by Matt Hilton
It was Adam’s turn to say nothing.
‘It isn’t a permanent move,’ she told him. ‘It’s just for a few days. There’s something I need to check on, and I can’t do it here. Once I get back we can, well, maybe we can talk and…well, if you’d like to we can try again?’
‘And will this business with Swain be finished then?’
‘I can’t promise that,’ she admitted.
‘Maybe I can make things better.’ It was a change from his parting shot the last time they argued, when he claimed he couldn’t live his life like that. How he couldn’t handle her obsession with the dead.
‘I hope so,’ she said, and she meant it.
After that, more words became difficult. Kerry felt choked. She made an excuse she had to run, and she ended the call even as he mumbled a reluctant goodbye.
Her coffee was still hot but was as unappetizing as before. She binned it on the way into the station, and checked the huge digital timetable overhead. Her train was at a platform, currently boarding. She joined the rush of humanity as they raced for the best available seats.
Less than five hours later, Kerry stood under the same town hall clock she’d seen on the lunchtime news, toting her overnight bag and a fresh take-out coffee and muffin from a shop behind her. It was early evening, already dark, and the wide expanse of red brick that formed the pedestrianized town centre was empty but for a few club-footed pigeons late to roost. They pecked at imaginary crumbs at the base of a 17th century market cross on a stepped dais about fifty feet away. Aside from a couple of coffee shops, the city centre stores had closed, all the shoppers had gone home, and it was still too early on a Tuesday evening for the nearby pubs and bars to fill up. The scene was achingly familiar, but held little in the way of nostalgia. As a young teen she’d hung out with her friends at the base of the market cross, a hub from which the town could be viewed, and where the girls could eye up the boys. When she was a uniformed constable the city centre formed part of her beat, and she spent many long hours patrolling up and down the main strip, chasing shoplifters during the day and boisterous revellers at night. The incidents she’d dealt with were too numerous to single one out, and certainly none with a twinge of affection.
When moving from country to town, she’d at first been overwhelmed by urban life, and had thought Carlisle a massive metropolis. Coming home from a true metropolis, she saw how small and contained Carlisle actually was. It was a large town really, given city status by virtue of its —admittedly impressive — cathedral. Few people she’d met in London could pinpoint Carlisle on a map, thinking it Welsh, and her accent that of a Geordie. Like many people from northern Cumbria Kerry was proud of her heritage and fiercely patriotic, or at least she was until disembarking the train about half an hour ago at Carlisle’s Citadel Station. She’d felt like a stranger.
Twenty minutes before that, her train had stopped briefly at Penrith station. It was too dark, and her view blocked by the station buildings, to see the crumbling castle beyond. The events that had shaped her life since began that day at the ruins. She averted her face and closed her eyes until she felt the train move on, and the catalyst of her life’s quest was behind her. It wasn’t an attempt at blocking her memories, but in replaying them – she wanted them untainted by what she might see now if she looked. In her mind she was an eight-year-old tomboy, in ill-fitting wellington boots, drenched under a teaming downpour while her mam bleated in panic at a railway employee. Puttering past, a battered old Land Rover coughed blue diesel smoke, and watched by the ghost of one of his previous victims its bearded driver grinned at Kerry, displaying the yellow tusks of an ogre…or bogeyman?
Shaking that image had proven difficult, and it stayed with her until she arrived at Carlisle and walked to the coffee shop where her mind had gone to the need for sustenance. She sipped her steaming brew under the town hall clock, realising her haste to reach home had thrown stumbling blocks in her way. What should she do now and where the bloody hell should she start? She’d nowhere to stay and no transportation: both needed rectifying. Siobhan lived less than a mile away, on a housing estate in the town’s west end. She had no compunction of visiting her mam, let alone staying with her. Ideally, it would be better if she could be gone again from town before her mother heard, unless she had news Siobhan needed to hear.
Being a local, Kerry had never stayed at any hotel in her hometown, but she knew of many. She strolled to the market cross and sat on one of the time worn steps, scrolling through her options on a phone app while she finished her coffee, and ate the moist but almost tasteless muffin. In the end she booked a room at a bed and breakfast a short walk from where she sat, chosen because it was located a few hundred metres from a car rental business. Her stop in Carlisle was only fleeting, and she needed to be mobile again at first order.
