Quite an unusual young man, I thought as I left him to his work. Not like a regular cleaner at all, though it still remains to be seen if he will prove as efficient as Mary. But Gloria’s boy is no stranger here. He knows these walls and corridors. Unlike Johnny Harrington, who after less than a year at St. Oswald’s when he was a boy of fourteen thinks he’s an Old Centurion.

• • •

I walked back home through the park again. I like the way it clears my head. The wind had brought down the horse chestnuts: broken shells lay on the ground, with the occasional fat brown nut rolling out as I kicked through the leaves. I couldn’t resist picking one up and slipping it into my coat pocket. Talismanic, it will remain there until the gloss has faded.

Once more, I considered Harrington. Has he ever deigned to pick up a handful of conkers from the ground? Did any of those three boys? The three of them were always so clean; so impeccably virtuous. Or at least, I thought they were. Later events made me question that. Of course, young Harrington wasn’t the cause of that sorry business. But he was there. It began with him. And now he’s the one releasing the ghosts, like a child with a magic lamp that, instead of casting light, releases nothing but darkness . . .

Chapter 2

2

Michaelmas Term, 1981

My conversation with Harry Clarke did little to solve the mystery of Johnny Harrington’s troubled “friend.” Charlie Nutter was absent that week, apparently with some kind of stomach bug, which meant that neither Harry nor I had the chance to talk to him. Harrington, whatever his motives in confiding in me, was once more his uncommunicative self, and Spikely, as always, annoyingly slow in spite of his intellectual’s brow—rather like my own Anderton-Pullitt, in fact; middle-aged before his time, and given to odd little habits, but showing no visible sign of distress, or concern for his absent schoolmate.

I did see him once after Chapel, though, outside the Chaplain’s office. This was traditionally where boys went to discuss their problems, although there was usually more sympathy to be had from the School Secretary than from the ingenuous Dr. Burke. I contemplated asking Spikely whether he too had a friend who might be possessed, but thought better of it when the Chaplain himself emerged from his inner sanctum, carrying a stack of rugby shirts and looking, as always, slightly harassed.

“Straitley!” The Chaplain has always had a somewhat peremptory manner.

“Chaplain,” I said politely.

Dr. Burke and I were not quite friends, he being more on the side of rugby and cold showers, while I preferred the comforts of licorice allsorts, Catullus, and the odd Gauloise. But I liked to think we got along, even though, to him, I suppose I represented the worst elements of Roman civilization.