The little girl, eight years old, sits in the wooden chair in the corner of Geering's office, framed by a towering tropical houseplant arching over her head. It's early and in the morning light he can see her wearing the same nighty, washed to off white, that she always wears. The nighty looks like something from a Dickens story. Thick cotton with lace around the neckline. Her expression is accusatory, disappointed in him, an expression like the one his father would sometimes cast upon him. Her skin is surprisingly pink, made more so by her thick black hair and her eyebrows standing flexed and in tension. Flushed and rosy her complexion isn't at all what you would expect of a ghost. If that is what she is.
John knew the girl well. He had become accustomed to her visits, and they no longer frightened him. She had been haunting him for nearly thirty years now. She didn't just haunt him in his dreams, though she regularly appeared in the most beautiful of slumbers to jolt him awake, she also on occasion appeared in his waking hours too. She never says anything or makes a noise, not even a gentle puff of breath. She just looks at him with the same expression fixed on her face, the only movement a transitory blink of the eyes.
She is real enough that he can't look through her. The wall behind is entirely obscured by her substance. To him she isn't a ghost or phantom nor some creation of his mind, but a mark left on his soul. A tattoo, beautiful in its tragedy.
"Sorry. I tried my best," he says across to her smiling his warm smile.
The girl's name is Fiona Scott. She's eight years old. Twenty-eight years ago, she was found strangled in her bed by her mother. They had only gone out for an hour to a pub on the corner of their street. They had left their children, a son, and a daughter, sleeping peacefully. It was something that they had done many times before. If they woke, the kids knew that their parents were not far away, and never for long.
On that night though someone broke in through a door leading from the kitchen to the small courtyard at the back of the house. They must have climbed the wall and then forced the door with a crowbar or similar. The house would have been dark and silent, and the burglar probably thought the place was empty. Nothing was disturbed downstairs, so Geering surmised that he had probably gone straight for the bedrooms looking for jewellery and other valuables.
For some reason, and they never worked out why, the burglar throttled Fiona in her bed, neatly laying her dead body out on top of the blankets still wearing her nighty. The same nighty that she now sits here wearing. He left the brother sleeping or didn't realise he was there, and he only woke up when his mother started screaming.
This was the third murder case John had worked in his career, and the only one he never solved. He'd had other cases go the wrong way at court, but he had always been sure that the person in the dock was the right man. But this one he never got close to figuring out who had committed the crime.
This case had also touched him more than any other case. Not just because he hadn't solved it, or because the girl was so young, but also because of how senseless it was. Normally Geering could have some understanding, sympathy even for the perpetrator. He could see how the darkness had bled out from a chaotic life and led them to his interrogation room. Situations getting out of hand, a temporary suspension of morality, or a belief that they wouldn't be caught. But this burglar, this murderer, upon finding the girl in her bed, could have just quietly turned around. He could have crept back downstairs, out the door, and over the wall. Instead, he took Fiona's life. Such a benign sounding phrase he always thought. To take a life. She would have felt it squeezed slowly from her, suddenly awake, the world coursing with bewildering fear. He had longed to look the killer in the eyes and ask him, why?
The parents had been torn apart and vilified in the newspapers. An injustice on top of so many injustices in John's view. An hour and everything had changed forever. Some thought they were involved, rumours that persisted through the years. But this couldn't have been. They didn't need alibis, even though they had them, watertight. He only had to spend time with them to know with certainty that they were not involved.
He still visited them from time to time, feeling an obligation to them beyond the duty of his job. He never told them about their daughter's visits to him. It would have been too upsetting for them. Carrying such a loss, they might have wondered why they couldn't have been so blessed as to see their beautiful girl sitting in front of them again. John told no one about this burden and blessing. She was a talisman of a responsibility that couldn't be shared.
