I handed them over. “Should we come with you?”
“No. Stay here.”
I couldn’t bear it. I pulled away from Niall and walked across the square—just to move, not because I had anywhere to go. I got to the signboard opposite the war memorial and stopped. Thoughts roiled in my head—the phone call I needed to make to Felix, the sight of that bloody, huddled shape, the sound of riders on the storm. Had anyone told the Elliots what was happening, or were they still searching the fields around the guesthouse?
Under it all, the smell haunted me, as if it still clung to my clothes—as if I had never escaped and never would.
That’s when I saw him, standing in the lane opposite, between the square and the flooded green, leering at me from under that red cap.
I went for him, hurling myself across the road at full speed. I didn’t notice the approaching car until it swerved to avoid me, horn blaring. I leapt onto the pavement, barely glancing at it, but that moment was enough. By the time I reached the place where the old man had been standing, he was gone. The swollen grey river slid by in front of me, blocking any retreat he could have made.
I had seen all the evidence laid out from the archives and Armstrong’s album. I had heard the riders in the night and accepted that they were real.
But until that moment, I hadn’t truly accepted that the thing killing children around Vainguard Hall wasn’t human. I’d fought the idea at every turn.
I was tired of fighting. I didn’t understand it—didn’t want to accept it. But I had come close enough to the old man this time to see what had changed. His cap had been a brighter red this time, drenched and wet, but not with water. And with that, another memory slid into my mind—Mac reading from his book of ghost stories: “After the death of Lord de Soulis, his familiar, Robin Redcap, continued to plague the area, preying on local children so he could dye his red cap in their fresh blood.”
THINGS MOVED faster after that. Three police cars came streaking through the village—two from the direction of Hawick and one from Carlisle—and a few moments later a team took over the little police and fire station. Niall and I were shuffled to one side, then asked, very apologetically, if we minded going up to Hawick to give our statements—“Hoping to bring the parents here, sir, and it’s best if they don’t have to hear….”
An hour later, we were seated in uncomfortable plastic chairs in a hallway in the big police station at Hawick. I was getting twitchy with every sideways look we got. We were only there as witnesses, but the place felt and smelt like every police station I’d been dragged into as a wild teenager, and I had to keep reminding myself firmly that I was a respectable adult now and more than capable of working with the police.
I didn’t like the way they took my statement either. They asked a lot of questions—when had I left Vainguard? Why had I been there so late? Why hadn’t I returned to the guesthouse? What was my relationship with Niall? With Mac? With the Elliot family? I gritted my teeth and reminded myself they were simply doing their job, but I couldn’t stop myself from getting more posh and effusive with every question, overcompensating for my instinctual distrust of their curiosity.
All the time, in the back of my mind, other images were roiling ceaselessly—the man in the red cap, the bloodied thing in the chapel doorway, my car broken under a pole that had fallen in the most dangerous way chance would allow, a squeal of tyres as I ran across the road this morning, Mac saying, “He’s always standing by the road and glaring at us when we drive past.”
Had Red Cap been hunting me or Mac? Or would either of us do?
Redcap.
Robin Redcap—a demon from a half-forgotten story.
But the dying had started with Francis Armstrong and the other three, with Eilbeck kids. It hadn’t been going on since reiver days.
Or had it? What I’d said to Niall about child deaths in the past had been true. Though tragic, they had not been uncommon. A death here and there, all seeming like accidents—this thing could have been here forever.
The questions circled back around. It seemed like hours before a young constable rushed in and whispered urgently in my interviewer’s ear. He listened, then let out a slow sigh before turning to me.
“Tests just confirmed that the remains in your foyer are animal, not human. A deer, it seems.”
My shoulders sagged, and I breathed out, “Oh, thank God. Any news on Mac?”
“Nothing yet, but we’ll be shifting to a full search-and-rescue operation now. We’ll need you to stay in contact in case we need to access Vainguard again.”
“Of course. Anything I can do to help.”
