A Line to Kill

5 Blind Sight

When I say that I had breakfast with Hawthorne the next morning, I mean that I tucked into scrambled eggs and bacon, tea and toast, while he sat, slightly aloof, watching me over black coffee and a cigarette. It’s hard to be close to anyone who refuses to eat with you, but then Hawthorne had an equally difficult relationship with food as he did with people. I had once visited his London flat just next to Blackfriars Bridge and had remarked on his pristine kitchen, his empty fridge. He survived mainly on processed food, the sort that came in plastic trays and never looked anywhere near as appetising as the pictures on the packet. The only alcoholic drink he’d been able to offer me was a rum and Coke and he himself had stuck to water.

The only time we’d actually sat down to dinner had been at the Station Inn in Ribblehead, Yorkshire. The two of us had been investigating the murder of Richard Pryce, a wealthy divorce lawyer, and we had gone to find out about a potholing accident that had taken place a few years before. Had he been particularly communicative that night? Not really. If I remembered the meal, it was only because of a chance encounter. A complete stranger had wandered into the pub and recognised Hawthorne, but had referred to him as ‘Billy’, insisting that the two of them had met in a nearby village called Reeth. Hawthorne had denied it. Far from bringing us closer together, the meal had left me more mystified than ever.

As for breakfast, I might as well have been eating it alone, a complete contrast to my dinner with Anne Cleary the night before. That had been warm and increasingly easy-going. I had ordered a bottle of wine but she had told me she wasn’t drinking – she was on antibiotics – and so I’d ended up drinking most of it myself. We had plenty to talk about: Walker Books, other writers, Alderney and the festival so far. Since I had last seen her, Anne had separated from her husband. She told me that she’d been having a bad time – how bad, I was to find out soon enough.

I looked for her now but guessed that she had left early for her session at St Anne’s School. A few of the other guests were out on the terrace, however. Kathryn Harris was sitting on her own at the table next to us, stabbing with a teaspoon at a bowl of muesli and yoghurt. Marc Bellamy was at the far end, still keeping his distance, his head buried in a copy of the Daily Mail. Elizabeth Lovell and her husband had just finished their breakfast and he nodded at us as they left. Her session was taking place that afternoon and according to Judith Matheson it was sold out.

I waited until they had gone, then I turned to Hawthorne. ‘Maybe it would be a good idea if we found somewhere quiet and rehearsed how we’re going to run our session,’ I suggested.

He looked surprised. ‘You think there’s any need?’

‘Of course there is!’ This was what I’d been waiting for all along. For once, I knew what I was talking about. ‘People are bound to ask you questions as well as me. You’re the subject of the book, so everyone’s going to be interested in you. It’s much more sensible to prepare the answers and make sure we don’t contradict each other.’

‘It’s not a performance.’

‘Actually, it is. We’re going to be on a stage, with an audience. They’ll have paid money for their tickets.’ He looked doubtful, so I went on. ‘Maybe we should track down Colin Matheson. He’s interviewing us. He can give us an idea of how he wants it to go.’

Hawthorne shrugged. ‘It’s only questions and answers, mate. And there’ll probably only be half a dozen people there. You’re worrying too much.’

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Maïssa Lamar approaching the hotel, wrapped in tight-fitting black spandex with a headband, wires trailing from her ears. She had been out jogging. As she disappeared from sight I was reminded of what I had seen at the airport. I told Hawthorne.

‘It was very strange,’ I said. ‘She seemed to be on her own, but the moment we all got up and left she went and met someone.’ I described the man I had seen. ‘Their conversation seemed very intense.’

‘It’s not so unusual to meet someone you know at an airport,’ Hawthorne said.

‘At Southampton Airport? And she was talking about you. I’m sure I heard her mention your name.’

‘They’re all interested in me. You just said so yourself.’

It was exactly what I’d expected. He wasn’t taking me seriously. But still I went on. ‘There’s something else,’ I said. ‘Someone stole £5 off the table at that restaurant in the airport.’

