The Ghost Read online

  Exactly what I thought I was doing, I still don’t really know. I couldn’t even be sure that McAra had been the last driver to enter an address. It might have been some other guest of Rhinehart’s; it might have been Dep or Duc; it could even have been the police. Whatever the truth, it was certainly in the back of my mind that if things started to get remotely alarming, I could stop at any point, and I suppose that gave me a false sense of reassurance.

  Once I was out of Edgartown and on to Vineyard Haven Road, I heard nothing more from my heavenly guide for several minutes. I passed dark patches of woodland and small white houses. The few approaching cars had their headlights on and were travelling slowly, swishing over the water-slicked road. I sat well forward, peering into the grimy morning. I passed a high school, just starting to get busy for the day, and beside it the island’s set of traffic lights (they were marked on the map, like a tourist attraction: something to go and look at in the winter). The road bent sharply, the trees seemed to close in; the screen showed a fresh set of evocative names: Deer Hunter’s Way, Skiff Avenue.

  ‘In two hundred yards, turn right.’

  ‘In fifty yards, turn right.’

  ‘Turn right.’

  I steered down the hill into Vineyard Haven, passing a school bus toiling up it. I had a brief impression of a deserted shopping street away to my left, and then I was into the flat, shabby area around the port. I turned a corner, passed a café, and pulled up in a big car park. About a hundred yards away, across the puddled, rain-swept tarmac, a queue of vehicles was driving up the ramp of a ferry. The red arrow pointed me towards it.

  In the warmth of the Ford, as shown on the navigation screen, the proposed route was inviting, like a child’s painting of a summer holiday – a yellow jetty extending into the bright blue of Vineyard Haven Harbor. But the reality through the windscreen was distinctly uninviting: the sagging black mouth of the ferry, smeared at the corners with rust, and, beyond it, the heaving grey swell and the flailing hawsers of sleet.

  Someone tapped on the glass beside me and I fumbled for the switch to lower the window. He was wearing dark blue oilskins with the hood pulled up, and he had to keep one hand pressed firmly on top of it to prevent it flying off his head. His spectacles were dripping with rain. A badge announced that he worked for the Steamship Authority.

  ‘You’ll have to hurry,’ he shouted, turning his back into the wind. ‘She leaves at eight fifteen. The weather’s getting bad. There might not be another for a while.’ He opened the door for me and almost pushed me towards the ticket office. ‘You go pay. I’ll tell them you’ll be right there.’

  I left the engine running and went into the little building. Even as I stood at the counter, I remained in two minds. Through the window I could see the last of the cars boarding the ferry, and the car park attendant standing by the Ford, stamping his feet to ward off the cold. He saw me staring at him, and beckoned at me urgently to get a move on.

  The elderly woman behind the desk looked as though she, too, could think of better places to be at a quarter past eight on a Friday morning.

  ‘You going or what?’ she demanded.

  I sighed, took out my wallet and slapped down five ten-dollar bills, and was given a ticket and a few coins in change.

  *

  Once I’d driven up the clanking metal gangway into the dark, oily belly of the ship, another man in waterproofs directed me to a parking space, and I inched forwards until he held up his hand for me to stop. All around me, drivers were leaving their vehicles and squeezing through the narrow gaps towards the stairwells. I stayed where I was and carried on trying to figure out how the navigation system worked. But after about a minute the crewman tapped on my window and indicated by a mime that I had to switch off the ignition. As I did so, the screen died again. Behind me, the ferry’s rear doors closed. The ship’s engines started to throb, the hull lurched, and with a discouraging scrape of steel we began to move.

