A Ghost at the Door (26 page)

At last the bishop had replied, sent an e-mail, part-apology for the delay, part-explanation on account of his overcrowded diary, but declaring that he would be delighted to
make time for the son of Johnnie Maltravers-Jones. He had a gap, before a lunch appointment, eleven thirty in the restaurant at the top of the Gherkin, where he would be sitting at a table reserved
in the name of his host, a leading City financial operation.

The Gherkin, it seemed to Harry, was an unusual hideaway for a man of religion. Built on the ruins of the old Baltic Exchange after it had been blown to oblivion by an IRA bomb, along with a
fifteen-year-old girl and two others, the forty-one-storey structure clad in glass had rapidly established itself as one of the delights of the City’s skyline. It was an unabashed exercise in
phallicism or picklery, depending on one’s viewpoint – and, of course, in money, vast amounts of it, which accounted for the heavy security and exceptionally clean windows. Harry had to
change lifts in order to get to the top of the building and found the bishop sitting at a window table where a bottle of exotic glacier water cast a shadow on the crisp white tablecloth. The cleric
was twisting a large amethyst ring on his right hand, seeming lost in thought as he gazed out at the view that, from nearly six hundred feet, was breathtaking. To one side he found the royal
medieval walls of the Tower of London and the cupola of St Paul’s Cathedral; to the other Harry could see down to the honey-cake crenellations of the Houses of Parliament. The Gherkin looked
down on them all.

The bishop looked up. ‘Welcome,’ he said, extending a hand. The fingers were thin, almost clawlike, the sensation of awkwardness exaggerated by the missing top of his little finger,
and a body that once had been a power on the rugby pitch was now wizened and slightly bent. A man past his prime. There was an air of sadness about his pale eyes; the lips were pink and moist,
constantly moving as though searching for some elusive word. A band of white hair curled around the margins of his otherwise bald head in an echo of the clerical collar he wore above his black
clerical shirt, and around his neck he wore an elaborate pectoral cross in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet with you, Mr Jones – may I call you
Harry?’

Even as Harry took his place, looking down the meander of the Thames to the haze-covered countryside of Kent beyond, a waitress appeared at his elbow.

‘Tea? Coffee? Something stronger?’ the bishop enquired.

‘Tea, thank you. Indian.’

The waitress moved serenely away.

‘Quite a place you have here, Bishop Randall,’ Harry said.

‘Not my perch, of course. This is the world of Mammon and I’m no more than an occasional visitor. I try to catch a few crumbs from the tables. The Church so desperately needs
them.’

‘I suspect there are some pretty impressive crumbs.’

‘Yes, but from this height they tend to fall a long way. My task is to persuade those men of very profound wealth that they can afford not only their yachts, several ex-wives and assorted
young companions but also a conscience.’

‘You had a career in the City before you joined the Church, didn’t you?’

‘Ah, you’ve done your homework,’ the bishop chuckled, his lips moving like the ripples on a pond – although in truth there had been remarkably little information about
the bishop to be found: a sparse
Wiki
entry, few interviews or profiles, no evangelical outpourings. ‘I found the City . . . unfulfilling.’

Harry’s tea arrived; he let it stand for a while.

‘But we have so much to talk about and so little time,’ the bishop said, moving them on. ‘How can I help?’

‘I was hoping you could tell me a little about my father.’

‘Ah, the Blessed Johnnie. Did you know he was a very fine scrum half?’

‘I had no idea.’

‘Could have got a blue if he’d applied himself.’

‘You did, didn’t you?’

The bishop nodded. ‘But for Johnnie there were always . . .’ – he sighed – ‘too many distractions.’

‘What sort of thing?’

The bishop began, picking his words with care. ‘He was always very . . . enterprising. Had no money and not much background. In places like Christ Church at that time such things mattered.
Every staircase had its earl or an honourable, there was even a maharajah floating about the place. It was still very
Brideshead
but Johnnie never let such things stop him. He made himself
useful.’

‘How?’

‘He would organize extravagant trips during the vacations. Skiing at Klosters, summers in Venice, that sort of thing. Always led from the front, did Johnnie. First down a black slope,
first into the bar and’ – the damp lips wobbled in amusement – ‘it has to be said, he was always first up to the prettiest woman in the room. Your father always made his
mark.’

