“How long has it been?” he said. “It was only a few minutes ago that I shot you in Taksim; a second ago you were a bin man in… some place. Somewhere else. How long has it been, really?”

I dredged my thoughts back. “Five days? And it wasn’t me you shot.”

“Yes, it was,” he replied, sharp as a tack through the toe. “It was you I shot; and a tragedy that it wasn’t you who died.”

“But your orders were to kill Josephine too.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“She was compromised.”

“By what?”

“You know.”

“I really don’t.”

“She killed our people.”

“She really didn’t, but I can see this argument getting circular.”

He tugged loosely against the cuff around his wrist, irritated rather than testing its strength. At last: “You must be very intimate with my body.”

“Yes.”

“What do you think?” he asked, twisting so I could admire it fully. “You have an unusual perspective. Do I fulfil your requirements? Is my face stern enough, are my legs of a suitable length, do you enjoy the colour of my hair?”

“A stern face is not the consequence of the body that bore it.”

“I cannot imagine my face in any shape other than the look I give it.”

“I can,” I retorted. “You’ve looked after yourself, that much is clear. Hard to say whether you’ve fallen foul of that fine line between fitness and vanity. I was curious about the scar across your stomach. Also you need to think about spectacles.” His mouth twisted in surprise. “Take it from an expert; you’ll be wanting reading glasses sooner rather than later.”

“My eyes are twenty twenty!”

Amazing, the indignant pride people invest in natural processes.

Astonishing, how deeply vanity is ingrained.

I tried to put my hands on my hips, but in the confined space of the cabin I could only manage one hand on one side. “Are you saying that to impress me?” I asked. “Because I imagine, having been in residence for a while, that you’re the kind of man to take pride in his physical prowess, but there’s no point being foolish when it comes to your eyesight. I’ve had cataracts, infections, long-sightedness, short-sightedness, partial blindness…”

“Not you!” he snapped. “Not you. Someone else’s eyes, someone else’s blindness.”

“Me,” I replied. “I, myself. These are the things I have experienced. I have walked bodies into courtrooms because they were too afraid to speak. I’ve held a skin down while they gave me the general anaesthetic because the tumour-ridden schmuck was too scared of hospitals to go through the treatment. Think whatever you want about who I am, but don’t waste your breath denying my experience.”

He tried bristling for a moment longer, shoulders high and eyebrows low, but the effect was too conscious now, and he abandoned it. I slunk down on to the bottom bunk. My nails were shellacked to a fascinating firmness. My back ached, my uniform belt was tight, and as I pressed my hands against my spine, a thought struck me. “Am I…” I blurted. Coyle stared at me, one eyebrow raised. I ran my hands carefully across my midriff, pressing deep into my soft skin, feeling for something beneath the warmth. “I think I’m pregnant.”

The train rattled, and no one spoke. Then the tiniest shiver passed down Coyle’s spine, his shoulders jerked and he gave a single, high hoot of merriment.

“Bloody hell,” I groaned.

Coyle’s laughter subsided as quickly as it had come. Outside, fields of freshly turned earth stretched away to the flat horizon. A full moon sat in a cloudless sky, promising icy winds and frozen soil come morning. I pressed my hands against my belly and felt something turn which wasn’t my stomach. “This is… peculiar,” I said.

“You’re not enamoured of the joy of childbirth?” asked Coyle. “I thought you would have given it a go, just for the experience.”

I scowled. “During times of stress I have been known to make… unexpected jumps. And while I’m sure giving birth is a wonderfully life-enhancing experience, if it comes with the associated baggage of planning, expectation and the optimism of another eighteen years of happy nurturing by the family fireside, when there’s a fifty/fifty chance that you might mid-convulsion find yourself a mewling infant still attached by an umbilical cord to a shrieking and confused woman, I’m sure you can see why the exercise might lose some of its appeal.”

An idea dawned on Coyle’s face. “You could… ghost into a foetus?”

“What a truly ghastly idea.”

“You’ve never tried.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Never been tempted?”

“Not in the least. I have no delusions about the joy of physicality. Having inhabited almost every size, shape and form of body you can possibly imagine, the only conclusions are these: exercise when you’re still young enough to appreciate it, look after your spine, and if you have the option, use an electric toothbrush.”

“Decades of stealing bodies and that’s your big conclusion?”

“Yep.”

“How long have you been a ghost?”

I glanced up and saw his eyes bright upon me. “Wouldn’t you love to know. How’d you get that scar across your stomach, Mr Coyle?”

“You know it’s not my name.”

“Curiously enough, that doesn’t bother me. A few hundred years.” His eyes flickered, and I leaned forward, one hand pressed instinctively over my belly. “A few hundred years,” I repeated, soft against the bouncing of the train. “I was murdered on the streets of London. My brains were bashed in. As I lay there, I caught the ankle of my killer. I hated him, feared him, dreaded him for killing me, and was so frightened of dying alone, I needed him, longed for him to stay with me. Next thing I knew, I was staring at my own corpse. I was arrested for it, an irony which has never entertained. Not a glamorous beginning, truth be told, but it seems the urge to live outweighs all other instincts.”

“Who were you when you died?”

“I was…” the words drifted somewhere at the back of my throat “… no one of significance. What about you, Mr Coyle? How’d you get that scar?”

Silence.

“Galileo,” he said and stopped.

I waited.

“Galileo,” he tried again. “Stuck a knife in me.”

“A ghost?”

“Yes.”

“Why’d he stab you?”

“I was the last one left standing.”

“Where?”

“Santa Rosa.”

“You said these things before.”

A small shake of his head, a smile. He can’t believe what he’s saying. Now would not be the time to question the notion.

“There’s… a rumour,” he murmured. “A myth. Over time the story has outgrown the seeds that sowed it. Yet for all that, there is some truth in it. A ferry ride, a few hours, across the Straits of Malacca, perhaps through the Baltic Sea. The engine stops, and as the passengers and crew wait for rescue, a body is found. The body is… someone, doesn’t matter. Throat cut, blood on the deck and everyone panics until someone points out that the killer cannot have escaped being seen, must have been caught on camera, drenched in blood. They look. They find the murderer, who sits huddled in a toilet, shaking with fear, blood on his, her–whoever’s–face, on their hands, their clothes. We have the killer, they say. As soon as the engines are fixed we shall take this murderer to the police on shore.

“Then another body is found, intestines pulled out, eyes popping up at nothing, tongue lolling in a vacant mouth, and everyone goes, it is not the killer we have caught, or perhaps who we’ve caught is working with someone else, and the panic spreads, and this ferry has too few staff to too many passengers, no hope of order, so the captain orders all passengers to a muster point. Everyone stay in one place, he says, no one move, and we shall be safe. Safety in numbers. It is a comforting thought until the first mate sees that at the muster point on the first-class deck the passengers are all dead. Some have blood on their hands, some on their faces; some tried to bite the ears off their neighbours; some ran; some fled, but one remains, standing, grinning at the camera, before he too waves goodbye and is, within a few minutes, himself found dead.