Night After Night (48 page)

Herridge says, ‘If you knew he was making it all up, why did you keep quiet for so long?’

‘Roger, I’m a psychologist, not a detective. I observe, I assess, and I test what I’m getting against my and others’ experiences. Sure, I’ve convinced m’self he’s lying, but I’m not going public with it until I can convince the world. I’m even thinking, OK, he’s created this ghost, he’s given her a white mac and a history of physical abuse… is it possible
he’s
the abuser?’

Defford’s nodding.

Helen Parrish says, ‘Is that likely?’

‘It was possible,’ Ashley says, ‘but I wanted to give him the chance to take it further. To bring this woman, as it were, to life.’

They keep jumping to Ozzy, but it’s like a still; he doesn’t seem to have moved.

‘Ouija,’ Defford says.

Still on the floor at Ozzy’s feet, the planchette on its back.

‘I may have lied about the ouija board,’ Ashley says. ‘If I gave the impression it was something I’d no experience of, that was my only untruth. I’ve worked with my fellow psychologist and ex-illusionist Richard Wiseman and others in exploring the paraphernalia of the seance room. Spent many an hour over a hot planchette until I could easily identify who – whether intentionally or subliminally – was manipulating it.’

‘And, ah’ – Cindy’s voice – ‘you’re in no doubt?’

‘No doubt at all.’

‘Who pushed the table over just as Ozzy’s guest was spelling out her name?’

‘You were there, Cindy, was it you?’

‘Angela?’ The shot widens to take in Roger Herridge, hair down over his face, his head inclining now to Ozzy’s and tilting to one side. ‘You
prick.
’

Then Rhys Sebold’s shouldering between them, but Herridge is already walking away, tossing back his mane.

Nobody needs an explanation. A liquid glint in Herridge’s eyes he passes under the candle spears which are themselves beginning to drown in molten wax.

‘One of Roger’s flower ladies,’ Grayle says dully. ‘I think her name’s Angela.’ She turns away. ‘Ahmed really screwed us all, didn’t he? Came in with the sole intention of screwing us.’

‘We’ve had at least ten calls or emails,’ Jo says, ‘from people putting names to the woman he keeps seeing.’

‘Let’s see how Sebold’s taking it,’ Defford says.

But Rhys’s thin, edgy face is hard to read. Street-cred at stake here. Grayle’s guessing Ahmed didn’t disclose his intentions to his self-styled friend, which is going to hurt. But is it better from Rhys’s point of view to conceal that? Let viewers think he’s part of the scam.

Ozzy doesn’t look at Rhys, or anybody. Only the ouija board by his feet. Bends slowly and picks it up, stands looking down at it between his hands, before dropping it on the flags and hacking the heel of his right shoe into its face until spidery cracks appear.

He kicks it away, faces the false wall.

‘Get me out, please.’

Jo looks at Defford.

‘Can he?’

‘Of course he can. We can hardly be seen to be keeping prisoners. Besides, they’re voting on the second eviction as we speak. Chances are it’ll be him.’

‘Doesn’t look like he’s prepared to wait, Leo. Clearly doesn’t want to get into explanations.’ Jo glances at the nearest screen, winces. ‘What’s that fool doing?’

Roger Herridge is looking down at the wounded ouija board, prodding it with a suede toe.

‘You didn’t say goodbye to it, Ozzy. Got to say goodbye or the spirit doesn’t go away. Eloise would be furious if she were here.’

‘El-o-ise,’ Ozzy says, his voice almost musical, ‘got kicked out for being a mental bitch. I, on the other hand, choose to go without assistance. Is anybody even listening to me? No?’ He looks around, retrieves a half-empty wine bottle. ‘This anybody’s?’

‘Helen’s, I expect,’ Sebold says. ‘Keeps Diana in there.’ He turns at a movement. ‘Haven’t you done enough for one night?’

Ashley stops, couple of paces from Ahmed. Between him and Rhys, she looks slight and unexpectedly vulnerable, like she’s realized she might have no friends left in here.

‘Come on,’ she says. ‘You almost pulled it off, didn’t you?’

Ozzy doesn’t turn to her, but he can surely see her in the mirror.

‘I mean, what was I supposed to do, Ozzy, once I knew?’

He stands tossing the bottle from hand to hand, shaking out a smile. Directly in front of the false wall, he’s huge in three screens.

‘I think what we’d all like to know is why you did it? M’self, I really don’t think it was just to prove you could get away with it, and I… we don’t want you to go, Ozzy.’

