Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  First, I needed a change of clothes, but not from any shop. ‘Sides, I cud be recognised. There had to be another way…

  Codlington called itself a village but that were a lie. There was only a few cottages and a farm like ours set back off the main road where a line of washing - men’s and women’s - hung dry and stiff from a wire stretched between two dead trees.

  I took me chance. Made a quick choice and, having buried me old stuff deep in a handy pile of horse manure, were soon back on the flat, open road. The land of the dead and gone, where before long, came the low growl of a car engine coming closer behind me. There being nowhere to hide, I spun round, thinking of that biggie with the blue eyes and the rifle. But no. Doctor Lovell was pulling up alongside, a bit tight for me liking with a deep ditch on one side, him on the other. The Austin 7’s passenger window full down and his bloody dog were yelping.

  What the Hell were he doing out here?

  “Can I take you anywhere?” he asked.

  This didn’t sound right. I sniffed a trap.

  “I’m on an errand for Pa,” I said above the dog’s din. “Not far now, thanks.”

  “Come on, take a seat. I’m going to Telfer Cross. One of my older patients has just moved there.”

  I hesitated. Besides, there were nothing in sight for as far as me eyes cud see. I had to get to the docks at Felixstowe, but how? Me leg wouldn’t last out much longer, and me breathing were playing up.

  “How far is it?”

  “Just a few miles. It’s a nice run, anyway.”

  It weren’t. But by then, he’d pushed open the passenger door, making that dog yelp some more. Making me wonder too where his black case might be. Unless in the boot. He kept giving me sideways glances and I knew he knew more than what he were letting on. But I were bigger than him, and for all he knew, I cud have had me own means of protection.

  “You don’t look well, Stanley,” he said with mock concern, I cud tell. “And that leg of yours needs a proper dressing.”

  “Me leg’s fine.”

  Silence.

  “So, what have you been doing with yourself?” he said eventually. “It’s been almost a month since I tried to help you stay on at Vesper house. And why’s your father asking you to walk so far from home when he owns such a big car? The biggest I’ve seen round here.”

  Too many questions....

  “Family business.”

  I got in and the doctor leant over me to pull the car door shut. He smelt of coal tar soap, and I noticed funny little sores around ‘is mouth. Just like mine. How sweat trickled down his forehead even though more clouds had come to block out the sun.

  “You’re a loyal son, Stanley. And I’m not sure they deserve it.”

  “What d’ye mean?” Yet I felt a strange rush of pride, like pure, cold water trickling down me body. Ma nor Pa had never spoken to me like that. Not a once.

  The doctor waved to some old man trimming part of the roadside hedge next to his shack. Then out of the blue said, “they think you’ve done something bad to Mrs. Myers. Now that’s not the kind of thing any parent should say.”

  Ma isn’t me parent.

  “When did you see them?” I said, with a faster heartbeat.

  “Yesterday. They both have facial sores like you and me. And breathing’s an effort. But what I found equally disturbing, was how readily they’d agreed with the police to having your photograph displayed in public.” Another glance. Were he actually sorry for me?

  More than anything, this made me want to tell him that since Rita Myers had told me I really were hers, it were like having a lead weight strapped to me body. A weight grown heavier by the hour. I wudn’t see him agin, so what were the point of holding back?

  “I wudn’t have harmed a hair of her head ‘cos… ‘cos…” I began.

  “You can tell me,” the doctor encouraged. “My dog doesn’t understand English.”

  “She were me mother,” I blurted out. “Gave me a photo of me as a baby. Even got her eyes. See…”

  Her dead eyes…

  I found the small thing buried in me new trousers’ pocket and passed it over. He slowed the car down and bent over so his nose almost touched mine in the photograph. And all the while, in the silence, I saw outside me window how the clouds’ shadows had spread to make the land below all dark, shifting like a winter sea.

  I’d given away too much. I felt raw, peeled. Even the dog were quiet as the fields around us grew smaller, dotted with ducks, hens and the like, and the odd dwellings looked prosperous compared to those in Hecklers Green.

