Nobody True

“… pity you caught me searching through your desk when you showed up tonight, Oliver. Pity for you, that is, because as far as I’m concerned, it suits my plans very well. Jim was always a stumbling block, but you… well, you were just a bloody nuisance.”

A low murmuring then, almost a grumble. From Guinane? Had to be.

Then Sydney once more: “I must have hit you a little too hard—you’ve been out of it for some time. I did want to explain a few things to you before…” His voice trailed off, leaving an implication hanging in the air.

I peered round the corner of the corridor in an attempt to see more through the partially open doorway and ducked back swiftly as a figure passed across the gap. It was Sydney, pacing the floor, something long and silvery gripped in one hand, its upper length resting in the open palm of his other hand. With my back braced against the corridor wall, I waited and tried to muffle the snuffling noise that came from the aperture of Moker’s face with my hands. Although I’d only caught a brief glimpse, I suddenly realized what the silvery thing he had been brandishing was; a three-foot long unmarked steel rule, the one I used for cutting card and paper. One side was flat, blunted, while the other was slightly angled to provide a keen cutting edge for a Stanley knife blade or scalpel. Although flat at each end of its length, it resembled—and I’m sure could be used as—a sabre or heavy sword. Whatever, I was always aware it could be a lethal weapon in the wrong hands.

“You know what I was looking for, Oliver?”

Despite the circumstances, Sydney’s voice was modulated, restrained, the kind of monotonous tone that used to make my eyelids heavy the moment the first balance sheet figures were mentioned.

Only a mumble came from Guinane.

“I was looking for more letters,” Sydney went on. “Those very private letters Jim’s wife has been sending you over the years. I discovered the first one a long, long time ago and have kept tabs on them ever since. Rather a passionate lady, Andrea, although I could have done without the guilt trip she laid on you both. Tried to stop your affair many times, didn’t she? Only you wouldn’t let go. But why keep those letters in your locked drawer, Oliver? Oh, by the way, I have extra keys to every drawer, cupboard and filing cabinet in the place. Very handy for my kind of snooping. But why, Oliver, why keep the letters in the office? Tell you what I think. I think you got some kind of kick reading them while your friend and partner sat opposite you without a clue. Wasn’t that the reason? Yes, I really do believe so.”

“Bastard!”

At least this was coherent, but Guinane failed to follow up with anything else.

“You see, all those late nights I put in were not just spent doctoring the agency’s accounts. No, I was spying on you and Jim too. I can’t tell you how much I despised your cosy relationship. I was always the outsider, the boring bean counter, while you and he were the agency, you were the creative team that brought in all the suckers. I’ve always been in a weak position, which is why I had to watch you both constantly, make sure you weren’t conspiring against me.”

I almost banged the wall behind me with the heel of my fist. What was he on about? The company was called gtp, for Christ’s sake, Guinane True Presswell—he was always an equal partner. We never conspired against him, he was an important part of the team, the shrewd one that kept our feet on the ground, who dealt… with… all… the… agency’s financial affairs… The words slowed down in my mind. Apart from searching our desks and, no doubt, our files too, what else was Sydney involved in?

“Oh yes, you were the glory boys, the winners of clients and awards. Me? Just a third party, nobody important. As I said, bean counter. Did either of you consider I had an outside life? Did you? Did you know I’ve been divorced twice, the third one on the way? And each divorce cost me dear, as the next one will. And did you know I gamble, Oliver? Oh, I love to gamble. Horses, casinos, even dog tracks—I love ‘em all. Have you any idea what it costs to maintain such a lifestyle? And then there’s the cost of cocaine. That’s the great irony. Jim thought only you had a problem with drugs—we discussed it many times behind your back. How do we get you off them, would you agree to rehab? Should we even confront you with the issue, would it damage the partnership? In fact, I was the one who pointed out to Jim that you were back on the coke again. And all the time, neither of you realized I was a heavy user myself. Though, unlike you, I know how to control it. Question of metabolism, and you must have the wrong kind. An expensive habit, all the same.”

I heard a mirthless chuckle and it came from Sydney as he paced the floor. From Guinane there was only more mumbling, a weak kind of protest, I think. What the hell was wrong with him?

“I could never let either of you know that I had financial difficulties, of course. If I had, the first thing you’d do is check the books, or have an independent auditor take a look at them, and no way could I allow that. I’m running too many scams with the company’s money, see? Couldn’t have some snooper inspecting the accounts. No, I’d probably end up in prison. Want to hear about some of my little deceptions, Oliver?”

If he didn’t, I certainly did. I peered around the corner again and looked towards the open door across the corridor. I didn’t know if it was his placid intonation, or the unexpected revelations, but I seemed to be fascinated with these revelations of Sydney’s. Why was he confessing these things to Guinane? And what had he done to him? Our financial director—our bean counter—passed the narrow gap in the doorway again and this time he slapped the steel rule against the palm of his hand in the way that teachers used to brandish their canes before the corporal punishment ban.

“I hope you’re listening, Oliver. It’s a relief to get this off my chest after so long, so I’d appreciate it if you paid attention.”

He stopped his pacing for a moment and I could see most of him in the opening. The blunted steel blade flashed in the overhead lighting.

“I had had money troubles since—and before—I met you and Jim True, but I kept them well hidden. Jim was easy to fool and you—you, Oliver, didn’t care anyway. You two left the financial side of the business entirely in my hands and accepted my word on everything. You were both too in love with your own creativity to bother about money. So long as it was coming in regularly, and the amounts afforded you grand lifestyles, you didn’t worry about boring things like balancing the books, checking invoices, chasing clients for money owed. I wasn’t complaining, because it allowed me so much leeway. I have deals with printers—and you know how much print work we put out each year—photosetters, art studios, even one or two photographers. They put in an inflated invoice and we share the difference between real costs and imagined costs. It’s worked out very nicely over the years and nobody has ever complained—least of all our clients who have no idea whatsoever about such charges. They’d be shocked if they knew the profit margin on all these services.”

He moved out of view again, resumed his pacing. By the way he tilted his head when speaking, I was aware that Guinane was not on his feet. Not even sitting in a chair.

“Apart from travel, hotel, lunch and dinner expenditures, there was no end of ways I could milk the company. Entertainment, company cars—one for my soon-to-be ex-wife, incidentally—phone bills, all lost in the agency accounts. gtp even paid for my drug habit, how’s that grab you?”

Another mirthless chuckle. Another low groan from Guinane.

“But the real kicker, the scam that brought in the most for me, was the setting up of another company, one that neither of you knew about. And it was so simple. All I had to do was add ‘limited’ to gtp. When certain cheques came in for gtp, I only had to write ‘Limited’ after the name, and then pay the money into my own secret company bank account. I had to be cautious, naturally, couldn’t let huge amounts go missing, but over the years the scheme—sorry, the scam—has been highly profitable. Sweet, don’t you think? Actually, I’ve been quite brilliant. Never too greedy, you understand, always keeping within certain limits, but oh so lucrative.”

Slowly, creeping inch by inch, I made my way across the corridor’s junction, hoping I’d timed the move so Sydney wouldn’t pass the open doorway and see me. If I made a noise, a scuffing as I dragged Moker’s feet across the carpet, I don’t know; I think Sydney was too wrapped up in his boasts to hear anything beyond the room he was in. I could feel myself—I could feel Moker’s body—growing weaker by the second as vital functions within the flesh that were only kept going by my own will wound down.

“And then Blake & Turnbrow, one of London and New York’s biggest and richest advertising agencies, came along with the intention of swallowing up gtp. Jim always knew in essence it would be a takeover, and you were in denial—or you had your own agenda. But you both thought it was Blake & Turnbrow’s idea, so impressed were they with our work and client list. Well, to tell you the truth, Oliver—and that is what I’m doing tonight, telling you nothing but the truth—it was I who put out the feelers initially, I was the one who approached them. In a surreptitious way, of course, through a contact I had there. I let them know we wouldn’t be averse to talks.”

A muted thwack as he slapped the steel rule against the palm of his hand again. From where I now stood, I couldn’t see Sydney anymore but I glimpsed Guinane. He was on one knee, a hand and elbow flat on the desktop, the knuckles of his other hand pressed against the floor for support. His head kept sagging as if too heavy to support. A trickle of blood ran from his hairline to his cheek.

“A risk for me,” Sydney continued, his shadow cast out into the corridor for a moment, “but the money we three would be paid makes all my cheating over the years seem petty, small change. Of course, because I’ll be the only one left of the partnership after tonight, my financial reward will be even greater. Are you interested in the risk the situation presented for me, Oliver? It doesn’t matter if you’re not, because I’m going to tell you anyway. I hope you’re not too groggy to take it all in. Did I hit you too hard when you surprised me at your desk? This piece of metal makes a dangerous weapon, wouldn’t you agree? I only used the blunt side so that there wouldn’t be too much damage, because that wouldn’t suit my purpose at all.”

I edged nearer to the open door, my legs beginning to droop under the weight they were carrying.

Sydney continued, “Now, where was I? Oh yes, the ‘merger’. Being one of the smartest agencies in town as well as the most profitable, Blake & Turnbrow would want to know exactly what they were getting and whether or not my forecasts for the next few years were exaggerated. ‘Due diligence’ it’s called. They will send in forensic accountants to inspect our books and look at our cost structure to make sure we are already operating efficiently. They’ll search for skeletons in the cupboard, tax or VAT fraud, that sort of thing, of which, as a matter of fact, we’re entirely in the clear—I’m neither stupid nor so greedy as to take such risks.”

I heard him stop pacing.

“It was bloody hard work,” Sydney said, “and I’m sure you noticed that I’ve been putting in even more overtime and weekends lately. Tonight, I finally put everything in place and as long as I’m around to answer any queries their team might make, everything will be fine. Teeming and lading, the allocation of future money against old debts, will take care of any discrepancies, so the books will look up to date. They’re bound to find little things that are not quite right, but they’ll consider them unimportant in the grand scheme. Blake & Turnbrow is too eager to take possession to let slight errors affect the buyout.”

When he spoke, Guinane’s words were sluggish, slurred, but they could be understood. “Why, Sydney? Why did you do this to us?”

“I’ve already explained. I’m in great need of money. The people I gamble with are a little impatient and a bit short on understanding; as are my ex-wives who are complaining about slow alimony payments. Buying cocaine in today’s over-inflated market doesn’t help the situation either. No, I’m rather desperate at the moment.”

He paused, as if reflecting on his next words.

“That’s why Jim had to die. He was in the way, he wanted to block the takeover. Fortunately, I had an acquaintance in the police force who unwittingly gave me an idea. One that’s been working out rather well, as a matter of fact.”

“You… you killed Jim?” Guinane was obviously beginning to recover from the blow on the head. Sydney must have grabbed the first heavy object that came to hand when Guinane walked into our office—the steel rule sometimes kept on my desk.

“Oh yes. I thought you’d realized that by now,” I heard Sydney say. “Detective Constable Danny Coates is my second wife’s brother, now my ex-brother-in-law. We’d always got on despite the bitch his sister turned out to be, and we’ve kept in touch even after the divorce. Like me, he enjoys a flutter on the horses, as well as blackjack and roulette. We frequent the same gambling clubs, as a matter of fact. He’s also not averse to the occasional coke wrap I supply him with from time to time.”

“Sydney… look, let me get up. Let’s stop… all this.” Guinane’s speech was still slurred and he sounded as if he was in pain, maybe concussed.

“I thought you wanted to hear? You know, it’s quite cathartic to get it off my chest, especially when you won’t be able to repeat it to anyone.”

“What do you mean?”

I heard noises as if Guinane was trying to get to his feet, but even as I peeked through the gap I saw him slump to the floor again, only saving himself from going all the way down by gripping the edge of the desk.

Sydney’s voice was soothing, yet it chilled me. “Hush, now. Be patient, Oliver. You want to hear the whole story, don’t you?”

Sydney appeared in the gap, his back to me. He was looming over Oliver, the metal rule held by his side, ready to strike.