‘You think it was Maïssa?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Maybe it was the waiter.’

‘It could have been any of them.’ He still didn’t seem interested so I finished up with the playing card, the ace of spades that had been planted on Charles le Mesurier’s car.

Hawthorne shook his head. ‘Tony, mate. You’re putting this stuff together like it’s a book. But nothing’s happened. Nobody’s been killed. So none of it’s of any interest.’

‘Is that what you think?’

‘I just think maybe you should relax.’ How could he be so reasonable and so irritating at the same time?

I got up as soon as I could and walked away, leaving him to his own devices. As I went past the next table, I caught Kathryn Harris’s eye and smiled at her. ‘Is everything OK?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes. It’s lovely here and I’m so excited to be helping. We’ve got the big party tonight. Have you seen Charles le Mesurier’s house?’

‘Not yet.’

‘It’s amazing.’ She looked up at the sky. ‘It’s going to be a hot one. I’d love to get out and explore the island. But I’m going to be busy most of the day getting things ready.’ She glanced over at the far table. ‘Marc’s putting together quite a feast.’

She seemed completely unaffected by what had happened the evening before, both her argument with Marc Bellamy and her encounter with Charles le Mesurier at The Divers Inn. It made me think that I might have read too much into them. She was much younger than me. Perhaps she saw things differently.

Alderney is a lovely place. I had managed to rent a bicycle and spent the rest of the morning exploring the island, captivated by the sense of anachronism, the cobbled streets, the Jane Austen architecture, all the defences – the forts, the barracks, the German pillboxes, the batteries and the bunkers – that had been constructed with almost insane extravagance but never actually used. I cycled all the way from Fort Clonque, a nineteenth-century fortress sitting on its own rocky outcrop at the western end of the island, to The Odeon, a brutalist naval range-finding tower perched on a hillside at the far east. I stopped at Gannet Rock and stood at the edge of the cliff, looking vertiginously down to the churning, crashing sea. In front of me, two rocks of biblical proportions rose out of the water, covered with thousands of brilliant white birds. It was a breeding ground for gannets and one of the wildest and most isolated places I’d ever seen.

I wasn’t going to make the same mistake as the day before when it seemed I’d been the only writer to miss George Elkin’s presentation, so just before one o’clock I was back at the Alderney cinema in time to catch the last twenty minutes of Maïssa’s performance. The cinema was not a huge place. From the outside it looked more like a shop or perhaps a solicitor’s office and once you were in there, there were only about a dozen rows of bucket seats, upholstered in the red plush of another age. Even so, Maïssa had signally failed to fill it. Only thirty people had come to hear her and they weren’t having a good time.

Maïssa’s delivery was dreadful. She hadn’t even learned her own work by heart and she stood behind a dais, reading it out with a sort of carelessness as if she just wanted to get it over with. She introduced her poems in broken English and didn’t seem to understand fully what she was saying. The poems themselves, in Cauchois, were indecipherable and the translations – which were being projected onto the screen behind her – weren’t actually much help. As I came in and took my place at the very back, she was in the middle of a poem about Joan of Arc, but I’m afraid, to my ears, it came over as little more than a collection of random words.

She finished and there was a smattering of the sort of applause that always sounds embarrassing in a half-empty room. Maïssa smiled briefly. ‘Thank you very much,’ she said and she too did not sound enthusiastic. ‘I will end, please, with a haiku. I write it for my boyfriend after we split up. It is my thought for him and it is short, so I can translate.’

She paused, turned the page and began to speak.

‘I look to the light

But a dark shape pursues me.

Your shadow or mine?’

She bowed her head for a moment. I joined in the applause but at the same time there was something that puzzled me. I’d read that poem before. I was sure of it. But how could that be possible when I’d never heard of Maïssa Lamar before I’d been invited to Alderney?

I was still thinking about it as I came out of the cinema and it was while I was standing there on the pavement that I saw him: the fair-haired man from the airport. He had taken off the leather jacket and wore a polo shirt that clung to him, showing off the muscles in his chest and arms. There was a gold chain around his neck.

