The Mentor. Steve Jackson
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‘You know, Paul, for a spy you can be pretty unobservant at times.’ She pointed out the bowl of furry, moist fruit sitting on one of the work surfaces, the flowers decomposing in a vase on the kitchen table.
‘No one’s currently living here,’ she said. ‘This kitchen hasn’t been used for Christ knows how long.’ George marched over to the fridge and yanked the door open. The smell of rancid milk floated heavily through the kitchen. She lifted out the carton and read the sell-by date on top. ‘My guess is that he hasn’t been here for the best part of a month.’
‘That’d be around the time Sophia died.’
‘So where’s he staying?’
‘More to the point, why isn’t he staying here?’
‘Too many memories, perhaps,’ George suggested.
‘Perhaps,’ Aston agreed, unconvinced. And now that George had mentioned it, he could sense the emptiness that filled the kitchen. There was an air of neglect, a whispering sense of things lost never to be found again. And it wasn’t just the kitchen. He’d noticed it when he’d stepped into the house; noticed subconsciously but it hadn’t registered because he didn’t have a name for it. And now he did: abandonment. Like a sunken ship, this house had settled into the silent dark loneliness.
The next door along the hall led to a small study. This was obviously Mac’s domain. There were no pictures on the walls, no personal touches whatsoever. The room was as anonymous as its owner. A thin layer of dust had settled across the room, coating the top of the filing cabinet and clinging to the screen of the monitor. Aston went over to the filing cabinet and pulled open the top drawer. Empty.
‘I’m going to try the next room,’ George said. ‘The sooner we get out of here the better. I’m getting really creeped out now.’
Aston thought about reminding her of the ‘let’s stick together’ speech and decided not to. She was a big girl. He stared into the empty drawer, hand on the handle. Strange. He heard George’s anxious footsteps moving down the hall, heard her open the next door, the click of the light switch.
‘Paul,’ she shouted. ‘Get in here now. You’ve got to see this.’
The filing cabinet drawer clanged shut and he ran along the hall. George was blocking the doorway, and he stopped behind her, placed his hands on her shoulders.
The front room was really two rooms separated by a wide archway to create a large open space. Before Sophia’s illness had taken over this had been the lounge and dining room. High ceilings, worn wooden floorboards, colourful paintings on the white walls, trinkets and ornaments arranged on the black painted mantelpiece, a multicoloured rug in front of the fire, framed photographs lining the bookcase. The room was filled with dozens of personal touches. Female touches. If the kitchen was the heart of the house, this room had been its soul.
An upright piano was pushed up against one wall and covered with a white sheet. The piano must have belonged to Sophia. Aston couldn’t imagine Mac tinkling the ivories; cracking his knuckles before launching into a Mozart concerto, or bashing out some barroom blues. No, he couldn’t see that one at all. Bedpans and packets of pills sat on top of the piano. A vase of mummified roses jostled for space, the heads brittle and black and scarred with a memory of crimson.
The large metal-framed hospital bed dominated the room, neatly made up with clean white sheets. A shower cubicle with waist-height doors had been built into one corner. It was wide enough for the lightweight plastic wheelchair that sat forlornly next to it. The Chief was right, thought Aston, it was impossible to imagine what it was like. One by one all those things you take for granted stolen away: unable to wash or feed yourself, the indignity of wearing nappies. And the worst part was that your brain worked as well as ever, throwing up memories of how things used to be, monitoring the decline, that slow slip-slide towards the grave. Motor Neurone Disease was worse than any curse. Nobody deserved to die like that. Please, Aston thought, when it’s my time make it quick. His attention was drawn to the piano again. How insensitive was that? Why hadn’t Mac moved it out of the room? That would have been the decent thing to do. Instead it was just sitting there, a constant reminder of one more thing Sophia had lost.
On the table next to the bed was a water jug and a small framed wedding photograph. Aston picked up the photo, called George over to take a look. Mac was smiling in the photo. Actually smiling. He wasn’t grinning, or doing that sanctimonious smirk of his. No, this was an honest-to-God million-dollar beamer. For once in his life Robert Macintosh looked happy. Time had been kind to this incarnation of Sophia; in her younger days she must have been stunning. She looked radiant in the photo, glowing with health, and Aston wondered when it had been taken. A few years ago, judging by the suit Mac was wearing. There was no hint of the disease that would ravage her. She was wearing a simple blue silk dress and carrying a posy of flowers that exploded with colour. Simple countryside flowers, dandelions and daisies mostly, were woven into a small tiara that sat on top of her long golden hair. A fairy princess on her wedding day.
George took the photo, held it up to the light and studied it carefully. ‘She was pretty.’
Aston looked curiously at her for a moment. On the surface George’s comment had sounded like a compliment, but it had seemed forced, like she was saying it because it was the expected thing to say. Then again, they were both strung out, and he was probably overanalysing.
‘What?’ George said. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘No reason.’
‘If you’ve got something to say, then say it.’
Aston plucked the photograph from George, put it back where he found it. ‘Someone got out of bed on the wrong side today.’
George sighed. ‘Sorry, Paul. It’s just that being here in Mac’s house like this … well, it doesn’t feel right, know what I mean?’
‘I know exactly what you mean.’
They climbed the stairs together, side by side, neither willing to take the lead. The haunted house vibe had infected Aston, got him on edge. Every creak elicited an uncomfortable extra fraction of a heartbeat to add to his already racing pulse, every pipe groan got him sweating a little more. They reached the landing and worked methodically through the rooms. The first door on the right was the bathroom: gleaming white porcelain, an old-fashioned bathtub supported on four spindly legs, and a brass shower head. The next door led to a spare bedroom: functional furnishings and little in the way of personality.
His fingers brushed the handle of the door at the end of the landing and that was enough to get the electricity crackling. The hairs went up on the back of his neck, on his arms. A quick glance at George told him she felt it, too. He was rational, they both were, but sometimes you had to admit you couldn’t explain everything away with science and logic. And right now his thoughts were anything but logical. They were the thoughts of a child who needed the wardrobe checked one more time for monsters despite the fact it had been checked half a dozen times already.
The door swung open, and in the light sneaking past them he saw the silhouette of a woman. His first thought was that it was Sophia’s ghost. An irrational thought, but that didn’t make it any easier to shake off. Behind him, George let out a tense gasp. He quickly flicked on the light, convinced it must be an optical illusion – ghosts didn’t exist; there had to be a rational explanation – but the woman didn’t disappear in the glare. If anything she became more solid. As Aston’s eyes adjusted, and he was able to see what was going on, he gave a nervous laugh. It wasn’t Sophia’s ghost, but what he saw wasn’t any less disturbing.
‘This is totally fucked up,’ George muttered, taking the words from his mouth.
Mac had turned the bedroom into a shrine. What Aston had thought was a ghost was a mannequin. He moved in for a closer look, George at his side. The mannequin was dressed in the same blue silk dress from the wedding photo; the wig was made from real hair, the soft, fine strands wound into a shoulder length French plait. There were dead flowers in her hair, and Aston guessed