  He handed it back and never mentioned it again.

  *

  “The young boy at your farm’s not well either,” he said suddenly.

  “Buck?”

  A nod. I were glad he’d not meant Mollie, but hadn’t I’d deliberately kept me spittle off her, smearing it instead round his cup and plate? That same day I’d spat at Ma and Pa, the two snorers?

  “He ought to be at Vesper House, too. Like you, Stanley. And everyone else for their own and the public’s safety. The laboratory in Norwich telephoned me with some very bad news which has confirmed your condition. Are you ready?”

  He turned left down a narrow loken lined by broken fencing and small settlements that had given up the ghost. Where were we going? Judging by the intermittent sun, the answer were north. Not east.

  “It’s clear that the Mycobacterium leprae is well established in your system,” he murmured. “This will, over the next few years, affect your skin, your nerves and mucus membrane, which can cause a painful death.”

  “You and all,” I reminded him. “Don’t forget.”

  “How can I? And as I was saying, you need to be isolated. Kept disinfected, away from those who are clean. Unfortunately, there’s no known cure. Not at the present time.”

  *

  Too many burnt fields like a yellow-brown ocean had welled up and seemed to swallow up his small car, with me, him and the dog behind trapped in it, sinking, sinking… I wound me window down and took in gulps of hot, dusty air. Me lungs sore and weak.

  “You caught it off Angelid Menelos,” the doctor went on. “His remains prove he was the carrier at your farm, and the police are now trying to trace any other people he may have unwittingly infected. Handing them a life-sentence, in so many words.” Another glance and a frown. “This is serious, Stanley. But if you let me help you, it’s possible you could at least survive for…”

  “No! Like everyone else, you think I’m a sinner. I’m wanted for three murders. It’ll be the rope round me throat, not pills and prayers.”

  He shook his head. Still frowning.

  “Trust me. You could soon be out of harm’s way.”

  “Vesper House?”

  “No. It’s closing down. This other place is in Cornwall, with plenty of sea air.”

  “Never. I don’t know bloody Cornwall!”

  And that’s when I snapped. Feeling handcuffs tight around me wrists again. Those coppers’ eyes. That fat Reverend’s bad breath in me face…

  I shoved against him, making the Austin swerve too close to some old gate into a patch of rough ground. He jabbed a sharp elbow into me ribs. Stronger than I thought, and then something flew at me from behind, tearing me hair, nipping me neck. Fecking yelping again.

  Fecking dog.

  “Max! That’s enough!” shouted the doctor. “Sit! And as for you, Mr. Bulling,” his voice changed as if it belonged to someone else. “If you want to lose that leg, your fingers, your hands and feet, then I’ll park in Telfer Cross and you can get out. And God forgive me for letting you go.”

  Mollie wouldn’t look at me agin. What could I do without me fingers?

  I stared at me hands.

  “You’re seeing sense,” he said finally, with a small smile.

  “But no cure?”

  The dog were panting thirteen to the dozen.

  “I’ll see to it that you get better, Stanley. And I repeat, trust me.”
/>   *

  More clouds. I cudn’t count ho many, but they’d all gathered over the sun agin as I waited with the thirsty dog for the doctor to re-appear from a square, grey house set between two smaller cottages. Some old maid had answered the door and bowed like he were royalty. It gave me too much time to dwell on the word ‘isolated’ and ‘disinfected’ like I were nothing more than some old sow with leaking titties. Our Bessie’s complaint in the end, after The Monkey’s filthy bit of fun.

  Then the front door opened. Him and another man, big-built, twice as tall. I didn’t need to look any more. Doctor ‘trust me’ Lovell had found a fecking cop. I cud normally sniff them a mile off. How they walk, place their legs when standing; their hands. But clear as day, this one were in uniform.

  I whipped round in me seat, grabbed the dog by the scruff of its neck, and not giving it even one chance to yap, clamped me hand around its jaws.

  “Got ye.”

