The Heights

by Juliet Bell

  Harry edged back along the hallway, leaving Heathcliff to his private grief. The draft licked past him round the door carrying the whisper of a name. ‘Heathcliff.’

  Harry shook his head. Old houses could play tricks on you sometimes.

  Lockwood strode up onto the blue hills. They were deserted, unsurprisingly given the wind that was lashing across the moors and down onto the town below. He pulled his coat tightly around him, and sat down on the cold grass, looking out over Gimmerton. From here he could see the Heights, and then the town and then the Grange estate, not quite built up enough to stop him from picking out the big old house at one corner. He turned his head to the west where the remains of the old mine site still sat, a squat and dirty blemish on the landscape. Ray Earnshaw had been a man who counted for something in this town, but he was gone, followed by both his kids, and both their partners. And now his grandson – if that’s even what Luke was. What sort of legacy was that?

  He reached into his pocket to pull out the twisted nail as his mind drifted back to the strike, to the night when, for him, this had all begun. ‘Ray Earnshaw’s kid,’ they’d said. He’d asked around about Ray and the consensus was that he was a decent bloke. He was the sort you might have gone for a pint with, before the strike had put the men and the police on different sides of a battlefield.

  It was over. He knew that. Whether it was through fear or loyalty, the Earnshaws had closed ranks. He wasn’t going to get anything new. He hadn’t even managed to prove a crime had definitely been committed. The original investigation into Luke’s death hadn’t looked too hard, because there wasn’t anything to look at. A seed of regret still burnt in his belly, though. It meant Heathcliff was getting away with it, like he always did, like he got away with the nail gun, like he got away with tormenting that girl Cathy, like he got away with whatever the hell he’d been doing all those years he disappeared into the wind. And that rankled. Too many people got away with it, and it was supposed to be Lockwood’s job to make sure they didn’t.

  Lockwood stared down at that house. If he strained his eyes he thought he could make out a figure at that back window. The wind dropped back for a second and he caught a hint of a voice drifting out over the moors. ‘Cathy! Cathy!’

  Seeing ghosts again most likely. A shiver ran down Lockwood’s spine. He’d thought he’d felt something, hadn’t he? That first night back in the village when he’d come to the back of the house. He remembered the feeling of the cold skin touching his, pulling him in, wanting him to fall into this abyss. Is that what he’d done? Had he let ghosts from the past drag him down? Lockwood stood up. It was time to accept that he’d tried. He’d tried and it wasn’t enough. He wasn’t going to be the man who saw Heathcliff Earnshaw behind bars. He was going to go home, collect his carriage clock and hope that something better came next. He’d leave Heathcliff to his demons. Perhaps he hadn’t got off so lightly after all.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  2008

  ‘Cathy. You’ve come back to me.’

  Heathcliff grabbed her by the shoulders, his eyes burning into her face. Kate froze. Terrified to move. She wanted to push him away, but she was too afraid. If he really thought she was his Cathy, there was no telling what he would do.

  ‘Cathy!’ He lifted one hand to touch her hair, and Kate shuddered.

  ‘Heathcliff…’ Harry slowly got up from the couch. ‘That’s not Cathy. That’s Kate. Cathy’s gone, Heathcliff.’ His voice was gentle.

  Heathcliff’s forehead creased in confusion and his grip on her shoulder loosened. ‘Gone. Where’s she gone? Up into the hills? Why is she going there without me? I have to catch her.’

  He turned around and a few seconds later Kate heard the door slam.

  Rubbing her arms, Cathy turned to Harry. ‘We can’t keep doing this. He’s mad. And he’s dangerous.’

  ‘He’s always been dangerous,’ Harry said.

  ‘Not like this. This isn’t like him hitting you. There’s no telling what he’s going to do.’

  ‘He’s family. I have to look after him.’

  Kate felt tears pricking the backs of her eyes. ‘You’ve got to help him. I just let my dad get sadder and sadder. And then he killed himself. I know that’s what he did. And I could have stopped him. I should have got help. The only way you’ll stop Heathcliff is to get him locked up. And then we’ll be safe too.’

