Night After Night (7 page)

‘Um – I should ask – nobody in the party was wearing a similar dress than night?’

‘You kidding? This was very much Trinity’s show. Nobody would dare. Would
you
have?’

‘I don’t do dresses these days.’ Grayle’s feeling unexpectedly tense. This guy, this ex-soldier with one foot, he would’ve gotten more impact out of this if he
hadn’t
admitted to being superstitious. ‘So…’

‘No mirrors. No double image. And you know how I know this? Because the expression’s different. Couldn’t be more different. The other face is very pale and not smiling. The lips seem to be parted, and the eyes are also very pale. Almost white. And they’re staring from out of the darkness.’

‘Staring at you? Staring at Trinity?’

‘Both. That probably doesn’t make any sense, but it would if you could see it. The eyes are… they’re taking offence. Big time. Somebody’s not welcome. That’s how I saw it. Call it hindsight if you want.’

‘You don’t?’

‘No. Stays with you, an image like that. I know it’s unlikely, a faint wisp of a woman putting out all that negative emotion. But I’m just— I think I
will
have another drink, Grayle. They do
proper coffee here, do you think? No, no…’ Pruford’s out of his chair faster than you’d imagine for a guy with one foot. ‘No, I’ll get them.’

‘Just— Jeff, were you the only person to see this, apart from the woman who took the picture?’

He’s shaking his head.

‘It’s worse than that, Grayle. Couldn’t get that white face out of my head, and yet I was feeling very pissed off at my own… cowardice is not the word, but getting creeped out by a tiny image on a phone? I was going to have another go at that woman when she was safely away from Knap Hall, so about a fortnight later, when Trinity was not looking good, I looked up her details and called the number in the States and… she was dead.’

Grayle stares at him.

‘Arrived back in the States with pneumonia. Gone within a week. And if that sounds like I’ve made it up to support not having any evidence for you… well, whatever you want to think.’

‘So nobody else saw it.’

‘Nobody I know of saw that picture, no.’

‘What about what… what was
in
the picture? None of the staff ever see anything?’

‘Dunno. Frankly, I’d be surprised if nobody did. But, you see, we all valued our jobs too much to want to scare Mrs Ansell. I often had my suspicions about Poppy Stringer, the housekeeper, but you wouldn’t get anything out of her. Not even now. She used to work for the Marquis of Bath at Longleat – must have a stack of stories about him, but never a word.’

‘Um… Lisa – the scullery maid? She indicated that after the night of the red dress, something changed. For Trinity. That night she was… the word was “incandescent”. And then… maybe something soured?’

He shakes his head.

‘I wasn’t that close to her. Lisa was closer. She’d know.’

Grayle says nothing. Jeff Pruford’s leaning on the backrest of his vacated chair.

‘I wonder what she sees. If she still walks that place, what does she see? I mean, does she exist in the world she created, where Knap Hall’s all aglow?’

‘Different place now, I guess. Full of regrets.’

‘More than that, Grayle,’ Pruford says. ‘If she’s stuck there, God help her.’

February

6

Something touched me

FOR THE SHORTEST
month, drab February can last for ever. The twenty-seventh is a silvery kind of day, and Fred Potter’s taken Grayle out to lunch at the new health-food restaurant in the Rotunda, a healthy four-minute walk from the office.

Significant warning sign. Fred doesn’t do health-food restaurants. Fred does burger joints and pubs, like the good old-fashioned journalist he is, despite being barely thirty.

‘What would you recommend, Grayle?’

He has the menu. She ignores it, looks him full in the eyes.

‘I’d recommend you get this over real quick and go grab yourself a bag of fries.
Chips
.’ She slaps her own wrist. ‘All these years and I still never get that right.’

She’s kidding, of course; it was one of the things she got right from the very first week she was over here, on account of chips sounds so much more healthy and innocent than fries. But Fred Potter and Neil Oldham, who owns the agency, seem to like it when the Americanisms leak out.

She stares at the sepia pictures on the restaurant walls, of ladies taking the waters at Old Cheltenham Spa.

‘We had another call from HGTV,’ Fred says.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘This time, Leo Defford in person,’ Fred says. ‘As distinct from an assistant producer just out of assistant-producer-school.’

‘You tape the call for posterity?’

