A Private Haunting (15 page)

On Friday morning Jonas phoned Boss Hogg. Told him he was sick. Hogg said
whatever
and hung up. Jonas kept listening, until a voice told him
the person you are calling has hung up
, again and again and now a different phrase:
the person you
are calling knows all about the magazines
...
the person you
are calling
... He should call Hogg back, tell him what he told the detectives, that if they were his, would he be stupid enough to leave them in a youth club drawer?

A week since the talent show, the first Hub night since Lacey had disappeared. A few of the parents complained about inappropriateness but Mark went ahead.
It's
what she would want
, as people always said, an insistence on normality that was more about their ability or otherwise to deal with a situation than any real sense of what the person might think.

But Jonas. Here was a man who truly did not have a clue. To turn up to The Hub or not? Every time he decided yes he saw two black balaclavas and rain pattering a dirty magazine. By 6.30 he'd worked himself into a state of near stasis, only dragging himself from the house with the thought of needing to appear normal. As he opened the front door he realised that normal had packed up and fled. Trying to be normal might actually seem abnormal. He closed the door again. And opened it. Just breathe and walk, feel that gossamer soft air, Flash Gordon colours streaking the western sky, lilac and violet, blood orange. To watch was to have the world slow. To have the world slow was to
chill
out
,
Mr M
.

He managed it until Spencer P appeared. Suddenly beside him on his bike, a look of amused disgust. Jonas opened his mouth but Spencer P was saying something he didn't quite hear and accelerating across the village hall car park, veering towards the alleyway across by the health centre, Jonas sprinting after him and a twinge in the hamstring, the little bastard had made him pull a muscle and when he got to the alleyway Spencer P was gone.

He could hear his heart hammering, a hammering now becoming a humming, getting louder, maybe the sound of an imminent coronary and a panicked hand to the chest but the sound actually beyond him, he realised, above him on big blue a small plane, circling down, accelerating and throttling back, now melding into the whine of a sudden lawnmower, noise and heat suddenly swelling and when Jonas turned round Pete the village hall caretaker was staring.

It wouldn't do at all.

Li Po and Big Haakon. They'd roll with it. Haakon of the Apologies, the alcoholic who remembered just enough to keep forgetting. If you never learned then it must be a gift to be able to forget. Haakon disappeared after every binge and the idea was immediately appealing, ride it out, hide in the woods once more, Sycamore Camp and those headlight beams, criss-crossing his face like endless wagging fingers and tsk, tsk, Jonas, this is no way to behave and they were right, it was no way to behave, he was Jonas Mortensen. Jonas of the Plants. Mr M would not be cowed. So throw open the door to that hall and stride in. He belonged.

 

Mark disagreed.

Not straightaway.

His first action was to stare and bite his lip, his second to get a big red embarrassed face as he watched Jonas get a coffee from the kitchen. Jonas waved and sipped, pondered Mark's face. It was alarming how a red that couldn't get any redder actually
got redder
. How long would it take him to crank up to whatever he was going to say? Five minutes, in the end.

‘Evening.'

‘Evening.'

‘What happened to your face?'

‘Walked into a door.'

‘Look, eh... I think – '

‘They aren't mine. Those magazines.'

‘This isn't the time or the place, the kids will be here soon.'

‘Did the police talk to you?'

‘I was mortified. They asked if I'd ever phoned that outdoors centre and I haven't. They'd checked it out. They phoned up the number on the cover. You were the only one who called!'

‘Who have you told?'

He looked away. ‘I phoned round.'

‘Thanks for that.'

‘C'mon, Jonas. I didn't know what to do. I was going to call and then I wasn't. I didn't do anything until today. I've got a responsibility.'

‘Today?'

‘Yeah. Why?'

‘You're a liar.'

‘What?'

‘Because people knew yesterday, Mark.
Yesterday
. So how's that, how did they find out?'

‘I don't know. I didn't phone anyone until today.'

Jonas believed him.

‘You should go home. It's the first time we've met since Lacey's been gone. The kids are going to be upset and we need to – '

‘We need normality. Isn't that why we're here? That means me being here and – '

‘Think about it from – '

‘We're doing mushrooms.'

‘
Mushrooms?'

‘
Mushrooms
.'

The word hung limp in the air. Jonas's hands shook as he set out the pictures on the table by the stage: fairy-ring champignons and panther caps, Fool's Morel and cep, some actual chanterelles he'd picked in the woods during the search. The idea was to have a quiz,
The Shroom of Doom
: guess the edible among the poisonous, build the knowledge that Jonas would test on a field walk.

 

The kids began to straggle in, about a dozen, fewer than usual. Most looked at Jonas then looked away.

