The Ghost Reapers Read online

  “Then write a serious academic article.” He sighed. “Jazz, someone has to say something. Your Twitter addiction is out of hand.”

  He pulled a cigarette from his packet and crushed it, letting the flakes of tobacco slip through his fingers.

  She bristled. “Alcohol and cigarettes are addictions. My writing is educational.” Her eyes rested on her graduation photograph. In a world drowning under a plethora of Firsts, her Third Class degree was not what she had hoped for.

  “Educational? You think Twitter is educational?”

  “All men and women are equal on a Twitter page.” Jazz checked out her bitten nails, wondering whether she did need some help from Nefertiti Nails after all.

  “Marxist baloney: Tweeting is social interaction for the socially inept.”

  “Thank you.”

  He gulped in the cold damp air. “I did not mean you.”

  “Why not? It’s true; I honestly didn’t expect my ideas to create screeds of abuse. You have no idea what it feels like to be trolled.”

  “Not very trilling.”

  “Trilling?” She screeched, remembering her death day threat. Revealing it meant he would come over. She let him drone on.

  “Religion brings out the worst in some people. It’s easily forgotten if you sit in front of a computer screen for unhealthy periods of time. No matter how good the software, they can’t feel, any more than they can live your life for you.” He scuffed the ground with his shoe. “Sorry, didn’t mean to sound sanctimonious. The sentiments cybating towards you can’t be much fun.”

  “Is cybating a real word?” She tugged at the necklace, remembering her father’s words: “Life and renewal are the Egyptian symbol for eternity; I will always be your father, Jazz.” He had kissed her on the forehead, then left for what she had supposed was another archaeological field trip; she didn’t realise she would not see him again. She raised her index finger to her mouth and bit off the tip of her fingernail.

  “As real as ‘u’ ‘r’.” Jed emphasised the letters hoping to raise a laugh. Her silence prompted him to continue. “Your theory is rattling through the religious world like a tornado. You are a religious teacher, not a religious terminator.”

  “I merely commented on the authenticity of the Turin Shroud’s carbon dating.”

  “The exact phrase you used was ‘covering Christ’s body for centuries’. Dead body covered for centuries equals no resurrection.”

  “I am not a complete idiot, Jed.”

  “It’s not up for debate. What are you going to do?”

  “If I can’t validate my theory I will never be vindicated.”

  “Vindicated! You seriously expect to prove Christ was wrapped in the Shroud for centuries?” He sucked in air, imagining it was cigarette smoke. “For once in your life be sensible. Tell the school directors you got it wrong.” He pulled the cigarette packet from his pocket, then squashed it in his hand before throwing it in the litter bin.

  “I can’t. You must see, this hate reaction only makes sense if I’m right.”

  “Bigots don’t operate with logic.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  He thought about it. “Have you considered the impact if you’re right?”

  “Without evidence, I can’t prove it, which is why I have work to do. Thankfully, data is easily accessible on the net.”

  “Cyberspace is a muddy quagmire of half-baked theories.”

  “Data forms patterns. The patterns associated with the Shroud’s authenticity don’t add up.”

  “Come on, Jazz; patterns are polar opposites of hard evidence.” He turned towards the nineteen-sixties school building, as the bell rang for the third time. He was late for his physics lesson. The light experiment he had planned for his pupils would take too long to set up. His teaching session would be an hour of trawling through text books with bored teenagers.

  “Einstein figured out gravitational waves from patterns. If scientists can do it, why shouldn’t historians?”

  He quickened his pace with Jazz’s voice rattling in his ear.

  “You aren’t a historian; besides, science has nothing to do with religious studies. You can’t prove your theory. Why throw your career away on conjecture?”

  “Wrong: past tense.”

  He sighed. “I could come around tonight with a couple of bottles. We could put the world to rights.” He glanced at the window of his lab. A few of the boys were texting on their mobiles. One was inspecting the latest tattoo on his arm.

