Mortal Ghost (55 page)

‘I’m unarmed. Let me come and speak with you,’ the man said.

He placed the bullhorn on the ground, lifted his arms above his head, and pivoted slowly in place. Leaving the bullhorn where he’d placed it, he ventured a step or two closer.

Jesse called out to him, ‘Stop right there.’

The officer did as instructed. He addressed Jesse again, his voice now clear and confident and measured; he’d got his stutter under control. This was an educated man. He had been well-trained for such incidents. Jesse wondered briefly whether the speech impairment had been deliberate, a way to disarm his suspects.

‘Why don’t you tell me what you want? I’m certain we can come to an arrangement.’

Jesse said nothing.

‘You’re Jesse, aren’t you? My name is Richard, Richard Howell. I’m Chief Inspector. You can trust me.’

Jesse laughed.

‘Let Sarah go and no one will shoot. If there’s a problem, we can talk about it. There’s no need for anyone to get hurt.’

Jesse didn’t reply.

Howell took another step forward.

Jesse waved the pistol and called out, ‘No further. Or I’ll kill her.’ He held the gun to Sarah’s head.

She had to try. ‘No! He doesn’t mean that. You’ve got to stop him. He wants to—’ Jesse clamped his hand over her mouth and shook her head roughly. ‘I’m warning you, I’ll kill her right this second,’ he yelled. Then dipped his head and hissed, ‘Not another word.’

Howell stopped, holding up his hands in a placating gesture.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Whatever you want, Jesse. Just tell us what we should do. We don’t want anything to happen to Sarah. Nor to you.’

‘I had nothing to do with the fire,’ Jesse said. A lie, but as much of the truth, of himself, as he was prepared to offer them.

‘I spoke to Finn not half an hour ago. I expect you don’t know we’re friends. He’s already got a good lawyer lined up for you. You don’t need to do this. Nobody has to get hurt. You’re young. Sarah’s young. You’ve got your whole lives ahead of you. Put the gun down. Let’s just talk.’

The thwack-thwack of chopper blades insinuated itself only gradually into Jesse’s consciousness. At first he hardly noticed the low rhythmic throb, for his attention was focused on the scene in front of him. He had to find the exact moment when he could make his move. How many rounds were in the magazine anyway? There were more policemen than he’d anticipated, and it would require all of his concentration and split-second timing to bring this off. By the time he realised that they had called out a police helicopter, it was already overhead.

Jesse glanced up. Shit, he thought. A sniper had a scoped rifle trained on him from the open door of the chopper. If they shot at him from behind, would he be flung forward onto the bridge?

‘If you don’t want me to kill Sarah, then clear the bridge. The whole area. Once we’re away, I’ll set her free.’

‘Jesse, these are some of the best marksmen in the country. You don’t stand a chance. Not that way.’

There was a short silence.

‘Think about it, lad. These men are good. So good they can shoot off a single ear or hand or testicle. Or arrange for you to be a
quadriplegic
for the rest of your life. If you imagine it’s a merely a choice between living and dying, think again.’

There was a longer silence.

‘If I let Sarah go, you won’t shoot me?’

‘My job is to save lives, not take them.’

Sarah was beginning to shiver again. It was time to get her to safety. It was time to end it.

‘OK, I’ll let Sarah go.’ Jesse released her as he spoke. ‘Go on,’ he whispered to her. ‘I need you to do this for me.’ When she hesitated, half-turning to plead with him, he nudged her forwards with his free hand. ‘Please, Sarah. Go over there and into the car.’

Slowly, as though dazed, she stumbled the short distance to where Howell was standing, Finn’s gun trained on her the entire time. Howell whispered something to her. She shook her head and turned to stare at Jesse. Her lips were moving. Howell signalled to one of his men, who came over and led Sarah to the car. She refused to get inside, however.

‘Now you, Jesse,’ Howell said. ‘Put down the gun.’

‘First call off the chopper. It’s making me very jumpy.’

