The Unquiet Dead (41 page)

‘Murder requires intent to kill, Nancy. You didn’t murder him.’

She continued to weep.

‘There was no malice aforethought; you couldn’t have foreseen the events that led to his drowning. It wouldn’t even hold up as manslaughter.’

That wasn’t necessarily true, Jessie knew. It was Nancy’s word against a dead man’s. But Nancy was dying, and even the most cold-hearted killers repent to some degree at the end. God may not be all-seeing, but death was.

‘That makes it accidental,’ continued Jessie. ‘A tragic accident,’ she said softly.

Nancy’s teeth trembled against the plastic tube.

He drowned. It was an accident
.

‘He drowned,’ said Jessie. ‘It was an accident.’

The paramedic slipped a needle into the back of Nancy’s hand and taped it there. Saline solution
and a mild sedative. He feared she was going into shock. Jessie stared out of the window while he worked. She’d sent Burrows off to fetch Charlotte with instructions to tell her everything they knew, including the truth about the nanny and Mr Scott-Somers. It would be up to Charlotte to decide what she wanted Nancy to know. There wasn’t a lot of time. Nancy wasn’t leaving that chair alive. Jessie didn’t want her to die confused, angry or scared. The little girl hadn’t had a lot of peace in her life, she deserved a peaceful passing. But Nancy seemed more distressed than before. She was agitated and pulling at the tube. Then she began to cough uncontrollably.

‘I think she wants the tube to come out,’ said the paramedic. ‘She wants to talk.’

Jessie returned to her side. ‘Can you put a mask on her?’

‘I can, but I don’t know how long her lungs will be able to take the pressure. Even with the extra oxygen.’

‘How long?’

He shrugged. ‘Hours.’

Jessie turned to the enormous woman, enveloped in her own self-loathing. ‘Do you understand what he is saying, Nancy?’

Nancy blinked once.

Jessie hoped Burrows would hurry.

The tube came out and Nancy began to talk. Syllable by syllable. Word by word. It was
arduous and painful to watch as she struggled to get the words out and keep death and her tears at bay. ‘He…Thin…ks…I…A…ban…don…ed…him.’

‘No, Nancy,’ said Jessie, replacing the mask on her pale, pasty face. ‘He knows you didn’t abandon him.’

Nancy’s face creased in pain.

‘I promise you.’

Nancy shook her head a fraction.

‘Yes, I can. The sewage system requires only a centimetre of rain to fall before it begins to back up. The boiler room is two floors underground. It started raining at two thirty on the afternoon of 23rd February – I know because I checked with the Met Office. It was torrential for the first hour or so, then rained steadily on and off for three days. You’d know that because you were standing in it. But the first centimetre fell within the first four to six hours. You left the building at twenty to four, according to Mr Romano’s meticulous notes. Malcolm wasn’t expecting you back for twenty-four hours and, Nancy, he would have drowned long before that. It wasn’t a trap. You were his friend. He knew that.’

The radio on the paramedic’s bike crackled loudly. An indecipherable message skimmed over the airwaves. The nurse hung up the drip and ran out to answer a distress call. Jessie stayed in the house, to answer another.

‘A good friend, too, I think.’ Jessie crouched
down next to Nancy. When she spoke again it was in a quieter voice. ‘Don Firth says the baths are haunted. He says that someone didn’t like to be disturbed down in the basement. Someone strong enough to stop people going down there, strong enough to stop developers signing their name on the dotted line, strong enough maybe to shield the person who would be blamed if his body were ever discovered.’

Nancy pointed at Jessie.

‘We found him by accident. Exactly where you had left him, in the dry pit at the back of the boiler room, the one that wasn’t under the flood water, the one with the heavy lid that you somehow managed to shift.’

Jessie knew also that Nancy had tried to resuscitate him, because she’d seen the bruises, but she figured those details were unnecessary.

The paramedic returned. ‘False alarm,’ he said. ‘Radio’s playing up.’

Jessie winked at Nancy, then looked up. ‘Your sister is here. Can I let her come in?’

