A Private Haunting (18 page)

Eva was no help.

She was dancing now, over there by the bathroom door that creaked when he opened it. He bent to the hinge for a while, pulling the door back and forth, waiting for the creak, back and forth and Eva still dancing until finally he lay back on the worn carpet and looked up at the crack in the ceiling and waited for sleep that didn't come, the cracks stretching as he stared, spidery zigzaggings always back where they started when he closed and opened his eyes.

He sat up suddenly. Someone else must be doing this, in a world of six billion a Japanese man could be sprawled on the tatami, staring up with eyes that refused to blink until he saw how complicated the web of cracks would become and finally get it, understanding that tracing every connection was impossible and you finally had to just let it all go.

What a relief, just imagine that
incredible
relief
.

And they began to cry, Jonas and the Japanese man, as back and forth went the creaking bathroom door, Eva still dancing and a sudden image of the little shrine with photos and a daily candle that he had built to her and Anya in the Christinegård house before he finally had to leave.

* * *

Jonas woke cold on the hotel room floor. Light leached through the curtains and the room seemed poised, as if someone watching had just left. He had a crick in his neck and an erection that disgusted him as much as the taste in his mouth. He was sick on the carpet, the mess confusing him until he recognised last night's spring roll. Half-remembered remnants, the whole of the previous day felt like that. Eva hovered, quietly faded and there was Lacey.

He felt guilty, the self-pity of a seedy hangover. He thought about her as his guts spasmed again.

You, dead. Dead
in the bazaar. Dust and blood on your face that
is becoming Azidullah's, coming closer, bringing me tea. We
sit in a quiet room back at base and talk
about aftermaths. I tell Azidullah how silent our aunt's
house was the night you disappeared, as silent as that
other house must be raucous, your house of mud and
clay in the mazy tumble of old Sangin. There you
are lying, you who is she, under a white sheet
but the face revealed, the relatives wailing, wailing as we
did not do in our house, so different in the
west, so much more sophisticated we think, when nothing is
more civilised than screaming at death brought in the name
of that so-called sophistication. You would shy away from
them, from the police and the army, who come in
their khaki and their black and white to poke their
noses. Downstairs, I hear the questions again. I listen and
I feel guilty. But they are not here for me
. Today is not yesterday. I am not sitting on our
aunt's sofa with the plastic covering to protect it
from my dirt, I am not being asked what I
did that day, every hour of that day and why
we were fighting, as if it was abnormal for brother
and sister to fight. I am not watching a policeman
study the cuts on my knuckles but it is just
a fall from my bike and straight away the little
glances and why should they believe me, why should they
? Because I
am
lying, I sit on the sofa and
lie about those cuts as easily as I tell the
truth to the two men from military intelligence; bureaucracy idling
, looking at its watch, just give it straight and simple
corporal. And Azidullah pours me more tea. He places his
forehead to mine and his hands on my cheeks. His
concern is so very genuine. We drink tea, he and
I. And I cry for you both, I cry for
you both...

 

The one hundred count-back stopped the images at forty. They told Fletcher to think like a TV, just a matter of pressing
off
on the remote control. Bring on the black, the little red standby light.

He blamed the police. Sunday morning at seven am, it could only be the cops at the front door. He lay in bed until they stopped knocking, leaping up when he heard the door being opened half an hour later. Then Jonas's voice, the Norwegian back from wherever he had disappeared to the night before. He was talking to someone, several sets of footsteps heading for the kitchen. Fletcher moved to the top stair. He could just hear the two detectives asking questions about the missing girl, the same questions in multiple ways, monotonously probing for the way in. He remembered the technique.

Then Azidullah came.

He was a captain in the Afghan National Army. A gentle man with three young children, proud pictures in a wallet. Nine years dead, Azidullah was still an occasional presence, the last time a winter night in Liverpool, Fletcher passing a mosque and the sound of prayer.

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar
.

Fletcher had
started to repeat the words, to himself at first and
then out loud. A
zidullah was suddenly beside him, smiling, encouraging him,
louder, louder
. They were thrown out of a café, shouted at in the Toxteth halfway house.
Allahu Akbar
,
Allahu
Akbar
, the two of them, all through the night, Fletcher falling asleep to wake with Azidullah again vanished.