“Yes, my cop friend gambles too much and has a penchant for cocaine. Not a fine endorsement for law and order, is it? Unfortunately, that’s the world we live in nowadays. Nothing’s clean anymore.”

Satisfied that Guinane was still weak and too dazed to be a problem, Sydney walked away, out of my line of sight. I crept closer to the opening, aware that it was becoming more and more difficult to maintain control over the body I occupied. If I was going to make a move, it would have to be soon, yet I had to hear more; I was still absorbed in these revelations.

“My ex-brother-in-law is chuffed to be detailed for such a high-profile case, the search for a serial killer who mutilates every victim. So much so, he can’t stop talking about it when we meet up for a spot of boozing and gambling. Bragging, I suppose you could say, because it made him look important. That’s why the plan to get rid of Jim True grew so easily in my mind. I could do the deed and make it look like the work of the serial killer. Jim would be put out of the way, no hindrance to the takeover. And who would suspect me of the crime? All I needed was the right opportunity, and you provided me with that, Oliver, when you rang me last Sunday night to tell me you and he had fallen out and you’d left the hotel. Leaving Jim alone. I was becoming pretty desperate by then, and your phone call was just the prompt I needed.”

“You couldn’t have…” There was shock and dismay in Guinane’s voice.

Sydney responded quickly, almost angrily. It was the first time his mood had tightened since I’d been listening. “Oh yes I could! I took my time after your call—forgive me for not backing up your story to the police, but by the time they asked me if you’d called that night as you’d told them, the plot had moved on. Now where was I? Oh yes, after your phone call I chose a suitable weapon—one of those short chef’s choppers from my kitchen that was not quite like the murder weapon used in the previous serial killings, but which served my purposes perfectly—blabbermouth DC Coates had told me about the real weapon. Incidentally, I got rid of it in the Thames the same night. I went to the hotel and used the keycard to your suite—you remember, I acquired a key for myself when I booked you both in, so that I could come and go as I pleased, check on your progress from time to time. I let myself in and, as I’d hoped, because it was so late, past midnight, found Jim asleep fully clothed on his bed. I think he’d hit the whisky bottle after your bust-up. And my, what a deep sleep he was in. You might have thought he was already dead, so shallow was his breath. It made him a nice easy target. I wore gloves and one of those terrible, old, gaudy shellsuits I thought were the height of fashion in the eighties and which I’d never thrown away, so blood wasn’t a problem. Any that splashed onto my face I washed away in the bathroom. I’d brought the shellsuit and gloves along in my briefcase, the chopper too, and that’s where they were returned to after the deed, just in case anyone saw me leave. Oh, and of course, the other weapon came in the briefcase too, but that was left at the scene of the crime. Danny Coates told me about the knitting needle—seemed to think it was common knowledge anyway even though it had been kept out of the media, by mutual agreement. You could easily have learned of it through one of your journalist friends. And by the way, another mistake the police think you made was to use the knitting needle on Jim after you’d killed him with the chopper. Their forensic expert worked that one out. That was just another thing that led them to believe a copycat killer was the perpetrator.”

“You’re insane,” Oliver said thickly. (See how I’d reverted to “Oliver” in my mind. I still hated him for what he’d done to me with my wife and how he’d stolen the most precious thing in the world to me, my daughter Primrose, but he hadn’t killed me, he hadn’t quite sunk that low. Because of his predicament right then, I almost pitied him.)

“Not really,” Presswell replied. “Let’s say years of resentment and my hopeless financial situation came together at a crucial moment. You know, Jim didn’t make anything as much as a moan when I cleavered his head. I find that quite surprising, don’t you?”

Oliver was right: Presswell was insane. Nobody normal could speak of such a horrendous act in the matter-of-fact tones he’d returned to. I felt sick, not physically, because I was inside someone else’s body, but spiritually sick, sick in my mind. It had been Sydney Presswell, not Oliver, all along. Butchered by my own business partner and friend. I might have laughed if my sense of humour hadn’t left me some time ago. This was the deviant madman who’d cut off my genitals and left them in a pile. How sick was that? I shuffled even closer to the opening, my ruptured face almost at the edge of the door. My killer’s back was to me.

“Suitably,” he continued, as if enjoying his own confession, “the hotel was like a morgue when I arrived and, because I used a staff entrance at the back, not even the night porter saw my coming and going.”

“I don’t…” Oliver began with some difficulty. “I don’t understand why they immediately suspected it was me.”

“Because you were the last person to see Jim alive—always the first suspect, that person in this kind of case—and you’d been arguing with him in your suite—an extremely heated argument, they were told by the night porter. When they heard about the conflict between you two over the takeover by Blake & Turnbrow, they became even more suspicious of you. Then when I told DC Coates about your ongoing affair with Jim’s wife—well, I think that really clinched matters for them. You wanted your business partner out of the way because he objected to the takeover that would make you rich and also because you wanted his wife. Pretty strong motives as far as they were concerned. And by the way, I mentioned you were heavily into drugs.” Presswell was hovering over Oliver, the heavy rule held like a club. Threatening.

“You tried to make it look as if it was just another serial killing, but although you’d found out about the murder weapon, you were unaware of one other vital element in those crimes, something you could never have arranged even if you hadn’t been. How could you know of the victims’ crazy behaviour before they died? Only the police directly involved in the cases knew that the three previous victims had acted totally out of character before they were killed. They had degraded themselves after leading perfectly respectable lives. The Press never found out, it was a factor that was completely hushed up. Oh yes, I knew, because my ex-brother-in-law wanted me to think he was a very important policeman who worked only on A-list crimes, and he loved to let me in on inside stuff, things he thought made him a big man in my eyes. The copycat killer—you, Oliver—made an important mistake because he hadn’t full knowledge of the crimes. The previous victims were under duress, perhaps their families were under threat if the intended victim didn’t comply with the killer’s instructions. Or they were being blackmailed. Or hypnotized. All kinds of theories have been put forward, but the police cannot know for sure. What they are agreed on is that the killer is a very sick person with no apparent motive. But you, Oliver, you have a couple of motives for killing Jim, and as far as they’re aware, you might be scheming, but you’re not sick. Even chopping off Jim’s private parts had some peculiar logic—he was sleeping with the woman you loved. That’s what makes you different from their target and why this murder is not like the others. Even the murder weapons were used in the wrong order.”

There seemed to be more humour in his laughter now, but the hysteria that was only hinted at before had become more noticeable.

I saw Oliver try to rise to his feet, but Sydney struck him again with the rule, using only the flat side, bringing it down hard against Oliver’s scalp. Oliver yelped, groaned and collapsed once more.

He was still conscious though, because I heard him say, “I’ll… tell them… I’ll tell them about you…”

Still in view, Sydney leaned over him. “You won’t be around to tell them anything. Are you really so stupid that you think you’re going to live through the night? That I was confessing all this to ease my conscience? Huh! You really are a first-prize idiot, d’you know that? All brains and no sense, as my dear mother used to say.”

He straightened, and carried on talking as he did so. “I have to admit I’ve been working half on instinct all this week, improvising as things went along, but tonight you’ve given me the perfect ending. Tonight you die, you see? And you leave behind your confession. You knew the police were on to you, you were full of remorse over killing your best friend, so you took the only honourable way out.”

And your lover had thrown you out, I could have added but didn’t.

Oliver had grabbed the edge of the desk with both hands and was trying to pull himself up. Sydney ignored his efforts, although he now kept the steel rule raised over the struggling man.

“Let me give you the whole scenario, Oliver. You came here tonight, your last place of refuge, as it were. Nobody else was around. No, not even me. I was at home tucked up in bed—as I was that fateful Sunday night. Yes, I’d worked late, but had left before you arrived. You typed your confession on your computer and left it on the screen, no hard copy necessary. You’ve been screwing your best friend’s wife for years, you and he had business differences, and in a fit of rage you killed him. Naturally, I’ll type all of this for you and I’ll use my handkerchief over my index finger so the only fingerprints on your keyboard will be yours alone. I’m told computer suicide notes are popular these days. No handwritten signature necessary, which is particularly helpful to me in these circumstances.”

I could feel any power I had left over Moker’s body swiftly ebbing away. I had to make my move, but couldn’t just yet: Sydney’s exposition to a man he thought would shortly be dead was not quite finished.

“Why, Sydney?” I heard Oliver ask. “Why do this after all the years we’ve worked together? Surely nothing’s worth killing your friends for.”

“You still don’t get it do you? Neither of you ever realized the pressure I was under. Well fuck you!”

You know what? That shocked me. Hearing Sydney Presswell swear shocked me. Ridiculous, I know, considering he’d just confessed to years of embezzlement and, worse, my murder, and hearing Sydney—Presswell!—say “fuck” absolutely shocked me. You see, I’d never heard him curse like that before, not once, not ever, even when we argued over some company matter or other. In fact, I can’t recall Sydney ever getting angry before. Or cross. He’d always been mild-mannered. Not docile, I don’t mean that, but he’d always been the perfect gentleman, the most even-tempered person I’d ever known.

Now he’d said the f— word and that clinched everything for me. Sydney—see? I couldn’t even call him Presswell for long—was two people, it seemed: the nice, quiet, soft-toned accountant and respected colleague, and the scheming killer who leaned over Oliver now. The “fuck” confirmed it. Sydney was completely crazy.

His voice was raised; he was almost shouting at Oliver.

“You creative people are always complaining about tight copy dates, lack of time for presentations, overnight layouts and copy ideas, all that crap! But never did you understand the pressure I’m under, and I don’t mean the kind that goes with the job! I’m in deep shit, Oliver, and it’s been coming to a head for some time now. I don’t just mean greedy ex-wives and kids’ school fees. I owe serious money to people who don’t like to wait too long for payment. Money I haven’t got. That is, I haven’t got it right now.”

I practically jumped out of the body I was occupying when he brought the metal rule down hard on the desktop.

“But all that will change once the deal has gone through. I’ve already been asked to stay on as a financial consultant at a higher salary, but the real reward will be the partners’ bonus from Blake & Turnbrow and the large secret commission I’ll receive for brokering the deal in the first place. You and Jim were never supposed to know about that, but I guess in the words of the late, great Buddy Holly, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

Somehow I was even more scared now that his voice had resumed its normal, placid pitch.

“So, what’s to be done with you, Oliver?”

Sydney made the question sound reasonable. Mr Nice Guy again.

He answered his own question. “It’s actually very simple. You have to die, of course, but then I’m sure you already knew that. So it begs the question. How are you going to die? Again, the answer is simple. You’re going to take a high dive.”

Another moan from Oliver, a kind of despairing protest.

“Your confession is taken care of—or it will be in a few minutes’ time. All that needs doing is the deed itself. I suppose I’m going to have to drag you over to the windows, aren’t I? No chance of you helping me with that? I thought not.”

I heard him walk across the room, his voice fading slightly.

“I warned you about these floor-to-ceiling windows with that pointless balustrade right outside them, told you both they were dangerous when opened, but you loved the elegant style too much to care. Now you’re about to learn how seriously dangerous they are.”

The sounds of bolts being drawn, a catch turned. Then a fresh breeze pushed at the door I was hiding behind, narrowing the gap. A scuffling noise came from inside, Oliver moaning protests again, a soft dragging sound.

Oh dear God, the moment was here. I had to do something and do it quickly.

I dug a hand into one of the raincoat’s deep pockets, stiffened fingers feeling for the knitting needle I’d put there. My fingertips were numbed, but I forced them closed around the thin weapon, gripping the needle as best I could, slowly drawing it out, afraid I might drop it.

With my other hand, I shoved at the door, sending it wide. I held the needle out in front of me, the lethal tip pointed upwards.

But strength was quickly draining from the body I possessed. The knees were giving way, the raised arm was trembling.

I’m losing it, I thought. I’m losing control!

Sydney Presswell was halfway across the room, Oliver limp in his arms, the copywriter’s feet dragging over the carpet, the French windows open wide before them.

Sydney heard my heavy shambling footsteps. He looked back over his shoulder, saw me, and astonishment stretched his bland features.

