Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  “You mean, Cold Comfort Farm? Very noble of you to actually go there.”

  “I wanted to catch up with Stephen Vickers. We’d been friends at university.” I coughed again. “But for some reason, your sister seems to have gone off piste…”

  “Never mind that now.” He stretched out a large, well-manicured hand. “The Reverend Nicholas Beecham, Rector of three rural parishes in the United Benefice of Snodbury. I hate to see anyone suffer. Especially children and the elderly. So, in you come, and we’ll sort out that wretched problem for you.”

  I let the ‘elderly’ dig go. My cough had got worse.

  Catherine.

  Why I was here, trailing his bulky shadow down a wide hallway; that smell diminishing but not what seemed to be blocking out even more air from my nose and mouth. Heavier than bread. More like earth. Even organic compost...

  “I can’t swallow. Can’t bloody breathe,” I choked. And then as suddenly as a train entering a long tunnel, came blackness and the faintest sound of a phone ringing.

  *

  I saw the alarm clock’s bright green hands before anything else. Eight p.m. Where the hell had that hour gone, and where was I? In little more than a box room, bare save for the single camp bed and a sepia photograph of a group of ancient-looking bishops in full CoE regalia on the opposite wall. For some reason, a dusty corn dolly was attached to its frame. I ran my tongue around inside my mouth which felt as rough and foul as the bottom of a gravel pit.

  “Mr. Lyon? Are you alright?” That mellifluous voice was now outside my door. “There’s coffee or tea downstairs when you’re ready.”

  I croaked that I was in fact alright, except for the closed-blind darkness and the fact that my shoes seemed to be missing. No one is more vulnerable than a man in his socks, and here was I without that small but significant part of my armour.

  I was no longer an investigator, but a victim.

  You bloody fool, Lyon.

  That framed sepia coven of Bishops all seemed to be staring my way, and within seconds I was upright, feeling under the bed for my shoes. Bought to last, they’d cost enough…

  Never keep your back to the door.

  I turned around sharpish.

  “Are these what you’re looking for, Mr. Lyon?” My host was holding them both up like trophies. A small smile of triumph denting his fleshy cheeks. “Now, put these on, and get out of my house before I call the real police. And any more attempts to interfere in my life, don’t forget I have friends who could really make your retirement worth remembering.”

  With that he threw each shoe in turn on to the floorboards next to me and waited, watching as I put them back on. But I took my time. Going quietly wasn’t my style.

  “If Catherine Vickers remains out of touch and isn’t home by tomorrow morning

  it won’t be me wanting answers from you. So,” I added, trying to clear my throat. “You can tell me now where you think she might be. Because I heard she was picked up by by a young, blond male driving a small red hatchback near Bakery Lane in Hecklers Green at around 9.30 yesterday morning

  “Out! Now, or else…”

  Nicholas Beecham’s face was as red-purple as a sunset.

  Fuck him.

  “This same car, or something very similar, was later seen at Tidswell Station. I do believe your late wife also owned a small, red hatch, and that you employ a...”

  “I said, or else!”

  I shoved him out of the way and leapt down the stairs two at a time, too quick for him to follow. I then let myself out into the dank drizzle and without glancing back, made for my car.

  Reversing too fast, my Citroën almost clipped its right sill on a brick gate post and when I did finally check behind me, my host was framed by an open front door. His right arm raised. A goodbye gesture, or could it be the fucker was armed?

  *

  I didn’t wait to find out. Instead, drove up Vicarage Road without lights and parked up along a shaved hedge between a salt storage box and an old horse trough swollen with black water. The track marked as a public footpath I’d spotted earlier, was far too narrow for my car, and the possiblity of being stuck, unable to turn, made me leave it tucked tight against the spiky hawthorn.

  Still feeling oddly drained not only by my coughing and choking session, I pulled up my coat collar against the peppering rain, located my pocket torch and followed the line of wet earth through a flat, empty field of dead weeds. To my left, some fifty yards away, stood The Vicarage’s imposing silhouette. All so far unlit until a close line of conifers blocked any further view. To the right, nothing except a blur of land and sky.

