Late afternoon, Roger Herridge is called into the chapel. No reason, it’s just his turn, and the director following his progress in the house says he could use some more about Roger’s mindset.
‘I’m a churchgoer, yes,’ Herridge says.
Grayle doesn’t know why she asked this as a preliminary. Maybe the vanishing altar put it into her head.
‘Roger, how does faith in God equate with a belief in ghosts?’
‘Hmm. Not easily, as it happens. Not many ghost stories in the Bible. But, flimsy and transient as they are, ghosts do appear to be evidence of some form of afterlife. Perhaps the best we’re going to get during this one.’
‘But you’ve never experienced an apparition.’
‘No. As I’ve explained, it’s why I’m here.’
‘And why you exchanged rooms with Ashley Palk?’
He looks resigned.
‘Yes, we did that. I offered to swap with Ozzy Ahmed, but he refused. Quite angrily. Ashley was more accommodating as long as there was fresh bedding.’
‘Ashley doesn’t believe that the soiled imprint on her pillow was any more than—’
‘Dirty laundry? I disagree.’
‘What do you think it was?’
‘For what it’s worth, I think she probably wasn’t alone in the
bed. Didn’t say that to her, of course. But time and place can overlap. Particularly in a room where something significant took place – or
takes place
. Continually.’
‘You’ve been in the room for two nights now. Has anything… occurred in that time?’
Looking forlorn, Roger shakes his head.
‘Sound like an idiot, don’t I?’
‘You don’t sound too much like a politician,’ Grayle says before she can stop herself.
Roger recoils.
‘All right, let me deal with that. I was a Lib-Dem MP. Always understood liberalism as a matter of providing enough money, through increased taxation if necessary, to give people the freedom to be what they want to be. Even if what they want to be doesn’t conform to what the majority of Liberals consider politically or morally acceptable. My fascination with ghosts has never endeared me to some of my colleagues who respect your right to a belief system but despise you for having one.’ Roger trembles slightly. ‘Don’t get me started. I think that, far from being nonsense, ghosts connect us with our past.’
‘In what way?’
‘If we only experience history through old buildings, antique furniture, old books, we’re missing the reality of it. Emotions live on. Tragedy doesn’t go away. Nor does evil. Sometimes we’re side by side with our ancestors and our moods are affected by what they did. Think about it.’
‘Thank you, Roger.’
‘Thank
you
.’
Stepping down from the reality truck into a dimming afternoon she’s met in the mud by an apprehensive-looking Jo Shepherd.
‘Come with me, Grayle.’
‘Where?’
‘You need to see this. Although you didn’t see it, OK? I’m not supposed to share it. I’m not even supposed to have copied it.’
They’ve given Jo a small cabin. One desk, one chair, one laptop, switched on. When they’re inside, Jo slams the door, locks it, waving Grayle to the chair as she fingers up a document. Steps back quickly as a solemn-faced dark-skinned woman appears on the screen.
‘Jess Taylor.’
‘Who?’
‘The camerawoman you were to have spoken to. If Defford hadn’t decided to do it himself.’
‘Oh, the one who… saw something.’
‘In the main chamber. From behind the false wall. Put the cans on, I don’t want anybody overhearing. Plus,
I
don’t want to hear it again.’
‘Why did Defford have to interview her?’
‘Because she was under contract, one of the team.’
‘I see.’
She doesn’t.
‘You will,’ Jo says.
The woman’s evidently uncomfortable at being on the wrong end of a camera. Or maybe just uncomfortable. Her accent is London, middle-class. Her skin is very dark, African rather than West Indian.
‘Thought it was the log guy at first. Or the log guy’s assistant.’
Defford’s voice: ‘He doesn’t have an assistant.’
‘Thank you for that.’
She’s in the chapel, but with no mood lighting. This is bright and hard, for clarity. She’s very thin and fit-looking, sinews in her neck like piano wire.
Defford: ‘What was he wearing?’
‘Could’ve been leather. Brown and worn. Some kind of boots. He had fairish hair.’
‘Where were the residents?’
‘Supper. In the room next door. I’d been told to get some GVs of the room while it was empty. Only it wasn’t. So I waited for him to leave. Which he did after a few seconds.’
