He was nuts. And she had to stop smiling, she was just encouraging him. ‘You’re three days too early,’ she pointed out.
He turned to her, his arm sliding along the back of her seat. He was inches away. She could smell the beer he’d drunk at the Fletcher’s. ‘In three days I couldn’t have been sure of having you with me,’ he said. ‘Do you dance?’
‘Do I what?’
‘Dance. You know, move your body in time to music. I chose this track specially.’
Evi listened for a second. ‘Dancing In The Dark,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘My mum used to play this. Where are you …?’
Harry had climbed out of the car and was walking round the front of the bonnet. He held open her door and offered his hand.
Evi shook her head. Definitely nuts. ‘I can’t dance, Harry. You’ve seen me. I can barely walk by myself.’
As though he hadn’t heard, he reached across her to turn up the volume. Then he’d taken her by both arms and was lifting her out of the car. Evi opened her mouth to tell him it wouldn’t work, she hadn’t danced in years, they’d both end up sprawled on the ground, but with his arm wrapped tightly around her waist, she found she could walk quite easily across the few remaining feet of farm track and on to the rock of the Tor. He took her right hand in his, his other arm stayed round her waist to hold her up. His jacket wasn’t fastened. His hand felt like ice. Holding her tightly against him, he began to move.
The old-fashioned cassette player seemed to distort the music somehow, making the drumbeat louder, more insistent than she remembered. And it was ridiculously loud, they’d be able to hear it in the town … but impossible to worry about that, to think about anything but Harry, who danced like he was born to it, holding her up without effort, singing softly in her ear.
The wind blew her hair across his face, he tossed his head and pulled her into the curve of his shoulder and still they kept moving, swinging backwards and forwards in a four-time movement, on the hard rock of the Tor. And she’d thought she’d never dance again.
‘The singing, dancing priest,’ she whispered, when she sensed the track coming to an end.
‘Played in a band at university,’ said Harry, as the vocals faded and the notes of the saxophone curled out across the moor. ‘We used to do some Springsteen covers.’
The sax drifted away. Harry dropped her hand and wrapped both arms around her. She could feel the heat from his neck against her face. This was insane. She could not get involved with him, both of them knew that, and yet here they were, on what felt like the tip of the world, clutching each other like teenagers.
‘I’ve had a very weird day,’ he whispered, as a new track started.
‘Want to talk about it?’ she managed.
‘No.’ She felt a soft brushing on her neck, just below her ear, and couldn’t stop herself shivering.
‘You’re cold,’ he said, straightening up.
No, I’m not. Don’t let go of me.
He stepped back, one arm dropped away, he was taking her back to the car. She stopped him with a hand on his chest. ‘I’m not cold,’ she said. ‘Why are you a priest?’
For a second he looked surprised. ‘To serve the Lord,’ he replied, looking down at her, then up at the sky. ‘Was that rain?’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I need more than that. I need to understand what makes a man like you become a priest.’
He was still smiling but his eyes looked wary. ‘That’s a lot to ask on a first date. And that was definitely rain. come on, back in the car.’
She allowed him to lead her back to the passenger seat and hold the door open until she was sitting down again.
‘You said this wasn’t a date,’ she pointed out, as he joined her in the car and twisted round in the seat to refasten the roof in place.
‘I lied,’ he muttered, locking the hood and switching on the engine. Then he seemed to change his mind and switched it off again.
‘I never intended to become a minister,’ he said. ‘I come from a working-class family in Newcastle who weren’t churchgoers and it simply never occurred to me. But I was bright, I got a scholarship to a good school and I met some very impressive teachers. History was my thing, religious history in particular. I became fascinated by organized religion: its rituals, history, art and literature, symbolism – everything really. I did religious studies at university, not theology.’
She waited for him to go on. ‘What happened?’ she asked, when he didn’t. ‘You had a road-to-Damascus moment?’
