‘What was he like?’
‘He was just a boy.’ Trish sort of shrugs. ‘I didn’t like him much ’cause he always used to grab the football at break time, to play with his mates. Who didn’t include me.’
‘He had friends?’
‘That he did. He was popular actually. It was like he had a following.’
‘I thought he was new to the area.’
Trish shakes her head. ‘He liked to pretend so, recently I mean, but he’s as local as I am.’
Couple of months back Georgie took a taxi ride home from Crackenbridge, the car left overnight with a flat tyre and Bobby talking all the way home about the years he’d spent in Australia. She’d wondered if it was all lies, even at the time. He never mentioned having grown up round the corner.
‘What brought him back, then, d’you think?’
‘Family’s my guess. His mum lives up the road.’
Georgie opens her mouth to speak, then changes her mind. Poor woman. No one’s called her yet. She doesn’t know.
‘We’d better go and talk to her,’ Georgie says. ‘It’ll be hard.’ What an awful thing, to have to tell a parent their child is dead. Georgie’s glad she and Fergus never had kids; she doesn’t think she could have taken the worry about it, knowing what she knows about the world.
‘It will,’ says Trish. ‘It will. She might remember me, though I’m not sure of that. Don’t know if it will help either way.’
‘I don’t think there’s much that helps, with something like this.’
‘Honesty, I guess.’
Georgie likes that about Trish. Now and then, when you least expect it, she comes out with a truth like that.
They make their way down the stairs together, letting Cal know they’ll be off – he’s by the main door, checking the entrance. No lock on it these days. He promises to call later, with the fingerprints and ink comparisons.
‘There were fingerprints, then? On the paper from the two notes?’
Of course; Trish hasn’t heard about that yet.
‘Aye, there’s a couple of partials for sure,’ he says. ‘The notes look to be written by different people, but on the same paper. I’ll know more around two when I get the results back. And there was no note found here at the scene.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing,’ says Georgie. ‘No note, no prior threat we know of. No words anywhere so as we can find.’
‘Then there’s not necessarily a connection between the crimes,’ Trish says. ‘Is that what you’re thinking? Could be two separate killers? Similar weapon, maybe, but different approach. No note. I didn’t see that coming. I was sure… But of course he’s not foreign, is he. He’s from right here.’
‘He’s from right here,’ Georgie says.
‘And there was nothing with the eyes this time?’ She pauses. ‘The lack of note seems important, right? And I don’t know of any particular connection between the men themselves. Lived in different villages. I don’t think they were friends, though they’d probably have met one way or another.’
‘Probably…’
‘And the murders took place in different locations,’ Trish continues. ‘One indoors, one outdoors…’
‘That’s all true,’ says Georgie. ‘All very true. There is one thing though.’
‘What’s that?’
‘There’s a car, parked down the side alleyway. Away from the main road. It took me a minute to notice it, tell you the truth. Could hardly see it from upstairs. It’s right in the shadow between the flats, there. See?’
‘Oh my God,’ says Cal.
‘My thoughts exactly. And we’ll need to confirm it, of course, but now I’ve got a better view of it I’m fairly certain the car parked right there opposite the flat where Bobby Helmsteading was murdered belongs to Dr Cosse.’
Trish has her restless energy again, Georgie can see it in the way she straightens up, bends and stretches each arm.
‘We have a connection,’ Trish is saying. ‘We. Have. A. Connection.’
Cal’s already calling to his team, and Georgie’s as eager to see what they find in the car as Trish, of course she is, it’s just that she can’t shake the feeling there’s something she’s not seeing yet, something bigger. And then there’s this itching in her legs. She’d been running away a long time before she found Fergus, and together they found this sleepy stretch of coast, and for the first time in a long time she wonders if maybe she needs to be moving on again. She’s not sure why or what that would mean, exactly, but the thought makes her insides twist. That’s when she sees them, though. Way over by the horizon, like yesterday.
‘Do you see, over there, Trish?’