Within a few minutes, I was out in the hallway. Niall was already there, stretching his legs out across the corridor and glaring at people. His expression eased when he saw me. “Finally. I was done an hour ago.”
I shrugged. “Sorry.”
“You’re not the problem, mate.” He gave a flat stare to the next officer who walked past and grabbed my elbow. “Let’s get out of here.”
I went with him gladly, listening to him mutter under his breath. There was something comforting in hearing that irritation turned on someone else in my defence, but I was still feeling too shaky to appreciate it much. Where was Mac? Missing was better than dead, but some of those kids in Martyn Armstrong’s album had been simply missing, and they’d never been found.
As I settled into the front seat of the van, my phone vibrated in my pocket. I glanced at it—Kasia, wanting to know if I was okay, then Felix. Was the news about Mac out already?
But when I opened the messages, they were asking about the storm. I flicked past, not up to putting together either a careful lie or explaining what was actually happening, and moved on to my emails as we pulled out. One from that morning caught my eye and I opened it. “Huh.”
“What?”
“They tracked down Jean Parfitt.”
“The wee lass who was friends with the Armstrongs?”
“One and the same.” I didn’t point out that the “wee lass” would be in her eighties now. “She’s here. In Hawick, I mean. They want me to go and talk to her.”
“Butter her up a bit?”
“For good reason—” I started, then stopped. Niall didn’t need the corporate spiel.
“What’s the address?”
I read it out. He nodded and made a turn I hadn’t been expecting, directing us back the way we’d come. “Up the top, above the B road. Let’s go, then.”
“Now? Aren’t we going to get back and help with the search?”
“Reckon getting the full story out of her might be just as helpful. Or are you still thinking this is all just coincidence?”
“No.” I watched the grey outskirts of town roll past and added softly, “‘By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.’ And I’ve got a suspicion what it is.”
“I’ve been wondering myself.” He laughed bitterly. “Taken all sorts of visitors up to the castle and told them creepy tales over the years. Never thought it would come back to haunt me. Literally.”
A few minutes later we drew up in a little cul-de-sac. The houses were small and modern, but behind them the land fell away, green and damp and empty. The rain was coming down heavily again, and I wished for an umbrella as we made our way up the tiled garden path. Jean Parfitt’s house was a neat little bungalow with lace curtains and a slightly overgrown hydrangea flowering beside the front door. It looked very normal, far from even Niall’s lodge, let alone the shadowy heights of Vainguard.
I rang the doorbell, trying to dismiss the only mental image I had of her—a dark-haired teenage girl screaming profanities over her dead brother’s body.
We waited for a while, Niall shifting from foot to foot. At last he said, “She’s not in. We should—”
Then the door cracked open, and a frail voice said, “Don’t you go running off now, laddies. I’m just slow to get to the door these days.”
She had the door on a chain, not open
enough for me to see her face, but her accent was right—a little bit of Scots over a hint of Geordie, exactly as I’d expect from a Newcastle orphan who had settled in the Borders.
“Jean Parfitt?” I asked.
There was a long silence before she said, “Not for more than sixty years, pet. It’s been Jeannie Duffy since 1955. Now, who in the world would be asking after me with that name?”
“I work for Becky’s—what used to be the Eilbeck Trust. Mrs Duffy, we were hoping to talk to you about Vainguard and the Eilbeck home there.”
Another long silence. I wondered if she was about to slam the door on us or tell us to go to hell. She had every right.
Instead, I heard the scrape of the security bolt being unlocked, and she pulled the door open.
Jeannie Duffy bore little resemblance to the girl in the photograph. Her back was stooped, and she leaned heavily on a stick, her fingers gnarled. Her white hair was cropped short and styled neatly. But when she looked up at me, her eyes were still dark and fierce.
And it was me she was staring at, not Niall. She said, her voice trembling a little, “I know who you are. You’re Leon—little Leon Kwarteng, come back at last.”
“You know who I am?”