  “Wine won’t put my world back; only I can. Let’s take a rain check.”

  “OK, but on one proviso: text me at least once in the next twenty four hours.”

  “Promise.”

  Her computer rang with new tweets as she replaced the receiver. If she was wrong, why did people care so much? The words “your death day” echoed in her head. She looked at the Nefertiti advert and then at her nails. Someone else understood about patterns. She headed to the window, needing to think.

  Chapter Three

  The vista from Jazz’s apartment tied you to twenty-five years of mortgage servitude on sight. On rare cloudless days, the view stretched through the Georgian streets, right the way down to the River Tyne.

  Today, the haze merged into the townscape. It was her unflattering image that reflected back in the tinted glass, not the view. She spiked her hair with her hand. Her black roots were on the cusp of trend as they poked through her blonde crop. Neglect of her appearance, combined with a woeful lack of confidence, ensured that her Facebook account remained faceless.

  She watched the carpet of clouds drift apart, enabling the buildings to retake their place like a lost jungle city. People sporting heavy overcoats strode through the streets. Desperate to reconnect to the city’s heartbeat, she splayed her hand on the glass, and then turned – it was not their reality she craved.

  Back at her desk, she did a few neck exercises, hoping to ease the tension. She had drunk too much coffee. Her hand shook as she wrapped it around the external mouse to access her trolled Twitter account.

  Skimming the venomous tweets, only one caught her eye.

  “Ankh wearer! The daughter of an Egyptian faker follows in his footsteps.”

  She glanced around the room, gripping her necklace. She knew she was alone, but the computer screen made her feel someone was watching her. She shivered as a new email appeared:

  “Check out your dropbox.”

  Jazz clicked on the icon, then waited as the pixels formed an instantly recognisable image. The dark-haired man holding a martini glass was her father. The silver-plated framed photograph had pride of place on their grand piano. He had drifted in and out of her childhood like a ghost.

  She peered closer. His face was rounded, whereas hers was angular. She was taller than him too. His eyes were brown, not green like hers. She did not look like him.

  Her eyes blurred with tears, yet still she stared. There was something on his arm she did not recognise. She enhanced the image until she could make out the tattoo, and then gasped. The likeness to the Shroud of Turin was unmistakable.

  “Jazz will fail, Dad’s in jail.” The rhyme had haunted her childhood, now it picked at her brain. She leant back, gripping the chair’s plastic arms as time slipped through her memories. She was eight years old again. Her mum and Nan were seated at the white Formica kitchen table.

  “It’s in all the papers.” Her mother’s defeated tone reverberated off the anaglyptic wallpaper. “The Egyptian Museum caught him red-handed trying to manipulate the evidence. It’s a huge scandal. We’re finished.” Hyacinth pushed her greying hair into a bun.

  “Come on luv, everyone is entitled to one mistake.” Nan poured more wine then picked up the Daily Express, peering at it through rounded spectacles. “English intellectual rewrites history to ensure a glittering career.”

  “Mum, must you read it?”

  She put the paper down, continuing to stare at the photograph and the headline. “His fa
ther was Italian, wasn’t he? He came to your wedding do when you got back from Italy, all dyed hair and ice-cream lips. Why don’t the papers say Marc is Italian?”

  “He was born in Cardiff. I know as much as the papers, Mum. Marc’s papyrus, proving Tutankhamun was Nefertiti’s son, was carbon dated to 1962; that was twenty-plus years before Jazz was born.”

  Nan rolled the word Tutankhamun around in her mind, as she tugged at her long gold-coloured earrings. “There was that big exhibition in London in the sixties. Your dad and I wanted to see the gold. You don’t think of dead people wearing gold. Nowadays the bloody undertakers would rip it off before the corpse was cold.” She thought about it. “He even had gold discs in his pierced ears. I said to your dad, never mind the sixties, they had queers in those days. He was born long before the sixties, wasn’t he?”