  I felt trapped all of a sudden, sitting in the chilly twilight of that hold, with its stink of diesel and exhaust fumes, and it was more than just the claustrophobia of being below decks. It was McAra. I could sense his presence next to me. His dogged, leaden obsessions now seemed to have become mine. He was like some heavy, half-witted stranger one makes the mistake of talking to on a journey, and who then refuses to leave one alone. I got out of the car and locked it, and went in search of a cup of coffee. At the bar on the upper deck I queued behind a man reading USA Today, and over his shoulder I saw a picture of Lang with the Secretary of State. ‘LANG TO FACE WAR CRIMES TRIAL’ was the headline. ‘WASHINGTON SHOWS SUPPORT’. The camera had caught him grinning.

  I took my coffee over to a corner seat and considered where my curiosity had led me. For a start, I was technically guilty of stealing a car. I ought at least to call the house and let them know I’d taken it. But that would probably entail talking to Ruth, who would demand to know where I was, and I didn’t want to tell her. Then there was the question of whether or not what I was doing was wise. If this was McAra’s original route I was following, I had to face the fact that he hadn’t returned from the trip alive. How was I to know what lay at the end of the journey? Perhaps I should tell someone what I was contemplating, or better still take a companion along as a witness. Or perhaps I should simply disembark at Woods Hole, wait in one of the bars, catch the next ferry back to the island, and plan the whole thing properly, rather than launch myself into the unknown so unprepared.

  Oddly enough, I didn’t feel any particular sense of danger – I suppose because it was all so ordinary. I glanced around at the faces of my fellow passengers: working people mostly, to judge by their denims and boots – weary guys who had just made an early-morning delivery to the island, or people going over to America to pick up supplies. A big wave hit the side of the ship and we all swayed as one, like rippling weed on the seabed. Through the brine-streaked porthole, the low grey line of coast and the restless, freezing sea appeared completely anonymous. We could have been in the Baltic or the Solent or the White Sea – any dreary stretch of flattened shoreline, where people have to find a means of turning a living at the very edge of the land.

  Someone went out on deck for a cigarette, letting in a gust of cold, wet air. I didn’t attempt to follow him. I had another coffee and relaxed in the safety of the warm, damp, yellowish atmosphere of the bar, until, about half an hour later, we passed the Nobska Point Lighthouse and a loudspeaker instructed us to return to our vehicles. The deck pitched badly in the swell, hitting the side of the dock with a clang that rang down the length of the hull. I was knocked against the metal doorframe at the foot of the stairs. A couple of car alarms started howling and my feeling of security vanished, replaced by panic that the Ford was being broken into. But as I swayed closer it looked untouched, and when I opened my case to check, Lang’s memoirs were still there.

  I switched on the engine, and by the time I emerged into the grey rain and wind of Woods Hole, the satellite screen was offering me its familiar golden path. It would have been a simple matter to have pulled over and gone into one of the nearby bars for breakfast, but instead I stayed in the convoy of traffic and let it carry me on – on into the filthy New England winter, up Woods Hole Road to Locust Street and Main Street, and beyond. I had half a tank of fuel and the whole day stretched ahead of me.

  ‘In two hundred yards, at the roundabout, take the second exit.’

  I took it, and for the next forty-five minutes I headed north on a couple of big freeways, more or less retracing my route back to Boston. That appeared to answer one question at any rate: whatever else McAra had been up to just before he died, he hadn’t been driving to New York to see Rycart. I wondered what could have tempted him to Boston. The airport, perhaps? I let my mind fill with images of him meeting someone off a plane – from England, maybe – his solemn face turned expectantly towards the sky, a hurried greeting in the arrivals hall, and then off to some clandestine rendezvous. Or perhaps he had flown
somewhere by himself? But just as that scenario was taking firm shape in my imagination, I was directed west towards Interstate 95, and even with my feeble grasp of Massachusetts geography I knew I must be heading away from Logan Airport and downtown Boston.

