Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  I excused myself and went upstairs. Not to the small room at the back of the farmhouse which Will and I had eventually, after protests, been allocated - whose low, central beam had left us with sore bumps under our hair - but to the bedroom at the front with an uninterrupted view of the Longstanton Road and beyond. Mile upon mile of camel-coloured land without it seemed, a single living, breathing creature on it.

  The wide-open window had already let in a crowd of bluebottles that congregated in and around a half-full chamber pot under Buck’s bed. Perhaps he’d not had time to reach the stank outside or been too scared of the dark to venture downstairs past the old dairy’s mountainous heaps of rusting junk.

  But this had been Stanley Bulling’s room. A man I knew deep in my bones was just as much a threat to us as Matthew Crane. Slippery as an eel. A liar and dissembler. And moreover, diseased. He’d woken something in Mollie that was far too soon, too precious. And at forty-one, was old enough to be her grandfather. I remembered the writing inside that shell.

  Deliver us from evil…

  *

  Having swiftly emptied the chamber pot, I returned to that same room which I hoped more than ever was merely a temporary billet, impelled to explore it further. I began with the single wardrobe. According to the small, metal label screwed behind the left-hand door, it was made in Shoreditch in 1902. Half the space was taken up with small drawers, each empty and stale-smelling. Buck’s Sunday best suit hung from a coat hanger pocked with woodworm. His shirt and short trousers lay folded beneath it. A few items of clothing I’d managed to save after the robbery. But should they stay there? What if Stanley Bulling’s leprosy still lingered in the very air?

  I should have considered this before. Hadn’t Constable Lambert worn special gloves when he’d called? And that specific memory decided me to go with Will as soon as possible to Vesper House and find out. Afterwards, to get this unhealthy room spotless.

  Never mind what the Bullings wanted, our family came first.

  Next, a small, white-painted chest of drawers that seemed more in keeping with a girl’s bedroom. Why I’d instinctively put Mollie’s few things in its top drawer where the lining paper at least had seemed the newest. In the bottom drawer were a few mothballs and torn paper from some newspaper or other, nibbled at around the edges.

  But something in the far corner did catch my eye. Small, round, with a pearly sheen like the white of a dead eye. It was a button with just two tiny holes in the middle. Certainly not belonging to any garment a grown man might wear. A liberty bodice came to mind as I placed it in my skirt pocket and hurriedly shut the drawer.

  “Mum?”

  Buck’s voice made me start. I’d not even heard him come up the stairs.

  “There’s proper clouds out there! Look!”

  Indeed, there were, nudging each other in from the east. As dark underneath as the one that had cursed the scene of my crime. Ominous and threatening.

  “We’re all going out to work on the water pit again. Are you coming?”

  I patted his head. His hair, like the rest of us, badly needed a wash. “I’ll try. Don’t overdo it. Promise? Your chest’s been a bit better lately.”

  He nodded, then stopped. “I’ve just remembered something. I don’t know why I never told you when you said you’d seen Matthew Crane too.”

  “Too? What do you mean?”

  “I swear I saw him going up to Lord Helvin’s place next door.”

  “When?”

  “A week ago.”

  I must have turned pale. My stomach contracted.

  “Mum? Are you alright?”

  “What was he wearing? Tell me…”

  “Hunting clothes. I don’t mean for foxes. More for birds. He had a rifle on his shoulder…”

  Buck looked at me sideways. “Do we tell Dad about that?”

  “No. Leave it to me.”

  46. NICHOLAS.

  Tuedsay November 15th1988. 7p.m.

  These dark, dank evenings were surely the work of the Devil, I thought, still shaken by that unfamiliar Fuzz’s telephone call, and grimacing each time I had to use the Peugeot’s clutch. If this pain continued, my next car would have to be an automatic, and a Mercedes would be much more in keeping with my role as Bishop of Cavenham. But for now, I had to be one step ahead. Lying low low until the weeekend would be a start.

  I knew the way back to Longstanton like the proverbial back of my hand, so was free to wonder about that Fuzz with the distasteful Midlands accent, and what he might have wanted. As for who might have pointed him in my direction and given him my telephone number, there was only one answer. The failure who’d dogged my steps for the past three days. Failure and bully. His hours numbered.

