Mortal Ghost (49 page)

‘I need to talk with you about your brother,’ Jesse said.

Mick continued to chew on a piece of lobster, head bent over his plate. Jesse wondered whether Mick had heard him. He was about to repeat himself when Mick swallowed, dipped a finger into his sauce, raised his head, and stared at Jesse. Mick’s eyes were hard and impenetrable, like mirrored lenses. Slowly, very slowly he licked his finger clean. His mouth stretched into a smile.

‘Tastes just like her cunt,’ he said.

Implacable fingers tightened the silence between them like a gut string on a cello, tightened till about to snap.

‘Daniel is dead,’ Jesse said. ‘I killed him.’

Chapter 37

Jesse woke all at once, as though someone had tossed a bucket of cold water over the bed. For a moment he was unable to move, his first conscious thought of Sarah. He shifted his gaze from the elongated rhomboid of moonlight which fell across the floor through the half-drawn curtains and soon could make out Sarah’s shape, her deep-sleep breathing. His eyes searched every corner of the room. Other than the gooseflesh which puckered his skin, all seemed normal. He pushed aside the duvet, careful not to jostle Sarah, and padded to have a look from the window. The garden was still, the night showed no sign of imbalance. But his skin continued to tell him something was wrong. He pulled a jumper over his head and carried a pair of jeans out with him into the passage, shutting the door quietly behind him.

In the kitchen he fed Nubi a handful of dog biscuits and let him out into the garden. He’d found nothing amiss in the house. Meg and Finn were sleeping soundly, there was no sign of an intruder. Jesse opened the fridge and took out a bottle of milk, then poured himself a generous amount and drank it down. After stowing the glass in the dishwasher, he held out his hand. It was steady, and the icy prickling feeling, as if it were sleeting under his skin, had disappeared. Perhaps just a bad dream, after all.

He went to the open doorway and peered out. ‘Come, Nubi,’ he called softly. He heard the dog snuffling from the direction of the shed. He called again, louder. How long did Nubi need to piddle anyway? He whistled once, then listened. It sounded as though Nubi had found something to eat. Another mouse? Damn that dog! He’d chomp anything he could fit his jaws around.

Jesse was about to step out into the garden when the phone in the kitchen rang. He whirled and stared at the handset. It rang again. Not the private signal. His eyes shifted to the clock. Three-twenty. Who the hell was calling at this time? Or a wrong number? The display gave nothing away:
anonymous call
.

Don’t pick it up. All his instincts were screaming at him now. It continued to ring. Finn or Meg would hear if the caller persisted. Before Jesse could stop himself, he had the phone in his hand, then against his ear.

‘Jesse?’

The sensation along his skin was back, only this time the sleet had turned to needles of driving snow, and the wind was gusting.

‘Jesse?’ The voice repeated—cold, disembodied, unfamiliar.

He cleared his throat. Suddenly he realised that in the brightly lit kitchen he could be seen through the window and open door.

‘Who is this?’ he asked.

A laugh. An ugly knowing laugh. A laugh that made him shut his eyes and hold his breath, to keep from melting the phone on the spot.

‘Fireboy, listen real good. Nobody messes with my hands—with me. Hear that, cunt.
Nobody
.’

