Ghosts Know (29 page)

The babble of the audience sinks to a mumble and yields to a silence strewn with a few coughs as the curtains part to let out a man in an evening suit. He waits for a shrill hacking bout to subside and pats a small cough of his own before saying “Ladies and gentlemen, we are privileged to have with us tonight the return to Manchester of one of the world’s leading psychics. Last time we were lucky enough to be graced with his much sought-after performance he had so many messages he didn’t have time to deliver them all. Tonight he hopes to make amends if anyone was disappointed. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for the man who’s always sensitive on your behalf—Frank Jasper.”

I have to join in, both as a reason to unclench my fists and so as not to seem different from everyone around me. The applause, though not mine, swells as the curtains glide all the way open to reveal Jasper, who’s spotlit from above as though heaven is beaming on him. He’s as bronzed as ever, which has to betray a few sessions under a lamp, and dressed in white, even his shoes. At that distance I can’t tell whether his collarless shirt bears a slogan. As he advances to the edge of the bare stage he draws the spotlight with him. “Welcome, all my friends,” he says. “All of you I’ve met and all the ones I’ve still to meet. All the ones I’m seeing now and all of them I will.”

He’s worse than ever. My nails scrape his slippery face as I grip the programme with both hands so as not to clench my fists too visibly. For once in a theatre I’m glad to be sitting behind someone broad and tall, a woman whose extravagantly wide coiffure adds to her usefulness. I’m able to hide most of my face except for my right eye from Jasper as he says “I guess I can predict a full evening for us. There are a whole lot of people here you can’t see. There are people who’ve come back because they need to speak to us.”

I just manage not to grin—to bare my teeth, rather. He’s telling the truth for once, and that’s conclusive. I’ve come back to raise my voice, but I mustn’t be too quick; I need to wait for whatever moment will let me expose his tricks so thoroughly that no one can be fooled by them in future. I clamp my jaws shut, sending an ache up my left cheek to the eye-sized hole, while Jasper declares “I’m hearing from somebody, only maybe who they’re here for won’t want to believe they are.”

That’s devious even for him, and I’d call it offensive as well. As I stare at the smooth cartoon he seems to have become he says “I’m getting they’ve only recently passed. Whoever knew them thinks they went too soon.”

How can his trickery fail to be obvious to everyone? Because they want to be deceived and would never admit it—that’s his guarantee of success. I’m dismayed to glimpse movements in the auditorium, people nodding their heads in agreement with Jasper or in the hope that he means them. “I’m hearing C,” he says, and when nobody lays claim to it “No, it’s more like a T. When they were in this world they liked to help people.”

I’ve begun to wonder how blatant he intends to be. Has he developed such a contempt for his victims that he’s no longer bothering with any kind of subtlety? I’m tempted to set my trap at once—to say he’s in touch with someone I recognise. I’ve practiced altering my voice, and I’m sure he won’t know me until it’s too late. I want to see through more of his performance first, and I succeed in keeping silent while training my eye on the unnaturally lit artificially coloured cartoon of him. As he’s answered by a murmur that he either can’t locate or finds insufficient Jasper says “Wait, I’m hearing more. They were involved with a lot of people, not just the ones they knew. Was that their job?”

Can anybody really think he’s after confirmation rather than a clue? His gaze ranges about the audience and, before I’m ready for it, passes over me. I can’t help holding my breath as an aid to sitting absolutely still. By the time his attention drifts back to the front stalls, my jaws and the left side of my face have begun to throb. That gives me more rage to save up, but I manage to relax my jaw a fraction as Jasper says “It’s not an unusual name, is it? I’m sure I’m hearing a t or a c if I’m not getting both.”

“Tanya Cristobel.” I have to grind my teeth so as not to shout this while Jasper sends his eager gaze around the auditorium. When it fails to prompt any response he says “They don’t want you to be shy. Maybe they always wanted to help people to express themselves. They couldn’t be a teacher.”

His tone is just ambiguous enough to let this be taken as a question. It has no more depth than the way he looks to my eye, and I’m struggling not to be provoked to speak when someone near the middle of the theatre says almost inaudibly “They couldn’t, no.”

“Lady in the green dress. I’m sorry, I don’t have your name.”

Now she’s got her voice out she tries to raise it. “Charmaine.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if Jasper claimed this was the name he was reaching for, but he says “Didn’t they call you Charming Charmaine?”