They'd patrolled together, joint ISAF-ANA patrols. Smiley-faced info operations and sweets for the kids.
Schools and food aid
. Roll out the big sell to bemused locals, insurgents among them and who's who, who the
fuck
is who? Always that cold fear but smiling Azidullah with the patience of the desert. Fletcher learned that the pat on his arm meant
now
we wait
. His gaze would lower, contemplating the distance, waiting for the moment to give Fletcher his cue to continue.
Reconstruction. Democracy
. The next few words in a dialogue endlessly built and torn down.
Enduring Freedom
. The Afghans did just that. They endured until the foreigners took their freedom home.

Fletcher sat on the stairs as Azidullah did, leaning forwards, head angled, flattering the interest of the men in the kitchen who didn't know he was listening. He considered moving further down but couldn't rule out hitting a creaky stair. No reason to be careless, as Azidullah was careless to sit outside that teashop. The man on the moped put thirty-five rounds into him.

Fletcher memorised every question the policemen asked and every response that the Norwegian gave. Fixated concentration, he'd learned from his aunt. The Marines noticed it early. They called it an aptitude, said they needed soldiers who could listen. It was all about intel, like the detail filtering up from the kitchen.

Detective A told Mortensen that they knew Lacey had returned to his house after the midsummer party, an anonymous tip. Why hadn't he told them? The Norwegian couldn't say. He only managed a barely audible
I see
when told that they had checked with their Norwegian colleagues and knew about his conviction back in Bergen. Detective B couldn't hide his derision; if the police knew then Mortensen could be damn sure the media soon would.

The police would get there in the end, thought Fletcher. But they once thought the same about him.

‘I want a week off,' said Jonas.

‘That's why you're calling me? It's Sunday
morning,
Jonas.'

‘I want a week off.'

‘Whatever. In fact, take more. Take two weeks.'

‘A week is fine.'

‘Take
more
.'

‘Why?'

‘I want you to.'

‘A week's enough.'

‘Why don't you think about something more long-term?'

‘What's that supposed to mean?'

‘Just a piece of advice.'

‘I'm taking a week.'

Jonas ended the call, looking at the handset as if Boss Hogg might appear on the screen.

No way he was going to work.
Think
of it as a piece of advice
. I hear you, boss, no finger needed to stir the tea-leaves to read how
unusual accidents
happen on a work site. Only forty minutes since the two detectives had left but Hogg already knew, clear as the day was blue.

Jonas sat on the bed. The police had been waiting outside when he got home from the hotel. A casual lean against a black BMW at seven thirty on a Sunday morning. Only cops did that. Someone passing End Point would notice, then a conversation in the shop, a couple of texts...

A swelling anxiety made him stand up. But standing just made him more anxious, meant he couldn't process. It was completely ridiculous. So he sat down again, deliberately. The trick is to keep breathing. Another surge of adrenaline forced him back to his feet. Fuck it, he
was
anxious, he really was but he still didn't know why he hadn't told the detectives that Lacey had come back to his house after the
Jonsok
party. He just didn't. They didn't believe him.

Really
, they said.

Really.

In his pocket, his mobile rang, as it had when he was showing the detectives inside the house.
Don'
t mind us
, Sad Eyes had said.
Feel free to
answer.
Jonas hadn't then and didn't now.

Mary again. Not one phone call the night before and now three since 6 am. She was probably furious at him for standing her up.
Standing her up
, like they were dating. He threw the mobile on the bed and started pacing round the room. He used to do this for hours in prison.

 

Remember, how spartan that cell was. Others had postcards, pictures on the walls, odd trinkets. One guy had a collection of miniature Mickey Mouses, neatly lined up on his desk.
My little boy sends me a new
one every month
. All Jonas had was a perfectly round pebble, smooth, black dappled with grey. He found it in the recreation yard and took it with him when he was released. It now sat on his bedside table, a totem of reassurance. When Jonas smelled it he smelled the sea and when he put his tongue to it he thought he could taste salt.

The pebble mattered. Like him, it belonged elsewhere. He picked it up and closed his eyes, seeing the churned grass of the back lawn where Fletcher had beaten him up. The detectives had noticed but didn't ask about the divots and muddy ruts. He hefted the pebble, feeling the weight. Fletcher entered the scene. Half naked and lying down, basking like a snake.

Imagine standing in the sun room. Throwing the pebble. Would Fletcher's forehead crack loudly as it landed, like a gunshot, echoing around the houses? Or would it be more of a wet plop, the skull splitting like a watermelon? Maybe, who could tell, maybe this was the unknown future purpose that made him take the pebble with him when he was released. A near miss was more likely, a thud on the grass that had Fletcher looking up and seeing Jonas.

