Ghosts Know (18 page)

‘Ali.” Having warned his son in some way, the older man says “It is someone about Wayne.”

“Is it one of his gang? Are the swines calling up now?”

“I do not think. He does not sound like them.”

“Then let’s hope it’s the police. Here, let me talk to him.” A confused noise suggests a struggle, and I assume a hand is attempting to muffle the mouthpiece while the father says “Take care.” The noise ends, and Ali demands “Who—”

“Mr Nazir, I understand you and your family have been having some trouble with Wayne and his friends.”

“Us and a lot of others. Who is this? Are you the police?”

“Just someone else like you, I’m afraid. I’ve been having problems with him as well.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“I believe I can get him dealt with as he deserves if I collect enough evidence. Do you mind if I ask what you’ve had to put up with?”

“I don’t mind in the slightest bit. It’s about time someone asked. You’ll have met the killer, will you?”

“Ali, have a care.”

“He’s not afraid to talk about the Stanleys, and it’s a bloody sight past time we weren’t either.”

What have I just learned, and can it be true? “Killer,” I repeat.

“That’s what they call that brute of an animal.”

I’m still not certain, but I have to risk sounding so. “You mean the dog.”

“The one they say isn’t illegal, but it should be.”

“Like a few other things about Wayne.”

“You won’t hear me differing with that.”

I need him to be more specific, and I’m enraged to catch myself wondering how Jasper would handle him. “It isn’t just the dog that’s been giving you a problem, is it?”

“He wouldn’t be so big without it They think they own the street.”

“What are you saying it lets him do?”

Ali either doesn’t like the question or is determined to stay with his theme. “It uses the street for a toilet. You should see the pavement outside here. I think it has been trained to go there.”

“Have you approached anybody about it?”

“I would but my father thinks they would make life worse for us.”

“You were saying what Wayne thinks he can get away with because of the dog.”

“Not just him. Mr Stanley thinks the pavement is his personal car park, and there’s woe betide anyone who says they haven’t room to pass. You tell me how he affords a car like that with the job he does.”

“Which job is that?”

“Scrap.” With even more contempt Ali says “I call it rubbish.”

“Ali, be more careful.”

I’m willing him to be less so as I say “You think his home life has made Wayne what he is.”

“Like the father like the son, do you mean? Or—”

Presumably this isn’t true of the Nazirs, or so Ali wants to think, even if his English isn’t quite as accurate as he seems to believe. “In their case I’d say it was.”

“Wayne is responsible for what he does.“_

“We all are, but don’t you think his family is too?”

“When they see what he does, most truly.” Ali’s grasp of the language appears to be deserting him as he grows more impassioned. “And when they do not do the single thing to stop him.”

“What haven’t they stopped?”

“Drinking with his friends in the street till all the hours and smoking what they smoke.”

“The police must be interested in some of that, surely.”

“If anybody dared calling them we would all be blamed.”

“There’s already been violence, has there?”

“Violence, I say so. I will talk.”

His last words must be aimed at his father, who says “How do you know who you’re speaking to? Suppose it is a trick?”

“He sounds a good man. You heard him.” Closer to my ear Ali says “Yes, violence. There was a boy with the similar dog and Wayne set Killer on it.”

“What happened?”

“The other dog was killed and Wayne’s gang told the police it made the attack. A boy who will do that will do worse.”

“And he has, hasn’t—”

It isn’t the ping of a bell that cuts me off, nor even realising that someone has entered Nazir’s; it’s hearing Ali’s father speak at not much less than the top of his voice. “Mr Stanley,” he says, by no means only as a greeting

“We won’t talk any more,” I tell Ali and end the call at once.

I’m gazing at the blank screen of the laptop and wondering how much I’ve learned when I hear Christine’s key in the lock. I switch off the computer and hurry past the prints of imaginary destinations to meet her. “How’s your research going?” she says as she shuts us in. “Will it help your novel?”

“I’m sure it’s going to be a help,” I say, hugging her to hide my face.

It’s Raise Your Voice Day, and I’m more than ready to raise mine. The Frugo people are at Waves, and I mean to give them their money’s worth. The day is supposed to encourage people who don’t ordinarily speak up to make themselves heard, and I suspect some of my listeners may ring up to complain they’re being silenced. If Paula and the bosses want controversy I don’t expect to have to manufacture it. I just hope nobody brings up Kylie Goodchild.

