S. J. Bolton

by Blood Harvest

  ‘Fair enough,’ agreed Harry.

  ‘Good. I can have the new keys ready for you the day after tomorrow. Come and have some lunch in the White Lion with me. Shall we say one o’clock?’

  Taking fingerprints was the work of a few minutes and then the two men said goodnight and left. Harry returned to his study. He looked at the drinks cabinet. He’d had enough. He felt something warm moving between his ankles and looked down. The cat was rubbing its body against his jeans.

  ‘I hate cats,’ grumbled Harry. He bent to pick it up. It lay in his arms, purring, comfortingly warm.

  Half an hour later the cat was fast asleep. Harry hadn’t moved.

  35

  19 October

  EVI PARKED HER CAR IN THE ONEREMAINING SPACE. THE huge hangar-style building of Goodshaw Bridge fire station was twenty yards away. She got out of the car and found her stick.

  ‘I struggle with stairs, I’m afraid,’ she explained to the fire officer at the reception desk. ‘Is there a lift I could use? Sorry to be a nuisance.’

  ‘No problem, love. Give me a minute.’

  The fireman led her along the corridor. She tried to keep up but her back had been giving her trouble for days. Constantly leaning on her stick was putting too much pressure on the muscles on one side of her body and they were pressing against nerves. She should be using her chair more. It was just …

  They reached the lift and went up one floor, then back along the corridor. Maybe on her way out she could just slide down the pole.

  Ahead, her guide stopped at a blue door and rapped on it. Without waiting for a response he pushed it open. ‘Lady to see you, chief,’ he announced before glancing back at Evi. ‘Dr … er?’

  ‘Evi Oliver,’ she managed through gritted teeth. ‘Thanks so much.’

  Inside the room, two more firemen were standing, waiting for her.

  ‘Dr Oliver, good morning,’ said the taller, older of the two, holding out his hand. ‘I’m station chief Arnold Earnshaw. This is my deputy, Nigel Blake.’

  ‘It was very good of you to see me,’ said Evi.

  ‘No problem. If the fire bell goes, you won’t see us for dust. Until then, we’re all yours. Now then, how about a coffee?’ He raised his voice. ‘Where you going, Jack?’

  Evi’s guide reappeared, double-checked that his two superiors still took their tea milky with three sugars each and happily agreed to make Evi a white coffee.

  All three sat down. Evi would have liked a moment to get her breath back but both men were watching her, waiting for her to begin.

  ‘I explained on the phone that I was interested in finding out more about a fire that occurred in Heptonclough a few years ago,’ she began. ‘It’s in connection with a case of mine, but I’m sure you’ll understand I can’t give you details. It’s a matter of patient confidentiality.’

  Chief Earnshaw nodded his head. His colleague, too, looked interested, happy to help. She wondered if firemen were bored a lot of the time, actually quite welcomed distractions.

  ‘The fire was in the late autumn, three years ago,’ said Evi. ‘In a cottage in Wite Lane, Heptonclough, did I mention that?’

  Earnshaw nodded and patted a manila file on his desk. ‘It’s all in here,’ he said. ‘Not that we really needed to look it up. That was a bad one. A little lass died.’

  ‘Were you there?’

  ‘Both of us,’ said Earnshaw. ‘Every one of our regulars and a few of our volunteers as well. What can we tell you?’

  ‘I understand that once the fire is contained, there are two basic questions that you need to answer,’ said Evi. ‘Where the point of origin was and what was the cause of the fire?’ Gillian still hadn’t told her how the fire had started. If it had been due to negligence on her part, or her husband’s, it might go some way towards explaining her anger, or her guilt. Both men were nodding at her.

  ‘Is that a good place to start?’ she asked.

  Blake leaned forward. ‘You need three things to make a fire, Dr Oliver,’ he said. ‘You need heat, a fuel source such as paper or gasoline, and you need oxygen. Without any one of those, no fire.

  Do you understand?’

  Evi nodded.

  ‘In most circumstances, we can take the oxygen bit for granted. So, what we’re looking for is a combination of heat and fuel. After that, fire travels sideways and upwards from its point of origin. If a fire occurs at the foot of a wall, you’ll see the burn patterns spreading up and away from it in a V shape. Are you with me?’

