A Ghost at the Door

  ‘What’s the matter, Jem?’ he asked, impatient to get on.

  ‘I’m not sure. It’s nothing, but . . . Who put the flowers there, Harry? And that silly plastic toy?’

  They found the caretaker in his hideaway at the back of the cemetery, beneath a rush awning that stuck out from the front of a ramshackle work shed. He was sitting on a battered chair beside an equally forlorn table, cracking pistachios between his teeth and staring out towards the distant sea.

  ‘Sighnomi – excuse me,’ Jemma began, leaning on more of her youthful Greek.

  The old man smiled in encouragement and pulled himself, willing but wearily, from his chair.

  ‘The flowers – Louloudia. Who put them on the grave?’

  The old man tapped his chest. ‘Me,’ he replied, revealing broken English.

  ‘But why?’

  He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together in the universal language of money.

  ‘You want paying?’ Jemma asked, taken aback but nevertheless reaching into her bag.

  ‘No! No!’ the caretaker insisted, his cracked face suddenly flushed with insult. ‘Money, it come by post. Every year.’

  ‘But who? Who sends it?’

  The old man shrugged his shoulders. ‘Three hundred fifty euro. Every year. In letter.’

  ‘From where?’

  The old Greek struggled and spread his hands in a gesture of impotence.

  Harry jumped in. ‘These letters. Do you still have them?’

  The caretaker shook his head once more.

  ‘Then the toy, in the red shirt,’ Harry said, trying to draw its design on his own chest, ‘where did that come from?’

  But the old man seemed bemused.

  ‘The red shirt!’ Harry said, more forcefully, as if raising his voice would help scatter the old man’s confusion.

  The Greek gazed from Harry to Jemma, then back again. Their misery was unmistakable. Yet suddenly his face burst into a broad smile. He reached into his pocket and brought out his phone. He called someone, gabbled a few words, placed a gnarled finger on the button to activate the speakerphone, and with an expression of pride held it out towards Harry. A woman’s voice came from the phone, in accented but excellent English.

  ‘Mr Jones, my name is Iro. I am Mr Kottikas’s granddaughter. How can we help?’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you, Iro,’ Harry said, nodding his thanks to the old man. ‘Your grandfather has been very kind but . . .’

  ‘I’m afraid his English is like a banker’s virtue, Mr Jones. Sadly unreliable.’

  ‘I’ve been visiting my father’s grave. There are fresh flowers on it. Your grandfather says someone sends him money every year for them. I’d very much like to know who.’

  ‘I’m sorry but we don’t know. It’s been going on ever since your father was buried. A note came asking for the grave to be tended and saying money would be sent every year. And so it has. Cash. But never any name. It surprised us, too.’

  ‘Then what about the plastic doll? Where did that come from?’

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Jones, while I speak with my grandfather.’

  A cascade of Greek followed before Iro returned her attention to Harry. ‘It seems the doll of which you speak was sent with last year’s money. In a small parcel.’

  ‘You must have some idea who sent it,’ Harry insisted, struggling to hide his exasperation.

  ‘I’m so very sorry but—’

  Suddenly the old man gave a cry and began wagging a finger. ‘Stop, stop! One . . . minute!’ he exclaimed before disappearing inside his patched-up shed. Moments later he returned, clutching a small cardboard box. He tipped its contents over the table. Screws, bolts and other fixings tumbled out, clattering onto the battered top. Then he handed the box to Harry. It was robustly constructed, ideal for storing old screws, and just big enough to hold a small plastic doll.

  There was nothing inside, no letter, no markings, but on the outside of the box, in carefully formed capital letters, was Mr Kottikas’s name and address. Two stamps were fixed to the parcel to cover postage. British stamps, franked and cancelled by the seal of a local postmaster. A seal that was smudged but still legible.