  Hyacinth raised her eyebrows. “A few millennia.”

  “What if Marc didn’t know the papyrus was a fake? Someone could have set him up.”

  Hyacinth raised an eyebrow. “He could go to prison.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be in prison in Cairo; all those Arabs, all men’s cologne and greasy hair.” She pursed her thin, purple-hued lips. “Come to think of it, it’s right up Marc’s alley.” She squashed the cigarette butt into the ashtray. “You did all right out of him, luv; besides, if he stays in Cairo people will forget. It’s not as if he was around much, anyway.”

  “It isn’t just the Nefertiti thing. Reporters were here today. They asked if I knew that Marc was married to an Egyptian woman.”

  “Marc was married?”

  “Still is apparently. He has a sixteen-year-old son, Francisco.”

  Nan took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “That makes him eight years older than Jazz, and you a-”

  “I can count, Mum.”

  “Bloody hell!” She stood up. “I need a proper drink. Where’s the Bailey’s?” As she turned, she caught sight of Jazz.

  “Hyacinth, shut up. The littl’un is here.”

  Jazz squirmed, remembering her question to both of them. “If Daddy is in prison, is my brother there, too?”

  ‘Jazz will fail, Dad’s in jail’…the rhyme reverberated in her head, tugging the past further into the present.

  “He is not your brother. He is your father’s son.” Each word hammered into her as her mother towered over her, pointing her finger. “Listen carefully Jasmine, that part of our life is over. I can’t stay here with the memories.”

  “What memories? Marc was never here. At least now we know why.” Nan pursed her lips.

  “Memories of what might have been. I can’t live here. I’ll sell the house.”

  “Don’t be daft, Hy, Jasmine has friends here.”

  “You are her best friend.”

  “What about her school? She likes it there.”

  “Jasmine needs a proper school, not some lesbian comprehensive. I can’t stay here, Mum.”

  Nan poured a large glass of Bailey’s, then slowly licked her lips. “Be sensible, Hyacinth, you can’t afford somewhere else. This place is half Marc’s.”

  “I can sell my story to the papers.”

  Nan pulled a face. “Even if they wanted it, it would only be a few thousand.”

  “Sixty thousand.”

  “Sixty thousand!” Nan tapped her fingers on the table, trying to calculate.

  “If you sell your place, too, we could start again, new names, new life – we could move to Italy. I’ve always wanted to live in Tuscany.” Hyacinth sounded so sure.

  Jazz never heard from her father again. Her mother wiped him out of their lives. Nan did the same.

  Years later, after her mum and Nan had died, Jazz Googled him. There was nothing; he wasn’t even on Facebook.

  The thought returned her attention to the screen and a new tweet.

  “Jazz Santos, the daughter of an Egyptian faker, follows in his footsteps.”

  “Santos!” No one knew her birth name. Her mother had even changed her birth certificate to Jasmine Ridgeway.

  She stared at the tattoo suddenly understanding – it wasn’t about Egypt and the Shroud. Someone was claiming she was a fraudster just like him. The only two people who knew her real name and could have written it were her father and her stepbrother. She typed the name Santos on the screen. There was nothing but a few Facebook nonentities, none of whom she recognised.

  Why would either of them make such an assertion? Why do it now?

  Chapter Four

  Francisco Santos’s mind was on anything but his appearance: nonetheless he ritualistically stared into the mirror. He ran his tanned fingers through his black mop of hair. His black jeans and sweater identified him as a man in his late thirties who enjoyed expensive, classic clothing. They also implied that he was used to getting his own way in an understated sort of way. Today he was not sure if anything would go his way. He had mentally rehearsed how he wanted his next conversation to go. He could not rehearse her reaction.

  The hotel room added to his unease. Its designer brand, primed for instant recognition, meant that businessmen in Beijing or New York would find everything in the same place. He detested it.

