Grey Ladies

by William Stafford

  A flash of grey disappeared around the corner of a building on the industrial estate opposite the flats.

  Brough went cold. He found the energy from somewhere to propel himself at speed to the front door. He fumbled the key into the lock and pushed the door open with his shoulder, slamming it shut behind him almost before he had got through it. He scaled the stairs to his flat, scrambling with his hands and feet.

  Why am I so terrified? he wondered. I don’t believe in ghosts. Do I?

  The events of the previous case had forced Brough to question his beliefs of what exists and what doesn’t. At the time, his father had counselled denial. Put it out of your head and get on with your life. It’s the only way to deal with such things.

  That...experience hadn’t involved a ghost. It had been a - a - Brough still didn’t know how to categorise or quantify what had happened. A man had been convicted and banged up. That was all anyone cared about.

  He lay on the floor, getting his breath back.

  Should he call Dad? Should he tell the old boy what was going on?

  No. Chief Constable Peter Brough (retired) would tell him to bloody well grow up and get a grip. Brough could almost hear the lecture now.

  He sat up, leaning against the back of the sofa. There was something comforting in that. Even though he was on the first floor, he was wary of someone (something!) peering in through the window.

  He wrestled his phone from his jacket. Three missed calls and a text, all from Alastair.

  Alastair!

  There was someone he could turn to!

  Brough pressed the little green telephone icon. Seconds later, Alastair was on the line.

  “Hey!” The enthusiasm in his voice both pleased and annoyed Brough. How wonderful to hear but yet how uncomfortable it was to let someone get close.

  “Hello,” said Brough, considerably less exuberantly. “Sorry I missed your calls. Been busy.”

  “I heard. No doubt I’ll be meeting the next poor sod tomorrow.”

  “I’ll give you a head start. She was stabbed through the back.”

  “Nice.”

  There followed a silence.

  “Al?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you...” Brough was having difficulty broaching the subject, “do you...”

  “Do I what? My answer is every night while thinking of you.”

  “Heh. No, I mean, do you - still have that leaflet about the ghost walks around the castle?”

  “Oh! Well, I wasn’t expecting that. Um, yes, yes, I have. It’s right here.”

  “Good. When’s the next one?”

  “Um...” He listened to Alastair open the leaflet and turn it over. “Oh. Not until October. It’s more of a winter thing. Dark nights and a chill in the air, I suppose.”

  “Ah. Oh.”

  “What’s all this interest in ghost walks all of a sudden? I thought you said it was all rubbish.”

  “It is. I’m just trying to cover all the angles.”

  Another silence.

  Alastair asked what he was doing.

  “Nothing.”

  Alastair asked if he could come over.

  “I’m knackered.”

  “This is rubbish,” Alastair complained. “If you moved in here, we’d at least be under the same roof -”

  “I’ve got to go,” Brough cut him off before he could go down that old road again. “Goodnight!”

  He hung up quickly. Should go to bed, he thought. But his mind was racing.

  He crawled around the sofa and across the floor to the window. He reached up to twirl the stick that closed the blinds. When he was sure he was safe from observers, clad in grey or otherwise, he stood up straight, feeling ridiculous in his own living room. He grabbed the laptop and fired it up. He spent the next hour looking up Dedley Castle and its history. The website also yielded contact details for the resident historical expert, a Doctor Adrian Lawson.

  Brough entered the telephone number into his phone. Doctor Lawson would be receiving a call first thing.

  Brough went to bed. It was still unmade from the night before. He got undressed and flopped onto the mattress and caught a whiff of Alastair’s after shave and of their love-making.

  Damn. Brough castigated himself for being too abrupt. He would do some fence-mending in the morning. And put the bedclothes in the washing machine.

  Sleep absorbed him before he could make any more plans.

  ***

  Across town, Miller sat staring at the stacks of cardboard boxes that were taking over the house. Still so much packing to be done but sod it. It was late and she was exhausted. The packing could wait. It wasn’t as though there’d been any interest in the house.

  She opened her hand to look yet again at what she was holding, at what D S Woodcock had slipped to her just as they were leaving the Dorothy Beaumont.

  A business card. His business card. He had scrawled his mobile number across it in wobbly biro. Miller had already committed this number to her phone. And to her memory.

  Why had he provided this information? Did he expect her to use it?

  Was this all in the interests of sharing intelligence and team work?

  Miller replayed the scene in her mind, along with their walk to the car park from earlier. What did those looks he gave her mean? Come on, Mel, she urged herself. You’re supposed to be a detective!

  She decided to make cocoa before bedtime. She shuffled to the kitchen, passed the boxes that made the hall narrower. Without thinking she took two mugs from the tree and almost spooned brown powder into both of them before she remembered her mother wasn’t there.

  Poor Mum! Miller smirked and then felt ashamed for being amused at what had happened.

  That unfortunate incident with poor old Harold and the continuing murders of the staff indicated that the Dorothy Beaumont rest home was perhaps not the best place for her mother to reside in.

  She’s not coming back here!

  The speed at which the thought sprang to her mind caused Miller to blush with guilt.

