Talking to Ghosts Read online

  Victor bowed his head, then, hearing the front door creak, he turned to look. A man carrying a satchel appeared, framed in the rectangle of golden light. Victor watched as he disappeared down a dark corridor. Bernard tried to take his bag, but the boy refused, gripping the handles, staring blankly at the floor. The social worker turned away with a sigh and walked on ahead down the corridor.

  He walked purposefully, rolling his broad shoulders, his thick arms hanging away from his body as though preparing to fend off a rugby tackle. The boy walked behind, staring at the man’s broad back, his short neck. Bernard seemed both heavy and agile, swift and powerful. He made Victor think of a boxer. The wooden floor creaked or groaned, and every step they took seemed to stir up the smell of floor polish.

  They went into a cramped little room furnished with a bed with a whitewood frame and a red chair and a table. A built-in wardrobe was fitted with shelves papered with blue plastic. The wallpaper was beige with square patches that seemed less faded, peppered with holes from thumbtacks and drawing pins. The social worker gestured to him to put the bag on the bed.

  “There you go. This is your new home. They’ll be serving lunch soon.”

  Victor sat down next to the bag. A bedspring creaked. He set the urn on the bedside table and pressed his hands flat against the mauve bedspread. Through the open window he could hear excited bursts of birdsong that seemed to come from the mass of trees he could see. He craned his neck and could make out berries at the top of a cherry tree glistening in the sun. Everything shimmered in the sunlight, quivered with the sounds of shouting and laughter, the rumble of traffic from the avenue or the bypass nearby. Bernard asked if he was hungry. The boy immediately got to his feet and followed him. Before he left the room, he put the urn in the wardrobe, which he carefully closed. Bernard said that as long as he kept his key with him at all times, his belongings would be quite safe. After lunch, he would have time to get himself sorted. As they walked down the corridor, Bernard showed him where the showers and the toilets were.

  They heard the tinkle of cutlery, a clamour of voices and scattered laughter. The large dining hall was equipped with tables that seated four. The posters on the walls were cheery, sun-drenched wildlife scenes of placid animals. Victor’s attention was caught by two lions, their eyes shining, staring straight into the lens, and he slowed down to have a closer look.

  “This is Victor,” Bernard said in a loud voice, briefly interrupting the various conversations. “He’s just got here, so I’m counting on all of you to help him settle in.”

  There was a burst of laughter. Victor saw a skinny boy sniggering. He had thick brown curls falling over of his face and was staring down at his plate. There were about twenty kids, most of them bent over their plates, absentmindedly scraping the floor with the soles of their shoes. There were only eight or nine girls who clustered together at two tables, chatting quietly, with a seriousness that was obvious from their broad sweeping gestures and the attentive way they listened. Some had finished eating but had stayed behind to chat. Victor was seated at a table with two younger children whose feet barely reached the tiled floor and who watched indifferently as he sat down. From a corner of the dining room, two men and a woman were keeping an eye on things, and after Bernard had wished him bon appétit, he went over to join them, sitting at right angles to Victor.

  A woman immediately appeared and gave Victor his lunch. He thanked her with a nod.

  He ate. He did not know if he felt hungry. He did not look at anything or anyone. His gaze flitted around the room like a tired, heavy bird, seeing nothing. He sopped up the sauce from his plate with a piece of bread and then passed the time by drumming softly on the table with his fork. The two boys at his table struggled to cut the meat from the bone on their chops, then cut away the fat which they pushed to the edge of their plates, making identical piles. Every now and then a pea would roll off onto the tablecloth, and they would pop it into their mouths with an irritated look. They often did exactly the same thing at the same time, or almost, it was as if they were playing some sort of silent, intuitive game, where the goal was to mimic each other. They didn’t speak, but gave each other knowing or quizzical looks, and giggled noiselessly.