On an impulse, I went up to him. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Are you here for the festival?’

He looked at me blankly.

‘I think I saw you at the airport. You were talking to Maïssa.’

‘I’m sorry. You’re making a mistake.’ He turned round and walked away from me but I’d learned two things from the exchange. He was definitely French. And he hadn’t wanted to be recognised.

I watched him disappear, then crossed the road.

The festival had organised a sandwich lunch at The Georgian House, a gastropub and B & B just opposite the cinema, and it was here that I caught up with Hawthorne, who was talking to a man I didn’t know. About forty, lank black hair framing a crumpled face with troubled eyes, he looked like a junior doctor about to break bad news.

‘This is Colin Matheson,’ Hawthorne told me.

I was completely thrown. At breakfast I’d suggested meeting Colin Matheson, but Hawthorne had shown no interest at all. ‘Oh – you’ve met!’ I said.

‘Yes. We’ve just had a bit of a run-through … how we’re going to do the session.’ He looked at me accusingly. ‘Where were you, mate?’

‘I was listening to Maïssa Lamar.’

‘I’m afraid I decided to give that one a miss,’ Matheson said, managing to sound both regretful and relieved. Judith had told me he was a barrister and I have to say I was surprised. He was softly spoken. He didn’t seem assertive enough. ‘I’ve just been going through some of the questions with Mr Hawthorne,’ he went on. ‘We’ve almost sold out, by the way.’

I wasn’t sure if that ‘almost’ was good or bad news. After all, the cinema only had about ninety seats.

‘Maybe you and I could have a quick chat about it?’ I suggested, weakly.

‘I’m not sure we’ve got the time.’ Colin smiled. ‘Anyway, I’m sure you don’t need any rehearsal, a pro like you.’ He glanced at his watch as if that settled the issue. ‘We thought we might go to Elizabeth Lovell’s session after lunch,’ he added. ‘Judith managed to snag some seats. You’ve probably heard, they’re a bit of a hot ticket! Would you care to join us?’

I’d had no intention of going, but if Hawthorne planned to be there …

‘I’d love to,’ I said.

‘Good. Good. I’ve heard her talk before and she is quite remarkable. If you believe in that sort of thing …’

‘And do you?’

‘I try to keep an open mind.’

I became aware of a figure moving towards us, making his way through the lunchtime crowd with obvious determination. It was the historian, George Elkin, and he didn’t look happy. Colin Matheson turned round, saw him and visibly flinched. He knew what was coming.

‘I’ve just heard the news …’ Elkin said.

‘George! Have you met—’

‘The power line. You’ve decided on the route.’

Matheson had no fight in him at all. His eyes seemed to sink deeper into his head. ‘Actually, George, we haven’t announced it yet.’

‘I know you haven’t announced it. I can understand that you wouldn’t want to announce it. But you’ve done it all the same.’ He turned to Hawthorne and me. ‘There are five mass graves on Longis Common. A thousand poor souls murdered by the Nazis, finally at peace. My grandfather is one of them. Think of it! He was in his twenties when they starved him and worked him to death. But these people …’ There were actually tears in his eyes as he fought for control. ‘They’ll desecrate the whole area, tear it up for a handful of euros and to hell with what everyone else thinks.’

‘Actually, there are quite a lot of people on the island who support NAB,’ Matheson said.

‘And there are a great deal more that don’t.’ Elkin stood there, seething. ‘This is all about Charles le Mesurier, isn’t it? He’s the guiding light behind NAB and you’re all dancing to his tune.’

‘That’s completely untrue.’ Matheson looked more uncomfortable than angry. ‘And to be honest with you, this really isn’t the best place—’

Elkin cut in. ‘You know what the prisoners used to call this island? Le rocher maudit. “The accursed rock”. It seems to me that very little has changed.’ He spun on his heel and walked away.

Matheson folded his hands and shrugged in apology. ‘I’m afraid tempers are running a little high when it comes to the power line,’ he explained. ‘I’m very sorry you had to witness that. George is a good man and he means well, but that was really inappropriate.’