45
She was wakened by a sense of being watched. As she stirred, in unfamiliar surroundings, it took a moment to get her bearings, and she sat up blearily, startling away the shadow looming alongside her bed. It didn’t matter that Girl had become a permanent presence throughout her childhood and early teens, she could still be perturbed by the ethereal figure when waking and finding it so close. It made her wonder too, just how near to her Girl got when she was asleep. Did she regularly stand over her, observing her when she was unaware, studying her? Did she ever sit on the bed next to her, or even slip under the sheets, seeking comfort and companionship? During her waking moments she’d caught glimpses of Girl slipping from sight before, but never from this close. Kerry trembled and had no idea why.
She left the bedside lamp off. There was no need for it. The B&B was situated alongside a well-lit main route into town, and there was enough ambient light streaming in through the thin curtains to see by. Kerry kept her head tilted to one side, using her peripheral vision to search for Girl. The darkness in one corner of the room was clotted, and she could make out an amorphous shape in the gloom. Resisting the temptation to view her directly, Kerry settled her vision dead ahead, then allowed it to unfocus. Girl’s shape coalesced.
‘How does it feel to be home?’ Kerry whispered, conscious of the thin walls and other guests sleeping only a few feet away.
Girl’s head raised a fraction, and there was something quizzical about her reaction.
‘I assume you’re originally from Cumbria,’ Kerry went on. ‘It’s where you first showed yourself to me.’
The only response was a slight tilting of Girl’s head. Desperately Kerry wanted to look directly at her. But she kept her gaze averted. She sat in the bed, holding the duvet cover over her chest. Nonthreatening. Nonjudgemental. ‘It was you who led me back here, wasn’t it? Not Swain. You showed yourself immediately after Bilan Ghedi was shot, before Swain died. You came to me then because you knew what was happening again here, and you needed to get my attention because other girls were in danger.’
Girl neither confirmed nor disagreed. She only stood, face draped with straggly hair. Foggy, indistinct, out of focus, there was still something about Girl that struck Kerry. Movement is easiest observed in the periphery, an inherited trait from when early humans were prey animals. Without concentrating on her, Kerry could spot the workings of Girl’s fingers as she clutched and released her shapeless dress. It was the nervous fidgeting of a guilty child caught with crumbs on their lips beside an empty biscuit barrel.
‘I wish you could talk to me. If only you could speak I might’ve stopped this from happening now. I might have stopped these girls being taken.’
Shamed, Girl’s head dropped.
‘I’m not blaming you, Girl. None of this is your fault. Maybe nothing could’ve been changed to stop that. The main thing is we are here now, and hopefully we’re not too late to stop him doing it again.’
Girl’s head rose. It was at Kerry’s use of the collective word: we. Her clutching hands released her dirty dress. She took a tentative step forward, and Kerry glanced at her. For the briefest instant she could see Girl’s sm
ile, and then she froze and was gone.
‘Speaking to yourself, Kezza? It’s the first sign of going crazy, you know?’
Coughing in scorn, her attention snapped on her unwelcome companion. Erick Swain wasn’t averse to being viewed head on. In fact, he demanded attention. He stood at the foot of the bed, his arms crossed, the handcuff dangling. He was translucent, but his internal glow ensured he was picked out against the dim background. He curled up his mouth at one side. Kerry clutched the duvet tighter to her chest.
‘You don’t have a monopoly on my madness,’ she snapped. ‘It’s the middle of the night, get out of here and scare some stray cats or something.’
He shrugged at the suggestion, then stroked his goatee in contemplation. ‘Interesting that you should say that. Certain cats do act as if they’re aware of my presence. Not dogs though. They don’t know I’m there. Well, I can only speak for Tyke. He had no idea when I went to see him.’
‘You visited your dog? When?’
‘After I asked you to make sure he went to a good home. Did finding Robson in Battersea give you the idea or what?’
She wouldn’t lie. She’d taken no part in rehousing his Border collie. ‘Until Hettie’s been to court we can’t rehome Tyke,’ she said. ‘So DS Korba arranged for him to stay at the dogs home in the meantime. He’ll be well looked after for now.’