Mark gathered everyone together, made a heartfelt speech about how
we all need to
stay strong for Lacey, she'd want us to carry
on as usual
... Eggers's daughters, Eloise and Laura, appeared a few minutes afterwards and made straight for Jonas, giving him a big hug. He held his arms away from them, aware of staring eyes. Typical Eggers, they hadn't been told yet.

‘Will we find her, Jonas?'

Before he could think of any answer that wasn't utterly empty there was a loud shout of
Eloise
.

‘Dad?' said Eloise.

Jonas looked towards the door of the hall. And the man himself, Eggers, striding towards him.

‘What are you
doing
, dad?'

‘Why don't you tell her, Jonas?' Eggers stopped a foot away from him.

‘Come on, this – '

‘Shut up. Tell her why the police talked to you.'

‘Mr M?' said Laura.

‘Come on then,
Mr M
. Tell her. You gonna?' He leaned in, his nose almost touching Jonas's. ‘We just got Mark's message. You've got some nerve being here. I want you gone.
Now
.'

‘You don't really think – '

‘Shut it. Just shut it!'

‘What about you,
Jackie
? You forgotten your lunchtime shows?'

‘What's he talking about,' asked Eloise.

Eggers flushed and stepped forward. ‘Keep your mouth
shut
. I don't work with kids.'

‘You're such a – '

A violent shove shut Jonas up, his head whipping back. He stumbled into the table and scattered mushrooms, losing his footing and down onto his arse, looking up as they all looked down and he finally realised his mistake. In being here, expecting nuance at a time of absolutes. He stood up, grabbed his back-pack and walked quickly across the hall.

In the lobby he almost knocked Mary over. She looked confused, then almost crestfallen.

‘I take it you got a call from Mark?'

‘Yes. Look, Jonas, I – '

‘Everyone's made up their mind.'

‘Can you blame them?'

‘Can you meet me tomorrow? In town. Can you do that?'

Mary sighed and looked away.

‘Please.'

‘You should go home.'

‘
Mary
.'

But walking past she reached out, touched his fingers. So lightly, an ambiguity. He thought of that night in his garden, an appraising gaze of this man, Jonas, whom she didn't know at all.

As ever, the Saltmarket was crowded. Jonas stood in the town's main shopping street and stared up. Forget adverse weather, technical faults, there were no anomalies in the certainty that was a
scheduled
flight-path
. SAS 263 perhaps, Oslo to Bergen. Up there in the contrail blues, heading west-north-west. Truly our lives were a search for the most direct flight.

So far he'd counted six smooth then furring white lines made by passing aircraft. Another appeared, north east to south west, bisecting two other, parallel lines and creating a Z. It delighted him, made him think of that black and white
Zorro
serial, he and Axel and swords made from sticks, a delight even the sweaty smell of pasties from the
Cornish Café
couldn't overpower.

People were staring, a few even looked up.
What's up there, what's up there?
, well whatever you want, write your story, white on blue and a gradual vanishing,
as all of us too must
pass
. Straight from the Hollywood script, the stereotypical gloomy Scandinavian. Jonas might be long gone from Norway but it's as impossible to wipe off the genetic boot-print as it is to laugh at an Ingmar Bergman movie. All those endless winters, waiting for the silver in the east.

His happiness, it verged on manic. Mary had agreed to meet him. He was down for a Saturday shift but took another day off. Boss Hogg just said
whatever
. Anymore and it would become a pleasing habit, maybe the righteous principles of the old country were losing their grip.

The thought made Jonas wildly content and he returned every furtive glance from the passers-by with a beaming, care-in-the-community smile. Who cares, the sun might be hot, the street crowded with shrieking herds of teenage language students and over-friendly charity volunteers, but he'd escaped from the village, put distance between himself and the night before.

 

No one had followed him out of The Hub. No one jumped him on the way home, Eggers with a
banzai
, some maniac in a balaclava, not even Mary, running towards him with concern, tear-stained cheeks and throwing her arms round his neck, like a bad melodrama, which it was.

Back at End Point, Fletcher was sitting in the kitchen eating a Chinese takeaway. Rice in his beard and lips shiny with spare rib sauce, opening a can of beer and watching Jonas watch him.

‘You packed yet?' Fletcher wiped his mouth on a white dish towel, leaving a browny streak.

‘Have you?'

‘I can wait. No worries.'

‘Have you got a balaclava?'

Fletcher picked at his teeth then studied something on the end of his finger. ‘Bit hot for that. Unless you're planning to stalk another little girl. Summer nights, creeping in an open window?'

‘Fuck you.'

Fletcher reached into a bag of prawn crackers and started munching, open-mouthed. ‘You need to relax, bro. Thought the night with Mary would have helped.'

