House of Fear Page 5

  “Cool. No problem.” Olly stood up, both hands thrust in jacket pockets, then one checking his mobile phone for messages. “Can I drive you anywhere?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  “Are you sure?” He pushed the chair under the kitchen table. “Well. I’m sorry we couldn’t come up with the goods, Mrs Lehr. Not on this occasion.” He shot his cuffs, ran his finger round the inside of his collar. “Do you want us to keep your details on record? Er... I take it you’re not interested in the property?”

  He saw himself reflected in the dark lenses of her sunglasses as she held out her hand.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘no,’ then,” he said.

  By the time she reached the multi-storey in Hammersmith she’d already decided she wasn’t going to tell Rollo. He’d call her gullible, silly, neurotic, certifiable. Foolish. Worse. It was pointless. He wouldn’t feel anything for Suzy. A career girl with everything ahead of her? Why would he care about her? He’d just grunt like he grunted and shook his head when she got weepy over an old black-and-white movie. Yet he’d shed tears happily over a goal at the cup final and not think anything abnormal about that.

  She would simply tell him the house in Shorrold’s Road wasn’t suitable. End of story. That was all he needed to know. And she wouldn’t phone him before the return journey. She didn’t want to talk to him right now. Or was she being – (that word)...

  You’re not being weak, Miriam. He’s a bully, he always has been, you know that, and you have to be strong.

  Miriam nodded. Gripped the wheel. Adjusted the rear view mirror.

  He gets a kick out of belittling you. Don’t let him. This isn’t the only life you can have, it’s just the one you’ve chosen right now and you can un-choose it.

  She felt Suzy’s hand resting on hers on the steering wheel. So much smoother and softer than her own.

  Miriam. You’ re a strong, beautiful lady. You can do this. You can change your life. You can turn this corner. I know you can.

  She drove down the ramp of the multi-storey and let the barrier take her ticket, not relishing the drive ahead, heading into the rush hour.

  Then, as she joined the traffic, she decided not to take the M4 at all, and headed somewhere else, with a clarity of mind that startled her.

  Habitually, Olly Lumb rearranged the fridge magnets when he arrived home and he wasn’t about to change the habit of a lifetime. He found an ‘S’ and a ‘U’, then an ‘R’ and an ‘F’ to go with it. Then he found a large red ‘M’ to spell ‘SMURF’ but had to move a magnetic fried egg to keep the photograph of The Boy after his first haircut in position. He loved that picture. Tintin, he called it. Cartoon boy. It made him smile.

  His wife was cooking and she got a kiss on the back of the neck, just above the chain of the necklace he’d bought her for their last anniversary.

  Didn’t want to share the day with her, though. Didn’t know why.

  There was nothing illicit or untoward in his contact with Miriam, nothing romantic. He wasn’t even attracted to her – God, no. It just seemed a private thing. What happened today, to the two of them. He wanted to process it, let it sink in, get it settled and ordered in his brain because it didn’t feel ordered now, not even after he’d popped the cap of that ice-chilled Belgian beer they’d brought back through the Tunnel.

  Then he would tell her. Maybe. If it felt right. But only if it felt right. Maybe it was something he’d keep to himself. Not like an affair or a secret, more like walking through a graveyard and not wanting to step on a grave. You knew the person underground wouldn’t care, but somehow, weirdly, that didn’t matter. It was just something you didn’t want to do. And this felt the same.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He looked up from his bottle of Ename.

  “You’re quiet.”

  “Am I? Don’t mean to be.”

  When he’d first made love to his wife she’d said, “If I were a cat, I’d purr!” and he loved that, that memory. He basked in it. From the very beginning he wanted to love Fran and protect her, save her. Make her feel safe, that was it. That was it exactly. Though she’d no doubt laugh uproariously if he said it that way. He went over and kissed her again, this time on the lips.

  “You know what? I love you,” he said.

  “That’s better.”

  “That is better.”