Fiona always appeared like this at the point John made a breakthrough in a case. Looking at him with that expression. Well John, when are you going to solve my case? This is what she is saying with that look. His eyes flit down to his copy of the page Barrie had found in the dead man's flat. They had a name now, and he expected that today they would learn a great deal more about him. Understanding the victim, who they were, what they did, what circles they moved in, and what secrets they held, was usually the key to finding out what had happened and at whose hand. This one discovery, missed on the first fingertip search of the flat, presented so many new doors to open. He looks up again at Fiona. "Well, what do you think?" he says.
She doesn't answer of course. She just keeps looking at him the same way. In the mornings, his vision has become a little blurred and soft at the edges, and for a moment she looks truly ghostly. He tries to ignore the certain knowledge that the fog is more than just tiredness. It will clear by 9am, but still it makes it difficult for him to read. He carries on speaking out loud to the girl. Maybe she can hear him even if she doesn't respond. He has always sensed that she can. That something more than the silence exists in the space between them. Nothing odd about that he thinks. Isn't religion simply a one-way conversation between the living and the dead?
"What are we to make of this? This message in a book with it's odd reply. To my friend Joshua Matheson. Our meetings together are always something I look forward to. S. Is S, Stuart Levitsky? I guess we'll find that out today, eh?" The girl just looks on filling the room with her quiet unease. Looking up at her helps Geering to focus his eyes which are starting to clear in the middle field of vision as the morning light grows.
"I always loved watching you play our game! Josh. What game and why write the reply here, where it might never be seen? Had he just borrowed the book? And who watches someone playing their game? Its such strange phraseology" he looks at Fiona again, "You don't know either, eh?"
"And look at this strange half-finished border with its doodled circles and ticks," he holds the page up so that she can see. "No, I've never seen anything like that either Fiona. What does it mean? Does it mean anything? Doodle or code?" He waits a moment for an answer that he knows full well won't come. "Not in a talking mood today then?" he says.
He returns his focus to the page and tots up the number of words. Shaking his head and still looking down at the desk he asks, "How can one page with twenty-five words on it hold so many questions, eh?" But when he looks up Fiona Scott is gone, leaving him alone in the room now filled with sunshine and an entirely different atmosphere of quiet unease.
******
Geering stands facing a large heavy door in the corridor of the university mathematics department. The air is thick with the smell of professional cleaning products that can never fully conceal the odours of centuries. He can hear the faint murmur of conversation and suddenly feels like he is about to intrude on someone's day. Perhaps deliver news devastating to the person on the other side. Perhaps come face to face with a killer. You never know. He stands tall and gathers his confidence. He must project an air of relaxed authority when he walks in. Make sure that everyone knows that he is in charge. He concentrates hard to engage the nerves and muscles in his body, which have been sending shots through his limbs without warning all morning. This he wants to conceal.
He knocks and waits. Someone on the other side calls for him to "come". When he enters, he sees one person sat on the business side of a desk situated towards the window and two people, a man and a woman, sat opposite. Introducing himself he explains that he is from the police. They are all looking at him. He's seen this look before. A mix of surprise and guilt as they rifle through their brains, checking for any crimes they might have committed. Geering enquires as to which one of them is Stuart Levitsky, directing the question at the man sat behind the desk, who seems the most likely candidate. His instinct is correct. He hangs his coat without asking on a wooden coat stand that looks like it has been there since the beginning of time. As he does this, he senses the woman studying him carefully, but then gets the impression she is studying his coat. There is a subtle difference in the line of sight, too low and too left to be him that she's looking at.
This makes him wonder who these people are. They don't look like students. The man maybe looks like an academic, but more poet or philosopher than mathematician. Friends they say. Visiting London for the day. Popped in for chat. John is fifty-fifty on whether he believes them. For now though he's just drawing the outline of what's going on. He'll colour it in and add detail later.
Geering tells them why he's there. Direct and to the point. They must be wondering, and the air clears once it is said. Professor Levitsky is surprised that he could be connected to such a thing. A dead body in a flat isn't something that anyone, let alone a maths professor, is usually connected with. Geering judges his shock as genuine. Ninety percent he thinks, however the professor is difficult to read. As if a part of him is missing.
