A Ghost at the Door by Michael Dobbs Page A

but how could he forget? Shortly after his mother had died, when Harry was around fourteen, he’d spent a few days with his father in the apartment
he was renting on one of the elegant tree-encrusted squares of Bloomsbury. Harry had taken himself off to the British Museum for a new exhibition but it had failed to capture his imagination and
he’d returned much earlier than expected to his father’s place. He knew his father was at home because the latch hadn’t been double-locked. He’d marched naïvely,
innocently, through the living room and then through the bedroom door to discover his father. He was naked. So was the woman beneath him. ‘Your turn soon, eh, Harry, old boy?’ his
father had muttered, but the embarrassment was as impossible to hide as his father’s wrinkled arse. The woman had been bundled rapidly away and, as the front door closed behind her, the
light-heartedness of his father had turned to stone. The words were thrust at him like a steaming poker. ‘Don’t come looking for me, Harry. Not behind doors that I’ve
closed.’
    Then his father had struck him, across his face. There had been clips and taps before, even a gentle backhander or two, but this had been the first serious assault. One man marking out his
ground against another. Even at fourteen Harry had wanted to hit back and had no thought of running, but instead he simply stood there and took it. And the second blow. He wouldn’t hit his
father. But that was when the blame began in earnest. He saw his father in a bleaker, more desolate light, no longer knowing him, and Harry began taking sides in his parents’ busted marriage.
The awe and loyalty of childhood began to sink almost without trace beneath the doubts that come with adolescence and endure far longer than any bruise.
    His broken memories were disturbed as the pilot gave his aircraft the lightest touch of thrust and the Boeing 777 banked over the ocean for its final approach to L. F. Wade International
airport. This was one of the finest approach runs anywhere in the world, into the islands of Bermuda that hung like a string of pearls in the empty Atlantic, and it was early evening, the sky
shaded with gentle hues as the aircraft passed above St George’s. It would be a couple of hours yet before the lights of the old township were switched on and began to light up its narrow and
picturesque streets. Beneath him Harry could see the microscopic outlines of people strolling about their business. This was subtropical paradise; nothing happened in a hurry.
    The island was a remnant of empire – what was in the official script described as a British Overseas Territory. It still doffed its banana leaf to the Queen but in almost all other
respects it went its own way with its own government, its own laws and, most importantly for the tribe of wealthy expats who claimed residence there, its own tax regime. Despite the ever-present
threats of hurricane and social incest, so many flocked to its shores that it was rumoured to have the highest per capita wealth in the world, but no one knew for certain. And that was the magic of
the place. No one knew, not for certain.
    Harry had nothing but hand luggage, an old leather shoulder bag he’d picked up in Colombia when his luggage had been stolen, and he was soon at the front of the line for passport control.
‘Business or pleasure, Mr . . . Jones,’ the black official in a crisp blue shirt asked, glancing at the proffered passport.
    ‘Entirely personal pleasure,’ Harry replied, and was waved through.
    The airport was barely six tree-lined miles from the capital, Hamilton; Harry took a bus. He jumped out at Front Street by the harbour, not knowing for sure where he was headed, but it
didn’t prove to be a major inconvenience. Hamilton was small, a population of barely two thousand; nothing was more than a cat’s cry away. He tarried only to fill his lungs with air
that had last touched land somewhere off the Gulf