‘What's with the doll eh? You
freak
.'

Fletcher angled his head. ‘C'mon, man, you can do better than that.' He got up and left the kitchen.

Jonas stared at the takeaway remnants. He felt the touch of Mary's hand as he left the village hall, saw her back arch in the half-light. And then the instinctive thought:
who would you
choose, Jonas, if they were both standing in front of
you right now, who would you choose?

Just before midnight Mary texted to say she would meet him in town the next morning. Five hours after he had seen her at The Hub. Five hours to make a decision. He went to bed and again jammed the chair under the door handle. When he woke it had again moved to the window.

There was less activity on the village green. Marginally less, but noticeably, interest in Lacey faltering, despite the TV vans and the roving bands of hacks, the clusters of police and locals. A military occupation must be similar, that sense of over-exposure, a growing familiarity with the unfamiliar, a normalising that would abruptly end when the editorial interest guillotine came down. How long would it take, ten days, two weeks, longer? A special unit probably monitored ratings in real-time, phone to hand, ready to move the circus on.

Jonas gawped like everyone else. He paused at the war memorial to take it in, refusing the spectacle even as he indulged it. A few people glanced his way, because they all knew now, didn't they, come the day a sharpening of the pitchforks, come the night the mob... Like Big Haakon he'd hold his head high. But not
too
high. Instead of the busy bus stop by the green he chose another which hardly anyone used, a few streets away, round on Tanner Avenue.

There was a film crew midway along the street, directly opposite the bus stop. A small crowd was watching and as Jonas appeared some of them looked across. Maybe they knew him and maybe they didn't and where was the
damn bus when you wanted it
? A camera had been set up at the end of a garden path in front of the third house in a terrace of four. Beside the cameraman was a boom operator and a mini-skirted woman with a clipboard. The woman called for quiet and a moment later a teenage girl in a short blue jacket and a red and white polka-dot dress came out of the front door. She walked down the garden path and turned right at the gate, along the pavement into the distance until a loud shout of
cut
.

He watched the re-enactment. A tightness in the guts. Then another take, forcing him to watch Lacey disappear again. The
details
. It was so obvious it took him a while to notice. They'd got some basic details completely wrong. The red and white polka-dot dress, that wasn't Lacey's. And her hair was blonde, not dark. The only thing right was the blue jacket. Then he remembered that Eggers had told him they'd already done a reconstruction. So why another?

 

When Jonas finally dragged his eyes from the criss-crossing airplanes he walked to the east end of Saltmarket. Then right, into Brandywine Passage, towards the University Lands, the crowds thinning until he was almost alone among the narrow lanes and the high limestone walls. Spires above him, tall bookcases through leaded windows. A solitary cyclist appeared, a smiling young woman, black flowing college robes as she passed. Jonas smiled back. Beside him, a stretch of scaffolding encased in blue plastic was whipped by a sudden gust of cold wind, rippling the length of the plastic and reaching the end just as the cyclist turned a corner.

Dissonance. It was always there, snapping at the heels. Did you really think this sun-blushed day, with its gentle calligraphy of white contrails on blue, would make it easy, Jonas,
to get away
?

He walked on, up to
The Mayor
, next to the independent cinema he last went to years ago, a Hungarian movie called
Kontroll
with a beautiful woman who rode the Budapest subway dressed as a bear. He often used to go to
The
Mayor
, the pub run by a skinny old Irishman with a pinched face and glacier-green eyes. Every space on the walls was covered with posters for classic films:
La
Dolce Vita
,
The Asphalt Jungle, For a Few Dollars More
. He remembered a rainy winter's day, roll-ups and Jameson's, arguing movies with the Irishman in the near-empty pub, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson on endless loop.
The
Mayor
had been given a gastro makeover: tapas and Thai curries, a wine list to
rival the best restaurants
.

Three and a half minutes.

Jonas timed it. Three and a half minutes for the muzak to drive him into the garden, where he found a table beside a purple-flowered clematis filled with bees, and sipped his whisky. He stood up too quickly when Mary appeared, cracking his knee on the table. She didn't smile. Offered no sympathy. He wondered about this as he queued at the bar for her white wine.

 

‘
Skål
.'

‘Cheers,' she said.

‘Nice day, eh?'

‘We're not going to talk about the weather are we?'

‘I guess not.'

‘There used to be a beer called Skol. There were adverts on the TV with cartoon Vikings. I remember once, my parents were away and my brother was supposed to be looking after me. He came home with a case of Skol. Twenty-four cans. I remember him puking in the fireplace.'

‘Sounds like a good night in!'

‘You mean out.'

‘What?'