Like that they would remain, two unyielding Samurai, a stand-off in time-lapse, summer accelerating into autumn, winter, the clouds shifting cirrus to cumulus, azure to weaker blue and gunmetal grey, now teeming rain and snow flurries, the two of them unmoved because to move was to give ground and to give ground was to be the one to leave.

He hefted the pebble again, threw it in the air and caught it. You needed poise to make a direct hit. But a hit could kill and a killing meant the return of the detectives, more questions.
Why
'd you do it son, why?
Jonas as Cagney, still defiant as they strapped him to the Chair.

How many times in a life did we answer a question? Ten questions a day means seventy a week, 3000 a year, 200,000 in seventy years. Why this need to know? When the last motive is uncovered freedom is dead. The police should be told that all their questions are killing freedom.
Why did Lacey come back after your party
? She just forgot her jacket, that's all.

 

The bedroom was stifling, heat trapped by closed curtains, closed windows. He put the pebble on the bedside table and sat down on the bed again. Palms on the knees. Sweat on his naked body. The mobile phone on the bed blinked blue. Probably another voice mail from Mary. He wanted to go to her but didn't. Big Haakon was holding him back, that epic miscalculation on the day of his release. No repeats, no do-overs, once was most definitely enough.

 

10 am, a thin winter drizzle and a small backpack, the cliché of the prison doors banging shut behind him.

He had walked into town, tyres on wet tarmac and the searching eyes of passers-by who knew where he'd come from, he was sure. Then a train to Oslo and on to Larvik, a bee-line for familiarity and Big Haakon – another outcast, who'd
understand
, who'd swing open a welcoming door and then a tear-filled bear hug, an overflowing glass, the sweet stun of oblivion.

But Haakon's garden had been tidied. There was a neat lawn, flowers in little rows. The doorbell actually worked and the stranger who answered had bought the place three years ago.

Tore still had the shop on Haralds gate. Newsagents knew the news and Jonas's conviction had made the nationals. Tore recognised him as soon as he came in. The shop was unchanged, the same mustiness that now smelled like the dusty values of the town itself. Jonas couldn't shake the feeling in Tore's gaze that by leaving he'd rejected those values, a first step on a corruption that had its inevitable full stop in the darkness on the edge of Bergen.

Tore's grudging directions took him to the northern outskirts, a house on a subdued, new-build estate. The woman who answered the door wore an oversized silver crucifix on a chain round her neck. She said nothing for a few moments, leaving him in the downpour, face set with triumphant disdain, as if she'd just won a long-standing bet that he'd turn up one day.

Haakon sat in a high-backed chair in a spartan living room. A tiny TV set. No bookshelves. A coffee table complete with Bible. He must have told the woman all about Jonas Mortensen, a fallen son of Larvik, this town which proved its goodness by welcoming himself, Haakon of the drunken binges, Haakon of the Apologies, back into its forgiving embrace.

‘You shouldn't have come back,' said Haakon.

Instead of that blank indifference Jonas saw a smile from another lifetime, Haakon peering over his shoulder at the orange ember Jonas had finally managed to create from the bow-drill.

‘There's nothing for you here.'

‘This is my home.'

‘This hasn't been your home for a long time. You can't come back and pretend it is.'

‘I wanted to see you. It's been so long.'

‘You wanted to hide.'

‘What? Hide where?'

‘In the past.'

‘What's wrong with that?'

‘That little girl. Your daughter. She never got the chance to remember where she came from. You robbed her of the nostalgia you come here to indulge. I suppose you think about me with a little smile. The drunken idiot from your childhood. I'm offended that you've come here.'

‘You've no idea how sorry I am.'

‘There's a train at four.'

Jonas walked back to the harbour. Stood for a long time with the bobbing yachts, the rigging singing, dark squalls moving on a barely lighter Skagerrak. The sea was viscous, as if time had externally slowed. Inside, it seemed to have sped up, a tumble of memories and somewhere nearby that precious hoard of childhood, he just had to remember where he'd buried it.

The joujouka gulls cackled, and a lurch in the stomach told Jonas, finally, how much time had passed. He saw the arrogance in expecting the same Haakon. We shift, do we not, running waves in a blustery nor'easter, cross the watersheds but still wonder how our feet got so wet.