43

But as I stood there in the doorway, the knitting needle’s point quivering in my unsteady hand, I knew I no longer had the strength to attack. Moker’s skin felt like a deep-sea diver’s suit, his head like the metal helmet. I felt my own spirit struggling to free itself of the useless body, to discard it like an unnecessary layer. In a few short moments, Oliver would be thrown over the low balcony outside the windows and I shouldn’t—no, I honestly couldn’t, despite what he’d done to me—let that happen. He’d sold me out, stolen my wife, and had cheated me out of the daughter that should have been mine. But he hadn’t killed me. Sydney had done that. Greedy, resentful Sydney Presswell, mild-mannered, easy-going Sydney. Embezzler Sydney. Perverse Sydney. Killer Sydney! And I’d grown too weak to prevent him from killing someone else! Oh, Jesus God, please help me! Give me that last ounce of strength or willpower, whatever it takes to stop Sydney throwing Oliver out the window!

But it was no good—I had hardly anything left. Astonished, surprised, he might be, but there was no fear in Sydney’s eyes, and certainly no shock.

But it was that lack of shock that gave me the idea. And the idea was inspired by the real serial killer.

I had to make Sydney so afraid of me he’d be paralysed if only for a few seconds, like Moker’s victims. It might just give me enough time to stab him with the needle, but in the neck, an easier target than his awkward-to-get-at heart.

I tore at the scarf around my face—no, my arm was too dysfunctional to move swiftly; more accurate to say that I worked at the scarf with my free hand—to get it loose and reveal the deformity that Moker had borne all his life, the facial aberration that had frozen the people he was about to kill for a few crippling seconds.

And in a way, it worked, although in Sydney’s case, fear was not a factor. No, revulsion had replaced the astonishment, disgust at this deformed creature that, for the moment, was interfering with his grand plan. Then something else flickered behind those rimless glasses he wore. Was it recognition? His eyes had left my face to stare at the nasty-looking weapon I held towards him. The sharpened knitting needle. Had he made the connection?

And I think it was this also that sent a fresh pulsing through Moker’s corpse. I don’t know, I’m not absolutely sure about these things, but I thought that maybe whatever remnant of Moker’s psyche was left behind inside his battered brain, or even inside the flesh of his body as a whole, had stirred up memories of a lifetime’s rejection, years of being an outcast, because of normal people’s revulsion of him. The same revulsion that was behind the fear in Sydney’s eyes. Did flesh and blood absorb such soul-rending emotions? Was everything that happened to us throughout our lives recorded, somehow embedded into our very substance? I’ve no idea, but the angry surge now pouring through Moker’s body could not be denied.

Another thought: maybe the anger that brought strength with its flow naturally came from myself, my own spirit. Hadn’t I wept for Moker earlier? Hadn’t I experienced the emotional pain he had felt all his life? Was my sympathy for him, my empathy for him, my anger for him, empowering my own last reserves of willpower? Had Sydney’s undisguised revulsion at the grotesque who stood before him triggered a reaction shared between myself and whatever was left of Moker? I can only guess at the answer.

This returning vitality sent me rushing across the room at Sydney.

Oliver dropped to the floor when Sydney let him go and raised his hands to ward off my attack.

The knitting needle was held high in my hand and I brought it down just before I cannoned into Sydney, aiming for his plump neck but missing, the sharpened point piercing his cheek, an inch below his left eye, my clumsy but fierce momentum pushing him backwards, either the pain or the surprise provoking a shrill shriek, his fear and revulsion turning to horror as he pedalled back, my force and his own panic sending us towards the open windows.

I dug down with the needle, ripping his cheek, and now he screamed, a full-blooded sound, a frightened cry of conviction, this from a man I’d never known to show strong emotion. Blood spurted from his face to join the crusted blood on my forehead as I pushed with strength that was already waning once more, driving us both through the tall open windows onto the foot-wide false balcony outside.

An odd thing happened when we tottered there on the brink of the sixty-feet drop to the shiny wet street below. Sydney, with the back of his knees pressed against the stone balustrade, looked directly into my—into Moker’s—eyes. The moment froze, became meaningless as far as real time was concerned in the way such important moments often do.

Just for that ceaseless instant, his pale-grey eyes widened and I thought I saw recognition in them.

Maybe his guilt, with oblivion or hell a breath or two away, caused his mind to superimpose my real face onto one that was largely absent, because I’m sure his mouth and his voice started to shape my name, the fright in his eyes swapped briefly for a question.

“Ji—?” I’m certain he was about to say, but overbalance tore him away from me.

The half-formed query—if I’m correct in judging it so—swelled into a ferocious scream that withered to a self-pitying wail just before he hit the ground.

The soft mulchy—mushy—crunch that came back at me was awful to hear.

44

I swayed there on the phoney narrow balcony, any power I had left finally depleted, and the light drizzle soaking the head and hands of a body I’d borrowed for a while, one I’d never have liked to own full-time. A breeze flapped the lapel of the raincoat I was wearing, a breeze whose evidence I saw but couldn’t feel.

I felt empty, vacant, as bare as the shell I occupied. I thought that whatever memories Moker’s cooling flesh had sustained after his soul’s departure—or whatever chemicals in the brain that governed such things and which took just that little bit longer to expire after the body’s death—were finally spent. This shell, this vessel, this host, had no significance anymore, except to those who would view it later and recoil at its ugliness and injury.

It had no importance to me either. Nor had anything else in this world. Maybe.

I leaned forward, knees against the stone balustrade.

I had no further use for Moker. I wanted out. At least his carcass had helped prevent another murder. Pity Moker, himself, hadn’t earned that small redemption.

It was too cold inside this body now, too vacant. I could almost feel its flesh corrupting around me. I wanted my freedom.

I leaned even further out over the shiny deserted street, knees no longer hard against the balustrade then followed Sydney.

Falling in the dark. Body lazily tumbling over. Descent slow. So slow you’d believe that meeting the ground might not be so inevitable. But it is. Of course it is. It just takes longer than you would ever imagine.

And I’m suddenly afraid, even though I know I can’t be hurt at this journey’s conclusion. I’m already dead, so how can I feel pain? Besides, this isn’t even my body. Maybe it’s the shock I’m afraid of. Or maybe my mind is informing me that when you drop from a great height onto something hard and unyielding there’s going to be a lot of hurt. Probably only for an instant—depends on how far you fall—but, like the drop itself, that instant might last a very long time.

Also, something else awaits me in that moment before journey’s end. Moker’s final memory—and yet his first.

And I’ve been here before, but then I was interrupted by my own distress.

—chaos, images rushing through a freshly created mind—no order, no recognition, until everything slows, resolves itself, becomes calm and a clear recollection—

I understand. This is Moker’s original memory. His birth. I continue to fall, sailing down on my back, arms and legs splayed.

—darkness becoming lighter, redness and too much brightness, unformed shapes moving in front of me, floating, but not how I’ve floated before in the womb, huge rough hands beneath my slimed and bloody body, a separation, a snapping of something, the link that fed mi, the sudden awful feeling of loss, a sadness, my first, then sounds around me, not like the constant thud-up that had always comforted me, that had gone now, was replaced by these harsher noises I don’t like very much, and those blurred moving shapes, bright and white and pink, one looming larger than the others, warm stickiness being wiped from my body, unpleasant sounds, gasps, a sudden rigidity to the arms that hold me, an unhappy emotion that somehow transfers itself to me through that hardened grip, causing me unhappiness, more pink shapes, scarcely defined in my early unfocused vision—hands—reaching out to me—

—passed over to someone else, a wonderful feeling, a sense of comfort and safety, a pleasure that was common and continuous until a short time ago—wonderful to have it back, even though it’s not quite the same, not as secure as before—

—A terrible noise, sudden, high, frightened, a scream—

—and a new scene intrudes on the altering reverie, a flashback from a time that’s yet to come—a woman I know although I haven’t seen her for many, many years, the woman who gave birth to me, standing inside an open front door, a haggard woman whose prematurely wrinkled skin is yellowish, her wiry grey-streaked hair straggly, her clothes unkempt, and she looks at me with horror and contempt and slams the door in my face—my poor, poor face—and I hear her screeching on the other side of the closed door—

—go away!—

—go away!—

—and I’m returning to my birth setting and I’m being handed over to that same woman, younger now, tired but pleased—except she’s looking at me in the same way she would look at me years later when I’d gone searching for her and she had screamed and screamed when she had discovered me on her doorstep, the one she’d birthed all those years ago, the child she had tried to forget, the one she should love as any mother would, as any mother should, as any mother must love her own—but instead she was screeching, screeching—

—go away!—

—go away!—

—and now that same screech, only this is the first time, just after I am born, the screeching terrifying me although I have no conception of why it should—the disturbed sounds around me that I don’t even know are voices because I haven’t experienced life yet, but something in the sounds increasing my anxiety—already I don’t like this new world, already I’m becoming bewildered—frightened—and that screeching is shattering forever the contentment I had known in the womb—

—take it away!—

—take it away!—

—and already I have learned rejection.

I smashed into the ground beside Sydney and even relaxed bones shattered. The back of Moker’s head, which had impacted first, cracked like an egg—like a real egg this time, filled with runny yolk rather than chocolate goodies—and I felt the brain mash, some pieces of its matter scattering across the tarmac. Interior organs jumped from their moorings, most rupturing, others squeezed flat. The lungs that must have gathered air through the irregular funnel-shaped face on the way down before the body flipped over burst like overinflated balloons. But the worst thing was the noise of hitting the ground, that same mulchy-mushy-crunch that Sydney had made, except I heard it from the inside, where it was louder and more scary, and the squashing of substances and the snapping and grinding of bones could be felt (no, there wasn’t any pain involved).

The collision almost jolted me from Moker’s body, but I kind of bounced—or reverberated, to be more accurate—before settling into it once more. I sensed there was nothing left inside, no more memories and no more functioning. Now, in every way, it was an empty shell; and it was time for me to discard it. I sat up and the carcass remained where it was.

Next to me, Sydney’s head was just pulp—unlike Moker, he’d landed face first—and strange yellowish stuff oozed out with the blood. One of his legs stretched out at a comical right angle from his hip and a hand rested against the back of his neck, the palm and clawed fingers curiously turned upwards, his elbow twisted. I think his stomach must have split open, because a big pool of blood was spreading over the rain-soaked street beneath him. It expanded in spurts, as though the heart was still pumping, but it quickly became a steady flow, indicating the last weak dregs of life had finally given in.

I stood up and stepped out of Moker as if I were stepping out of a beached canoe. Yet I couldn’t leave him right then and I’m not sure why. His body was of no more use to me and revenge had been delivered—not that I felt any sense of satisfaction or achievement, by the way, only a feeling of great sadness and completion. Oh, and pity, a deep pity for the unfortunate man who was Alec Moker. I remembered the flashback, the instant memory just before his body struck tarmac, the moment of his birth, a beginning that was so traumatic, so devastating, that it had never been erased from his subconscious, even though it happened when he’d only just been born and such an early event should never have been registered, let alone remembered so many years later. (I wondered if everything that happened to us during our lifetime was neatly stowed away somewhere deep beneath the layers of our mind, never to be lost, never to die, but perhaps recalled at the moment of death. Didn’t happen with me, but then mine wasn’t what you’d call a regular demise.)

I turned as a harsh light came from the other end of the narrow street. A car was approaching at speed, headlights on full beam. Then police sirens, two more cars screeching round from a sidestreet at the other end, racing towards me, the darkness and rain somehow giving their sounds even more urgency. Tyres squealed as all three police vehicles slid to a halt on the street’s slippery surface.

45

A uniformed policeman leapt from his car and ran the few yards to the two broken bodies lying in the street, while on the other side of me the two detectives I knew as Simmons and Coates (the latter Sydney’s ex-brother-in-law no less!) left their Volvo and hurried towards the corpses without quite the same urgency. Other uniformed figures were emerging from the patrol car, a Vauxhall Cavalier, that had stopped behind the Volvo.

“Jesus fuck,” the detective called Coates said in a dismayed whisper as he looked down at the two busted men at his feet. There was no need to take the pulse of either of them to verify they were dead.