  Watch your beam. Don’t cough.

  Easier said than done, I thought, with the sudden urge to check my wallet. My dependance on Nicholas Beecham had been unplanned. He’d had an hour to… do what? Jesus, I was getting paranoid, but still extracted my wallet and checked through each of its tight leather folds. Threshers’ discount card, shopping list, petrol receipts, dental appointment, cinema ticket, NatWest debit card all intact. Next, my own ID cards. Always useful. After meeting Rosemary Harding, I should have had six left.

  Only five.

  Fuck.

  So, the delightful Reverend Nichalas Beecham now knew where I lived, and my landline phone number. Also, something else. Who exactly had called him before I’d crashed out in his spare bedroom?

  26. NICHOLAS.

  Monday 14th November 1988. 9 p.m.

  My fish supper, like everything else, was on hold. But I’d been a Good Samaritan despite the real purpose of that failure’s mission. A man so unlike me, with no definite role in life and enough time for the Devil to use his idle hands. It would take a big leap of imagination to think he might once have been an efficient law enforcer. Cough or no cough, he certainly hadn’t impressed me, although I did wonder how long it would be before he realised one of his fancy cards was missing. The first of my big worries was who at Hecklers Green had seen my sister get into what could only have been Vivienne’s Fiesta on Sunday morning? The second, how that has-been cop was already sniffing around Piotr. My twitching hand hovered over the hall telephone.

  Don’t…

  Too much was at stake in my bid for the Bishopric. I had to keep all this upheaval to myself and work on my own, until such time as Piotr decided to reappear. And I could have sworn it was his voice on the phone just after that failure’s head had hit the pillow. A few words in Polish and then silence. Perhaps a month’s worth of my salary in his pocket hadn’t been enough. Perhaps, in true blackmailer fashion, he’d be back for more. In which case, I’d be ready, with God on my side. Oh yes, Nicholas Beecham, the black sheep of the family fold, would be invincible.

  *

  Once I’d locked my front door, I extracted John Lyon’s card taken from his wallet, and re-read the lies. ‘Active, retired Detective Inspector who places integrity and rigour above all.’

  I had to chuckle. Nice address too, I thought, adding the make of his new car and its registration number. I then wondered what that strange and sudden cough of his had been all about, and it did occur to me, he could have made the whole thing up to gain access to the house. And yet, when I’d helped him up to that spare bedroom, he’d been quite helpless. An invalid who’d almost pulled me down the stairs.

  I really had to repay his unwelcome visit without jeopardising my own career prospects. But first, a very necessary visit lay closer to home.

  My empty stomach grumbled out loud, but the simple planned meal would have to wait. Not for the first time in recent days did I sense a small fire begin to burn behind my forehead. Always a danger sign, and one to be immediately extinguished. I suddenly glimpsed my sister’s etiolated face. Those challenging, sea-grey eyes and pretty mouth so commonly possessed by betrayers. She’d been spotted where she shouldn’t have been. Piotr again, perhaps deliberately sabotaging our plan? Who could tell? I wished then that I’d kept him out of it. The little Slavic prick-tease.

  I then slipped
my arms into my old mackintosh. Old, because my new, waterproof coat which Geoffrey Dobbs had charitably observed, took years off me, would be too obvious in the dark. I also pushed my favourite trilby into position on my head and, having folded up my useful black woollen hat, slotted it into my right-hand side pocket. I’d once seen George Chisholm wearing the same to a Diocesan Trust meeting last January and had unashamedly copied him.

  As my head fire burned less vigorously, I thought of those waterlilies Vivienne had planted in our small pond during her last summer. How their spindly roots wiggled and waved beneath seemingly solid green platelets, and how my own roots seemed enmeshed in a thickening stew of treachery.

  *

  Thankfully there was no sign of my visitor’s Citroën, and Vicarage Road seemed remarkably dark, as if the few street lights had been affected by a temporary power cut. No neighbour lights either and I guessed from the absentees at yesterday’s Morning Service, most were away on child-free cruises to the winter sun.