Nancy pulled the mask away and smiled at last. The paramedic pointed to the drip. ‘The sedative is working,’ he murmured. Jessie didn’t think it was the sedative. She had seen that same look in the eyes of a girl who died under a train.
I’m okay. I don’t hurt any more
. Death’s approach bought with it the promise of imminent peace. It was nearly over. Just one more thing.

Jessie watched Charlotte with admiration. She was sober, for a start. She didn’t balk at the filth surrounding her sister, or her sister’s appearance. She’d brought candles. The first thing she did was light them all, scooping up the rubbish as she went. When she was finished, she brushed Nancy’s hair. Jessie saw the blond roots coming through behind the darker, dyed hair. Like Malcolm, thought Jessie, Nancy’s true colour was at last beginning to show through. When Charlotte was finished she curled up at Nancy’s feet like a miniature piece of porcelain at the base of the Sphinx. She reached up and took Nancy’s hand. Finally she started to talk. Jessie didn’t need to hear the story retold. She knew it by heart. She went out on to the street, inhaling the cold air with relief. What she’d said to Nancy was true: Don did think the baths were haunted, and he wasn’t alone. And it was also true that the water would have risen too fast for Malcolm to expect a rescue. If he needed forgiveness, it was more likely from himself, not Nancy. Jessie stared back at the crumbling façade and wondered whether for fourteen years Malcolm Hoare had been doing what everyone else had failed to do: protect Nancy.

In her pocket the phone vibrated.

‘We’ve found Mr Romano,’ said the breathless voice of the young officer from Lisson Grove Estate.

‘Where is he?’ she asked.

‘On the roof of his building. He’s threatening to jump.’

‘Is he serious?’

Forty-three 999 calls from an estate where the police were seen as the enemy said he was. She told Burrows to stay, and ran for the car.

With sirens blazing, Jessie weaved perilously in and out of traffic, her faith in the flashing blue lights absolute. She pulled up alongside a growing crowd of spectators. People had come to see the Italian fall. Jessie alerted the local officer to her presence. He looked terrified.

‘If he jumps, it’ll be all my fault –’

‘Don’t worry, he’ll be talked down. The unit is trained for this.’

The young officer looked forlornly at Jessie.

‘What?’

‘The unit are four hours away.’

‘So who’s that guy?’ asked Jessie, nodding in the direction of the man entering the maintenance door to the building.

‘PC Jack Shayer, but he has a nickname …’

‘I’m afraid to ask.’

‘Jumping Jack. You want them down quick, call for Jumping Jack, he has them down in a –’

‘Flash.’

‘You get my drift.’

‘If that’s you being subtle, I’d hate to see you being indiscreet,’ said Jessie, starting to run.

The officer ran alongside her, flat-footed and
panting. ‘Please, DI Driver, I don’t want Mr Romano’s death on my conscience. That sort of thing can ruin a person’s life.’

This was something Jessie knew. ‘Don’t worry. I can handle him.’

‘He’s been shouting and screaming at someone like he was down the allotment.’

Jessie reached the staircase. Father Forrester was waiting for her, Romano’s notebooks cradled in his arms.

‘Be careful up there. The man may not know his own strength.’

‘Have you read them?’ she shouted, taking two steps at a time.

‘All of them,’ the priest called back.

‘And you think Mr Romano is hearing voices?’

‘Yes. And right now, they’re telling him to jump.’

Jessie stopped for a second. She looked back at the beat officer. ‘Clear this area – just in case this doesn’t work.’

Jessie caught Jumping Jack Flash at the roof door. He would not hear of allowing her out there in his place, but told her that she could accompany him in his rescue mission. Jessie couldn’t fault his enthusiasm for his job. She followed him out on to the flat asphalt roof, and listened as he quietly called Romano’s name. Mr Romano didn’t respond. He didn’t even turn round when they approached him.

‘Mr Romano, whatever the problem is, jumping isn’t the solution,’ said Jumping Jack Flash, at
which point Jessie decided she too might jump. So she took over.

‘Mr … Doyle,’ she said calmly. ‘We’ve been looking for you for some time.’