‘Is it true what he said?’ Hawthorne asked. The encounter had pricked his interest. ‘Le Mesurier is in charge?’

‘Not at all.’ Now Matheson was blushing. ‘I made the decision. Or rather, the States-appointed committee did. Mr le Mesurier has been a strong advocate for NAB because he believes it will bring wealth to the island. I can assure you he has the best intentions, as does everyone who’s involved!’ He looked into the crowd, trying to find Elkin. ‘It really was too much of him to attack me in that way. Of course, George lost his grandfather in the most terrible way, killed by the Nazis. But even so …!’

We finished our sandwiches with a certain amount of awkwardness and then made our way back to the cinema. By now a queue had formed, but Matheson led us in round the side and down to the front where three seats had been reserved. Very quickly, the room filled up. Soon every seat was taken and there were more people standing along the sides and at the back. There were two armchairs on the stage in front of the screen and as the lights dimmed, Judith Matheson marched across the stage, followed by Elizabeth Lovell, who was being guided by her husband. She waited while they took their places.

‘Good afternoon, everybody,’ Judith began. She deliberately paused while the room settled down, very much in the manner of a primary-school head teacher, severe but kind. ‘How lovely to see such a packed house at this very special event. Elizabeth Lovell needs no introduction, but to those of you who missed her the last time she was here, I should explain that the gentleman sitting next to her is her husband, Sid, and although he won’t be taking questions himself, he will be assisting her during the next hour. Elizabeth is unsighted, so his first job is to connect her with you. As I’m sure you’ll understand, Elizabeth can become very emotional when she speaks at these events, so she likes him to be with her on stage.’ She turned to him. ‘Sid, I’d like to welcome you back to Alderney.’ He smiled and nodded. ‘Just two more things. You all know where the exit is in the event of a fire, and Elizabeth has asked me to remind you that there will be a signing afterwards at The Georgian House across the road. I’m very happy to tell you that books are being sold at a ten per cent discount. So without further ado, please welcome Elizabeth Lovell.’

Judith left the stage and the audience burst into sustained applause. At the same time, I looked around. George Elkin had not come, which was hardly surprising, and nor was there any sign of Maïssa Lamar. (Where had I read that poem? I was still wondering about it.) Marc Bellamy and Kathryn were probably in the kitchen of The Lookout, preparing for the evening, and Charles le Mesurier hadn’t shown up either. But Anne Cleary was there, sitting just a few places away from me. She lifted a hand and smiled.

‘Good afternoon.’ Elizabeth Lovell seemed to be focusing on a point in the middle of the audience, a few metres above our heads. Her head was tilted back so that the black discs of her glasses caught the lights being trained on her and flashed them back at us. She was sitting so rigidly, her shoulders could have been nailed to the back of the chair. Her hands were resting on her knees. She was dressed in the same colour palette as the day before and it occurred to me that if I could have looked at her from the side, she might have had an uncanny resemblance to the famous painting of Whistler’s mother.

‘Packed house,’ Sid muttered. He was wearing a blazer, white shirt and slacks. ‘Nice crowd … maybe a hundred people. No children. Raked seating. Standing at the back. More women than men.’

‘Thank you, Sid.’ She lifted her voice. ‘It’s been a very long time since I lost my physical sight but I still like to know where I am and who I’m talking to. I have an ability to sense the atmosphere and I know that I’m surrounded by friends. At the same time, though, I sometimes find it hard to be sure on which side of the mirror those friends can be found. For that, ladies and gentlemen, is the difference between life and what most people call death. They are reflections of each other. Two different sides of the mirror.’

This was her introduction and for the next thirty minutes she talked about her life and philosophy, expanding on what I had already read in the festival programme. Born in Exeter, she’d had a happy childhood, an ordinary education, loving parents, a job as a librarian. She’d always had an interest in books and had dreamed of becoming a writer. She had met Sid on holiday in Jersey. He was the taxi driver who had picked her up from the airport.