Howell pursed his lips, thinking it over. Then he nodded and stepped back to his car, leaning down to speak to a figure seated in the vehicle—the operator in charge of communications, Jesse presumed. All at once the pressure behind his sternum ballooned, this was it, there might never be a better opportunity. Fuck the sniper. With a deep breath, Jesse braced himself as best he could, rose to his full height, took aim, and began shooting.

With a harsh cry Sarah started forward, but Howell seized her by the arm so that she lost her balance and sprawled onto the ground. He shouted, ‘Don’t shoot. Hold your fire. For god’s sake, lads, hold your fire!’ but it was too late. The noise was deafening. Sarah looked up in terror. For a fraction of a second she thought she saw Jesse gaze at her, thought she saw him smile, saw his lips move, heard him say ‘I promise.’ Then terror, real terror, exploded over her, the world gone red. She screamed as she saw him recoil. No. God no. There was a moment which seemed to expand to a lifeline, when the noise became whited silence, and Sarah heard nothing, not even her own screams, and the scene was happening inside her head. Then with a hoarse inrush of sound, time contracted like a womb and flung Jesse from the bridge.
No
. He ignited instantly in a roaring inferno, hung for a breathless heartbeat in the air, his body a human firework
no
a nuclear detonation
no
a fiery incandescent nova. Images flickered across her blurring vision . . . Jesse a bird Jesse
no
Jesse . . . Jesse . . .

And then he was gone.

The sun was hot red ball over the river. Tongues of flame licked an obstinate truth from the dark, secret, oily waters—a deathly hush as the guns fell quiet.

‘Jesus,’ breathed Howell. He shuddered and turned aside. The boy had been a blazing torch as he fell from the bridge. He must have wired himself—that white-hot flash, the detonation which had deafened them for a few seconds. Even that bird—kestrel, wasn’t it?—almost hadn’t made it away. There would be nothing much left to recover. Only just a kid. What a screwed-up world. But Howell was a professional, and he gave the necessary orders: for boats, for divers, for a forensic team, for all the consequences of a police incident.

It would be a long day.

Sarah is heading for the corn circle. It’s a warm golden afternoon, the first after a grey start to October, and the sidewalk cafés and playgrounds are beginning to fill. She comes often to the park. On most days she wheels the pushchair along the gravel paths she and Jesse walked that very first afternoon. Today she has a book tucked into the net along with the usual baby paraphernalia, also an old waterproof camping sheet. If the grass isn’t too damp, she’ll stretch out on the ground, get through that chapter for history.

She missed some school last year, but not much. There had been private tutoring, and with her marks she was allowed to sit most of her exams late. The rest she’ll be able catch up, in the end she’ll finish with her year. These are modern times—a single parent, a teenager, shouldn’t have to suffer. Her parents know how to exploit the system. And in school she wears her motherhood like a badge of honour, a test passed.

October is a country month, one of the best. Maybe at the weekend Meg will drive them to Gran’s. Some of the apples will be ready for picking, fragrant bunches of lavender hang under the eaves—Gran has bought almond oil this year for infusing—and there’s always jam to be made. The sweet, sharp tang of quinces simmering in the kettle will permeate the whole cottage. Sarah smiles to remember how she and Peter used to fight over the scrapings.

The baby needs country air—Sarah, even more so. At five months the baby still sleeps in Sarah’s bed, wanting only a nice long suck to settle. It isn’t quite so easy for Sarah. She’s been dreaming of Jesse again, though never as vividly as the night the baby was born and lay next to her in that tiny cot.

The path ahead is thronged with people, which Sarah doesn’t mind as long as she can find a quiet corner. After the fire, she needed months to be able to walk into a crowded room without beginning to shake. And she still avoids large enclosed spaces like shopping malls, the school auditorium. She hasn’t been to the cinema since that one time with Jesse. And she’s just begun her first dance class a few weeks ago, though she’s not keen to perform onstage again.

Occasionally she meets with someone from school for a coke or bit of TV, but mostly she prefers to be on her own. Having a child has changed her in more ways than she could have ever imagined . . . having had Jesse . . . Aside from teachers and exams, there isn’t much she has in common with the old crowd, even Katy. But she misses Thomas, who left for New York at the beginning of term.