  With that, I were out. Tightened me grip till it were nothing more than a black rag. Silent forever. I chucked it over someone’s hedge and legged it back the way we’d come. Whoever’s trousers I were wearing, clung far too tight, but that didn’t matter.

  I were free.

  *

  I got to Felixstowe docks at four o’clock, though I had a job to read that name at first. The oil and fish stink wouldn’t last for ever, I told mesen. I were just glad to see endless water laid out in front of me like a dark grey, wrinkled sheet.

  “Thank ye,” I said to the roughneck from London who’d given me a lift in his open truck once I’d reached Longstanton Road. “I can pay ye summat.”

  “No need,” he smiled in a way that shud have warned me. “I’ve already helped myself.”

  *

  Even though the sun peered between the clouds, I shivered like a cold eel at the end of a fishing line. The kind of catch I’d reeled in from the River Howse after an autumn storm. Me pockets was empty, and before I could stop the thieving bastard who’d lifted all me cash, he’d pulled away from the quayside and driven off.

  I shud never have dozed off, but after that episode with Dr Lovell and his dog, then all the walking afterwards, it weren’t surprising I’d bin grateful for that surprise lift.

  Him with no name so keen to take me in.

  What next? Penniless and starving, I were, but surely something wud turn up. This were a busy place. Even the sea full of trawlers, wherries, cargo ships and their different flags, all bobbing on the tide. Adorned with names I couldn’t understand.

  “Where you going?” asked another man so thin a breath of wind cud have blowed him over. His head bald as a coot. Overalls smeared in brown grease.

  “Anywhere. Or I were…”

  He gawped at me up and down. “You look like my boy. Drowned last year off our boat. At Cromer, poor bleeder.” He peered at me so close I cud see red veins in his eyes. “Yes. You could be his double, but maybe I shouldn’t say that.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s the look of death on you. Same as him.”

  48. JOHN.

  Tuesday 15th November 1988. 7.20 p.m.

  I’d already spotted the Reverend Beecham’s old Browning automatic, so we weren’t going to be standing in his way. However, once Catherine and I had left Wombwell Lodge to follow the limping intruder towards the church, I’d pretended to fetch my torch from my car.

  Instead, I’d placed the black box file under the driving seat then surreptitiously checked her Allegro’s petrol gauge. Almost full, which contradicted what she’d said to me twenty minutes ago. Perhaps when she’d turned on the ignition, it had initially showed empty. I preferred to believe that, as my previous car often did the same.

  Yet with another niggling doubt, I’d rejoined her by the church, wondering why on earth Beecham had been at the university, then sneaking around here. Also, how he’d managed to unlock the church’s studded oak door. Perhaps with a key found somewhere, or handed down via his uncharitable grandfather, perhaps. Perhaps that anonymous threat had driven him here. Unless this was his own church.

  In a typical siege crisis in Nottingham, talking had always been the preferred first response. But thanks to Nicholas Beecham’s sister relentlessly fuelling his rage, he’d seemed beyond all that. In such a volatile situation, anything could have happened. I’d told myself to give it five minutes before calling Connor Morris.

  “Where’s your torch?” She’d asked me.

  Damn.

  “Please come away from that door,” I’d said instead of replying. “Leave him alone. Just in case.”

  “Cowardly, bloody nutter,” she’d sniffed, stepping to the side of it, “What the Hell’s he doing here anyway? Why not come out and face me after locking me up in that dump in Aldeburgh?”

  “Perhaps, with your help, we can find out.”

  *

  8 p.m.

  Nicholas Beecham betraying me about Piotr together with news of the Catchwell Crossing tragedy had been the marzipan and icing on the cake, so why not add a few candles? Less and less could I trust this willowy, ash blonde standing next to me, whose brown mac hood framing her face made her resemble less the woman I’d once known. More a cunning, Carmelite stranger.

  “Who had the key to free you from the lock-up?” I asked.

  She turned to me. A strange smile flickering on her lips. “My son, of course. Anything else?”