  *

  I’d just passed the weather-beaten sign for Longstanton when my cell phone’s sudden ring made me lose my grip on the wheel. Having managed to straighten the car, I pulled in past the one bus stop and turned off my headlights.

  “Are you alone?” Came a man’s deep voice I immediately recognised. “This is important.”

  George Chisholm. Vice Chancellor of West Norfolk University no less, and secretly influential member of the Diocesan Trust. A betrayer who’d once said he’d help make me Bishop, whom Piotr had also pleasured and confessed to me as much, with not quite enough remorse for my liking. A senior academic of few words but apparently plenty of action between the sheets. I’d been ashamed to admit that the Pole’s childish ploy to make me jealous had worked. Next time, I’d be considering altering my Will. As it stood, he remained its sole beneficiary. But if Piotr had died in Vivienne’s car, what then?

  “Yes,” I said, returning to my enemy.

  “This line’s not good. Speak up, Nicky. Pretend you’re delivering a sermon.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Did you find anything?”

  I’m relying on you…

  “The throw-back on Reception held me up and then…”

  “No sob stories, please. I can’t bear it. You had a job to do.”

  To save your skin, no doubt.

  “I just hope my name didn’t crop up.”

  Never mind his name, it was his face that filled my mind. Bespectacled, with strong, fleshed-out features. A heavy forehead never without a frown, which most found intimidating. Another man with few morals and most likely a past best kept hidden.

  “It didn’t, and I’m sorry.”

  “You will be. I’m meeting our mutual friend Leslie tomorrow evening about his replacement, and mine could be the casting vote to keep your three parishes intact, and more. He’s annoyed you couldn’t make lunch today, and Clive Jordan-Wood’s not best pleased either. So, is your stomach upset better, and again I ask, what have you found?”

  Each venomous syllable brought a fresh surge of queasiness. A loosening of my moorings. A white juggernaut suddenly appeared behind me and churned by, almost clipping my wing mirror. Blinding me in a wave of spray. I felt even more vulnerable but couldn’t show it. Not to the one whose hands were too big for his wrists. Whose slicked-down, probably dyed black hair seemed out of kilter with his skin colour. No, my fight with John Lyon was my business, especially as I’d come off worse. As for that so- important green file…

  “Any luck at Myrtle Villa?” pressed my tormentor. “You were supposed to get back to me on that, too.”

  “Only dust,” I lied. “Been empty for years.”

  “I’m not happy.”

  “I’m sorting it out. Alright?” I said, getting back on track. “Just give me tonight and I can meet up with you tomorrow sometime before your meeting.”

  A derisory snort followed.

  “Why should I trust you, Reverend? Besides, in this important matter, I make the arrangements.”

  Silence save for my windscreen wipers and my stomach’s nervous rumblings. A bat flickered past the windscreen and vanished. Despite my thick coat, I was trembling, all too aware of the black, bare trees along the roadside bearing down on me. That endles
s spire pointing to impossible heights.

  “I’m almost at Wombwell Lodge,” I said. “Give me a chance.”

  “You’ve blown your biggest one, Nicky. Why should I rely on you again? It was the black box file I wanted.”

  I strugggled to keep calm.

  “I’m doing my best,” I said.

  Another dismissive snort, bringing me closer to the boil.

  “Just find the bloody thing. There’s a good chap. And preferably before my important meeting. Get my meaning?”

  Slimy bastard.

  “I’ll try.”

  “Vickers’ collection of documents relating to the Wombwell Farm mystery are university property. He could collect a jail term for arranging their theft. And by the way, entre nous, I’ll be leaning on the garrulous gay Gregory Lake tomorrow, chez lui, because he’s not answering his fucking phone. I wonder why?”

  I flinched at the ‘f’ word. A true Vice Chancellor he was not. Just another hustler like Reggie Kray, but less well ironed.

  Another shiver. He’d no idea about my buggered knee and the has-been who’d caused it. The lengths I’d gone to to keep my troublesome sister quiet. And then I recalled the quarry incident. My foolish, reckless nemesis.