  “Now go and switch off Octonauts and tell The Boy his tea’s ready. Hector!”

  As he did as he was bidden, Olly was wondering several things. Most of all wondering why the ghost appeared to her, Mrs Lehr, and not him. He’d been to the property several times in the last few years and seen nothing. He’d stood in that empty house and that’s all it was – an empty house. Nobody spoke. Nobody appeared. So it troubled him. Why do they appear to some people and not others?

  Then he remembered the moment he shook Miriam’s hand to say goodbye, and how he’d seen the little flinch of pain in her cheek. And how he’d looked down for a fraction of a second and had seen the bruising on her wrist and forearm. Pink, dark blue and purple. The result of a fall or some accident, he’d thought, or perhaps not an accident at all.

  Miriam turned off Black Boy Lane into the street she knew of old. It was notoriously bad for parking, but she found a place instantly.

  She rang the doorbell, thinking how to say she wanted to stay a while, she wasn’t sure how long, before going back to the West Country. But the truth was, she was now certain, she never wanted to go back to the West Country, or see Rollo, her husband, ever again. Yesterday had visited today, and now she wanted today to visit tomorrow, if that made sense. And if it didn’t, tough luck.

  A woman opened the door and embraced her. For a fleeting moment she smelled of Suzy, of Suzy’s embrace, of Suzy’s hair, and Miriam felt for the first time in a long time she wasn’t scared any more.

  “Hello, Mum.”

  For further information about the work of The Suzy Lamplugh Trust, and to donate, please go to:

  http://www.suzylamplugh.org/

  IN THE ABSENCE OF MURDOCK

  Terry Lamsley

  Terry Lamsley is an extraordinary practitioner of the supernatural. His roots are in M.R. James, Robert Aickman, Ramsey Campbell and the tradition of the English ghost story, yet there is a surreal and almost comic thread to Lamsley’s fiction that reminds me of the films of David Lynch and Mike Leigh. ‘In The Absence of Murdock’ is a very strange story indeed, at once urbane (urban even), but at the same time the fiction’s reality threatens to dissolve into a terrifying world that none of us would ever understand.

  “Oh, it’s you, Franz, come on in.”

  “I’ve come to see Jerry. Is he at home?”

  “Of course he is. Where else would he be? He’s always at home nowadays, remember. He’s upstairs, waiting for you, I expect.”

  Franz gave his sister a curious look. “How do you know that?”

  “I suggested that he call you or another of his old friends.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Possibly. Probably,” Barbara said, pulling the front door shut behind him.

  Franz said, “I can hear it in your voice. And Jerry sounded very strange when he phoned.”

  “Yes, I expect he did.”

  “Are you going to tell me what it is?”

  “The problem? Well, I’m not sure about that. I’d better let Jerry explain. It would sound better coming from him.”

  “Really? Why’s that?”

  Barbara gave Franz a wild, slightly irritated look. “Please,” she said, “go on up. He’ll be pleased to see you.”

  “You seem almost embarrassed about something, Barbara.”

  “Not really, no – it’s not that, exactly – but we’ve both been under a bit of a strain recently, for the past few days, in fact.”

  “It shows.”

  “Well, you’re here now. Perhaps you can sort things out.”

  Franz started to climb the stairs. “I’ll try, at least,” he said.
>
  Barbara waited until he was passing the chair lift waiting at the top of the stairs before she called out, “Thanks for coming, Franz. Jerry will be so pleased to see you.”

  Franz said, “So you said, just now.”

  He walked along the landing, stopped outside his brother-in-law’s room, and waited a few moments before lifting his fist and rapping rather loudly on the door.

  “Is that you, Franz? Come on in.”

  Franz walked in to the room Jerry called his office. It resembled an office in as much as it contained a large desk covered with a certain amount of paper and a typewriter. Jerry called himself an ‘old fashioned’ writer. He claimed to despise computers and people who used them and was proud of his antiquated method of producing his and Murdock’s scripts. As far as Franz could remember, Murdock transferred the finished script to respectable Word form, but Jerry was not supposed to be aware of that. Murdock was not present, but Franz thought he could detect the faint smell of the man’s horrible cigars hanging in the air.

