The Ghost

knew I had about ten minutes to get to the little supermarket on Ladbroke Grove before it closed. It was toward the end of May, dark and raining. I grabbed the nearest jacket and was halfway down the stairs when I realized it was the one I’d been wearing when Lang was killed. It was torn at the front and stained with blood. In one pocket was the recording of my final interview with Adam, and in the other the keys to the Ford Escape SUV.
    The car! I had forgotten all about it. It was still parked at Logan Airport! It was costing eighteen dollars a day! I must owe thousands !
    To you, no doubt—and indeed to me, now—my panic seems ridiculous. But I raced back up those stairs with my pulse drumming. It was after six in New York and Rhinehart Inc. had closed for the day. There was no reply from the Martha’s Vineyard house, either. In despair, I called Rick at home and, without preliminaries, began gabbling out the details of the crisis. He listened for about thirty seconds, then told me roughly to shut up.
    “This was all sorted out weeks ago. The guys at the car park got suspicious and called the cops, and they called Rhinehart’s office. Maddox paid the bill. I didn’t bother you with it because I knew you were busy. Now listen to me, my friend. It seems to me you’ve got a nasty case of delayed shock. You need help. I know a shrink—”
    I hung up.
    When I finally fell asleep on the sofa, I had my usual recurrent dream about McAra, the one in which he floated fully clothed in the sea beside me and told me he wasn’t going to make it: You go on without me. But this time, instead of ending with my waking up, the dream lasted longer. A wave took McAra away, in his heavy raincoat and rubber-soled boots, until he became only a dark shape in the distance, facedown in the shallow foam, sliding back and forth at the edge of the beach. I waded toward him and managed to get my hands around his bulky body and, with a supreme effort, to roll him over, and then suddenly he was staring up naked from a white slab, with Adam Lang bending over him.
    The next morning I left the flat early and walked down the hill to the tube station. It really wouldn’t take much to kill myself, I thought. One swift leap out in front of the approaching train, and then oblivion. Much better than drowning. But it was only the briefest of impulses, not least because I couldn’t bear the idea of someone having to clean up afterward. (“We eventually found the killer’s head on the terminal roof.”) Instead I boarded the train and traveled to the end of the line at Hammersmith, then crossed the road to the other platform. Motion, that’s the cure for depression, I decided. You have to keep moving. At Embankment I changed again for Morden, which always sounds to me like the end of the world. We passed through Balham and I got off two stops later.
    It didn’t take me long to find the grave. I remembered Ruth had said the funeral was at Streatham Cemetery. I looked up his name and a groundsman pointed the way toward the plot. I passed stone angels with vultures’ wings, and mossy cherubs with lichened curls, Victorian sarcophagi the size of garden sheds, and crosses garlanded with marble roses. But McAra’s contribution to the necropolis was characteristically plain. No flowery mottoes, no “Say not the struggle naught availeth” or “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” for our Mike. Merely a slab of limestone with his name and dates.
    It was a late spring morning, drowsy with pollen and petrol fumes. In the distance, the traffic rolled up Garratt Lane toward central London. I squatted on my haunches and pressed my palms to the dewy grass. As I’ve said before, I’m not the superstitious type, but at that moment I did feel a current of relief pass through me, as if I’d closed a circle, or fulfilled a task. I sensed he had wanted me to come here.
    That was when I noticed, resting against the stone, half obscured by the overgrown grass, a small bunch of shriveled flowers. There was a card attached, written in an elegant hand, just legible after successive London downpours: “In memory of a good friend and loyal colleague. Rest in peace, dear Mike. Amelia.”

    WHEN I GOT BACK to my flat, I called her on her mobile number. She didn’t seem surprised to hear from me.
    “Hello,” she said. “I was just thinking about you.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “I’m reading your book—Adam’s book.”
    “And?”
    “It’s good.