He was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, he wasn’t comfortable talking about this. ‘Sort of,’ he said. ‘People kept telling me that I’d make a good priest. There was just this little problem of faith.’
The rain came from nowhere, thudding down on the soft roof of the car like small stones. ‘You didn’t believe?’ she asked.
He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I was almost there,’ he said. ‘I could tell myself that I believed in all the distinct parts, but they were still just a whole load of separate theories. Does that make any sort of sense?’
‘I think so,’ said Evi, although it didn’t really.
‘And then one day, something happened. I … saw the connection.’
‘The connection?’
‘Yep.’ The engine was on again, he was reversing away from the Tor’s edge. ‘And that is all you’re going to see of the inner man for one night, Dr Oliver. Fasten your seatbelt and prepare for take-off.’
They drove down the moor at a speed that had Evi wishing she believed in a deity she could pray to: for her own personal safety. She didn’t dare try to talk to him again, to say anything that might distract him. Besides, she’d just been ridiculously indiscreet. How could she tell herself she wasn’t involved with him, when she knew that the skin of his neck smelled of lime and ginger, and the exact point on his chest her lips would touch if she leaned towards him?
Within minutes of the rain starting, small streams were racing down the sides of the road. A quarter of an hour later, they’d left the moor and were depressingly close to her house.
‘So where do we go from here?’ asked Harry as he turned into her road.
‘I’m seeing Tom later this week,’ she said. ‘He seems to be relaxing more around me now. Maybe he’ll open up a bit. If he’d just admit the existence of—’ Harry had stopped the car outside her building.
‘I wasn’t talking about the Fletchers,’ he said, in a voice that seemed to have dropped an octave.
‘I should go,’ she said, bending down to find her bag. ‘I have an early start in the morning and … it was a good suggestion about tonight. Thank you, I think it will help.’ She turned her back on him and found the door handle, conscious of being watched. She was going to have to do this quickly, she could call goodnight over her shoulder as she walked up the path. It was a short path, hardly two yards to the porch.
The engine fell silent. Behind her, Harry’s door was opening. He was much faster than she was, he would make it round the car before she was even standing up. Yes, there he was, holding out a hand, and was there any point in telling him she could manage? Probably not, and in any event, this was a new Harry, with darker eyes and who seemed to have grown taller; a Harry who didn’t speak, whose arm was around her waist as he hurried her along the path, through the downpour, to the shelter of the porch. Definitely a new Harry, who’d turned her to face him, whose fingers were reaching into her hair and whose head was bending towards her as the world went dark.
Oh, this couldn’t be a kiss – this was a butterfly, bruising its wings against her mouth, settling lightly on the curve of her cheek, the point where the smile begins.
Was this a kiss? This soft stroking of the lips? This crazy feeling that she was being touched everywhere?
And this certainly couldn’t be a kiss, not now that she was spinning away into a place lined with dark velvet. Hands were tangled in her hair – no, one was at the small of her back, pressing her cl
oser. The rain against the porch roof felt like drums in her head. Fingers stroked the side of her face. How could she have forgotten the smell of a man’s skin; or the weight of his body, pushing her against the wall of the porch? If this was a kiss, why were tears burning in the back of her eyes?
‘Do you want to come inside?’
Had she said that out loud? She must have done. Because they weren’t kissing any more, just close enough for it to make no difference and his breath was swirling around her face like warm mist.
‘There’s nothing I’d like more,’ he said, in a voice that was nothing like Harry’s.
The keys were in her pocket. No, they were in her hand. Her hand was reaching out for the lock; his was closing around it, slowing her down.
‘But—’ he said.
Why was there always a but?
He’d brought her hand back, was holding it to his lips. ‘We still haven’t done the pizza or the movie,’ he whispered. She could barely hear him above the rain.
And you are a priest, she thought.
‘And I really don’t want to rush this.’ He released her hand and tilted her chin upwards so that she was looking directly at him.
‘That’s rather sweet,’ she said. ‘And more than a little womanly.’