  Closing the door of his room, he glanced at the queue in front of the occupied lifts. People were using their suitcases to fight for space. His gaze drifted beyond them, to the end of the corridor and the fire escape. Lengthening his stride, he headed towards it, and pushed the heavy fire door open.

  The concrete walls were not as glamorous as the hallway. But oblivious to the décor, he ran down the eighteen flights of stairs. As he marched through the chrome and glass lobby into the street, he was barely out of breath.

  Rain had begun to fall and there was a cold north-easterly wind. It smelt like November, not late March. He fastened his overcoat and tucked his head into the wind as he made his way through the Georgian streets. On other occasions he would have admired the architecture, but not today.

  As he drew closer to the river, he took out his new iPad, bought from the Duty Free at Heathrow. He pressed her number. Even from this distance, he could glimpse the new apartment block towering above the old city streets.

  She picked up on the third ring tone.

  “Jasmine?” His voice betrayed his seriousness.

  Jazz strained her ears. The slightly accented voice speaking the name which her mother had preferred was unrecognisable. She glanced at her mobile’s screen: number unknown.

  “Actually, it’s Jazz.” Her heart bounced off her ribcage.

  “Sorry, old habits die hard.”

  She stayed silent, hating to go there.

  “The photograph connects us both.” He broke the silence as Jazz pulled a face.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Come on, Jazz, you know as well as I do, it’s a photograph of our father.”

  His words shattered her carefully constructed wall. Twenty-one years in the making, destroyed in less than two minutes. “Francisco.” Her heart raced.

  “Who else would call you Jasmine?”

  “Is this a sick wind-up?”

  “No decent brother would do that to his half-sister. My intention is to help, not hurt.”

  “Help, how can you? You don’t even know me.”

  “Our father made sure I knew all about you. I was sorry to hear your mum had died.”

  His casual use of the words “our father” made her feel that she was choking on memories. “Impossible; my mother did everything she could to reinvent me. She even changed my name to ensure he never found me; besides, your apologies for her death are a little late.”

  “Ten years too late, but you are still the same little brat you always were.”

  “You can’t say that; we haven’t met.”

  “You must remember London and the Tower?”

  His certainty forced her to flick back through the years. The visit to the Tower when she was six was one of her better memories. Her father had introduced Francisco’s mother as a work colleagu
e.

  She barely remembered her, but Francisco hadn’t treated her like a dumb kid. Now she understood why. It was a lot to take in. The deceit sparked simmering anger.

  “Why contact me now?”

  Francisco lowered his voice. “Dad died a few days ago.”

  “In Cairo?” Her heart skipped a beat.

  “New York. I took him there after my mother died, almost nine years ago. He made me promise to get in touch with you after his death.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been better to contact me when he was alive?” she snapped back at him.

  “He was afraid.”

  “Afraid?”

  “He hated the idea of hurting you again.”

  “Why change the habit of a lifetime?” she scoffed, before adding, “He only knew how to hurt me.”

  “That’s just it, Jasmine.”

  “Jazz.”

  “He knew how much he had hurt you, Jazz.”

  “I doubt it. He ruined our lives.” Bitterness locked inside her for more than twenty years spilled out.

  “You mean the fraud charges?”

  “They weren’t charges. He was found guilty and put in prison. I never saw him again.”

  “Yes, but…” Francisco clenched his fist trying to hang on to his patience. “There is more to it than that.” He crossed the road as the pedestrian light bleeped.

  “More lies, more bad deeds? His prison sentence was not the reason I stayed away.” She took a deep breath hoping to regain control. “He lied to my mother. He was married when he married her. He had another life, a life we weren’t part of. He ruined everything.”

  Francisco inhaled deeply. “You can’t blame Dad for your mother. You were as much a part of his life as I was. He didn’t contact you because he was afraid of discrediting your mother in your eyes.”

  “Big Issue.” A man selling the homeless newspaper pushed one in Francisco’s face. He gave him a few coins but refused the paper.

  “She did that without anyone’s help. What could he have done to make it worse?”