Darkroom (10 page)

‘No, no. I want to stay. I thought she'd left me. I really thought she'd left me.'

Mary was still standing so close to Brenda's desk that if she had been substantial, Brenda could have reached out and touched her face. She waited for a moment, but her smile gradually faded because she knew that Brenda would never be able to see her again. She looked up at Jim regretfully and then she vanished.

Jim gave Brenda's shoulder a reassuring squeeze and walked back to the front of the class. ‘OK,' he said briskly. ‘Freddy, how about you – do you believe in an afterlife?'

‘Sure,' said Freddy. ‘Whenever I'm playing cards, my grandpa whispers in my ear and tells me what the other players are holding in their hands, which is cool.'

‘How do you know it's your grandpa?'

‘I can smell him. Rebel Yell whiskey, and cigars, and garlic breath, that's what he used to smell like.'

‘Well, if it's true, that's very interesting, because many people report that they can smell spirits even when they can't see them. Spirits seem to be capable of making their presence known by arousing our nasal receptors, which are much more sensitive, say, than our eyes or our ears. Ruby?'

‘I don't know,' said Ruby, flashing her gold charm bracelets. ‘I believe that we go on living so long as there's at least one person left who remembers us. People live in other people's minds. If somebody can remember a song, and pass it on to their children, then why can't a person's soul get passed on that way, too?'

‘Randy? You don't believe in an afterlife?'

Randy wobbled his jowls. ‘All we are is meat, right?'

‘Absolutely,' said Shadow. ‘And some of us is ten times more meat than others.'

‘I'm going to sit on your head and fart
Camptown Races
in your ear,' Randy warned him.

‘Enough of that,' Jim warned him. ‘What's your point, Randy?'

‘The point is that when our meat dies, right, our brain dies, and when our brain dies, that's it, no more us. How many pigs get slaughtered, right? Millions of them, every day. But we don't get haunted by millions of pigs, do we? You never hear them going oink-oink in the middle of the night.'

‘That's because animals don't have souls,' put in David Robinson. ‘Only humans have souls, because animals can't tell the difference between right and wrong, or have faith in our Lord, like we can.'

Jim wondered what his class would have made of Mary, picking the petals off her red daisy. He still didn't understand spirits himself – why some spirits chose to appear and others didn't, or why some spirits were seething with resentment, while others appeared to be so placid. Maybe there was no real mystery about it. Maybe they were just the same as living people.

‘All right,' he said. ‘I want to hear another piece about Bobby and Sara. Roosevelt, how about you? What did you write?'

Roosevelt awkwardly stood up, his head gleaming as brightly as his mirror sunglasses. He shrugged his shoulders two or three times and then he held up a scruffy square of paper, sniffed, and announced, ‘This is like a pome. This express exactly what I feel for Bobby and Sara and how they pass away:

‘Roosevelt, that's very good,' Jim told him. ‘A little macabre, maybe. But I guess we have to face the fact that they both met a terrible death.'

His attention was caught by a sharp reflection outside, between the trees. Lieutenant Harris's car was coming down the driveway toward the college entrance. Jim turned back to the class, and said, ‘OK, we'll get back to Bobby and Sara tomorrow. Meantime, I have a project for you. No groaning, if you don't mind. This should be a very interesting and worthwhile project, but it will require a little
work
.' More groans.

He turned to the chalkboard and wrote the word
DAGUERROTYPE
.

‘Anybody know what this is? A daguerrotype?'

‘Is it like a terrorist?' asked Philip.

‘Inspired guess, but no. Edward?'

‘It's an early sort of photography, sir. Invented by Louis Daguerre.'

‘That's right. Before film was invented, photographers had to use metal plates which they made sensitive to light with chemicals. It was a very messy business, and they had to carry a whole lot of stuff around with them – cameras, tripods, bottles of mercury. But they took some incredible pictures. Mountains, lakes, railroad locomotives. The battlefields of the Civil War. They even took saucy pictures, too. Oh yes, they had porn, even in 1850.'

