Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  I didn’t believe her. Her brother and Stephen had been threatened, not her. I was about to mention the young woman’s photograph, with the remains of ©KC 1980 printed on the back. Instead, asked, “can you see any badge on that car behind us? It’s odd that I can’t.”

  She moved her head a little. “Nor me.”

  “So, what else do I need to know about Stephen’s boss? What other contact have you had with him, apart from dinner?”

  Catherine sighed out loud. Whatever her other talents, acting wasn’t one of them. “You’ve asked me that before. I’m tired. Let’s just get back home. We can start looking properly for Stephen and Piotr tomorrow.”

  “You knew Greg Lake’s address.”

  “So? What are you implying?”

  Despite the heater again on max, a noticeable chill added to that lingering, rotting smell. Then all at once a sudden, strong gust of wind pushed us over the road’s white line, making her grip her hand-hold over the door.

  “Anyway, where on earth are we going?”

  “Killing two birds with one stone.”

  “I hate that expression.” She then checked her watch and sighed again. That same black tank was pushing us east not west. Closer to where Sandra and Clive Lyon had, in an instant, been cut in half on a single-track railway line on the edge of nowhere, within sight of the sea, leaving two young kids to rebuild their lives.

  What had Greg Lake left behind? I wondered, pushing those horrific details out of my mind. A young Polish guy whose own mother might just then have admitted the truth?

  *

  The ghosts of my my dead parents would have to wait.

  “Hold tight,” I said.

  And before Catherine could react. I’d whipped the car round in the road, like Nottingham’s Traffic team had shown me, ending up with both nearside wheels

  half on, half off a thick, wet verge. No matter. Our pursuer’s tail lights were then far enough away to give me the chance I needed. Or so I thought.

  “Oh my God.”

  The monster had re-appeared, nudging us towards a wall of fir trees. Or rather, surely a wall of death. It could shove my Citroën around as if it were a mere dice.

  What must have poor Greg felt in that small car, seeing the train coming, and unable to bale out? Then another more pressing thought took over. With my foot hard on the brake, I reached for my cell phone, punched out a number.

  “John Lyon here. Former DI with the Nottinghamshire police. Is DS Connor Morris around?” I said to the woman who answered. “It’s urgent.”

  A pause while she asked someone else.

  Hurry up…

  “He’s just this minute left with all his stuff. Awful business…”

  Good God.

  “Please…”

  “I’ll try. He’s still got his personal police phone.”

  “Tell him we’re in trouble, and to get to Wombwell Farm in Hecklers Green pronto. I’m pretty sure George Chisholm tailing us. He’ll know.”

  Silence save for the unanswered ringing and heavy rain punishing the car roof.

  “There’s no reply.”

  Damn.

  “Keep trying for Chrissake!”

  Another serious shunt made those firs come closer. Their spiked trunks too thick. Too

  rigid. Waiting.

  *

  “Shitshitshit...”

  The line had gone dead and the black, badgeless 4X4 had stopped directly behind us. In front, despite the downpour, I read the sign FRESSINGTON FOREST. FIRES PROHIBITED.

  Half of me wanted to face this imbecile with his own crowbar. The other half to get the Hell out. But a third alternative had in the meantime, grown even more tempting. To see how my passenger and he interacted.

  “Let me try,” Catherine offered, sweet as pie, and dialled the number I gave her. “Connor Morris?”

  “I’ll take it,” I said, as my Citroën was then at a standstill.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  My phone stayed in her hand. Her eyes never leaving me for a moment, waiting for Morris to answer.

  This was a farce. I’d been a bloody fool to hold back so much, but that tactic had usually worked in my job. Keeping the buggers guessing.

  Suddenly, those headlights behind us cut out, making the natural darkness too dark, while the driver’s shadowy form stayed ominously still. A form I recognised.

  Enough.

  I prised the phone from Catherine’s cold fingers. Felt one of her sharp nails connect with my skin as Morris finally gave his name, sounding bleary.

  “John speaking, we’re in trouble,” I repeated. “Did you get my message a minute ago?”