‘So why would you think—?’
‘Because, Leo, it walked’ – her voice rising like a siren in the cans – ‘through the fucking wall?’
No reply from Defford. Grayle turns to look at Jo, detaches one can.
‘Quite,’ Jo says.
Jess Taylor’s glancing from side to side in the chapel. Not really liking it or what she’s here for.
Defford: ‘And that was it?’
‘No.’
‘You’re saying you saw it again.’
‘Yes. In a different part of the room. Half formed.’
Defford waits.
‘I… One hand, no legs.’
‘Take your time.’
‘Don’t patronize me, Leo.’
‘Older than she looks,’ Jo says. ‘Eight years with Al Jazeera.’
‘So not…’
‘Not exactly inexperienced.’
‘I’m trying to get this right for you,’ Jess Taylor says. ‘Picture me on my own in my little bunker behind the false wall, where I knew nothing could see me. Hard to believe that at first – first time for me with two-way mirrors. But by then I’d spent a couple of days shooting people who couldn’t see me, so I was adjusted. But this…’
‘This was different?’
‘Oh yes. First of all, remember I’m seeing it through the camera. You always think you’re OK behind a camera. Invulnerable. You’re obtaining the shots, that’s the important thing. It’s how cameramen get killed in wars, obtaining the shots. What you see is not what gets you. I was actually saying that to myself.
What you see is not what gets you
.’
‘What you’re seeing is usually harmless.’
‘Usually. Certainly this… sort of thing.’
Defford: ‘You’ve seen one before?’
‘My gran. I was about thirteen. It’s not uncommon for kids. ‘This was…’ Jess lifts a hand into shot. ‘Look at that. Still shaking. Don’t remember the last time that happened. These things… it creeps up on you, then it takes over everything. All your senses. Takes you out of yourself and into
its
place. Not like anything else you’ll ever experience.’
Grayle stiffens.
Yes
. Yes, that’s how it was. Thank you, Jess.
Christ.
‘You’re not going to use this, are you?’ Jess manages a wispy smile. ‘Or you wouldn’t be doing the interview. It’d be the American woman.’
‘Maybe we should do it again, then. With Grayle.’
Jess takes the kind of breath that conveys astonishment moving towards outrage.
‘I said I’d talk about this once, Leo, and then never again. Nor am I going back in that room.’
‘Jess—’
‘So if you’ve nothing else for me, outside the house, I’ll be on my way. Just glad I’m not using my own kit. That camera, by the way’ – she’s half out of the chair – ‘you should get rid of it. And
don’t
trade it in. I mean get rid.’
Silence. Then,
‘Why do you say that?’
‘When I saw it again, it was suddenly
fully
formed. And unclothed. Walking through the candlelight, as if the candle was part of it. And it was this… this side of the mirror. My side. With me. In other words, there was no mirror. No wall. And the camera… the camera was utterly freezing. So cold it felt hot, you know what I mean? Like in the dead of winter when you’re trying to prise something out of the ice, and it freezes your fingers. And they go numb.
That
cold. The camera was that cold.’
‘You were frightened.’
‘Now what do
you
think, Leo?’
The sound distorting as she gets up and it’s over.
‘Sometimes, Leo just doesn’t think,’ Jo says.
‘Where is she now?’
‘Gone. I mean really gone. Gone back to London.’
‘He
let her go
?’
‘She’s a freelance. She gave him a full account of what happened—’
‘Very professionally. Fulfilling her contract.’
‘And then she quit. Grayle, I could not possibly be more convinced.’
‘No wall,’ Grayle says. ‘You notice that? There was no false wall there even last week. Let alone centuries ago.’
‘So… whatever it was lives in that room as it used to be. God, I never in my life thought I’d be having a conversation like this.’
‘And she’s right. He needs to get rid of that camera. And not switch it on again.’
‘We checked the rushes. Nothing. I asked Leo what we were going to do with Jess. He said we’re going to sit on it.’
‘He’s that stupid?’
‘I think he means we save it, for possible use at the end of the week. If it seems appropriate. We don’t have pictures of anything – he kept saying that – at the end of the day, we just have somebody talking about seeing something. Somebody nobody’s heard of.’
