milk I?d left in the portable fridge had soured, turned green, and mutated into a new life form since the last time I was here, and I?d had to hide the fungus-sprouting mugs behind the filing cabinet, and my professional facade was hanging even more askew than it usually does. Once I?d got them sitting down I couldn?t even offer them coffee.
Straight down to business, then.
?What can I do for you?? I asked.
?Our daughter,? Mel mumbled, her voice slurred and thickened slightly by the swelling on the left side of her jaw. Having said that, she seemed to run out of words.
?Abbie,? Steve took up. ?Abigail. She?s gone missing.? Where Mel?s voice had been carefully, rigidly flat, his was so full of formless emotion it almost sounded strangled. He fished in his wallet and took out something small and rectangular, which he handed to me. I took it and flipped it over so it was right-side up for me: it was a photograph, passport-size, of a girl. About thirteen or fourteen years old, judging by face and build; long, straight blond hair of the kind that gets called ?flyaway? on shampoo bottles; an awkward, apologetic smile. Around her neck, a gold pendant shaped like a teardrop. There was something in her eyes . . . something a little sad and haunted. Or maybe there wasn?t. Maybe my memory inserted that nuance, in the light of what happened afterward.
?I?m really sorry to hear that,? I said, meaning it about as much as anyone does in those circumstances. These were just strangers, after all, and Abigail was just a name. ?How long ago??
That?s a stupid habit I?ve got: when I can?t think of anything else to say, I start in with the questions like a doctor looking to make a diagnosis.
Steve looked to Mel to answer, and again she seemed hard put to it to frame words. ?Saturday,? she said, hesitantly, as if picking her way across some inner minefield. ?The day before yesterday. That was the last time we saw her, and there was?something else that happened then. Something that we think might be connected.? I registered the ?might,? which seemed a little odd, and I was about to pin that one down, when Steve spoke up again.
?We want you to find her for us, Mr. Castor.?
I?d already jumped to a different conclusion, and I had my mouth open on the first words of a speech I?d made a hundred times before, so I was caught a little off balance. I closed my mouth, looked from the man to the woman and back again while I tried to think of something else to say.
Most people in the Torringtons? position would be looking for some kind of reassurance that Abigail was still on the right side of the grave: that?s a service that a lot of exorcists offer, whether they can make good on the promise or not. I was about to say yes: yes, I?d look for Abbie?s spirit, try to find out if it was still inside her body, but with a whole long string of caveats and provisos?because even with the wind at my back and the right kind of focus object I can only find a spirit if it?s there to be found. Some people depart very quickly after death and never come back, so only the sloppiest of cowboy operators assumes that the absence of a ghost is proof positive that someone is still alive.
Anyway, that had all gone out the window. Now I had a different proposition on my plate?and a different set of options. I could still take the job on, if I was so inclined. There are ways of finding living people that are (putting this as neutrally as I can) only open to members of my profession, but I don?t tend to use them. Rafi aside, I don?t traffic with demons, and I don?t raise the dead so that I can shake them down for information. Generally speaking, if someone?s sleeping quietly in the grave I leave them there. That?s the closest thing I have to an ethical standard.
So that left the other option: letting the Torringtons down without too much of a bump.
?I don?t normally do missing persons work,? I said. It sounded lame, I knew, and it sounded cold. I tried again. ?You?ve called the police, I?m sure, and they?re already doing all they can. What I could add to that would be?minimal, and pretty haphazard. I think maybe you ought to see what they can turn up before you start putting out feelers of your own. Or at least, you should discuss it with the officer who?s in charge of the case. I know that?s cold comfort, but they do know what they?re doing.?
Into the strained silence that followed, Mel made the lips-parting sound that means someone is about to speak, but then she didn?t.
Steve filled the gap. ?There is no police investigation,? he said, looking like he was biting down on something bitter.
I blinked. ?There isn?t? Well then, I?d say that?s the first thing you need to??
?Abbie is already dead.?
Ever the consummate professional, I didn?t actually allow my jaw to unravel all the way to the ground. It took a little effort, though, and there was a strained pause during which the statement just hung in the air, disturbing and palpable. ?You?d better run that by me again,? I said at last.