At that, Harry was back, grinning at her, scooping her up and holding her tightly against him. ‘There is nothing remotely womanly about me,’ he hissed into her ear, ‘as I fully intend to prove before too much longer. Now get inside, you baggage, before I change my mind.’
When the phone rang, Harry’s first thought was that he’d only just fallen asleep and that it would be Evi, asking him to come round. He turned over in bed, unable for the moment to remember which side the phone was on. You know what? Sod it. Sod the pizza, sod the movie, sod everything, he was going.
No, that side had the clock. It was 3.01 a.m. He turned over and reached out. He could be dressed in two minutes, at her place in ten. By 3.15 he could be …
‘Hi,’ he said, pressing the phone against his ear.
‘Vicar? Reverend Laycock?’ It was a man’s voice. An elderly man.
‘Yes, speaking,’ he said, his stomach cold with disappointment. He’d be going out after all, but not to a woman’s warm bed.
Someone was dying. Sex or death – the only reasons to call someone in the middle of the night.
‘Renshaw here. Renshaw senior. My son asked me to call.’
Tobias Renshaw, his churchwarden’s father, ringing him in the small hours?
‘My son apologizes for not calling himself, and for waking you, but I’m afraid you’re needed at St Barnabas’s straight away. You’ll see the police vehicles in the lane. When you arrive, you should make yourself known to Detective Chief Superintendent Rushton.’
49
3 November
SIMBA, MILLIE’S BLUE TEDDY BEAR, LAY ON HIS BACK AT THE bottom of the stairs. When Tom had seen him last, not five hours ago, he’d been clutched in his little sister’s arms. So either the soft toy had developed a taste for midnight strolls or something was very wrong. Tom ran across the landing to Millie’s room. The cot was empty.
Downstairs, a door slammed shut. Tom glanced towards his parents’ room. No time to do anything but yell as he ran across the landing, down the stairs and through the kitchen. He’d heard the back door. Whoever had Millie had only just left the house.
He felt a rush of cold air as he dodged his way around the kitchen table. The back door had bounced open again and the wooden floorboards of the cloakroom were wet. It was still raining hard outside and, even in the doorway, looking out over the mass of mud that was the back garden, the wind battered against him, sending volleys of ice-cold raindrops to soak his pyjamas.
His eyes weren’t used to the darkness yet. He screwed them up and could just about make out the churchyard wall and the laurel trees behind it. From the direction of the yew tree and Lucy Pickup’s grave, he heard a grunt.
Someone was out there. Someone with Millie.
‘Dad!’ he yelled. No answering shout. No choice really. He had to go out.
The relentless rain over the past few hours, together with all that had fallen over the previous day or two, had turned the garden into a swamp. Thick black mud surged over Tom’s feet as he stepped away from the shelter of the back door. A few more steps and he could see better. A black figure was trying to climb the wall but it was carrying something in one hand, something that looked like a large, black hold-all.
‘Dad!’ he yelled, as loud as he could, trying to send his voice in the direction of the house but not wanting to take his eyes off the figure at the wall. ‘Dad!’
His dad would never make it in time. Tom ran forward, sinking almost to his knees in mud, and was just in time to catch hold of one of the climber’s retreating legs. The girl – because who else could it be? – began kicking at him, but she was losing her grip on the wall. She made a grab upwards and gave one last kick that caught Tom off guard. Her booted foot connected with the side of his face and he let go. She gave a sort of leap and then she was lying spread-eagled over the top of the wall, kicking wildly as she scrabbled to her feet. She was almost away, but the black hold-all she’d been carrying was still at the foot of the wall.
She looked from it to Tom and then, with a sharp movement of her head, down at the wall she was standing on. She staggered, almost fell, and then jumped down on the other side.
The wall was moving. It wasn’t possible, but it was happening. The bulge of stones, which for years had held back tons of earth, seemed to swell. Tom watched first one stone, then another, then several, topple from the top and fall into the garden. Through the gap they left behind, earth began to spill over from the churchyard. One of the gravestones seemed to be sliding closer. Tom wanted more than anything to run but something was rooting him to the spot.
