A Ghost at the Door (28 page)

‘Then may I offer you these?’ Harry said, handing the box across. He felt he could do business with this young woman.

She was in her late twenties and wise for her years, used to dealing with all sorts from pompous Privy Councillors to confused Japanese tourists. She appreciated Harry asking for a favour rather
than simply making demands, although the gentle bribe suggested the possibility of choppy waters. From outside the thick walls of her office came the sound of Old Tom striking the half-hour.
‘Look, I’m just about to have my morning coffee break and it’s far too nice a day to spend it inside a stuffy office. Would you like to join me for a walk around the
Master’s Garden?’ she asked, rising from her chair.

They walked through the ancient cloisters with their worn stones and soon were in a walled garden. The day was gentle, the birdsong brisk, the breeze dancing through the army of lilies,
sunflowers and roses that crowded the borders. A gardener was mowing the wide expanse of lawn that backed onto the cathedral, pulling out the croquet rings that barred his way. The sweetness of
freshly crushed grass filled Harry’s nostrils.

‘My father,’ he began as the gravel scrunched beneath their feet, ‘was a rather untidy man in many ways. He left behind him quite a lot of loose ends, unfinished business, some
of which involves his old university friends.’

‘Like Bishop Randall. I did forward your letter. Have you not heard?’

‘Yes, I did, thanks.’ She seemed relieved. ‘There were others, too. A man called Findlay Francis. I know he was up here at Christ Church, it was mentioned in his
Wiki
entry.’

‘I’m sure I remember the name.’

They were at the halfway point on their stretch around the garden and sat on an old teak bench in the shade of a towering sycamore. ‘Can I ask you how long you’ve been working here,
Helen?’

‘It’s around five years now.’

‘You see, until the time my father died in 2001, no matter where he was in the world, whatever he was up to, he came back to this country for a week or so. Always in the middle weeks of
October. Religiously. Almost like a pilgrimage. And I think while he was here he met up with other Oxford friends, so I was wondering . . .’

‘If they met up here?’

She was sharp as well as attractive.

‘That’s right. Look, October’s the start of the academic year, Michaelmas term, and it would be a natural place to hold any reunion.’

‘We encourage our alumni to visit. Bring their goodwill with them. And hopefully their money, too.’

‘Old habits.’

The gardener had finished trimming the lawn and was knocking the croquet hoops into place with a wooden mallet. The sound of wood on iron echoed from the warm sandstone walls.

‘So if they came back to Christ Church,’ Harry continued, ‘they’d probably have dinner at High Table. Maybe run up a bar bill in the SCR, stay overnight in the guest
room, just as I did.’

Helen nodded.

‘So I wondered if there might be any records.’

‘Ah,’ she sighed. She wrinkled her nose.

‘Helen, I can’t emphasize enough how important this is. All I need to know is if my father came back and, if he did, who he was with. That can’t be covered by any privacy code,
can it?’

‘Frankly, I’m not sure. It’s an odd one.’

‘We’re talking twenty, thirty, maybe forty years ago. Not even Cabinet papers are kept secret that long.’

She shook her head.

‘There’s a problem?’

‘Even if it were OK to release that information – and I’m not saying that it is, you understand – I’ve no idea what sort of records there would be. It’s
pre-digital, nothing but scraps of old paper.’

‘We could say I was undertaking research for my thesis.’

‘Are you writing one?’

It was his turn to frown. ‘Let me take a look. Please.’

‘You want all of that for a walnut whip?’

‘I swear I saw some champagne truffles in the box, too.’

She shook her head once more. ‘Oh, Mr Jones, you’re really rather wicked.’

‘You see right through me.’

She sat staring at him while the breeze rattled the ancient branches above their heads. ‘Mr Jones—’

‘Harry, please, since we’re almost partners in crime.’

‘I’ve no idea whether this information should be regarded as confidential, and I doubt if anyone else does, either. They’d have to convene a committee, dust off the precedents,
submit proposals to the proctors. And the proctors would only suck their thumbs for a while, then cover their backs by seeking the view of the Vice-Chancellor. Harry, this could get very messy,
take months.’ She paused for a final moment of reflection. ‘So I’d better not ask.’

‘Helen, I don’t want to get you into any difficulties.’

‘You won’t. What you will do, Harry, is come to my office at three thirty. That’s the time for my afternoon tea break. But you may find that I’ll be out taking a walk
along the river. Eating chocolates.’

Old Tom was ringing the half-hour as Harry rapped on Helen’s door. There was no answer. He stepped inside and closed the door carefully behind him. The office was much as
he had remembered it that morning, except the box of chocolates on her desk had been opened and both the walnut whip and the champagne truffle were gone. And, in the corner, an old filing cabinet
stood with one of its drawers gaping open. In the rack of files there was one set apart from its neighbours. It was marked ‘High Table: Guests’. The papers inside were old, chaotic, far
from complete. Many of them consisted of no more than flimsy carbon copies.

But they were enough.

Waterloo train station. The place on the concourse level that had never quite decided whether it was a wine bar or a coffee shop. Overstuffed armchairs and tiny tables. It was
the first occasion Jemma and Harry had come face to face since their time-out. She hadn’t wanted to be there, to be any part of this, but Abby had insisted and Jemma had found it impossible
to deny her.