  As he read it Harry’s hand was shaking. ‘No, impossible. It can’t be,’ he whispered.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The Isle of Man. Part of Britain, but part not. An isolated and often storm-swept rock in the middle of the Irish Sea. There is a saying that on a clear day and from its highest point a man can see five kingdoms: the kingdoms of England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales – and God. A place of raw beauty, of moorland, of mountain, of uninhabited beaches where oyster catchers and seals keep a wary eye for intruders. Yet, despite its physical attractions, at least half of the inhabitants come to the island not for its views but because of its status as a tax hideaway, for the island is also a place of investment funds, offshore advisers and audacious accounting.

  ‘And where my parents lived when they first got married,’ Harry had explained to Jemma in a voice that kept stalling. ‘In Kirk Bride. Where the parcel was posted.’

  Kirk Bride was a hamlet on the northern tip of the island, away from the towns, set in rolling farmland that melded into a heather-covered coastline. They’d been there two days and had knocked on every door they could find. They had tea with the vicar, interrogated the local postmistress, who also ran the tearooms. ‘We get lots of tourists,’ the postmistress had explained, shrugging off any knowledge of the parcel that Harry waved at her. No one could help, which was perhaps not surprising, since Harry and Jemma had precious little idea of what they were looking for. Not a soul could remember tell of anyone called Jones who had lived in these parts, even after Harry had tracked down his parents’ entry in the church’s marriage register. Their spirits began to flag. This was the sad time of year with summer gone and the harvest in, after the tourists had fled and when doors were closed. Kirk Bride was battening down for the winter, which could be long in these parts.

  ‘Why did they choose this spot?’ Jemma asked, on their third morning when they had taken the road out to the lighthouse on the point. It was a clear, sharp morning with a testing breeze and a view that stretched across the sea to the Solway Firth and the distant purple-brown mounds of land that was Cumbria.

  ‘Money, I guess. This is bandit country, or used to be, and you know what my father was like. They moved to London when I came along.’

  ‘For you.’

  ‘For me? I hadn’t thought about it in that way. I’d assumed it was more for the buzz, the social life, Harrods. When they’d grown tired of being alone with themselves.’

  She remembered what McQuarrel had told her about Jessie: perhaps she’d had other needs, needs she would never satisfy here, on the empty heath.

  The breeze was stiffening, building white caps on the water, wrestling with the faded summer heather and gorse that had burst into brilliant yellow flower. Jemma retreated inside her coat.

  ‘I hate this bloody place,’ Harry muttered forlornly. ‘Come on, Jem, let’s go home.’ His words were filled with frustration and confusion, and more than a little anger.

  He took her hand and they turned. As they did so another couple came into view. The pair had parked their car a little way down the track, by the red-and-white-striped lighthouse, and it was evident they were taking the air rather than planning a long walk across the heath. The man was elderly, wrapped up inside an overcoat and muffler with a soft trilby pushed down on his head. He was bent into the breeze and leaning heavily on his walking stick. The woman at his side was much younger and had the practical appearance of a nurse. Harry guessed this was the daily outing for the old man, a gentle totter in the shelter of the lighthouse, a lungful of sea air and an eyeful of Scotland before the nurse returned him to his home and a blazing hearth. Their presence made Harry feel like an intruder; as the other couple drew close he took Jemma’s hand more firmly and began heading back. The old man’s stick tapped upon the ground, step after slow step
, his free hand stuffed inside his overcoat pocket for warmth and to stifle the palsied tremor that ran through it. Despite his affliction, as they passed, the man raised his hat in silent greeting.

  Harry stopped dead. The old man did the same.

  ‘I knew you’d find me. Eventually,’ he said. ‘What took you so long, son?’

  The two men sat on a bench in a nearby windbreak, with Jemma in the middle, separating them. The nurse was dismissed to the car. Harry hadn’t said a word. He sat with his head in his hands as though praying that his eyes were deceiving him.

  ‘Mr Maltravers-Jones? I’m Jemma,’ she said, deciding to break the tension.

  ‘I know,’ the old man said in a voice that came close to a wheeze. ‘Tallon told me.’

  ‘Forgive me for mentioning it but you’re supposed to be dead.’

  He nodded stiffly. ‘Soon will be.’ He tapped his chest, his breathlessness gave away the rest. ‘Let’s not hurry things, eh? And you can call me Johnnie.’ The eyes were red, hollow, told of some incurable exhaustion, yet still they managed a little jig of pleasure as they gazed at Jemma.