  I drove as slowly as I could along the wide road for perhaps fifteen miles. The rain had eased, but it was still dark. The thermometer showed an outside temperature of 25 degrees Fahrenheit. I remember great swathes of woodland, interspersed with lakes, with office blocks and high-tech factories gleaming brightly amid landscaped grounds, as delicately positioned as country clubs, or cemeteries. Just as I was beginning to think that perhaps McAra had been making a run for the Canadian border, the voice behind me told me to take the next exit from the interstate, and I came down on to another big six-lane freeway which, according to the screen, was the Concord Turnpike.

  I could make out very little through the screen of trees, even though their branches were bare. My slow speed was infuriating the drivers behind me. A succession of big trucks came lumbering up behind me and blazed their headlights and blared their horns, before pulling out to overtake in a fountain of dirty spray.

  The woman in the back seat spoke up again.

  ‘In two hundred yards take the next exit.’

  I moved into the right-hand lane and came down the slip road. At the end of the curve I found myself in a sylvan suburbia of big houses, double garages, wide drives and open lawns – a rich but neighbourly kind of a place, the houses screened from one another by trees, almost every mailbox bearing a yellow ribbon in honour of the military. I believe it was actually called Pleasant Street.

  A sign pointed to Belmont Center, and that was more or less the way I went, along roads which gradually became less populated as the price of the real estate rose. I passed a golf course and turned right into some woods. A red squirrel ran across the road in front of me, and jumped on top of a sign forbidding the lighting of campfires, and that was when, in the middle of what seemed to be nowhere, my guardian angel at last announced, in a tone of calm finality: ‘You have reached your destination.’

  Thirteen

  * * *

  Because I am so enthusiastic about the ghostwriting profession, I may have given the impression that it is an easy way to make a living. If so, then I should qualify my words just a little with a warning.

  Ghostwriting

  * * *

  I PULLED UP on to the verge and turned off the engine. Looking around at the dense and dripping woodland, I felt a profound sense of disappointment. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d been expecting – not Deep Throat in an underground car park necessarily, but certainly more than this. Yet again, McAra had surprised me: here was a man reportedly even more hostile to the country than I was, and yet his trail had merely led me to a hiker’s paradise.

  I got out of the car and locked it. After two hours’ driving I needed to fill my lungs with cold, damp New England air. I stretched and started to walk down the wet lane. The squirrel watched me from its perch across the road. I took a couple of paces towards it and clapped my hands at the cute little rodent. It streaked up into a nearby tree, flicking its tail at me like a swollen middle finger. I hunted around for a stick to throw at it, then stopped myself. I was spending far too much time alone in the woods, I decided, as I moved on down the road. I’d be happy not to hear the deep, vegetative silence of ten thousand trees for a very long while to come.

  I walked on for about fifty yards until I came to an almost invisible gap in the trees. Demurely set back from the road, a five-barred electric gate blocked access to a private drive, which turned sharply after a few yards and disappeared behind trees. I couldn’t see the house. Beside the gate was a grey metal mailbox with no name on it, just a number – 3551 – and a stone pillar with an intercom and a code pad. A sign said, ‘THESE PREMISES ARE PROTECTED BY CYCLOPS SECURITY’; a toll-free number was printed across an eyeball. I hesitated, then pressed the buzzer. While I waited, I glanced around. A small video camera was mounted on a nearby branch. I tried the buzzer again. There was no answer.

  I stepped back, uncertain what to do. It briefly crossed my mind to climb the gate and make an unauthorised inspection of the property, but I didn’t like the look of the camera, and I didn’t like the sound of Cyclops Security. I noticed that the mailbox was crammed too full to close properly, and I saw no harm in at least discovering the name of the house’s owner. With another glance over my shoulder, and an apologetic shrug towards the camera, I pulled out a handful of mail. It was variously addressed to Mr and Mrs Paul Emmett, Professor and Mrs Paul Emmett, Professor Emmett, and Nancy Emmett. Judging by the postmarks it looked as though there was at least two days’ worth uncollected. The Emmetts were either away, or – what? Lying inside, dead? I was developing a morbid imagination. Some of the letters had been forwarded, with a sticker covering the original address. I scraped one of the labels back with my thumb. Emmett, I learned, was President Emeritus of something called the Arcadia Institution, with an address in Washington DC.