So far so ordinary. Her story, which she had clearly told many times, became more interesting, and more occult, after she lost her eyesight due to diabetes. This had happened twelve years ago, when she was about to turn thirty.

‘Of course, I was angry,’ she told the audience. ‘I was shocked. I was in denial. But at the same time, I realised that although this side of the mirror – your side – was closed to me, the other was opening up. I began to call it Blind Sight. I cannot see what you can see. But you cannot see what I see, and I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that what I see is wonderful. There is no such thing as death. We are surrounded by friends and family who wish us no harm, who – quite the opposite – want to guide us. I never call them ghosts. That’s a word used to frighten children. Nor are they even spirits. That makes them sound angelic and I can assure you, not all of them are. To me, they are reflections. With Blind Sight I can see them. I am looking at them now.’

And so the fairground ride – the ghost train – began. I glanced at Hawthorne, wondering what he was making of all this, but he was giving little away, listening with polite interest. Elizabeth continued to describe ‘the other side of the mirror’, then suddenly pointed. I followed her quivering finger to a poster on the wall advertising Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation but I don’t think that’s what she had in mind.

‘There!’ she said. ‘I’m seeing a lady. Her name was Mary or Margaret. She was here for seventy years before she crossed to the other side …’

I’d seen it all before, starting with the choice of ‘Mary or Margaret’, which immediately doubled her chances of making a score. Put a hundred people in a room and the odds were huge that one of them would know a Mary or a Margaret who had died, and if those names didn’t work, she could move on to Mabel, Miranda and Miriam.

‘She has wet hair,’ Elizabeth added.

I had to admit, I wasn’t expecting that.

There was a short silence. Elizabeth was still gazing in the direction of Tom Cruise. Then someone shouted: ‘That’s Mary Carrington!’

‘Lady in the fourth row. Fifties. Glasses,’ Sid muttered. He hadn’t spoken for a while.

Elizabeth’s head swung round. ‘Who was Mary Carrington?’ she asked.

The same person replied. ‘She lived in town. Everyone knew Mary. She used to have a sweet shop. She slipped getting into the bath. She hit her head and drowned.’

‘She is with her husband … Eric.’

‘It wasn’t Eric! It was Ernest!’ a man called out from the back.

‘She wanted to be with him and now they’re happy together, even though they miss you. They miss the island.’

‘She always said she hated it here,’ the man remarked.

‘She said it but she didn’t mean it. Now …’ Elizabeth took a deep breath as if she had heard someone creeping up on her from behind. ‘There is another presence here. A young man. He left us far too soon. His name is …’ She hesitated, unsure. ‘William?’

I knew it was all trickery. I have an interest in magic and have read biographies of Harry Houdini, who spent half his life exposing fake mediums. I used to watch the Canadian magician James Randi on television and he explained exactly how it worked. If nobody in the audience knew a William who had drowned or been run over or whatever, Elizabeth would make something up and move on. The audience wanted to believe her and that was the weapon she was using against them. How had she known about Mary Carrington? It would have been easy for her to find out. Maybe she had come across the story in a back edition of the Alderney Journal. I was sure it would have been reported.

She was waiting for someone to respond to the arrival of William and I was expecting her to move on to Walter or Wayne when she added, in a surprised voice, ‘Is Anne here?’

I hadn’t noticed it until now but it had become very warm in the cinema. There was no air conditioning and although they’d left the door open at the back, the flow of air was sluggish. I felt the one hundred people pressing in on me and heard their collective breathing. In the half-darkness, the blind woman on the stage seemed almost threatening. I remembered going to pantomimes when I was a boy and living in terror that I would be chosen by one of the actors for a sing-song or a bit of fun on stage. I felt the same way now. My father had died young. I hoped with every fibre of my being that he wasn’t going to show up next – although he’d never taken that much interest in me when he was alive.

‘Anne?’ Elizabeth scanned the audience sightlessly.

Sid reached out to her. ‘Do you mean Anne Cleary?’

