A Private Haunting (11 page)

A strange and kaleidoscopic evening Mary would decide, much later, with the reassurance of hindsight.

It was the symmetries that stuck: Fletcher in the middle of the back seat of the bus, directly in line with the aisle; Mary and Jonas six rows ahead, facing each other across the aisle; the bands of burgundy, orange and flame red, thinning on the horizon as the evening became deep blue then lavender dark; the village green that could have been arranged just so, a TV crew in a corner, floodlit dazzle and a group of watching locals, side-lined in the shadows.

Lacey's boyfriend added another strange kink. As they were waiting for the bus Spencer P cycled past and circled back, staring at Jonas before cycling away. When the bus stopped at the lights outside the village the kid was back, staring up at Jonas who stared back, launching into a monologue about Spencer P that was way over the top, a hostility Mary didn't understand. It took a while to steer the conversation back to where they were going to go.

‘Where's the best place for music?' he asked.

And sly Mary sat back in her seat and pretended to think, because she'd done her research before going round to Jonas's. She counted down, five to zero and the eureka moment.

‘My daughter used to go to somewhere called
The Underground
. They've got live music every night. Fancy that?' Jonas did and when she shouted back to Adam he gave a gleeful double thumbs-up that was both enthusiastic and sarcastic. Then he looked at Jonas and winked.

Jonas tensed. He was about to say something then didn't, glancing at Mary, as if remembering she was there. The tension between the two men was palpable. For a quick moment dismissed even quicker she wondered if Jonas was jealous. The Norwegian did make sure to stand in the middle as the three of them walked to
The Underground
, and seemed to flinch when Adam removed his shades inside the venue and asked
do
you
want a drink... Mary?
her name slowly emphasised, a bit creepy. All through
Pierre and the Pirates'
set Jonas stared at Adam, who danced with odd spastic jerks, a scarecrow plugged into the mains.

Jonas's distraction made her self-conscious. She danced too, half-hearted middle-aged wiggling, hoping no one caught her eye, looking around at first dates and estrangements, glittery-eyed love and disillusion's slow-burn. Awkward, under-age girls crowded the front, conspicuous in the effort to be inconspicuous. She wondered if Lacey came here.

‘They don't seem to know much,' Jonas shouted in her ear.

‘Who?'

‘The police. About Lacey.'

The pounding music, hearing the name, it was startling – a warp in space. ‘No. No, they don't.'

‘Think they've interviewed Spencer P yet?'

‘C'mon, he's just a kid.'

‘Lacey was just a kid too.'

And then it didn't seem right to Mary, this entertainment. She stared at the too-skinny lead guitarist with the milk-white skin and an image flashed: a dead body, a teenage girl in a field. The lump in her throat was sudden but still she swayed her hips, the image revolving.

When the song ended she was crying. Jonas put a hand on her arm and looked at her carefully, as if for the first time, then back to Adam, twisting and jerking and no music, oblivious to the amused onlookers, furious moves with his eyes shut, mouth opening and closing.

* * *

Jonas was first off the bus. The real-time screen told him it was 01.21. They stepped into soft-focus streetlights and a purple sky, walking in silence past the green, the TV vans. He had a sudden image flash, the three of them with linked arms, skipping along the street like the Yellow Brick Road. No singing, though, just the scuff of their feet and three perplexed frowns.

At the cross-roads, he and Mary said a gawky goodbye, a hug thought about but avoided. She walked down the street to the left, Jonas watching. Fletcher stood beside him, also watching.

When Mary disappeared he headed right. Jonas looked left, right, and went straight on. Anywhere apart from End Point, Fletcher's face a half-lit cipher, a smirk and a frown, what he knows and doesn't know but no one knows anything, all these houses Jonas was walking past, cottages to outskirt new-builds, all these sleeping people and their untold stories.

So bury the one-eyed doll in the loft, cram the genie back in the lamp and lock it in the garage until the laughing ghost of your past taps you on the shoulder and would you look at that, he's got a
black beard.
Jonas made sure he hadn't left Fletcher alone with Mary long enough to tell her about this lying Norwegian. The problem was the stream of days yet to come.

He stopped, realising he was on Panama Lane. The hole in the fence midway along the lane was still there. He squeezed through, into the woods. The sound of the dual carriageway was startling, still busy even now, the road twenty metres away through the trees and how could he have ever put up with noise like this?