He chalked up the name R
OBERT
H. V
ANE
.

‘This is the man I'm interested in. He toured Southern California around 1853, and I believe that he took pictures of Native American tribes. I want you all to see how much you can find out about him, and see if you can locate any of his pictures. You can use the library, the Internet, whatever you like.'

‘Is there some kind of point to this, sir?' asked George solemnly. His hair was sticking out at the back, as if he had just got out of bed.

‘Yes, George. We're going to be writing an imaginary diary of what it was like to wander around California in the pioneering days, taking daguerrotypes.'

‘Er … what for?'

‘I'll tell you what for. So that you can use your imagination to describe California as it was in the middle of the nineteenth century, and how new and wonderful it must have appeared to visitors who came from the east. So that you can describe the technical process of taking a daguerrotype in clear, easily understandable English. So that you can tell me which pictures
you
would have taken to show the people back in New York what California was like, and why it was worth them making a hazardous three-thousand-mile journey to settle here.'

Jim stuck up four fingers, one at a time. ‘One, you'll be demonstrating how good you are at describing scenery and people. Two, you'll be showing that you can understand the way somebody else thinks – even somebody who lived a hundred and fifty years ago. Three, you'll be making it clear that you can grasp a technical process and explain it in non-technical language. Four, you'll be displaying your powers of persuasion, your salespersonship. You may think this is a history project, but believe me, all of those four skills will help you to find a modern-day job. Any job.'

‘Even if you want to work for Radio Shack?' asked Edward.

‘Especially if you want to work for Radio Shack.'

Shadow puffed out his cheeks and Jim could tell how daunted he was by the thought of writing more than two coherent sentences.

‘You got a problem, Sonny?'

‘Kind of. Maybe I misinterpretated it – but didn't you say yesterday that you wanted us to teach you?'

‘Yes, I did. But think about it. How can you teach me anything if you don't
know
anything?'

‘Hmm,' said Shadow. He wasn't convinced.

Jim smiled at him. ‘You find out all about this Robert H. Vane character, believe me, I'll sit and listen to you. And I won't file my nails, or pick my nose, or send suggestive text messages to my girlfriend. I won't even bounce a basketball on my head. Is that a deal?'

Lieutenant Harris was waiting for Jim outside the main entrance, along with two detectives. They were all standing in the shade of the college's pride and joy, a hundred-foot cedar of Lebanon, which was allegedly planted by Tom Mix, the great silent-movie cowboy, in 1923.

‘We have an eye witness,' called Lieutenant Harris as Jim came walking across the grass.

‘Oh, yes?'

‘Detectives Mead and Bross have interviewed dozens of bums and itinerants who spend their nights by the seashore. One of the bums was camping less than fifty yards away from the Tubbs' beach house.'

Detective Mead flipped open his notebook. He was black and handsome as a TV actor. He wore a gray lightweight suit, immaculately cut, and a red and yellow silk necktie. ‘Hayward Mitchell, aged 48, unemployed dishwasher of no fixed address. Says he was settling down for the night when he saw two young people coming down the ramp to the beach. Says they were laughing and joking and generally horsing around.'

Detective Bross was well over 6ft 5in tall, with a head that looked as if it had been sculpted out of raw granite with a jackhammer. He had a gray buzzcut and deep-set eyes, and a hook-shaped scar around the side of his mouth. He said nothing, but he stared at Jim as if he were trying to remember his face from a recent armed robbery.

Lieutenant Harris took two color photographs out of his pocket and held them up. ‘Mitchell admitted that he was nine parts intoxicated, but he identified both Bobby Tubbs and Sara Miller. He gave a reasonable description of what they were wearing and we don't see any reason why he should be shooting us a line.'