  ‘Silly question but . . .?’

  ‘What am I doing here?’ He pulled out a handkerchief to wipe a dribble of spittle from his lips. ‘I’m hiding, of course.’

  ‘From whom? The taxman?’

  Johnnie gave a dry laugh. ‘No. It’s never been about money.’

  Suddenly Harry twitched into life, turning on his father as though he’d been bitten. ‘It’s always been about money. It’s your life’s work!’

  The old man shook his head, didn’t try to match his son’s passion; perhaps he was no longer able. ‘No, never that. Money’s been more of a hobby. Some people collect stamps. I collected ideas. Gave them a little exercise.’

  ‘So why did you disappear? Lie to everyone?’

  ‘There were some very serious people who didn’t care for what I was doing. They intended to kill me. Just like they did with Ali.’

  Harry jumped to his feet. He was no longer able to control the storm of emotion welling inside. ‘I wish they . . .’ He didn’t finish the sentence. Not even he was sure of what he might have said.

  ‘If you sit down, son, I’ll try to explain.’

  Harry glared at his father in turmoil, the old resentment returned with all its fury, a scene that had been repeated many times but not for many years. Only reluctantly did he do as he was told.

  ‘Ali was my closest friend, almost a brother. A bloody Arab, of course. Called me a Son of a Britsch, but that was nothing to what I called him. Like all Arabs he enjoyed making money but he was also an idealist. Wanted peace for his homeland, a respite from all the killing. Pathetic, I know, but . . . a good man – yes, a very good man, was Ali. And a devoted friend. Shared what he had with us.’

  ‘The Aunt Emmas.’

  Johnnie nodded. ‘But I was his best friend, you see, the very best. Loved his ugly face, his terrible jokes.’ Johnnie paused, summoning memories. ‘It was just before our annual get-together. He called from Riyadh in a state of great excitement. Said he’d discovered something that might be the most important piece of information we’d ever had.’ He was staring at Harry, making sure he had his son’s attention.

  ‘He told me of a weekend he’d just spent with a Saudi prince, one of the lowlife types with sticky fingers. A man who loved to drink and to brag. Like all of us, eh, Jemma?’

  He squeezed her hand and smiled, enjoying a little moment of mischief. She nodded in gentle agreement. Then the moment was gone and he returned to his tale of the darker side.

  ‘One night the prince had finished with his whores and was off his head to the point of incoherence. Kept mumbling about an attack on the United States that was going to change the world. Something that was massive. And imminent. Ali thought it was no more than wild ramblings until in the morning the prince, now very sober, spent every hour shouting at his money men. Gambling everything he had. We’re not talking just millions, but hundreds of them. That’s when Ali knew he was serious. The prince was piling into gold and oil and defence stocks, getting out of things like the dollar, insurance. And airlines.’

  ‘When was this?’ Harry asked, his voice now cold.

  ‘Early September 2001.’

  ‘You can’t be serious. Nine-eleven?’ Harry gasped, incredulous.

  ‘Was it? Perhaps. We had no way of knowing. It was a few days before. We thought it was simply a massive raid on the markets, some sheiks consortium selling everything short. So Ali and I did the same.’

  ‘But how could the prince have known?’ Jemma broke in.

  ‘The nine-eleven hijackers,’ Harry whispered, seeing through fog. ‘Most of them were Saudis.’

  ‘We had no idea what we were getting into; we made a monumental screw-up,’ Johnnie continued, his breathing shallow, punctuating every thought. ‘You remember what it was like after the Twin Towers: they were days of chaos and conspiracy. And revenge. I was appalled to think I might have got myself involved in some way. So I made a mistake. A terrible mistake. I talked to someone with connections to the intelligence services about it. Should never have trusted him. Never.’

  ‘Why?’ Jemma asked

  ‘Because almost immediately afterwards the Saudi prince disappeared, not a trace. And within days Ali was murdered, very publicly, along with his family, as a warning.’

  ‘Who would do that?’

