Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  “Ran off. Don’t blame me. ‘He were more wriggly than a bloody worm.”

  But just then, the bor came out from under me coat, staring up at Drummond with half-closed, puffy eyes. “I thought I recognised your voice,” he said. “You’re Matthew Crane from the New Forest, aren’t you? Near where we used to live. You almost buried my Dad alive ‘cos he sold a Forest stallion, and Mum swore you’d followed us here.”

  The man lunged down towards him, and I stood in the way for as long as I cud, but he were bigger and stronger, moreover with two good legs. He grabbed the bor and shook him as if he were no more than the piano mat in our parlour.

  “Help!”

  “Shut your mouth.”

  “Mollie’s your daughter. I heard Mum tell Dr Lovell.”

  What?

  For a moment, Drummond paused. His mouth twisted up, with the bor in mid-air trying to knee him in the chest. Then, before I cud stop him, came the scream and the crack of thin ice with the heel of his boot. The dull plop of water. The last sounds I heard.

  Then came the smell…

  64. SARAH.

  Tuesday 14th December 1920. 6.15 p.m.

  I’d had to forget Vincent Lovell’s sudden and at the time, shocking admission of love. How his body had so suddenly and urgently needed mine, as if we were somewhere else altogether, not a place of murder.

  For Buck was still outside, and with my partner-in-crime gone out to check on him, I peered through a crack in the curtains at a half-finished snowman and the the falling snow beginning to ease off. My heart pumping hard.

  Come on…

  Then, having poked at the fire and, with some effort, added more coal, I perched on a chair near the door, willing it to re-open with Vincent Lovell and Buck, rosy-cheeked, ready to warm their hands. Still feeling sore, I leaned back, but this didn’t shift the solid emptiness and a delayed contraction as if the last of Matthew Crane’s leavings would soon be leaving my womb.

  Just then, the door begn to open, briging a second draught of icy air, but the Vincent who re-appeared wasn’t someone I recognised. Certainly not the man who’d held me with such desperation.

  I lurched to my feet, almost falling over in my rush to reach him.

  “Where’s Buck? Why isn’t he with you?”

  His cheeks were white, but not from the cold. He took my hand. Ice on bone. “He’s not anywhere,” he murmured. “I’ve called and called till I’m hoarse.”

  I pushed past him and out into the blinding whiteness of another world. A terrible, silent world where nothing else moved or breathed.

  In front of me stood a half-finished snowman with more snow piled up alongside in readiness to finish it. Also, two coals for the eyes that Buck must have taken from the outside store. I also saw where his little hands had patted the lower body into a solid, symetrical shape. The darker depressions made by his fingertips.

  “Buck!” I screamed. “Come back! Come back!”

  When only the night replied, I tried bending down to see where his footprints led, but a sudden, biting pain made me gasp and stumble towards his creation.

  “Stay there,” said Vincent, running from the house with a blanket which he placed over my shivering shoulders. “You could haemorrhage.”

  “Why not call the police now? And Wombwell Farm? Then we can try and see which way he went.” I pointed at the confusion of footprints going this way and that. “It seems there are more than one set and look at the difference in sizes.”

  “We can’t. Henry Beecham had officially closed Vesper House yesterday. Anyway. let’s check first, shall we? Buck may not be far.”

  I couldn’t bend down any further, but he got to his knees, scanning each print with a torch. “See how they vanish altogether,” he frowned. His breath a pale plume from his mouth. “Almost as if…”

  “Someone’s tried to hide them.”

  His torch then scanned the distance to the open gate, beyond which was an area set aside for both motorised and horse-drawn vehicles. His own snow-covered car stood in the far corner. Not immediately visible.

  “And this covering up extends to the gate, which I swear I closed after us.”

  “Buck!” I screamed again into the nothingness. “Where are you? Come back!”

  “Sssh.” He sprug to his feet, switching off his torch. Both knees patched with white. “Listen. Can you hear something.”

  Only my guilty soul.

  “It’s a car engine. Quick. Get back inside. We’ll lock ourselves in. Just in case. If it’s Henry Beecham, as I’m guessing it is, he’s a prize bully.”