  “Report back to me by eleven,” he barked. “Let’s hope I’m feeling generous.”

  Call ended, and with those last few words thudding in my mind, I changed down to second gear, still without lights, and into Wombwell Lane, thinking his fucking career or mine?

  I gave myself one guess, which didn’t change my mood in the slightest.

  *

  He’d not mentioned Piotr or any incident at Catchwell Crossing and that was unnerving enough. “Knowledge is power,” he’d opined at a Diocesan trust meeting in August and been met with a frosty silence. And here I was, unnerved again by the glimpse of three cars, grey, blue and silver beyond the ragged hawthorn hedge that fronted my scheming sister’s half-timbered house. His and hers. And the meddler from Colchester. So, it would be three against one.

  Damn.

  I reversed on to the muddy verge to face the road, giving me a quick escape if need be. I then pulled out my late father’s discreet little pistol he’d always kept in his locked cigar box. A memento from his Burma days. Of course, after he died, and Mother was dribbling away her hours in a nearby Nursing Home, I, not Catherine, was made Executor of his Will and given Enduring Power of Attorney. A huge advantage, given the complexity of their estate. But who wouldn’t have chosen a young, popular vicar over a pot-smoking arts student?

  Oh yes, she and Stephen both, in the early days, before her jealousy of me had set in. I tried to work out when and with whom she’d conceived her only child. Another student? An older man? Piotr had always become vague when I’d enquired about his family. But he must have come across the name Beecham? A name binding her and me together, like the trussing string around a plucked broiler. Surely, he must have known?

  *

  A light came on in one of their upstairs rooms. I’d only been inside the place twice, but of course pretended to those who asked, that I was a regular and welcome visitor. Vivienne had always refused to accompany me, having felt a distinct froideur from the pale and lovely Catherine. And who could blame her?

  Focus…

  I tried to remember if this lit window belonged to one of the guest bedrooms or my target, the study, which I’d never seen but could imgine. It certainly couldn’t be a bathroom, not with clear glass…

  Hang on…

  And while waiting like some seedy gumshoe, I switched on Radio 4 where the seven o’clock news followed the sombre and ominous chimes of Big Ben. At first, I let news of a planned postal strike and Benazir Bhutto’s bid to be Prime Minister of Pakistan wash over me until another woman’s name made me jerk upright in my seat.

  “… and in a cave in the disused Ringshall quarry near Needham Market, a Miss Olive Thompson aged seventy-six who’d been trapped inside it for approximately six hours before being heard by a passing cyclist, has been rushed to Norwich Community Hospital suffering from severe bruising, shock and hypothermia. Police will be interviewing her tomorrow. A hospital spokesman confirmed she can clearly remember her attacker.”

  Tomorrow? Jesus Christ.

  *

  I’m relying on you, Nicky…

  Drizzle and mist which could have been useful, but I was too careless. Too busy thinking of that nosy little witch who’d survived. Who’d been too loud when I should have been as silent as a fox at the busy coop. I heard my sister call out in surprise from the landing, followed by sounds of rushed footsteps thudding on the stairs. Louder and louder. The failure’s, then hers. Legs, bodies, faces a blur before I tripped on the rucked-up hall carpet.

  Lord, deliver me…

  No sign of Stephen.

  I scrambled too my feet, clutching my bad knee in one hand, my pistol in the other, and limped outside via the back door. The way I’d come in. They’d been careless too, leaving it unlocked. Stupid people. Their threats like some vile wind propelling me towards the church. A route I’d taken on my last visit. My knee was hurting less, as if my rushed little prayer had worked. Nevertheless, she and the has-been were behind me.

  “You cowardly monster!” shrieked Catherine. “Keeping me tied up in that stinky lock-up in Aldeburgh. How bloody dare you. And how dare you use that young man of yours to do your dirty work! What’s wrong with you?”

  “Young man of mine? Why not give his correct status? Or are you too ashamed?”

  Silence.

  “What the Hell are you talking about?”