‘Good ol’ Zorba the Greek. I knew he was a dog man that time he fussed with Tyke in the garden. Next time you see him, tell him thanks from me. I didn’t want Tyke going to any of Hettie’s lot.’
‘Do you know something, Swain. That’s possibly the first sign of humanity you’ve ever shown. It’s a shame you had to wait until after you were dead.’
His mouth flickered a smile. He lowered his arms, tucked a thumb in his waistband. Said nothing.
‘How do you suggest I tell Danny thanks from you? Don’t you think that could be tricky?’
‘Korba doesn’t judge you. You already told him about seeing me, and he didn’t jump to the same conclusion as Adam did.’
‘You’re right. He didn’t think I was going crazy, but that would change if I tried conveying messages from you to him. I value his friendship too much to risk it.’
‘Tell him you channelled me through a Ouija board, and I spelled out that he was a dog man and not a pussy like I first thought.’
‘You had to go and spoil the moment,’ she said with a shake of her head. It was faintly annoying that his words had amused her. ‘Any way, you didn’t follow me all the way here to talk about your dog.’
‘Where else did you expect me to be? I told you, Kezza, you’re stuck with me. I’m the jelly in your doughnut, as the Yanks would say.’
‘More like the pain in my arse.’
‘Tetchy!’
‘I’m like that when my sleep gets disturbed. Was there something you wanted, or can I get back to sleep now?’
‘I wasn’t the one nattering to myself. That was quite a discussion you had going with yourself, girl. Then you said you wished I could talk to you. Remember?’
A jolt went through her. Her conversation had been one-sided, and Swain had taken her reference to Girl as being aimed at her. Proof positive that he and Girl existed on different planes, and he was unaware of her. Not so Girl, she had sensed Swain before he showed.
‘I wasn’t speaking to you. I was…thinking out loud. How much did you hear anyway?’
‘Ah!’ He waved away her concern. ‘Not much. Just some self-pitying shit. Then about the main thing being we’re here now…’ He paused in thought. ‘What were you on about when you said it’s not too late to for us to stop him doing it again?’
She didn’t correct his misassumption. Let him believe she had referred to him. Maybe it would help loosen his tongue about what mattered if he thought they were a team. ‘He’s back,’ she said. ‘The Fell Man. He’s taken more little girls.’
His shoulders jerked, nonplussed.
‘You don’t care that he’s doing God-knows-what to more children?’
‘All I care about is seeing Robson’s corpse. I thought I’d made that clear enough.’
‘Oh, you did. And then I thought I saw a spark of humanity in you, when you needed to visit your dog to check he was OK. But I see now that was a blip. We’re talking about children, Swain! Little kids, being brutalised by a monster. How can you shrug it off as if it’s nothing? You once told me you hated nonces, well why protect this one?’
‘Who said I’m protecting him? Fuck the Fell Man. And fuck those little kids. Everybody I ever knew was a kid once and look at how they turned out!’
‘You are such a prick,’ she snarled. ‘Get out of here and leave me alone if you don’t want to help.’
He folded his arms again, set his tongue in his bottom lip as he considered. ‘You know, maybe I will leave you to it. See how you get on without my help, while I do something for myself for a change…’
‘Yeah. Please do. See how you get on. Let’s see who needs who most in this arrangement.’
After a moment, he grunted. ‘OK, then. If it means I have to prove a point, I’ll tell you this…’
She stared at him.
‘You saw him,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You saw him. That bloke who looked like Catweazle.’ Kerry was too young to get the pop reference. ‘The scruffy geezer with the beard down to here,’ he reiterated, while touching his chest.
‘You mean the man in the Land Rover, the one that grinned at me after Sally went missing?’
‘Talk about asking the obvious.’ Swain sneered. ‘I said once before you were a bit slow on the uptake, Kezza, but you need a bomb up your arse to get you into gear. Yes, I mean the creepy paedo in the Land Rover. But don’t you remember…you saw him near Penrith castle, but that wasn’t the first time you saw him, was it?’
Wasn’t it?