  Victor, who finished before them, watched as they smeared fromage blanc around their mouths. Both boys had small, dark eyes, almost devoid of eyelashes, which gave them a sly and slightly stupid expression. They were obviously brothers, one was blond, the other had jet black hair that glinted blue under the strip lights. It was hard to tell which was younger. Maybe they were twins. The dark-haired boy regularly poked out a long, pointed tongue and licked around his mouth. His constant snuffling screwed up one side of his face. The blond boy, who had close-cropped hair and a long scar running across his scalp, often froze with his spoon in mid-air for several seconds, glanced vacantly at what was going on around him, then went back to noisily shovelling his dessert into his mouth so fast he almost bit his fingers.

  Gradually the children got up and left the room in twos and threes, stacking their plates on a trolley as they went. After a while Victor found himself sitting alone at his table: at some signal known only to them, the two boys had jumped up from their chairs in perfect unison and cautiously walked away, carrying their plates and their glasses in front of them like holy relics. Then, like the others, they too disappeared through a doorway from which Victor could hear shouts and laughs, fists banging on walls and the scrape of tables or chairs. Soon he heard the voice of a television presenter, intercut with snatches of music, applause and adverts. Standing in the corner, the social workers were smoking and talking in low voices. From time to time they laughed, covering their mouths as though they were shy. Victor noticed that apart from him there was only one boy still at his table: the tall boy who had giggled earlier when Victor arrived, and was now bent double. He looked as if he was asleep, his head resting on his folded arms. Or maybe he was crying, because every now and then his body shook.

  Victor got down and stacked his plate and cutlery on the trolley. His fork fell on the floor, and the noise made the three adults turn and stare. They did not take their eyes off him until he had left the room.

  Four boys were playing table football, cheered on by two more who promised they were going to thrash the winners. The game was tense, the players punctuating their furious wrist flicks with muttered obscenities directed at nothing and no-one in particular.

  Victor stepped closer and watched the game for a few minutes. The ball flew off the table and bounced at his feet. He caught it as it bounced and gently tossed it back to one of the players, but the boy did not thank him, in fact he did not seem to notice the newcomer standing silently a few feet away. Other boys were watching the television, sometimes mocking the adverts that all seemed to feature beautiful women, fast cars, and jewels in sumptuous settings. Victor wandered away from the table football and slowly walked around the room. The two brothers were staring spellbound at the television, though they were sitting some way back, lolling in armchairs, methodically picking their noses, rolling the snot into little balls and flicking it into the distance. The dark-haired brother was still regularly poking out his tongue as if, like a snake, he could use it to sense the universe of smells around him. The boys’ restless feet were constantly scuffing the floor, twitching or quivering convulsively in a continuous fidgeting that spread to every part of their bodies except their round, staring eyes, which remained glued to the television in the distance.

  Victor turned away, walked over to the window and stood there. He watched a group of sparrows squabbling over food on the lawn beneath a big oak tree. They hopped about, pecked at each other, and flew up suddenly into the dark leaves, only to drop down heavily onto the other birds. All around the light was blinding and brutal, from the metallic glare of the sky to the short grass that was yellowing in patches, and everything seemed transfixed by the stultifying heat. Even Victor did not move, he stood stock-still as beads of sweat began to trickle down hi
s face and onto his neck. He did nothing to wipe them away, even though he found the warm tickling sensation uncomfortable, and then his eyesight misted, his eyelids twitched feverishly and suddenly snapped shut, as he slumped to the floor and started to vomit, eyes closed, clutching his stomach, breathless and seized by convulsions.

  *

  He was woken by an angry blackbird, slicing across the rectangle of the open window with a dark caw. Or perhaps it was the cold contact of the stethoscope against his skin. A man with a worried look was sounding the depths of his body. He gave a smile when he saw the boy open his eyes. He inflated the blood-pressure cuff and checked the dial, intent on the sounds that only he could hear. He told Victor everything was fine, and smiled again. It was just an after-effect, he said, and stood up, his face suddenly disappearing from view. Victor blinked in surprise. The doctor said he was going to give him an injection to help him relax, and asked if that was O.K. The boy’s eyelashes fluttered and, unblinking, he watched the needle slide into a vein in his arm and the plunger of the syringe slowly being depressed.

