The Ghost

normal human being. The fact that he wasn’t a normal human being was neither here nor there.
    From Ruth Lang’s room came the sound of footsteps, and then her door opened and closed. I thought at first she might be coming to investigate who was moving around next door, but instead I heard her walking away. I put down McAra’s manuscript and turned my attention to the interview transcripts. I knew what I wanted. It was there in our first session:
    I remember it was a Sunday afternoon. Raining. I was still in bed. And someone starts knocking on the door…
    If I tidied up the grammar, the account of how Ruth had canvassed Lang for the local elections and so drawn him into politics would make a perfect opening. Yet McAra, with his characteristic tone deafness for anything of human interest, had failed even to mention it. I rested my fingers on the keys of my laptop, then started to type:
    C HAPTER O NE
    Early Years
    I became a politician out of love. Not love for any particular party or ideology, but love for a woman who came knocking on my door one wet Sunday afternoon…
    You may object that this was corny, but don’t forget (A) that corn sells by the ton, (B) that I had only two weeks to rework an entire manuscript, and (C) that it sure as hell was a lot better than starting with the derivation of the name Lang. I was soon rattling away as fast as my two-finger typing would permit me:
    She was wringing wet from the pouring rain, but she didn’t seem to notice. Instead, she launched into a passionate speech about the local elections. Until that point, I’m ashamed to say, I didn’t even know there were any local elections, but I had the good sense to pretend that I did…
    I looked up. Through the window I could see Ruth marching determinedly across the dunes, into the wind, on yet another of her brooding, solitary walks, with only her trailing bodyguard for company. I watched till she was out of sight, then went back to my work.

    I CARRIED ON FOR a couple of hours, until about one o’clock or so, and then I heard a very light tapping of fingertips on wood. It made me jump.
    “Mister?” came a timid female voice. “Sir? You want lunch?”
    I opened the door to find Dep, the Vietnamese housekeeper, in her black silk uniform. She was about fifty, as tiny as a bird. I felt that if I sneezed I would have blown her from one end of the house to the other.
    “That would be very nice. Thanks.”
    “Here, or in kitchen?”
    “The kitchen would be great.”
    After she’d shuffled away on her slippered feet, I turned to face my room. I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer. Treat it like writing, I said to myself: go for it. I unzipped my suitcase and laid it on the bed. Then, taking a deep breath, I slid open the doors to the closet and began removing McAra’s clothes from their hangers, piling them over my arm—cheap shirts, off-the-peg jackets, chain store trousers, and the sort of ties you buy at the airport: nothing handmade in your wardrobe, was there, Mike? He had been a big fellow, I realized, as I felt all those supersize collars and great, hooped waistbands: much larger than I am. And, of course, it was exactly as I’d dreaded: the feel of the unfamiliar fabric, even the clatter of the metal hangers on their chrome-plated rail, was enough to breach the barrier of a quarter of a century’s careful defenses and plunge me straight back into my parents’ bedroom, which I’d steeled myself to clear three months after my mother’s funeral.
    It’s the possessions of the dead that always get to me. Is there anything sadder than the clutter they leave behind? Who says that all that’s left of us is love? All that was left of McAra was stuff . I heaped it over the armchair, then reached up to the shelf above the clothes rail to pull down his suitcase. I’d expected it would be empty but, as I took hold of the handle, something slid around inside. Ah, I thought. At last. The secret document.
    The case was huge and ugly, made of molded red plastic, too bulky for me to manage easily, and it hit the floor with a thud. It seemed to reverberate through the quiet house. I waited a moment, then gently laid the suitcase flat on the floor, knelt in front of it, and pressed the catches. They flew up with a loud and simultaneous snap.
    It was the kind of luggage that hasn’t been made for more than a decade, except perhaps in the less fashionable parts of Albania. Inside it had a hideously patterned, shiny