Ghosts in the Morning

Chapter 4



For once, the weather forecast had been spot on. The storm had hit with a vengeance, unleashing its wrath across the island.

I was standing on a large rock to the west of the Corbière lighthouse. The lighthouse had stood proudly on the southwest corner of Jersey for over 130 years, its concrete shell proudly withstanding the battering of four daily tides. I remembered a teacher, on a school visit, told us that Corbière translated as ‘the place where crows congregate’, which always seemed ironic given that the place was dominated by seagulls. There was a flock of seagulls now, sat imperiously on the rock, arrogant in their ability to withstand the fierce wind. I tried to think what you called a group of crows, it wasn’t a congregation of crows...maybe a parliament...

This was one of my favourite places in the island. I loved it here, especially on a windy day, when the swells lifted the white horses proudly into the air, and the raspy sting of seawater blasted my face. There was no better spot in the island to view the power of the sea as it flexed its salty muscle. It made everything else in life seem so small, so insignificant, the ocean put things in their rightful perspective. There were powerful people littered through history who believed themselves to be strong, superior, masters of the universe, gods even. But they were nothing, nothing when compared to the monstrous majesty of the sea. It was at its brutal finest right now.

Spray soaked my face, and I licked my lips. Wind flapped viciously at my coat and pushed at my back, threatening to topple me from the rock into the foamy scum below. I breathed deeply, relishing the loneliness. The weather was unpleasant to most, and it was a weekday, so everyone was at work or at home, tucked into their cosy, heated boxes, missing nature’s show.

Then I noticed a man clambering across the rocks nearby. I squinted behind him, at the direction he had come from and saw his car parked at the side of the road. At the beginning of the number plate was a red ‘H’, signalling that it was a hire car. A solitary tourist. H e was walking towards me, but he wasn’t looking at me. A pair of binoculars swung from his neck and he was gazing up at the foreboding sky. A birdwatcher then...a twitcher. People laughed at them sometimes, pigeon-holing their hobby alongside trainspotting, but that was wrong. ‘Please don’t put the birdwatchers in a pigeon-hole’, I said to myself. My laugh was whipped away by the wind. I liked birds, I loved to watch them as they soared on the swirls and eddies of thermal currents, they always seemed to embody the ultimate freedom. I wished I was a bird sometimes.

The man got closer, but he was still looking up. He was rotund and red-faced, though whether that was from the exertion of the rock-climbing or the howling wind, it was hard to tell. Or maybe he was just florid-faced. Too many whiskies for too many years, perhaps...no, not whisky, it would be real ale. Pints of real ale with his twitcher friends in pubs that smelled of wet dogs. The man had a moustache; thick brown hair perched on his top lip like a soggy turd. I hated moustaches. Uncle Peter had a moustache.

The man drew alongside me, and reached for his binoculars. As he did so, the point of his elbows caught me in the side of the ribs. I flinched but the man didn’t seem to notice that he’d struck me, or didn’t care. I gritted my teeth and stared at the man. He stared back, a mixture of impatience and contempt on his face. A cruel face, an arrogant face. He didn’t see me, he didn’t care, I was beneath him. He pushed past me, crossing to another rock, then turned his back and stared out to sea, binoculars raised.

I am invisible.

I felt the anger well, then a quickening as my blood starting to pump faster through my body. Like with the cyclist. My synapses started to crackle and I breathed deep. I turned my head, left and right, there was no-one around. I crossed the rock, the sound of my wet sneakers muffled by the wind, and I stepped behind the man. The rock jutted out over the ocean’s scream. A precarious place to stand. Unsafe, easy enough to have an accident, especially on a day like this. He didn’t see me, he didn’t hear me.

I reached up and put my hands on the small of his back. His jacket was one of those expensive waxed ones, green and greasy with the rain and the sea spray. He must have felt the pressure as he started to turn. I shoved firmly. For a brief millisecond, he seemed to hang in the air, like a startled marionette, then he was gone. I stepped carefully to the edge of the rock. His body looked small, all crashed and broken on the jagged rocks below. The sea continued to pound relentlessly at the coast, growing large with the incoming tide, then a huge wave swept in, white horses rearing on its crest and claimed the man from the rocks.

