Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  Wrong.

  She was staring at me. Almost beautiful, while Connor Morris’s latest news stuck in my throat.

  “Do I have to repeat my questions?”

  “No.” But once I’d given her the answers and before I could click central locking, she’d pushed her way out into the urban night and ran off along the pavement, her mac flapping with each stride. Her fair hair disappearing into the darkness like a dying candle flame.

  *

  Moments later I found her in a phone booth, shivering, almost incoherently speaking to someone I assumed was from the hospital. Behind and in front of us, the congestion was still static. Whatever had happened ahead was clearly serious, judging by the two fire engines bearing down behind us in the middle of the road. But what troubled me more than this, was why there’d been black paint on the smashed-up Fiesta’s rear bumper and why George Chisholm’s name had made her run.

  Now wasn’t the time to push things, not only because it might possibly be her son lying in the morgue, but also the almost painful admission that Catherine Vickers had always possessed more sides than a Rubik’s cube. Some darker than others. Even deadly.

  My dictum again.

  Timing was everything.

  “Come on, we can walk it from here,” I suggested, and she didn’t argue. The traffic jam could last a long while yet, and already other vehicle doors were thudding shut as more motorists followed suit. Why I called Connor Morris hoping for an unmarked car to meet us at the hospital. We weren’t safe.

  However, he sounded subdued. Different. More so when I explained why I’d rung.

  “Sorry, John. I’ll pass you on to Transport. They may have spare wheels.”

  “Hell, what’s up?”

  Silence on the line. More car doors slamming around me. Another ambulance wail approaching.

  “I’m taking sick leave. May be permanent. Wife crisis. D’you want a list?”

  “Shit.”

  “Spot on with that, mate.”

  “Can we meet up somewh…”

  “Too late, but thanks all the same.”

  “Let’s go,” said Catherine. “We’re wasting time.”

  “Someone else is pulling the strings in all this,” I said to him, staying put. “Someone who must at all costs, have the material I found in Stephen’s office and his study at Wombwell Lodge. And I don’t mean Nicholas Beecham. He’s simply Pig-in–the Middle. Reckless, yes but…”

  “Was. He’s dead.”

  “What?”

  Catherine’s hands covered her face.

  “Decided to jump from the roof of Norwich Community Hospital, with the key to St. John the Martyr still in his fist. He survived for a bit, poor sod, which makes it bloody worse. On my patch if you please. Another reason I’m off. Christ knows how you stuck it so long.”

  “I’ll tell his sister,” I said, almost numb with shock.

  “And what’ll she tell you?”

  “We’re in danger,” I muttered, aware of her still listening. “And Stephen, wherever he might be.”

  “You know who you should be asking. Come on John.”

  “I do.”

  “Remember your nickname?”

  Big Balls?

  Call ended. I dialled another number.

  “For God’s sake!” Catherine tried snatching the phone from my hand. “My son could be dead as well.”

  “Is that all you can say?”

  “Why not?”

  Then, from somewhere deep in her bag came the unmistakeable ring of another cell phone. Muffled, but clear enough. Her grip on my arm suddenly fearsome, but I fought her off and pulled out the offender. A cream-coloured Motorola. Brand new.

  *

  “Well, well, well,” I said, handing it back. “I’m learning something new every bloody minute. You said you didn’t have one.”

  “I forgot, that’s all. Look, can’t you and that detective friend of yours see I’m worried sick about Piotr and Stephen. But then what would he or you understand?” She fixed me with a feral stare. “Nothing much has ever troubled you, has it? You’ve stayed single, no complications. No kids. Stephen used to say the same.”

  Thanks for that.

  I ignored the barb. There’d be plenty more where that came from by the time I’d finished.

  “You said you’d met George Chisholm, the Vice Chancellor when he came to dinner,” I said, turning to check where I’d abandoned my car. The blockage around us beginning to move. Inch by inch. “Was that the only time?”

  “Pardon?”

  I repeated the question.

  “Why bring that up now?”

  Don’t push it…

  “What vehicle did he drive to your house? Or did he use the non-existent public transport?”

