Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  “Hello?” Came a woman’s voice. “What are you doing?”

  This was no dog.

  I turned away from where Catherine’s makeshift bed had been, to see a tiny wizened creature almost merged with the shadowy dark some way from the door. An old busybody in a belted coat who must have somehow squeezed herself beneath it.

  “Minding my own business,” I replied, busy with my handkerchief. Suppressing my surprise and annoyance. “We’ve used this garage for years during our holidays.”

  She looked me up and down. “Well I’ve never seen you before.” She then sniffed.

  “There’s a funny whiff in here. You been sick?”

  Nosy little bitch.

  “Not at all. This place is bound to be full of odd smells. By the way, I’m John Lyon, an ex-policeman, now living in Colchester, and who may I ask, are you?”

  “Olive Thompson. Miss. My lock-up’s down the other end, and I’m at 10, North Sea Terrace. When you stand outside of here, I’m just opposite. With the ivy.”

  Wonderful.

  “So, are you back here for a winter break perhaps?” She quizzed.

  “Not this time. Just checking everything’s alright.” I had to get rid of her, but also ask a question. “Have you seen anyone hanging around near this garage recently? Or heard anything unusual?”

  A hesitation in which my heart beat sounded like a drum.

  “Something or nothing…”

  “Please explain.”

  “About an hour ago, when I set off to go shopping. There was this man…”

  “What man?”

  “I only caught a glimpse. In black, that’s all I know. My old eyes aren’t what they used to be.”

  My tongue felt too big for my mouth. I felt sick again.

  “What was he doing?”

  “I didn’t stop long. Not like some round here. But he had this same door half open - a bit more than you - and I swear I heard a woman’s voice as well.”

  “Really?” I hoped my shocked expression would do the trick. “And you heard him too? Are you sure it wasn’t coming from another lock-up?”

  She shook her head, causing her grey waves probably just freed from their curlers, to bob and bounce in the most ridiculous way. In my mind I could hear her relaying all this to the wrong ears. That is, if she hadn’t already done so.

  “Any car?”

  “I certainly heard one, but because my back wall’s so high…”

  “Please try.”

  “I can’t.”

  In that instant, the tectonic plates of my carefully constructed world had shifted. She was in the way. I couldn’t trust her. Without any warning, I shoved her towards the furthest, darkest corner and before she could protest, banged her head against the nearest breeze-block wall.

  Crack.

  Again.

  Crack.

  She suddenly went limp between my hands like a dead rabbit. Her mouth wide open showing two sets of acrylic dentures. I did consider removing them, but what then? They were too small for my own mouth. I quickly checked the pulse in her wrist and her neck, but the half light made it difficult to tell. However, she did seem to all intents and purposes, quite dead. Also, small enough to fit the empty oil barrel that my sister had been left to use as a lavatory, and yet seemed surpringly odourless.

  *

  Then, with great haste, I raised up the door just enough to back my car in. There was surely nothing amiss in my loading such an object into the boot, I thought, perspiring and freezing in turn. But for a few minutes, the effort left me dizzy, and in my haste to leave, almost forgot to take the small, camp bed mattress. I rolled it into a bundle tighter and tighter as if it was my sister’s neck. And the others…

  Traces of two sets of oily footprints confirmed my fears, and without making a sound, I closed the Peugeot’s boot, when actually I wanted to slam it down hard. The Polish con man had not only pocketed two thousand pounds from me, his gullible benefactor, but also, if Neville Gray had been correct, involved my Bishop.

  I should telephone him at the earliest opportunity, find my betrayers and give Professor Vickers the kind of warning he wouldn’t forget. But first, the oil drum lying snug in the boot. Where to dump it? That was the question.

  *

  Gulls again. Vile creatures, spoiling my car’s clean bonnet as I negotiated my way back on to North Sea Terrace. I’d taken a good look round before leaving the lock-ups, and although there’d not been another soul in sight, who knew what anyone else living in those pastel-coloured houses might have seen? Windows lie, especially those prettified by net curtains. And there’d been plenty enough of those.