Fred’s scanning the menu a second time, evidently looking for the least offensive item. He’s now chief reporter at the Three
Counties News Service and may one day take over from Neil Oldham as proprietor. If it survives that long.

‘Defford was very encouraged by the stuff you gave them. He liked your style.’ Fred lowers the menu. ‘Grayle, this Quorn… does it actually taste
anything
like meat?’

‘Maybe with the right sauce and a little imagination. But then I don’t even remember meat. Where’s this going, Fred?’

‘He liked your objectivity. That you clearly weren’t trying to give him what he wanted to hear. Although you did. Very much so.’

That could be because nobody thought it worth telling her
what
Defford wanted to hear. One of the reasons she didn’t particularly enjoy this job. The other was that obtaining background material for a TV production company lacks what she likes to think of as the purity of journalism. Especially if you don’t know how it’s going to be used and really can’t imagine it being anything edifying.

‘And he has a proposition,’ Fred says.

Grayle doesn’t react beyond a wrinkle of the nose. Fred pours spring water into two glasses.

‘When he was paying us to get behind the Knap Hall wall of silence… that was just a fishing trip. See if the place was what they were looking for. Now they’re actually going ahead. With the programme. And the house.’

‘Good for them,’ Grayle says dourly. ‘Whatever it’s about.’

‘So Defford would like you to dig deeper.’

‘I’m already digging deeper. Trying to persuade the freaking gardener to talk.’

‘As part of the team.’

‘Team?’

‘He wants you on the team. In a research capacity. Which would mean a ten-month contract. And the possibility of more work if it goes well.’

Ah. Grayle can hear the swish of curtains closing on a career, like the screening of the casket in a crematorium as the furnace gets fired up.

Fred nods at the menu.

‘Whatever you’re having,’ she says absently. ‘Nothing on there died for us.’

‘Except when it was wrenched out of the soil.’ Fred beckons a waitress in a vintage Laura Ashley apron, orders two Quorn risottos, sits back. ‘Have you ever
heard
a radish scream? As for a dying quorn…’

Reluctantly, Grayle smiles. Fred is Gloucestershire-born, from farming stock. He can admire an Old Spot pig without wanting to keep it as a pet. But she’s not going to make this easy for him.

‘TV experience,’ he says, ‘always looks good on a CV.’

‘Ten months of hack work under the direction of some emotionally retarded egomaniac looks
good
?’

Fred looks hurt.

‘All right.’ She sips some water. ‘Bottom line: would they be paying Three Counties or me?’

‘You.’

‘I see.’

It’s all she needs to know.

‘What can I say, Grayle? I’m so sorry.’

‘Well, it’s, uh… a refreshingly different way of having your ass detached from the premises without having to hear the word “fired”.’

Fred fishes for a smile, gives up, shakes his head. Tells her it’s no reflection at all on her abilities. Simply last-in, first-out. She knows how it is. And how much better it’s not going to get.

See, it’s not that there isn’t enough news around. News never winds down, human madness will always be a growth industry. Just that fewer people expect to pay to learn about it. Regional papers are closing down, radio stations getting their budgets minced. Blame the Internet, blame new technology. Nowadays, a journalist is any semi-literate asshole who can frame a blog, and a press photographer is someone in the right place with a smartphone.

‘Neil thought it would be better coming from me,’ Fred says. ‘He thinks you don’t trust him.’

‘Heavens.’

The one incontestable truth about journalism is that it makes you cynical. And the most cynical of journalists are those working for news agencies like Three Counties, picking up regional stories to sell to newspapers and broadcast media so they can be rewritten or voiced-up by the guys who get the bylines. Or, worst of all, fed into trash TV.

But now, even TV and radio newsrooms are plucking stories for free off Twitter. Stories that aren’t really stories at all. Bottom line: someone at Three Counties has to jump. She tries to convey to Fred how much she appreciates their efforts to lay a mattress on the ground for her. But there’s no need. If Oldham had asked for a volunteer, she’d’ve been first to step up to the plate. She can get another job. Someplace.

Someplace that will almost certainly involve quitting the very convenient Cheltenham apartment and starting over, but still… even with her income flatlining, it’s going to be a lot easier for her than it would be for Fred, with a wife and a new baby.

‘Would at least give you time to look around, Grayle. Knowing you were OK for money.’

