A Ghost in the Machine Read online

  “Pretty girl,” said Judith, grasping the nettle. She sounded detached, slightly amused, as if talking about an attractive child. “Clever too.” Her magnanimity knew no bounds. “Mallory said she was at the LSE.”

  “That’s right. She was telling me about it at the funeral. Sounds a bit of a bear pit.”

  “I’ve no doubt she’ll cope. When you’re that young everything’s a challenge.”

  Now the years between the girl and herself and Ashley yawned. The girl was half their age. I should have more faith, thought Judith. She smiled across at him and struggled to believe herself truly loved.

  Ashley said, “You still haven’t told me how your meeting went the other night.”

  “Meeting?” Judith frowned, repeating the word with vague puzzlement as if she had forgotten its meaning.

  “Peacock Hotel. New client. Surgical instruments.”

  “Oh, that. Nothing to tell really.”

  Nothing to tell? Only that it had been the most disagreeable experience of her entire life and was still fresh and foul and hot in her memory. Only that she had spent hours afterwards soaking and scrubbing herself in a scented bath and still felt filthy when she slipped into bed beside Ashley. Inevitably her recollection of the experience would fade but Judith knew she would never forget entirely. How did you scour the inside of your head?

  He had seemed pleasant enough—a stout, middle-aged man with a stiff little grey moustache and rather smeary half-moon spectacles. His suit, brown pinstripe worn with a pink shirt, was too tight. He was sitting at a banquette in front of a tankard of beer, next to which lay his wallet. After they had shaken hands he stood up and pulled the table out. When she squeezed past him and sat down he pushed it back, which left Judith wedged into a corner. She opened her briefcase.

  “So, Mr. Paulson—”

  “Polson. With an O.” He exaggerated his wet, red mouth into the sound, then inserted his little finger in and ran the tip around his lips gradually widening the opening.

  “Remind you of anything?”

  “I’m sorry—I don’t—”

  “Just my bit of fun. What’ve you got for me then?”

  Judith produced a folder and handed him a four-page glossy brochure describing her services. He glanced down and handed it back, moving unnecessarily closer to do so.

  He said, “The photo doesn’t do you justice.”

  “So how do you think I can help, Mr. Polson?” Judith made her voice very firm and brisk. “Do you have an accountant at present?”

  “I do.” He was staring at the opening of her shirt.

  “May I ask why you’re thinking of changing?”

  “I’m not thinking of changing.”

  “Then I don’t quite see what I can do for you.” Judith spoke tersely. She had left Ashley feeling not at all well and driven ten miles for this meeting. She put the material back in her case and snapped it smartly shut.

  “I do,” said Mr. Polson. He opened the wallet and handed it over. “Try one of these for size.”

  Judith reached out without thinking. She saw neat rows of condoms. There must have been thirty…forty perhaps. Not a very pleasant experience but hardly likely to leave one poleaxed. She looked at them long enough to show her indifference, then handed the wallet back.

  “I see you’re an optimist, Mr. Polson.” Then, feeling the first stirrings of anger at the insult she added: “Try looking in the mirror sometime.”

  A spasm twisted his mouth. Immediately Judith was sorry and not just because of the deliberate wounding. Apprehension was present too. His face had darkened, becoming suffused with blood. Judith looked about her.

  The room was very large and, at 6:30 in the evening, sparsely occupied. Half a dozen dark-suited men were grouped around a table stacked with glasses at the far end. They huddled, murmuring, occasionally throwing their heads back with harsh guffaws of laughter. Two youngish women were on bar stools chatting to the barman. And there were two or three scattered couples, also engrossed in conversation.

  Judith was trapped. Polson blocked one side, the angle of the banquette as it turned a corner blocked the other. She pushed slightly at the table then realised his metal documents case was jammed firmly against it. He closed the gap between them. Pressed his leg against her own. Breathed his plaguey breath into her face. Poured a stream of filth into her ear.