  Evi nodded again.

  ‘Some things in a house, like synthetic materials or stairways, can distort this, but as a rule of thumb you track the fire damage back to the point at which it was greatest and then look for the heat-and-fuel combination. At the Wite Cottage fire, the point of origin was pretty clear, even though the upper floor eventually collapsed. It was the kitchen, the area around the cooker.’

  ‘And do you know how it started?’ asked Evi.

  ‘Largely guesswork,’ replied Blake, ‘because the damage in the area was so extensive. But we understand cooking oils were kept around the cooker, never a good idea. We suspect a pan was left with a gas flame underneath. It happens a lot with omelette pans. People make an omelette, concentrate on tipping it on to a plate without breaking it and they put the pan down, forgetting they’ve not turned the gas off. The pan gets hotter and hotter until the oil left in it catches light. If a plastic bottle of olive oil was close by, the plastic would melt and the oil run out. You can see how …’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Evi, making a mental note to move the bottles of cooking oil she kept close to her own hob.

  ‘In this case, though, the real problem was the Calor gas,’ said Earnshaw. ‘The cottage wasn’t connected up to the mains gas supply, so the family used a cooker that was powered by Calor gas. It’s not uncommon in rural areas, but in this case, the family had three spare canisters stored in a small room just to one side of the cooker. Once they caught fire …’

  ‘I see,’ said Evi, wondering if she really had the nerve to ask her next question. ‘I know this is a difficult question and please excuse me for asking it, but did you ever consider the possibility of arson?’

  Earnshaw leaned back in his chair. Blake was frowning at her.

  ‘We always have to consider arson,’ said Earnshaw after a while.

  ‘But on this occasion, there was nothing to cause us any undue concern. The fire had an easily identifiable point of origin.’

  ‘One that could be readily explained,’ chipped in Blake.

  ‘Had it started in a wastepaper bin in a bedroom,’ said Earnshaw, ‘or if we’d found a trail of petrol around the house, it would have been a different matter.’

  ‘The house was rented, so there was no possibility of insurance fraud,’ said Blake.

  ‘And the couple lost their child,’ said Earnshaw, as though Evi should have thought of that herself. The arson-to-disguise-accidental-death theory wasn’t going anywhere. Evi began to think she might be outstaying her welcome.

  ‘I do understand that,’ she said. ‘I know I’m asking insensitive questions. I’m sorry I can’t explain why.’

  ‘Hiding evidence of arson really isn’t that simple,’ said Blake. ‘Arsonists often use matches and then just throw them away, thinking the fire will destroy them.’

  ‘And it doesn’t?’

  Blake shook his head. ‘Match heads contain something called diatoms,’ he said. ‘Single-celled organisms containing a very tough compound called silica. Silica survives fires. Sometimes we can even identify the brand of match used.’

  ‘I see,’ said Evi. ‘I’ve got one last question, if I may, then I’ll leave you in peace. How soon after the fire was extinguished did you realize that the child’s body had been completely destroyed?’

  The two men looked at each other. Blake’s frown had deepened.

  ‘The fire burned for several hours, I understand,’ Evi went on. ‘Even after it was extinguished, you w
ould have had to be sure the structure was safe.’

  ‘The upper floor collapsed,’ said Blake.

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ said Evi. ‘So you would have had to search through the wreckage, it must have taken quite some time, before you were sure.’ And all that time, Gillian had been traipsing over the moors, willing herself to keep believing. ‘Before you were sure the fire had obliterated the child’s body.’

  ‘Dr Oliver, it’s very rare for bodies to be completely destroyed in fire. Very rare indeed,’ said Earnshaw.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t quite …’

  ‘People who imagine otherwise don’t know their chemistry,’ said Blake. ‘When bodies are cremated, they’re exposed to temperatures of around 1,500° Fahrenheit for at least a couple of hours. Even then, you’ll still find human remains among the ashes. Most structural fires, particularly in a residential house, don’t burn hot enough or long enough to destroy a body. The house itself just doesn’t provide enough fuel.’

  ‘In this case, of course, the fire did get very hot because of the Calor gas acting as a fuel supply,’ said Earnshaw.