The uniformed policeman had made the mistake of taking a small torch from his pocket and shining it on the heads of the two dead men. The light wavered as he suddenly turned away as if to throw up. Simmons gripped the policeman’s wrist and held the torch steady so that he could get a proper look at the corpses.

“That one must be Moker, the lunatic we’re looking for,” he said quietly. “That damage to his face wasn’t caused by it hitting the deck. There’s no blood coming from it for a start and the face is just how Andrea True described it. What about the other one? Oliver Guinane, you reckon?”

“I don’t think so,” Coates’s voice was hesitant, his initial dismay graduating to shock. “Even belly down you can see he hasn’t got Guinane’s curly brown hair. I… I think I know who this is.” He pointed a shaky finger. “See the smashed glasses lying in the blood by his head?”

“So?”

“I think it’s my contact in the agency. Sydney Presswell, company manager and financial director. Used to be my brother-in-law until my sister divorced him a few years ago. I’m sure I recognize that grey-check suit—he wears it a lot. He’s the guy Andrea True said Guinane was going to see tonight.”

Both men, and some of the policemen who were now milling around, peered up at the lights near the top of the building.

“Right,” Simmons said briskly, pointing first at the uniforms, then towards the building’s fifth-floor balcony, lights from the room behind throwing the balustrade into relief. “I want three of you up there right away. That’s obviously where these two took a dive from. See if there’s anyone else around. There should be a man called Oliver Guinane about somewhere. Yes, that’s right, the one we hauled in for questioning about the death of his business partner, James True. For all we know, he might be responsible for this as well.” He nodded at the corpses on the ground. “So go careful just in case. If you find him give us a shout.”

He turned towards the officer who had gagged a few moments ago. “You. Get on to control, tell ‘em we need SOC set up ASAP. Better get the medics in, too. There’s nothing they can do, but we’ll need an ambulance to take the bodies. And listen, I want both ends of the street sealed off for now—we can minimize the area once the essentials have been taken care of. Get moving.”

The uniformed policeman headed for his striped white patrol car, just as a Transit van pulled up behind it. More uniformed men piled out of the police carrier.

Simmons caught the elbow of a policeman close to him and pointed to the Hillman parked outside the agency. “Search that old heap over there, break in if it’s locked. It’s the car we’ve been looking for.”

“Looks to me,” said Coates, whose face was pale in the glare of headlights, “by the position of their bodies, that they might have come down together. Maybe they were having a ruck and it spilled out over the balcony.”

“Yeah, could be. But why would Moker go for Presswell?”

“Guinane must have been the target, but Sydney got in the way, or maybe tried to save his friend, or he could have been the only one in the office. It was no secret that we’d taken Guinane in for questioning about James True’s murder, so maybe Moker thought he was the copycat killer and didn’t like it. Andrea True said Moker arrived at the house shortly after Guinane had left, but maybe Moker got there earlier and listened at a window.”

“Heard Guinane telling his girlfriend where he was going next,” Simmons continued for him, although his tone was dubious.

“I reckon that’s it. We know now Moker was the serial killer. Hadn’t managed to get Mrs True and her kid, so went for other bait.”

Simmons shook his head as he pulled his raincoat up against the rain. “I dunno. Doesn’t make sense to me. How could he know where the agency was?”

“We found those phone books in his flat. He’d got the address beforehand, probably days ago when he first read about Guinane in the papers. Don’t forget, the agency’s name as well as Guinane’s was underlined in thick pencil in those articles about him being a suspect. Same as the location of True’s house.”

The two detectives had obviously been able to go through the cuttings more thoroughly than I had, even if it had only been a quick search.

Simmons clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Nah, doesn’t work for me. It’s too pat. I want a proper look into this Sydney Presswell’s background, your brother-in-law or not.”

“Ex-brother-in-law,” Coates insisted.

“In every sense now. Look, there’s something going on that doesn’t sit well with what we know. I want more background on Guinane, Presswell and True. Especially Presswell though, because he’s the one who’s been feeding you information about Guinane. I mean, really putting Guinane in the shit.”

“Okay, but—”

Both men looked towards a new car, a dark Jaguar saloon that has just drawn up behind the other police vehicles.

“Oh-oh,” said Coates resignedly. “The governor’s here.”

“Yep, and he’s got Commander Newman with him,” said Simmons. “Word’s obviously got upstairs about our breakthrough.”

Should be interesting, I thought, as I loitered close by, a wall behind my back so that I was out of the way of the busy policemen (not that it mattered, of course, they’d never know they’d bumped into me apart from a brief moment of disorientation). How the hell was anyone going to make sense of what had been going on?

The two senior policemen came towards the apparent crime scene, walking briskly and acknowledging the salutes of officers who were making themselves look even more busy. The taller one was Chief Superintendent Sadler. The shorter man (although only comparatively shorter because Sadler was so tall) wore an important-looking crisp, dark uniform and sported a neatly clipped beard. This one acknowledged his men with a sharp flick of the brown leather gloves he carried towards the rain-speckled visor of his cap.

When they reached the two detectives, Sadler introduced them to the uniformed policeman. “DS Simmons and DC Coates.”

The senior officer gave a curt nod of his head. He addressed Simmons.

“Give me a quick rundown on the main investigation and how it ties in with this.” His gloves indicated the two figures at their feet. “I gather they are connected in some way?”

“We heard about the woman who collapsed and died earlier tonight at Paddington Green after naming her attacker,” Sadler said to his two detectives. “The wonder is how she ever made it to the station in the first place with her injuries.”

“That’s right, Sir,” agreed Simmons. “She arrived there with a knitting needle straight through her heart.”

“Carry on from that point,” Commander Newman said impatiently.

“Because of the murder weapon involved, Paddington Green got on to the Yard’s major incident room, the one dealing with the recent spate of serial killings. As luck would have it, DC Coates and I were there on overtime and we scooted over to the nick as soon as our receiver passed on the information.”

“She was already dead when you got there?” queried Chief Superintendent Sadler as he scrutinized the bodies on the ground, a sour expression on his lean face.

“That’s correct, Sir. Incidentally, she had many other marks on her body, indicating her killer had roughed her up beforehand. She must have put up quite a struggle and there was no mutilation. We figure she’d managed to escape before that could happen.”

“And you say she named this person Moker as her attacker.” It wasn’t a question from the police commander but an affirmation.

Sadler spoke. “That’s right. She wasn’t all that coherent apparently—not surprising after everything she’d been through—but fortunately the name itself was perfectly clear.”

Simmons picked up again. “Locating Moker’s address was easy enough. No previous form by the way. Our computer found it on the electoral roll and Swansea supplied the make and number of Moker’s vehicle. We assumed there’d be a car involved because our killer would have had to have some kind of transport to transfer previous victims from one place to another for the mutilation. It was the break we were waiting for—a fresh killing. Could’ve been another copycat, of course, but this time we thought we were really on to something. In all, there were three ‘Mokers’ in the book but two lived out in the suburbs and we were keen on the one from inner London where all the murders were committed. We sent men out to the other addresses just in case, but our main attention was on the Shepherd’s Bush address. We knew our instincts were right the minute we entered Moker’s empty flat.”

“You had a search warrant, I take it?” Commander Newman asked sharply.

“Requested over the phone, delivered while we were there, Sir.”

I think neither of the two officers wanted to ask if that was before or after they’d entered the flat.

“We didn’t make any mess getting in though, Sir,” Coates quickly put in, as if reading their minds. “The window was only latch-locked and a credit card quickly took care of that when we got no response to knocking on the door. A constable climbed in and opened up for us. We can always say the door was open in the first place if it’s a problem.”

The commander stared at him for a second or two and, as an observer who didn’t like the grubby little detective, I enjoyed Coates’s discomfort.

“Let’s hear the rest, Simmons,” Newman said, redirecting his gaze.

“Yes, Sir. Well, although it was unfortunate that we didn’t catch Moker at home there was enough evidence in that place to know we’d found our serial killer, and forensics are going through the flat with a fine-tooth comb as we speak.”

Commander Newman gave an encouraging nod of his head and Simmons went on.

“We found newspaper clippings of every murder and mutilation so far, including James True’s. We also found a whole bunch of knitting needles stashed away in a cupboard, some of them already sharpened and all the same brand as the murder weapon.”

“Well done,” Newman acknowledged, slapping the leather gloves into the palm of his hand. “Now, how does it tie in with all this?” This time he nodded down at the dead bodies on the ground.

“Yes, I’m not too clear about what you told me over the phone,” put in Simmons’s immediate boss, Sadler. “You said Moker turned up at this James True’s house.”

It was odd being referred to in this way when I was standing only a couple of feet away (I’d moved away from the wall to get closer to the group).

With Coates chipping in every so often to let his superiors know he was in the picture, Simmons quickly explained how they had found news clippings showing pictures of Andrea and Primrose, and then had noticed the missing page in the telephone book from the T section. They’d immediately—and quite smartly, I thought—put two and two together, so they sped to my home in force and found a distraught Andrea and Prim. With what they’d learned from Andrea they had put out a fresh APB for all units to step up their search for Moker’s Hillman which, in the event, was spotted by an officer on fixed point outside a VIP diplomat’s house, who called in the information. The Hillman was only two streets away from the agency and that was when Simmons and Coates suspected (again, quite astutely, I thought) Moker had gone after Oliver Guinane, the man who had tried to appropriate his, Moker’s, crimes.

It was Sadler who interrupted the flow. “Is this man Guinane inside the agency now?” The tall man glanced up at the lights on the fifth floor and, reflexively, the commander did the same.

“Not sure, Sir. I sent some men up there a little while ago to look, but they haven’t reported back to me yet. I was about to go up there myself, just before you arrived. Thought I’d better put you and the commander in the picture first.”

“Right. Good. Let’s all—”

The policeman Simmons had ordered to search looker’s car appeared at the detective’s side carefully carrying an object in one hand, a large handkerchief preventing contact between it and his palm and curled fingers. I moved even closer for a better look, peering over Coates’s left shoulder.

It was Sadler who spoke to the PC, who seemed reluctant to interrupt his superiors.

“Uh, small chopper, Sir. I suppose you’d call it a hatchet.”

“You found it in the Hillman?” Simmons leaned forward with great interest.

“Yes, Sir. Under the driver’s seat.”

Moker’s mutilation tool. I’d forgotten all about it. Oh thank God he didn’t bring it with him into the house…

“I told him to search Moker’s car when we got here,” Simmons said to both the commander and the chief superintendent.

The loud wail of an ambulance; we hadn’t noticed its approach. The sound cut out as its driver waited for a policeman to hold back the blue and white tape that had already been strung across the street at both ends.

Our attention returned to the nasty little weapon in the constable’s hand.

“Didn’t have to break into the vehicle, Sir,” the young policeman said to no particular sir, displaying the hatchet proudly. “It was unlocked and it didn’t take long to find this. Lots of blood on it, even the handle. Newish and old stains. Looks as if it’s never been cleaned.”

Simmons grinned broadly and, although now I couldn’t see his face from behind, I’m sure Coates was grinning too. Sadler allowed himself only a small smile.

“Well done, constable,” the commander said to the young policeman (What was he? Twelve years old? His head was too small for his helmet). “Extremely well done.” (Spoken like a leader of men.) “Bag it and give it to forensics when they turn up. What’s your name?”

“PC Kempton, Sir.”

“Once you’ve passed it over to the bods, carry on with the search of the vehicle, see what else you can find. And get someone to help you, I want two men on the job.”

“Already taken care of, Sir,” Simmons put in quickly, but not defensively. “The other man’s continuing the search as we speak.”

Commander Newman gave a satisfied nod of his head.

“Sir!” the young policeman said smartly and took his leave. He marched off towards a patrol car, no doubt to collect a plastic bag big enough to hold his prize.

Simmons, and probably Coates too, were still grinning.

“Well I think the hatchet, together with those knitting needles you found in Moker’s flat, ties it all up rather neatly,” commented Sadler as if in praise of his two detectives.

“Except for this other man lying here,” said Commander Newman to spoil the fun. “What did you say his name was?”