  As she poured boiling water into her mug and stirred the lumpy powder until it dissolved, Miller told herself the reasons for putting Mum (away) in a home were still valid. She was just in the wrong home, that was all. Nothing else had changed.

  Miller looked at the business card again. Was this the start to the new life she was so keen to embark on?

  Maybe.

  She resolved not to read too much into it. She sipped at her cocoa and winced as it scalded her lip.

  She had been hurt like that before.

  10.

  “I don’t see how I can help you, Detective Inspector.”

  Doctor Adrian Lawson was not what Brough had been expecting. He couldn’t be further from the becardiganed and dishevelled academic of Brough’s imagination. There was not a stitch of Harris Tweed about the man. At first glance he seemed a much younger man with his Beatles haircut and boyish manner but closer up, the ravages of age were discernible, making the mop of hair a signifier of his eccentricity.

  He explained the safari suit and pith helmet as necessary for the school trips that descended on the castle. History is an adventure, apparently. And also it went with the zoo. Brough nodded but he suspected Lawson’s everyday clothes wouldn’t differ greatly from this costume.

  “I wasn’t here when that poor woman took a tumble on the stairs. I was in a meeting with the council. Buggers want to cut our subsidy again. Bastards. They know full well this place is the town’s biggest draw. People come from all over and our research programme is up there with the best of them...” he raised his hands, giving up. “You haven’t come here to hear about my funding problems.”

  “No,” said Brough. “I was wondering what you made of the reports th
at an old woman was sighted and apparently chased the victim into the tower.”

  “Oho!” Lawson laughed. The skin around his eyes crinkled. He was suddenly fuelled by enthusiasm, keen to expound on his specialism and rattle on about something more interesting than funding wrangles.

  He beckoned with his head for Brough to walk along with him around the castle’s central courtyard.

  “There are many stories in this place, Inspector. As you might expect, a place this old has had a chequered history but there does seem an uncanny - you might say - and disproportionate number of tales of supernatural goings on. Of course, for us it’s another lure to wiggle about in front of the tourists. Get them here with the promise of spooks and then get them hooked into the real history. Did you know, this place was a key Royalist stronghold during the Civil War?”

  “Um, no...” Brough was keen to keep Lawson on track. “So, you don’t believe the ghost stories then?”

  Lawson shook his head. The pith helmet didn’t quite move in tandem with it.

  “My belief or non-belief is immaterial,” he smiled. “It’s not about proof or not proof. As I say, the stories are to attract the punters. It’s all money in the coffers, you see. But the stories are authentic. That is to say we haven’t fabricated them out of thin air. These stories go back centuries. Reports of sightings all agree. People who haven’t heard the stories report seeing the same things as those who have.”

  “Hmm.” Their stroll had brought them around the courtyard to the Grey Lady Cafe. It was closed - Brough had come before opening time, as soon as Lawson had agreed to see him, using the urgency of a murder inquiry to get immediate access to the expert.

  “This Grey Lady...” Brough tried to sound casual. “Can you tell me about her, for example?”

  “Oho!” Lawson clapped his hands together and rubbed them with glee. “She’s a corker. One of our star players. Hence the dubious honour of having a cafeteria named after her.

  “I mentioned the castle was involved in the Civil War. The place was besieged, in fact, causing most of the damage to the buildings you can see today. We’ve got a couple of the cannons. For display purposes only, I hasten to add. They’re on the other side of the keep, to blast away at any marauders approaching from the town.”

  “The Grey Lady?” Brough prompted, fearing Lawson might launch into a history lecture which, fascinating though it might turn out to be, was not what he wanted to hear.

  “Wife of the incumbent lord. Place was under siege. She gave birth but the child did not survive. The grief of it drove her mad. Being cooped up didn’t help either, I suppose. She became ill. As she lay dying she expressed her wish to be buried with the child and for her husband to attend her funeral.

  “Well, what with one thing and another - there was a war on, remember - Hubby didn’t go to the funeral. The surrounding soldiers allowed the service and the burial to go ahead at the church down the bottom of the hill. But Hubby didn’t go. And, it’s reckoned, she wasn’t buried with her poor kiddy either. Naturally, or rather supernaturally, she got pissed off and has been roaming around the place ever since. Looking for the baby. Angry with her husband.”

  “Hmm,” Brough nodded. There was little to this he hadn’t heard already. “And where is she seen, Doctor? Where does she walk?”

  “Oh, well, we’ve walked most of her route already. All along there. Through here and on the stairs up there.”

  Brough glanced around the quad and to the spiral staircase as Lawson pointed out the route. The keep was closed to the public. The police tape had been replaced with a less sensational or worrying sign. Closed until further notice.

  “And what does she look like?”

  Lawson made a shrug as if to say Brough’s guess was as good as his. “I’ve never seen her,” he shook his head in theatrical sadness at this confession. “That pleasure still awaits me. But by all accounts, she’s a miserable thing. Sometimes she’s clearer than others. At others, she’s little more than a sort of blue glow.”

  “Oh?”