‘Who?’ exclaimed the officer.

Mr Romano slowly turned round. His naturally olive skin had paled to a ghoulish white. He obviously hadn’t eaten or slept for several days. His clothes hung loosely off him, dirty and crumpled; his dark wavy hair hung in greasy tendrils over his shirt collar; his face was gaunt and skeletal, his eyes dusted with a dark shadow that traced the edge of his eye sockets. He looked as though he was already dead. Jumping Jack stepped back. Mr Romano seemed a man possessed. Such was the transformation that for a second Jessie forgot that Doyle had never existed, as she looked into the eyes of the man that the children had described. The bogey man. Boo Radley. The evil drug dealer who had killed their golden boy.

‘I’m a very bad man,’ said Mr Romano.

‘Why have you come back, Mr Doyle?’

‘I never went away. You just couldn’t see me. Poor Romano, in front of his very eyes and he never knew. They’re so stupid, the Italians. All that macho crap.’

It was only the mention of his nationality that made Jessie realise even Mr Romano’s accent had gone. ‘He said he saw you.’

The man who looked like Ian Doyle’s Identikit
smiled ghoulishly and tapped his head. ‘But he could never stop me.’

‘Mrs Romano – did she try to stop you?’

Mr Romano trembled at the sound of his wife’s name.

‘She knew.’

‘What did she know?’

‘Fuck off, bitch!’

‘Mr Romano –’ warned the gallant officer before Jessie had a chance to shut him up.

‘I’M NOT MR ROMANO!’ he shouted, lunging at the officer and sending him crashing to the floor. ‘Mr Romano wouldn’t do that! He wouldn’t do that! He loved his son.’

Jessie grabbed the Italian by the arm as he pulled it back to launch another blow at the snivelling policeman. She forced him into a half-nelson, but he was stronger than he looked and threw her off. Only a low wall now separated her from the bone-shattering concrete eighty feet below. As the suicide specialist got up on all fours and shouted for help, Mr Romano turned and kicked him hard in the belly.

‘Squealing pig!’

As he lined up a second kick at the man’s kidneys, Jessie propelled herself off the ground and began to run in his direction. Mr Romano glanced at the moving object and tried to redirect the force of his kick, but he was caught off-balance. Jessie threw herself at him with all her weight, landing on top of him with such force that his head seemed
to bounce off the asphalt. The fire-exit door opened and Father Forrester and Sister Beatrice emerged, each holding a cross. Jessie was so startled that she took her eyes off Romano. He didn’t need a second chance. He grabbed her round the neck and forced her back. Hard. As he pushed her down, he got to his knees, then stood up. He now had both hands around Jessie’s neck. She could feel the cartilage in her oesophagus cracking.

‘Our Father, who art in Heaven … give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation …’

Jessie was beginning to choke and black shadows were appearing on her peripheral vision.

Another voice joined in, mingling with the others. Her head was swimming. ‘O God, forasmuch as without thee we are not able to please thee, mercifully grant that thy Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord … Amen.’

She thought she felt something wet and warm fall on her head. Stop fucking praying and do something, she cried out silently as she pulled in vain at Mr Romano’s strong fingers. She was weakening fast.

Jessie hit the ground before she realised the hands she’d been struggling against had released her. When she looked up, all she saw was Mr Romano running for the edge of the roof. He leapt high over the small wall and vanished into thin air.
Father Forrester and Sister Beatrice ran to the edge and looked down.

It took Jessie’s lungs a few moments to realise that they had air in them again. She drew in painful, heaving gasps as her system fought to absorb the oxygen, then staggered to her feet and stumbled forward. Father Forrester held his arm out for her. Leaning heavily on him, she peered over the wall. Beneath her a ring of firemen stood on the tarmac playing area. Faded green, white and red lines crisscrossed one another, forming geometric shapes beneath their feet. Like kindergarten children preparing themselves for a game of ring-a-ring-of-roses, their arms were stretched out to one another. They were holding a thick, dark grey blanket, in the middle of which lay Mr Romano, curled up like a baby.