  I glanced back at the strange, headless lump of snow as if I might catch

  a glimpse of my little man still there, proudly firming it into shape.

  Once indoors, Vincent locked us in, and while he dowsed the fire, I made sure there was no chink between the curtains and switched off the light. He then stood, ear pressed to the door, which I wished opened on to the the end of the long hallway, rather than directly outside.

  “If I’d not begged you to get rid of…” I whispered but couldn’t finish.

  “All in the past. Just go into that store room by the bed. It’ll be freezing but at least you’ll be safe. If it’s who I think it is…”

  “Safe? What from? Buck’s the one in danger.”

  “Sarah, it’s my fault. I should never have brought you both here. But there was nowhere else to do the procedure and give you the other medicines I’ve been taking.”

  “I could have waited. Besides, why not use your house? Myrtle Villa?”

  He hesitated.

  “Please, Sarah, just do as I say, and once I’ve seen our visitor off, we can telephone the police from the forge.” He opened the door and passed me the key. Immediately the chilly little room lined by empty shelves, slowed my heart, I vaguely wondered where the medicaments were that he’d referred to. Unless kept somewhere else.

  There was an odd smell too. Not of medicines, rather something resembling Wombwell Farm’s stank and water pit combined. I closed the door, locked it and pulled my coat tighter around me. All the while almost overpowered by a feeling of dread.

  “When you’ve lost a child it’s as though you never leave the tunnel of grief. That the promised daylight at the end, never comes.”

  *

  I could hear other raised voices, although more muffled than Vincent’s. The determined throb of fists on wood. If it was Henry Beecham, he wasn’t alone.

  “Dr. Lovell? Open up immediately!”

  “Not until you’ve said who you are and your reason for being here.”

  “The Reverend Henry Beecham and Constable Drummond.”

  “Constable Drummond? Why?”

  “You’ve no right to be here treating your patients. This is Church property and now officially closed. I wouldn’t like to think you’d had copies of my keys cut.”

  “That’s slander, Reverend. You said yourself I could keep a set for emergencies, as I live closer to this property than you.”

  “Where’s Mrs Parminter and her boy?” Came another voice that made me listen even harder. “They’re not over at Wombwell Farm. In fact, the young girl there said you were with them in your car, ready to bring them to Vesper House. Helpful little lass she was. Said you also wanted her and Mr. Parminter and the Bullings. My, my…”

  Mollie. The stranger. Betrayer.

  My heart seemed to freeze.

  “She’s lying,” shouted the doctor. “I’ve not the faintest idea where they are. I merely called in here to check the fires were properly out. For which you should thank me, not punish me.”

  “Open up!” That same voice so different from the vicar’s made me grip the door handle, but my shivering legs to lose their strength.

  Listen again.

  Matthew Crane.

  ‘There is no God… ‘

  *

  The future came like an unbidden ghost. I could even sniff it. Without drawing breath, I pulled my diary from my pocket and stuf
fed it in the space between a store cupboard and the stone wall. Next, I turned the door’s frozen key, and left my hiding place, holding on to the end of the metal bed and the chair back as I went to stand by Vincent Lovell who had the dead fire’s poker in his hand.

  “I know now who this so-called Constable is,” I whispered to him. “He’s dangerous. The…”

  “Ssh.” He placed his free hand on mine. Squeezed it tight, renewing my strength as he did so. Nevertheless, I had to disobey him, and took a deep breath.

  “Where’s Buck, my son? You know, don’t you? You took him from outside. An innocent little boy. Call yourself a man of God, Henry Beecham. And as for you, Matthew Crane, you Devil. You criminal. Marriage-wrecker who tried to murder my husband. Who raped me last summer. Bring your lovely, fair-haired, blue-eyed daughter here and let her explain herself.”

  Silence, in which Vincent Lovell stared at me in shock.

  “You’re all diseased, save her,” said Beecham. “She must be protected. Now let us in.”

  “Never.”