  Jerry was sitting in a wheelchair near the window. The heavy curtains were drawn and the only light in the room came from a big lamp hanging over the desk.

  Franz said, “What have you been up to, Jerry?”

  “Not a lot. We’ve just about put the new series to bed, I’m pleased to say.”

  “You didn’t invite – summon – me here to tell me that.”

  “True enough. I’d forgotten what an extremely no-nonsense sort of person you were, Franz. Forgive my attempted polite small talk.”

  “Barbara thinks you’ve got a problem.”

  “Hum. Well, it’s not exactly a problem. One that you might be able to solve, that is.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Something inexplicable, Franz.”

  “Go on then, astonish me.”

  “Okay. Murdock has gone missing.”

  “He’s walked out on you? Doesn’t surprise me at all, you can be a pain in the neck at times, as I’m sure you’re aware. I’m surprised that the working relationship has lasted so long. He’s probably had enough – or too much – of you. Needs a break. I expect he’ll turn up in his own good time.”

  “I fear not.”

  “Why?”

  “The circumstances of his disappearance were… peculiar.”

  For some reason Franz found this funny. He laughed and said, “Just what exactly is on your mind, Jerry? Do you want me to go and look for him?”

  “No, that may not be necessary, but I’d like your opinion. Just let me explain.”

  “Do, by all means.”

  Jerry put his hands together in a prayerful attitude, tapped his fingers together one by one, then hauled his wheelchair around so it was exactly facing Franz. Franz supposed he was attempting to appear relaxed, but he had the same mildly embarrassed expression on his face that Franz had seen on his sister’s face a few minutes earlier.

  He said, “I assume you know how we work together, Murdock and I?”

  Franz had watched an episode of the comedy Murdock and Jerry were responsible for, Dead Funny Ted, set in a funeral parlor run by a doddering old fool called Edward, in a picturesque seaside town populated almost entirely by elderly people. He had found it gormless and not the least bit funny, but he didn’t think it necessary to tell Jerry that. Besides, the public were supposed to love it. Instead, he said, “I read something somewhere, in one of the TV Sunday supplements I guess, how you work as a team. About how you read the papers together in the morning in search of ideas and then get down to work in the afternoon.”

  Jerry nodded, “Murdock enjoys what he calls ‘our daily disaster sessions.’ Always seems to be something terrible happening somewhere. You have to laugh.”

  “I believe it mentioned something about that, too.”

  Jerry permitted himself an uneasy smile of satisfaction on hearing this. “That’s right. That gets us going. Anyway, we both have our different roles. I provide the plots and situations and Murdock handles the characterization and dialogue. Believe it or not, he’s good at jokes. Or, rather, a humorous turn of phrase. Myself, I’m less so.”

  Jerry paused as though he expected Franz to make some comment. Franz didn’t, so Jerry continued, “It always worked well enough for both of us. We were just about finishing up on our fifth series, you know.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Yes, it’s been what you might call a runaway success.”

  “That’s very good.”

  “We were working on putting the finishing touches to the last episode a few days ago. Murdock was going through his paces, speaking every character’s part aloud, as he has always insisted on doing, searching about for the humor in the situation we’ve reached in the script. I had turned my chair away from him and wheeled it up to the window for some fresh air. My lungs and heart, as you know, are not good, especially in the presence of Murdock’s cigar smoke.”

  “I don’t know how or why you stand it.”

  “As I said, we have to work as a team, all for one and one for all. Murdock says he can’t think without a smoke and we each need the support of the other. It’s the way we get things done.”

  “Humm. It once occurred to me that he might use those particularly pungent cigars to hide another more personal smell.”

  “Barbara told me she sometimes has the same suspicions. She keeps her distance.”

