Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  “Good idea.” I said, thinking survival. “And I hope he or she is found soon.”

  “She?”

  He’d not expected that.

  “Women can kill an’ all,” I said.

  “I think, Stanley, that given the method of killing and hiding the body and the likely murder weapon, considerable strength was needed.”

  “Look no further than Ma, then. Ye shud see her castrating our weaners. See her bloody arms. And the spade being ours too. I cud tell.”

  He gave me a funny look as if I shud think of Ma as the Virgin Mary and Pa, well, the Son of God hisen.

  “Farm tools get stolen all the time,” he said, writing more things down. “And sometimes your back door’s left unlocked?”

  “We never once bin burgled.”

  He sighed.

  Good. Being worn down.

  “Despite what you imply, neither you mother or father jointly or severally because of their age, would have been able to murder in this manner. Nor,” he gave me another odd look, “would they have wanted to.”

  He took a long gulp from a glass of water by his elbow, and just to see it, made me own mouth froth at the corners. “He was very useful to them. They’ve just given us a detailed account of his brief time there.”

  “Why useful?” I interrupted, waiting for mention of the pit.

  “You have three hundred and forty-four pigs to keep in very challenging weather conditions, plus fifty-five acres. He was a welcome pair of hands, was he not?”

  “’Cept for his cock.”

  The youngster’s pen dropped from his fingers.

  “Pardon?”

  “I said he cost too much.”

  “Neither I nor Sergeant Toft had that impression. We’re looking for motive. Someone wanted him dead. Why would such an impoverished labourer be a threat or an obstacle to either or both your parents? Have you any other ideas?”

  “None.”

  “Think, Stanley. His murder is a vile and wicked crime.” He then pointed at what I’d been trying to avoid. Menelos’ cheeks were cracked black, with both ears half-eaten and two circles of mucky fabric placed over his missing eyes. His hair mostly nibbled away. If only he’d stayed buried in the river bank a bit longer, I wudn’t be here now. And was that Susan Deakins I cud see smiling down at me? Little had she known where she’d ended up…

  “It wasn’t you who was resentful of him, by any chance?” That came out of the blue.

  Think.

  “That’s squit. He made me life easier. Our pigs loved him. We had a laugh, even though I cud hardly make out what he said.”

  “Where’s the rest of him?” The cop leaned forward.

  I shrugged, trying to change me left leg to a better position under the table. The Monkey were beginning to smell worse, and sure enough, some old warmint in a crumpled suit and carrying what looked like a picnic hamper, removed him, all the while giving me the evil eye. A pool of brown muck lay in its place, and the cop’s handkerchief he’d placed on top of it, sucked up the stain in the shape of a strange country.

  “I ask again, Stanley. Where’s the rest of him?”

  He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, picked up his pen and started writing again. Don’t ask me what the words was. The wrong way up for a start. He looked dead beat and even though I had me leg to deal with, I reckoned I could last him out. Until the other uniform came in, bringing stale sweat and the whiff of a roll-up in his wake. His fat face red as Susan Deakins’ fanny. His hands twice the size of mine.

  “And now that lot has turned up at Wombwell Farm,” he announced, looking at me then pulling a chair away from near the wall and sitting down. “Will they all be killed, I wonder?”

  Not me mawther…

  “Gippos,” I said, to get them both freaks off me back. “That or Lord Helvin who calls all foreigners dirty dogs.”

  “I’ve heard that too,” said the Sergeant with the water. “But that hardly makes for motive.”

  “The head were found on his side o’ the river. And the spade. Surely that’s proof?”

  “No,” he glanced up from his pad. “We need to dig further, and insecuruty comes to mind.”

  Fatty Toft’s eyes lit up.

  “You mean Stanley here was worried about losing his position?”

  “Something to think about.”

  “That’s slander,” I got in quick. “I liked him. He made me laugh.”

  “Now then,” the scribe ignored me by screwing the cap tight on his pen and setting it down. “We’ve both spoken to Doctor Lovell at Myrtle Villa, and in ten minutes, you’ll be taken over there for preliminary treatment, before being kept under observation at Vesper House at least while this inquiry is ongoing.”

