The Ghost Read online

  I sat down on a lounger, releasing a faded odour of chlorine and sun tan lotion, and called Rick in New York. He was in a rush, as usual.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘We had a good morning. The man’s a pro.’

  ‘Great. I’ll call Maddox. He’ll be glad to hear it. The first fifty thousand just came in, by the way. I’ll wire it over. Speak to you later.’

  The line went dead.

  I finished my sandwich and went back upstairs, still clutching my silent phone. I had had an idea, and my new-born confidence gave me the courage to act on it. I went into the study and closed the door. I plugged Amelia’s flashdrive into my laptop, then I attached a cable from my computer to the cell phone and dialled up the internet. How much easier my life would be, I reasoned – how much quicker the job would be done – if I could work on the book in my hotel room each night. I told myself I was doing no harm. The risks were minimal. The machine rarely left my side. If necessary it was small enough to fit under my pillow while I slept. The moment I was on line, I addressed an email to myself, attached the manuscript file, and pressed SEND.

  The upload seemed to take an age. Amelia started calling my name from downstairs. I glanced at the door and suddenly my fingers were thick and clumsy with anxiety. ‘Your file has been transferred,’ said the female voice which for some reason is favoured by my internet service provider. ‘You have email,’ she announced a fraction later.

  Immediately I yanked the cable out of the laptop and I had just removed the flashdrive when somewhere in the big house a klaxon started. At the same time there was a hum and a rattle above the window behind me and I spun round to see a heavy metal shutter dropping from the ceiling. It descended very quickly, blocking first the view of the sky, then the sea and the dunes, flattening the winter afternoon to dusk, crushing the last sliver of light to blackness. I groped for the door, and when I flung it open the unfiltered sound of the siren was strong enough to vibrate my stomach.

  The same process was happening in the living room: one, two, three shutters, falling like steel curtains. I stumbled in the gloom, cracking my knee against a sharp edge. I dropped my phone. As I stooped to retrieve it the klaxon stalled on a rising note and died with a moan. I heard heavy footsteps coming up the steps, and then a sabre of light flashed into the big room, catching me in a furtive crouch, my arms flung up to shield my face: a parody of guilt.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ came a policeman’s puzzled voice from the darkness. ‘Didn’t realise there was anyone up here.’

  *

  It was a drill. They held it once a week. ‘Lockdown’, I think they called it. Rhinehart’s security people had installed the system to protect him against terrorist attack, kidnap, hurricanes, unionised labour, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or whatever passing nightmare presently stalked the restless nights of the Fortune 500. As the shutters rose and the pale wash of Atlantic light was released back into the house, Amelia came into the living room to apologise for not having warned me. ‘It must have made you jump.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘But then I did rather lose track of you.’ There was an edge of suspicion to her manicured voice.

  ‘It’s a big house. I’m a big boy. You can’t keep an eye on me all the time.’ I tried to sound relaxed, but I knew I radiated unease.

  ‘A word of advice.’ Her glossy pink lips parted in a smile, but her big, clear blue eyes were as cold as crystal. ‘Don’t go wandering round too much on your own. The security boys don’t like it.’

  ‘Gotcha.’ I smiled back.

  There was a squeak of rubber soles on polished wood and Lang came hurtling up the stairs at a tremendous rate, taking them two or three at a time. He had a towel around his neck. His face was flushed, his thick and wavy hair damp and darkened by sweat. He seemed angry about something.

  ‘Did you win?’ asked Amelia.

  ‘Didn’t play tennis in the end.’ He blew out his breath, dropped into the nearby sofa, bent forward and started vigorously towelling his head. ‘Gym.’

  Gym? I looked at him in amazement. Hadn’t he already been for a run before I arrived? What was he in training for? The Olympics?

  I said, in a jovial way, designed to show Amelia how unfazed I was, ‘So – are you ready to get back to work?’

  He glanced up at me furiously and snapped: ‘You call what we’re doing work?’