  Franz, resisting the temptation to yawn, said, “Anyway, carry on.”

  “It’s going to be a bit tricky explaining the next bit. Barbara, usually so sympathetic, can’t follow me at all after this point. Anyway, see what you think.”

  “You had your back to Murdock and you were looking out of the window.”

  “I was doing a bit of free thinking, I call it, searching for inspiration, letting my mind wander, and was not really aware of my surroundings. While I was daydreaming I realised that Murdock’s voice had stopped and the room had fallen silent. Even when he’s not mumbling away to himself, Murdock fidgets about and makes noises. He giggles to himself and coughs and sighs a lot. I couldn’t hear a thing from him, so I looked round to see if he was alright.”

  “And he wasn’t.”

  “No, he really wasn’t. He wasn’t there at all.”

  “He’d left the room.”

  “He certainly wasn’t in it. It took me just a few seconds to establish that fact. Then I smelt burning and that worried me, as you can imagine. I thought the house might be on fire. But then I saw smoke rising from over there” – he pointed – “just where Murdock had been sitting, and I found a cigar end smoldering on the carpet.”

  Franz leaned forward and rested his hand on his forehead in hope of concealing the smile that he couldn’t avoid. Jerry said, “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing, please continue.”

  “Yes, well, I had to call Barbara then, because if I reached down for it I risked falling out of my wheelchair. I mean, I could have killed myself, it was that risky. My condition is very delicate. Luckily she heard me and ran up at once.” He pulled a peculiar face, like a cautious rat sniffing the air, then said, “There’s what’s left of the cigar. I thought I’d better keep it.” He stretched out and slid a large glass ashtray towards Franz.

  After giving the tray and its content a brief inspection Franz said, “Why?”

  “Why did I keep it? I suppose as some sort of evidence.”

  “Evidence of what? Surely, at that time it didn’t occur to you that something had gone wrong.”

  “Oh, yes it did. No doubt about it. There was a feeling in this room. Barbara noticed it, I think, but she didn’t say anything, so as not to upset me even more, bless her.”

  “She could see that you were upset, then?”

  “I couldn’t hide it. And she was furious about the burnt carpet. I tried to explain but she didn’t, couldn’t, understand what had happened and I was too confused to make much sense. I mean, I wasn’t sure myself. She got the message that Murdock had gone after droppi
ng his cigar but she wasn’t much surprised because she’s said many a time that the man was a clumsy lout.”

  “Well, let’s face it, she’s not far wrong.”

  Jerry looked mildly disapproving of that. “Murdock has his faults, no doubt about it, but together we bring in the money. I may not be around much longer, and there’s seven years left before the mortgage on this house is paid. I frequently have to remind Barbara of that when she criticizes Murdock.”

  “Anyway, you say he’s gone missing for the moment,” Franz said.

  “I said he’s vanished.”

  “And you saw and heard nothing when he went?”

  “Umm, well, there was a slight sound, just before I looked round and found he had gone. At least, I think so.”

  Franz was tired. It had been a long, hard day in the library where he had been doing some research since it had opened at nine in the morning. He took a discreet look at his watch and found it was now almost eleven in the evening. He got out of his chair and yawned. Jerry got the message and said, “You are leaving. I’m sorry to have kept you. It was good of you to come.”

  “What was it, though, this sound you heard?”

  Jerry sought the precise expression to describe the noise he thought he had perceived, then said, “It was like a sharp inhalation and exhalation of air.”

  “Of breath?”

  “Almost certainly.”

  “Like a sigh, then. Perhaps Murdock’s last sigh? Or gasp?”

  “It’s no joke. I’m deadly serious about this.”

  “I’ll go away and think about what you’ve told me, but perhaps, if Murdock really has disappeared or had some sort of accident, wouldn’t it be better to call the police?”

  “No, no way am I having anything to do with them. They’ll question me and I will have to tell the truth and they’ll think I’m mad. Do you think I’ve gone insane?”