  If only they could also see God as equally capable of delivering their desires, I mused, choosing not the main road east from Snodbury, but what had once been a drovers’ route, straight and uncomplicated, away from prying eyes.

  This time, I didn’t switch on Radio 3. I had to keep my own agenda clear. To discover who, if anyone, lived in Bakery Lane, and rehearse beforehand how I might introduce myself. Also, to see if Myrtle Villa might still be standing.

  *

  I was grateful that my Peugeot’s colour was an unmemorable beige, almost invisible save for its side lights, as I drove beneath ancient holloways which in turn yielded to Norfolk’s endless tracts of flat, uninhabited land on either side. Yes, the odd water-logged pothole or sudden stretch of standing caught me by surprise, however, in the overall scheme of things, these were minor impediments.

  When Catherine began her freelance translation work, we’d often argue over the finer points of language. How just one or two alphabet letters can change a whole meaning. Usually, for the sake of peace, I acceded to her viewpoint, so you’d have thought that when I needed all the help I could get, from whatever source, she’d forget old differences. But not my childless sister with her misplaced, crusading zeal. Oh no.

  I’ve always avoided using the word ‘revenge’ in my weekly sermons. It smacks of sloppiness; the quick fix, when in fact I’ve discovered the will to punish is actually born from a deep and complex stew of emotions. On this occasion, however, it seemed more than apt.

  Too much was at stake to allow simpletons to influence the future course of my life. Why I’d foregone supper and a comfortable evening by the fire for an hour’s drive on a wet and miserable night.

  *

  The drizzle that had accompanied me so far had stopped, but not my suddenly pulsing heart. Be careful, I told myself. I’d had two warnings of mortality since my last birthday in September, which of course would remain confidential during my bid to sit on Leslie Horncastle’s magnificent throne in Cavenham Cathedral.

  I didn’t need a third reminder.

  Suddenly, too, Longstanton’s mighty church seemed to appear like a validation of my purpose. A church in the High Anglican tradition which my grandfather had restored to its glory at considerable personal expense. He’d paid for its unique altar adorned by gold sculptures of birds from the Corvidae family. Crows, rooks, ravens diminishing to the robin and wren, still intact on my last visit, after jealous Catherine had sent me those damaging photocopies of the doctor and our grandfather’s letters. Why his earlier largesse hadn’t extended to the continued upkeep of Vesper House, I’d probably never know. And for that, as far as I was concerned, he’d remain unforgiven.

  For a few seconds I left the car to look at Wombwell Lodge where neither beyond the front door’s opaque glass strip, nor between the badly-drawn curtains, was there any light on. Clearly, no-one at home.

  As I plotted my way back to the Peugeot, I found myself wondering why the once-happy couple had chosen this gloomy spot out of so many other more pleasant possibilities and then recalled the tight-lipped Stephen letting slip it had been all Catherine’s idea.

  She’d loved the quietude, the regular sound of church bells…

  Rubbish.

  I, her out-going, successful brother was the reason. The Reverend Nicholas Beecham who must be destroyed. And then it suddenly occurred me that perhaps she had a not-so-little helper. Someone with historical knowledge. The same as who’d sent me that unnerving threat?

  *

  Hecklers Green was a dump. You’d have thought someone with spare money would have bulldozed the derelict line of cottages in Bakery Lane and created an enclave of affordable homes for those yougsters wanting to stay in the area.

  Dream on…

  The dead weeeds along the roadside and in the lane itself, were higher than ever. Blown litter more visible, but tonight I wasn’t interested in aesthetics. I switched off my lights and carefully parked behind the cottages aware of the dark shape of that misguided doctor’s dead house filling my rear-view mirror.

  I took in deep breaths of the dank, silent air. The silence of the grave, I thought, shivering, stretching the black hat further down on my head and pulling up my collar. I’d not forgotten the small, Belgian Browning automatic that father had passed down to me, and now kept ostensibly to deal with squirrels and other vermin in the garden.

  Vermin. Exactly.

  Suddenly, a sound. I strained to identify it. A muffled, repeated banging which at first seemed to come from the corner cottage on my right. The only one which, judging by flickering candlelight from behind the one lower window, seemed occupied, with a clear view of the narrow junction with Longstanton Road.