Talk has died down, yet the fire still smoulders in everyone’s memory; the fire, and the boy who set it, and Mick. Sarah was insulated from the gossip for a while—her parents sent her for six weeks to her grandmother in Norway—but upon her return she soon got wind of what was being said at school, and her rage was cataclysmic. It took three blokes to pull her off the girl. With her mum’s help, Sarah has come to understand that, deep down, she’s angry at Jesse (and herself), not the stupid kids who have no idea what they’re talking about. She doesn’t really blame them any longer—well, not much—when she thinks about it rationally. They all know someone who died in the fire. Why should they doubt Mick’s version of the story?

Finn has done his best, but everyone knows of his vested interest in defending the boy. There was an official inquiry into the actions of Howell’s elite team, which resulted in a few dismissals, a few reprimands, but not much else—certainly no prosecutions. Sarah continues to avoid Mick, not that he seeks her out. And of course, together with Gavin, he flatly denies the rape. Jesse was right all along—she should have gone to the police straightaway, when it would have been possible to submit to a few simple tests. Might things have turned out differently? The fire . . . Jesse . . . ?

‘I know you don’t want to believe he’s dead, but he’d never let you suffer like this without getting word to you,’ Finn said after she’d come back from Norway. She’d been racing to answer every phone call; checking her email a thousand times a day; setting upon the post like a fix. ‘At least for him it was over quickly, he didn’t have to live with his guilt,’ Finn added thickly, turning away.

Her parents then suggested she change schools, but Sarah refused. Her obstinacy, her pride were the only things that kept her from going under in those first months of denial and loneliness and desolation and grief; her family’s support. And Thomas—thank god for Thomas. Even so, there were moments when she thought about an abortion. As soon as her pregnancy showed, though, she squared her shoulders and stared down any questions about the father until nobody, but
nobody
, dared to ask. It surprised her, where the strength had come from. After a while she discovered that their speculations ceased to matter. Once reasonably popular, she became something of an outsider, despite Thomas. The books she’s read make it out to be lacerating, the worst kind of gaol sentence—solitary confinement. Maybe for some. But she no longer trusts simple fictions. It’s as if she speaks another language, not the common tongue. She uses the same words but they sound strange, distorted—underwater. And there are still times when she sees lips move and hears sounds fill the room, but it feels like watching TV with the meaning rather than the volume switched off. She listens to music for hours. Solitude sings. She needs it, she supposes. And gradually, she’s beginning to notice a certain admiration, a grudging respect—and interest—from some quarters. There are friends out there, when she’s ready for them.

Christmas was very difficult, and in the end her parents rang Inge in Norway and begged her to come for the rest of the holidays. Her grandmother sat with Sarah for hours, sometimes right through the night. In her beautiful alto voice Inge sang aria after aria from her favourite operas, or sometimes those wonderful blues classics, until Sarah would finally fall asleep. To her alone Sarah showed the lines which Jesse had left under her pillow. Inge said nothing, only stroked her granddaughter’s hair. No one was astonished that Inge agreed with Sarah about school. ‘Don’t let that serpent have the satisfaction of driving you away,’ she said. ‘It’s a matter of honour.’ An old-fashioned concept, but Sarah found it curiously satisfying. It reminded her of Jesse.

On New Years Eve Mick and Gavin were involved in a bizarre accident. They were crossing the Old Bridge on foot with some mates, returning late from a party. It had begun to rain. Gavin had his arm around Mick’s shoulders. A bolt of lightning struck them both, and Gavin spent months in hospital, so badly burnt that his charred penis had to be amputated. While Mick escaped with less severe injuries, he needed a long period of recuperation, and he’ll carry the scars for the rest of his life, the ones on his back being the worst. At school everyone noticed the personality changes, the memory problems, and his difficulty in processing information, though the incoherent remarks about his brother soon tapered off. Mick’s hearing was also impaired, and only recently has he begun to play sax again. He’s stopped talking about the fire since the accident. No one else was harmed.