Melanie shook her head, as if her mind were automatically refusing?even while she spoke?to go back over this ground again. ?She died on a school trip to Cumbria, last summer,? she said, her voice if anything even deader and harder than before. ?An accident. Three girls fell into a river?Abbie, and two of her friends. It was in spate. The current was very strong.?
?They were swept away before anyone could get to them,? Steve took up, sounding angry, but it sounded like an old anger, much rehearsed now and very much sick of itself. ?They shouldn?t have been anywhere near the water in the first place. They had no chance. No chance at all.?
They both fell into silence, looking away from me and from each other: I could see that this was still raw, after most of a year. It would probably still be raw after most of a life. ?But she came back,? I prompted. I was starting to get the picture now: it was a bleak and sad one, executed mainly in grays, but then I don?t get to see many that are in bright primaries.
Steve nodded. ?Yes, she came back. About three months later. We were in her room.?
?Cleaning out her things?? I hazarded, but he shook his head fiercely. ?Just sitting. In her room. And I?I suddenly felt that we weren?t alone. That somebody had come in, and was standing quite close to us. I couldn?t see anything, but I just knew.? He smiled a very faint, very tired smile. ?I turned to Mel, and said ?Can you feel it?? Something like that. She thought I?d gone mad. But then she nodded. Yes. She was getting it, too.
?That was what it was like, at first. You just had to stand in a certain spot, and you could sense her. It was almost as though you could smell her breath. And about a week after that we started seeing her. Always out of the corner of our eye, at first?never when we actually turned to look at her. It was as though she was coming back to us slowly, from a long way away. We kept waiting, and she kept getting closer. Then we could hear her voice, some nights, calling out good night to us from her room when we were getting into bed. We shouted good night back, as though??
He paused, and Mel came in on cue. I got the impression, just for a moment, that they?d told this story before, and I wondered if they?d tried out many other exorcists before they got to me. ??as though she was still alive. As though nothing had happened.?
?It seemed to be the best way to make her stay,? said Steve. ?I?d stand at the sink, in the evening, washing up from dinner, and she?d start up a conversation from behind me. I didn?t look around. I chatted back to her. Told her about what was happening at work, and?and with her friends. Told her jokes.?
He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then opened them again and stared at me as if he was expecting some kind of a challenge. After a moment, a single tear made its slow, meandering way down his cheek. He looked like a man who?d find it hard to cry, and I felt, just for a moment, the guilty twinge of a reluctant voyeur. ?I know how strange this must sound, Mr. Castor,? Steve Torrington said. ?But having her back was what stopped us from falling apart after losing her. We went back to being a family again.? He shrugged?a minuscule twitch of his shoulders that spoke volumes. I could see exactly how that would work. And given all the other places that ghosts can end up haunting, the bosom of the family seemed close enough to heaven to make no difference.
Which was maybe the point, a clinical, dispassionate voice pointed out from the back of my mind. For ghosts, happiness is a double-edged proposition.
I put it as gently as I could. ?Sometimes?I?d even say often?what keeps the dead here on earth is a feeling that there?s something they still have to do. Other times it?s just the fear and pain of passing over, or some other strong emotion like anger.? I was trying to present this to them in a particular way, so that they could see it as what it was?a kind of happy ending. ?It usually tends to be something negative, anyway. Most ghosts are hurting, on some level. I think?if you made Abbie feel as safe and welcome and loved as you probably did?she may just have gone on to whatever comes next.? I wouldn?t bring heaven into the equation: I?m an atheist myself, as I think I may already have mentioned?mostly because I can?t handle the contradiction of an omnipotent God coming up with a world as badly thrown together as this one. A couple of CORGI-approved gas fitters could have done a better job. ?She may be somewhere else now?somewhere where she should have gone to straightaway, after she died. The extra time you had with her was a gift and, you know, a comfort?but it was never going to last. The dead aren?t that durable, most of the time.?
I stopped. Steve was shaking his head very emphatically?almost angrily?but he didn?t speak. Instead he turned to look expectantly at Mel, whose eyes were on the desk. Evidently this part of the story fell to her, and evidently she knew it.
?There?s something else,? she said, and swallowed hard. ?I met a man. Three years ago.? She darted a quick glance at me, to