Again that laugh. And then Jesse was left listening to the wind howling across the shattered and jagged edges of the night.

~~~

‘Jesse.’

Jesse swam upwards towards the light, the water rippling above his head.

‘Jesse.’

He broke the surface and opened his eyes, blinked. His eyelids were gummy. Early morning sunlight flowed into the room, warm and golden.

Finn was standing just over the threshold, door ajar. He put his finger to his lips and beckoned. Memory flooded into Jesse’s mind, and with a quick glance at Sarah, he slid out of bed and followed Finn into the passage. Jesse leaned back against the closed door in his boxers and T-shirt, first rubbing the sleep from his eyes, then combing his fingers through his hair.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Come downstairs,’ Finn whispered grimly.

On the floor near the fridge, Nubi lay in a pool of vomit, foam flecking his nostrils and muzzle. There were several other puddles scattered throughout the kitchen—dark urine, undigested chunks of meat floating in more vomit, malodorous diarrhoea. When Jesse crouched at the dog’s side, he knew it was too late. Nubi’s jaws were drawn back in a rictus of death, his eyes wide and staring, his body rigid from the spasms.

‘Poison,’ Finn said, then held Jesse as he shuddered and wept.

Chapter 38

Finn cancelled his long-scheduled trip to New York over Jesse’s protests. ‘So I won’t sell as many books. Who cares? We won’t be going hungry, not with a doctor in the family.’

Finn’s joking did nothing to mask the worry at the back of his eyes. Together he and Jesse dug a grave near Nubi’s favourite spot under the walnut tree, hacking and finally sawing through limb-thick roots in grim determination. Meg and Sarah joined them when the hole was deep enough. No one said much while Nubi was buried, Jesse least of all.

The last spadeful of soil in place, Jesse went right off to the unfinished job of clearing away the sundial, whose destruction Finn wasn’t quite inclined to classify with broken windows; however, it was clear to everyone that Jesse was in no condition to be questioned closely. Soon afterwards he retreated not just to his room, but to a place where even Sarah couldn’t reach him. Though he didn’t lock her out physically—they still spent the nights together—his skin, his breath, his thoughts became so cold that it hurt to touch him. It felt like a car handle on winter days in Norway—put your naked fingers to it, and you left part of your own skin behind.

When Finn asked about enemies, Jesse looked at him blankly, as though he didn’t understand the words. And when Finn persisted, Jesse shrugged. ‘I already know who it is. I’ll deal with him.’ Disquieted, Finn tried to probe for more information, but Jesse turned back to his weeding without a word. For that was all he seemed able to do—hours and hours of labour, hard physical labour, long into the night. Sarah thought he was trying to sweat away the pain. He hardly ate, and he wouldn’t shower, as if he welcomed the smell of his own sweat—as if its very rankness proved something.

After discussing the situation with Meg, Finn rang Matthew on Thursday. There too something was wrong—Jesse had not been to the boathouse in days—but Meg thought Matthew might be able to carry some of Jesse’s grief. ‘Matthew has a way with strays, we all know that,’ she said. And though Matthew was stiff on the phone, bluntly declining to answer any of Finn’s questions, he did turn up a few hours later. Even more laconic than usual, he made straight for the garden where he found Jesse forking over the compost heap. After about twenty minutes Finn suddenly remembered some tools he desperately needed from the shed, but Matthew flicked him such a severe look from under his black cap that Finn withdrew without even bothering to open the shed door. Sarah added a few choice words of her own about nosy, meddling parents before leaving for a dance class.

In another hour or so Matthew came into the kitchen where Finn, having relinquished all pretence of repair work, was hovering over a mushroom risotto and a salad he was preparing. They exchanged a couple of pleasantries but Matthew refused to stay for supper, and refused even more firmly to divulge what he and Jesse had talked about. ‘Give him time,’ was all he’d say. Finn bit back a sour comment about Meg’s influence when he saw Matthew attempt, and fail, to mask his sadness. He left, however, with a promise to return soon.