‘I’m not comfortable,’ she’d explained to Harry. ‘I’m not ready yet.’

‘Have you stopped loving me, Jem?’

‘No, but we both know that simply loving you was never going to be enough. It’s working out how I might ever be able to live with you that I can’t get my head
around.’

She wasn’t the first to have said something like that. Harry knew that if he tried to push things he would reopen wounds, perhaps do lasting damage. He’d have to make do with a
double espresso.

Abby had suggested the meeting place and Jemma pointed her out to Harry as she stepped onto the escalator. Abby hid a good figure beneath shapeless clothes, wore a battered straw hat with an
oversized brim and had a canvas bag slung over her shoulder that was large enough to carry essential supplies that would outlast the Apocalypse. As she drew nearer they saw she had an intricate
henna tattoo covering her wrist and the back of her hand. Jemma waved, got a kiss for her troubles, while Harry got a guarded greeting and a handshake that made the army of bangles on her wrist
jangle. She held his hand for several moments, as though trying to read his chakras, then seemed to find something of which she approved. ‘Peace and love, Mr Jones.’

‘Wouldn’t
that
be nice?’ he replied before disappearing to arrange an order of herbal tea and espressos.

Abby watched him go, studying the muscular body beneath the loose summer shirt and tightness of the trousers around his butt. ‘Him –
and
the other?’ she said to Jemma,
in awe. ‘As I said, I used to be young once, but never that young.’

‘OK, Abby, these are the rules of engagement. You and Harry tell each other your secrets, you keep mine.’

‘Do either of them have brothers?’

But already Harry was returning from negotiating with the waitress behind the bar and soon they were sipping their hot drinks. Harry produced his photo. ‘Your father. My father,’ he
declared, pointing.

She whispered something inaudible and then sat silently, running her fingertip with its violently painted varnish across her father’s face. It was clearly a moment of emotion and there was
mistiness in her voice when she spoke again. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before. Old photos. When he was young.’ When she looked up from the photo her eyes were filled
with gratitude, and also with trust. ‘I didn’t really know my dad terribly well, you see. He split up with my mum when I was young, about ten, and after that he was little more than a
visitor in my life. He wrote – you know that, of course – and that kept him travelling around the world. I can’t say we ever had a proper relationship.’ It was clearly a
source of pain. ‘But he did keep in contact. You know, it doesn’t sound much, a postcard, but he sent me one every month from wherever he was. And he always sent me a dedicated copy of
his books, nearly twenty of them, all told, about oil sheiks, film stars, disgraced politicians, royalty. Not my sort of stuff, really, but in every one he wrote a special message for me. He tried,
I know that. He just wasn’t very good at it.’

‘Do you recognize the other faces?’ Harry asked, indicating the photo.

Abby shook her head. ‘I don’t think I ever met any of his friends.’

‘Where did he live when he was in this country?’

‘He had a flat in Brighton for many years, overlooking the sea. Always loved the sea, said it helped him concentrate. But he had a problem – oh, it must have been about ten years
ago, maybe a bit more. He was walking back home late one evening from his favourite drinking place, cutting through The Lanes, one of the alleyways a little back from the seafront, when he was
attacked.’

‘Mugged, you mean?’ Harry asked as Abby took a sip of her tea.

‘No, very badly beaten. Spent a couple of weeks in hospital. Could have been far worse but a couple of policemen heard the shouts and when they appeared the attackers ran off.’

‘Who were they?’

‘Never found out. The police decided it was probably a bit of gay bashing that got out of hand – but Dad wasn’t like that; my mum used to say he wasn’t very much inclined
either way. The beating affected him, very much so. He told me it was to do with the book he was writing, someone trying to put him off. And it worked. He never finished it, started on something
else.’

‘Do you know who the book was about?’

‘No. He wouldn’t even discuss it. He didn’t mind suffering for his art but no way was he going to die for it; he said no book was that important. Became very secretive, sold up
in Brighton, moved.’

‘Where?’

‘I don’t know. He became paranoid, hid himself away. Stopped using credit cards, it was always cash, didn’t have a regular phone number. He spent much more time out of the
country, said he was afraid they were still after him. But I never found out who “they” were. And I’m not even sure where he stayed when he was in Britain – somewhere in the
West Country, that’s all I know. He would come to see me in London and this is where we’d meet, Waterloo station. He got very cloak-and-dagger.’

‘You said he travelled a lot for his work.’

‘Seemed to spend half his life on planes and in hotels.’

‘Did he come back to Britain regularly?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. Every year. He’d research his subject, then come back here to write it all up. But only for a couple of months or so. He said he could write three thousand words a
day so long as he was left alone.’

‘Tell me, Abby, was there any particular time of year he came back home?’ Harry asked, an edge to his voice.

‘Yes, always in the autumn.’

‘October?’

‘That’s right. September–October. Then sod off before the snow, that’s what he used to say. Before they caught up with him again.’

‘So your father changed his life after the attack?’

‘Completely.’

‘Can you remember exactly when that was?’

‘As I said, around ten years ago. No, perhaps a little more. I was still in my twenties.’

‘Might it have been 2001?’

‘No, no, not then. It was the autumn of the following year, 2002. I’m pretty sure of that,’ she said, nibbling at her thumb as she concentrated. ‘But we were all getting
paranoid then, weren’t we? After 9/11, just before the Iraq war.’