  When someone came to fetch him for dinner, he was roused from the half-sleep he had been drifting in all afternoon, twisting and turning on the sheet that stuck to his clammy body. He wondered what time it was, but his watch was sitting on a shelf and he did not dare ask this man who was trying to persuade him to come and eat something. Victor refused to go downstairs, his only response was to turn away, curl up into a ball and pull the sheet over his head. He stayed for some time beneath this pale blue shroud, in the hush of his faint breathing, aware of the dim glow that seeped through the fabric, looking at his fingers, wriggling these tame, secret creatures, his lips moving, mouthing words with a faint hiss of saliva creating a confused counterpoint to the birdsong that came in random bursts from outside. Then he shifted in the bed, sat up and looked around, eyes puffy with sleep, at the peaceful haven of his room. He reached out, pulled his backpack towards him and began to make an inventory. Apart from a few clothes, the police had packed a little Walkman that had belonged to his mother, and a handful of cassettes by old-fashioned singers. He rummaged for his MP3 player but could not find it, so picked up the Walkman again, examining it from every angle. He ran his finger over the buttons, then pressed EJECT and extracted the cassette, which he also examined, turning it over and over, probably because it had no label. He reloaded it into the little red player, put on the earphones, and pressed PLAY. Nothing happened. He shook the device, took out the tape, reinserted it and closed his eyes. Still there was no music, the tape did not move. He opened his eyes and noticed the battery compartment was empty. He poked a finger in to be sure, then tossed the Walkman onto the bed, leapt to his feet and paced the room, his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, then stood at the window and stared out at the heat haze that stained the sky with a sickly grey-green veil, even as the patches of shadow spreading at the foot of the walls announced that night was drawing in. In the distance he could hear the low roar of the motorway. The warm air quivered with the metallic breath of the city.

  *

  Victor stood for a long time, finding it now possible to remain utterly still but for the deep and steady rise and fall of his breath, the quivering of his eyelids that made his face seem alive, and the anxious curiosity of his eyes searching out everything there was to see: there was not much, trees, birds, a few insects, buzzing specks against the evening light.

  A loud crash from the corridor behind him made him start. It sounded like someone banging on his door. He went to open it and peered into the dark, empty hallway. He could hear muffled laughter from behind a door beneath which a band of light flickered with shadows. The cold wooden floor creaked with every step. On his right he could see a bright room and the faint sound of water dripping. Warily he stepped inside, as though walking into a trap tiled in white and blue. He walked past a line of washbasins, peered into the shower cubicles, the toilets, then locked himself into a cubicle to pee. As he was doing up his flies the door of the next cubicle slammed shut, he heard a sigh of relief and a series of intimate splashes and almost immediately the foul stench reached him. The toilet flushed. The door banged so hard that it shook the thin partitions separating the cubicles. As the stranger left the bathroom he burped and started to whistle a shrill, unfamiliar tune, then there was the squeak of hinges and the click of a latch. Victor waited until everything was silent; only then did he emerge and creep back to his room, terrified that one of the other doors might open, distracted by the snatches of music that faded away and died in the twilight.

  He lay on the bed again, staring at the ceiling, watching as night drew in, darkening the pale rectangle of sky he could see through the window. The room around him was sketched in mauve and grey with patches of blue shadow in the corners. He laid a hand on his chest and felt his heart beat, and in his head he felt the same dull throb, buzzing like an insect. He did not see the darkness finally take hold, because by then he was snuggled up with his mother, naked and warm as she stroked his hair, whispering softly to him – my little boy, my darling – sweet nothings scarcely louder than a breath and planting kisses all over his face. He let himself melt into this dark embrace, pressed his body and his face into the soft mattress, groaning, shifting listlessly, suddenly overcome with suffocating sleep.