  Don’t dwell on it.

  The car seemed heavier, and I also told myself that the thing rolling back and fore in the boot wouldn’t be a problem for much longer. Each corner I turned, took me further and further away from that bleak sea, and in life, unlike death, it was reassuring to know where one was going. But as I left the chi-chi little town where the comfortably off go to die with salt air in their lungs, I did wonder with a sliver of anxiety whether Olive Thompson had any living relatives.

  RINGSHALL QUARRY. DANGER. KEEP OUT!

  A welcome sign if ever there was. And yes, even as a young lad, I’d found such warnings enticing, as if testing the parameters of my strict upbringing - or rather - downbringing, as some trick-cyclist might say.

  No-one else around. No cars, nothing, except my Peugeot cocooned in the leafless clasp of a myriad trees. Beech and oak as far as I could tell, surely providing enough camouflage either side of the rutted cinder track, should I need it. This in turn became less and less obvoius the closer I crawled in first gear towards my goal. I wound my driver’s side window down to give me warning of the slightest disturbance. But no, it was only the moving tyres. I finally stopped and pulled up the handbrake extra tight. Fear of discovery then overtaken by thoughts of Piotr making more calls. Of Catherine doing equal harm with the man who could possibly have rescued her. Who’d pinned me down like a butterfly for too long. His latest threat still in my coat pocket.

  Ssssh….

  Was that some bird calling to another? I couldn’t be sure, but if those small noises were coming from my open boot, there was no time to investigate. My priority was to reconnôitre the site asap and get rid. At the track’s end, a roll of rusty barbed wire had been considerately broken, leaving a helpful gap. Nearby, someone’s takeaway carton lay abandoned, crawling with maggots, while further along stood a faded sign

  FLY TIPPERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.

  I peered over the rubbly edge of a vast open bowl of hewn yellow-grey stone at least a quarter full of stagnant water. Sun and cloud overhead with the threat of more rain.

  Perfect.

  For the first time since discovering Catherine gone from that lock-up, I filled my throbbing chest again and again with the static winter air before hefting the oil can from the boot and rolling it rhythmically towards that broken barbed wire. A mess of white hair spilled out from one end before suddenly, one of the woman’s hands, veiny and freckled, appeared.

  Damn you.

  This was slowing me up. I kicked it back where it belonged and then, after a final shove, the container rumbled over the edge and make a satisfying, deep ‘plop’ into the depths below.

  35. STANLEY.

  Wednesday 28th July 1920. 1.30 p.m.

  Fecking disgusting, that’s what. Manhandled like one of their fecking pigs. Call theresen men o’ the law? The jungle, more like.

  “Innocent till proven guilty,” Ma had protested after Susan Deakins went missing and the men in blue, though not the young one, had knocked us up at midnight.

  I were innocent but did still wonder why Pa had kept quiet, and whatever this Vesper House were, I’d soon be escaping. They’s bagged the wrong one. But how to shift Fatty Toft pressed up so close, and the other one starin; at me through his little mirror? And why were both wearin’ green rubber gloves?

  *

  We’d re
ached Hecklers Green and its new shop in silence. The desert outside were pale and hazy with just the odd bare tree. Only the crows seemed to be alive, perched along the roadside fencing or pecking at some dead thing bin run over. They’d be dying off soon too, I thought. And good riddance.

  “The Deakins’ place,” said the lump of fat, pointing at Byre Cottage through his window. “We could call there on our way back.”

  I flicked me head the other way for fear of catching the widow Deakins’ titty-totty face peering through its one lower window. All she did ever since it happened. A danger to me for as long as she lived.

  “We get this one locked away first.”

  Locked away?

  What Dr Lovell had said, but without good reason. I held back. There’d be time enough when me handcuffs was off, to show ‘em what a very upset Stanley Bulling could do. And that Lord Helvin, for popping two shots at me backside. Meanwhile, me left leg were also punishing me. Killing me, in fact and me head still weren’t me own. Inside it were churning everything over, and the last thing I saw before dropping off to sleep were Ma and Pa. Not smiling or waving. Staring.

