The Ghost Read online

  I came to an uncertain halt and checked left and right for traffic, conscious all the while of him staring at me from only twenty feet away. And he must have recognised me, because I saw to my horror that he had got to his feet. ‘Just one moment!’ he shouted, in that peculiar clipped voice, but I was so anxious not to become embroiled in his madness that, even though there was a car coming, I teetered out into the road and began pedalling away from him, standing up to try to get up some speed. The car hit its horn. There was a blur of light and noise, and I felt the wind of it as it passed, but when I looked back the protester had given up his pursuit, and was standing in the centre of the road, staring after me, arms akimbo.

  After that, I cycled hard, conscious I would soon start to lose the light. The air in my face was cold and damp, but the pumping of my legs kept me warm enough. I passed the entrance to the airport, and followed the perimeter of the state forest, its fire lanes stretching wide and high through the trees like the shadowy aisles of cathedrals. I couldn’t imagine McAra doing this – he didn’t look the cycling type – and I wondered again what I thought I would achieve, apart from getting drenched. I toiled on past the white clapboard houses and the neat New England fields, and it didn’t take much effort to visualise it still peopled by women in stern black bonnets, and by men who regarded Sunday as the day to put on a suit rather than take one off.

  Just out of West Tisbury I stopped by Scotchman’s Lane to check directions. The sky was really threatening now, and a wind was getting up. I almost lost the map. In fact, I almost turned back. But I’d come so far, it seemed stupid to give up now, so I eased myself back on to the thin, hard saddle and set off again. About two miles later the road forked and I parted from the main highway, turning left towards the sea. The track down to the cove was similar to the approach to the Rhinehart place – scrub oak, ponds, dunes – the only difference being that there were more houses here. Mostly, they were vacation homes, shuttered up for the winter, but a couple of chimneys fluttered thin streamers of brown smoke, and from one window I heard a radio playing classical music. A cello concerto. That was when it started to rain at last – hard, cold pellets of moisture, almost hail, that exploded on my hands and face and carried the smell of the sea in them. One moment they were plopping sporadically in the pond and rattling in the trees around me, and the next it was as if some great aerial dam had broken and the rain started to sweep down in torrents. Now I remembered why I disliked cycling: bicycles don’t have roofs, they don’t have windscreens and they don’t have heaters.

  The spindly, leafless scrub oaks offered no hope of shelter, but it was impossible to carry on cycling – I couldn’t see where I was going – so I dismounted and pushed my bike, until I came to a low picket fence. I tried to prop the bike against it, but the machine fell over with a clatter, its back wheel spinning. I didn’t bother to pick it up but ran up the cinder path, past a flagpole, to the veranda of the house. Once I was out of the rain, I leaned forward and shook my head vigorously to get the water out of my hair, and immediately a dog started barking and scratching at the door behind me. I’d assumed the house was empty – it certainly looked it – but a hazy white moon of a face appeared at the dusty window, blurred by the mosquito shutter, and a moment later the door opened and the dog flew out at me.

  I dislike dogs almost as much as they dislike me, but I did my best to seem charmed by the hideous, yapping white furball, if only to appease its owner, an old-timer of not far off ninety to judge by the liver spots, the stoop and the still-handsome skull poking through the papery skin. He was wearing a well-cut sports jacket over a buttoned-up cardigan, and had a plaid scarf round his neck. I made a stammering apology for disturbing his privacy, but he soon cut me off.

  ‘You’re British?’ he said, squinting at me.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘That’s okay. You can shelter. Sheltering’s free.’

  I didn’t know enough about America to be able to tell from his accent where he was from, or what he might have done. But I guessed he was a retired professional, and fairly well off – you had to be, living in a place where a shack with an outside lavatory would cost you half a million dollars.

  ‘British, eh?’ he repeated. He studied me through rimless spectacles. ‘You anything to do with this feller Lang?’

  ‘In a way,’ I said.