The guard at his desk greets me with a wink. “I haven’t told nobody anything.”

“Honestly, Vince, all you need to tell is the truth.”

He looks disappointed by my response. “Nobody asked.”

On the top floor Megan glances up with a hint of a smile or at least a straight-lipped pledge of one. “Are the headsmen here yet?” I need to know.

I wouldn’t have thought her lips could grow straighter, but they manage. “Who are you talking about?”

“The chaps with the axes. Our executioners.” I should have realised by now that she lacks a sense of humour, or at any rate my kind, and so I say “The Frugo folk.”

“They’re with Paula. One of them’s a woman.”

She must resent my not having considered the possibility; she’s acting as if I denied her a voice. “I hope they’ll be listening to me.”

“Why should you think they’ll be doing that?”

“I imagine they’ll be listening to every one of us. Even you, Megan.”

I mean this more as a warning than an insult, but I don’t much care how it sounds. Most of my colleagues are at their desks in the newsroom, intent on looking not just busy but essential. Presumably that’s why those who glance at me return immediately to their work. I fill a plastic cup from the cooler and hurry into the control room, where the twelve o’clock news is just beginning overhead with no mention of Kylie Goodchild. I’ve borrowed Rick Till’s routine and arrived with little time to spare, boosting my adrenalin, I hope. I wave at Christine and dash past her to chase Lofthouse out of the studio. “You’re in the wrong place, Trevor.”

He carries on donning the headphones but lifts the right earpiece. “I’m afraid you are, Graham.”

Before I can argue Christine follows me into the studio. “You didn’t give me a chance to say. Paula wants Trevor to take the phone-in.”

“You’re my understudy, are you, Trevor?”

“Just for today.” He lets the earpiece down and adds “As far as I know.”

“Why didn’t anybody tell me sooner?”

“I was with the visitors when Paula arranged it,” Christine says.

Trevor gazes at me as if I have no right to be there, and I tramp after Christine into the control room. “Were they interviewing you?” I murmur. “How did it go?”

“They haven’t fired me yet.” Before I can establish how much of a joke this is meant to be Christine says “They want you now.”

“They sent you with the message, did they?”

“They said as soon as you came in.”

I shouldn’t appear to be blaming her—she looks anxious enough. I drain my cup on the way to the cooler, where I refill it and then knock on Paula’s door. The sound seems oddly hollow, not least since it brings no response. I’m raising my fist to knock harder when somebody whispers “Conference room, Graham.”

The voice is so stifled that I can’t identify the speaker or even their gender. It puts me in mind of a nervous child in a schoolroom, trying surreptitiously to help a classmate with the answer to a question. The impression infuriates me, and I rap on the door of the conference room with quite a helping of my strength. I’m expecting Paula’s standard summons, but a man says “Yes, come in.”

Three people are seated at the near end of the long table, well out of the rays of the sun. Paula has her back to the door and glances around at me. She’s flanked by a man and an equally young woman, both of whom have the scrubbed bright-eyed look of evangelists; they remind me of the pairs who go from door to door. Their expensive lightweight pale grey suits could almost be a uniform. “Graham Wilde?” the woman says, reaching a hand across a document folder that lies beside an open laptop. “I’m Meryl.”

“Dominic,” her colleague says and holds out a hand the instant she lets go of mine.

His handshake is no less firm and terse than hers—like hers, as smooth and cool as his precisely shaved face looks. He has a laptop and a folder too, lined up so nearly opposite hers that they might almost be playing at reflections. As Paula joins the visitors in observing me, not so brightly in her case, Meryl says “Sit wherever you’re comfortable, Graham.”

Both laptops are tuned to Waves. Lofthouse’s muffled voice feels multiplied, as if a pair of invisible but not entirely insubstantial headphones is clamped to my skull. I’m heading for a seat when the first caller says “Have you taken Graham off?”

“I don’t think anyone would want to do that,” Lofthouse says with a mumble of a laugh.

“Imitate him, I expect Trevor’s saying,” Paula wants the visitors to understand.