‘Took risks, you mean?’

As Wickham reminisced he ran a finger down his crucifix. Harry noticed that his fingers were beautifully and almost certainly professionally manicured. Per haps he was making up for the fact
that he was down on the digit count. ‘You have to remember it was the sixties. The Vietnam War, the Beatles, Profumo, the Pill. The world trembled, everything seemed to be up for grabs, every
rule was questioned. It was a time when, for a while, I lost my own faith. But your father never had much time for rules. What he had instead was a large number of friends. Extraordinary. I think
Johnnie invented the game of networking – everyone from aristocrats to an engineering student from Worksop. Named Richards, I think he was, quite brilliant academically but without a single
social skill that anyone could discover. Latchkey kid with a working-class grudge, hated Oxford. But Johnnie made friends with him and discovered he had a peculiar skill with telephones. Could beat
the system. In those days when you wanted to make a call you had to drop four large old pennies into the slot before the operator would connect you. Richards discovered that simply by tapping the
receiver in the right way he could mimic the sound of the coins dropping and get his call home for free. Then he expanded. Built himself a little gadget tied together with tape and with wires
sticking out of it that enabled him to make calls to any part of the world. In those days you had to book international calls and they cost several fortunes. Johnnie had a lot of pals with
girlfriends in the States or Switzerland or Australia, rich pals who were more than happy to pay for the pleasure of chatting up their young ladies, particularly if at the same time they could add
to it the exquisite titillation of cheating the General Post Office. Johnnie and Richards went into business together and made some very serious money.’ Harry was astounded, almost breathless
in anticipation. It was as though a page of history – his own history – was being turned for the first time. ‘What happened?’

‘Richards got caught, of course. Got himself arrested and charged with some ludicrous offence like misappropriation of Her Majesty’s electricity. The authorities were making it up as
they went along. They’d never come across anything like that before. Ridiculous, couldn’t make it stick. Richards was found not guilty and as he walked down the steps of the court the
men from the GPO came to their senses and offered him a job.’

‘And my father?’

‘Always one step ahead. Nobody could lay a finger on Johnnie, got away with it, always did.’

‘I suppose he did,’ Harry muttered, an edge of bitterness souring his tone. ‘You and he were good friends?’

‘For a while, yes. It was a time of sharing. Pimm’s, poetry, long afternoons in punts, and exceptionally pretty people. Everyone was pretty in the sixties.’

‘And the Aunt Emma club.’

‘Ah, yes, the Aunt Emmas. Just an informal gathering, very gentle. At that time we undergraduates weren’t allowed in the full university club, so we called ourselves the Junior
Croquet Club and hacked away on college lawns. And your father, Harry, was the meanest man with a mallet I ever knew.’ The bishop laughed. ‘A total tiger in front of the hoops, while I
was always a bit of a headless chicken, I fear.’

‘And after university? You kept in touch?’

‘Summer’s colour fades. Young people drift apart. I went into the City while he . . . well, Johnnie continued making friends, finding opportunities wherever he could.’

Harry reached for the photograph in his pocket, realizing that the bishop’s stories had already swallowed up so much of his time. ‘These people . . .’ He put the photo down on
the crisp linen tablecloth and pointed. ‘There’s you. My father.’

‘Well, well,’ Wickham said, fumbling for his pince-nez glasses, which emerged from his suit breast pocket attached to a thin gold chain. He was almost foppish but a bishop could get
away with it.

‘You were both friends of Susannah Ranelagh.’ Harry pointed once more.

‘Yes, her name strikes a chord. Not close friends, not in my case, at least, no more than an occasional leap around the croquet lawn. I wonder what became of her.’

‘This is Christine Leclerc. And the one she’s got her arm around is Ali Abu al-Masri.’

‘Yes, I remember them. Followed their careers from afar. So sad.’

‘And this one’s Findlay Francis, isn’t it?’

The bishop squinted. ‘Is it? Was that his name? I don’t remember, it was such a long time ago. Mind you, at my age most things were a long time ago.’

‘It just struck me as strange that so many members of your croquet club seem to have come to a sad end.’

‘Three score and ten.’