The strategy he had decided on that morning was to show the cleaned-up photo of the man to Stuart Levitsky. Geering didn't want to lead him by giving the name Joshua Matheson but instead ask if he could identify him, cold and unprompted. The page from the book he would hold back for now. Forensics are still running their tests, and other than giving Joshua Matheson's name and leading him here, he still isn't sure if it is at all significant. He had planned for Levitsky to be alone, but he seemed glad to have his friends there and Geering decided to let them stay while he showed them the photograph.
Before revealing it, he tried his best to prepare them for what they would see, and for the information that he wanted. There is nothing bloody or gruesome on the photo, and it had been cleaned up to remove the pallid hue of death on the skin and give it a living peachiness. But it would be a binary moment for the professor. Either acquaintance or stranger had passed, and the switch was about to be flicked.
Geering doesn't need telling though. Before the photograph hits the table it is obvious that Joshua Matheson is known to him. A moment later he confirms it in words. "Yes. Yes, I know him. His name is Joshua. Joshua Matheson."
"And what about you two. Are you also acquainted with Joshua Matheson?"
They both look at the photo again and then in unison say "No."
"I've never seen him before," the woman adds.
Geering can see Professor Levitsky is in shock. He asks to go into the other room where it's more comfortable. Geering takes the details of the man and the woman, Ben Erwin, and Samantha Brock, should he need to contact them later. Wishing them well he allows them to leave through the same door that he had entered through. Watching them disappear he still can't make up his mind about them. Their walk is just a little more nervous than is normal. But these thoughts vanish as quickly as they appeared. Probably nothing John.
The other room adjoining the office is cluttered. Books and papers are piled halfway to the ceiling like toy skyscrapers. A few old computers, half dismantled, is all that breaks the pattern of these towers. The windows are thick with chalk dust giving the room a misty light, thin and green. At one end, two enormous blackboards stretch the full length and height of the wall scrawled with notation. Nestled amongst this chaos are four wooden chairs at the front and a green velvet sofa seeming to be randomly positioned at an angle to everything else in the room. Professor Levitsky is sat on the green sofa his face as ashen as the chalk strewn floor. Geering closes the door and walks so gently that he almost floats.
"I know this must have come as a terrible shock Professor. I'm sorry to be the one that must come here and bring this news. I can't tell you everything, and at the moment we aren't even sure exactly how Joshua came to," he stops to find a word less blunt but there is none, "die."
"No need to apologise. I just can't believe he's gone. How?"
"As I said we don't know everything yet. There's a lot still that we must work out, and you can possibly help us greatly in understanding who Mr. Matheson was. Do you mind me asking what your relationship to the deceased was?"
"My relationship?" Coming from Stuart's mouth these words seemed to hang on a precarious thread, their weight dangerously tensile. "We worked together on a project. He hired me as a matter of fact. And then I suppose we were friends."
"A project. What sort of project?"
"Mathematics, computers, that sort of thing. Data analysis."
"So, is that what Mr. Matheson did for a living?"
"Partly. I think so, yes."
"But you aren't sure exactly? How can that be if you worked together?"
"Well, he hired me you see? I did work for him, but he didn't do work for me, so I never knew exactly what he did. That was how it operated."
"How it operated? Do you know for which company he worked for perhaps?" Geering asks, starting to feel a little confused by the relationship being described.
"No. There was no company as far as I know. He worked for others. He never talked about who and I never met anyone else."
"And do you think these others might have wanted to do harm to Joshua?"
"I don't know. I couldn't speculate."
"And I have to ask, but do you think Mr. Matheson could have done himself harm?"
"Suicide?" the professor answers sounding surprised. "Out of the question. Absolutely not."
"Good," Geering says slowly, but he is disappointed. He had hoped for more. "And when did you last see Mr. Matheson?"
"About two months ago, a little less maybe. We met at a café where we used to go to talk."
John worked the days back in his mind. That would have been a week or two before his body was found. "And did anything seem amiss?"
"No not really. He was a little more distracted than normal perhaps. He said he had a lot of pressure on him, but that was nothing new. He seemed himself."
"And do you know of anyone else who knew or might have been acquainted with Mr. Matheson?"