  Next came the crash of something heavy against the door, creating a jagged hole with an axe head embedded at the top. Then again and again until that small treatment room was suddenly full, with the doctor soon overpowered by the bigger Beecham, and Crane’s rough-gloved hands clamped around my throat. For a choking second, I recalled what Mollie had said to me in Oak Leaf Cottage the morning we’d left.

  “You’ll be dead by then. You and him.”

  *

  But where was Vincent Lovell? The man who’d said he’d loved me. Why wasn’t he here when I needed him? Then with the creeping stench of death, foul earth and water full of bones and human waste, came an icy blackness, blacker than even that night sky where the stars have vanished for ever.

  65. JOHN.

  Wednesday 16th November 1988. 3 a.m.

  “Connor? That you?” I said.

  “It is. Here, drink this.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Between a rock and a sodding hard place.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Wombwell Farm. See that Under Offer sign? It’s huge.”

  I peered out through the rain. He was right. Those two words, red on white, seemed more like a proclamation. Underneath, however, a warning.

  PRIVATE PROPERTY. DANGER OF DEATH FROM UNSAFE STRUCTURES. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. K.F. Merritt. Estate Agents & Auctioneers.

  Next, a Norwich address, phone and fax numbers.

  “My God. Looks pretty recent to me,” he went on. “Wonder who’s going for it? Could find out first thing...”

  But in truth, even locating my brain was a problem. Next, a cold can of Fosters was in my hand. Its ring pulled back ready. The smell of it neutralizing the other stuff still hanging around.

  “You freaked me out,” he added. “I almost called 999.”

  “I was being buried alive. Just like that time I called on Nicholas Beecham and had to spend the night there. But why me? Not you or anyone else?”

  “Dunno. Did you see that young woman’s face again as well?”

  I nodded, beginning to think she was now permanently present at the edge of my consciousness. Tangible, but also intangible.

  “Just keep drinking,” Connor nudged me. “By the way, I took a call from the lovely Avril while you’d crashed out. Conscience clearly pricking her. That’s what I like to see.”

  She’s been up all night.

  “Does she know where we are?

  “Yep. Says she’ll try and get here now Supertwat Elliot’s cleared it. I’ll believe it when we see it, mind, but she has been busy, fair play, as my Welsh Granny would say.”

  He drew breath before continuing.

  “First off. A man walking his dog near Catchwell crossing remembered the front plate of a black Mitsubishi Pajero parked across the entrance to a public right of way yesterday morning at around 10.45 a.m. Said it looked hand made. He was going to report it but was off on business in France for a few days. Your DVLC contact confirmed a number plate match. But get this.” Morris refilled his lungs. “It originated in a garage in Great Yarmouth. A demo model Austin Metro with three thousand on the clock. He must have nicked it. There’s more. Even though the driver wore a black cap pulled right down, this guy swore she was female.”

  “Jesus Christ.” The beer I’d just swallowed began to re-appear. A swirl of random images brought a fresh bout of dizziness. “Everything hinges on what the service train driver might also have seen. It’s like wading through landfill.”

  But Morris was speaking again.

  Listen.

  “After seeing you at the Norfolk & Norwich, Lockley confirmed she’d gone over to Stoney Linton, missing you and Chisholm by a few minutes. She also found evidence that Greg Lake was being leaned on to hand over what was referred to as the Wombwell File by whatever means. A black box file, no less.” He looked at me. “Sorry chum. No wonder you were frantic to find it back there.”

  “What else?”

  “Apparently, there’s an answerphone message on his phone from Chisholm’s office, the day before the crash. Hardly friendly. More like desperate”

  “And careless. So that’s why he was at Greg’s house last night, plus crowbar.” I said, unable to drink any more. “But where had Greg been that evening?”

  “Anyone’s guess.”

  “‘King George’ knows no bounds.”

  “You’re telling me, and by the way, those two turds who greeted you both at the hospital earlier tonight, were ex-students. Probably on the dole, needing cash.”

  “Perverting the course of justice carries a life sentence. He might strike lucky.”

  “Let’s bloody hope so. “

  “Something else to tell you. If I’d not been too caught up with keeping tricky Catherine Vickers on board…”

  “Spill. I still need to take a leak.”