  ‘It would kill him to be locked up in some nut house.’

  ‘Staying here is killing him too. And if we’re not careful, he’ll kill us as well.’

  Harry shook his head and turned away. Kate heard the door slam. Harry was following Heathcliff up onto the hills. He’d make sure he was all right and watch him until he came home again. They deserved each other.

  She stomped upstairs to her tiny bedroom and curled up under the blankets. The wind was blowing wildly off the moors. It moaned as it swept around the house, and a few times she thought she could hear voices in the wind. Heathcliff and Cathy calling.

  She buried her head under her pillow to stop the noise.

  Maybe Kate was right. Harry watched as Heathcliff strode in circles around the flat bit of the moor, his hands waving in animated conversation with a ghost. He was mad. He barely ate anything at all. Most of the time he had no idea what was going on around him. It was getting so bad, Harry was nervous leaving the house, especially when he had work and would be gone all day. He didn’t know what Heathcliff would do to himself.

  He didn’t know what Heathcliff would do to Kate.

  But how could he lock him up in a padded cell? That would break whatever was left of Heathcliff’s heart. He’d die if he was taken away from the place where he and Cathy had grown up together. A tiny voice deep inside Harry told him Heathcliff would die if he stayed here anyway.

  But he was family.

  So was Kate.

  Whatever he did, someone was going to get hurt. Harry wished it could be him, not one of them.

  Heathcliff stopped talking and raised his head, listening to a voice only he could hear. Then he turned and started walking back down towards the estate. Harry knew he was heading home. He’d go and sit in Cathy’s room now, talking to her until exhaustion took him. Harry started to get to his feet and then stopped. He didn’t want to go back there. But what else was he to do? Heathcliff needed watching. Harry stuck his hands in his pockets, and realised he still had a few pounds in cash. He could duck into town. To the chippie. Maybe if he brought home some fish and chips, he could convince Heathcliff to eat something. Kate too, although she’d probably be in bed. She went to bed early these days.

  If he had enough money, he could buy some beer. They could sit around the table and eat a meal like a real family. Just this once.

  He got to his feet and set off towards town. He’d have to be quick about it. Once Heathcliff locked himself in that small room, he wouldn’t be out until morning.

  He caught the chippie before it closed, but the Spar’s doors were already shut. He bought some Coke instead. That was probably a better idea than beer anyway. As he turned back towards the Heights, he saw the outline of the old Workingman’s Institute. That’s where he’d go tomorrow. Much as he didn’t want to, he’d talk to the social worker. Kate was right. Heathcliff needed more help than he could give.

  But first, there would be tonight. His steps quickened.

  As he turned the corner at the bottom of Moor Lane, he knew something was wrong. It took a few seconds for him to realise what it was. Smoke. He could smell smoke. His raised his eyes towards the end of the road. For a few seconds he saw nothing unusual, then a flicker of light caught his eye. Flames. Number 37 was on fire. The fish and chips slipped from his hands, the packet bursting open and strewing the special dinner across the footpath as he started to run.

  He flew up the road, his heart pounding in his chest. He flung himself through the gate and crashed through the door. Then he stopped.

  The house, both houses, were full of smoke. The electric
ity was off and the only light was the golden flicker on the walls around him. He could already feel the heat and hear the crackling of the flames, but he wasn’t entirely sure where the fire was. The kitchen seemed the most likely place. Had Heathcliff left the gas on?

  Heathcliff. He looked through the swirling smoke towards the stairs. Heathcliff would be up there in Cathy’s room. And Kate? She would be in her room too. And if she was asleep…

  Harry began to cough as the smoke burnt its way into his lungs. Which way?

  He turned and ducked through the archway into number 39.

  She could hear voices. Crying and sobbing. Or was it the wind? Was it Luke she heard calling her name? Or her father? There was another voice too. Mummy? She was alone and frightened and it was dark

  A hand grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her.

  She opened her eyes, and rolled over. ‘What?’