“Presswell,” Coates quickly told him. “Sydney Presswell. We think he might have got in a tussle with Moker. Syd— Presswell was probably trying to save Guinane from Moker and they crashed through the window and over the balcony.”

“We’ll know more if Guinane is up there,” Simmons said helpfully. “He might be hurt, maybe unconscious.”

“Then we’d better find out,” said Newman, slapping the gloves into the palm of his hand again like a punctuation mark to the detectives’ report.

I’d almost lost interest by now. The facts were clear as far as I was concerned and I didn’t need to know any more. They’d find Ollie semi-conscious in our old office and no doubt he’d fill in the details for the police when he was able to. He would tell them about Sydney’s foolhardy confession—Sydney thought he was talking to a man who would be dead in a matter of moments—and they’d check out our devious bloody bean counter—yeah, I really did think of him like that now, although I hadn’t before—and discover all the little discrepancies in the accounts which foxy old Sydney wouldn’t be around to explain away, and they’d delve into his background thoroughly, find out about his debts, his gambling, his alimony payments to two high-maintenance ex-wives, a third one coming up. The drugs. They might—no, they would search his home after Oliver had spoken to them—and find his stash. Or maybe one of his exes would rat on him for revenge—it’s impossible for a wife not to know her husband is doing drugs. Of course, all that wouldn’t necessarily make him a killer, but he’d lose all credibility as a fine upstanding man. They’d dig even deeper and would come up with something, I was sure about that.

Ollie? He wasn’t guilty of the crime of murder, but he was guilty of other things where I was concerned. I could never forgive him but, hey, suddenly I didn’t care as much. I seemed to be moving away from emotional things like anger tonight. Oddly, I couldn’t even hate Sydney for cheating and murdering me; I just thought he was a very sick man. God, I even felt pity for Moker.

Imagine remembering your mother’s rejection at your own birth! Followed by rejection for the rest of your life! Born to be reviled or spurned by the ignorant few—few, but still too many!—driven crazy by your own disfigurement (It seemed that if anger was slipping off the board, then compassion appeared to be growing stronger.) I felt sorry for the poor, poor guy who had tried to kill Andrea and Primrose, sorry for someone who’d already murdered four other people, used them, then chopped three of the bodies to pieces, and it beat me, I couldn’t understand why. Probably because I’d had glimpses of his life literally from the inside, experienced his sorrow and pain. But then, I’d also felt his excitement and sick joy for those terrible things he’d done. I’d felt the lingering shadows of his black soul—the whole of which had repelled those good souls who had sunk into his foulness in a vain attempt to influence the man. There was nothing worthy there, only wretched darkness and cruel malevolence. Could evil ever be absolute? Nothing there to glimmer in the umbra? I’d never thought so before, but now I wasn’t so sure. Maybe Moker’s soul would have been evil whatever the state of his body.

Anyway. Time to move on. Nothing left for me to hear, I had the answer I’d sought. Have to return home, see for myself if Prim and Andrea were okay. My wife—who’d deceived me. My daughter—who wasn’t truly mine. Oh Hell—!

What did it really matter? I still loved them both. Yeah, even Andrea. Our marriage may have been a lie, but there’d been good times, great times. (Maybe love was growing stronger too, moving in to fill those gaps from where the negative vibes were absconding.) And nothing ever—ever—would diminish my love for Primrose. No, that couldn’t change.

So. Time to go.

I started to drift away down the street, oblivious to the rain and the bustling uniformed figures around me. Started to drift away, but something stopped me, something said among the small group I’d been eavesdropping on. Something said by Coates.

“She should’ve stuck to knitting scarves,” Coates had said.

Commander Newman, who had taken a couple of strides towards the gtp entrance with Chief Superintendent Sadler by his side, stopped short and turned round to Coates and Simmons. The two detectives were following so close behind they almost bumped into the senior officers.

I turned to look at Coates as well.

“What did you say?” the commander demanded, his expression severe. Sadler looked puzzled as he took in the detective constable.

“What did you say, man?” Newman glared at Coates with steely eyes.

“Er, we found a whole pile of badly knitted scarves when we searched the flat. Long ones, all dark. A few balls of wool and more knitting needles. She must have had an obsession for needles.”

Sadler cut in. “What the bloody Hell are you talking about Coates? Who’s this she?”

“Her, Sir.” Coates looked confused as he pointed back at the dark shapes lying in the street “Moker.”

“Moker?” It was Newman again, his eyebrows arched, but his jaw set firm. “Do you mean to tell us that Moker—” now he was pointing at the bodies, “—Moker,” he repeated, “is—was—a woman?”

“Uh, yes, Sir.” The detective constable was distinctly uncomfortable. “I thought you knew. Alexandra Moker. That was the full name on the electoral roll and driving licence. We found tampons in her bathroom but not much other woman’s stuff though.”

I was stunned. I stood rigid, light rain falling through me. Moker had been a woman. It was unbelievable. Did it make any difference? Yeah, it did to me. Somehow it made the misery she’d had to bear all her life even more poignant. Call me a sucker, call me old-fashioned, but I’d always had a great respect—and a soft spot—for women, young or old, fat or thin, pretty or—or not pretty; I’d always cherished women. Even my mother had not managed to change my regard for them. To me, women were vulnerable, they needed protection. Not politically correct these days, I know, but they’d always be the weaker sex (physically, I mean, not mentally, not even emotionally) to me. I’d always open a door for one; I’d always give up my seat for one. Believe it or not, I used to stand up most times a woman or girl entered the room. An anachronism? Maybe I was, but I’m not around anymore to be called names. Besides, nearly every woman or girl I’d ever known seemed to appreciate my regard for them.

So that probably was why finding out that Moker had been female hit me hard. God, what had life been like for her? And had her physical appearance driven out all her femininity? I mean, just the way she walked! And I thought she was just plump when I saw her naked chest! What was God’s great plan for her? My spirit—literally—my spirit sagged. I couldn’t move so had to listen to Coates as he continued.

“Those telephone books, by the way,” the detective was saying. “We wondered about them when we searched Moker’s flat. You know, without a proper mouth there could hardly be any two-way dialogue, plus there wasn’t a phone in the flat anyway. James True’s wife—widow—told us Moker never said a word when she attacked her and her daughter, she just made kinda grunting noises and snorts.”

Sadler, no doubt still digesting the startling news of Moker’s gender—I’m sure there can’t have been many female serial killers in the annals of crime—spoke curtly to Coates. “What’s your point?” he snapped.

Simmons came to his colleague’s rescue. “We also found unposted letters in the flat. Poison-pen letters, no two alike, every envelope addressed differently and to both men and women. We reckon she chose them from the telephone books and got some kind of perverted kick out of sending them. They were pretty horrible. Sick, I think you’d call them. You know, sex stuff.”

Neither Newman nor Sadler wanted him to elaborate and Sadler made it clear. “Enough of that for now. Let’s get into the building and see if Oliver Guinane is inside. He might be lying dead for all we know.”

Without a further word from any of them, all seemingly lost in thought save for Coates who began to whistle quietly, they made their way towards the agency building. As they entered the glass doors of my old agency, I saw one of the cops Simmons had sent in earlier coming from the lift. He saluted the commander and began telling the group something, a finger jabbing upwards as if to indicate the top offices. I hoped they’d managed to bring Ollie round. I also hoped he wasn’t badly hurt.

Although I’d turned to watch Newman and his detectives enter the building, I still hadn’t moved from the spot. Maybe I was bewildered by what I truly wished was the last revelation in a very traumatic week.

Moker. Alexandra Moker. A woman. Even when I’d used her body for my own purposes I didn’t have a clue. Was there supposed to be a difference, should a cuckoo spirit feel the physical variation between a man or woman without sight of those differences? I honestly had no idea, and right then it was of no great importance to me. I just wondered why I’d so naturally assumed Moker was a man.

I remembered the mortuary earlier that day—God, was it the same day? All right, it might be after midnight, but it was still today’s night as far as I was concerned. When, alone in the mortuary, Moker had molested a female cadaver, did that mean she was a lesbian? But then she had commandeered a young woman that evening and gone off with the debauched men for sex. There had also been a previous female victim. My guess was that her sexuality meant nothing to her because there had probably never been an opportunity to make love with either male or female. Despite her necrophilia, I still felt pity for her.

It occurred to me that my confusion over her sex was for a far simpler reason. When she had arrived at the morgue, her boss had asked whose grubby apron had been left in the corpse room, and her co-worker, who was about to leave, had pointed a thumb over his shoulder at Moker and replied; “Alec’s”.

Only he hadn’t said “Alec’s” at all. He’d replied “Alex”, short for Alexandra. That’s how I’d made the mistake in the beginning; also I’d expected the serial killer to be a man, as had the police themselves. She even walked like a man!

My melancholy gave way to numbness. Moker had been a monster in every sense of the word. But her life had been miserable, her birth had been hideous. No excuse for the odious things she’d done, but… but…

I would have wept for the woman called Alexandra Moker that night. But lately, I’d wept too much.

46

After returning to Primrose and Andrea and making sure they were okay—they were both asleep in Andrea’s and my bed, front door securely locked, a policeman keeping guard on the doorstep, the bedroom door locked too—I wandered. And have wandered ever since.

Literally as a lost soul, I drifted through the city, day and night. I observed people, almost living their sorrows with them. I eavesdropped on conversations and heated debates, even watched couples making love (no pervy sexual thing for me this last one, because sex or desire no longer played any part in my make-up; rather it was a personal wish to see men and women bonding in the most intimate way possible, a need to feel their commitment to one another at its strongest—yet too often all I sensed was their lust). I think I was just searching for love in this sad old world of ours and, yes, I did find it and it wasn’t rare. It was in most people, young and old—especially in these two extremes, in fact—and in those of middle years as I had been. Sounds corny, I know, but it was a great comfort to me.

I experienced everything in a fresh and new way, and every detail was of interest to me. It was the same feeling you get immediately after you’ve recovered from a serious or debilitating illness, only this was a hundred times more intense. I sat in parks and watched people, muffled up in the cold, pass by, momentarily sensing their feelings, their thoughts. I was especially fond of watching children in school playgrounds, because their unbounded zest for life when they were playing touched me deeply. If only you could see their colourful and vivacious auras.

Some animals sensed me, others didn’t. Cats were particularly sensitive to my presence whereas most dogs became confused, often afraid. Birds deliberately ignored me when I sat on park benches, coming close to peck at insects or any breadcrumbs they might find, yet never invading my space. It was as if they were aware of me, but it was of no concern to them, I was neither a threat nor a means of more food.*

*Incidentally, animals also have souls. I’ve watched them leave the bodies of dogs and cats run over in the streets (happens a lot in the city) or when they die naturally (cats nearly always find some secluded spot to die in, whereas dogs like to have their owners close by). And their little souls don’t rise up into the “heavens”, but, like ours, they evaporate just moments after leaving the dead body (if they don’t, if they drift away rather than vanishing, then a new ghost has been created). Yep, there are ghost-animals too. It’s the same with people, which is why ghosts always seem melancholy—they’re lost, you see. Other ghosts, like my father (I learned all this from him when he next came to me), come back from another dimension, but only to visit and never for very long. Anyway, it was he who explained how animals and human souls vanish rather than rise as if on a journey to the sky. The only exceptions, he told me, were birds, whose small spirits did float skywards, but only because that was what they knew best.

One day, I dropped by Westminster Cathedral. It must have been a Sunday morning—I’d lost all sense of time by then—because a High Mass was in progress. When I walked out later I found I was relieved of the guilt, baggage—never a burden, but ever a nag—I’d carried around with me as a pathetic Catholic (in common with many other Catholics) for far too many years. I’d discovered that pomp and ceremony were not essential to belief, although the ritual and symbolism were necessary for many and essential for some. Individual or collective worship were both right—naturally a combination of both was the ideal because neither one precluded the other—and a person was free to choose without persuasion or dictates by those who had set themselves up as conduits to God.