‘I never…’ Under the table, Grayle’s fists have tightened. He’s noticed how long she’s been wearing the same outfits? ‘Never figured to stay here longer than it took to prove I could work the sharp end.’

The sharp end is missing kids, street-stabbings, soap stars’ extra-maritals. As distinct from crystal therapy, rebirthing, past-life regression. And a picture of a dreamy-eyed blonde holding a piece of quartz they’d made glow, on top of a weekly column in the
New York Courier
headlined
HOLY GRAYLE
.

Jesus Christ, is she ever going to live down Holy Grayle?

‘You proved it,’ Fred Potter says. ‘You don’t drink enough, but otherwise you’re OK.’

‘Even cut my hair.’

‘Now
that
was a step too far. I liked your hair the way it was.’

‘End of the day, Potter, all I need from you guys is a cash pay-off. And a reference makes me sound like Lois Lane.’

Pause. A woman at the next table is talking about all the flood damage to her holiday cottage in Cornwall, how they won’t be able to sell it till it dries out, and that could be
months.

‘Listen…’ Fred Potter leans back in his chair of woven cane, hissing in frustration. ‘Grayle, listen to me…’

‘I stopped listening?’

‘He really wants you.’

‘What?’

‘He wants
you
.’

‘He doesn’t know me.’

‘You know what these TV guys are like. He likes what you’ve done, he loves the way you linked up Trinity Ansell and Katherine Parr. He says most of the idiot researchers he’s employed, it would have sailed over their heads. He wants you to go on doing it, and he’s prepared to pay. For the continuity. It makes sense to him.’

‘Yeah, and it makes sense to you. And Neil. Especially Neil. He gets to unload me and feel he’s doing me a favour.’

‘You’re looking at more money than you could ever expect from Neil.’

‘Yeah, for going…’

Backwards. Oh hell, how did this happen?

Weak sun fingers the art-nouveau wood nymphs painted on the windows. She still likes this place: the Rotunda, Cheltenham, the proximity of the Cotswolds which are nice in winter, pre-tourists.

‘It’s probably not what you’re thinking,’ Fred says.

‘And I’m thinking
what
?’

‘You’re thinking one of those ghostbuster shows. Hand-held, infrared videocam. A female presenter who—’

‘Who screams and goes, “Oh my God, something touched me, and it was cold!” You mean it isn’t?’

‘Grayle, I never like to pry into anyone’s past—’

‘
What?
Fred, you
love
to—’

‘—but didn’t that used to be your province? In New York?’

‘OK, let’s just…’ She calms herself. ‘Holy Grayle – I don’t wanna even
talk
about that woman ’cept to say even she never sunk that low. Ghosts, that’s no job for adults, it’s overgrown teenagers in baseball hats. Downmarket, credulous TV. Serious people don’t go there. It’s discredited. That’s how much things’ve changed, and you don’t… you don’t realize till you’re out of it.’

Grayle examines the other people in the health-food restaurant. At one time, a good proportion of them would be New Age animals,
hippies nouveaux
, with zodiac earrings, ankhs on chains, Jesus sandals. Now both men and women here are wearing business suits and doubtless have season tickets for the gym. Health food is about health, and that’s it. It’s about taking care of your body to make your life last longer because this life is all you have and anyone who says otherwise is a freaking fruitcake.

She says, cautiously, ‘Defford know about that? About me?’

‘He might do.’

Grayle shakes her head, sighing.

They told him. They said, Grayle? Sure, Grayle is just what you’re looking for.

Maybe told him how, when she first came to the UK, she was working for this subscription magazine,
The Vision
, a forum for the exchange of
anomalous experiences
, bought by the same kind of nut-jobs who used to follow Holy Grayle in the
New York Courier
. Only British and therefore more quaint.

Working for Marcus Bacton, the ex-schoolteacher who was the journal’s founder, editor and proprietor. Who was serious enough to hate most of his readers.

Who, some years ago, had a minor heart attack.

Grayle kept offering to try and keep the magazine going until he was back on his feet, but Marcus was shaking his head, saying it was a mug’s game. Saying this was the writing on the wall and
propelling her, almost forcibly, out the door. Telling her it was time to stop casting around for a workable belief system while reconstructing other people’s. Time to get back into the world. Learn a regular trade before it was too late. Or get the next plane home.