Trish looks at her, confused.
‘You’re pointing at the sky, Georgie.’
‘Yes, but look at those lenticular clouds, over there to the north. Don’t they look special to you? So smooth and almost… well, I don’t know. Ethereal, don’t you think? They were up there yesterday too. They’re some of the most beautiful clouds I’ve ever seen.’
‘They’re just clouds,’ Trish says with a shrug.
Georgie forces a smile. They’re more than just clouds, though. She knows that. They’re something rare and transient, and they needed to be seen.
OPENING TIME
Fergus gets to Crackenbridge Museum at nine o’clock on the dot, only to discover that it doesn’t open until half past – there’s a note on the door saying the school run comes first. It’s probably staffed by volunteers. Next door is one of the old charity shops, he remembers it ’cause they used to have a great assortment of army coats, but now it’s all closed up and there’s a sign in the window saying RETAIL UNIT AVAILABLE FOR RENT. He goes for a walk around the block, past the Morrisons, past the row of B & Bs with vacancies, through the new estate, round past the old cinema that was abandoned halfway through being converted into a restaurant, graffiti on the plasterboarded windows, and eventually turning back to the museum, where he is still fifteen minutes early but he tries the doorbell anyway. Can’t tell if it actually rang inside, but no one comes to the door, so after a few minutes of standing there he sits down on the step and rests his head back. He’s just letting his eyes close over when he’s startled awake – feels like a right numpty as the woman, hands full of bags and a buggy containing a sleeping toddler, nods at him with the words, ‘We’ve got a keen one, eh?’
‘I’m sorry, I thought…’
He rises awkwardly to his feet. Doesn’t quite know what to do with himself as she searches for her keys, though pretty soon he finds himself holding several of her bags and peering at the toddler in the buggy. Georgie tells him that sometimes he apologises for himself too much. She’s probably right too, but it’s a hard habit to break. Still, he didn’t apologise for forgetting dinner last night. Maybe he should have.
The woman has unlocked the door now, and he helps her up the step with the buggy, waits patiently as she seats herself behind the front desk and pulls out the postcards (50p each), leaflets (free to a good home) and a battered paperback. ‘Three pound for adults,’ she tells him, and he fishes out some coins from the side pouch of his cycling rucksack. He’s in his Lycras again, so no pockets. The sweat he’d worked up on the cycle over is cooling fast – no heating on in here overnight, that’s for sure. Could be there’s no heating at all. It’s closed all winter. Not enough folk coming to justify even a volunteer’s time. They’ve got a postcard of the standing stone though, there on its own in the field, slightly lopsided, grey with smudges of white, looking rough and weather-worn against a pristine blue sky. And there’s another of the large bowl he remembered, the size of a casserole dish but taller, with handles either side and figures carved into the metal, their faces upturned and mouths open to the sky.
‘Time to see the original,’ he says to the attendant. He recognises her now, he’s sure of it. ‘I run the local archaeological society.’
She smiles politely and he can’t decide whether she already knows who he
is or simply doesn’t care.
‘And you know’ – he picks up the postcard of the standing stone – ‘I’m thinking of getting some aerial footage of this. Maybe you’d be interested…’
But she’s started reading her book already. There’s an image on the front, a twisted knot of red rope, with silver and night blue behind it. The toddler is fast asleep, clutching onto a floppy purple doll with orange wool for hair and well-chewed teething rings dangling where its hands should be. The book and the doll seem like the only colour in here – the lights are dim, the walls a grubby off-white, the floor brown carpet. Fergus leaves her to her reading and follows the arrow pointing through a door to his left.
Crackenbridge Museum is a single room. He doesn’t know what’s on the top floor of the building – from outside it was clear there must be a top floor – but in here, what would originally have been a residential home, presumably, has been converted into an entrance hall and a single, open-plan room housing four tall glass cabinets and about a dozen information posters along the walls. The windows look out onto the street but are clad in thick curtains. Maybe it’s to protect the exhibits, though it’s probably more that no one could be bothered to open them. Overhead, two energy-saving light bulbs fail to fill the room with light.