  It was the first time I’d ever seen a flash of bad temper from him, and it struck me with the force of a revelation that all this running and pressing and lifting had nothing whatever to do with training; he wasn’t even doing it for enjoyment. It was simply what his metabolism demanded. He was like some rare marine specimen fished up from the depths of the ocean, which could only live under extreme pressure. Deposited on the shore, exposed to the thin air of normal life, Lang was in constant danger of expiring from sheer boredom.

  ‘Well, I certainly call it work,’ I said stiffly. ‘For both of us. But if you think it’s not intellectually demanding enough for you, we can stop now.’

  I thought I might have gone too far, but then with a great effort of self-control – so great, you could practically see the intricate machinery of his facial muscles, all the little levers and pulleys and cables, working together – he managed to hoist a tired grin back on to his face. ‘All right, man,’ he said tonelessly. ‘You win.’ He flicked me with his towel. ‘I was only kidding. Let’s get back to it.’

  Seven

  * * *

  Quite often, particularly if you are helping them write a memoir or autobiography, the author will dissolve into tears when they’re telling the story … Your job under these circumstances is to pass the tissues, keep quiet and keep recording.

  Ghostwriting

  * * *

  ‘WERE YOUR PARENTS at all political?’

  We were once again in the study, in our usual positions. He was sprawled out in the armchair, still wearing his tracksuit, the towel still draped round his neck. He exuded a faint aroma of sweat. I sat opposite with my notebook and list of questions. The mini-disc recorder was on the desk beside me.

  ‘Not at all, no. I’m not sure my father even voted. He said they were all as bad as one another.’

  ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘He was a builder. Self-employed. He was in his fifties when he met my mother. He’d already got two teenaged sons by his first wife – she’d run off and left him some while before. Mum was a teacher, twenty years younger than him. Very pretty, very shy. The story was he came to do some repair work on the school roof, and they got talking, and one thing led to another, and they got married. He built them a house and the four of them moved in. I came along the following year, which was a shock to him, I think.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He thought he was through with babies.’

  ‘I get the impression, reading what’s already been written, that you weren’t that close to him.’

  Lang took his time before answering. ‘He died when I was sixteen. He’d already retired by then, because of bad health, and my stepbrothers had grown up, married, moved out. And so that was the only time I remember him being around a lot. I was just getting to know him, really, when he had his heart attack. I mean, I got on all right with him. But if you’re saying was I closer to my mother – then yes, obviously.’

  ‘And your stepbrothers? Were you close to them?’

  ‘God, no!’ For the first time since lunch, Lang gave a shout of laughter. ‘Actually, you’d better scrub that. We can leave them out, can’t we?’

  ‘It’s your book.’

  ‘Leave them out, then. They both went into the building trade, and neither of them ever missed an opportunity to tell the press they wouldn’t be voting for me. I haven’t seen them for years. They must be about seventy now.’

  ‘How exactly did he die?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Sorry – your father. I wondered how he died. Where did he die?’

  ‘Oh
, in the garden. Trying to move a paving slab that was too heavy for him. Old habits …’ He looked at his watch.

  ‘Who found him?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Could you describe that?’ It was hard going – far harder than the morning session.

  ‘I’d just come home from school. It was a really beautiful spring day, I remember. Mum was out doing something for one of her charities. I got a drink from the kitchen and went out into the back garden, still in my school uniform, thinking I’d kick a ball around or something. And there he was, in the middle of the lawn. Just a graze on his face where he’d fallen. The doctors told us he was probably dead before he hit the ground. But I suspect they always say that, to make it easier for the family. Who knows? It can’t be an easy thing, can it – dying?’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘Don’t all sons think their mothers are saints?’ He looked at me for confirmation. ‘Well, mine was. She gave up teaching when I was born, and there was nothing she wouldn’t do for anyone. She came from a very strong Quaker family. Completely selfless. She was so proud when I got into Cambridge, even though it meant she was left alone. She never once let on how ill she was – didn’t want to spoil my time there, especially when I started acting and was so busy. That was typical of her. I’d no idea how bad things were until the end of my second year.’