I turned around and headed back to my car. And just then I remembered. It wasn’t a parliament, no, that applied to owls. It was a murder of crows.



***



‘Where have you been, I’m starving?’

‘No, Graham, I would hardly say you’re starving,’ I said, pointing at his stomach. ‘Let’s be honest, I think you’ve got a few spare pounds there to keep you going.’

‘Don’t be facetious, Andrea. Besides, I’ve lost a bit of weight recently, actually,’ Graham whined, tapping his pot belly. ‘I’ve been going to the gym at lunchtimes now and again.’

I snorted. More likely spending lunchtimes with Nikki. I vaguely remembered something about her flat being close to the office.

‘So, where have you been? And what’s for dinner?’

I sighed. I didn’t really know where I had been. I had driven around in a fugue state, the car radio softly playing the latest pop drivel. I wasn’t really sure where I’d driven, nor of the route I had taken. I had probably driven around in large circles, it’s not like Jersey was that big, but I couldn’t be sure, there was a blur on my recall. I had been to the shop though, I knew that. I remembered the tinny, soporific music – songs I used to like destroyed in cheap cover versions by singers who couldn’t sing - and I lifted up the Marks & Spencer bag, and showed Graham the boxes within. Chicken dinners, sweet and sour sauce, microwave only, nice and easy. Separate boxes for the rice. I had planned to go to the fish market, some salmon perhaps, or some fresh king prawns, but I must have changed my mind. Perhaps my unconscious mind has steered me away from the prawns - I remembered from school that prawns were the scavengers of the ocean. They hovered up all of sea’s detritus, all of the dead bits, and I Imagined that would include rotting corpses.

‘Daniel phoned, he said he was going for a pizza with the boys, so...’ Graham said, realising that I wasn’t going to answer.

I shook my head clear, and reached into the nag. ‘Okay, okay, no problem, I’ll freeze one of these dinners, I think they can be frozen,’ I said, then set about preparing dinner. I slipped the cardboard sleeves off two boxes and grabbed a fork, clutching it like a dagger. I pierced the film – I liked to stab the film hard and fast with the fork – then I jabbed at the buttons on the microwave. Minutes later and ping! I didn’t ask Graham if he wanted anything else with his dinner, I couldn’t be bothered, and the egg fried rice had a few peas mixed in anyway. Maybe not enough to count as one of his five-a-day but what did I care?

‘Will you pour me one of those?’ Graham asked, as I filled a glass with white wine. ‘Make it a large one.’

He sounded tired. ‘Bad day?’ I still cared, a little, and it annoyed me.

‘Yes, yes, it was. Well, bad week, really,’ Graham sighed. ‘There has been some new Auditing Standards issued earlier this year and they’re a complete pain in the arse. I mean, I know we’re auditors and it’s meant to be our job and all that, but there must be a point when enough is enough...’ He bit into a piece of chicken, and the juice squirted on his chin. He wiped his chin with the palm of his hand, and then wiped his hand on the tablecloth.

I ground my teeth together. The tablecloth was white and the sweet and sour sauce looked like it stained.

‘And, well, those new Standards mean even more controls over us, as auditors, I mean it’s probably going to take us longer to satisfy the requirements for the audit file itself than it is to do the actual fieldwork of the audit.’

I poured another large glass of wine and Graham raised his eyebrows at me. ‘You going to leave some for me?’ he said.

I topped his glass up to halfway, then the bottle ran dry. There was another bottle in the fridge but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

‘So, anyway,’ he continued, ‘here I am, spending most of my time trying to justify the increase in next year’s audit fees due to these new Standards. I’m getting loads of flak from our clients, I’ve got Finance Directors queuing up to kick my arse.’

Graham sucked and smacked his lips together, the greasy coating dribbling again on his chin, reminding me again of Uncle Peter, how he used to drool like an overexcited boxer dog, before sucking the saliva back into that mouth with its broken yellow teeth and its sour alcoholic breath and...

‘Anyway, I guess that’s enough of my boring work talk, I guess you don’t want to hear about all of that audit stuff. So, how was your day, did you do anything exciting?’

Well, I killed a man – in fact, it was the second person I’ve killed in less than a week – was that classed as exciting? I mean, I would call it unusual, certainly, but exciting? I don’t know, Graham, what do you think?

‘No,’ I replied.