  ‘And is that why the little girl’s remains …’

  ‘We found her the next day,’ said Blake. ‘Very little left, of course, but even so … What made you think her remains weren’t found?’

  Evi’s hands had flown to her mouth. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she managed. ‘I’ve been completely misinformed.’

  ‘What we found was very similar to what we’d expect after a cremation,’ said Blake. ‘Ashes and bone fragments. They were identified as human. There wasn’t really any doubt that we’d found the child.’

  ‘And what happened to the remains?’

  ‘They were given to the family,’ said Earnshaw. ‘To the mother, from what I can remember.’

  36

  21 October

  ‘WHY DO YOU THINK YOUR PARENTS WANTED YOU TO see me, Tom?’ asked the doctor with sleek dark hair and thick black eyelashes. Evi, he’d been told to call her. She looked like one of his sister’s Russian dolls, with her pale, heart-shaped face and big blue eyes. She was even wearing the same colours as Millie’s dolls: a red blouse with a violet scarf.

  Tom shrugged. Evi seemed nice, that was the worst thing, nice in a way that made him want to trust her. Trust her was something he really couldn’t do.

  ‘Has something been worrying you?’ she was asking him now. ‘Is anything making you anxious in any way?’

  Tom shook his head.

  Evi smiled at him. He waited for her to ask him another question. She didn’t, just kept looking and smiling at him. Behind her head, a large window showed a sky so dark it was almost black in places. Any minute now it was going to tip it down.

  ‘How are you getting on at your new school?’ she asked.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Can you tell me the names of some of your new friends?’

  She’d tricked him, she’d asked him the sort of question he couldn’t answer with a yes, no, OK or a shrug. Friends were OK, though, he could talk about friends. He could talk about Josh Cooper, he was OK.

  ‘Are any boys at school not your friends?’ she asked, when they’d talked about boys in Tom’s class for a few minutes.

  ‘Jake Knowles,’ Tom answered, without hesitation. Jake Knowles, his arch enemy, who had somehow found out that Tom was seeing a special doctor and had made his life extra miserable about it for days now. According to Jake, Tom was destined for the madhouse, where they tied you up and kept you in a padded cell and sent electric shocks through your brain. The special doctor would see he was nuts and send him away and he’d never see his mum and dad again. Worst of all, he wouldn’t be able to look after Millie. He wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on Joe.

  ‘Do you want to talk to me about what happened a week ago last Saturday?’ Evi was asking him now. ‘When something frightened you and you ran into the churchyard?’

  ‘It was a dream,’ said Tom. ‘Just a bad dream.’

  37

  MILLIE HAD CLIMBED DOWN THE BACK STEPS INTO THE garden. She pushed herself upright and looked all around. When her eyes found the yew tree her little face lit up. She set off towards it.

  ‘Millie!’ Tom had appeared at the back door. ‘Millie, where are you going?’ He jumped down and crossed the garden to his sister in three strides, then bent to pick her up.

  ‘Millie shouldn’t be out on her own,’ he said, as she started to squirm and he carried her back to the door.

  Millie looked back at the yew tree as she was carried indoors and the door was firmly closed behind the two children. She wasn’t allowed to be alone any more, not even for a minute.

  38

  23 October

  ‘SCHIZOPHRENIA IS QUITE RARE,’ SAID EVI. ‘ONLY AROUND 1 per cent of the population develop it, and it’s only in a very few of those cases that we see an onset of symptoms before the age of ten. Most importantly, neither you nor your husband have any family history of the illness.’

  It was Evi’s first meeting alone with Alice Fletcher, in the family’s large, colourful sitting room. The two boys, both of whom she’d already met individually, were at school, Millie upstairs napping. So far, it was proving to be an unusual meeting. From the outset, Alice had almost seemed determined to charm her son’s psychiatrist. She’d shown an interest in Evi personally, which patients, normally rather self-obsessed, rarely did. She’d tried to make her laugh, had even succeeded a couple of times. And yet it was so clearly a facade, and a fragile one at that. Alice’s hands had shaken too much, her laughter had seemed forced and before the meeting was twenty minutes old she’d broken down and confided her fear that Tom was suffering from COS, or child-onset schizophrenia.