  Gagging for it she was he knew he could tell her name was a byword a byword open up for anybody thought he was ugly? he wasn’t ugly down there down there where it mattered they were all the same down there they could go upstairs he’d got this film get her going five of them five and this tart thirteen she said what? thirteen? knew it all couldn’t wait got on this bloke’s shoulders then all the others queued up acting crying she was good at that acting crying this bloke he said pretend it’s a lollipop, laugh. Then he put his…

  Afterwards Judith could never understand why she just sat there unable to move. Embarrassment didn’t come into it. It was as if the area between and around them was as solid and impenetrable as thick ribbed ice. His hand, which had been resting on her knee, slipped over to lie on the inside of her thigh. The thumb separated itself, pointing upwards.

  Then Judith noticed someone making their way over the acres of carpet in their direction. She caught the man’s gaze, locked her own into it lest he should walk on by, then glanced despairingly sideways at her tormentor.

  Polson saw what was coming. He stood up, collected his case and said loudly, “Look forward to doing business with you then. Until next week?”

  As he strode off Judith closed her eyes. She was conscious of the second man sitting down but couldn’t look at him. She sat there as seconds and then minutes dragged past. The frozen skin on her face began to soften. She became conscious of her heartbeat and that tears were rolling down her cheeks. The man went away, then came back with a large brandy.

  “Drink this.” He put her hands around the bowl. “Come on, Mrs. Parnell.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You must. One swallow at a time.” Judith drank, spluttered. Drank some more. “Good. You know, you should go to the police about this.”

  The thought of it! The thought of describing him, having to repeat what he had said perhaps over and over again. Nausea swept over Judith. Brandy mixed with bile filled her mouth.

  “Excuse me a moment.” He got up. “I’ll get some water.”

  “I must go.”

  “No – that’s just what you mustn’t do. And you certainly can’t drive.”

  “All right.”

  She gave in straight away even while acknowledging how spineless this was. How utterly pathetic. Yet the relief was overwhelming. She could just sit here, quiet and small and, above all, safe. Eventually she would stop feeling faint, the mortified muscles in her legs would flex into life and she would be able to stand upright and make her way to the door. How wise and kind this man was. This stranger she had never seen before and yet who, unaccountably, knew her name.

  3

  As now even Sunday had a late afternoon rush hour, Kate’s plan was to leave Appleby House about midday to avoid the weekenders streaming back to their city homes. She put several boxes of lovely garden vegetables in the boot of the Golf, planning to drive home via Tesco where she could fill up with diesel.

  Polly, of a sudden bored to tears with rural life, went back with her mother, spending the whole journey in bad-tempered silence. Unable to banish from her mind the infuriating contretemps at Dennis’s house she was sure the village had, by now, received a well-embroidered account of the situation. Personally Polly didn’t give a stuff about this but hated the idea of being at a disadvantage with Dennis. Of course, there was always the slight chance that the woman with the corned beef complexion hadn’t told him.

  It had been a mistake, though, casually wandering round to his place like that. Next time, say in a week – she daren’t leave it much longer – she would make a proper appointment And borrow something boringly re
spectable to wear. Polly saw herself in a dark, sober and creakingly dull ensemble asking Dennis’s advice on her sudden windfall and laughing up her sleeve.

  The other reason for her sulks was the divine Ashley. Far from being able to follow up their first meeting Polly had been thwarted at every turn. She had not even managed a casual word over the garden gate. Discovering from Kate that his wife worked from home was quite a blow. On the other hand, Polly reasoned, Judith must leave the house sometimes, if only to shop and go to the post. Not a bit of it. In two whole days Judith did not budge. Then Polly saw her handing a stack of letters over to the postman. A request to her mother that the Parnells be asked over for a drink as they were all going to be neighbours now met with a very sharp response.

  Kate had asked Benny also to come to London and stay a while. But Benny refused and could not be persuaded. What about Croydon? Someone would feed the animal, certainly. But how cruel to abandon him so soon after his dear mistress had also unaccountably vanished. Plus there was the threat of burglars. An unoccupied house was an open invitation to the criminal element. Thieves could break in and steal Carey’s lovely things.

