Another Three Ghost Stories

Dearest Dorothy

It’s been a strange day.

First, a report of gunfire in an industrial estate. Two firearms officers, sweating in Kevlar, and a warehouse full of dead Eastern European gangsters. One still breathing: “Dorota,” he kept saying to the paramedics.

In the middle, not a drop of blood on her, a child’s doll. Faye took it for the evidence bag.

We slung the long arms in the back of the BMW. I took the wheel. We were both quiet, me thinking about that bloodbath, Faye playing with the doll.

“Are you putting that thing in the bag or not?”

“Dorothy,” Faye replied, “her name is Dearest Dorothy.”

We stopped at lights so I turned to her. She hadn’t secured her Glock. I reached for it.

“Don’t you touch her!” she yelled, no, screamed. She’s a pretty girl, Faye, but she wasn’t pretty then, eyes wide, froth on her lips.

“It’s just a damned doll, Faye!”

Then I was looking into the barrel of her Glock-17.

“Stop the car,” she shouted: “Stop the bloody car, Dev!”

I did, nice and slow. She unbuckled, gripping that doll with white knuckles.

“I’m taking Dearest Dorothy and we’re going!” Then she was out on the pavement, doll in one hand and pistol in the other, with mid-morning shoppers skipping out of her way. “Don’t touch her!” she screamed at a pointing child. The white-faced mother found herself facing a 9mm semi-automatic.

“Faye, drop the weapon!” Now I was armed, my pistol on her, hers wandering between me, the child and the mother. “Put it down, Faye!”

Faye’s face crumpled with baffled fury, tearful, gulping air. She pressed the doll to her cheek and squeezed her eyes closed. The barrel moved towards her chin.

I took the shot.

The discharge sent pigeons whirring into the air, the boom of the Glock rolling down the shopfronts and surging back to me. Faye lay on the kerb. Dearest Dorothy sat next to a widening puddle of blood. I ran to her.

“Too right, it’s been a strange day,” said the Commander, blinking at the paperwork. He regarded me over the desk with a strange expression. “Are you OK, Dev?” When I nodded he added, “Drop that thing in the evidence bag, will you?”

“Her name is Dorothy,” I told him before I left.

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The Approach

17 November
An exciting new piece for the gallery! ‘The Approach’ by Xavier Ling: a late work from his ‘Grey Period.’ Might it be his last work, before his untimely and implausible demise?
It will be the centre of an exhibition: ‘Final Visions: last works by lost visionaries.’ I must notify the press!

20 November
It has arrived, a landscape in oils on canvass, 29 by 47 inches. It must go on the mezzanine. What a spectacle, fusing the hypernaturalism of the Café Volpine School with Signac’s use of geometric abstraction. The road recedes to a point of perspective the eye approaches but never attains. There’s a smudge in the distance that could be a tree, a tower or a human figure. How teasing.

21 November
I think it is a human figure. The flyers are at the printers. The photographer arrives at the weekend.

24 November
“That smudge?” he said. How can a photographer be so blind? I’m looking at it as I write and it’s distinctly a human figure, on the road, approaching the viewer.

27 November
Tonight was a private viewing – a vernissage, as Dietrich would say –to selected critics. Ling’s landscape drew a mixed response. Dietrich insisted on telling gruesome stories of Xavier Ling’s unsettling death. Melinda thought it ‘spooky’ – but Melinda has no insight at all. No one mentioned the figure on the road. It really is very distinct. I can make its eyes (so bright). It’s larger than I recall. Or closer.

29 November
Closed the gallery. Can’t cope with the chatter, the inane questions. How can they not see the figure on the road? Is it Ling himself, hidden in his own picture? His eyes – I can make them out from here.

30 Nov
Rain. Too dark. Slept on couch in gallery. He is so much closer. Ling has teeth, so white and sharp. Those eyes…

31 Nov?
Banging on windows must be Dietrich with news reviews didn’t answer go away Dietrich so many messages on phone. No leaving now Ling has arrived he fills the frame but I will not look into those eyes, if I turn around and look, the teeth, so close, I will not I will not I will

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Hit & Run

It felt like a hard shove. Tyres squealed and tail lights roared away. Gracey ran into the road, screaming her head off. There was this bloke, stretched out, head at a funny angle. I recognised him. He was me.

A crowd gathered. Soon enough, sirens. I always used to think: “That’s some poor sod’s number’s up.” Now it was me they were coming for.

Coppers of course, when it’s too late to do any good. Hit and run, they said. Who saw what? Of course, no one saw a bloody thing. Make, model, plates? Sorry, officer… Useless, the lot of them.

No sense from Grace either. Nice girl, not the brightest.

“He stepped out right into it!” she kept telling the woman police officer. “Like he didn’t see it coming,” she said and the lady copper had this look on her face like she gave up being on telly to do this job.

Gracey went into the back of the cop car and I – the body, me – it went into the ambulance.

I didn’t want to go with them.

That mangled meat, it only felt like it was me when the tattooist’s needle was stinging, or the booze was coming back up after a session, or during a ruck, when your nose breaks and there’s blood in your mouth.

What was Grace anyway, when I wasn’t putting babies into her, the twins and the new one, whenever that’s due? Her face, all blotched with tears and snot: wouldn't miss it.

There were two ways to go and one of them was to stand around while the doctors brought out the bad news and Grace howled and then the funeral, all my mates in suits trying to crack onto my sister. What was the point in that?

The other way was marked out with two lines of fire, the treadmarks of a car, a silver Jag, blazing through town. Someone was at the end of that trail, someone with a Jag outside on the drive, someone enjoying a smoke and some banging tunes, trying not to think about what had happened on their way home.

Someone I was going to visit.

I turned my back on the flashing lights and walked into the night. Then I started to run.