“Oh, my dear,” she said, and I realised in dismay that her eyes were wet. “I know exactly who you are. You’ve finally found us. We’ve been waiting so very long.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I SHOT Niall an alarmed look. “Um.”
Jeannie blinked back her tears and reached out to grasp my arm. Her grip was very light, but I couldn’t ignore it. “My dear, you won’t remember me, but I would know you anywhere. When you were in the hospital in Carlisle, I sat with you until you woke up.” She lifted her head, and I saw that fierce light in her eyes again. “Robin’s a coward, you know. He’ll never take a bairn if there’s an adult there to defend them.”
I let out a slow breath. I’d put together all this speculation, but it had only been a theory. To hear someone else—a stranger, whatever she claimed—say the name aloud shook me. Then the other part of what she’d said hit me. “You were there? How?”
“I was a volunteer at the hospital, of course. Martyn and I—we kept our ears to the ground, just in case.” She pulled back a little, waving me over the doorstep. “Come in, please. You must have so many questions. And your friend?”
“Niall,” said friend supplied. He was studying her with a thoughtful frown.
Jeannie made her way slowly along the little hallway. I noticed the pictures on the walls—plenty of her at various ages, often arm in arm with a short man with a cheery grin and an ever-expanding waist. A different pose caught my eye, and I stopped, frowning at it. The man she was standing with looked familiar.
“That’s Armstrong,” Niall said. “I remember him from back then, just about.”
Jeannie peered up at him. “Why, you’re the Forster boy—Duncan’s grandson.”
“I am that.”
“Oh, we worried about you. Duncan Forster should have known better than to bring a child into that house. I do not think poor Martyn had a full night’s sleep until you went back to school each summer for worrying over you.” Her voice changed, and she added, “I’m so sorry, my dear. So sorry. We weren’t fast enough for your wee lass. Martyn never forgave himself for being too slow.”
Niall tensed but looked down at her with nothing but kindness in his face. “It wasn’t his responsibility.”
“Oh, but it was. It was our fault, you see. It was all our fault.”
“Your fault?” I echoed.
“Martyn and Renie and Shirley and me.” She raised a trembling hand to point to the picture, and I looked at it again, suddenly seeing four lost children in the middle-aged faces staring back at me. “Now Martyn’s gone, and we lost Renie to cancer five years ago, and Shirley is in a home somewhere in Devon, not knowing her nose from her toes, and the only one left is me.”
Martyn Armstrong. Irene Mellor. Shirley Atkins. Jean Parfitt. I had imagined the four survivors as children but never really thought about their lives after that, beyond what Felix had told me about Martyn. I shivered.
“Now, I’ll just put the kettle on,” Jeannie said, “and you boys sit yourself in the conservatory. Milk and sugar?”
It was so practical that I shook off the shivers and almost laughed.
“Builder’s tea for us both,” Niall said. “And I’ll give you a hand there, Mrs Duffy.”
“Oh, you needn’t, pet.”
I left them to work it out and went forward into the conservatory. It was very ordinary—wicker chairs with plump floral cushions, a few knick-knacks on the window sills, a knitted blanket, and an abandoned book of crossword puzzles on the low table. I barely registered any of that. What drew me was the view. The bungalow was right on the edge of town, and from here we looked out across the long green empty miles to the south. Even through the rain-speckled glass, I could see the B road winding into the distance and the purple gleam of the heather, but the thought that came to mind was the old peel towers of the border, where someone was always watching for the first sign of reivers crossing the line.
Vainguard was over twenty miles south of here, far out of sight behind the folds of the hills, but I couldn’t escape the thought that Jeannie had made her own watchtower here.
Behind me, she said, “You’ve seen my view, then.”
“It’s….” I couldn’t find the right words.
“I wasn’t as brave as Martyn. I could never have gone back to that place. I stayed as close as I could, but I never once drove down that road. He came to me, while he still could.” She made her way over to a chair, Niall behind her with a tea tray, and continued on, “But Martyn—he felt it was his duty to be there. He was the oldest of us, and a man, and he thought that made him all the more guilty, the silly fool. It was on all our shoulders.”