  Bugger that.

  “I’m refusing.”

  “You can’t,” said Fatty Toft. “And why? Because if his earlier diagnosis of your leg is correct, you pose a genuine risk to public health.”

  I felt numb all over. Cold as a corpse.

  A risk.

  I tried to get up, but that slab of hot beef was on me. The other standing close by. All the sweat he’d wiped off, were back on his skin.

  “You mean the Spanish ‘Flu? In me leg?”

  They looked at each other. I felt our small, oak-panelled room closing in on me like a coffin. I’d set enough traps in me time, and now I were in one mesen.

  “We’ll do a deal, Stanley,” the younger one said. “You show us where the rest of Mr. Menelos is and…”

  “Susan Deakins,” the slab of beef jumped in, taking the hot air from me lungs. “You mucked us about with her and all.” He grabbed me arm and pulled me upright. “So, see to it that by midday, we’ve got some answers.”

  “You can’t make me say nothing without a lawyer.”

  “Can’t we? Try us.”

  That’s when I lost it. Seeing precious dreams vanish. The farm passing to anyone but me. Money, car, everything. I remembered Tidswell Elementary School in its prison yard playground, fighting me tormentors with me feet, teeth and fists. Cowards all of ‘em. Me, Stanley Bulling the strongest. Whose heart were bursting with rage. And before me last kick at the bor on the ground who’d accused me of stealing his pie, it all faded to silence. To bottomless blood and blackness. Pulling me down…

  Why, just after four days, I had to leave.

  *

  “Here we are,” said the copper with blood still in his nostrils who’d ordered me to call him Constable Lambert. “Let’s get cracking.” He and Toft was pulling me towards our side of the Howse, their grip cutting off me blood supply. Still light-headed from our fight in the Police Station, and weak all over, no way wud I give in.

  I’d led them well away from the pit, and neither had even noticed it. But I’d caught a sudden glimpse of six people of different height standing by the farmhouse, still as statues. The mawther were next to the well, starin’ my way, while the pigs’ restless din from the barn, carried towards us, all the way over Priest’s Field.

  Toft pushed me head round to face the river. He bore a big grudge since me headbutt to his chest. “Waste our time, Stanley Bulling, and you’ll pay.”

  Just then, a cloud of crows suddenly lifted from the alders whose burnt top leaves had begun to fall. The birds made a black canopy over our heads before flapping away into the shimmery distance. Free, like I ‘ad to be. To lead these two lummoxes to the wrong place, till I cud escape.

  Knowledge is power, Stanley. Fecking use it…

  *

  “Lord Helvin needs to be out here, not me,” I said, while they shoved me over our boundary fence, keeping a grip on me vest. Tearing it from the neck down. “Mr. Menelos scarpered after I fell off that beam in the barn. He knew what he’d done.”

  “That why you killed him?” panted Fatty Toft. “We’ve been told all about it. And about the sow.”

  “Who by? Ma and Pa?”

  The midday bells from the church in Longstanton took over. I hated ‘em. Always had
. Now they banged into me brain as the two cops waited for me to point the way. If Heaven were full of that racket, I’d rather have Hell. I then noticed the bor and the mawther begin to move nearer, with me betrayers like two black beetles looking on.

  “Lord Helvin’s gave us permission to search again along his bank,” said Lambert. He’s being fully co-operative, which is more than we can say for you.”

  “So why no dogs?” I ignored that petty slur. “He won’t allow them. Am I correct?”

  No reply. Yet that toff had been to blame for us giving up on sheep. Him and Dennis Chubb shot dead two of our collie dogs, yet they’d bin nowhere near his precious land.

  “Right or left?” Toft snapped, indicating the tarpaulin covering where The Monkey’s head had been. Shoved me down the bank towards the shallow water.

  “Left,” I fibbed.

  “Don’t believe him. We’ll try right. Move.”