I don’t know how I realized this, it was just a reverse epiphany that suddenly cleansed my mind and lightened (enlightened?) my soul. One moment I was unsuccessfully aligning myself with the other worshippers and respectfully following the service, trying to get closer to God for obvious reasons, the next it was as if a great grey cloud had been lifted. Suddenly I knew that my way, and the way of millions like me, was okay. God was accessible to us all without intermediaries.

(However, there was one lovely thing that happened during the church service. Every worshipper’s aura spread to their neighbours’ and when the priest held high the little round wafer called the Host, all the auras joined together as one. The golden brilliance was too pure and dazzling to look at directly and I had to cover my eyes. More vivid than the sun, it was wonderful to be in its presence. It’s a pity it isn’t perceptible to the living.)

I continued to follow people home to see how they lived, haunted one or two bars at night, and generally drifted from place to place. I never visited another séance parlour again; I knew they would make me feel uncomfortable after that last time. Because it would torture me so, I also stayed away from Andrea and Primrose for a while, my mother too, but for different reasons.

Another day, taking a break from my roving, I hung around a picturesque graveyard, maybe with the idea of meeting some friendly ghosts. (I was never tempted to visit the crematorium’s “place of rest”, because there was no grave, just a tiny plaque with my name on it, among many on a wall, the ashes in a closed recess behind. Nothing sentimental there then.) I found a bench by a gravel path deep inside the cemetery and sat looking out over the many headstones and tombs, angels with high wings and outstretched arms, white crosses stained by lichen, one or two plots well tended, many others sadly neglected. With its Gothic mausoleums, markers and occasional monuments, the place had a quiet brooding atmosphere, which I found peaceful rather than sinister.

It was here, while hoping for a little peace and quiet from the harsh world outside, with the sun high in a clear azure sky, that my father came to me for the last time.

He was standing beneath an old oak tree whose thick leafless branches still managed to cast him in shadow. How long he had been standing there, I couldn’t be sure, for only when I sensed that eyes were watching me did I glance in his direction. At first, he was merely an insubstantial shadow among others, but as my gaze became more intense, his form took on a clearer definition, although his lower legs and feet remained invisible.

I didn’t move, I just stared back at him, wondering if I should join him beneath the oak. After a while, it was he who came to me.

By the time he reached me, he was fully formed, so much so that he could have been a normal man who’d stopped for a chat. He stood on the gravel path that ran between the plots, smiling down at me, and he wore the same clothes as on the previous occasions he’d appeared to me: old-fashioned double-breasted suit, too creased to be smart, and plain white shirt, dull, red tie. For the first time I noticed his shoes, brown brogues with swirls of tiny neat puncture patterns decorating the upper leather; they were slightly creased also, but at least polished.

“Hello, Jimmy,” he said in a pleasantly gruff but quiet voice.

The sun was behind him, his white hair a halo round his head; it was difficult to see his features.

“It’s you—Dad,” I said for some reason. Of course it was my dad.

“Yes, it’s me. Can I sit with you for a little while?”

I shuffled my butt towards the arm at the end of the wooden bench, making room for him. The past times we’d met had been traumatic, the last one particularly horrendous. But today, in this morbid but tranquil setting, I felt completely at ease with him.

“This time I can hear you,” I said, only now appreciating the fact. “You can speak directly to me.”

“You’re closer to us.”

I didn’t ask him to elucidate. Instead, I thanked him for helping me when Moker had attacked my family.

“We were weak,” he replied regretfully, shaking his head. Looking at him in the clear light of day (his image wavered only occasionally) I could see our resemblance. Perhaps he was how I would have looked eventually if I hadn’t died.

“I brought many souls with me,” he went on, “in the belief that our collective force would defeat the poor beast.” He sighed unhappily. “Unfortunately, when we stormed into the body, the soul there was so foul, so malign, we couldn’t stay. It was too overwhelming, too frightening—too corruptive. I’m sorry I fled with the others, but we were combined, there could be no separation from them.”

“You bought us time, that’s the point. Enough time for Andrea to recover and take her best shot with the poker.”

My father smiled again. “We were still there, although our usefulness was spent. We tried to give your wife strength.” His expression became serious. “But you know, what you did afterwards was very foolish.”

“You mean taking over Moker’s dead body?”

“You could have been tainted by the evil left inside him.”

“If there was any, it helped my anger at my ex-friend. Maybe it enforced the hatred I felt for the friend I thought I had.”

“Murder is never a solution.”

“D’you understand what Oliver Guinane did to me?”

The ghost nodded. “To want revenge is still wrong.”

“Huh! Seems to me I was deceived most of my life. His betrayal with my wife tipped me over the edge. I’d reached breaking point. And let’s be frank here—you were the one who started the ball rolling as far as betrayal was concerned. You walked out on me and Mother when I was just a kid.”

“I explained everything in the letters I wrote to you, letters your mother never let you see.”

We were interrupted by an old lady we hadn’t noticed coming along the path. She was slightly crooked and somewhere in her late seventies drawing towards eighty, and wearing an old coat with a scraggy synthetic fur collar that drowned her meagre frame (probably it fitted her well before she started to shrink). Held tight against her shapeless chest was a potted plant. As she drew level with the bench, she gave my father a cheery smile that revealed perfect porcelain teeth above bare lower gums.

“Nice day,” she greeted him in a croaky voice that was as cheerful as her incomplete grin.

My father smiled back and gave a small acknowledgement with his hand. She trundled on her way, perhaps to visit and chat to a late husband, or maybe a dearly missed friend. Perhaps she wanted to tell them she wouldn’t be long.

But I was puzzled. She could see my father, but she couldn’t see me. How’s that for irony? He was more dead than I was, surely? I mean—what was the expression they used? Oh yeah—he had “passed over” whereas I was still earthbound, so didn’t that mean he was more dead than me? Shouldn’t there be some kind of priority? I shrugged it off.

My father seemed to have enjoyed the brief encounter with the old lady, but the half-smile left his face when he turned back to me.

“Son, you saw the letters your mother kept from you for years when you were growing up. I wrote to you regularly after I left even though I never received replies. I never gave up, but eventually I died.”

“You still deserted me—us,” I reminded him.

“No, I didn’t, I didn’t desert you. Your mother made me leave.”

I shook my head. “I don’t believe that.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s true. You must have realized over the years that she wasn’t… well, she wasn’t quite right in the head.”

I thought of the evening I’d found Mother ripping up photographs of me and destroying letters from my father that I’d never been allowed to see, let alone read. And that was because I, too, had left her by dying. No rational person would ever react in that way, and especially not with such venom, such loathing.

“She could be a bit cranky, sure,” I said.

“Perhaps you’re in denial. Sons should love and respect their mothers, no matter what. Before you were born she was already making my life impossible with demands and strictures. I had a decent job, but she was never happy with what we’d got, she always felt she’d lowered her own high standards by taking me on as a husband—high standards that had never existed, incidentally. She was from a very humble background, her mother and father good plain people, her father a postman, her mother a part-time cleaning lady. It was only when they died within months of each other that your mother started to take on those grand airs. I suppose there was no longer anyone around to remind her of her working-class beginnings.”

He sighed, lost in memories for a little while. “At one time she was courting a reasonably wealthy young man, an assistant manager at a big chain store, his family quite well to do. But he broke off with her after a year or so, found someone else apparently. But it was that year with him and all its possibilities that aroused those airs and graces in her. She took me on the rebound and regretted it almost immediately. I won’t embarrass you about the physical side of our marriage; I’d only comment that her pregnancy with you was a surprise to us both.”

I remained silent. Truth is, I had nothing to say.

“When you came along I’m afraid she became even more difficult to live with. Now nothing was ever good enough for either of you. She disliked the house we lived in, felt the area was too working class, and she wanted to make plans for you eventually to be taught at a private school. I did my best, Jimmy, but it was never good enough.”

His image faded briefly as though regret had weakened whatever power it took to maintain a visible presence. Then it returned like a developing Polaroid image.

“Eventually, your mother became impossible to live with and I was forced to give her an ultimatum: accept what we had, appreciate what we had, or I would leave and take you with me.” He gave a small, dry laugh. “It was as if I’d lifted the lid off her madness. Oh, I don’t mean she became certifiably insane, but her hysteria was terrifying. She screamed at me to leave immediately, she never wanted to see me again, that I would never see my son again. She threw herself around, deliberately fell against furniture so that she was bruised and cut. It was our next-door neighbours, people she felt were her inferiors and not worthy of speaking to, who called the police. They thought she was being murdered. They were concerned for you also. You were just a toddler and you were frightened; you all but screeched the house down.”

He told me this with a bitter smile that disturbed his pleasant features and I tried to remember but couldn’t, even though the incident must have had a traumatic effect on me at the time. Maybe it was so upsetting for me that it was stowed away somewhere deep in my subconscious and maybe I thought my father was to blame so that it tainted my feelings towards him for evermore. Mother had certainly poisoned my mind against him over the years and perhaps that terrible day was when the foundation of resentment was laid. I’d been much too young to understand the situation; all I knew was that Daddy had upset Mummy and I must have hated him for that. Hadn’t he, himself, just told me that every son should love and respect his mother?

“The police came and, naturally, I was the villain of the piece. I had hoped that eventually things would settle down, we’d continue in the same unsatisfactory but steady way. Far from it. Your mother’s attitude grew worse day by day and, in the end, I did exactly what she’d constantly told me to do: I left.”

He gave another sigh, his head was turned towards me again and in his face I saw not just misery, but deep grief. “I had no choice. She would never have let you go, and I knew that by staying myself, her condition would only grow worse. In the end, I left for the sake of you both. Life had become impossible. I’m sorry, though, Jimmy. I did try to keep in touch, but eventually I was worn down by it all. All I could do was write you letters.”

I was quiet, absorbing everything he had told me. All those wasted years, for many of them despising a father I thought had abandoned me, and that followed by disdain, then finally by cold detachment—he had ceased to exist as far as I was concerned, and that was before I’d learned of his death.

“Can you forgive me, son?” Grief had been replaced by pleading in those faded blue eyes. “After I died I tried to stay connected with you, but that’s almost impossible once a person has passed over.”

I suddenly recalled a certain face among a crowd of onlookers, all of whom wore expressions of alarm and concern for the young man who had just been knocked from his motorbike, his leg cruelly twisted, blood seeping from beneath his crash helmet to run along the gutter where he lay. There was no fear on my father’s face that day, only compassion.

Here we were now, two ghosts sitting in a graveyard, one a veteran, the other a novice (I didn’t understand the difference between us, but I didn’t feel like a proper ghost). Father and son. Reunited. Together again, but only in death. I was grateful at least for that, and I think if we’d both had substance I would have hugged him; or I’d have asked my father to hug me.

Instead, and perhaps to cover that childlike yearning, I said: “But why didn’t you try to see me away from home? Why didn’t you find me when I grew older?”

He shook his head remorsefully. “I did that once. I went to your school and waited for you to come out. Unfortunately, your mother saw me first and threatened to call the police. She said she would hurt herself like before and blame me. She told me it would make her very happy to see me locked up in jail.”

Jesus Christ, I thought. I’d always known Mother could be a bitch, but I had no idea of how wicked she was.

“In my letters to you,” my father went on, “I was always suggesting times and places where you and I could meet but, of course, you never received them. The years went by and then, one day, I decided to hell with the consequences, I would come to your home, just knock on the door and introduce myself to you. She might rant and rave, call the police, but at least you would know I hadn’t forgotten you. I was determined it would happen, no matter what. Unfortunately, I died of a stroke before I had the chance.”

I took it all in, no longer confused; a certain emptiness never acknowledged but always with me nonetheless, had suddenly been appeased. If it hadn’t been for more recent revelations, I might even have felt whole again.

“I think I’m beginning to understand,” I said, then added, “Dad.”

His smile was different from before. It was as if he’d finally found something he had sought for a long, long time, both in life and in death. His smile was pure, untainted by anguishes of the past.

“You know, there have been other deceptions in my life,” I told him, unable to return his smile. “Knowing the truth of our situation means a lot to me, but these other… these other…”

“Deceptions, you said.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s the right word. My mother, my wife, my best friend, my business partner—even the person who means everything in the whole world to me, the little girl I thought was my daughter.”