  I repeated Eric Reddings’ statement about having seen someone resembling Piotr collecting Greg from his house last Friday in a red Fiesta. “She also referred to Greg as being openly gay.”

  “Shit, John. You should have said.”

  Connor Morris suddenly opened his door, bailed out and, having turned away from me, peed into the driving rain. In those few seconds, I was back in that wide-open grave, aware of a deepening darkness. Of death’s clinging embrace.

  *

  He brought the whiff of beery piss back with him into the car, cursing he’d not faced the other way.

  “Meant to say, Supertwat’s got border controls on the lookout, plus regional minions on all UK airports.” He slumped further down in his seat, then glanced at me. “That’s my call. I’ve never felt so effing washed up, and all because of…”

  “Look,” I broke in. “Make some space for yourself to sort things out. I’m living proof of acting on impulse. No-one to confide in, not even my sister who’d worried every day I’d get myself shot. So, take care, eh?”

  The embers of ambition, the need to discover the truth of what had happened here just after WWI, had begun to glow again. Hadn’t ‘Tiger’ been Carol’s name for me when we’d been orphaned? Well, it could be again, with Morris alongside. I told him so.

  “And pigs can fly,” he said, ruefully, pointing to a lit cottage window over the road on the corner of Bakery Lane. “Whose place is that? Any ideas?”

  *

  When I’d relayed what the strange Rosemary Harding from that same corner cottage had said during my visit there with Stephen and at the Sunshine Café, he eyed me with a mix of curiosity and disdain.

  “I’d say you’ve been carrying a little flame for the lovely Catherine. Come on, John. Get a grip. She’s in this up to her skinny little neck. And it’s actually you who needs to be careful.”

  He was right, of course, but something else hadn’t been. How that mysterious, elderly woman’s recollections on the farm and its whereabouts had been oddly vague.

  “Bit late for an old girl to be up,” Connor bserved.


  “Not just up but staring like we’ve got two heads.”

  “This is the country, remember? Never as safe as concrete. Look at Greg.”

  *

  “We’re not tooled up,” he said. “I signed off my Glock on Monday.” He glanced at me again. “How fit are you?”

  “Fit enough. As you saw, I can still lift half a pint.”

  “Your trench coat could be too light.”

  “It’s fine. Specially in this bloody weather. Anyway, that Rosemary Harding said the farm’s a ruin and there’s only ghosts.”

  I was aware of him looking again at me in an odd way.

  “You alright?”

  “Never better. She also made out the place was further away than it is. Why, I’ve no idea. Anyway, let’s just get there and get it over with.”

  I squinted out into the rain. Everything a desolate dark on dark. John Sell Cotman on a bad day. Or night. With distant black trees leaning away from the wind, and Rosemary Harding herself, still visible, until suddenly her light went out.

  *

  “The place is all locked up!” I shouted back to Connor Morris, on seeing the decrepit five-bar gate plus three chains and padlocks securing it to the right-hand post. “This seems the only way in.”

  Once again, I scoured these dismal, unlit surroundings where we now seemed to be the only living souls. But for how long? Yet the more I strained to see the ruined farm through the pouring rain, with water already trickling down my neck, the more I sensed my once sure hunch slipping away. Would I let it go so easily? Could I?

  No.

  “Damned gate!” I yelled, pushing away the notion that never mind his breath, the newly-sidelined Detective Sergeant might still be feeling the effects of his earler beer-fest. Yes, I was truly grateful he was around and might be even more so. “I’ve no bloody tools to deal with it.”

  “Waste of time,” Morris called back, pulling a navy-blue bobble hat over his head and his duffle coat collar up. “If Chisholm and his blonde are here, they’ll have got in somewhere else.”

  His blonde…

  “How?”

  “God knows.”

  I persevered by trying to tug the two most rusted chains free from their equally rusted padlocks. The old iron was ice-cold, slippery in my bare hands, leaving them stained as if with old blood. After a few minutes, the chains snapped and fell to the ground. But the third held fast until I found a handy, loose stone with a promisingly sharp edge and began bashing the padlock as if it was George Chisholm’s head. The din of granite on steel was too loud. There had to be another way. I needed my torch.