On Friday Jesse still ached when he woke. Mornings he felt as if someone had beaten him soundly in the night with the handle of his spade, though the soreness in his muscles did little to disguise the deeper ache. He groaned softly, and Sarah’s eyes flew open. This time, however, he stared at her with unguarded, festering eyes, then crawled into her arms. She said nothing, held him close. The smell of lavender gauzed them both.

Later he showered and dressed in clean clothes. Finn was hanging out a load of laundry on the rotary clothesline when Jesse joined him. Finn fished out some white cotton knickers.

‘I keep trying, but Meg just gives them away,’ Finn said laconically.

‘Gives what away?’

‘The lacy red camisoles and thongs I buy her.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Jess flicked a wet T-shirt at Finn, who dodged to avoid a stinging reprimand.

‘You and Meg,’ Jesse asked, ‘you still—still, well, make love?’

Finn laughed from his belly, like a good loud belch. ‘What’s brought that on?’

‘Sorry.’ Jesse seemed to be losing more and more control of his rackety tongue. ‘It’s none of my business.’

‘Oh, I don’t mind. I keep forgetting that to kids your age, anyone over thirty is old, and over forty, decrepit.’

‘Rubbish. Over fifty.’

They laughed together in a shared lull between waves. For some reason Jesse felt like seizing fast to Finn, probably the better swimmer, an admission Jesse would make about few others. This Viking could probably hold him afloat in one hand.

‘I’ll let you in on a secret,’ Finn said. ‘It’s like a fine cognac, improves with age.’ He must have seen something on Jesse’s face. ‘Trust me.’

‘It’s wonderful sometimes,’ Jesse said a bit shyly. ‘Liberating. It dissolves everything—not just time and place, but my skin and bones, my head, my sense of self.’ Jesse stopped for a breath. ‘But coming back hurts, like being squeezed into a pair of shoes that are too tight, a pair of wet jeans, your
skin
.’

Finn smiled—he remembered that intensity. ‘It’s always a little frightening to care about something . . . someone. What you have, you can lose. It can break, or be stolen. Or it might stop fitting.’

Jesse plucked a dandelion from the grass and rubbed his fingers over its glossy yellow plush, shredding it actually, without looking up. When the stem was bare and almost crushed, he let it fall to the ground.

‘I don’t think I have the courage to be so defenceless.’

‘Jesse,
everyone
is vulnerable when it comes to—’ No, he wasn’t prepared to go that far, to ratify a teenage romance with a word already used much too often, and too soon. They were just
kids
, for god’s sake. ‘—when it comes to sex. That’s what emotional intimacy is all about.’

Jesse was quiet for a few minutes, then spoke in a low rush. ‘But it doesn’t really work, does it? To be the other person. To escape yourself. She says something, or I do, or something happens, and you realise that no matter how naked you are, how stripped of defences, you’re still and always clothed in skin, and separate. That sense of self dissolving—it’s just an illusion. Orgasm lasts for what—maybe a couple of seconds? And then you’re back to wanting what you can never have. The end of loneliness.’

‘But think how glorious those few seconds feel.’

Finn regretted his attempt at humour when he heard the bleakness in Jesse’s voice. ‘Yeah, and think how Loki must be laughing at us. Our few
seconds
of boundlessness. Of release.’

‘Jesse, intimacy goes far beyond sex. Despite all the conflicts, which are unavoidable, a good relationship makes it a little easier to sing the sun in flight.’

‘Dylan Thomas never knew someone like me.’

Finn regarded Jesse soberly for a lengthy moment, an unflinching look. A
disconcerting
look.

‘Meet me behind the shed,’ Finn said. ‘I’ll be right back.’ He strode away into the house.

~~~

After a short debate with himself, Jesse ducked round the small outbuilding and waited in the shaded gap between its rear wall and the fence. An overgrown lilac bush, a rhododendron, and a woodpile in danger of imminent collapse—something else to take care of—screened the neighbouring garden.

‘Jesse,’ Finn said.

Jesse turned, then stared. Finn was holding a pistol in his hand.

‘Here, take it,’ Finn said, holding it out.

Jesse accepted it gingerly. ‘It’s loaded?’

‘Not much use if it’s not. In my line of work—well, sideline—surprises can be rather unfortunate.’

‘What am I supposed to do with it?’

Finn stepped back towards the fence, sturdy chainlink, and scuffed his foot through the leaf mould and loose chunks of bark near the lilac. ‘This is Sarah and Peter’s pet cemetery. An old tom, guinea pigs, a couple of tortoises, certainly a bird or two, tropical fish even. And Peter’s dog Surfer.’