  And so, when Kate and Polly drove away, Benny was left at the tall iron gate calling, “Goodbye,” and fluttering her handkerchief. Squinting and blinking through her pebbly glasses she waved and waved until the dark blue car was out of sight. Then hesitated, feeling suddenly bereft.

  She noticed Judith coming out of her back door and called, “Cooeee!”

  When Judith nodded back Benny started to make her way across the lane for a few words, putting off the moment when she had to go back indoors. But by the time she had reached the opposite fence Judith had disappeared so Benny had little choice but to retrace her steps. Once back inside she drifted into the vast, shabby kitchen and stood in the centre vaguely looking round.

  For the first time that she could ever remember she was quite by herself in Appleby House. A terrible quietness seemed to have crept inside. Now, instead of feeling comfortably familiar, it felt strangely cold and full of nothing to do.

  Benny began to feel nervous. The building was very large and, it seemed to her, very detached. On its far right was the fifteenth-century church of St. Anselm’s, separated from the house by a large graveyard. Roughly half of the three-acre apple orchard curved around the other side. The remainder stretched right away behind the walled garden at the back. In fact you could truthfully say, and Benny murmured as much to herself aloud, that the place was pretty well cut off. Of course there was a telephone, but not in every room. And what if someone did break in and she couldn’t get to it in time?

  Benny stood motionless, listening. Gradually she became aware that the surrounding silence, with which she had previously always been at ease, was not really silence at all. For instance, there were the rooks in the elm trees flanking the church walk, an unmusical background to all her waking hours. She heard them now as if for the first time. Carey had told her that a gathering would be called “a parliament of rooks.” Considering the ugly sounds they made, forever scrawking and scraping, it seemed entirely appropriate.

  Benny recalled once, after she had put some flowers on a grave, stepping back on to a dead one. It had given softly beneath her foot, a splodge of stiff feathers, dark red gluey stuff and heaving white worms. Benny had broken into a cold sweat of repulsion. She felt it again now: a creeping, nauseous chill.

  A cup of tea was the thing. Though she was careful – unnecessarily now, for Carey was no longer ill upstairs – each of Benny’s movements seemed to give rise to an astonishing amount of noise. Water gushed from the heavy brass tap, china cup and saucer clattered against each other in her hand. Then the elderly fridge, tall, dirty cream with a rusting chrome handle, suddenly rumbaed into vibrating life. Shudder and shake it went. Shudder and shake.

  Benny sat down at the kitchen table. She put the radio on, then immediately switched it off, realising that if anyone did approach the house, she would not be able to hear them. Above her a wooden airer, winched up to the ceiling and draped with towels, creaked slightly. Now that was odd, thought Benny, tipping back her head and staring upwards fearfully. Why on earth should it be moving? There were no windows open. No draught. Yet it definitely was. Almost swaying actually…

  Carey had said once that Benny would be lost without something to worry about. Certainly Benny could never remember a time when she had not been struggling to keep her head above a positive ocean of free-floating anxiety. The words “what if?” ruled her life. She could not help investing the most harmless, innocent situations with lurking terror. And any fleeting moment of happiness would immediately be tarnished by a deep apprehension as to what the next might reveal.

  No one, Benny least of all, could understand why this was so. According to the psychology textbooks, she should be as carefree as a bird. A wanted child, she had been lovingly if unimaginatively brought up by stolid, kindly parents. Shy, in-curious and outwardly placid, she went to school and did her homework, played tennis sometimes – though she always preferred reading to games – and made a few humdrum friends in a humdrum sort of way.

  As a teenager she had occasionally gone to local dances where her earnest, bumpy moon face and thin straggles of mousy hair (after a severe attack of ringworm it had never grown properly again) attracted little attention. She was hardly ever asked to dance and, in any case, always left well before the end to make sure of getting home safely. Even so, the fear was always with her. Always. What if…?