  *

  “Wake up!” Shouted some big woman in a white uniform and bright orange gloves, standin’ by the open car door on my side. Her cheeks red as blood. Her buried eyes like our sow Bessie’s on a bad day. “We need to get you seen to double quick.”

  “What d’you mean, seen to? If I’m being accused of killing someone and burying their remains, that takes time. Justice takes time.”

  “I said, double-quick.”

  Neither copper spoke another word to me as the handcuffs were clicked open and she pulled me out into the sunlight and marched me towards a closed front door set behind a straggly, hanging creeper or other. Brown and dead, like fecking everything else.

  I spotted a sign overhead with two black crosses painted on at each end.

  VESPER HOUSE

  I could just about read them two words but not the rest of the writing beneath it. Nor had I ever ‘eard o’ the place, or even seen it before, so tucked away in what had to be the last place God made with not another ‘ouse or farm to be seen. I heard the coppers’ car drive away at a good lick while she kept her orange hand on the bell afront of me. I wondered if she were married. Surely not with an arse like that and lardy ankles spillin’ over ‘er shoes.

  “What’s yer name?” I said, also hearing several bolts being slid back. Aware too, that for a few precious moments, I were free. “Aren’t I allowed to know?”

  She never turned around.

  “No. But I know who you are.”

  And that were that.

  Suddenly the heat felt too hot on me back. Her hold on me arm too fecking tight. Fear and pain still messing with me head, just like with Susan Deakins screaming at me, grabbing me hair then me balls. Before she shut up for ever.

  “You killed my Susan, and till the day I die, I’ll hunt you down like the cowardly warmint you are…”

  Thwack…

  Me bad leg were good enough as long as it cud take me weight. It did. Just.

  Her ribs cracked beneath her fat, and I saw how me right boot had left a dirty print on her prissy white overall. She let out a shriek and, clutching her huge chest, fell backwards, landing in a heap on the stone path. Her thighs had parted, giving me a view of her long, pink drawers that reached almost down to her knees. Even if I’d bin fully able-bodied, I wouldn’t be giving her any of me soldier. From now on that were saved for Mollie, me new, special mawther.

  A second kick, harder this time, right on her appley face. I didn’t stop to see the damage, just stumbled round to the back of the house where a swarm of bluebottles like what infested our farm, buzzed around wooden boxes of abandoned food. Animal bones mainly. Legs and shoulders jutting out, their flesh burnt black under the sun

  This got me thinking how easy it wud have bin for me to have added a human bone or two, but what were done were done. Now I had to try and lose me dangling handcuff and find something to wrap round me leg, paying me back for taking all me weight.

  Lucky me. Another box housed a load of papers torn in half. The top bits with with an ink drawing of Vesper House I cudn’t read a thing, but at least the bits of broken glass, metal scraps, screws and nails was more useful. I found one with an extra small tip. Perfect for the hole in the handcuff. Afterwards, I buried the thing out of sight at the bottom of the box, then noticed another one stuffed with of old carpets all bleached and weathered, rolled up together.

  There must be summat better…

  Joke…

  For beneath these was table cloths stained with food and fag burns. Some plain, some fringed and embroidered with initials that could have been H and B, but me runny eyes couldn’t quite see. Seconds later, having crawled through a handy space in the laurel hedge that hadn’t bin trimmed in years, I bandaged up me hurting leg, thinking p’rhaps now, the weepin’ scabs might heal on their own.

  Please God.

  But mebbe God weren’t lissening. What else did I expect?

  Then me eyes began playin’ up bad. No matter how many times I blinked or rubbed ‘em, they stayed the same. Misty. Wet, like I were crying.

  *

  “He went that way, I swear it,” came a woman’s voice I recognised only too well.

  Norah Deakins.

  On the other side of the hedge, and too bloody close, the crafty warmint.

  “Typical of those Bullings,” she went on. “Bad seeds all of them. And you’ve still not told me what really happened to me girl. How much longer must I wait?”