‘You say “that was a good night out”.'

‘But I mean in.'

‘In?'

‘Yeah. Back home. A night in with a few beers and
then
we go out because the booze is so expensive. We call it
foreplay
.'

‘Foreplay?'

‘No joke.'

A smile that started and stopped again. She glanced down at her wine, twirling the glass.

‘Thanks for coming,' he said.

The eyes flicked up, bored into his. ‘I don't want your thanks, Jonas. I'm not doing you a favour.'

‘I didn't mean – '

‘Finish that.' She nodded at his whisky. ‘I'll get you another.' She knocked back her glass of wine and stood up. He realised she was waiting for him and quickly downed his whisky.

 

Afternoon drinking. Jonas dug it. He was kinda drunk now so no problem with saying
dug it
. Made him feel like a proper boozer. Young Mr M loved Charles Bukowski and old Jonas got nostalgic, now and then indulged an afternoon buzz and if there was ever a time to indulge it was now.

All this he told her, babbling into a day becoming more over-exposed with each drink. One day he'd be one of the old men sitting at the bar and nursing a two-hour pint. He
wanted
that.

‘Really?' she said.

‘Why not?'

‘They're a bunch of old farts, that's why. Counting the days till death. If I get like that you can put a pillow over my face.'

‘Your wish is my command.'

‘One of them put his hand on my arm when I was getting the last round. I bet he had a hard-on.'

‘Can't blame the man.'

‘Pervert.'

‘If the hat fits.'

‘The cap.'

‘What?'

‘If the
cap
fits. That's the phrase. You know what you are?'

‘Do I want to hear this?'

She didn't return his smile. ‘A romantic.'

‘What's wrong with that?'

Something flared in her eyes and disappeared. She looked up to the sky for a moment then back at him. ‘What is this?' She leaned forward. ‘Me and you. What do you want from me?'

‘Well I – '

‘Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Is that it? You tell me your wife and daughter were killed and we have sex. Was that the reason you told me? Now they find some dirty magazines at The Hub. What's that all about? What am I supposed to make of that? Why am I even here?'

‘They're not mine.'

‘Of course you'd say that!'

‘They're not.'

‘Who
are
you?' she said.

‘I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked you to come – '

‘Oh shut up!' And she got up and left.

Two people at the next table glanced over. Jonas stared down at his whisky glass. A fat wasp was creeping round the rim, little feelers stroking the air before it flew off and returned, flew off and returned. For a sudden and perfect moment he felt just like that wasp.

Mary returned. The hair around her face was damp, as if she had splashed herself with water.

‘You believe me?' he asked.

‘Do I have any reason not to?'

‘Plenty, I suppose, if you think about it.'

‘That's true. But I'm here.'

‘I know.'

‘What does that tell you?' She leaned back, taking a long slug of her wine and not taking her eyes off his face. Then she carefully placed her glass down and folded her arms. ‘What now?'

Jonas shrugged. ‘It seems like you want to go home.'

‘Does it now?' She smiled briefly. ‘What do you know about Pushwagner?'

‘Pushwagner?'

‘You're Norwegian aren't you?

‘Last time I checked.'

She took a flyer from her pocket. ‘I saw this in the bar. You heard of this guy?'

‘Yeah. But I've never seen any of his stuff.'

‘We're going.'

 

Mary decided she knew what she was doing. She felt guilty that Jonas's revelation about his wife and child had been such a relief. But the magazines unsettled her. She believed they weren't his, probably. It just seemed so unlikely. He was a nice guy, remember, and she was drunk.

They walked down the street, back to the city centre. One of those days when everyone seemed to stare. Another time she might have hurried to the nearest toilet to check herself; any stray loo roll hanging out of her trouser leg, a bogey dangling from her nose?

Today, she felt defiant. She wanted people to stare as she walked down the street with Jonas. She wanted her husband to see her and imagined him coming out of a shop, double-take and incredulous. As incredulous as he'd been when she got home from The Hub to find a You Tube clip of her village green outburst hooked up to the big TV. The video was paused, Mary caught mid-harangue, her husband asking what the hell she was doing there at midnight. It had taken him two days to catch up and Mary was
sooo
impressed, called him
semi-detached
and almost said she had been there with Jonas Mortensen.

Suddenly Mary didn't want to be seen with Jonas. She wanted to run to the nearest toilet and lean on a sink, stare into the mirror and think about this some more. When she grabbed Jonas's hand he looked startled.

 

The exhibition was at the modern art gallery on the corner of a revamped square. Air-brushed, she thought, or steam-cleaned, no sign of the previous inhabitants, the homeless with their dogs and mysterious bundles. She imagined them bundled into trucks, dumped miles away.