  Harry grabbed her hand. ‘Come on.’

  She rolled out of bed, breathlessly steadying herself with a hand against the wall. Then the smell hit her. Smoke.

  Harry pulled her by the arm into the hallway. She could see the smoke now as it curled and rose up the stairs. The light seemed to move and dance. Fear caught her. It wasn’t light. It was fire.

  Harry shoved her roughly in the back. ‘Quickly.’

  She stumbled down two steps and then three before her foot slipped under her, sending her crashing down the stairs, jarring her back and hitting her elbow against the wall. On the floor downstairs she slid to a stop. Instinctively she lifted her hand to her face. The smoke caught at the back of her throat and she started to cough again. The coughing made it worse as she gasped for air. She had to get to the door. She pulled herself onto her hands and knees and crawled forward, feeling her way along the carpet until she reached the painted wood. Then she started to rise, until she found the chain and the lock. She grasped the door handle and tried to turn it, but her fingers slipped. She tried to take a breath but there was no air left, just the smoke burning her throat. She started to slide down the door, back towards the floor. There was a mouthful of cleaner air there. She gasped and tried once more to open the door. As her fingers reached for the lock, another hand covered hers. ‘Move back.’

  She did as she was told, pressing her body against the wall as the door swung open, and then Harry grabbed her again, pushing her out onto the footpath. She rolled and lay for a second flat on the rough concrete, gulping in the clean night air. Harry came to a stop, kneeling beside her. ‘Are you okay?’

  She nodded.

  He turned away and stared back at the house. ‘Fire brigade.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Phone the fire brigade.’

  She shook her head. ‘No phone.’

  ‘Then go find one.’

  Kate pulled herself up onto her elbows. He was right. They needed to phone 999.

  Harry stood up and took a step back towards the fire.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Her voice was rough from the smoke, and for a moment she didn’t think he had heard her.

  ‘Heathcliff’s still in there.’ He staggered forward again.

  Paralysing fear gripped Kate. ‘You can’t.’ She grabbed him to pull him back. To keep him with her, because she needed him there.

  ‘I’ve got to.’ He turned back towards the burning house.

  ‘But…’

  He looked back at her over his shoulder. ‘But what?’

  She shook her head. ‘Just make sure you come out again.’

  He nodded, briefly, abruptly. ‘Get help. Now. Go!’

  Harry paused for a fraction of a second at the open doorway. He took a couple of deep breaths, ignoring the voice that told him this was madness; that he and Kate would be better off without Heathcliff. He pulled off his T-shirt and wrapped the fabric around his mouth and nose and dived back into the house. Head down, he forced his way through the wall of heat and through the archway into the house where he’d been born. Sweat poured from his body as he made his way to the bottom of the stairs. He’d been expecting flames, but all he saw was the flickering orange light. He pulled the T-shirt away from his mouth for an instant.

  ‘Heathcliff!’

  No reply. He covered his mouth again and started up the stairs. The smoke got thicker and darker as he climbed, forcing him to drop to his hands and knees. At the top he tried to crawl towards Cathy’s room. The heat stopped him. He raised one hand to protect his face, peering through the thickening smoke towards the bedroom where he knew Heathcliff would be. A gust of air from some open window cleared the smoke and, for a fraction of a second, Harry saw him. He was standing by the window of Cathy’s room, silhouetted against the moonlit sky.

  The smoke shifted, and he was gone. Harry tried desperately to drag air into his lungs. Heathcliff was alive. Harry could still save him. He tried to crawl, low on his elbows, but the heat and the smoke and the flames beat him back.

  He retreated down the stairs, struggling for breath. He needed to try another way. Cathy’s window. As a child he’d escaped that way out onto the moors. Maybe that was the way out for Heathcliff now.

  He darted out into the street, pulled the T-shirt away from his face and gasped a few deep breaths of clean sweet air. Then he forced himself to run, his lungs screaming at the exertion, around the fence at the back of the house into the laneway.