I slumped forward, elbows on my knees, hands covering part of my face. “I just can’t get it right in my head,” I said. “I can’t seem to take it all in.” I’m sure my expression was a mixture of sorrow and anger when I raised my head and looked sideways at him. “Was nobody true to me?” I asked as if he might have the answer, or at least make sense of all that had happened.

He spoke softly. “By all means blame your mother for her cruelty to us both, but temper your anger with pity.”

Yeah, I thought. I can do pity nowadays. Hadn’t I felt pity for Moker? Christ, Moker! Even the cold-blooded killer wasn’t as he—she—seemed!

“She isn’t responsible for her mental problems. In her mind, I had left her. She hadn’t forced me to go. After that, she was always afraid of losing you too, and that’s why she turned your mind against me. But, of course, eventually you did leave her—you got married. And then you died. That has shattered her, she feels she has nothing left.”

“But Andrea and I didn’t want to cut her out of our lives, she made the choice herself.”

“For her, in her fragile mental state, it was the right choice to cut you out, or at least begin the process. I’m sorry to say this, but it was the right choice for you both. She would have tried to destroy your marriage.”

I gave a little shake of my head in frustration, then leaned back on the bench.

“You have to accept what she is, son. With acceptance comes forgiveness, and forgiveness is important to you right now.”

I didn’t follow up this last remark: my mind was still busy with other deceits.

“You know my wife was unfaithful to me throughout our marriage?”

He nodded. “It wasn’t entirely her fault. The other man was different to you and he has a power over her that is strong yet inexplicable. You’ll think it strange, but your wife loved you in her own way.”

“So that’s okay then.”

“You’ve every right to be bitter, but it’s a sentiment that’s of no use to anyone. All this anger of yours is only delaying your own progress.”

Again, I failed to follow up; in my mind there were only visions of Andrea and Oliver together, living happily with Primrose.

“Her lover—my best friend and working partner—is Prim’s father.” I gazed across the cemetery, unwilling to show him the full intensity of my fury—of my jealousy.

“To Primrose, you will always be her father. No matter if she learns the truth when she becomes older, she will still consider herself your daughter. Don’t underestimate the child’s devotion to you.”

“In time she’ll forget me.”

“With time her love will only be more assured. She’ll grieve for you now, just as your wife grieves for you, but eventually the hurt will pass for them, to be replaced by a memory that won’t ever be spoiled.”

“I just… I just don’t know whether I can believe you.”

“Then go back home and see them once more. Only once, mind you. You wouldn’t want to haunt your own family.” He smiled again, but it wasn’t catching. “If you stay with them, then their mourning will take longer to resolve itself. They won’t see you, but your presence will be there and they will sense something that they can’t understand. It will only make their pain harder to bear.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” I told him dejectedly. “I can’t just turn my back on them.”

“You must. Go back once and it might help you accept.”

“I don’t want to accept. I can’t accept!”

“Before long you’ll grow tired of your own melancholy. That’s when everything will change for you.”

“Okay. I still love Andrea and I’ll always love Primrose.”

“And that’s precisely what will help you overcome your bitterness. In your present state you’ll soon begin to experience pure love. Love without jealousy or passion, without partiality or bounds, an unselfish love, because it won’t be burdened by need. Anxieties will soon disappear.”

“I could never forgive Oliver for what he did to me.”

“No, but sooner or later you’ll accept it. I hope for your sake it will be sooner.”

“Forgive him?”

“Forgiveness follows acceptance.”

“You sound like a priest.”

He laughed aloud. “Where I come from we all do. It’s something we have to resist.” He became serious again. “You mentioned one other person who deceived you.”

“Sydney. Sydney Presswell. He was the agency’s business partner and accountant. Sydney did more than just deceive me though—he was the bastard that killed me.”

My father nodded as if he already knew.

“He also stole money from the company and engineered a takeover bid that I was against. Seems he’s been fiddling the books for years.” I breathed a resigned sigh. “I used to like him. Didn’t always agree with some of his methods and business proposals, but I always thought he was a stand-up guy. That’s the kind of idiot I am—was.”

“Gullible?”

I looked at him, about to object, then thought better of it. Wryly, I said, “Yeah, that’s about it. Sydney had been cheating on us for years, but Oliver and I, well we didn’t have a clue.”

“No wonder you feel nobody was ever true to you.”

“Paranoid? Doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” An old joke that failed to raise a chuckle between us. “But you know what? I couldn’t care less about Sydney anymore. Weird, I know, because not only was he a crook, but he took my life away, too. I don’t feel hatred and I don’t feel forgiveness. I just feel kind of numb where he’s concerned.”

“That might be because he’s dead.”

“And I killed him. Retribution, I’d call it.”

“Is that how you feel—you’ve avenged yourself.”

I thought about it for a short while. “Well—no. Like I said, I don’t feel anything at all.”

“That’s good.”

“Is it? Doesn’t seem right to me. He turned out to be a complete sham, who even tried to get someone else blamed for my murder.”

“But you’ve accepted it.”

“I don’t know, I wouldn’t quite say that. Let me put it this way: the murder and the embezzlement are bothering me less and less with each day that passes.”

“You’re getting yourself ready.”

I looked at him sharply. “Ready for what?”

“Ready to leave this all behind you.”

It didn’t come as a shock. “So I really am dead? There’s no reprise, no coming back, not even as someone else?”

He shook his head, and he seemed pleased.

“You’ve lost your body.”

“Couldn’t I… couldn’t I find another one?”

“They’re all taken. You’d have to be born again to gain another and that would put you in a different time and place. You wouldn’t even remember this life.”

“I could live with that,” I assured him.

“I’m afraid the choice won’t be yours. There’s much more to learn on the other side, you see. Much more.”

“Oh.” I didn’t bother to hide my disappointment “So how do I get to this ‘other side’? I feel useless here.”

“You’re making progress all the time.”

“I am a ghost then.”

“Not quite. In your present form, you’re a transient spirit.”

“I thought that was the same thing.”

“No.”

“My body’s dead, so why do I have to hang about here?” I protested.

“You weren’t in your body when it died. Fortunately.”

“Fortunately? How so?”

“It enabled you to do something before leaving this world. Something important.”

“Kill the killer.”

“She was corrupted.”

“But her face—”

“Her soul was not deformed to begin with. Only her own resentment and wickedness changed that.”

“Where is she now? I saw her soul leave her body. I was kind of hoping she’d become extinct, you know, become nothing.”

“Not punished?”

I shrugged. “She was a woman. For her—I mean her soul—to be totally snuffed seems reasonable to me. She’d been punished enough in this place. I didn’t think she should suffer anymore.”

“They were right about you. Gullible. Perhaps it’s no bad thing though. It shows a certain innocence of heart.”

“So tell me.”

“Alexandra Moker’s soul? Nothing ever becomes extinct. Let’s just say her soul won’t be around for a very long time.”

“I see. No one’s punished throughout eternity.”

“There are exceptions. Fortunately for poor embittered Alexandra, she wasn’t one of them.”

“I don’t think I want to know what it takes to be totally cancelled.”

“Very wise, Jimmy.”

“Can we get back to me, my situation?”

“Your departure will be a gradual process. You have the opportunity to learn more about the world you’ve lived in, and that gift isn’t given to many.”

“Lucky me.”

“It’ll be worth it. First though, you must follow my advice.”

“Accept the bad things in my life?”

He nodded. “Go back. Be impartial. Learn.”

Right then, I couldn’t think of anything more to ask, so we just sat quietly.

47

I did some more roaming before I returned to my old home and my mother’s dismal flat because I was reluctant to follow my father’s advice immediately, too aware that being close to Primrose and unable to communicate would hurt and frustrate me even more. Aware, too, that I had to let them go, I shouldn’t haunt them, that it might be the last time I’d see Prim and Andrea. I knew how emotionally painful it would be.

So I drifted for a while.

Time began to mean less and less to me and I experienced those “blackouts” more and more. I’d wake, if that’s how it could be described, usually in a different place to the one I’d occupied before the unconsciousness. At first, this was disorientating, but eventually I got used to it. I realized I had always become very drained just before it occurred even though I was only in spirit, and I assumed that the “blackouts” were nothing more than falling asleep, unexpected though they were, and gave me the chance to replenish myself.

More than once I bumped into lonely ghosts on my wanderings, but they appeared either perplexed by me or frightened, as if I were the ghost and they were human. They scooted away, or evaporated, leaving me alone again.

I visited more churches, because I found their tranquillity was good for meditation, and I was meditating more and more as time went on. Night revealed some of its mysteries to me, the activity that continued throughout the sunless hours. I understood why ghosts, visible or otherwise, were more active when the land was dark: it was because at night the streets are emptier and generally people slept, so there would be minimal contact between the dead and the living. It seems ghosts are very shy and often, but not always, aware that they are in the wrong place. As I mentioned, none wanted contact with me and I began to feel like some kind of pariah as far as they were concerned.

Even as I examined, explored, or just observed, I could feel myself waning, not growing weak exactly, but feeling more and more dissociated with the world I knew, somehow growing disconnected from it. Still I delved, still I was interested in everything around me, but not as keenly as before.

I called in on hospitals, often visiting intensive care units to watch souls depart from recently deceased host bodies. Some were happy to go, while others were glum, perhaps confused or disbelieving, a few not even aware that they were dead. There was always a special joyous radiance about the happy ones who accepted their passing, as if they already knew they would find peace and contentment, whereas the souls of those who failed to realize their situation, or who would not accept their death, were dull, grey, listless, and lingered by their corpse far too long. But none of these latter egressions matched the awfulness of Moker’s.

Incidentally, never again did I attempt to insinuate myself into a freshly dead body. The idea was now abhorrent to me and I wondered how I’d managed twice before. (Early on, I considered usurping someone’s living body permanently, to share their life, to be of substance again, but had rejected the idea almost immediately for three reasons: one, having two minds in one head would surely lead to insanity; two, it would be extremely difficult; and three, it would be wrong, very, very wrong—it would be theft.)

I learned a lot during that period of discovery and assessment, reaching understandings I never thought possible. Life itself began to make some kind of sense to me at last.

And day by day (I judged time only by the activity before and around me, the risings of the sun and moon, the day’s lengthening shadows; if I were to stand inside an empty pitch-black room I’d have no idea of passing moments whatsoever; however, this wouldn’t be like my recurring blackouts, because my thought processes would continue to work and thoughts are no judge of time) I became just a little more detached from the world, gradually withdrawing, it seemed, from the existence I used to know.

I figured I should return home before it was too late.

I visited Mother first: I wanted to get it out of the way. It was daytime when I arrived, but only twilight in the front room because of the drawn curtains, with a gap of barely a couple of inches in the middle for light to infiltrate the room. She’d lit candles, five or six of them, two of those on the low coffee table before the lumpy armchair I seemed to have grown up with.

Mother sat in the armchair, leaning forward, the wrists of her clasped hands resting on her knees. Unlike the last time I saw her, she had made some effort to tidy herself up. Her grey-brown hair was brushed and heavily lacquered, the beige blouse she wore beneath a light pink cardigan was neatly pressed, as was the long, pleated skirt she wore.

There was sorrow in her eyes, but no puffiness around them and no redness to the eyelids; it seemed her crying was done. I moved round to her side and saw what she was staring at.

On the coffee table, propped up by something behind and with the two candles acting as sentinels on either side, was a colour photograph held together—it was in four rough-edged sections—with clear Sellotape. It was the picture of me on the day I’d left art college; my young, wide, smile was marred by the rip down the centre of my face, but you could still see the happy anticipation in my eyes, the eagerness to get on with the next exciting stage of my life. Lit by the candles’ soft glow, the assemblage resembled a small shrine in the restful gloom and it occurred to me that this might have been Mother’s intention. Certainly there was no anger in those sad eyes that were taking in my beaming image, nor could I detect any more self-pity. Instead, there was a softness I hadn’t noticed for many years; since I was a child, in fact.