“We get that,” Dominic says. “It’s not too local.”

“Not that local is necessarily bad,” Meryl puts in.

I sit on her side of the table, leaving an empty seat between us. She switches off Wilde Card, but half the muted voice that’s replaced mine lingers in the air until her colleague shuts down his laptop. I don’t know what expression my face betrays, but Dominic says “Don’t you think he’s suited to the job?”

Of course this is a test, no doubt of loyalty, but it could be a trap as well. “He’s perfectly good at his own. I just wish you’d heard me doing this one.”

“We have,” says Meryl.

“I’m glad.” Nevertheless I’m anxious to learn “What did you play for them, Paula?”

She lifts her head, but her face stays as stiff as her hair. “We’ve been monitoring your output for some time,” Dominic says.

Though he can’t mean just mine, I feel I should say “Then I’m gladder.”

Meryl rises to her feet at once, and I wonder what I’ve done until I realise she’s turning her chair towards me. “Tell us why,” she says.

“You’ll have heard what I’ve been doing for you.”

“What would you say that was?” says Dominic.

“For one thing, increasing the audience.”

It’s Meryl’s turn again. “How do you feel you’ve done that?”

“I’m sure there are people listening who weren’t before.”

“Yes,” Dominic says, “but how are you doing it? That was the question.”

“We agreed I should take it as far as I could, didn’t we, Paula?”

Before Paula has finished parting her lips Meryl says “What were you taking where, Graham?”

“Challenging people. Shaking their beliefs up,” I say and keep my eyes on Paula. “You thought I should be a bit sharper with them.”

“I believe I said you should be honest, Graham.”

“What did you have in mind?” Dominic enquires without looking away from me.

“I wasn’t suggesting he wasn’t,” Paula says, “or anyone else at Waves. I was encouraging him to make it central to his presentation on the air.”

Her conference language must be designed to impress the visitors, but something seems not to have done so. After a pause as brief as her handshake and Dominic’s, Meryl says “You feel it’s your mission to challenge everyone’s beliefs, Graham.”

“I wouldn’t go quite that far. I’d say—”

“We all need a mission in our lives.”

It’s plain how strongly she feels about this—she’s taken Dominic’s turn to speak—but he contributes “We like all the members of the Frugo family to have one.”

“I didn’t say I hadn’t. I was going to say I question beliefs I think need it. You’ll have heard a few that did.”

‘Are you leaving out your own?” says Meryl.

“I don’t think anyone needs to know what those are. If a caller says, what can I think of, if they say something’s black I’ll do my best to prove it’s white.”

I’ve an odd sense of having chosen an unfortunate example until Paula breaks the silence. “No, Meryl’s asking if you ever question yours.”

I can’t help hoping the visitors feel she has assumed too much, but when they only gaze at me I say “I’d like to think so.”

“We felt you weren’t too comfortable,” Dominic says, “with alternative beliefs.”

I’m close to giving him the kind of argument that I suspect Lofthouse isn’t having on the phone-in. “Alternative to what?”

“Dominic’s thinking of the psychic you’ve kept involving in your show,” Meryl says. “What was his name again?”

“Frankie Patterson.”

“Frank Jasper,” Paula says with a blink at me that might denote reproach.

“We ought to remember,” Dominic says. “We’ve heard the name often enough.”

“What does he mean to you, Graham?” says Meryl.

“Not much at all. Not nearly as much as he thinks he does, as he thinks he means to anyone, I mean.”

Paula in particular appears to be waiting for me to finish, but it’s Dominic who says “You’ve been making quite a lot of him.”

“Not half as much as he makes of himself.”

“Some people,” Meryl says, “could think he’s the star of your show.”

“Well, I’m sure you don’t. I shouldn’t fancy even you do, Paula.”

Dominic turns to her as Meryl says “Why even Paula?”

“I’m waiting to hear that myself,” Paula lets everyone know.

“You asked me to invite him in the first place, if you remember. You thought he was what we needed. I don’t know if you two both heard that.”

As the visitors meet this with matching neutral looks I realise that although they may have listened to that edition of Wilde Card, Paula’s instructions won’t have been recorded. I gaze at her until she says “He could have brought an alternative element to your show.”