  Once she had got off the school bus, convinced her home was on fire. She tried to walk normally down the road but was unable to stop breaking into a run. She raced along, heart thumping, satchel banging into the small of her back, weeping frightened tears. She saw the great orange crackling framework of the house, sagging and swaying on the point of collapse. Firemen, shouting urgently, ran across the pavement, dragging hoses, and vanished into billowing smoke. A woman was screaming. So vivid was this hellish premonition that, hurtling round the corner of Laburnum Crescent, Benny stopped dead, blinking in disbelief at the serene row of unscorched semis dreaming away in the afternoon sun.

  A sudden shriek. Lost in recollection Benny shrieked as well, springing up, her chair falling backwards. But it was only the kettle. She righted the chair and went to make her drink, glad there was no one present to witness such foolishness. She could get another kettle now. A nice silent one that you could plug in. Carey had insisted on the whistler since Benny had let an older kettle boil so dry the bottom had fallen out.

  Sitting down and sipping Earl Grey, Benny made an effort to think about supper. Mallory, who had foreseen a slide into sorrowful inertia once his aunt’s companion found herself alone, had urged her to eat properly. And Kate had stocked up at the supermarket before leaving so there was plenty of stuff in the freezer. And a nice, fresh lemon sole for tonight.

  Benny had almost calmed down when she heard the click of the gate. She sat up sharply, alert and straight-backed. Who could it be? Not the postman on a Sunday. Footsteps rang out on the old brick path. So, no attempt at concealment. That was encouraging. Benny hurried over to the window and scrambled up to sit on the edge of the old stone sink. She twisted round, leaned sideways and pressed her plump, cushiony cheek hard against the glass lozenges. At this angle, with one eye closed and the other squinting, it was just possible to make out, through the openwork trellis of the porch, who the visitor might be.

  It was a friend. Probably her closest and dearest friend now that Carey had gone. Comforted, a little excited even, Benny hurried to open the door.

  The village of Forbes Abbot had long ago given up trying to agree on what exactly went on between dippy old Miss Frayle and the outwardly respectable Dennis Brinkley. Frankly unable to imagine any sort of sexual liaison, it was at a loss to understand what else they could possibly be up to. So it simply labelled the dry and dusty duo “a likely pair” and let them get on with it. This the couple did with dignified reticence, hardly even
aware they were the subject of speculation: Benny because it would never have occurred to her that she was clever or attractive enough to be talked about; Dennis because he always assumed his complete lack of interest in the lives of his neighbours would naturally be reciprocated.

  Forbes Abbot had not always been so sanguine. Admitted, Benny Frayle had been a write-off virtually from day one as far as making any sensible contribution to village life was concerned. But there had been high hopes of Dennis. It was quickly discovered that he was a professional man, partner in a successful consultancy and also the owner of a large, if strangely transformed property at the posh end of the village. As such he could have taken his place in the community and been well respected. The Parish Council would have welcomed him with open arms; ditto the Homemade Wine Club. However, it didn’t take Forbes Abbot long to decide that first appearances could be very deceptive and that there was rather more to the newcomer than met the eye.

  First, though he was as attractive as any middle-aged man shut in an office all day handling other people’s money had any right to be, he remained unmarried. Then there was the absence of visitors, of either sex, to the house. And everyone knew what the word “loner” stood for. But what caused the most unease throughout the local rank and file was Dennis Brinkley’s hobby.

  That every man should have one was agreed. It kept them out of mischief and from under their wives’ feet. A nice bit of DIY, gardening, bowls or snooker, mysterious activities in the potting shed – fine. Killing machines – something else.

  Not that killing per se was frowned on. This was the country, after all. Several families in the village and surrounding farms had a properly licensed shotgun, as many a rabbit or pheasant had discovered to their cost. One or two people who were more serious about the sport were members of a gun club at Causton and thought fine fellows for it. Boys will be boys, after all.