  Emmett … Emmett … For some reason that name was familiar to me. I stuffed the letters back in the box and returned to my car. I opened my suitcase, took out the package addressed to McAra, and ten minutes later I’d found what I had vaguely remembered: P. Emmett (St John’s) was one of the cast of the Footlights revue, pictured with Lang. He was the oldest of the group, the one whom I’d thought was a postgraduate. He had shorter hair than the others, looked more conventional: ‘square’, as the expression went at that time. Was this what had brought McAra all the way up here: yet more research about Cambridge? Emmett was mentioned in the memoirs, too, now I came to think about it. I picked up the manuscript and thumbed my way through the section on Lang’s university days, but his name didn’t appear there. Instead he was quoted at the start of the very last chapter:

  Professor Paul Emmett of Harvard University has written of the unique importance of the English-speaking peoples in the spread of democracy around the world: ‘As long as these nations stand together, freedom is safe; whenever they have faltered, tyranny has gathered strength.’ I profoundly agree with this sentiment.

  The squirrel came back and regarded me malevolently from the roadside.

  Odd: that was my overwhelming feeling about everything at that moment. Odd.

  I don’t know exactly how long I sat there. I do remember that I was so bemused I forgot to turn on the Ford’s heater, and it was only when I heard the sound of another car approaching that I realised how cold and stiff I had become. I looked in the mirror and saw a pair of headlights, and then a small Japanese car drove past me. A middle-aged, dark-haired woman was at the wheel, and next to her was a man of about sixty, wearing glasses and a jacket and tie. He turned to stare at me, and I knew at once it was Emmett, not because I recognised him (I didn’t) but because I couldn’t imagine who else would be travelling down such a quiet road. The car pulled up outside the entrance to the drive, and I saw Emmett get out to empty his mailbox. Once again, he peered in my direction, and I thought he might be about to come down and challenge me. Instead, he returned to the car, which then moved on, out of my line of sight, presumably up to the house.

  I stuffed the photographs and the page from the memoirs into my shoulder bag, gave the Emmetts ten minutes to open the place up and settle themselves in, then I turned on the engine and drove up to the gate. This time, when I pressed the buzzer, the answer came immediately.

  ‘Hello?’

  It was a woman’s voice.

  ‘Is that Mrs Emmett?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘I wondered if I could have a word with Professor Emmett.’

  ‘He’s very tired.’ She had a drawling voice, something between an English aristocrat and a southern belle, and the tinny quality of the intercom accentuated it: ‘S’vair tahd.’

  ‘I won’t keep him long.’

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘It’s about Adam Lang. I’m assisting him with
his memoirs.’

  ‘Just a moment, please.’

  I knew they’d be studying me on the video camera. I tried to adopt a suitably respectable pose. When the intercom crackled again, it was an American male voice that spoke: resonant, fruity, actorish.

  ‘This is Paul Emmett. I think you must have made a mistake.’

  ‘You were at Cambridge with Mr Lang, I believe?’

  ‘We were contemporaries, yes, but I can’t claim to know him.’

  ‘I have a picture of the two of you together in a Footlights revue.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Come on up to the house.’

  There was a whine of an electric motor, and the gate slowly opened.

  As I followed the drive, the big three-storey house gradually appeared through the trees: a central section built of grey stone, flanked by wings made of wood and painted white. Most of the windows were arched, with small panes of rippled glass and big slatted shutters. It could have been any age, from six months to a century. A short flight of steps led up to a pillared porch, where Emmett himself was waiting. The extent of the land and the encroaching trees provided a deep sense of seclusion. The only sound of civilisation was a big jet, invisible in the low cloud, dropping towards the airport. I parked in front of the garage, next to the Emmetts’ car, and got out carrying my bag.