  Then he fell. A short, brutal jolt that woke him with a start. He found himself on his back, his arms flung wide, his legs tangled in the sheets, gasping with terror. He shook the hem of his T-shirt to dry the sweat from his skin, kicked out to free his legs, and opened his eyes onto the darkness. When he felt calm again he got up, walked over to the window, and pressed his face against it. A rustling silence. The day’s clamour all but gone. A perfumed coolness rose from the grounds. A steady breeze, calm and gentle. The mute breath of hidden flowers. A faint shushing of leaves broke the silence. He looked at the sky, trying to make out the stars as they glided towards the west. He hoped there might be a comet, hoped he might see the moon, but could make out nothing save the perpetual pulse that seemed to keep everything alive. He shivered suddenly. He had been taught that the universe was cold and utterly black, streaked with ancient light and rocks no-one had thrown. He dismissed this paradox, which was too difficult for him to resolve, and with clumsy, groggy hands undressed and went back to bed, quickly slipping back into restless sleep.

  4

  Questioning the staff at S.A.N.I., Vilar discovered that Nadia’s coworker – and probably her friend – was a woman named Sandra de Melo: the pair had been hired at about the same time and had been assigned to work on the same team. The executives and the line managers he interviewed talked about the staff as if they were interchangeable, as though they were pack animals, and it took considerable effort to get any personal information about the young woman who had been working for their company for almost four years. Some fell silent the moment they heard that Nadia had been murdered, while others seemed more than happy to be “helping the police with their inquiries”. Vilar had a nagging suspicion that some of them imagined themselves playing a role in a crime novel. It hardly mattered since the management, in spite of all its talk of proper procedures, could barely disguise its disdain for “human resources” – despite having been given an award by the Chamber of Commerce the previous year. One interesting fact did emerge – Nadia only worked part-time, and her shifts were irregular.

  The rumour that the two women had been friends came from the team leader responsible for training them when they joined. The man had nothing but praise for their work, and stressed what a pleasure it had been to work with two beautiful, sexy women. Vilar had loathed the man’s knowing smiles and his studied pauses, the tacit male bond this moron thought he had established between them.

  Sandra de Melo lived out in the banlieue sandwiched between the motorway and the train tracks in a forbidding tower block on a bleak housing estate that some architect had tried to jazz up with wrought-iron balconies painted in garish colours. A boy leaning in the
doorway barely moved to let Vilar pass. Another was leaning against a window crazed with cracks, and a third was sitting smoking on the stairs next to the lifts. The air reeked of dope. As he reached the middle of the lobby the policeman felt their eyes boring into him, but he ignored them as he tried to make out the illegible labels on a bank of mailboxes, some of them padlocked – those that still had a metal door to protect their post.

  “You looking for someone?” a voice said behind him.

  S. de Melo. Apartment 317. The mailbox was stuffed with junk mail.

  “I’m talking to this fucker, you’d think he’d fucking answer?”

  Vilar felt an electrical charge trill through his shoulder blades and spread up into his neck making his hair stand on end. He turned towards the boy who had spoken, the one still standing by the door.

  “It’s O.K., I’ve found her. Didn’t want to tax your brain.”

  He forced himself to smile. The boy kept his hands in the pockets of his white shell suit. He was probably about sixteen or seventeen, like his mates. The one sitting on the stairs dropped his joint and stubbed it out with his trainer, his head lowered, observing Vilar from under his baseball cap.

  “It can be pretty dangerous here, m’sieur,” the boy said, leaning against the window. “On the stairs and that. Even in the lift, when it’s working. There’s thugs here who get a kick out of scaring people.”

  The other two nodded in agreement, mocking Vilar, waiting for him to react.

  “It’s pretty scary,” Vilar said, rolling his eyes as if he meant it, taking in the walls tagged with graffiti. “You guys must be really brave to hang out here, what with it being so dangerous.”

  “Yeah, it’s not safe,” said the boy who had been smoking the joint. “But the Feds never come here, the fuckers.”

  “There’s never a policeman around when you need one,” Vilar said, nodding. “Why don’t you give them a call?”