  We edged upstream along the far bank overgrown with dead weeds, and with each hurting step, I wished to God I’d dug those hiding places well away from Wombwell’s patch. But too late now. Then from above came the rustle of twigs and leaves.

  “Stop there! What do you think you’re doing?” A poshie. Lord Helvin, staring down at me with them half-buried eyes and that handle-bar moustache. He wore long black boots, spotless breeches plus hunting jacket. Then I saw the rifle pointing our way. “I thought I said no more invasions,” he barked. “This is my land. You’ve already trespassed without proper permissions.”

  Lambert looked at Toft who’d blushed. Another liar. So that made him better than me, did it?

  “It’s a murder investigation, your Lordship,” he spluttered. “We’ve reason to believe there’s more body parts belonging to a Mr. Angelid Menelos around here somewhere.”

  “You present me with a correct Search Warrant and I’ll consider it.” The toff peered down at me again. “I’ve endured enough, what with losing my only son in the war, and my wife last May. I want to spend the rest of my days here in peace and quiet. Not have these… these… Bullings polluting my thoughts.”

  He saw both the Parminter kids pressed up against our pig wire fence. Listening, heads cocked. The mawther’s hair thick gold. Her skin like butter. Nice little titties too, beginning to sprout beneath her summer dress.

  “Your Lordship, I sincerely regret this intrusion,” began Lambert, wiping his forehead again. “But justice must be done.”

  “And talking of justice,” the bor in short trousers piped up, “our Mum thinks someone bad called Matthew Crane might have followed us up from the New Forest. She’s scared. Dad’s worried too.”

  “Oh, shut up,” said the mawther. “He and Dad didn’t get on. That’s all.”

  The toff had stepped a bit closer to the edge of his bank. “Well, a man of that very name did call here yesterday afternoon, enquiring about a Will somebody.”

  “He’s our Dad,” said the bor.

  “Well, Mr. Crane didn’t stay long, not once he’d seen this.” He patted his rifle butt, staring at them. “Are you to be my neighbours?”

  But before they could reply, Lambert and Toft, distracted by the kids, had relaxed their hold on me.

  Go…

  I heard nothing else ‘cept river water splashing round me ankles and the rattle of stones with mesen as the hare and them the hounds. Not knowing the Howse like I did. Not clever enough to catch me and, as I gave one last look back, could see the golden-haired mawther trying to follow.

  32. JOHN.

  Tuesday 15th November 1988. 8.30 a.m.

  Catherine Vickers had been gone from home for almost forty-eight hours, and Piotr hadn’t answered to the phone number her brother had so eagerly given me. I’d tried calling this mystery man every half hour until I’d arrived back at Wombwell Lodge, too late to go out again with Stephen to Hecklers Green.

  Within seconds of getting into bed, I’d crashed out with the unexamined black box file, a noticeable lump still tucked away under my pillow.

  Now, at eight-thirty, after a restless night, punctuated by dreams of choking and the occasional, dull thud against my skylight window, I faced her husband in the kitchen as he brewed up. Still in pyjamas, he looked rougher than ever, with a shiftiness about him as if he didn’t want my company for long in case another tricky question came his way. Especially, I guessed, about Nicholas Beecham.

  “Lay off for a bit, eh, Johnny?” he’d said last thing before heading back upstairs to bed. “A guy can only take so much.”

  But now was different. We’d been treading water too long. Time to pin down the butterfly.

  “I ask again,” I said. “What’s Piotr’s surname?”

  “Christ knows. The Reverend only mentioned him once. Why?”

  Beyond bizarre… He’s your stepson.

  “He may have some idea where Catherine is. Even have overheard his employer reveal something, because I’m pretty sure it was his late wife’s car that picked her up on Sunday morning by Bakery Lane.”

  “Shit.”

  Silence save for the kettle’s last whimpers.

  “You’re making this up.”

  “Hardly. The old girl there said she’d seen a woman of Catherine’s age and appearance coming out of Myrtle Villa. So, what is going on? I’m just wondering how well you know her?”