‘I think it was more than that.’

The bishop’s lips lost their rhythmic beat and pursed in curiosity. ‘What do you mean, Harry?’

Harry searched the cleric’s eyes. ‘A plane crash. An assassination. A sudden heart attack. Now both Susannah Ranelagh and Findlay Francis have disappeared.’

‘Have they? I didn’t know.’

‘I think my father and Miss Ranelagh kept in touch. I think they met up every year, in October.’

‘Really? How good of them.’

‘I was wondering, do you know anything about that? Their friendship? Their meetings? Was it an annual get-together of the Croquet Club, something like that? And who was this third woman?
She’s a total mystery. Do you have any idea?’

The bishop dragged his eyes away from the photograph and took off his glasses. ‘Harry, you know more than I do. I’m afraid I can’t help you.’

‘You didn’t keep in touch with other members of the club?’

‘The other Aunt Emmas? No, not really, not even your father. He travelled so much.’

‘Can I ask when you last met him?’

‘You know, I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps during a gaudy at Christ Church, a reunion dinner. But there would have been so many others there and old minds grow weary—’

‘I’d like you to think about that really hard if you would, Bishop Randall. Any little connection, any detail you might be able to remember, no matter how small.’

‘Of course, I shall. And if it doesn’t offend you I’d like to remember him in my prayers. But I fear there is little else I can do for you, especially today.’ He glanced
at his wristwatch. ‘I hope you’ll understand and forgive me. My luncheon companion will be here any minute. I’d love to introduce the two of you but he and I are about to have a .
. . a very delicate discussion.’

‘Falling crumbs.’

‘Even the Good Samaritan required a few crumbs to undertake God’s work. So if you’ll excuse me, Harry . . .’ He pushed back his chair and rose, extending both hands,
which wrapped around Harry’s own.

‘Might I have an address for you, a telephone number, Bishop Randall?’

‘Of course, but I . . . I travel rather a lot. You can always track me down through the Church Commissioners’ office, that’s easiest. They always know where I am. Or
e-mail.’

It didn’t sound like too much of an excuse, not from a man of his age.

‘God guard your every step, Harry.’

The bishop released his grip. As Harry turned and walked towards the lift, he realized he hadn’t even touched his tea. And the bishop, who could remember every detail about an engineering
student named Richards, could barely recall even the names of his own friends.

Long after dark and still hours before dawn, Billy stood in the cover provided by a bookie’s shop doorway. It hadn’t taken much to find Harry’s old Volvo
parked in a side street. Edwards had provided the registered address and, with parking restrictions in London as tight as a Chancellor’s purse, the car was never going to be far away. Billy
eyed the street one more time. Nothing. He stared contemptuously at the car. It would have taken him less time to break into it than it would to hit a dartboard from three feet, but there was no
need. He knelt down beside the rear number plate, peered underneath to make sure there was no obstruction, then wriggled his way beneath until he was alongside the line of the exhaust pipe. With a
pencil light clamped between his teeth he inspected the underside of the car above the rear axle and, with a wire brush he pulled from the pocket of his camouflage trousers, scraped the thin layer
of road dirt away until he had a sound surface. From his other pocket he produced a gadget barely larger than a box of cooking matches. Mail-order. A vehicle tracking device. GPS straight to your
mobile phone. Battery life of three weeks, twelve months on standby. Real-time locations, password-protected and lots of other crap Billy didn’t need to understand. ‘An ideal solution
to the challenge of tracking company employees who are not working diligently. Also for use in domestic circumstances for resolving relationship issues.’ The tracker had three large magnets
that he used to attach it to the scrubbed area, where it located with a satisfying clunk. He allowed himself a smile. This was so much easier than the usual shit Edwards insisted that he jump into.
Perhaps the dick-head policeman was going soft in his declining years. Maybe it was time to stand up to the slime-ball. For sure, next time, maybe, probably, that’s what he’d do. What
goes up can be shoved further up. But no sooner had he vowed on the virtue of a hundred virgins that he’d quit being a loser than Billy froze. Two piercing bright eyes were staring at him. He
jerked his head in panic and banged into the underside of the axle. As if someone had hit him with a hammer. As Billy let out a stream of curses, the old dog fox sauntered away.