  “No. He drove a car, but as for the make of it, how do I know? It was dark. Anyway, I’m not answering any more of your ridiculous questions till we’ve seen Piotr. And not even then if I don’t feel like it.”

  “I’ve said, we don’t know if it is him.”

  “I’m not listening. Just bloody drive so I can get this over with.”

  *

  I’d accompanied enough traffic cops to have picked up some useful dodges that weren’t in the Highway Code, and while my silent, tense companion gripped her door handle, I managed to manoeuvre us past the cluttered, scarred accident site where within a circle of flashing yellow warning lights, a Mini’s crumpled frame was being hoisted on to the back of a breakdown truck. A fractured lamp post had already been dismantled and lay entwined in police tape.

  Memories of Wenhaston made me almost miss the correct exit at the next roundabout, and I wondered who, like my parents, had set out on their journey only for it to end like this.

  At 10.30 p.m. I steered my Citroën into the hospital’s main car park and found a vacant slot under EMERGENCY ADMISSIONS ONLY. Closer inspection showed it had already been reserved for a John Lyon.

  Thanks, Connor.

  We both ran through black puddles into an almost surreal brightness that rendered a paramedic wheeling an empty stretcher from a nearby store room, as if he’d come from another planet. Then came the sound of running footsteps behind us.

  “Hey! Where d’you two think you’re going?” Came an angry male voice followed by a skinny guy, early twenties, in green overalls blocking our way. Edgy and maybe doped up, judging by his irises. No identity badge, which was odd.

  “The morgue,” snapped Catherine. “It’s urgent.”

  “We’re expected,” I added. “By the police.” I withdrew my cell phone, and almost pulled out that strange young woman’s photograph with it. “I’m calling them now.”

  “That’s not allowed in here.” He eyed us both. Sweat pricking his eyebrows.

  “Anyway, let’s be seeing your ID.”

  “Ex-DI, eh?” He looked up with a faint sneer on his unpleasant mouth.

  “Can we go?” Shouted Catherine. “My son may be dead.”

  “Christ. Not that pile of mince we brought in from Heckler’s Green this afternoon? Never seen nothing like it in all my…”

  “Let us through,” I said, before another green, shadowy form flickered in the corner of my eye. A second guy with another empty trolley was coming up fast behind “Watch out!” I yelled as he pushed it into us while the skinny one blocked our way forwards

  A metal Venus Flytrap of sorts. But not for long. The new guy reached for my black box file, but I repaid him with a hit on his stubble chin. He toppled sidways while I kicked the other one’s groin, making him lurch backwards, groaning in pain.

  “Go!”

  Catherine didn’t need telling, and with every stride, still checking those two creeps were still on the floor, we reached a huge overhead sign. Each department, each specialism a jumble, until at the very end.

  MORGUE.

  *

  She reached its steel double doors first and was about to press the intercom alongside them when a bulky female police officer in a tight-fitting gr
ey suit, stepped out from a more ordinary door opposite. Her ID showed a slightly slimmer version of herself, but with that same bullish look.

  DS Avril Lockley possessed the build of a middleweight boxer, plus a jaw to match.

  She checked her watch

  “At bloody last,” she said, glancing first at me then Catherine. “Excuse my langauge. We thought you weren’t coming. I was about to…”

  “Thank you for arranging it, but look down there,” I butted in, pointing to the fleeing green-clad figures and their abandoned trollies. “I have dealt with them.”

  “Dealt with.?” She frowned. “Why?”

  “They tried to stop us getting here,” panted Catherine. “And the way one of them referred to the dead young man from this afternoon was disgusting. The other even tried to steal Mr. Lyon’s’ file.”

  Mr. Lyon.

  That still rankled…

  I held it up. The tightly-bound bundles of letters and photographs it contained, still unexplored.

  “I’ll need identification from both of you,” she eyed me with what I felt was a soupçon of respect, “A formality, I’m afraid. I’ve heard what a good cop you were up in Nottingham.”

  “From Connor Morris?”

  A nod, that was all. And who knew better than me that once you were out of the game, the waters quickly closed over.