  Come on, you little liar…

  “Your son, Piotr. Mr. Lyon informed me. Wasn’t that kind? Because as you know, it’s a sin to tell lies before God.”

  Then came mutterings as if the enemy were dividing. Good.

  Despite the damp and creeping cold, I was enjoying myself, yet thinking too how both Piotr and me had been used by such a scheming woman. Piotr with the palms of silk and the rest. That failure was speaking again.

  “You lied to DS Morris that you were away till Friday. Is this what you meant by ‘away? Snooping around at the university, then in your sister and brother-in-law’s house? And while we’re at it, can you tell me now if your late wife’s Fiesta is still in your barn? It would be useful to know.”

  “Implying?”

  “You’ve heard about the crash near Tidswell Station?”

  Leave me alone.

  “You’ve nowhere else to turn, Reverend, so best if you come quietly. At least you’ll have a chance to tell us exactly what’s been going on…”

  *

  His unedifying voice faded once I’d reached the main door to the church. Oak and iron, over three centuries old. Putting little creeps like him in perspective. My left hand closed over the old Browning in my coat pocket, while my other pushed in my grandfather’s worn key into the even older lock. One turn of the ice-cold handle and I was in. Rather too dark, but I was safe. I slid the two huge rusty bolts into place, then blinked to get my bearings. Several dead bird skeletons crunched under my shoes.

  Thank you, St John the Martyr. May God rest your soul.

  “Open up!” Screamed my sister.

  “Never.”

  “You’ve only ever cared about yourself, Nicholas. Feathering your nest. God knows what Vivienne ever saw in you…”

  She’d always whined, even as a child, and here she was again, accompanied by thuds and bangs. Angry fists on ancient, sacred wood. All they could do. Her breaths and mine just inches apart.

  Then suddenly, another silence in which I held my breath.

  “This crash you’ve just mentioned,” she said to the failure. “Why ask my brother about the Fiesta? Are they connected in some way?”

  A pause before he spoke.

  “Christ, I should have said…”

  “Said what?” She snapped, and I pressed my ear hard against the damp oak, pleased he might be in some bother.

  “There�
�s been an accident this morning at Catchwell Crossing on the Norwich to Kings Cross line just up from Tidswell station. A small, red car was hit by a service train. Its driver didn’t stand a chance of stopping in time. We’re just waiting for more news. More detail.”

  Her sudden, piercing scream caught me off balance. “Not my boy! Oh, God in Heaven, not my boy!”

  My boy. There she goes…

  Yet I was palpitating too. Supposing, just supposing…

  “Please, Catherine, pleaded the failure. “It’s early days.”

  She screamed again, and he tried to shut her up with more talk. How, according to the station master, someone - a man - anonymously called him just before eleven a.m. from a public call box. “A witness we urgently need to speak to. Was it you, Reverend?” Fired like a bullet. “We can soon find out.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I was nowhere near the place.”

  Instead, I was making the biggest mistake of my life.

  “Rest assured, we’ll leave no stone unturned.”

  Just then, that vast nave seemed to shrink, to press in on me. To the left and right, behind and in front. Its seventeenth century ironstone cold, crushing my whole being, while Olive Thompson’s victorious cackle eked like a curse through the gloom.

  47. STANLEY.

  Wednesday 22nd August 1920. 1.30 p.m.

  I were a wanted man, with police pictures of me face stuck on every lamp post from Hecklers Green up to Tidswell and beyond. I remembered when the person I’d called Ma for so long, had actually taken the photograph they’d used. Before that teasing little bint had started waving at me and lifting her skirt on her way back and fore to school.

  Better times then with our Norfolk Horn rams selling for record prices at the Diss Agricultural Show, and folk knocking on our door for more. We’d also had Ministry money to spend on pigs and turn our Fifty Acre field over to wheat.

  Now look.

  At least I had money and managed to walk far away from that damned hole. Damned, except for a candle still glowing in the pretty form of Mollie Parminter.

  ‘One day, I’ll come back for her.’ That were me solemn promise, but for now, I’d be getting on a boat at Felixstowe. I’d heard they went everywhere from there. I weren’t fussy. Just so I could bide me time till the time were right…