The clearing and the windblown tree took a while to find. Sycamore Camp, his first home in the village. Picking strawberries in Kent for a pittance a punnet had finally sickened him. Three months was three months was too long so leave, Jonas, seek the promise of the western lands…

It was almost unreal now, that urge to keep moving. When you stop you put down roots. But to stop you have to want to. This village was the first place in a long time he'd felt that. End Point was the final proof, the obviously abandoned house a sign and God-dammit Jonas sure liked a sign, even more he liked an open door, and if End Point's door had actually been locked then the locked door of an empty, run-down house was also an invitation.

He sat on the trunk and watched the passing cars. He remembered the compulsion, back then, counting the headlamp beams that crossed his face. Tonight they strobed like searchlights, an unsettling. He thought of Mary but Eva insisted, as overwhelmingly present now as then.

So he let it all stream, a mashed-up cine-reel of dream-memory and reflection, tropical evenings, lonely campsites under Fannaraken's ancient glare, teeming festival Lisbon, barrio alto hip hop and the heavy fug of sex, the stars in the sky here for all those yesterdays but maybe gone tomorrow, gone already, like the conceit that his eyes were the only ones to have looked at someone this way, to have been looked at this way, Eva laughing at their reflections on the window, Caribbean palms twisting like secrets in the dusk and the light of day become a purpling sky and the silhouettes now too dim to be certain about.

A twig snapped. It might be Eva. He waited for the hands over his eyes, the voice saying
guess who?
Or Lacey. He sat in the dark for a long time, picturing the fear in her pretty face.

Jonas endured another day of circlings. He'd stayed up all night, watching the sun rise into blue scarred by wisped whorls, like the after-trails of air-show stunt planes. The stranger appeared soon after, a wordless walk onto the lawn to again go through his stylised exercise ritual, a staccato formality to the choreography that made Jonas wonder if it was less a morning habit than a psychic necessity. As he glanced at Fletcher so the stranger looked at Jonas.

Later, when he came home and sank a beer, head buzzing from traffic, tar fumes and Eggers's gaudy true-crime speculations, Fletcher was still in the garden, star-splayed on the sun lounger. He was unmoving, as if asleep although Jonas knew he was awake, as aware of Jonas as he was of him. When Jonas finished the beer he didn't care anymore, going upstairs to crash out fully clothed. The last images before sleep were stunt planes, looping the loop, over and over again.

 

He forgot to close the curtains and woke with a new day pouring in. A dead man's slumber, no dreams. For a moment all was clear, understandable. A passing car. Birdsong. Then Mary, her face quick-rising. He'd barely thought about her since the gig but as he grabbed his mobile to send a text her face was suddenly replaced by Fletcher's leer. He put the phone down.

There were no more passing cars or birdsong, just a Niagara of thoughts. A blast of ECT was needed. What was it the docs said?
Four
hundred volts a day keeps the world
at bay
.

Outside the bedroom the landing creaked. Jonas was up, the J-Man was
superhero fast
, opening the door but no one there. Downstairs, Fletcher sneezed and Jonas immediately felt as if he was falling, such a long, long way but if you don't hit bottom then you can't shatter into a million pieces. The stranger, would he be looking up, waiting for impact?

He was. Jonas made green tea in his little cast-iron Japanese kettle and sat on the other side of the kitchen table. Fletcher looked back and they stayed that way for a long time, like a stand-off in a crappy Western. Fletcher broke first and looked away with a shrug. This annoyed Jonas, especially the shrug. Because it wasn't as if he'd won, it was more like Fletcher had given up. Jonas wanted to say something but didn't know what, something that made clear that he too knew that this whole staring thing was ridiculous. But to bring attention to it was to show his annoyance at having to explain himself, which annoyed him even more.

When the doorbell rang they looked at each other again.
It's
your house
, Jonas wanted to say,
you answer it
. But he didn't because it wasn't. It was Jonas's house so he got up, opening the front door to the two detectives from the briefing in the village hall. When he showed them into the kitchen Fletcher had disappeared. You'd think he would have stayed, a gleeful witness to the squatter bust, a finger-pointing ‘fuck you Mortensen, get thee gone'.

But the way they scrutinised him as they sat down, before they spoke. They were the Lacey cops, after all, they were here about her, nothing else. He had known as soon as he opened the door.

 

The sad-eyed detective told him three copies of a pornographic magazine called
Barely Legal
had been found in a locked desk drawer in the office where Jonas did administration for The Hub.