He’ll be ready with a ruse if that proves to be untrue, but Charmaine rewards him with an embarrassed giggle. “She did sometimes.”

He’s learned the gender of the dead at last. “Okay, I’m hearing she passed before she had a chance to teach.”

“She did. She’d passed her exams and everything as well,” Charmaine says and, overcome by emotion, turns to her neighbour to mumble a name.

“I guess I’m hearing clearer now. Charity, is that what I’ve been getting?”

He’s profited from far too much of it, and I could also point out that everybody must have heard the name—and then I’m delighted to hear the woman say “She was called Charlotte.”

“Sure, that’s right. Didn’t your friends call you Charlie and Charmaine?”

Charmaine rewards this with a muffled sniff. “Some of them did.”

“Let me tell you that’s how she still thinks of you both, and she’ll be with you whenever you need her. And I wasn’t wrong to mention charity, was I? She had a lot.”

“She gave whatever she could.”

“That’s how I’m hearing it, she liked to be involved with them. Do you know what she’s saying she would love to see? You setting up some kind of Charlie and Charmaine fund for the cause you think she’d most want to support.”

“It ought to be you, Mr Jasper.”

“Call me Frank like all my friends do, and I want you to put money right out of your mind while you’re here. I didn’t travel all this way for your dough.”

I can’t help wishing he were wired up to a polygraph. The memories this rouses inflame my rage, and so does hearing Jasper say “Somebody else wants to be heard now. They’re younger than Charlie, and did they pass this year?”

He’s met by an uneasy silence in which any restlessness falls short of a nod. Perhaps his listeners are unsure what they’re being asked or afraid to hope too much, but I’m entirely sure of him. He’s playing his most cynical trick to fasten on their emotions—pretending he’s been contacted by a child. “There’s a B with a message for a parent,” he says. “Who’s that who’s here?”

Is this my cue? Can I really use the death of someone’s child for my own purposes? That’s what Jasper’s doing, after all. In that case I could be said to be as bad as he is, and I haven’t opened my mouth when he says “I’m just about certain I’m hearing B. Is there a B here who’s recently said goodbye to a child?”

I’m waiting for him to decide he heard a different letter, but as he makes to speak again a woman gasps near the front of the auditorium. “It isn’t Kylie, is it, Mr Jasper? Bob couldn’t come this time.”

I drop my programme, not just because my fists have twitched open but as an excuse to crouch out of sight. I’d be ashamed if Kylie’s mother realised I was here or why. Remembering all that she’s suffered has confronted me with what I planned to do tonight—to rob her and people like her of perhaps the only belief that sustains them. Whatever my view of it, destroying it would be no better than vindictive, and my rage goes out like a fire that has been swamped with water. “It isn’t, Margaret,” Jasper is saying. “I’d know her. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Margaret Goodchild, Kylie Goodchild’s mother.”

This earns a burst of applause as well as a sympathetic murmur, and Margaret seems not to know whether to stand up. “Mr Jasper brought our Kylie back to us at her funeral,” she says in an uncontrolled voice.

I won’t let this provoke me. At least she hasn’t mentioned how he implicated me. I rise from my seat in as much of a crouch as I’m able to maintain and set about muttering apologies all the way along the row. Some of the people who let me pass appear to think I’m too moved to stay, while others frown at my behaviour. No doubt I resemble a child who’s been called up to the stage at a show, but I feel more like a culprit desperate to escape notice. I don’t know if Jasper has recognised me, since the left side of my face is towards the stage. Perhaps my eye-patch renders me unidentifiable. Surely if he knew me he wouldn’t dare to say. “Maybe whoever I’m hearing from is telling those they’ve left behind to be happy,” he suggests. “Maybe that’s the be, but I’m sure there’s a child.”

As I lurch into the aisle his words almost goad me into confronting him. I’m forcing myself to head for the lobby when a man says gruffly “Our Davina was stung by a bee once in the pram. We reckoned that was why she ended up so weak.”

“Davina,” Jasper says as if someone other than the member of the audience has told him. “That’s the name, of course it is. Didn’t you call her your little princess?”