Three cameras record Ozzy Ahmed bowling the wine bottle overarm at the two-way mirror. In two of them, his arm hides his face, its expression. Looks like slow motion, Grayle thinks, like he’s feigning it, until the bottle full of green candlelight leaves his hand.

Three boom mics and two personals snatch the sounds of exploding glass, but the pictures are just splintering abstracts, the only coherent one showing Ashley clawing at her face and the blood and glitter between her fingers.

59

Last fruitcake

FROM HER WINDOW
at the pop-up, she sees a line of grey in the north-eastern sky. It might be pre-dawn; it might be a false dawn, just like all the others.

It’s too hot in here for near-winter. She takes a short shower, sits on the edge of the bed in T-shirt and briefs, calls Marcus. She’s promised to call him, however late, but won’t push it. She’ll let it ring twice and then hang up.

‘So how many left in there, Underhill?’

‘Jeez, didn’t even hear you pick up. Where are you?’

‘Downstairs. It’s all downstairs in the bastard bungalow. Anderson has the defibrillator plugged in. Time is it?’

‘Four a.m.… sometime around there. Maybe five. Who cares? What did you say?’

‘How many left in the house?’

‘Three. Helen, Herridge and, uh, Cindy. Defford said they had to go through with the vote. Jo thought with Ahmed out, that would suffice, but Defford said they had to stick by the rule. End of story.’

End of Sebold. Hardly went out with good grace, but what did he really expect? Oddly, Max figured it wasn’t the viewers’ general feeling that he was party to Ahmed’s scam that did it, it was implying that Helen was a lush. Everybody likes Helen. Sebold should have known that. Helen’s your older sister, ageing gracefully, wiser but never throwing it at you.

‘Where’s the duplicitous Ahmed now, then?’

‘Luxury block next door. Soon’s he comes out the tunnel, Defford’s waiting for him. I don’t know all of what was said, but
Defford got what he wanted, which was a promise from Ahmed that he’d go before the cameras tomorrow – today – and explain. Different person when he was out of there, according to Jo.’

‘You weren’t there?’

‘I was at the gate with the cops. Maybe it was on the news?’

‘Not that I saw.’

‘Too late, maybe. What happened, hundreds of people phoned the cops, accusing Ahmed of assault… malicious wounding… worse? Never stand up in court, but he’d still’ve faced a night in the slammer if Ashley hadn’t gone out to the walled garden insisting she wouldn’t be pressing charges. Standing there wrapped in some guy’s sheepskin coat. “No, truly, officer, I’m fine”. Blood seeping through the dressings. Marcus, a mirror, for God’s sake? She coulda lost an eye.’

‘Ahmed have any idea what he—?’

‘Says it was an accident, he didn’t plan to let go of the bottle. Deeply upset and traumatized. Yeah, right, but also denying the woman in white was a scam. Tells Defford he didn’t know where she came from. Doesn’t believe in ghosts, God or Allah, but he doesn’t know where she came from. Defford thinks he’s lying. Even I think he’s lying. Why, why
why
?’

‘Where’s Palk?’

Ashley’s overnighting in the pop-up medical suite, but insisting she has to go back in the house else scepticism will be seriously under-represented. Grayle rocks back on the bed.

‘Jeez, Marcus, I am more than a little sick at heart. Over six months of my life.
Six months
.’

‘Could’ve told you it was a hiding to nothing. We’re not—’

‘Not meant to know, yeah, yeah. Never gonna work. But, hey, the show’s still a major success story. Viewing figures doubling. No wonderment, no sense of the world being bigger than we thought, but what’s that shit matter?’

Marcus doesn’t laugh either.

‘You know why that is, Underhill? Why nothing’s come of it? Two sides. Eloquent and reasonably well-educated people
with opposing viewpoints. Neither wants a reason for doubt. But neither wants to show weakness in front of the other, so nobody takes it seriously. Just a game. Except for the poor Starke woman, and look what happened to her.’

‘Worse than that, Marcus, it turned into the competition it was never gonna be. Now, at the halfway stage, we have what looks very like a winner. Let’s hear it for fragrant atheist, Ashley Palk. Whom, against all my instincts, I’ve actually kind of grown to like. Listen, I better try and get some sleep. People to interview. Maybe even Ahmed.’

‘Wish they’d let me interview the little shit.’

‘Yeah, that would be, uh…’

‘I’m sorry, Underhill.’

‘Hardly your fault. And you don’t even get paid.’