  “I don’t.” He poured out two mugs of tea as if he were a robot on another planet. I fetched milk from the fridge and a crumpled packet of Tate & Lyle sugar off the worktop. “I’m rarely here, am I? And my hours are getting longer. Student contact time increasing. George Chisholm breathing down my bloody neck every day…”

  Twice that name had come up. I recalled the conversation with Greg Lake in

  in Stephen’s office yesterday. Not exactly a fan club.

  “Both of us should go to the nearest cop shop,” I suggested, taking a sip of the sweet, scalding tea. “Or I get an ex-colleague involved.”

  Stephen slapped down his mug. “No. For God’s sake. I’ve already spelled it out to you!”

  “The police would have the man-power to check. We don’t, and I’m trying to find your wife, as well as who sent you those threats.” I checked my watch. “To be honest…” I stopped before adding what had niggled in my mind since I’d first seen Catherine standing alone at the end on Wombwell Lane on Saturday night. How she’d cut such a lonely figure with what seemed to be fear in her eyes.

  “Seems Nottingham’s made you paranoid.”

  Thanks.

  “Aren’t you going into work today?” I asked.

  “What does it bloody look like?”

  Just then, something solid and black hit the kitchen window and slithered down it, leaving a glistening trail of blood as it went.

  “Poor fucker.”

  “This house seems to attract suicides.”

  “Not funny.”

  I wasn’t laughing.

  “Whose idea was it to move here, anyway?”

  Stephen still stared at the spoilt window. “Hers. Why?”

  “Seems odd, that’s all. It’s pretty close to Myrtle Villa and where Vesper House had stood.”

  “We bought at a bargain price, and it’a a quiet spot.” He turned my way, still with that challenging look on his face. “Nothing odd about that, I can assure you.”

  Another cul-de-sac…

  “Look, I need to phone someone,” I said. “Then we’re off.”

  “Off where?”

  “Trust me. And if by the end of the morning, there’s still no joy, we report her as a misper.”

  “I said we can’t.” He looked stricken.

  “I can.”

  Stephen sat down on the small window seat, roughing up his already unkempt hair between both hands. This time, the spectral look was now rescue dog. An Irish Wolfhound to be precise. “You don’t understand, do you?”

  “Try me.”

  The kitchen clock whose face showed a scene from Monet’s garden, struck a sullen note to mark nine o’clock. It
s spiky, black hands juddering between one lily pad and another. Just like life, I thought bleakly. How nothing stays the same…

  “When we’d got back to Durham from my research trip to Naples, Catherine discovered she was pregnant.”

  “And?” Although I could partly guess the rest.

  “We were engaged as you know. But I made her get rid of it because I couldn’t see any further than just us two sharing an academic life together. Can you see that?”

  I nodded yet thinking all the while how desperately my sister Carol had wanted to be a mother and never given up trying until the menopause.

  “But I promised her that when we were both twenty-five, we could try again.”

  “Did you?”

  He shook that unruly head. “Never much in the bedroom department after that. And then she met some blond bloke from God knows where in Poland, who’d been a cleaner on campus. She’d tell me all about him. No, taunt is more the word. How Poles love children. Couldn’t get enough of them. No wonder they’re the Pope’s keenest cling-ons.”

  “Piotr?”

  The briefest nod.

  “To replace who I’d made her kill.”

  “But you lied to me about him? Why?”

  “Can’t you imagine the strain it added to everything? I put up with him as you would a kid whose real dad had done a complete bunk. Someone whose character was so different to mine. We gave him a good home while he needed it. Surely that was enough?”

  I could imagine, but there was certainly no trace of him at Wombwell Lodge and the word ‘grievance’ sprung to mind. Could this mysterious young man be out for revenge? Stephen was speaking again. “In fact, when he’d finished his catering course in Norwich, he wanted out. But were there any jobs?”

  “Just part-time in some Watford café. Why Catherine suggested he try her brother. She knew he was missing everything Vivienne did. Shopping, keeping the whole pious show on the road.”