One continuity was guaranteed, his father's unshakable contempt. The house by Langestrand kirke wasn't too far away. He had written to Jonas in prison to tell him y
ou are no longer my son
. The usual melodrama, like the way he left in a midnight blizzard to move in with the golf pro he was convinced looked like Gabriela Sabatini and who left him three months later.

It was no day for another terminal visit. Instead, he headed for the station, a watery coffee, hesitation from the teenage girl taking his order, shrewdness in the eyes, blue eyes like Anya, following him onto the train, eight hours in the
exile wagon
, back to Bergen, to Christinegård...

 

The water pipes suddenly coughed in the bathroom. Jonas's head jerked up. Hypnagogic images shattering. He tensed his body and relaxed. Tensed and relaxed. Then forced himself to get up and get dressed in a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. The memories became shadows, slipping away with an ease that was troubling. He stared at the phone on the bed, ever-blinking with Mary's name, listening to a ringing he gradually realised was coming from the front door.

 

‘There's interest, Jon - , Mr Mortensen. People want to know why the police have been talking to you.'

He'd expected this sooner. A journalist. Pink-faced and too much aftershave. He looked across the street. Gladstone was sweeping the pavement outside the café. He stopped and leaned on the brush. Jonas waved and Gladstone waved back a few moments later, a
significant
few moments, sizing up the situation and what he made of it.

‘Mr Morten– '

‘Go and ask the police.'

‘I'll ask them too.'

‘So why bother asking me?'

‘I'm just interested in your take. Maybe I should come in?'

Gladstone had been joined by the hairdresser from the ever-empty salon. She'd dyed her hair green, something to do in the absence of clients. They were talking as they watched.

‘You think I'm embarrassed?'

‘No. I think you're terrified and don't have a clue where this is going to end. I can help you.'

‘That right.'

‘I can get you 10k for your story. Might come in handy later.'

‘What story?'

‘Fifteen at a push. People have a right to know.'

‘No they don't.'

‘Are you saying that – '

‘What I'm saying is that you're getting confused about rights. People might want to know. Doesn't make it a right.'

‘What are you, the village philosopher?'

‘I studied it.'

‘And now you fix potholes.'

Jonas made to close the door and the reporter stepped forward.

‘Don't be a prick all your life, I'm only trying to – '

‘You're only trying to do what?' Jonas grabbed him by the shirt. ‘What the
fuck
are you only trying to do?'

‘Look up the street!'

‘Eh?'

‘The street. Look.'

Jonas held his grip and looked to his right.

‘See that blue Ford? That's the police. Red Golf on the other side? That's my photographer. You really want the cops to come running and my buddy to snap it all for the front page?'

‘Fuck you.'

‘Look Jonas. Cops blab. A few quid here, there, piece of piss, mate. I know about Norway, your wife and kid. 10k. You can get ahead of the game and you better believe that this is a game. I don't care if you really killed Lacey and you know what? No one else does. You're the
guy
. You're the bogeyman. You better tell your story before someone tells it for you.'

Jonas let go of the journalist. Stared right at him. ‘Can I tell you something? Off the record?'

The journalist's eyes lit up. ‘Course you can.'

‘People like you. You'd take a picture of your dying child before you called an ambulance.'

He slammed the door.

Slumped to the floor. Above him the letterbox clacked and the reporter's business card landed in his lap. Jonas immediately crumpled it, then, a few moments later, smoothed it out.

His face grew hot. Gladstone, that pause before he waved, the green-haired girl, Tore the newsagent and Haakon of the Cross before them, Haakon who may at
this exact moment
be holding court after a prayer meeting, telling the whole damn group about this man he once knew, Jonas Mortensen, who'd grown in the repeated telling to become the reporter's demon, the aberration in our midst who reassures us of our own goodness, our normality.

Only then did he register Fletcher at the end of the hall. The sun from the kitchen doorway was dazzling and Jonas couldn't see his face, just a black outline in quivering, silvery light.

‘Everyone's got a story,' said Jonas. ‘You haven't told me yours.'

‘You don't want to know my story.'

‘Try me.'

‘You know they're going to search this place.'

Jonas closed his eyes.

‘They're going to have crime scene vans and flashing lights, police tape everywhere. Maybe even those white boiler suits, you know the ones. That the forensic people wear? It's all gonna get a bit CSI, hope you've cleaned your bedroom. But they'll know if you've done that and they'll want to know why. You're kinda screwed either way. People are going to stand on the street, watching it all happen. For hours, like the circus. Probably be an ice cream van.'