The bulge swelled more, like a pregnant woman about to give birth to something hideous. The black figure on the other side of the wall took a few steps back as more and more of the earth started to slide away.
Then the wall just burst apart like a tower built by a toddler. Stones flew everywhere and black liquid poured out in a thick torrent. The headstone nearest the wall – Lucy Pickup’s stone – slipped closer and closer and then fell, cracking in two as it landed not three feet from Tom. Earth poured over the slope where the wall had been and a stench of drains and rotting things almost choked him.
The girl was continuing to back away. Tom took a step forward and something landed heavily beside him, missing him by inches and throwing him off balance. Falling to the ground, he recognized the edge of a coffin, a fraction before the wood collapsed completely and revealed its occupant.
The skull grinned at Tom with tiny white teeth. Pieces of flesh, like old yellow leather, still clung to it. Tom scrambled away from the corpse, feeling the scream build inside his head and knowing that if he let it out he might never be able to stop.
A fresh flood of earth poured down on him, filled with pale-coloured objects that he knew could only be bones. He threw back his head and got ready to let the scream out when a beam of light hit his face and an arm grabbed his shoulder. Tom whirled round. A small figure, wearing a yellow raincoat with its hood pulled up tight and carrying a flashlight, knelt beside him. It was Joe.
Tom pushed himself to his feet. Everything in his head was yelling at him to get back to the house, wake his mum and dad, call the police. As he set off for the back door, Joe pulled him back.
‘No, wait,’ Joe shouted, straining to make himself heard above the wind. ‘We have to find her.’
‘It’s too late,’ Tom yelled back. Up in the churchyard there was no sign of the dark figure. ‘She’s gone. We have to get Mum and Dad.’
Joe shone the flashlight on the ground around their feet. Tom wanted to yell at him to stop. It was all so much worse when you could see it properly. The skull, now broken away from the rest of the corpse, lay a few yards away. Lucy’s tiny statue had fallen
along with the rest of her grave. Pieces of coffin were scattered around. He saw what he thought was a human hand, the finger bones clenched in a fist.
Joe seemed to be looking for something. At last, the torch flickered on the black bag which the intruder had tried to escape with. It was half buried beneath a pile of mud and stones. With a cry, Joe ran towards it and started tugging at the handles. Still desperate to get away, Tom had a sense that this might be important. Gingerly, he picked his way over to help.
With a glooping noise, the bag came free and the boys staggered backwards, still clinging to the straps. Joe dropped to his knees and started to tug at the zip. Squeaking with frustration, he finally managed to wrench it back. Then, in the pale light of the torch, Tom could see him grinning. He dropped to his knees beside his brother and peered inside. Millie lay in the bag. As the boys watched, her eyes flickered open. She blinked up at her brothers in astonishment as raindrops began to fall on her face.
50
SOMETHING WAS THUDDING LOUD INSIDE HARRY’S CHEST. Not his heart, though, his heart never made this sort of racket. Should he say something, tell them he knew the identity of one of the dead children?
It was almost painful, this pounding against his ribs. If it was indeed his heart, he had a serious problem. Hearts weren’t supposed to beat this hard.
He couldn’t say anything now, he’d sound ridiculous, hysterical even. Tomorrow would be soon enough. He glanced down to make sure he would step on matting, and moved away from the cordoned area. The white-clad figures around him got back to work.
The Fletchers’ back garden was a quagmire. Harry followed in Detective Chief Superintendent Rushton’s footsteps, along the loose-weave steel path that had been laid over the mud. Above their heads a makeshift PVC shelter was holding back the worst of the weather. Powerful lights on steel poles had been positioned in the four corners. Now that he was facing the house, Harry could see lights on in the downstairs windows. The blinds and curtains had all been drawn.
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