She still hopes to give him half her money, help get him and Andy out of the bastard bungalow. She doesn’t think she can tell him anything from the Knap Hall experience to make his book worthwhile. A haunting isn’t cold spots and vases falling off shelves, it’s what happens inside people, and that doesn’t translate to the screen. If the cameras had been working when she was alone in the Ansells’ bedroom and she saw what she would later come to think of as Harry Ansell’s hanging body, heavy with regret, sagging with sorrow, liquid grief in dead eyes…

… all you’d see in the live gallery would be different views of broken bedposts and a woman with a white face.

When Marcus has gone, the sky in the window slit is the colour of tar. The white line has disappeared from the northeast.

Grayle lies back, shuts her eyes on it all. Will the last fruitcake in the tin please pull down the lid?

60

Script over it

SOMEHOW
,
SHE SLEEPS
, for maybe three hours, and when she awakes, to a banging on the door, the day’s started without her.

Jo Shepherd, in her TV-fatigues, is outside, displaying the kind of anxiety that doesn’t usually come before nightfall.

Grayle peers out. This is worse than nightfall. There’s dense mist, dark autumn mist, no sun behind it. Jo’s almost screaming through it.

‘Ahmed?’

‘What?’

‘You seen him?’

‘Jo, I saw enough of the bastard last night to last me the rest of my life.’

‘I’m serious. We left him in his room with tea and drinks and whatever he wanted, and he seemed tired but calm, said he’d talk to us – that’s you – on camera this morning. We’ve fixed up a small sitting room for it, in the unused part of the house, near Max’s office.’

‘Great,’ Grayle says dully.

‘But he’s not in his room in the pop-up, and we’ve checked the restaurant and all the obvious places. I thought maybe you and he…’

‘What?’

‘Were talking, before the interview. I don’t know.’

‘Can he get off the site?’

‘Anybody can get off the site, Grayle, it’s not a bloody concentration camp. But he hasn’t got a car here, and we still have his phone.’

‘But not his credit cards, I’d guess.’ Grayle yawns. Fucking Ahmed. ‘Lemme get dressed. Where you gonna be?’

‘Out looking for a new job, if we don’t find him.’

Ten a.m. finds them in Defford’s executive office: Defford, Jo, Kate Lyons, Max,… and Grayle. Funny how, when the shit’s all over the fan, you’ve become part of the core team, one of the need-to-know circle. The windows are opaque with grey mist, all the lights are on.

‘I wouldn’t want to scare you,’ Grayle says, ‘but it isn’t far to walk into Winchcombe. He could easily get a cab there. Or even a bus.’

‘Thanks for that.’ Defford’s pacing. ‘Why would he want out? What am I not getting? He knows full well that pissing off before it’s over puts him in clear breach of his contract.’

‘You think he cares about that?’ Grayle’s gaze floating up to the ceiling. ‘He just doesn’t want to tell us why he did what he did.’

‘Shit, Grayle, he was always going to have to, at some stage. He knows that, too.’

‘Naw, think back, Leo. What Ashley did, what she sprang on him, on all of us, he was
so
not expecting that. Far as he knew, she was there just to piss off the crazies, not her fellow sceptics. Soon’s he sees they’re not on the same side any more, all his wit and his gags desert him. You could see him, like
whaddo I do, whaddo I do?
No obvious answer presents itself, so he’s like get me out, get me out. Remembering he’s on live TV.’

‘That’s what Sebold says. Sebold says he was having a very public breakdown.’ Defford fists his desk. ‘And why the fuck did we let
him
out?’

Sebold is already threatening to lay this on the media, saying there were clear signs that his friend Ahmed was going through an emotional crisis.

Only there weren’t any signs, Max, the shrink, keeps saying.

‘I could give you a list of obvious symptoms he wasn’t displaying. Well, you probably don’t have time to hear them…’

Defford’s expression agrees.

‘Put them in writing, in incontestable shrink-speak.’

‘Though I do think Grayle’s right about last night,’ Max says. ‘Previously, when Ahmed was clamming up, you could see that was deliberate – he was being enigmatic. Last night was the first sign that he was not in control. And that’s not where Ozzy likes to be. He’s like you, Leo, he plans ahead. No heckler ever walks out of a gig uninjured.’

‘And who did he think
was
in control, Max –
Big Other
?’

‘Maybe he did,’ Grayle says.

And gets stared at.

‘Well, maybe Eloise was right. Maybe he was, to an extent, in denial. The idea that something he doesn’t believe in is screwing him up…’