  ‘Seems intelligent. Why’d he want to get himself mixed up with that damn fool in the White House?’

  ‘That’s what everyone would like to know.’

  ‘War crimes!’ he said, with a roll of his head, and I caught a glimpse of two flesh-coloured hearing aids, one in either ear. ‘We could all have been charged with those! And maybe we ought to have been. I don’t know. I guess I’ll just have to put my trust in a higher judgement.’ He chuckled sadly. ‘I’ll find out soon enough.’

  I didn’t know what he was talking about. I was just glad to be standing where it was dry. We leaned on the weathered handrail and stared out together at the rain while the dog skittered dementedly on its claws around the veranda. Through a gap in the trees I could just make out the sea – vast and grey, with the white lines of the incoming waves moving remorselessly down it, like interference on an old monochrome TV.

  ‘So, what brings you to this part of the Vineyard?’ asked the old man.

  There seemed no point in lying.

  ‘Someone I knew was washed up on the beach down there,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d take a look at the spot. To pay my respects,’ I added, in case he thought I was a ghoul.

  ‘Now that was a funny business,’ he said. ‘You mean the British guy a few weeks ago? No way should that current have carried him this far west. Not at this time of year.’

  ‘What?’ I turned to look at him. Despite his great age, there was still something youthful about his sharp features and keen manner. His thin white hair was combed straight back off his forehead. He looked like an antique boy scout.

  ‘I’ve known this sea most of my life. Hell, a guy tried to throw me off that damn ferry when I was still at the World Bank, and I can tell you this: if he’d succeeded, I wouldn’t have floated ashore in Lambert’s Cove!’

  I was conscious of a drumming in my ears, but whether it was my blood or the downpour hitting the shingle roof I couldn’t tell.

  ‘Did you mention this to the police?’

  ‘The police? Young man, at my age, I have better things to do with what little time I have left than spend it with the police! Anyway, I told all this to Annabeth. She was the one who was dealing with the police.’ He saw my blank expression. ‘Annabeth Wurmbrand,’ he said. ‘Everybody knows Annabeth – Mars Wurmbrand’s widow. She has the house nearest the ocean.’ At my failure to react, he became slightly testy. ‘She’s the one who told the police about the lights.’

  ‘The lights?’

  ‘The lights on the beach on the night the body was washed up. Nothing happens round here that she doesn’t see. Kay used to say she was always happy leaving Mohu in the fall, knowing she could be sure Annabeth would keep an eye on things all winter.’

  ‘What kind of lights were these?’

  ‘Flashlights, I guess.’

  ‘Why wasn’t this reported in the media?’

  ‘In the media?’ He gave another of his grating chuckles. ‘Annabeth’s never spoken to a reporter in her life! Except maybe an editor from The World of Interiors. It took her a decade even to trust Kay, because of the Post.’

  That started him off talking about Kay’s big old place up on Lambert’s Cove Road that Bill and Hillary used to like so much, and where Lady Di had stayed, of which only the chimneys now remained, but by then I had stopped listening. It seemed to me the rain had eased somewhat and I was anxious to get away. I interrupted.

  ‘Do you think you could point me in the direction of Mrs Wurmbrand’s house?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But there’s not much point in going there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She fell downstair
s two weeks ago. Been in a coma ever since. Poor Annabeth. Ted says she’s never going to regain consciousness. So that’s another one gone. Hey!’ he shouted, but by then I was halfway down the steps from the veranda.

  ‘Thanks for the shelter,’ I called over my shoulder, ‘and the talk. I’ve got to get going.’

  He looked so forlorn, standing there alone under his dripping roof, with the Stars and Stripes hanging like a dishrag from its slick pole, that I almost turned back.

  ‘Well, tell your Mr Lang to keep his spirits up!’ He gave me a trembling military salute and turned it into a wave. ‘You take care now.’