  Lawson patted the nearest wall as though petting a horse. “All this lovely old stone, Inspector. It has certain properties. You might be too young but do you remember cassette tapes? Well, recording sound on those is very similar, in my view, to what people think of as ghosts and ghoulies. What are those tapes but magnetised strips, coated with iron oxide? The sound is reproduced when you pass that tape through the correct kind of equipment. I think, and I’m not alone in this line of reasoning, that a ghost is nothing more than a tape recording in stone. When the conditions are right, the image is replayed, provided you’re got the correct kind of equipment,” he tapped his head, “to receive it.”

  Brough was puzzled. He supposed it made a sort of sense but again it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

  “So, this woman or recording of a woman, has she been seen anywhere else?”

  It was Lawson’s turn to frown. “I would think it unlikely. These things tend to be site specific. You won’t get a recording to work in another player. Not in this instance, I mean.”

  “Hmm.” This was unsatisfactory. The recording theory didn’t match up with Brough’s experience. His glimpses of a grey female figure at various points around the town didn’t tie in with Lawson’s explanation.

  “You seem troubled, Inspector?” Lawson suddenly gripped Brough’s forearm. “Have you seen her?”

  Brough gave a nervous laugh. “No, no, of course not. Just covering all the angles.”

  He pulled his arms free of the doctor’s grasp. Weirdo.

  “You don’t think there’s some spook behind that poor woman’s demise?” Lawson gestured towards the staircase. “Has modern policing come to this?”

  Brough reddened. “No, of course not. Thank you for your time.”

  Doctor Lawson watched the detective walk along the central path towards the archway at the far end of the courtyard. “I’m a rationalist, Inspector!” he called after him. “I suggest you adopt the same point of view!”

  Brough didn’t acknowledge these words. He kept walking. The grey, broken buildings that surrounded him were making him uneasy. At any of the empty windows, the Grey Lady might appear.

  He couldn’t get away fast enough.

  ***

  He walked at a brisk pace away from the zoo and up into the town. He made his way to the police station. He could shut himself away in there with his thoughts for a while and it would give rise to fewer questions from Miller if she picked him up from there rather than at the zoo. He didn’t want her to know about his impromptu enquiries.

  So much for sharing intelligence.

  The hobby bobby on front desk duty tipped him a half-hearted salute.

  “Alright, sir? Did you forget summat?”

  “I’m sorry?” What was the idiot blithering about?

  “Only they’ve been and shifted everything down the road. Giving us a rec room up there. Pool table, the lot.”

  “Oh, are they?” Brough stomped up the stairs. ‘Down the road’ meant Regional HQ. He hurried along to the office - his office!

  The door was open. Pop music blared from a tinny radio. Dustcloths covered the furniture which had been moved to the centre of the room.

  Two burly men Brough recognised as volunteers were pouring tea from a thermos. Their overalls were spattered with the paint they were using to transform the room from a place of work to some kind of social arena.

  Brough came to a halt, blinking open-mouthed at the wall he had been wont to use to sort his thoughts out. It was bare and shining with freshly applied emulsion.

  One of the painters held out the flask and a plastic cup, offering the nice inspector some tea.

  The nice inspector growled and swore but his words were swallowed up by the loud music. The nice inspector snatched up the radio and dropped it in
to a bucket of paint.

  The painters looked at each other.

  “Don’t like the colour?” said one.

  ***

  Brough stomped out of the police station - if he could still refer to it as such. What was it now, a clubhouse? - and telephoned Miller. He was enraged to have to leave her a voicemail, asking her to pick him up from the cafe opposite the cop shop. What was she doing, not answering her phone? It was unprecedented!

  He rang Regional HQ, demanding to speak to Karen Wheeler about this outrageous intrusion. A bit of warning would have been nice, he wanted to say. But switchboard didn’t know where Chief Inspector Wheeler was at that moment. A meeting or summat.

  Brough almost threw his phone into oncoming traffic but stopped himself before he made this rotten day any more inconvenient.

  He ordered a double espresso and sat near the window, hoping to spot Miller’s car before he actually had to drink the unappealing stuff.

  Hawaii 5-O sang out. Brough fumbled to silence it, embarrassed, but none of the other patrons took a blind bit of notice.

  Alastair.

  Brough felt a pang of guilt. He hadn’t called to make amends for his abruptness. It looked as though Alastair had forgiven him. Perhaps. Or he was calling to give him a piece of his mind. Or to finish things.

  Brough answered with trepidation.

  “Inspector,” Alastair said in his professional voice, “I have finished the autopsy on the stabbing victim. If you’re interested.”

  He hung up before Brough could respond.

  Shit.

  Hurry up, Miller.

  ***

  Miller could tell Brough was in a bad mood as soon as he got in her car. The grunt with which he replied to her cheery ‘Morning!’ was a big clue. The way he stabbed the seat belt clip into the um, whaddyacallit, holster was another.

  They rode in silence down the hill to Regional HQ. This suited Miller. Time to sort her thoughts out and to replay one more time the looks Woodcock had given her and to search his words for double meanings. Every turn of her wheels brought her a little closer to where he was.