  Here the flames were clearly visible, dancing and darting around the open window of the smallest bedroom. Harry yelled as loudly as he could, and stared up, shielding his face against the blast of heat with his arm.

  ‘Heathcliff?’

  Was that a figure at the window? Harry’s cries were desperate now. He couldn’t let this happen. Heathcliff had never abandoned him. He’d never gone away. Harry wouldn’t give up on him now.

  ‘Heathcliff! Jump. For God’s sake, jump.’

  For a second he saw him, staring down towards Harry. Was it possible that their eyes met? Not father to son, but something like it. Harry’s breath pulled at his chest. He opened his mouth. There was nothing he could say.

  Heathcliff’s head turned suddenly, sharply, as if someone had called him back into the blazing room.

  ‘Heathcliff!’

  The man in the window turned back, for a fraction of a second, and even through the smoke, Harry could see that he was smiling. His lips moved as he spoke just one word. There was a loud crash from inside the burning house. The flames suddenly flared, engulfing the dark figure in a brilliant light. And then the smoke rose to cover the window, and the face disappeared into the swirling blackness.

  Epilogue

  2009

  From a distance, the row of houses didn’t look all that different to how they’d looked when he’d first seen them twenty-five years before. Apart from the black, smoke-damaged walls of the house at the end, the bricks and mortar looked as they always had. It was only when you got into the streets and walked around, that you realised what was missing. The houses were still here, but the life of the place had long since departed.

  Former DCI Lockwood parked his car at the bottom of the estate and made his way up the hill on foot. There weren’t many people around. A couple of blokes wearing high-vis jackets over business suits were huddled round a clipboard down one of the side streets. Security fencing was being erected around the whole estate, but there was no sign of the guys doing that. Maybe they’d gone on a lunch break. A big billboard announced the area was being redeveloped into an exciting new estate of modern, desirable homes. Lockwood hoped the new residents would have better lives than their predecessors. A slightly smaller sign warned trespassers to keep out, under pain of prosecution. Lockwood was used to ignoring Keep Out signs. Even if he no longer carried the badge, no one was going to stop him doing what he had come to do. He wasn’t even entirely sure what that was. Perhaps you could say he’d come to pay his last respects.

  He made his way slowly up Moor Lane to number 37. Someone, probably the fire brigade, had smashed the door in. No one had
bothered to repair it. He tentatively stepped through the doorway. It wasn’t the first burnt-out house he’d ever seen, but it might now be his last. There was something about the charred furniture and the blackened walls that was heartbreaking, even to a heart as tough as his. It was the lost dreams, he supposed. He’d always found the charred photos and other small personal items immensely sad. Not that there was much of that here.

  He looked up at the sunlight streaming through the collapsed upper storey and roof at the back of the house. They’d found the body in the rubble. Burnt, but not beyond recognition. He couldn’t help but wonder if Heathcliff was happy now he was with Cathy again.

  ‘I’m getting maudlin in my old age,’ he muttered, still reluctant to leave. When at last he did turn to go, a glint of something amid the blackness caught his eye. He stepped around the charred timbers and reach down to pick up a small gold necklace. He brushed the ash away and looked at it closely. It was a cheap thing and he was surprised it had somehow survived the fire. Not only that, the engraving was still readable.

  Cathy.

  He slipped it into his pocket with his twisted nail and turned and walked back out of the ruin.

  ‘What you doing here?’ Harry Earnshaw was standing a couple of yards away.

  ‘I could ask you the same.’ Even after retirement the habit of being the one in the driving seat hadn’t left him.

  Harry Earnshaw shrugged. ‘Just came to look.’

  But Lockwood was barely listening. His attention had turned to the young woman at Harry’s side.

  She had changed. She still looked like her mother. She still had that untamed hair and the same bright blue eyes, but the wildness – that was gone.

  Now he knew what to do with that necklace. He reached into his pocket and held it out towards her. ‘You should have this.’

  She peered at the necklace. ‘Err… thanks. But…’

  He traced his finger over the lettering. ‘It was your mother’s. A gift from Heathcliff, I think. You should have it.’