  ‘Tell me about that.’

  ‘Right.’ Lang cleared his throat. ‘God. I knew she hadn’t been well, but – you know, when you’re nineteen, you don’t take much notice of anything apart from yourself. I was in Footlights. I had a couple of girlfriends. Cambridge was paradise for me. I used to call her every Sunday night, and she always sounded fine, even though she was living on her own. Then I got home and she was – I was shocked – she was … a skeleton basically. There was a tumour on her liver. I mean, maybe now they could do something – but then …’ He made a helpless gesture. ‘She was dead in a month.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I went back to Cambridge at the start of my final year and I – I lost myself in life, I suppose you could say.’

  He was silent.

  ‘I had a similar experience,’ I said.

  ‘Really?’ His tone was expressionless. He was looking out at the ocean, at the Atlantic breakers rolling in, his thoughts seemingly far away over the horizon.

  ‘Yes.’ I don’t normally talk about myself in a professional situation, or in any situation for that matter. But sometimes a little self-revelation can help to draw a client out. ‘I lost my parents at about that age. And didn’t you find, in a strange way, despite all the sadness, that it made you stronger?’

  ‘Stronger?’ He turned away from the window and frowned at me.

  ‘In the sense of being self-reliant. Knowing that the worst thing that could possibly happen to you had happened, and you’d survived it. That you could function on your own.’

  ‘You may be right. I’ve never really thought about it. At least not until just lately. It’s strange. Shall I tell you something?’ He leaned forwards. ‘I saw two dead bodies when I was in my teens and then – despite being prime minister, with all that entails: having to order men into battle and visit the scene of bomb blasts and what have you – I didn’t see another corpse for thirty-five years.’

  ‘And who was that?’ I asked stupidly.

  ‘Mike McAra.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have sent one of the policemen to identify him?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No, I couldn’t. I owed him that, at least.’ He paused again, then abruptly grabbed his towel and rubbed his face. ‘This is a morbid conversation,’ he declared. ‘Let’s change the subject.’

  I looked down at my list of questions. There was a lot I wanted to ask him about McAra. It was not that I intended to use it in the book, necessarily: even I recognised that a post-resignation trip to the morgue to identify an aide’s body was hardly going to sit well in a chapter entitled ‘A Future of Hope’. It was rather to satisfy my own curiosity. But I also knew I didn’t have the time to indulge myself: I had to press on. And so I did as he requested and changed the subject.

  ‘Cambridge,’ I said. ‘Let’s talk about that.’

  I’d always expected that the Cambridge years, from my point of view, were going to be the easiest part of the book to write. I’d been a student there myself, not long after Lang, and the place hadn’t changed much. It never changed much: that was its charm. I could do all the clichés – bikes, scarves, gowns, punts, cakes, gas fires, choirboys, riverside pubs, porters in bowler hats, Fenland winds, narrow streets, the thrill of walking on stones once trodden by Newton and Darwin, etc., etc. And it was just as well, I thought, looking at the manuscript, because once again my memories would have to stand in for Lang’s. He had gone up to read economics, briefly played football for his college’s second eleven, and had won a reputation as a student actor. Yet although McAra had dutifully assembled a list of every production the ex-prime minister had ever appeared in, and even quoted from a few of the revue sketches Lang had performed for Footlights, there was – again – something thin and rushed about it all. What was missing was passion. Naturally, I blamed it on McAra. I could well imagine how little sympathy that stern party functionary would have had with all these dilettantes and their adolescent posturings in bad productions of Brecht and Ionescu. But Lang himself seemed oddly evasive about the whole period.

  ‘It’s so long ago,’ he said. ‘I can hardly remember anything about it. I wasn’t much good, to be honest. Acting was basically an opportunity to meet girls – don’t put that in, by the way.’