  “Earlier on this evening, I found your brother at the university. He’d masqueraded as me, if you please, heading for Stephen’s office, I’m sure of it. Why? Any ideas?”

  Her pinkened eyes widened.

  “You’re making this up.”

  “Hardly. I floored him in the car park. Had no choice. He was after…”

  Here I stopped. The vicar was yelling more curses.

  “He won’t tell us anything,” she said. “Never did even when he’d been caught stealing as a kid. Self-serving twat. I wish… I wish…”

  The ‘twat’ word made me blink. Our Gran, Peggy Lyon had banned both Carol and me from using it in her house, or else no supper or breakfast next morning. Why we still gave it a wide berth ever since.

  “And I wish you’d told me about Piotr,” I said.

  She instantly paled. Stepped down from our meagre shelter, oblivious to the deluge, her hair flattened against her small skull. “I couldn’t. But I bet Stephen did.”

  A brief, defiant flare lit up her eyes. A look I’d not seen before.

  “He’s an idiot. Remember what he did to you at the station this morning?”

  “I do, and we have to find out where he is. Both of them in fact. If you’ve any ideas, please say.”

  She cocked her head. Those eyes welling up. A sob suppressed, then another.

  “There’s something else you’ve not told me, isn’t there?” she murmured. “Please, John… Please…”

  “If you meant the railway line victim, then at this stage, it could still be anybody,” I said, stepping back to hopefully get a phone signal away from that church’s oppressive main door.

  “Who are you calling now?” she said, beginning to cry.

  “Connor Morris.” I should have added his status, but inwardly too ashamed to admit it was still a problem. “He may have more news, and meanwhile, your brother here, may be in danger.”

  “Rubbish. I’m the one in danger.”

  I glanced from left to right, along the huge eastern wall and its six plain, arched windows. “Are there any other exits?”

  “No.” She produced a tissue and blew her nose.

  “That’s something.”

  “Look, I’ll tell you about Piotr later on,” she said, stowing the tissue away in her mac pocket. “It’s complicated. Then perhaps you’ll understand.” She came nearer. Her eyes still wet, shining. The tip of her nose red as she repeated, “Stephen informed you, didn’t he?”

  No way out.

  “Only because I pressed him. He wasn’t judgemental in any way,” I lied. “And to be honest, I�
�m glad he did. I’d like to know to whom Piotr’s connected. I’m sensing useful links which should be examined.”

  Her tone hardened.

  “What links?”

  Melanie Cox.

  “Later.” I punched in Connor Morris’s number.

  “Now, John,” she urged. “Please.”

  “Ssh. This call’s important.”

  *

  There was no further sound from inside the church or outside it, save for Catherine’s rapid breathing and my own pulse quickening.

  Morris picked up on the second ring as if expecting me.

  Norwich HQ sounded busy.

  “John, yes?” He was barely audible.

  “I bloody hope so. Any ID yet on that young man at Catchwell Crossing?”

  “Young man?” Catherine broke in. “You never said that.”

  I managed to keep her at arm’s length, but for how long?

  “Not so far. But the poor bugger’s jaw was left intact, so we’re checking dental records in the area. Just tried to call you. No joy.”

  “Blame all these trees around this church.”

  “Didn’t know you were religious. Where?”

  “I’m not. And we’re at St. John the Martyr in Longstanton.”

  “We?”

  “Me and Catherine Vickers.” I then lowered my voice to ask how quickly he could get here. That Nicholas Beecham, having sneaked into Wombwell Lodge and been rumbled, had locked himself inside the church. “He’s also armed.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Catherine butted in. “He couldn’t even use a pea-shooter.”

  I stayed focussed on Morris, gripping my phone even more tightly.

  “An old Browning automatic. Maybe Belgian. The same as I saw when I made a social call yesterday. He could be high risk.”

  “So, this is his idea of being away in Truro till Friday,” said Morris. “High risk or not, he’s a laugh a minute. You must have had quite an effect on him in your tussle at the university car park.”

  “Look, when can you get here?”

  “Say, eight thirty?”