"No. Sorry. As I said our work and friendship existed on an island you might say. I didn't get to know anything about what his life was like when he left that island. I liked him though. I liked him a lot."
"And do you have anything that you can freely share about the work you did for him?"
Stuart ponders this question longer than he had considered anything else that Geering had asked. The pause is long enough to be noteworthy, and Geering scribbles down THE WORK? and underlines it twice. "Most of it is under a non-disclosure agreement so I can't talk about it. I can share with you some of the publicly available academic literature on the subject of mathematical filtration methods. That was the basis of most of our discussions."
"Thank you but I don't think that will be necessary," Geering replies with a smile adding, "for now at least."
"Is there anything else I can help with you?" Professor Levitsky asks, colour returning slowly to his cheeks.
"No. I think that is all for now Professor. You've been most helpful. If you do remember anything you think might be significant, please give me a call at the station," he produces a card with his details on and hands it to the professor. "Anything at all, however small or insignificant it might seem. Okay?"
"Of course. This is all very difficult for me you'll understand."
"I understand," Geering says his voice full of compassion, for he understood grief better than most, together numbing and stinging like salt spray on open wounds.
Just as he is about to leave Geering remembers something else that he wants to ask. "One more thing. I nearly forgot. It'll sound like a strange question, but did you and Mr. Matheson ever play any games? Chess or checkers maybe?"
"No. I don't know if he could play chess."
He nods, thanks the professor once more, and leaves without being shown out. This too he understands. It takes time for a person to fully comprehend the passing of a friend. Especially in such strange circumstances. He would need to sit motionless, eyes fixed on a distant point, to work out what he must do next. Some need time alone, some surrounded by friends, some plant a tree or feel an irresistible urge to raise money for charity, some sit still while others need to set themselves in motion. The ways of being left behind as endless as the ways that people leave. Geering can't help but feel sympathy for Levitsky as he picks up his coat from the stand next to the door. He has the sense that friendship doesn't come easily to him.
Letting go at last of the strained conscious control he has been holding over his body for the last half hour, he limps and jerks back down the corridor and decides to get some caffeine in the student café downstairs. He gets a black coffee in a paper cup and sits. The aluminium chair screeches on the marble floor each time he adjusts his position. He tries to collect an impression of what he believes, and what he must still convince himself of. The professor seems genuine if a little odd, but only in the way that you might expect a math's professor to be. Sure, he didn't want to say much about the work he was doing, but commercial secrets are commonplace, and it sounded too complicated for the likes of John to understand anyway. However, his assessment that Joshua hadn't killed himself fitted with Geering's own view. This was useful confirmation from someone that knew Joshua. John felt reasonably certain on feel that Levitsky was not at all a likely suspect.
The other two he's less sure about. Erwin and Brock. They were an unlikely pair to be coupled to the professor, and their behaviour had created an atmosphere which drew his suspicion. Now he considers it more closely, he feels that the woman, Samantha Brock, had shown a glint of something like recognition when he entered the room. Like she knew him somehow, yet he was certain they had never met. He might try to probe a bit more into them and their relationship to Levitsky, but he had little grounds for doing so. Besides, if they were involved then the professor was involved, and he couldn't picture a three-way conspiracy between this constellation of people. So, what had he really learned? He'd confirmed who the man was, but he had known with some certainty before. He'd learnt that Matheson worked in something to do with computing and technology which might be useful once they probed his life further, but he still had no idea why he ended up dead in that flat, or who might have wanted to do him harm.
Frustrated, he knocks the last swill of lukewarm coffee back his throat and stands up. He stuffs a hand into his coat pocket, trying to find a tissue to wipe his nose which is starting to run. As he does he feels something that makes him stop. He applies gentle pressure with his fingers, and it crinkles like sweet wrappers as he pulls it loose. The envelope that Geering is now looking at hadn't been there before. It is one of those paper envelopes with a plastic window for the address. Flattening it out he can see it is addressed to Professor Stuart Levitsky.
"What on earth?" he mumbles to himself.