  ‘But these voices …’ she was saying.

  ‘Hearing voices is just one symptom of schizophrenia,’ said Evi firmly. ‘There are quite a few others, none of which Tom appears to have.’

  ‘Like what?’ demanded Alice.

  ‘Well, for one thing, his emotional reactions seem quite normal. I’ve seen no evidence of what we call thought disorder. And other than his insistence on this little girl – who he still hasn’t mentioned to me, by the way – there’s no sign of any delusional behaviour.’

  Alice Fletcher interested her, Evi decided. A long way from her own home, she, more than the rest of the family, might be expected to find it hard to settle in Heptonclough. The question was, how much of the children’s problems were the result of their picking up on the mother’s anxieties?

  ‘Even when schizophrenia is diagnosed in childhood,’ Evi continued quickly, ‘it’s nearly always preceded by other diagnoses.’ She started ticking them off on her fingers. ‘Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Bipolar Mood Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Do you know what any of these conditions—’

  ‘Yes,’ interrupted Alice. ‘And the OCD, the obsessive compulsive thing, that fits too. Tom goes round the house every night, checking and re-checking the locks on all the doors and windows. He has a list. He ticks things off one by one and he won’t go to bed until he’s gone through it. Sometimes he gets up in the night and starts running through the list again. What’s that all about?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ said Evi. ‘But I have noticed Tom’s anxiety about his little sister. Joe shares it too, incidentally, although he may just be picking up on Tom’s fears. Have they seen something on the news, do you know, something to make them especially anxious about her right now?’

  Alice thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘They only watch children’s television. Several times I’ve found him asleep on Millie’s bedroom floor.’

  Evi glanced down at her notes. ‘Just to come back to this little girl, for a while,’ she said. ‘Because from what you’ve told me, most of what’s bothering Tom seems to centre around her. Is it possible that there is someone in town who just looks a bit odd, maybe behaves in a strange way? Have you thought about that?’

  Alice nodded. ‘O
f course,’ she said. ‘And I have asked a couple of people. Not many, I don’t want everyone to know what we’re going through, but I did have a quiet word with Jenny Pickup. And with her grandfather, Tobias. They’ve lived here all their lives. They’d never heard of anyone remotely fitting the description Tom gives.’

  Alice paused for a moment.

  ‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘Tom talks about this little girl as though she’s barely human, the sort of thing we see in nightmares. This is a strange town, Evi, but harbouring monsters? How likely is that?’

  39

  27 October

  HARRY WAS GETTING CLOSER TO THE TOWN. THE silhouettes of the great stone buildings were bigger every time he turned another bend in the road. Over his left shoulder a firework burst in the sky. He slowed the car a fraction more. He’d always loved fireworks. Maybe on 5 November he’d drive up the moor again, park the car and watch the fireworks exploding from a hundred different bonfire parties, stretching all the way across the Pennines.

  The tarmac of the road gave way to cobbles and he turned the last corner that would bring him into town. Gold stars burst in the sky to his left and he was looking at them, not at the church, as he drew up and parked. He switched off the engine and got out of the car.

  He’d been visiting one of his oldest parishioners. Mrs Cairns was in her nineties and almost bed-ridden. Afterwards, her daughter and husband had insisted he eat with them. By the time he left it was nearly nine o’clock and he still had to collect the church accounts from St Barnabas’s.

  His feet had just made contact with the smooth stones of the church path when he knew something was wrong. He’d never considered himself a particularly sensitive man, but this feeling wasn’t one he could ignore. He knew he had to turn round and face the ruined church. And he really wasn’t sure he could bring himself to do it.

  He had turned. He was looking. He just didn’t believe what he was seeing.

  The ancient ruins of the abbey church were still there. The great arches still soared upwards, towards the purple sky. The tower, tall and forbidding, cast its shadow across the ground. Everything was just as it had been since the day he’d arrived. Pretty much as it had been for several hundred years. Only the figures were new. Sitting in window frames, leaning against pillars, sprawled along the top of arches, squeezed into every conceivable gap in the stonework were people. They sat, stood, leaned, sprawled, still as statues, mouths leering, eyes staring, surrounding him. Watching.