The Smile of a Ghost (44 page)

‘Oh? What did she look like?’

‘Quite small. Brown hair, brown eyes – passionate, angry eyes. Robbie was an adolescent boy, he wasn’t sophisticated, his terminology was simple. He was in love with Marion because she was everything you rarely find any more. She was… all feelings. All strong passion and impulse, in comparison with all the apathetic, jaded kids he had to mix with. Can’t you feel her, Mary? Now? Here?’

‘I can feel her confusion,’ Merrily said, and it was true. ‘I can feel her uncontrollable rage. And her despair.’

‘This was possibly the time of night she did it… hacked the bastard down and took a dive. Out of the window just above us. No tree here then, just stones. Marion plummeting down with a scream of terminal anguish. Her body bouncing as it lands, breaking, finally coming to rest—’

‘Coming to unrest,’ Merrily said.

‘—Where we’re sitting now, blood issuing from her mouth.’ A fluid thrill, like oil, under Bell’s voice now. ‘Oh, you do understand, don’t you?’

‘I understand Marion. Marion’s easy. She was both the betrayed and the betrayer. She’d let the enemy in. She didn’t see a way out, except through one of these windows. Jemima Pegler, however… that’s much more complex. And so’s Robbie Walsh. This friend of mine, he took me to see his mother, Robbie’s gran. Because she said she was seeing him around the house and around the town…’

‘He asked you to help her, as a psychic.’

‘Something like that. She said she was seeing Robbie reflected in mirrors and shop windows. And… in the water.’

‘She drowned…’

‘I was there that night,’ Merrily said. ‘And you came down to the river, with a bunch of… goths, it looked like.’

Bell stared at her, her arms in the ragged sleeves lifting what had lain on her knees – a black instrument case, too big for a violin, too small for a guitar.

‘And you seemed to know who it would be,’ Merrily said. ‘Who they’d found in the water.’

‘What are you suggesting…? Oh, look, all right… It was one of the band heard it was Robbie’s grandmother. Couple of them were in the town, and they heard someone—’

‘The band?’

‘It’s a young band, called Le Fanu, who come here sometimes. They’ve been influenced by my music and they come down some weekends and we play. They’re… my support mechanism, if you like. We hang out and we get a little stoned sometimes and… we’re putting an album together. Look, I hear stories that I’m flooding the town with fucking goths, but it’s just Le Fanu and their hangers-on.’

‘And was… one of them involved in a stabbing incident?’

Something squirmed, some creature, rattling twigs in the undergrowth on the other side of the path. Bell let out a breath.

‘Yes, yes… He was a roadie, and he doesn’t work for them any more. It was a very minor incident, I…’ She hugged the case. ‘… I don’t mind being considered mad – I am mad – but I won’t be accused of importing violence, do you understand?’

Her voice was breaking up now and she was trembling.

‘You’re shivering. You’re cold.’

‘I like being cold, you must’ve heard that. Cold as the grave.’

‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘Mary, are you writing a fucking book about me, or something?’

‘I’m—’ Merrily had to break off, take a breath. The cigarette lay dead between her fingers. Her spine was starting to ache, and her bum had gone numb. If she wasn’t careful she was going to come out with the truth. ‘I just think some of the things being said about you are probably all wrong. Jon—’

‘Jonathan’s an idiot. Him and his ghost-walk – irrelevant, an irritant.’

‘Maybe you just want to be an enigma,’ Merrily said. ‘The mad woman of Ludlow who walks in the night and sings her old songs to the moon while sitting under this… age-old symbol of life and death and immortality, wearing… wearing a bloody shroud…’

Bell Pepper started to laugh. ‘I really think you’re the first to notice.’

Oh God, and she’d been hoping it wasn’t. She stared out, past the lantern, at the ominous black forestry across the river, towards the Welsh border.

‘I didn’t think they made them like that any more. They seem to use paper now, or the body’s dressed in ordinary clothes.’

‘They
don’t
make them like this any more,’ Bell said. ‘I had a friend, an undertaker. He found them in a stockroom. Six of them. Old stock. Years old, even then. Probably post-Victorian, nineteen-thirties, I don’t know.’

‘I see.’

‘This was the guy who did the arrangements for my baby, if you were wondering.’

‘Your baby died…?’

‘My baby… had no life outside of me. When they pulled him out, he was dead meat.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No need to be. It works both ways. Ever since – over twenty-five years – a part of me has been where he is.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Merrily said, ‘I’m going to have to stand up, my back’s starting to seize up…’

She rose awkwardly and walked out of the penumbra of the yew. She was surprised to see the sky like deep copper foil over the Hanging Tower. It didn’t mean dawn, just another mood of an increasingly crazy night.

‘Do you want to come home with me, Mary?’

Bell Pepper was at her shoulder, the musical-instrument case at her feet, her hands around its stem.

‘I… I’ve got a daughter at home, I…’

‘How old?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘Hardly a problem, then. You’re obviously not as comfortable here as I am. Come back to The Weir House.’ Bell touched her arm. Her fingers felt like the wet tips of icicles. ‘You want to know, don’t you? About Robbie?’

Merrily didn’t reply.

‘I was entirely shattered when he died.’ That dark, translucent voice, the poshest pop star since Marianne Faithfull. ‘It was like – for me – some awful kind of retribution.’

Merrily turned to her. ‘Why?’

‘Because Robbie Walsh was my son,’ Bell Pepper said.

35

T
HE PHONE WAS
ringing. Jane woke up under the duvet on the sofa in the parlour, Ethel on her feet. She was fully dressed, more or less. Padded through to the scullery.