  I righted my bike and set off down the track. I wasn’t even noticing the rain any more. About a quarter of a mile down the slope, in a clearing close to the dunes and the lake, was a big, low house, surrounded by a wire fence and discreet signs announcing it was private property. There were no lamps lit, despite the darkness of the storm. That, I surmised, must be the residence of the comatose widow. Could it be true? She had seen lights? Well, it was certainly the case that from the upstairs windows one would have a good view of the beach. I leaned the bike against a bush and scrambled up the little path, through sickly, yellowish vegetation and lacy green ferns, and as I came to the crest of the dune the wind seemed to push me away, as if this too were a private domain and I had no business trespassing.

  I’d already glimpsed what lay beyond the dunes from the old guy’s house, and as I’d cycled down the track, I’d heard the boom of the surf getting progressively louder. But it was still a shock to clamber up and suddenly be confronted by that vista – that seamless grey hemisphere of scudding clouds and heaving ocean, the waves hurtling in and smashing against the beach in a continuous, furious detonation. The low sandy coast ran away in a curve to my right for about a mile and ended in the jutting outcrop of Makonikey Head, misty through the spray. I wiped the rain out of my eyes to try to see better, and I thought of McAra alone on this immense shore – face down, glutted with salt water, his cheap winter clothes stiff with brine and cold. I imagined him emerging out of the bleak dawn, carried in on the tide from Vineyard Sound, scraping the sand with his big feet, being washed out again, and then returning, slowly creeping higher up the beach until at last he grounded. And then I imagined him dumped over the side of a dinghy and dragged ashore by men with flashlights, who’d come back a few days later and thrown a garrulous old witness down her architect-designed stairs.

  A few hundred yards along the beach a pair of figures emerged from the dunes and started walking towards me, dark and tiny and frail amid all that raging nature. I glanced in the other direction. The wind was whipping spouts of water from the surface of the waves and flinging them ashore, like the outlines of some amphibious invading force: they made it halfway up the beach and then dissolved.

  What I ought to do, I thought, staggering slightly in the wind, is give all this to a journalist: some tenacious reporter from The Washington Post, some noble heir to the tradition of Woodward and Bernstein. I could see the headline. I could write the story in my mind.

  WASHINGTON (AP) – The death of Michael McAra, aide to former British premier Adam Lang, was a covert operation that went tragically wrong, according to sources within the intelligence community.

  Was that so implausible? I took another look at the figures on the beach. It seemed to me they had quickened their pace and were heading towards me. The wind slashed rain in my face and I had to wipe it away. I ought to get going, I thought. By the time I looked again they were closer still, stumbling determinedly up the expanse of sand. One was short, the other tall. The tall one was a man, the short one a woman.

  The short one was Ruth Lang.

  *

  I was amazed that she should have turned up. I waited until I was sure it was her, then I went halfway down the beach to meet her. The noise of the wind and the sea wiped out our first exchanges. She had to take my arm and pull me down slightly, so that she could shout in my ear. ‘I said,’ she repeated, and her breath was almost shockingly hot against my freezing skin, ‘Dep told me you were here!’ The wind whipped her blue nylon hood away from her face and she tried to fumble for it at the nape of her neck, then gave up. She shouted something but just at that moment a wave exploded against the shore behind her. She smiled helplessly, waited until the noise had subsided, then cupped her hands and shouted, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Oh, just taking the air.’

  ‘No – really.’

  ‘I wanted to see where Mike McAra was found.’

  ‘Why?’

  I shrugged. ‘Curiosity.’

  ‘But you didn’t even know him.’

  ‘I’m starting to feel as if I did.’

  ‘Where’s your bike?’

  ‘Just behind the dunes.’

  ‘We came to fetch you back before the storm started.’ She beckoned to the policeman. He was standing about five yards away, watching us – soaked, bored, disgruntled. ‘Barry,’ she shouted to him, ‘bring the car round, will you, and meet us on the road. We’ll wheel the bike up and find you.’ She spoke to him as if he were a servant.