  “I’m very sorry to hear the sad news of your brother, Nicholas,” she said to Catherine pressed up against those double doors as if willling them to open. “Sorry too that he managed to escape custody. But he was determined. Just like our mystery visitor here.”

  “Mystery visitor?” I asked.

  “A thick-set guy, well-spoken, with greying hair and wearing a dark blue overcoat plus an astrakhan collar. Not cheap. He’s been here once before already.”

  “When? Is there a register of visitors I could check?”

  Catherine sighed impatience. Trailed her hands over the morgue doors’ opaque, dull silver surface. “Can’t we go in here now. This is unbearable.”

  But Avril Lockley hadn’t finished. “His ID, which Sergeant Berry checked, gave the name Maurice Allsopp from Chelmsford. Said he was pretty sure he knew who the victim was.”

  *

  “That was no Mr. Allsopp,” I said, suddenly feeling trapped, going nowhere, with nothing to lose. Remembering Greg Lake’s throat-slitting gesture in Stephen’s office. “I’ll lay 5 to 2 on it was George Chisholm. Vice Chancellor of the University of West Norfolk. And for reasons known only to himself, I’m guessing he’s after this.” I indicated the black box file. “And that’s just for starters.”

  54. STANLEY.

  Tuesday 14th December 1920. 2.55 a.m.

  I’d not died, thanks to the lock-keeper called Marcus who’d seen me slip into the freezing canal and had hauled me up with a mooring rope. Me numb fingers clinging on to me bag, had almost let go of it.

  He’d complained in bad English how I’d been even heavier than one of the Friesian cows that often fall in after the spring rains. But when he’d first caught sight of me left leg while taking me wet clothes off, that were it.

  “Get out! Good Jesus, what have I done?” He’d backed away from me, white as a sheet. “May you and your disease spin in Hell and its fires burn you to ash.”

  I’ve never seen a grown man wail like him. Not even The Monkey when I were taking his head off, and it followed me out into the night so fecking cold I cud feel me bare skin turn to ice. All I had on were me shirt and pants until me bag, me dripping wet boots and trousers landed next to me on to the grass.

  *

  Home.

  All I thought about as I’d struggled away from his house with its pointy roof and one lit window, with the sounds of lapping water following me all the way to what I soon realised were a junkyard on the outskirts of some settlement whose name I cudn’t read.

  Rats everywhere, and some skinny dog sloping off into the darkness with dawn’s yellow streaks coming in from the east. But I’d found a tractor. Never mind it were a bag of rust, the cab were sealed and the metal seat took me weight.

  I must have slept till a hard sun blasted me closed-up eyes and that sly, fecking dog appeared again, barking worse than that quack Lovell’s waste of skin, bringing a tall, skinny bint with a blue scarf round ‘er head, who banged on me cab window. How cud I understand Dutch spoke so fast? But what I did hear were the word ‘gypsies,’ as she pointed to hersen.

  Friend or foe were hard to tell, and only when I’d decided to trust her, did I push open me cab’s creaky door. Twisted and turned me body and legs to get out, then realised that me last pay from that woodyard had vanished from me bag. No wonder it felt lighter.

  Damn the one called Marcus. While I’d bin close to death, he’d taken his chance. He’d be the one rotting in Hell, not me.

  Seeing me in such a state, the woman backed away, calling the dog off chewing one of me boots. She pointed at a copse of bare willows beyond the junkyard, from where I saw a hint of two painted caravans a strand of smoke rising into the sky. “Come over there with me.”

  Shud I or shudn’t I?

  Frank Lisle, what the Hell have ye done?

  That’s when I began hobbling towards it all, thinking at least a fire would dry me out, even warm me something to eat…

  *

  I confess I’d never bin fussed on gypsies. Lord Helvin kept a few on before the war. The Fletchers too. All from the same family. I’d heard they read the Tarot, told fortunes and trapped badgers and otters. Ma and Pa wouldn’t have them near us, but I’d sometimes bin tempted to join in. Then, in 1913 on Easter Sunday morning before anyone were awake, they all left. Just like that.

  Folk said they’d known the war were coming and were saving their skins.