The clock said two-fifteen a.m. She’d unplugged the answering machine, so the phone was still ringing, and she snatched it.

‘Mum?’

‘Jane…?’

‘Lol!’

‘What’s wrong?’ Lol said.

‘Wrong?’

‘All the lights are on. I’m sorry, I’m becoming the neighbour from hell. Maybe it’ll be better when I get a bed. I woke up on the sofa and I felt something wasn’t right, and I went to the front door and… all the lights are on in the vicarage. Well, not all the lights, just… more lights than usual. Sorry.’

‘She got called out to Ludlow. Belladonna was… assaulted.’

Jane explained. She was wide awake now. Waking up had never been a problem and she thought it was good, in one way, that Lol had noticed the lights. He cared.

Well, of course he cared.

‘She left her phone behind. I don’t think it was intentional, she was in a hurry. But I’m a bit pissed off, actually. I was supposed to be going with her tomorrow to sort out Belladonna.’

‘She was going to expose Belladonna to you?’

‘Maybe she senses I’ve mellowed. Do you want to come over for some hot chocolate or something, Lol? We could sit by the phone together.’

‘Not a safe thing to do in this village at the moment, with your mum conspicuously not at home. If we’re awake, someone else will be. Then you happen to trip up outside and cut your lip, and I’m back on Victoria Ward, and—’

‘Lol!’

‘You could give me a discreet call when she comes in. Or do you think I should maybe go over—’

‘Certainly not!’

‘You’re right. That would be… intrusive. Unforgivable. I need to keep my nose out.’

‘You don’t like Belladonna, do you?’ Jane said.

‘I don’t know her.’

‘You don’t trust her, then.’

‘Well, not from what I’ve heard, no, but we shouldn’t always believe rumours, should we?’

‘No. Lol’ – Jane sat at the desk, flicked on the anglepoise ‘– about that. The rumours. Do you have any idea who’s been spreading them?’

‘Not really. As long as the right people don’t believe them, I’m not going to worry.’

‘You heard from
Q
magazine yet? When the piece is going in?’

‘Should I have?’

‘You could ring them and ask.’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t like to miss it.’

‘Eirion gets it, doesn’t he?’

‘Yeah. So he does.’

‘Is this small talk, Jane?’

‘Bit late for that,’ Jane said ambiguously.

With no chance of getting back to sleep, Jane made some hot chocolate and took it back to the computer. Put Belladonna into Google and found, like, six million mentions. Put in Belladonna/religion and got it down to a couple of thousand. What it seemed to amount to was that this woman had tried everything and rejected most of it, including forms of paganism, mostly eastern.

When she found herself back in the Departure Lounge with Karone the bastard Boatman, Jane typed in:
You still here, Karone? Suggest consult own website and act accordingly
.

She Googled The Weir House, where Belladonna lived. There were three mentions, two negligible, one cursory. Essentially, a new house created authentically on the site of a fourteenth-century ruin, with a connection to the Palmers’ Guild. Jane Googled the Guild and came up with this fairly detailed article about a quasi-spiritual organization that had played a major part in making Ludlow what it was today – well preserved and not short of a few quid.

She printed it out and read it twice. It tied in fairly well with what she already knew, from A-level history, about the medieval social system – the need for wealth, status and godliness in equal measures. Like, forget all that rich man/eye of the needle crap; if you had the money you could provide for an afterlife. Jane was reminded of ‘Stairway to Heaven’, the ancient and interminable Led Zeppelin song that Eirion had in his anorak’s collection. Apparently, Tony Blair knew all the chords. Figured, somehow.

She tried Belladonna/Ludlow and hit on a short item from one of these
Heat
-type celeb magazines, which included this little gem:

She printed this out, too, sensing some significance here, and then checked the e-mails. There was one from Eirion, marked
For Jane
.

***

The e-mail was timed at 1.55 a.m. Chances were he was still vaguely conscious. Jane rang his mobile.

‘Yes, I’m very nearly naked,’ Eirion said. ‘And, sadly, alone. Are you in bed also, your body glistening with oriental oils?’

‘You sound pleased with yourself.’

‘I’ve found out where the shit lives. It’s one of those Georgian piles behind a ten-foot wall at Breinton, overlooking the city.’

‘So you’ll be going through Ledwardine to get there.’

‘No.’

‘Just that the Ludlow trip could be off.’

‘Does this mean I don’t get to do something potentially rewarding all on my own?’

‘You can do what you like after you switch the light out, but maybe you could call for me in the morning. I feel strongly about this, too. Lol’s my… whatever you call the bloke your mother’s having an unaccountably clandestine relationship with. And he’s… he’s taken enough shit this week.’

‘You told Lol about Fyneham?’

‘No. Not a word. I mean, let’s find out what the score is first. Like, if it turns out you’re wrong and the guy actually is working for
Q
…’

‘Jane, I went through a pile of back copies, looking for the name Jack Fine in all the concert reviews and small stuff, and then every known music website. I put him into every available search engine. If Fyneham’s working for
Q
, I’m going to leave school, get a job on a remote hill farm in Snowdonia and shag sheep.’

‘Yeah, OK, we get the point.’

‘Call me when you know if you’re going or not?’

‘I will do that.’ Jane noticed a new e-mail for Mum from the Deliverance office. It was highlighted with one of those red exclamation marks, conveying urgency. Sophie, who knew Mum always checked her e-mails before bed.

‘If I don’t hear from you before ten forty-five,’ Eirion said. ‘I’ll just go straight over there, OK?’