‘Yes.’

‘Second row. Just to your left.’

Elizabeth tilted her head in that direction. ‘There’s someone called William. He was very close to you. Was he your son?’

I looked at Anne, three seats away, and my heart went out to her. All the blood had drained out of her face. She was in a state of shock. ‘Please …’ She didn’t want Elizabeth to continue.

‘William was very troubled and he made a terrible decision. He was very young when he left you. And he knows how sad you are. He caused you pain. He wants you to forgive him. He died—’

‘He died of an overdose while he was at university.’ Anne’s voice cut in, supplying the information, perhaps trying to short-circuit this before it went any further. All around her, the audience had become very still, uncomfortable to be witnessing this personal tragedy.

‘Yes …’ Elizabeth nodded slowly, her gaunt face full of compassion.

‘He was an addict. He didn’t know what he was doing.’ Anne’s voice cracked. She hadn’t mentioned her son when we’d had dinner the night before, although she had said she had a daughter living in London. Even as we had laughed together it had struck me that there was an air of sadness about her, a sense of something unsaid. I hated what was happening to her now. It was horrible and unfair.

‘Don’t be sad, Anne,’ Elizabeth said from the stage. ‘There is no sadness on the other side of the mirror. He’s left all that behind him.’

‘That may be true.’ Anne stood up. ‘But he’s left me and his family behind him too and the pain has never gone … not for us.’ She had said enough. I saw her make the decision. Breathing heavily, she pushed her way to the end of the row, passing close to Hawthorne and myself, and without looking back left the cinema.

‘It can be hard, I know, to accept the truth of what I see.’ After what had just happened, Elizabeth Lovell was having to fight to win back the audience, who might easily have turned against her. She touched the fingers of one hand against her heart. ‘Believe me, I feel her pain, but I also know that there will be comfort for her too. We talk about losing people, but the truth is that they are never lost.’

She continued in this vein for another ten minutes but there were no further visitations. Judith climbed back onto the stage and, after thanking Elizabeth and Sid, directed the audience over to the book signing. They were eager to cross to the other side – of the road, that is – and there was quite a scrum at the door. Meanwhile, Sid helped his wife down from the stage. Judith was waiting to escort them to The Georgian House, but for a moment the two of them were in front of me. Colin Matheson was on one side, Hawthorne on the other.

‘That was extraordinary,’ I said.

Elizabeth was leaning on Sid. ‘I hope I didn’t upset Anne,’ she said. ‘It’s not my choice, you know, who comes to me.’

‘She’ll be fine.’ Sid patted her hand.

‘Have you met my friend, Daniel Hawthorne?’ I asked. I wanted to introduce them because I was interested to hear what Hawthorne would say.

She held out a hand vaguely in his direction. He took it and smiled.

‘Very nice to meet you, Mr Hawthorne.’

‘And you, Mrs Lovell.’

‘Did you enjoy my talk?’

‘It was memorable,’ Hawthorne said. ‘You must find it very tiring.’

‘Oh yes. I’m quite exhausted.’ She drew herself up, still resting against Sid. ‘But I’m afraid I have to go. There are books to sign.’

‘Mustn’t keep your fans waiting.’ Was Hawthorne mocking her? I couldn’t tell.

We watched Sid and Elizabeth leave the cinema. He was guiding her with his hand around her waist.

‘Her last book sold half a million copies,’ Colin Matheson muttered, as if he couldn’t believe what had just happened.

‘Online,’ I reminded him.

Hawthorne glanced at me. ‘Yes. But she gets seventy per cent of the royalties.’

And we got much less. It was something we’d discussed more than once before, but I was disappointed that he had chosen this moment to bring it up again.

Suddenly, we were alone in the cinema with just a couple of volunteers clearing up the litter. I looked back at the stage. ‘I don’t know how she did all that,’ I said. ‘But you do realise that she’s a complete fraud?’

‘Oh yes.’ Hawthorne nodded. ‘I saw that from the very start.’ He paused. ‘But those ghosts were definitely real.’