He reads the posters first. It’s mostly modern history: Crackenbridge during the First and Second World War, pictures of gas masks, the locals going to fight, the monument built when they didn’t return; an artist’s rendition of a typical family home in Victorian times, with a description of four generations living in a single room; a series of posters entitled THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION ARRIVES. It’s not till he’s round on the far wall that he finds the poster with the photo of the excavation at the motte. Archaeologists crouch beside a trench and a series of close-ups show the artefacts they found: fragments of a dagger that might have had ceremonial use, and the bowl he had remembered – behind him, it’s the centrepiece of the exhibit. The poster says it has similarities to the Gundestrup cauldron, though it’s made from iron and copper alloy. The imagery is Celtic, ritualistic; they date it from between 300 and 100 BC. Note the large man with stag’s antlers, the write-up says. The true meaning of the engravings may never be known.
It is in the central display case in the middle of the room, to allow you to walk around and see its full circumference. In the dim room, it seems to reflect the light with a copper-tinged glow. The engravings are accentuated by shadows, and a spotlight illuminates the stag-man. He is twice the height of the figures around him, with large antlers sprouting from his head. His followers wear cloaks and tall, conical hats, and they reach up towards him with pointed fingers; they strike Fergus as desperate, pleading. The stag-man holds a figure by the ankles, their head and torso disappearing into a cauldron. It seems, to Fergus, that they are surely being boiled alive. Circling the rest of the bowl is a procession of naked men and women, all wearing torcs around their necks and conical hats and they have the same pointed fingers – except they are not fingers, he suddenly realises, they have been carved with birds’ beaks instead of hands.
Next to the central display case is a small white block on the floor. A typed and laminated sheet of paper resting on it says the replica of the standing stone has been temporarily removed due to inaccuracies. Fergus frowns. Turning over the sheet of paper, he sees a photo of the stone itself, the original, except that something is wrong – it’s not as he remembers it. This stone is unmarked. Lichen-covered. Where are the carvings, the strange curves and shapes in the stone that he once felt with his own hands? He has to see it, in person. He has to get detailed, professional photos, and he needs the kit to do it. Georgie will understand. He cycles fast to the retail park outside of Crackenbridge – he knows exactly what to get, he even checked they had it in stock last night – and then it’s in his hands, smartphone-compatible, compact and portable, expensive: his very own drone. He pays from the joint account. She probably won’t even notice, and anyway it’s important he does this. The standing stone is calling him.
HALF TEN OR THEREABOUTS
Mrs Helmsteading looks beyond Georgie’s shoulder, her eyes drifting side to side as if distracted by the nothingness she sees there. Trish opens her mouth, then closes it again. To Georgie, it’s one of those houses that seem more silent than is natural. There’s always noise at home, with her and Fergus. There’s always something. Music playing or Fergus humming to himself. The two of them, talking together. Though they haven’t done enough of that recently. She shouldn’t have felt annoyed about him earlier, doesn’t really understand why she did. The comforting noise of him is something she’s been taking for granted but there’s not so much as a clock in here, not even the clicking of radiators warming up, the morning stretching of the pipes.
But then a small dog scurries in, a terrier, and suddenly it’s all yap yap yap and skidding to and fro. Trish tucks her feet beneath her chair, trying to keep them out of harm’s way. Georgie understands that – from all the manic barking it sounds like a dog that would take a quick bite just to say hello, just to get the feel of something solid in its mouth. Must be desperate for some attention, the poor thing. Actually, it seems hyperactive the way it’s darting about between them. He. It’s a He. If he would slow down for a minute, she’d give him a pat, soothe him a bit.
‘Oh,’ she says, her hand moving unconsciously to her neck.
What with all the sudden noise and scampering, it’s taken Georgie a minute to notice he only has three legs. No wonder he’s all over the place.