  “D’you know what the frigging time is? I’m trying to get home. Least that’s what it was.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Where are you?”

  I told him, but nowhere near as accurately as I should have, aware of Catherine’s growing restlessness. How she kept staring into her wing mirror, fingers drumming in her lap.

  “Chisholm’s been practising his shunting skills. He’s behind us, in some black 4X4. No badge. Could be a Pajero, not quite sure.”

  Catherine flinched, but was listening hard. As she had done all along.

  Pause.

  “Forensics are still waiting for a paint match to come in because DI Lockley in her wisdom, reckoned any other vehicle involved would have been immediately scrapped by the perp.”

  “She never said.”

  “She’s a woman. End of…”

  No time to comment on this blanket misogyny. That shadowy form at the wheel was beginning to move.

  “Her team are on to the local scrap yards. Has this one been in a scrape?”

  I felt like asking if he was drunk. Instead said, “there’s defintely no badge and the plates look home-made.”

  Normally, I’d have added Eric Reddings’ observations about Greg and Piotr driving off together last week. How Chisholm had been at Greg’s house with a crow bar and I’d floored him.

  Sod it.

  “You sound odd.” And the way he said it, confirmed he’d had a skinful.

  “Look, mate, can you get over here? Be different if I was on my own.”

  No time to explain why I’d said that. Just a growing sense I’d missed something important all along.

  “I would, but I’m…”

  Then, before he could finish, everything happened at once. A rush of raw wind from my left as Catherine forced herself out of the car.

  *

  “Where are you off to?” For a moment my grip on her right arm seemed enough to hold her back, but not once I sensed cold leather clamped around my throat.

  “Get out, you.” Came that same, throaty voice, sharper against the wind. “And no tricks.”

  No tricks? But I still knew some…

  “My turn now, Mr. Has-Been. And I believe you still have an item of my property.”

  “You mean Mrs. Vickers’ property?” I managed to gargle. Saw her face turn away.

  “Not very clever, that.”

  He pulled me outside where winter’s moan swayed the whole plantation, creating a macabre sound that intensified further and further into its depths. A black beanie covered his forehead but not his wild, bespectacled eyes nor a wide, twisted mouth set in a deep jawline. Greg Lake’s intruder seemed none the worse for wear. Certainly capable of opening my car’s boot and hauling out his crowbar. Catherine stood by the badgeless 4X4 as might a kiddie at the funfair waiting for a ride to stop as I ducked out of his grasp and kneed him where it should have hurt. But no. He’d stepped back too quickly while I in turn, overbalanced on to mud and fir cones.

  Try again.

  However, something held me back.

  Catherine…

  “Friends, are you? Or more than that?” I yelled at her. “And how come you, Greg and Piotr were all happy-happy with him in Braythorne not so long ago?”

  “Where d’you get that rubbish from?” Then, without warning, something hard
and heavy jolted my whole body. The ground came closer before another blow to the back of my bare head, twice as heavy as Stephen’s parting shot, brought a pulsing throb and the warm, metallic taste of blood behind my teeth.

  “Tut, tut, Mr. Has-Been. You can’t say I didn’t warn you.” That same taunting voice I’d heard at Greg’s place, accompanied by car doors thudding shut, seemed to fade into the distance followed by the fir trees’ rocking din. Then nothing.

  *

  “John? You got a pulse?”

  For a moment, my eyes wouldn’t open but I was aware of a hand feeling the throbbing back of my head until a sudden strobe of brightness made me blink twice, enough to see Connor Morris’s upside-down face close to mine. Beer on his breath. Thick and recent. I’d guessed right. He was bladdered. “Thank God,” he grinned, still exploring where that crow-bar had landed. “Bit of a bump but no blood that I can see. Can you sit up?”

  First aid at Hendon all forgotten. Risk of stroke or sudden aneurism blown away. I indeed sat up, dizzy, disorientated to see him looking around. His duffle coat torn away from his legs by the wind. A white saloon in the middle distance.

  “Where’s Mrs. Vickers?” he added.