  ‘No idea. But you wouldn’t have to look far for suspects, not with all that blood lust and retribution in the air. Could the Americans have done something like that? Of course they could if they’d become convinced we were mixed up in it. And they never took much convincing, did they. Jump in, bang bang, mission accomplished. But for my money – and there’s still a deal of that’, he said, eyeing Harry with an expression that was a mixture of both rebuke and pride – ‘It was more likely some Middle Eastern government or a group of extremists who took fright. Some thing had gone wrong, the plan had leaked and we were a loose end that might lead right back to the source of it all. And whoever it was, they wouldn’t have thought twice. Thousands had already died in the Towers, hundreds of thousands were soon to follow in the war. What did a few more matter? Ali’s execution was a warning and I was next in line. So I started running.’

  ‘But it wasn’t just you,’ Jemma said. ‘What about the others? Finn, Susannah, McQuarrel? The bishop?’

  ‘I hadn’t mentioned any of them, hadn’t needed to. They were all fine, until Finn started digging around for material to put in one of his wretched books. Made himself a target. That’s why he tried to disappear.’

  ‘He didn’t do it too well.’

  ‘I did it better. Took myself off the list. Spread a surprisingly modest amount of money around a Greek port and arranged a convenient heart attack.’

  ‘Letting me think you were dead,’ Harry said.

  ‘Remember this. Whoever killed Ali also killed his family. That was deliberate. Cruel beyond words. A warning. I wasn’t going to run the risk.’

  He stared at Harry with piercing eyes; Harry glared back.

  ‘Don’t try to pretend you were protecting me!’ Harry snapped, bitter.

  ‘What are you complaining about? You didn’t seem to care very much about whether I was alive or dead. You’d already cut me out of your life.’

  ‘It was you – you who cut me. When I was eighteen.’

  And all the years of hurt that had been locked away began flooding out once more.

  ‘I didn’t cut you. I made you,’ the old man bit back. ‘What would you have become if you’d arrived at your snotty university with your pockets stuffed full of my cash? You needed to learn. About knocks and bruises. I forced you to stand on your own feet. Best bloody lesson you learned at Cambridge.’

  ‘You never took any interest, never made contact.’

  ‘Now isn’t that funny, son? I thought that’s what I was supposed to accuse you of. How many times did I write? Did you ever reply?’
>
  ‘Don’t you turn this on me. What I became was because I got you out of my life.’

  ‘Oh, really? It didn’t seem that way when you got your hands on half my fortune.’ Johnnie was panting now, the colour creeping into his pale face suggesting he wouldn’t stop, even if it killed him. ‘Useful, wasn’t it, the odd fifteen million or so, just as you got yourself into Parliament, became a bloody politician? I remember an interview you gave once, about how your money gave you independence, enabled you to be your own man. Very noble. Only bit you left out was that it wasn’t your money at all, it was mine.’

  Harry flinched.

  ‘Tallon kept sending you money by the truckload. Took a while to unwind my affairs. He’s still doing it. The Brazilian rainforest, I think he told you. That’s bollocks. It’s what I have left, squirreled away, what you’ll get when I die. Don’t lose it as quickly as you did the last lot.’

  He paused, his eyes welling with an old man’s sadness. He waved his stick in anger at a seagull that had grown inquisitive and come too near. It flew off, circling on the breeze, crying in disgust.

  ‘Good man, Tallon. The only one who knew. I even had him arrange for an old friend to offer you a directorship, to see you through the rough patch. You didn’t have the bloody sense to accept it.’

  ‘You tried to own me!’ Harry spat back.

  ‘No!’ But the effort had become too much. Johnnie began spluttering, saliva trickling down his old chin. He wiped his mouth, struggled to regain his breath and with it his composure. When he spoke again it was no longer with venom, as if he no longer cared. ‘I didn’t try to own you, Harry. I simply tried to help you. As best a father could.’

  He flapped a hand to summon the nurse. It was over. But Harry was on his feet once more, overwhelmed by old nightmares.

  ‘You were never a father. And you were a pathetic excuse for a husband. I watched my mother die while you—’