  ‘Can’t do that, Mrs Lang, I’m afraid,’ he yelled back. ‘Regulations say I have to stay with you at all times.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ she said, scornfully. ‘Do you seriously think there’s a terrorist cell at Uncle Seth’s Pond? Go and get the car before you catch pneumonia.’

  I watched his square, unhappy face, as his sense of duty warred with his desire for dryness. ‘All right,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll meet you in ten minutes. But please don’t leave the path or speak to anyone.’

  ‘We won’t, Officer,’ she said, with mock humility. ‘I promise.’

  He hesitated, then began jogging back the way he’d come.

  ‘They treat us like children,’ complained Ruth, as we climbed up the beach. ‘I sometimes think their orders aren’t to protect us so much as to spy on us.’

  We reached the top of the dune and automatically we both turned round to stare at the sea. After a second or two, I risked a quick glance at her. Her pale skin was shiny with rain, her short dark hair flattened and glistening like a swimmer’s cap. Her flesh looked hard, like alabaster in the cold. People used to say they couldn’t understand what her husband saw in her, but at that moment I could – there was a tautness about her; a quick, nervous energy: she was a force.

  ‘To be honest, I’ve come back here a couple of times myself,’ she said. ‘Usually I bring a few flowers and wedge them under a stone. Poor Mike. He hated to be away from the city. He hated country walks. He couldn’t even swim.’

  She quickly brushed her cheeks with her hand. Her face was too wet for me to tell whether she was crying or not.

  ‘It’s a hell of a place to end up,’ I said.

  ‘Oh no. No it’s not. When it’s sunny, it’s rather wonderful. It reminds me of Cornwall.’

  She scrambled down the little footpath to the bike, and I followed her. To my surprise, she suddenly mounted it and pedalled away, coming to a stop about a hundred yards up the track, at the edge of the wood. When I reached her she gazed at me intently, her dark brown eyes almost black in the fading afternoon light. ‘Do you think his death was suspicious?’

  The directness of the question took me unawares. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. It was all I could do to stop myself telling her right then what I’d heard from the old man. But I sensed this was neither the time nor the place. I wasn’t sufficiently sure of my facts, and it seemed crass, somehow, to pass unverified gossip on to a grieving friend. Besides, I was a little scared of her: I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of one of her scathing cross-examinations. So all I said was: ‘I don’t know enough about it, to be honest. Presumably the police have investigated the whole thing pretty thoroughly.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  She got off the bike and handed it to me and we started ascending through the scrub oak towards the road. It was much calmer away from the sea.
The downpour had almost stopped and the rain had released rich, cold smells of earth and wood and herbs. I could hear the ticking of the rear wheel as we walked.

  ‘The police were very active at first,’ she said, ‘but it’s all gone quiet lately. I think the inquest was adjourned. Anyway, they can’t be that concerned – they released Mike’s body last week and the embassy have flown it back to the UK.’

  ‘Oh?’ I tried not to sound too surprised. ‘That seems very quick.’

  ‘Not really. It’s been three weeks. They did an autopsy. He was drunk and he drowned. End of story.’

  ‘But what was he doing on the ferry in the first place?’

  She gave me a sharp look. ‘That I don’t know. He was a grown man. He didn’t have to account for his every move.’

  We walked on in silence and the thought occurred to me that McAra could easily have left the island for the weekend to visit Richard Rycart in New York. That would explain why he’d written down Rycart’s number, and also why he hadn’t told the Langs where he was going. How could he? ‘So long, guys, I’m just off to the United Nations to see your bitterest political enemy …’

  We passed the house where I’d sought shelter from the downpour. I kept an eye out for the old man. But the white clapboard property appeared as deserted as when I’d first seen it – so freezing, locked and abandoned, in fact, that I half wondered if I might not have imagined the whole encounter.