There was so much information coming at me, I felt overwhelmed.
She kept talking, even as Niall quietly poured the tea and settled onto one of the sofas, holding his hand out. I could see he was reining emotions in, but he was calm for the moment, and I went to him and sat down with my back to the lonely moors.
I cut in. “But what was Armstrong doing there? What does it have to do with me?” I was still shaken and very glad of Niall’s warm presence beside me, his thigh pressed against mine.
“Why, he was trying to save the children, of course. As many as he could.”
“Save them? Us?” For I was one of those children. “There were others who escaped?”
She was quiet for a while. Then she said, voice sad, “Not like you. Sometimes, all Martyn had to do was listen for the horses and look for the signs. Then he could try scaring the family off—Shirley was ever so good for that. She’d phone up with family emergencies, lost pets, anything to get them out of the area for a while. Robin likes easy prey, you see. But the others—the ones where he took advantage of an opportunity—you were the only one we ever saved.”
For a moment, sitting there on Jeannie Duffy’s overstuffed sofa, the world closed around me, took me back to that squeal of brakes, to the slide of a car on an icy road.
Niall’s hand closed tightly around mine, and he asked, not unfriendly but with little of the warmth he was capable of, “And what about Leon? You came along afterwards and tried to fix your mess? Be careful with that tea—it’s hot.”
A hot cup in my hands was exactly what I needed to bring me all the way back to reality, and I reached for it gratefully.
“We tried, pet.” She looked at me, but I focused on the steam rising from my cup rather than meet her too knowing eyes. “I’m so sorry, dear. Children don’t go out alone so much these years. We think that’s why Robin has started trying to stop the parents from getting in his way, but your family was the first time he went for the adults too. We weren’t ready. If Martyn hadn’t been out with the dog—it was Sly that drove Robin off so Martyn could get to you.”
Niall sai
d, “I remember Sly. Border collie—beautiful dog. He had Mossie after her, and Cap until a few years back. My Katie loved Cap.”
It was a rare bit of information about Katie, and I squeezed his hand in return.
Jeannie bowed her head. “Bless her heart. Martyn and I—we were so sorry about Katie. It broke Martyn’s heart that he couldn’t get there in time. He lost most of his fight then.”
“He was an old man,” Niall said softly. “And he wasn’t the one who caused this.”
Jeannie said, her gaze wandering past us. “My Eddie used to say that. ‘You’re not what they did to you, Jeannie my lass. You’re the one who fought back.’ Mind you, he never knew all of it. He was a good man, Eddie, nothing to do with Eilbeck in any way, and he never knew exactly what I’d done.”
Niall asked gently, “And what did you do?”
But she was rising from her seat and hobbling back towards the kitchen. “Oh, I forgot the biscuits. You’ll get them down for me, won’t you, Leon dear?”
I followed her obediently, leaving Niall gazing out the rainy windows.
“I only keep them for guests, now I’m diabetic, but Layla, that’s my hairdresser, she likes a pink wafer with her tea, and I can always tempt that nice boy from the doctor’s, for all he lectures me about my diet. Up in the top cupboard, there.”
I got them down, wondering what she was up to—she had drifted off-topic slightly while she was talking, but this sudden burst of old ladyishness seemed very convenient.
But what would I know? I spent most of my time working with teenagers, who could easily slide into behaviour so stereotypical that I had a hard time keeping a straight face. I got Jeannie’s biscuit tin down and turned back to face her. She was studying me, and again I saw how fierce her eyes were, despite her frail form.
“He’s a nice boy, young Niall,” she remarked, “but he doesn’t need to know everything, does he?”
“I trust him.”
She nodded but didn’t look convinced. She said, “My dear, you may think dreadfully of us for interfering, but I have to tell you. We’re the reason they sent you to Eilbeck House.”
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