A phone number was written on one of the covers, which they had called. It turned out to be an outdoor activity centre in north Wales called
Black Raven Adventures
. A booking had been made by Jonas Mortensen for the weekend of October 25th. The centre hadn't spoken to anyone else from The Hub and the presumption could only be,
don't you agree, Mr
Mortensen
? that he had written the phone number himself and the magazines were his.

Jonas answered. The detectives looked at him the same way he'd been looked at in Bergen years back, a shifting mix of suspicion, pity and contempt. He wondered if it was something they practised in the bathroom mirror, channelling all those American cop shows.

He wasn't a suspect, they stressed. It was unnecessary to take him to the police station. Too many media.
Like
Doberman dogs
, said Sad Eyes.
Chasing bones
.
We try to
be discreet
.

But when Jonas let them out he saw Gladstone emerge from his café across the street. He stared at the two detectives as they got in their car then back at Jonas, who waved a hello he hoped wasn't too friendly,
exaggerated
, because that wouldn't be normal at all.

* * *

Eggers was four coffees down. Wired. Full of the same speculation and bullshit as the day before. He babbled about motives, suspects and then, later on, discovered the word
perpetrators, they're always using it
in those Scandy crime dramas, you should know about them,
Jonas.
He kept repeating it,
perpetrator
, savouring the sound as he libelled a range of people whose possible guilt was shaped by how much and for how long Eggers had disliked them.

No sign of Jonas on that list. He wondered how long it would take for word to get round.

‘I knew this day would come,' Eggers insisted.

‘Did you really?'

‘Did you see the reconstruction on the telly?'

‘What reconstruction?'

‘Lacey. Her last movements.'

‘I don't have a TV.'

‘There's darkness in the best of places and the best of places have the worst of shadows.'

‘Where did you read that?'

‘I didn't. I made it up.'

‘Really?'

‘Nah.'

And on and on with the speculation. He only shut up when the jack hammer was going.

‘Nowhere is innocent,' he stated in the van at lunchtime.

‘Shut up, for Christ's sake!'

‘Telling you.'

But Eggers seemed genuinely affected. Didn't even open the laptop and watch the usual lunchtime show. Just picked at his tuna and mayo sandwich and stared at the passing traffic.

‘It's happened before, you know.'

‘Here we go again.'

‘It has!'

Jonas left him to it. The obsession was typical Eggers. Here was an all-purpose addict of roving compulsions. Alongside the booze and the porn were the food fads. Like the pickled eggs a couple of years back, so strange that Jonas gave it an historical title: the Time of the Eggs. Every day for weeks they had to stop at a chip shop for a pickled egg. Eggers only weaned himself off with mini pork pies and yes, Jonas, they have to be
mini
. The Lacey mania would go on and on until Jonas seriously considered ending it with a clatter of the tar shovel.

Instead of murder he fired up the jack hammer. No ear protectors. Pounding his thoughts to dust: Eggers; the detectives and the magazines; the stop-motion memories of Mary at the gig; Fletcher's grin. But Eggers sought him out. When he switched off to a startling quiet there he was, hurrying towards him and waving a mobile which Jonas saw was his own.

‘I answered your phone. It was Mark and I figured Mark from The Hub and he might have some info.'

‘Does he?'

‘Yeah.'

‘What is it?'

‘We have to get back.'

‘What for?'

‘What's with the demon hammering, you on commission?'

 

Twenty, thirty cars crammed into the village hall car park. Eggers pulled up beside a Sky TV van. He lit a cigarette, settled the shades and swaggered towards the hall, Eastwood in a high-vis jerkin.

Jonas watched him go. He leaned against the van and thought about the magazines and who might know. A paranoia flash saw it happen, the TV crew by the door swinging the camera his way, the microphone in his face and
what do you have to say to these allegations
?

Inside, the hall was sweltering, much more male than the police briefing two days ago. He felt it, an excitement, all the more obvious for the attempts to hide it behind over-played frowns.

People remembered the Viking with the drinks tray. Some nodded, some looked away and some stared, as if daring him to say something. Jonas thought about the guy in Vigeland Park, Oslo, who said he recognised him from the front page of
Verdens Gang,
then punched him in the face.

So let benevolence and camaraderie light the sweaty face but hit the dimmer switch, keep the mouth shut. Jonas smiled a small smile he hoped was low-key but suddenly worried was too enigmatic. Or too jovial? Or just really irritating? He decided to stop smiling.