  As for me, I stiff as a board, limping for all to see. Me money gone, yet again. Me baby photograph peeleed away from me skin by the canal water. Nothing left, so nothing to lose. Then the smell o’ burning reached me nose.

  *

  English. Two women and four men, younger than me, dressed in long, dark coats, stood round a crackling fire. No spare flesh on their faces, and full heads o’ black or ginger thatch poked out from under their caps. They spoke in a flat kind of way, hard to understand and had arrived to work in the bulb fields but settled instead for charcoal burning. Selling their sticks to artists in Amsterdam.

  They knew I weren’t no crook nor a killer, and and said so.

  “We’re originally from near Barnsley,” added that same woman called Mary Bobbett. “And you?”

  Quick. Not Wales…

  “Ely.” That’d do. Pa’s mother once had some family there. “No work. Why I’ve bin in the Uiter Vecht woodyard since August…”

  Agin they looked me up and down till Mary Bobbett spoke again.

  “Don’t tell me ye’ve been swimming?”

  And when I’d finished me story, one of the men said, “we’ll go and see Marcus right now. Shifty fingers, that one. Time he was taught a lesson.”

  What cud I say? Course I wanted me money back, and me baby photo, whatever state that were in. But the price were too high. I wanted to melt away. To get home. But then the shivering began and wouldn’t stop.

  “Come in my cart,” she said, as the men left the fire and called the dog. “I’ve some stew. Goat it is, and tasty. Then you can tell me more about yourself. We don’t get many visitors.”

  She mustn’t see me leg.

  *

  Once me stomach were full, I lay back on a velvet chair next to a cast-iron stove whose logs fizzled behind its small glass door. Soon I were back in Wombwell Farm wirh a smiling Mollie Parminter waiting for me in her pink knickers…

  Peace. But not for long.

  “Open up!”

  The din broke me vision of her takin’ them knickers off. “Open up, or we’re coming in!”

  I rubbed me eyes. Saw blood on me fingers. I cudn’t even see the fecking door. Next thing, two men was manhandling me down the car
avan steps and into the bright sun.

  “Leave me alone! I’ve not done nothing.”

  I looked around, but everything were a blur, till I realised them two women and four other men were stood staring. The thick fumes of burning willow filling me throat.

  Then I saw him. Marcus, the lock keeper and a dog with blue eyes.

  Betrayers.

  “He’s got something of yours,” said the tallest man on my left. “Money.”

  A trick?

  “Keep it.”

  But the lock-keeper stepped forward, me canvas bag bound tight with string in his hand. Holding it out, teasing me. I looked for space to move into, but I were trapped.

  “You’re coming with us,” he went on. “You’ve no right to be here. You’re a low-life criminal carrying the plague.” He kicked me left leg and I yelped in pain.

  Mary Bobbett kept staring, then the whispers began, followed by pushing and spitting till the three of us reached a plain black truck, high off the ground and everything around it a blur. Me left leg kept giving way, but that didn’t matter. What did were how them four gippos hoisted me inside on to the back seat and slammed the door behind me.

  The lock-keeper kept his face pressed up tight against the window glass while on the other side, the winter sun were too low, too bright in me blurry eyes. Why, for a moment I didn’t notice there was two other men sat in the front. One bigger than the other who started the engine.

  “Stanley Bulling? Wombwell Farm, Heckler’s Green near Diss, in Norfolk?”

  His voice seemed familiar. But that were all.

  “Answer my question, you devious bugger.”

  The younger, thinner cop was Lambert, who said nothing. Both wore those same green, rubber gloves I’d seen at Wombwell Farm.

  “Been on your tail since Felixstowe, almost four months ago.”

  I cudn’t let that go.

  “Ne’er bin there in me life.”

  “You listen, Mr. Bulling. You’re under arrest for the murder and dismemberment of Mrs. Rita Myers of Wombwell Villa whose remains have been dug up by the local hunt’s foxhounds…”

  “Don’t deny it,” said Lambert as we left the encampment and took a wide, flat road towards the sky. “We’ve enough evidence for a conviction. Same for Angelid Menelos.”