Had her demons finally left her in peace after all these years? I wanted to believe so, but Mother had always been unpredictable. This might be a new, but temporary phase she was going through. I could only hope its influence would not be too short.

I felt my old, uncomplicated love for her returning, a child’s natural blind devotion, and I decided to leave before memories tarnished it. Aware she could never feel the touch, not even the whisper of a breath, on her cheek, I bent low and kissed her anyway.

Holding a mental picture of my house, I allowed myself to travel there by thought alone, which was a wonderful means of transport. Swift, too.

I’d expected to find Andrea on her own and had intended to wait for Primrose to return from school. When I found both of them there I realized it must be a weekend, probably a Sunday by the feel of it. Andrea was resting on our bed, and Prim was next door in her own bedroom, kneeling before the yellow and pink doll’s house we’d bought her for her last birthday. Prim was absorbed in organizing her “little people”—small, plastic men, women, children and animals, who inhabited the make-believe world she loved to escape into—around the wooden building’s various rooms, her own imagination giving them life and story.

Having first established where they both were, I went back to my wife. I gazed down at her lovely face as she lay on the bed and saw that the large wad of gauze held by Elastoplast, which had covered her damaged nose when I had returned to the house after Sydney’s death, was gone. Her face was gaunt and her eyes were damp with unreleased tears. I hoped that they were the last, that she’d finally cried herself out and this was only a moment of weakness, the worst of the grieving having run its course. And yes, I knew she had grieved terribly for me; the dullness of her aura told me how depleted by sadness she felt and I could sense the wretchedness of her spirit itself (I’d become very adept at such sensing lately).

As I watched, she closed her eyes, not to sleep, but to lose herself in a memory. Somehow I knew it was of me.

I noticed what she clutched in her arms, pressing it to her breast. It was one of my old sweaters, its colour a deep blue. A framed photograph stood on the bedside table, a place it had never occupied before. A family shot, a fairly recent one; me with one arm thrown over Andrea’s shoulder and hugging her tight to me, my other hand resting flatly against Prim’s chest, pulling her close between Andrea and myself. All of us were laughing and, as I remembered, not just for the camera—we were at Disneyland, Paris, and had spent most of the day laughing.

Perhaps, before, some of the reluctance to return home was, in part, because I feared Oliver might be there. But he wasn’t. There was no impression of him either. Again, this came from Andrea herself. I sensed nothing of Oliver (and I told you that my perception, or if you like, my intuition, had become acute) and I hoped he was now absent from her life. Maybe the shock of my death had cleansed her of him; maybe guilt had made her realize how deceitful they had been together, and that love cannot flourish on guilt. Could be that Andrea had finally seen Oliver in his true colours—a lying, vain, cheating cokehead. Again, I hoped so.

And I also hoped that, in time, she would forgive herself. I wanted her to find happiness in the future, not misery or loneliness.

I leaned over and kissed her forehead.

Lastly, I went to see Primrose.

She was still playing with the doll’s house and her tiny plastic people when I entered her bedroom and when she unexpectedly looked over her shoulder, I thought she could see me. There was no expression on her sweet little face though and, just as quickly, she returned to her game.

I went over and sat on the floor next to her. I watched her profile as she arranged her little fun world and spoke the tiny people’s lines for them. I used to be fascinated by the playlets she made them perform while I surreptitiously watched from behind a newspaper whenever she set up the whole production downstairs in the living room. Her inventiveness since the age of five had always amazed me, each performance turning into a simple morality tale—plastic children (the same size as the adults) becoming lost, those same kids stealing, then repenting and becoming good once more, the father figure arriving home late from work yet again and missing his dinner, but promising not to work so hard anymore (I wonder where she got that one from?). It’s always wonderful to watch your own child grow and develop physically and mentally, and I was a sucker for it.

And now this would be my last opportunity to be entranced by her (don’t ask me how I knew, I just sensed it was so, and as I’ve said, my perception was becoming pretty sharp). I was sure my father was right when he said that by hanging on, “haunting” them, I’d interfere with their healing process, because part of them would not accept my death and subconsciously they would sense my presence. The mind sometimes absorbs ethereal elements that it will not always relay to the brain; such messages or unrealized perceptions are never lost though, and their influence can often be felt.

I noticed Prim, like her mother, had a photograph by her bedside. But this featured just the two of us, Prim and me, cheek-to-cheek headshots, our grins perfectly matched.

I sat with her for some time (I knew it had been a while, because when I glanced out the window, the sun was much lower in the sky). It had to be now, I thought. Staying any longer would only make it harder to leave.

Trying to dismiss the heartache that was threatening to undermine my resolve I bent forward on my knees and put my arms around Prim, careful not to encroach her small body, and touched her soft cheek with my lips.

I kissed her and she suddenly jumped. I withdrew sharply, not wanting to frighten her. She looked directly at me for a moment, but then her gaze went beyond where I knelt. She turned her head, to the left, to the right, and then behind her. For a little while, her expression was one of bewilderment and then, her tawny-flecked eyes shining, it changed to one of amazement.

“Daddy?” she whispered in awe.

Unchecked tears spoilt my vision. I knew she could not see me, nor would she hear me if I spoke. Nevertheless, I said, “Yes, Prim, it’s me, Daddy.”

No recognition in her eyes, no sign that she had heard my voice. As I knew there wouldn’t be—I was not a proper ghost.

She frowned and looked around the room again. She moved off her knees and sat on the floor, her ankles crossed as she pondered. There was still puzzlement there on her innocent face but, thankfully, no alarm.

Then she smiled and looked at our picture by the bed.

I smiled too.

48

So that’s my story. I hope it’s been of some interest to you.

Maybe, when you awaken from your out-of-body dream, you’ll have forgotten everything I’ve told you. I know I forgot dreams sometimes when I was alive.

The point is: do you believe me? Well, ask yourself why would I lie? I’ve spent too much time with you to waste on gibberish—it was dark when we met by chance and now the sky to the east is growing lighter. It doesn’t matter anyway. You can trust me or not. It’s up to you.

You might also ask yourself why this storyteller died but his soul did not go to its proper ordained place like most souls? I’m still a little puzzled by that myself, but this is how I see it.

For one, my soul was not in its body when I died—when I was murdered.

Two, there was some work for me to do in this world before I left it. I had more murders to prevent, because Moker’s killing would have gone on and on until she was caught. That’s why I found myself in Moker’s basement flat at the beginning of all this. It seems a Higher Source—at least, that’s what my father called it the last time we talked—a Higher Source guided me there. The rest was up to me.

And three, my unusual status gave me the opportunity to learn about myself and about life. I suspect many other souls get the same chance before they move on but, of course, the living wouldn’t know it. In my incorporeal form—my astral state, if you like—without flesh and blood, and all the hang-ups that go with that, I was pure mind with no physical distractions. The sensory gift we all have, but few of us use, was unfettered, my psyche was liberated. Is liberated—it’s an ongoing thing.

I’ve begun to understand and appreciate just a little about life on this planet. Not much, but way more than before. I won’t bore you with the “love is all” cliché, although that plays a big part in the understanding, and an even bigger part in our next stop. I’m assured—by my father—that it’s going to be something wonderful, but that’s all he said. No, we’re here on this earth to learn acceptance. Yep, that’s right—acceptance. Acceptance of everything that life throws at you. All the good, all the bad—everything. Doesn’t mean you don’t work—or fight—to defeat it or make the bad things good, but sometimes we have no control at all over it. That’s when you have to accept; you have no other choice.

My father told me acceptance leads to forgiveness, which is vital for progression, according to him, but I don’t believe it’s quite as simple as that—for us, anyway—and not as easy. Believe me, I know it isn’t easy. I think acceptance can lead to forgiveness, but it’s too hard for most people. How do you accept a tyrant, a child molester, a rapist—a murderer? I had to accept that last one, although I did my best to stop the killer. But it doesn’t matter to me anymore. I can be objective—forgiving—because I’m no longer part of it all. Because ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, the tribulations in this life are not so important, not compared to what happens next, the wondrous things that will come to each and every one of us.

What’s helped me begin to understand is this gradual disconnection with the world I’ve always known—the place you’re living in now. Jealousy, deceit, anger, acquisition—it’s all trivial as far as the big picture is concerned, and it fades into insignificance when you’re totally free of those imperfections yourself. That’s why I’ve forgiven Andrea, Oliver and Sydney. My mother too. As for my father, it seems there was nothing to forgive. I’ve accepted the emotional pain they caused me. It isn’t easy, nor that simple, but the more my presence here wanes, the easier and simpler it becomes.

The only person I’ve not yet fully forgiven is myself, because I had some of those imperfections or faults I mentioned. But I’m working on it.

You know, even Alexandra Moker should have accepted her disfigurement, but unfortunately it—and the lifetime of rejection she suffered—corrupted her mind and soul. I think she’ll get another chance though, but it’s only a guess.

I don’t expect to be around much longer. But that’s okay. I’ve seen a lot. I’ve finally taken excursions into the countryside and even though I’m becoming more distant from this world, the true beauty of nature took my breath away (metaphorically speaking, yet again!).

I’ve spent ages in art galleries, really looking at paintings and sculptures, really absorbing them and, for the first time, truly appreciating the artists’ intent.

I’ve explored famous old buildings and some spectacular new ones, museums too, gaining insights into other times, other civilizations.

I went to the palace to see the queen again—she wasn’t in the first time. Very tedious, not the kind of life you and I would like, I promise you.

I’ve sat in parliament and, believe me, most MPs are just as lazy and self-important as we think they are.

One dark and beautiful night I tried to reach the stars, but never even got as far as any helicopter might fly. Something pulled me back and I knew it wasn’t gravity; it was as if I’d reached my limits and my own will would not take me further. But I saw stars and planets as I’d never seen them before, zillions of them, each one a separate dazzling jewel.

I’ve seen over our world from a new perspective and I can assure you, it’s more fabulous than you could ever imagine.

Now time’s running out for me.

I can feel myself slowly vanishing, my mind gradually becoming disenfranchised from this place. Look at my arm. It’s almost transparent. And by the way you’re squinting at me, I suspect the rest of me is disappearing too. It’s okay. I feel ready to leave.

Am I afraid? My destiny was daunting to me, but that’s not so anymore. In fact, I’m eager to go on. There are many more answers on the other side as well as more mysteries. I know, because not only have I become acutely sensitive to this world and its meaning, but I’m already beginning to perceive something of the next. I think it’s going to be incredible.

It’s been good to meet you and get so much off my chest. It’ll help me forget the hurt. You’re the only one I’ve been able to communicate with in my wandering, so thanks for listening. Ghosts, yes, but not out-of-body spirits like you. Besides, they never wanted to chat. I glimpsed Moker before and she glimpsed me, but it wasn’t the same as this. There was no contact. Incidentally, I feel I ought to warn you to beware of the OBEs—look what happened to me—but I know you have no choice. Just don’t journey too far away from your host body, okay? And if you can, always leave it somewhere safe.

You know, my feelings of being drawn away from this life have been growing stronger even as I’ve been speaking to you. I think my departure is more imminent than I expected.

Take care of yourself and remember what I said about acceptance. It can resolve many things. And again, be cautious in your spirit state—you’re leaving your body very vulnerable. Don’t abuse your gift, use it only for good things or not at all. Learn things and treat your body like the temple it is. Treat it with reverence—it’s more valuable than you know. Oh, and I hope you didn’t mind my little digressions from the main story. Just thought you might be interested. Besides, I haven’t had the chance to talk like this for quite a while.

Okay. Got to go now.

More things to see before it’s too late. More things to understand.

Take good care of yourself. Don’t neglect your body. Appreciate it.

Hey, you’re fading too. Your body wants you back. Try and remember this—it might just help.

Take good care.

See you eventually…

In another pla—

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James Herbert is not just Britain’s Number One bestselling writer of chiller fiction, a position he has held since publication of his first novel, but is one of our greatest popular novelists, whose books are sold in thirty-five other languages, including Russian and Chinese. Widely imitated and hugely influential, his twenty-one novels have sold more than fifty million copies worldwide.