Grayle stands up, slams down the lid of the laptop.
‘This because it doesn’t fit into the story so far? Because it’s a man?’
‘Because we don’t know who he is or how he fits in. An innocuous fair-haired man in leathers.’
‘You think he was innocuous? You wanna watch her again?’
‘God, no.’
‘What if
I
know who he is? Was.
Is
. Time we stopped backing away from this. End of the day, the worst that can happen to the credulous is embarrassment.’
‘We go and talk to Leo?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Grayle shakes her head. ‘Let him come looking for us. What I think is you need to fix up another meeting with Cindy. Any way you can let him see this?’
She’s nodding at the laptop.
‘Might be possible, but it’d be a risk. The chapel’s going to be in demand tonight. We go live for the first eviction, and the timing of that’s still floating.’
‘Can we get him out the back? Outside the walled garden?’
‘If Defford finds out we’re going behind his back, it’ll be the worst of all worlds. I mean, OK, my world view’s turning upside down, but apart from that what’s going to happen? What can Knap Hall and a man with… yellow hair… really do? Apart from not giving us the kind of television we had in mind.’
‘Well, Jo,’ Grayle says. ‘Why don’t you ask Harry Ansell? Why don’t you ask Trinity?’
That night, from the very top of the programme, they screen Ozzy story’s, beginning with those ‘previously on
Big Other
’ moments when he’s behaving oddly in his bedroom, finding him knocking over candles at the end of Helen’s Diana story. Joining the audience next day for his memories of Reg, the caretaker’s skull, and Cyril the paedophile. Ending with that intimate public confessional with Parrish.
I’m a mess, Helen.
Defford thinks it’s the finest programme he’s ever produced.
He has several bottles of champagne brought up from the restaurant to his office, to which everyone will be invited.
Just as soon as the first eviction’s out of the way.
54
Fruitcake thing
FIRST THING TUESDAY
morning, Grayle is called into Defford’s office, where Kate Lyons sits, hair bunned and skewered, behind Defford’s big desk, a printout in front of her.
‘We have a problem, Grayle. I’ve handed it over to the lawyers, but Leo thinks you should be in the picture.’
‘Eloise?’
‘No, Eloise is still taking it rather well. She didn’t make any friends and she says she’s getting better vegetarian food out here. No, it’s this. Have a seat.’
At first, she thinks it must one of the viewers’ emails, backing up a choice of evictee, but, no, it’s someone using the same
Big Other
email address to alert them to what he says is a gross libel.
‘Obviously, it isn’t a libel,’ Kate says, ‘as the alleged victim is no longer alive. Even so, if it’s true it’s unsavoury and poses certain questions that we’ll need to answer sooner or later.’
The name on the email is
[email protected]
.
He doesn’t waste words.
I was sickened watching your programme to hear the name of a good man blackened in the worst possible way. I am a former schoolfriend of Austin Ahmed and was one of the four boys who spent a night in the ‘haunted’ biology lab. As the youngest and most impressionable of the group, I doubt if I slept at all that night. It’s still very vivid in my memory, and I actually remember Ahmed going to the toilet in the early hours. He was scared, too, and was away no longer than
about three minutes. I even remember looking at the clock.So hardly enough time to enjoy a hot chocolate in the staffroom and then administer a hand job to ‘Cyril’, whose real name was Dave Turner. Dave, who died three years ago, was still teaching at the school when I started work there myself as a maths teacher and we became good friends.
I can tell you for a fact – and would say the same to his face – that Ahmed is LYING. If neither he nor you is prepared to put this right, I shall be obliged to refer this matter to the national press.
Paul Swinton
‘What’s Leo say?’
‘He tends to leave these things to lawyers. He isn’t too worried. It’s Ahmed’s word against this chap, and Mr Turner’s dead. His friends would be expected to stand up for him. Even if he does go to the press it may not come to much.’
‘I dunno, Kate. When you look at this morning’s spreads…’
Every national paper except the
Independent
and
Morning Star
carries the story from the very careful press release OK’d yesterday by Defford. Again there’s been no time to follow up the story. The tabs love it, the
Express
asking,
WHO IS MYSTERY WOMAN
‘HAUNTING OZZY’?