‘Jonas!'

He flinched at the tap on his shoulder. Mark. Electric-pink Bermuda shorts and an anxious babble.

‘They want me to speak. I'm a
community leader
, apparently. The police want to stick with specialist search teams but they want to broaden it. I don't agree, what do you think, the police know what they're doing, don't they?'

Gone before Jonas could reply. He watched Mark climb the stairs to the stage, wondering why he chose
those shorts
.

 

The same table had been set up on stage. Mark was sitting alongside several other local luminaries: district councillor Bacon; the chairman of the parish council; the high school headmaster; the chair of the Rotary Club... A consensus would have taken a minute but they each got three,
the community should organise a parallel search… the police
aren't making use of local knowledge and almost five
days have passed… why are they still focusing on the
park..?

And then Mark. He gulped. He was bold. He made the absent counter-argument,
the police were the experts
... they know their job... do we want to risk hampering
the investigation
?

But as the disquiet rose, the more beet-faced Mark bumbled on. His voice took on a wavering shrillness and Jonas willed him to shut up and sit
down
. He reminded him of those out of place teachers back in Bergen. No gravitas. The kids were merciless, like the crowd in the hall. Jonas picked out an underlying edge to the hostility, the same he had felt in Gladstone's look when the detectives left End Point that morning, an as yet unstated suspicion directed at someone who works with children and hasn't a child just gone missing?

Councillor Bacon brought the judo chop. The octogenarian Cabinet Member for Communities, ten times elected and a man of unswerving patrician certainty, silenced Mark with one line.

‘As elected district councillor, I am the authority, Mr Stephens, and I call for a show of hands.'

‘No' was called first. Mark's arm went up, along with a dozen others. The mutters rose, people turning to see who'd voted no. Some arms came down but Mark seemed to enter a state of stasis. His arm stayed up, palm out like a fascist salute, fingers strangely waggling.

Jonas couldn't help it. He watched his own arm rise up. Instinctive, an eccentric reaction from an eccentric man. Mark and Old Sam knew he was like this, Eggers too but Eggers had caught his eye and looked genuinely appalled. Jonas lowered his arm, down into the murmurs.

‘Yes' won in a landslide.

Councillor Bacon went full Churchill.
Time is of the
essence... community frustration will become community determination
… The TV crew arranged people behind him, kids and adults, older people, the visual will of the community reflected in the councillor's shiny bald head.

 

Suck it up
. That's what the kids in The Hub said when someone screwed up. That's what Lacey would say.
Suck it up, Mr
M
, he could hear her, if only he could hear her now. So Jonas could do nothing but suffer the stabbing looks on his treacherous back as he headed to the toilet to splash cold water on his face that was scarlet for a reason and everyone surely knew why.

He crossed to the urinals and chose the one furthest from the door, wondering if most men would do the same, even if no one was standing at any other. He directed his piss onto the blue disinfectant cube, which set him thinking about how long it would take to dissolve.

Imagine it was your job, Lacey, that you're a boffin working for Unilever? Would you wake at night, heart-sick at the degeneration of your cancer-curing idealism? Or would you be excited by building the ultimate, long-lasting disinfectant cube? And why blue or yellow? What's the reason, Lacey? Why, in all the urinals of all the world, are they only blue or yellow?

Lacey had started laughing now, a great sense of humour that girl. Jonas watched her laughing until she cried, he'd seen her cry a few times but that's what hugs were for. He hoped she wasn't disappointed with him. The no vote meant nothing. Don't read anything into it.

The door banged. He turned to two men, one he didn't recognise but the other he did.

Psycho Dave from the
Jonsok
party. ‘Well, look who we've got here, Dr No himself.'

The other man laughed.

‘Heard the police said a little hello.'

Despite the sense of threat, the words were actually a relief. The visit from the detectives was known about but not the reason, yet. On the outrage spectrum Dr No was infinitely better than something magazine-associated like
look who we've got here,
Mr Paedo himself
.

Jonas walked to the hand dryer and Dave stepped in front it. He turned to the paper towels but the unknown man moved towards him. He braced himself and Munich flashed, the three skinheads who jumped Kiev Dimitri when he went to the bar in Laimer's beer garden. Dimi was big. He'd taken out two by the time Jonas reached him, just in time to get his nose burst.

Then the door opened again and there was Eggers.
Let it go,
lads
and the two men backed off.