Free Ghosts Know by Ramsey Campbell Page A

your show. It’s a pity you didn’t mention the photo while Mr Jasper was there.”
    “Frank knows all about it, trust me, and so does everyone else who was here.”
    “Maybe you should hope that’s all he knows.”
    That’s at least one innuendo too many, and my rage breaks loose. “Unlike our Frankie, I’ve nothing to hide.”
    Christine blinks at me through the window, but I’m glad I said that. At the end of a silence sufficiently intense to belong to more than one person Cheryl demands “What are you saying about Mr Jasper?’”
    “For a start he was brought up in Manchester, and he’s gone to some trouble to see his public doesn’t know.”
    “He’s never from round here.” I can’t judge whether Cheryl is proud that he’s local or far too belatedly skeptical about him, even when she objects “How would you know?”
    “Not from the Internet. He’s covered his tracks there. Your friend heard me read his past, though, didn’t she? The scar I was talking about, he got that in Hulme.”
    Cheryl muffles the mouthpiece again before retorting “She wants to know how you can say that.”
    “Because it’s true. If anybody thinks I played some kind of trick by recognising him you’d have to wonder if he—”
    “Graham.” Christine is holding up a hand as well. “Look at his web site,” she says urgently in my headphones. “Go to the sidebar.”
    I type Patterson’s false name in the search box and bring up the site. There he is, baring a sample of his bronzed chest and opening his eyes wide as if they’re as guiltess as ever. I find the sight not much worse than irritating, even when my gaze shifts to the sidebar—and then I have an unwelcome suspicion. I click on the button that says LIFE, and up comes his biography. Frank Jasper, born Francis Patterson in Hulme, Manchester. I know that wasn’t there last week, but now the site spells out details of his boyhood.

11: It Was Written
    “It isn’t as new as you think, Graham.”
    “Believe me, it is.”
    “But if you look at the date—” Christine says and brings up the properties of the biography page on her monitor.
    “I nearly fell for that myself. All it says was that the page was made a year ago. I’m telling you it wasn’t on his site last week.”
    “What was, then?”
    “It must have said the page was under construction. Don’t you see what he did? He made the page and stored it till he had to put it on his site.”
    Wilde Card has just ended, and we’re at her desk. Before bidding me a sad farewell Cheryl from Droylsden hoped I’d open my mind long enough or wide enough to see the truth. I thought she might have attracted more of Patterson’s supporters onto the air, but the next caller thought obesity should be taxed and the parents of the roly-polies in particular, which provoked enough arguments to fill up the rest of the hour—all of it that wasn’t occupied by ads for Frugold jewellery and Frugoggle spectacles and the Frugodsend charity card. Now Christine says “Why would he want to do that?”
    “So he could put it up if anybody found him out and say he never hid the information in the first place.”
    I’m attempting to keep my voice down, but perhaps it reaches further than it needs to, because Paula Harding says across several desks behind us “Are you two conducting a post mortem?”
    “I think the subject’s dead,” I say, “and I’m the murderer.”
    Perhaps she wasn’t joking as much as I took her to be, if at all. “Let’s continue it in my office,” she says, and when Christine makes to follow me “I’m talking to Graham.”
    I overtake her just in time to hold open the door of her office. She perches on the cushion that adds stature to her chair and switches off Rick Till or at least hushes the computer. Her head sinks—she might be miming some kind of confirmation—as I lower myself onto the flatulent leather chair. “Well,” she says, “this is getting to be a regular event. One of