Detective Mead turned over another page. ‘The vics went into the beach house, and about ten minutes later Mitchell says he saw a third individual coming down the ramp. Says this individual appeared to be dressed in white and gray. This individual climbed the steps outside the beach house. When he reached the verandah, he turned around, as if he was making sure that nobody was watching him. Mitchell says he was definitely African-American, no question about it. Possibly late middle-aged or elderly, too, because his hair was white. We took Mitchell down to the station and had him sit with our best composite artist. The artist used ImageWay computerized ID and came up with this … which Mitchell agrees is a very accurate likeness.'

Jim took the paper and opened it out. Looking back at him was a square-jawed black man with a shock of white hair and white eyebrows.

‘Ever seen him before?' asked Lieutenant Harris.

Jim shook his head. ‘Nope. Never have. It's not the kind of face you'd be likely to forget, is it? You don't mind if I keep this, though? Maybe something will come to me.'

‘According to Mitchell, this individual was very well-built,' said Detective Bross, in a thick, concrete-mixing voice. ‘About the same height and weight as me.'

Jim looked Detective Bross up and down. He must have weighed all of 275 pounds. ‘Well-built? You don't exaggerate, do you?'

‘Let's just say that his mother must have made him eat his greens.'

Jim stared at the ImageWay picture closely. He found it oddly unsettling. It was like seeing a friend in a mirror for the very first time – a friend whose face you know well, but when his features are reversed left-to-right, looks unfamiliar, even creepy.

‘Mitchell says he never saw this individual leave the beach house, although obviously he must have done. He probably waited until later, when Mitchell was asleep.'

‘So it looks like Bobby and Sara might have been murdered?'

‘Almost certainly. So, if you can get something out of that face that we can't, don't hesitate to call me.'

‘Sure thing,' said Jim.

He nodded goodbye to Detectives Mead and Bross. He could tell that they were deeply unimpressed by his psychic abilities, but that was their problem. He had picked up no vibrations from the crime scene, nothing at all, even though today's visitation by Brenda's sister Mary had shown him that he was still capable of seeing spirits. He couldn't identify the suspect in the Image Way picture, either. At least it wasn't the college janitor, Walter. He, too, was black, with snow-white hair – but he was only 5ft 5in tall and skinny as a spider.

He was walking back toward the main entrance when Karen came out, with Perry Ritts from the science department. Perry was deeply tanned, with thinning blond hair that waved in the wind like a flag, and one of those wholesome-guy faces with plenty of teeth and eyes that were always a little too wide, as if everything surprised him. Karen was wearing a pink check blouse that he had never seen before, and she was laughing. She looked a little older, of course, but it suited her, and he had forgotten how pretty she was.

Jim veered sharply right toward the side entrance. He wasn't ready to confront Karen yet. He was even less ready to nod and smile at her as she walked past him with Perry Ritts. He had made up a rhyme about Perry Ritts – it wasn't clean and it wasn't at all complimentary.

J
im went for a drink after college with Vinnie and Stu Bullivant from the arts department. Stu looked more like a Minnesota logger than an art teacher, with a massive brambly beard and a red checkered shirt and jeans that could have comfortably accommodated Jim and Stu in each leg. Stu had a theory that
everything
was art, particularly after seven beers. A shopping cart was art, because you filled it with things that revealed your soul.

‘Stand behind any woman at the supermarket checkout, and look at what she's buying. She wouldn't let you read her private diary, would she? But she's spreading out her shopping in front of you, and that's much more intimate than any diary. What does it say about her, if she's buying twenty-four bargain-price toilet rolls, and six loaves of medium-cut white bread, and four gallons of milk, and thirty cans of dog food, and a box of incontinence pads, and a dozen Hungry Man TV dinners, and a can of drain unblocker, and a copy of
National Enquirer
? It says everything. It's a searingly honest self-portrait. Searingly honest! Just because she happens to have created this self-portrait in consumer goods, instead of paint, that doesn't mean it's any less meaningful. It's still art!'