What had this glum, anonymous man stirred up?

‘Miserable Andy’ was what Gomer Parry called him because he rarely smiled, never seemed to be particularly enjoying his work. Gomer must be twenty years older and still riding his JCB like he was part of some heavy-metal rodeo, but Gomer was self-employed and could retire if and when he wanted to, while Mumford had been forced into it and, like Dylan Thomas had advised, he wasn’t going gentle. Retirement: maybe this was the most savage rite of passage.

Which made Lol think about himself and the received wisdom that said that if you hadn’t made it in the music business by the time you reached thirty it wasn’t going to happen, ever. So it probably wasn’t going to happen. Was that worse than being like Belladonna, an international cult-figure at twenty and now some eerie Sunset Boulevard ghost?

As he was approaching the lights in the centre of Leominster, Lol’s phone broke ironically into the first bars of ‘Sunny Days’, the nearest he’d ever come to an actual hit. He pulled off the road into the forecourt of the petrol station on the corner, eased up against some second-hand cars, all of them at least ten years younger than the Astra.

Jane said, ‘You’d better pull over, Lol, what I have to tell you could cause an accident.’

‘One moment.’ He switched off the engine. ‘OK.’

‘Right,’ Jane said. ‘First off…’

First off, she told him, he’d be well advised to start looking for Mum in the general area of Ludlow Castle, where a girl was threatening suicide. Yes, another one, and it was no use asking who or why because this was all Sophie had known, therefore it was all Jane knew.

‘Christ,’ Lol said.

‘OK, the second thing. You sure you’re off the road?’

‘Get on with it, Jane.’

‘I’d like to claim total credit for this, but it was Sophie. I didn’t think even Mum meant that much to Sophie — well, not in comparison with the cathedral. Just shows, doesn’t it? So, like, Sophie talked to the Dean.’

‘The Dean.’

‘At the cathedral? The steely-eyed number-cruncher in charge of the cathedral? It’s pretty clear Sophie’s got some serious dirt on the Dean that she’s been, like, saving up, and now it’s really come good. I mean, circumstantial evidence more than anything else, but the Dean is the missing component that connects everybody.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Lol said. ‘What are we talking about? This is about Mumford? Belladonna?’

The line seemed to fracture.

‘… And we checked it on the Net and it’s a bit of a gob-smacker.’

‘Start again, Jane,’ Lol said.

‘Can’t be done,’ Steve Britton said. ‘Sorry. Can’t allow it. Tense as hell in there, George. That girl goes out the hole, there’ll be an inquest on all of us.’

‘The hole?’ George said.

‘Well… window. Jagged hole in the wall. She’s up on this deep window ledge, and they can’t reach her. She made us take away the scaffolding — leaned back, half out the window, said if we didn’t take it away she’d… you know. Don’t look that big a drop from below, but when you’re up there…’

Steve Britton was probably in his forties, nearly as tall as George, with a scrubbed face and invisible eyebrows. He nodded at Merrily, across the castle gate.

‘Friend of Andy Mumford’s, right?’

‘You seen him lately, Mr Britton?’

He laughed. ‘I’m glad to say, no. Poor old boy.’

‘Who’s in with the girl?’

‘Inspector Gee and Dr Saltash. I think you know him, too. My superior suggested he go in, seeing he was around. Also the woman minister. Canon…’

‘Callaghan-Clarke.’

‘That’s it. Seems they been studying the situation,’ Steve Britton said. ‘It’s not an easy one. It’s not normal, this, is it?’

‘Do you think you could tell them I’m here… and I might just be able to help?’

Steve Britton coughed. ‘Like I say, a bit difficult in there just at the moment, Mrs Watkins. Perhaps if you could come back later?’

‘I see.’ Seemed clear he’d been told that if she turned up she definitely wasn’t to be allowed in. She could imagine Saltash briefing Steve Britton, in confidence. Not for me to try to influence you, Sergeant, but a woman with a stress problem in a situation this volatile… would that be wise?

‘Inspector Gee’s also very much the right person for this,’ Steve Britton said. ‘You’ll remember Sandy Gee, George — DC here, four, five years ago? Went back into uniform to take charge of family liaison in Shrewsbury. Plump person. Three kids, now. Needs somebody a bit mumsy, I reckon. Seems very young, this girl.’

‘So it is a girl?’ Merrily said. ‘I mean, you’ve seen her yourself?’

‘Who’d you think it was?’ Steve Britton eyed her, curious.

‘Do you know her name yet?’

Steve Britton pursed his lips.

George Lackland snorted. ‘God’s sake, Stephen, how long you known me, boy?’ He turned to Merrily. ‘People help each other in a small town. It’s how things get done. How good connections get made.’

The Mayor turned back to Steve Britton and gave him a long, considering stare, as if their future relationship and all it might promise was on the line here.

‘Samantha Cornwell,’ Steve said. ‘And it wasn’t me told you.’

‘Goes without saying, Stephen. Local?’

‘Ledbury. Like the other one.’

Merrily blinked. ‘That means she knew Jemmie Pegler?’

Steve Britton looked uneasy; he’d already said too much.

‘Thank you, boy,’ George said. ‘It won’t be forgotten.’

Merrily followed the Mayor back onto the square, everything reshaping.

She’d assembled a scenario in which Bell, betrayed, had fled to Marion’s tower, all ghosts together, but it was wrong. Now the scene in her head was a corner table at the cafe in a mews across the car park from Hereford Police HQ. On the table, a computer printout, e-mail format:

if i emptied every packet and every bottle in there and swallowed the lot. well just be sick as a dog most likely. how sad is that, sam. im not going out sad. im not. when i go theyll fucking know ive gone.