  I guessed she was telling one o’ them coppers, but I never heard no reply. Too busy going back in time to that sunny afternoon behind the smithy…

  “Bad seed?” I said to mesen. Yet me willing mawther hadn’t thought so. Taking it all, alive and dead. But thinking back, her being dead had bin better.

  I got to me feet and moved on, careful to make no sound, keeping to the hedge until, at its furthest edge, I set off across the still-bare field that seemed as if it had lain abandoned for years.

  I’d just got into a wobbly stride, occasionally having to steady mesen with whatever came to hand, when I looked up and saw two small figures running towards me as if I were a ripe plum just fallen from the tree.

  36. JOHN.

  Tuesday 15th November 1988. 11 a.m.

  “Mr. Lyon? Are you alright?”

  I blinked, looked up, aching all over, with a serious headache, only then realising where I was. In a WC cubicle that hadn’t seen a mop for weeks. The door had been opened inwards a few inches, giving me even less space to move my legs into a more normal position. My watch read eleven o’clock. I’d been here almost an hour, comatose. This was Tidswell Station, for God’s sake, in the middle of bloody nowhere. Not St. Ann’s estate in Nottingham. My wet clothes smelt of urine.

  Thank you, Stephen.

  “I said, are you alright?”

  “I think so.”

  I used the lavatory’s wooden rim to lever myself up and pull the door fully open to see an elderly, grey-haired woman staring at me with alarm. Those bright blue eyes even more startling. Her long, brown coat was dripping wet. Her boots two-toned by dampness.

  Rosemary Harding.

  “I could call the station master,” she said.

  “No. I mean, no thanks. This is a private matter.”

  She sniffed. “Well, this isn’t a very private place. In fact, I came in to spend a penny before…”

  “Oh no…”

  “Yes. You’re in the Ladies’”

  “I’ll go right now. Do please excuse me.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve all the time in the world. I only come here for a decent cup of tea and some passing company.” She stared at me again as I brushed past her like some wino leaving a boozer, aware of stale pee from the floor on my trousers. Dizzy, queasy, but above all, confused. Just what had made Stephen Vickers crack? Enough to knock me out. His old friend?

  �
�Shall I check your head for lumps?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.” But I wasn’t.

  “We could still have that cup of tea,” she then suggested minutes later, having stepped out of a neighbouring cubicle. “You look as if you could do with one.”

  “You’re right,” I said splashing ice cold water on my face over the nearest cracked washbasin and checking all my teeth were still joined to their gums. “I had planned to visit you again with a few more questions.”

  Her expression changed. Particularly those eyes.

  “About the Great War?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure about that.”

  “They’d have been fairly general,” I said quickly. “Just to help me get a better feel of the place.”

  “Well, that’s different, I suppose.”

  *

  Despite his deceptively thin shoulders, the historian, Stephen Vickers must have dragged me from the station car park and along platform 1 until reaching the first of the WCs. Whether for men or women clearly hadn’t mattered. But rendering me invisible at least for a while, had.

  Bloody coward.

  But was he?

  Drop it or your dead. A warning… That second threat he’d received from whoever, was still in my pocket as I led the way to what passed as a cafeteria. Sunshine Café- a misnomer if ever there was. A one-room affair almost taken up by a giant tea urn and coffee maker; packaged snacks of mostly pies and sausage rolls. This was pig and sugar beet country, after all. And given the dire state of my new mac and shoes, I could easily have passed for a pig farmer.

  The pale-faced girl who served us with a pot of tea and two suasge rolls, also stared at me, doubtless wondering as she prepared our drinks, if the grey-haired octogenarian hadn’t ensnared some scruffy, late middle-aged toy boy.

  I wasn’t going to ask her if she’d seen or heard anything unusual earlier on. This was my problem to sort out. And soon.

  “So, who did this to you? D’you know?” My companion poured four sachets of brown sugar into her tea and stirred it with a bent spoon like mine. “I mean, you’re a former policeman not some drug dealer.” She took a sip, clearly thinking hard. “Was it that nutter you turned up with yesterday? The one driving the grey Volvo?”