Somebody—the father, I assume—responds with a sob. “She’s here with you,” Jasper says, “and she wants you to know—”

I would rather not hear. I hurry to the doors, which thud shut behind me like a lid, cutting off Jasper’s routine. Usherettes and other personnel glance or stare at me as I cross the foyer, but I won’t react; I just want to be out of the Palace, beyond any risk of causing a scene or worse. Even the hot still night feels like a relief. I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand while I stare at the gap in the wall of the bridge, leading to the steps down to the canal. I’m about to move onwards when the gap seems to jerk into focus, almost regaining perspective. At last I’ve realised what I heard.

“It’s Derry here again, your lunchtime chum. Today’s Cancel A
Crime Day, so let’s be a bit serious. I’m sure all of us mums and dads ought to be concerned with crime, and I expect the rest of you are too, specially all you mature listeners. Let’s see how many of us can make a difference for everyone today. Are the lines buzzing yet, Patsy?”

“We’ve a few callers waiting.”

“Slap my wrist and call me wicked. I’ll bet the jury would let you off for provocation. You don’t like anyone calling you Patsy, do you? And nobody who rings my show today is going to be one. So don’t get in a paddy, Patty. Man the switchboard or I should say girl it if you’ll let me, and let’s be hearing from our pals.”

The one point worth disentangling from this rigmarole is that it must be Christine’s day off, unless she has found another job. She’s one problem I won’t have to solve, supposing that she would have tried to hinder what I need to do. The radio is turned up all the way, and I can hear every word without straining my ears, despite the shouts and metal uproar in the workshop and the traffic noise out here on the road. There’s nowhere to hide unless I move out of earshot of the workshop—the nearest cover is a phone box at least a hundred yards away—and so I’ll have to take the risk.

As I produce my mobile a speeding lorry pants hot oily fumes into my face, reminding me that I can’t even move away from the road. The fumes that feel like the noon heat rendered thicker and more stagnant are one reason I wipe my forehead while I wait for my call to be answered. By no means immediately a voice says “The Derek Dennison Deal. Who’s calling, please?”

It isn’t Patty, who must be overseeing the calls, but of course it isn’t Christine either. “Say Graham from the centre,” I tell her.

“From the centre of Manchester.” As I take her to be typing the details on Dennison’s screen she says “From the centre of Manchester.”

I have to resist thinking I’ve found a parrot to go with my patch. “Where else,” I confine myself to saying.

“And what point would you like to make, Graham?”

I stare towards the garage, which consists largely of an outsize shed full of cars and parts of cars. However many mechanics are at work in there, they aren’t visible from my section of the uneven flagstoned pavement. To my eye the building looks even less substantial than the rest of the perspectiveless road bordered by large old houses split into flats, some with shops on the ground floor. I could imagine the garage as not much more than a cardboard replica, capable of being razed by a well-chosen blow. I’m here to deliver one and, I very much hope, to expose a fake at last. “I’d like to help clear up a crime,” I say not too loud.

“Could you speak up a little? I’m not quite getting you.”

I turn my back on the garage before saying “To clear up a crime.”

“That’s good, Graham. Can you tell me a bit more about it?”

“I don’t know if I can say it twice.” I’m just wary of losing my chance. “I’ve had to get ready to say it at all,” I tell her, which is true enough.

“Can you hold on, please? I’ll have to speak to the producer.”

There’s some mumbling beyond a hand planted over the mouthpiece, and then a voice I recognise takes over. “What’s it about, please?”

Patty sounds no more amiable than she did with Dennison. “About a crime,” I say, having glanced back at the garage.

“I gathered that. What are you asking to do?”

“To put a few details out on the air. I think they might help to get it solved.” Patty’s silence prompts me to add “They might help your audience figures as well.”

At once I’m afraid I’ve said too much. Perhaps I’ve betrayed my identity, or suppose Dennison has antagonised her so badly that she’d rather not boost his ratings? As I search for some other way of persuading her to let me on the air she says “Have you got a radio on?”

“I haven’t, no.”

“All right, we’ll call you back.”

I could think she hasn’t looked into my intentions thoroughly enough. Perhaps that’s her way of taking a crafty revenge on Dennison. I keep my back to the garage while I make another call, which takes so long that I’m afraid of blocking one from Dennison’s team. At last I’m able to face the garage, where the radio is broadcasting an appeal to her neighbours by a woman whose house keeps being daubed with excreta and racist graffiti. Above the clatter of a drill in the garage a man shouts “If she doesn’t like it she should fuck off where she come from.”