  “Fuck Mrs. Vickers. What about the file?”

  “File?”

  “She hid it under the passenger seat in my Citroën. A black, vinyl box file.”

  “Let’s get you sorted first, mate.”

  “No! See if it’s there. If not…”

  Those huge, delirious trees filled the sudden emptiness for what seemed a lifetime, and it wasn’t only the drunken cop who returned, but that unique and repulsive odour, wafting around my face.

  “Not a dicky bird,” slurred Morris. “What was in it, anyway?”

  Shit…

  “Stuff that someone had to have at any cost. Why we must get to Wombwell Farm.”

  “You were always scared of cows, remember?”

  “Thanks for that. And I’ll drive. Better a cripple than a piss-head.”

  “Cheers.”

  “And by the way, I doubt there’ll be any cows. Although one, maybe.”

  *

  Having pulled me to my feet, we reached my car. It was as if Catherine Vickers had never sat there, and without that file, the interior seemed doubly empty. Even Connor Morris’s tall frame bulked out by a duffle coat made little difference, and before negotiating my way out of the forest and back on to the wet, silent road, I showed him that younger woman’s black and white photograph.

  “Quite a looker,” he added, handing it back to me. “What happened to her?”

  “Just sit tight. I hope we’re at last about to find out.”

  60. STANLEY.

  Tuesday 14th December 1920. 5.15 p.m.

  Drummond had accused me of infecting all them at Wombwell Farm. But what he didn’t know was that I’d spared me special mawther, and that wud be bound to count in me defence.

  The more I thought about that, the more the notion grew that someone might have diseased her after I’d gone. I ought to ask.

  I also had to see her agin. Check she really were free of the leprosy. Feel her legs around me middle. Her tongue in me mouth, then kissing me soldier, but as I were tied too close to Drummond with a length of thick rope, I just had to let it dance around inside me trousers getting bigger and bigger until…

  Neither of them heard me groan of pleasure ‘cos of the noise of the van’s wheels on the road where tractors must have left a lot of loose stones. Nor did Drummond notice a wet patch on the front of me. Pleasure do ‘ave a smell, I decided, feeling me soldier shrivel up till the next time.

  *

  Although quite dark outside that police van, the sky were fillin’ up with slanting clouds - pale on top and black below. In any farmer’s book, that meant only one thing.

  Snow.

  Two winters ago had bin bad at Heckler’s Green. Snow thick as me owd gal’s hair, covering everything for weeks. This cud be worse, but what a gift. Summat else good coming me way. Then I noticed trees. Evergreens. All close together and very handy indeed. Also, that Ma and Pa had bin truly blessed.

  “Thetford Forest, so not far now,” announced the Incomer pulling at our rope, deliberately giving me wrist burns. If it had bin just him and me, I’d have punched his lights out. As it were, I’d have to be quick and clever.

  Time to take me chance.

  Me free hand sudddenly gripped me gut and me cry made Lambert swerve the van to the right, just missing a horse and cart coming towards us. “Me gut! Am going to be sick! Can’t do that in ‘ere, can I?”

  “We ought to stop.” The one next to me said. “I’m closer to this animal than you.”

  “It’s coming!” I cried. That did it. The Growler’s brakes came on, and in the confusion that followed, Drummond banged his big head and sat there in a daze. I undid the knot tied to me handcuff. That I could live with. A memento of this latest injustice. Just like me little button and that shell, still waiting for me.

  *

  ‘Twere as if I were well all over agin, with fresh strength from somewhere after the months away in Holland, losin’ me money an’ all. ‘Specially me baby photograph.

  “Stop him! Damn you, Drummond. You should have hung on to him. Used your bloody muscles…”

  Lambert’s insults faded as I headed towards the forest and forced me way into its pungent depths where fox shit, every kind of shit slithered under me feet. But I didn’t care about that. I knew no one wud find me if I went in deep enough and come mornin’ I’d be off. Back where I belonged.