He slides under the low coffee table, there’s more scratching of claws on laminate flooring, then he barks at Trish, who’s now pressed back into her chair as far as she can get, before leaping towards Mrs Helmsteading’s ankles. Mid-jump, though, Mrs Helmsteading reaches down – the fastest movement Georgie’s seen her make – and scoops the dog up, where he sits, calmer at last, on her lap, his stump curled underneath his body.
Georgie wants to ask what happened to the dog, but she doesn’t.
Mrs Helmsteading’s eyes return to their searching for something behind Georgie’s shoulder.
This time Georgie turns to see what it might be back there, hidden in thin air. And actually, there is something there. There’s a window, facing out onto the street. The sun’s broken through the cloud for a second and it’s coming in low, casting the figure in front of the window in silhouette, but she’s fairly sure – yes, she’s quite certain now that through the faded, dirty-looking net curtains she can see the gawky shape of Andy Barr peering inside.
‘Trish, you didn’t—’
Trish is up like a shot, opening the door.
‘What are you doing here, Andy?’ she says. ‘You’re not supposed to be here. And it’s rude, you know’ – this spoken under her breath to him alone, though of course everyone in the room can hear her – ‘it’s rude, looking in someone’s window like that.’
Georgie’s on her feet too. She shouldn’t have been so soft the other day. Trish is trying to teach him, trying to help him, she gets that – and she remembers what Trish said about his dad, it’s been haunting her – but this is totally inappropriate. Then she hears Mrs Helmsteading’s voice.
‘Bobby’s gone,’ she’s saying. ‘Bobby’s gone.’
She’s pushed past Georgie and she’s pulling Andy down into a hug and Andy, dwarfing her at his six-foot-six and thin as a coat stand, looks baffled, totally baffled.
Suddenly Georgie understands. Mrs Helmsteading doesn’t remember Trish, but she knows Andy. She’s seen Andy recently; he’s been around in her life. He didn’t come here to be work-shadowing her or Trish, he came here to see Bobby. They knew each other – though she hadn’t known that before. They must have been friends. That’s what it looks like, as Mrs Helmsteading’s words and the police’s involvement gradually sink in. For a second it looks like his knees might collapse under him, but they don’t. That’s not what happens at all. Andy goes the other way.
‘Who did
this?’ he demands of Georgie. ‘What the fuck happened and who did it? Who the—’
Georgie doesn’t even have to speak; Trish knows what to do. She’s putting an arm around Andy’s waist, leading him gently back to the door.
‘Let’s sit outside,’ she’s saying, ‘you and me, pal. This is a nasty shock for us all. Such a sad thing to have happened. Let’s have a sit down outside, in the fresh air, okay?’ And Andy is following her, his shoulders lowering with her words, the anger falling out of him already. He’s not a naturally angry boy. Georgie knows that; they all do. ‘Okay,’ Trish says, ‘you come and sit with me outside now, pet.’
Georgie doesn’t think she’s ever heard Trish call anyone ‘pet’ before. It’s worked though, Andy is quiet and there’s been nothing bad said, just some honest upset. With what Mrs Helmsteading’s going through, probably Andy cursing a bit makes no difference either way. She looks back to the three-legged dog, cowering underneath Mrs Helmsteading’s chair, but there’s something she’s thinking, something about how Mrs Helmsteading doesn’t quite seem… Well, she’s upset, certainly, distant and vague, but not in shock, that’s the thing. Not the way Andy was.
The door clicks shut behind Andy and Trish, and Georgie is left alone with Mrs Helmsteading and the dog. On the far wall there’s an ornately tiled mantelpiece over a flame-effect gas fire. She steps closer to it and her eyes run over the crammed row of chipped vases filled with feathers, half-used candles – from the smell in here she’d say they’ve been lit recently – old wedding photos, painted china horses and a curved metal figure of a woman and a child. She turns and says to Mrs Helmsteading, ‘I need to ask you a few questions, I’m afraid. Would it be okay if I asked them now?’
When the Dead Come Calling Page 9