  Bad girl, Catherine. Bad boy, Piotr…

  But no. The more I listened, realised the source of that sound lay behind me. In a house called Myrtle Villa.

  Careful not to tread upon anything that might reveal my presence, and with the aid of a discreet torch, I made my way through its open back gate, past a roofless annexe and around to the front where six glistening stone steps took me to the wooden front door that was, unlike the rest of the house, relatively unscathed.

  Such carelessness.

  It was ajar. Thank God. I’d have a chance to look round.

  I’M RELYING ON YOU, NICKY, AND TIME’S RUNNING OUT.

  *

  I switched off my torch before following these intriguing noises inside. In the first room, despite its minimal light, an elderly busybody wearing a woollen scarf around her thick, grey hair, and a brown moth-eaten coat, was standing on a chair, foraging in a hole set near the top of an alcove. Stockings wrinkled around her ankles. I could smell her too, above the damp. Not very pleasant, but nothing compared to what she was pulling out from behind a loosened stone in the wall.

  A faded, almost colourless file, whose clasps hung uselessly loose, allowing the corners of its old papers inside to protrude like rows of sharp, stained teeth.

  Then, with an animal’s instinct, she turned to me before stepping down. But I was quicker. My hands soon around her thick waist. Her blue, startled eyes on mine. And that’s when my head fire became like the inside of a crematorium furnace. Deadly. All-consuming.

  “I’ll have that,” I said, but she fought me off with a well-aimed kick.

  “No, you don’t!”

  “That bloody hurt.” I yelped.

  “Get away! How dare you. Who do you think you are?” Her voice almost a growl. “What in God’s name are you up to?”

  I let go. But the threat still hogged my mind.

  “We need to talk, you and me. And quickly.” I rubbed my shin and lowered my voice as I sometimes did during my more condemnatory sermons. “Should you decide not to co-operate, well, I have several end-of-life options available.”

  “No one threatens me,” she said, gripping that file as if for dear life. “As you’ll soon find out.”

  My fire turned to fear. I could tell she meant it, and backed away, standing aside to
let her pass, while she stuffed her dusty find inside the front of her coat.

  “I’m sorry. I’m under a lot of pressure right now,” I said. “Please may we talk. I won’t take long.”

  “Your name is?”

  “Just call me Henry.” That fateful name had come without warning, like biting into a mouldy apple. I flicked on my torch. Saw two stars twinkling overhead. Her blue eyes wide in surprise.

  “Henry?”

  “That’s right. Do you have a problem with it?”

  “I could ask the same about you.” And with that, she took my torch and led the way down the steps and across the expanse of weedy neglect to her back door.

  27. STANLEY.

  Wednesday 28thJuly 1920. 8.50 a.m.

  At almost nine o’clock I were back in me bed, no more comfortable in mind nor body. Smarting too, about Pa mentioning Susan Deakins to a fecking stranger. But that were Pa all over. Ma as well, come to think of it. I’d disappointed them from the start. Being underweight, needing extra time to feed. One turn on her tits leading to the next.

  Me to go to Vesper House? Out of sight and bloody mind till the incomers took me place?

  I’d taken an old knife from the old dairy. The one they’d used on our boars who were no good for breeding. Rusty, but still sharp enough if need be, were I to be taken from here agin me will. It lay snug under me left bum cheek. Not the cleanest of places but how to wipe mesen out in a bloody, bare field?

  Now the bluebottles hovered close, licking their black lips.

  Not long to go…

  I could either lie here or try and reach the window to see the Parminters arrive; ‘specially the mawther, but best to stay put so’s everyone’d think I were on a downward path. Unlikely to last till next week.

  Suddenly I heard three knocks on the front door and a voice from the past I’d never forget.

  Constable Toft? Yes…

  “Anyone home? Mr. Bulling, are you there?”

  I stopped breathing I’d not ‘eard no police car. No warning at all. The last time he’d called, he almost pushed the door in, till Ma reminded him of his position as an Officer of the Law. “Mrs. Bulling?”