Walking with Ghosts

plans disasters for them, and for everyone around them. He glanced at the house as he passed, noted that all was in darkness apart from a single attic light which was so dim it could have been a candle. Then he negotiated the small pedestrian passage and steps which led him on to Marygate Lane. He made his way towards the Museum Gardens, but when he got there the gate was locked. He took the river path instead, and eventually sat on the same bench he had used earlier to eat his sandwich. There it was again, that old river rolling along.
    The moon came up and Sam shook his head slowly from side to side. He hadn’t knocked on the door because he’d put Billy in the frame for the murders of three women. Yeah, there it was, summary justice. He’d never met the guy, had no evidence against him apart from a flimsy possible connection with Pammy Wright, and he’d already convinced himself that Billy, the son of Dora, the brother of Diana, was a serial killer.
    And it’s always the way that as soon as you do that, as soon as you make that kind of judgement, then everything else, every event and coincidence just goes to prove that you were right in the first place. So the fact that the building Billy lives in hasn’t been painted, and the dim light in the guy’s bedroom, all conspire to augment his guilt.
    Sam smiled to himself. That was one of the great drawbacks to being a detective. You had to think everyone was guilty. Oh, sure, Billy Greenhills was the Surgeon, he probably killed India Blake as well. Different MO, but what the hell, she was a woman, and Billy killed women. At least three we know about, probably a whole lot more we don’t know about, yet, in different parts of the country.
    Look at this. The guy lives alone. He has no contact with his family. Probably masturbates and lives off the state. Never changes his socks.
    Blow the fucker away.
    Sam Turner, radical, liberal thinker and social reformer. Move over, Mother Teresa, there’s a rival on the scene.
    He walked back to St Mary’s, and this time he would have knocked on Billy’s door, except that Billy left the house and made his way towards Bootham, while Sam was still seventy metres away. Sam followed, telling himself that’s what detectives do. Getting into that old familiar argument with himself: I don’t wanna shout out the guy’s name in the street in the dark, then go through all that business of introducing myself, making sure he’s who I think he is. And I know I don’t have to follow him, but why not? I’m here. He’s here. I might learn something. OK, so I’m a bloodhound. That’s how I got into this kind of work.
    Billy walked to High Petergate and went into the York Arms. He bought himself a pint and took it through into the back room. Sam got an orange juice and stood at the bar close to the entrance, so he’d see when Billy left.
    After twenty minutes Sam walked through the back to the Gents. Billy was sitting alone at a small round table, about a third of a pint of beer in front of him. The other tables in the room were occupied by couples and groups. A hen party had put two tables together and commandeered all the unused chairs and stools in the room, so that Billy’s table had no spare seats at it. He was swarthy. Thick, well-shaped lips. He had Dora’s chin. His hair was styled like Elvis Presley’s, but without the sideburns. It rose in a quiff at the front, and then sailed backwards over his head, held in place with enough gel to get a trifle started. His eyes were deep set and dark, hidden beneath pronounced brows, just a glitter there, a flash of white. A large elastoplast was sticking to the front of his throat.
    When he got back to the bar, Sam was disappointed. The glance he’d had of Billy had not been enough. It was as if he hadn’t seen him at all. He’d seen what Billy had wanted to project. But that projection contained no essence of the man behind it. It was a mask.
    Was he wearing make-up?
    Sam listened to a monologue from the table behind him. A middle-aged man’s voice said: ‘We’re all up for grabs as far as he’s concerned. The guy’s got the morals of an alley cat. What do you think, Sugar?’
    Sam half turned his body so that he could get a picture of the face behind the voice. Middle-aged, as he’d guessed, rotund and fresh-faced, going bald. Sugar was a tall guy with a moustache, reminiscent of Freddie Mercury in the old days, long ago.
    In this town there was no such thing as a bar