  “Scum of the earth? Where are you?” A man’s muffled but familiar voice reached me as I kept going, pushing through bramble and heaps of dead fern, almost blind as a bat with me poor eyes and me leg hurting like buggery.

  Were Drummond after me? It didn’t sound like him, so had to be Lambert getting closer. His words all too clear, following me deeper into the plantation.

  “Thanks to the prompt actions of Doctor Lovell who should get a Knighthood, we know beyond reasonable doubt that the liberty bodice button you’d hidden in your bedroom, belongs to the missing Susan Deakins. As for that shell most likely belonging to Angelid Menelos also found there, it contains the interesting phrase, ‘deliver us from evil.’ I wonder what the poor man meant by that?”

  Me bouncing heart made me stop.

  “Who found them? I’ve a right to know. The Parminters?”

  Hell’s eyes…

  I’d not meant to speak.

  No reply. Until that same voice started up agin.

  “Stanley Bulling, do you wish to confess?”

  I moved on, stumbling over a fallen branch. A long one with a spike that just missed tearing into me other leg. At Weesp, me job were to saw these buggers off, but just then, they was very useful indeed. I hid behind one of the conifers’ thicker trunks, holding me breath, bidin’me time, till the slosh o’rainwater and crunch of things told me the cop were getting closer. Further back, I heard the other one above the noise of crows fighting for territory.

  The branch felt big and strong in me hands and I toyed with the balance of it so when the time came, it wud do the most damage.

  Come on. Come on…

  “Bulling? You’re in there somewhere, so just step out now and when the time comes, there could be extenuating circumstances. I’ll see to it myself. I’ll say that you’ve been…”

  But he never completed his sentence ‘cos even with me runny eyes, I’d glimpsed that familiar face; the flakes of snow in his hair and let me whole wasted life land on his bare head. Me, the slave who’d lived with pig shit in me nose every hour of the day and night, and the only one never allowed to use the stank or sit at the table in company, had got his own back.

  *

  I cud smell the copper’s blood and covered me mouth an’ nose with me hand while his groans and cries cut into me brain. Don’t lissen, I told mesen. Get out, back to me owd gal for whatever days and nights I had left.

 
I spoke too soon.

  “Let’s be having you, Stanley,” came Drummond’s voice, which he’d not very cleverly tried to make sound more Norfolk with bits and bobs of this and that thrown in. A man new to policing yet with the air of someone hard as drought earth, not given to sympathy.

  A grave-digger came to mind.

  And that made me think of the Pit in Priest’s Field. Full of autumn rain, and how it had reeked even on cold days.

  “I can see the hangman’s rope already. Clear as day,” he went on, keeping some distance. “And your head being covered by a bag before the lever’s pulled. Looking forward to it, I am, I must say.”

  We’d listened together to Lambert’s last gasps and I knew then the man who’d moved next to me, were more than dangerous. Yet I cud make trouble for him letting his fellow cop die untended, with barely a glance.

  The ball weren’t all in his court. Not by a long chalk.

  “I’m going to telephone Diss police station when I can,” he said. “Tell them exactly what’s happened. How you evaded us and disappeared. How Detective Constable Lambert and mesen while searching for you, suspected other things happening in the forest here. Three gypsies armed with knives in their belts, surprised us and set on him first, with that branch. They then stole our police van.”

  Those blue eyes narrowed in a way that made me blood freeze from top to toe, “But in exchange for all these lies, you’re to help me.”

  “Me help ye? How?” The shock of it made me voice come out all thin and reedy. Like Susan Deakins.

  “By getting rid of that diseased lot at Wombwell Farm. We’ll be doing a public service. The Reverend Beecham’s run out of funds for his Leper House as it’s correctly called, and neither he nor Doctor Lovell can help with a cure. None’s been found yet. Nor can they prevent them from infecting more innocent souls. Something needs to be done.”

  I cudn’t take it in. I felt sick. Me gut really did begin to churn over. I were in the presence of a madman.

  *

  A night jar sung out through the air and when it stopped, I heard snow falling where spaces allowed it. Over the dead policeman’s stiffening body.