‘Think about it, Kezza,’ Swain said. ‘You’ve known all along where to find him. You saw him, and he saw you and your sister, and that’s where he fixated on Sally. He wasn’t at that castle by chance: where do you suppose he followed you from?’
And he was correct. She did know. Her heart stuttered in her chest, and her throat almost pinched shut. She’d known since she was eight years old where the Fell Man made his lair!
And with her shocking epiphany, Swain flickered out of existence like a doused flame.
46
Kerry drove west under leaden skies. She passed the immense sandstone edifice that was Carlisle’s historic Norman castle, and over the River Caldew, a source of some of the major flooding in Carlisle a few years back when Storm Desmond brought havoc to the region. Continuing west, she bypassed her old neighbourhood, and didn’t feel a twinge of regret for missing a visit with her mam. She passed her old secondary school, and experienced a worse sense of loss for it than her mother. The school she attended had been demolished, and a brand spanking, wood-cladded monstrosity built in its place. The school wasn’t the only major change she spotted. A northern by-pass to the M6 motorway had opened since last she was home, and a huge roundabout sat astride the boundary of town and country, where she only remembered green fields. Everything looked familiar, but different. She felt similarly, because after her sudden recollection that morning, she was a different person too.
The instant she remembered her first encounter with the Fell Man, Erick Swain had blinked out of existence. It was as if she didn’t need him anymore and so he left. Perhaps remembering was all it took to release his lingering spirit, and he’d gone to wherever he belonged — that was if she still accepted Elias Price’s assertion that spirits were real and wandered among the living. Now it was easy to be doubtful again. The more likely explanation was that he’d been a manifestation of her subconscious all along — a coping mechanism as Doctor Ron had assured her — and with her sudden epiphany his usefulness was at an end. In hindsight, Swain hadn’t solved the shooting case for her, and she could even convince herself now that it was
her own intuition that had led her to the warehouse where Funky and the other fugitives had taken cover. She was a DI with the Gangs and Organised Crime taskforce; she’d bet that she’d read somewhere in the intelligence they’d gathered on the Nine Elms Crew about the warehouse. So too the Power House, where she’d tracked Jermaine Robson to. It was a known hangout of his and perhaps it was a lucky guess and a large coincidence that he’d chosen to hide at the derelict gym. Even coming home to Cumbria needn’t have been through supernatural guidance, but a combination of being at a loose end and viewing the news report concerning the missing girls. At times it might appear he’d led her to decisions and conclusions, but that could easily be explained too: like Swain said, in his colourful fashion, sometimes she took a moment or two to catch on to what her mind had already shown her. What about the disturbances of the air, and the faint electrical discharge she sometimes experienced when he was around? They were psychosomatic, her brain causing physical bodily sensations to the uncanny and illogical nature of his appearances to her; surely anybody would sense a similar skin-crawling response to something menacing that defied explanation.
No, she thought, just stop. Stop pretending!
She had barefaced lied to Elias Price about her gift to communicate with the dead — he could call it a psychic ability, if he chose, but to her it had always been less of a super sense than something intrinsic to her being, as if her brain had been wired up differently. Growing up on a farm, she’d understood the nature of death at an earlier age than most other kids. From the age of four she could associate the sausages at breakfast with the pigs she’d helped feed in their pens, and the roast on Sundays with the lambs last seen gambolling in the fields. It was difficult to miss when her dad went out to the barn to slaughter their next meal. So, at age five, when Grandma Betty had visited her in her bedroom, she could also associate her with the frail old lady she’d last seen sitting in an overheated room in a nearby hospice. She understood that Grandma Betty was there in spirit, while her corporeal form lay devoid of any spark of life in the funeral parlour Siobhan had entrusted her to. After Grandma’s visitation she saw other spirits, ghosts, spectres, and could differentiate them from her imaginary friends deliberately conjured to block them out. Yes, from an early age she’d understood the truth of those apparitions, because in each instance every last one of them had wanted something from her, whether it was to impart a message to a loved one on the earthly plane, or to complete some mundane task left undone. Even Grandma Betty had wanted something from her, albeit only the parting gift of the kiss Kerry refused her at the hospice when she’d shied away from Grandma’s parchment thin lips and sour smell.