  ‘But you were very good,’ I protested. ‘When I was in London I read interviews with people who said you were good enough to become a professional.’

  ‘I suppose I wouldn’t have minded,’ Lang conceded, ‘at one stage. Except you don’t change things by being an actor. Only politicians can do that.’ He looked at his watch again.

  ‘But Cambridge,’ I persisted. ‘It must have been hugely important in your life, coming from your background.’

  ‘Yes. I enjoyed my time there. I met some great people. It wasn’t the real world, though. It was fantasy land.’

  ‘I know. That was what I liked about it.’

  ‘So did I. Just between the two of us: I loved it.’ Lang’s eyes gleamed at the memory. ‘To go out on to a stage and pretend to be someone else! And to have people applaud you for doing it! What could be better?’

  ‘Great,’ I said, baffled by his change of mood. ‘This is more like it. Let’s put that in.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not?’ Lang sighed. ‘Because these are the memoirs of a prime minister.’ He suddenly pounded his hand hard against the side of his chair. ‘And all my political life, whenever my opponents have been really stuck for something to hit me with, they’ve always said I was a fucking actor.’ He sprang up and started striding up and down. ‘“Oh, Adam Lang,”’ he drawled, performing a pitch-perfect caricature of an upper-class Englishman, ‘“have you noticed the way he changes his voice to suit whatever company he’s in?” “Aye”’ – and now he was a gruff Scotsman – ‘“you can’t believe anything the wee bastard says. The man’s a performer, just piss and wind in a suit!”’ And now he became pompous, judicious, hand-wringing: ‘“It is Mr Lang’s tragedy that an actor can only be as good as the part he is given, and finally this prime minister has run out of lines.” You’ll recognise that last one from your no doubt extensive researches.’

  I shook my head. I was too astonished by his tirade to speak.

  ‘It’s from the editorial in The Times on the day I announced my resignation. The headline was “Kindly leave the stage”.’ He carefully resumed his seat and smoothed back his hair. ‘So no, if you don’t mind, we won’t dwell on my years as a student actor. Leave it exactly the way that Mike wrote it.’

  For a little while neither of us spoke. I pretended to adjust my notes. Outsid
e, one of the policemen struggled along the top of the dunes, head-first into the wind, but the soundproofing of the house was so efficient he looked like a mime artist. I was remembering Ruth Lang’s words about her husband: ‘There’s something not quite right with him at the moment, and I’m a bit afraid to leave him.’ Now I could see what she meant. I heard a click and leaned across to check the recorder.

  ‘I need to change discs,’ I said, grateful for the opportunity to get away. ‘I’ll just take this down to Amelia. I won’t be a minute.’

  Lang was brooding again, staring out of the window. He made a small, slightly dismissive gesture with his hand to signal that I should go. I went downstairs to where the secretaries were typing. Amelia was standing by a filing cabinet. She turned around as I came in. I suppose my face must have given me away.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing.’ But then I felt an urge to share my unease. ‘Actually, he seems a bit on edge.’

  ‘Really? That’s not like him. In what way?’

  ‘He just blew up at me over nothing. I guess it must be too much exercise at lunchtime,’ I said, trying to make a joke out of it. ‘Can’t be good for a man.’

  I gave the disc to one of the secretaries – Lucy I think it was – and picked up the latest transcripts. Amelia carried on looking at me, her head tilted slightly.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘You’re right. There is something troubling him, isn’t there? He took a call just after you finished your session this morning.’

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘It came through on his mobile. He didn’t tell me. I wonder … Alice, darling – do you mind?’

  Alice got up and Amelia slipped into position in front of the computer screen. I don’t think I ever saw fingers move so rapidly across a keyboard. The clicks seemed to merge into one continuous purr of plastic, like the sound of a million dominoes falling. The images on the screen changed almost as quickly. And then the clicks slowed to a few staccato taps as Amelia found what she was looking for.