When the Dead Come Calling

by Helen Sedgwick

  There is a cuckoo clock on the wall that has been stuck on the same time for over four years. Its hands stopped moving back when her husband got ill and she’s never fixed it. Never will. It is, in fact, the exact same model of cuckoo clock Walt Mackie has in his sweltering living room, though neither Mrs Helmsteading nor Walt himself are aware of that fact. They were being sold thirty years back in the gifts and hardware store in Warphill, shelved between the varied assortment of multicoloured Rawlplugs and the large bags of bird feed. Perhaps it was this bird theme that prompted their positioning in the shop, though they would have been better housed among the cheap mugs with cows on them. Even so, both Walt Mackie and Mr Helmsteading bought a cuckoo clock while they were in stock, Walt for himself and Jack Helmsteading as a gift, and Walt’s is still going, just about, while Mrs Helmsteading’s has given up.

  Dawn used to love that clock. Mrs Helmsteading remembers it like it was yesterday, though it was decades ago, when Dawn would sit cross-legged on the floor and wait for the cuckoo to pop out of its box. She would laugh and laugh and laugh when she saw it, point at the wall like it was total magic. Mrs Helmsteading stares at the cuckoo clock now, willing the time to change, the hands to move, the little door to open so the cuckoo can appear, but of course it’s no use. She drops the photo into her lap and stares down at it through the silence, one corner of the old wooden frame tugging at the fabric of her skirt.

  She is still wearing the slippers she was wearing when the police came round this morning, and young Andy too. She didn’t much like Bobby’s friends – didn’t much know them to like them, at least – but Andy seemed like a sweet kid. He always called her ‘ma’am’. She suspected Bobby used to buy them cans, what with him being older and the rest of them underage. He enjoyed having a following. Boys who’d do what he told them to, kids who owed him something. She didn’t much like that either, but she didn’t want to interfere. Best to keep out of it, was what she told herself at the time. Just look the other way.

  She turns the photo frame over and undoes the back clips and lifts the photo out so she can hold it properly, feel it with her hands. The glass tips out, without the back of the frame keeping it in place, and she can feel an odd sort of pressure from it lying there on her thighs. It’s got sharp corners, though, they prick at her skin through her skirt, so she puts it back on the coffee table, along with the disassembled pieces of frame. It catches the light in a weird way, makes it look like there are half-visible shapes moving on the glass. But she doesn’t want Rattle to cut himself on that, getting overexcited the way he does sometimes. Or is it that he gets frightened? She’s not sure now. But it’s like the dog knows when she’s thinking of him, ’cause just that second he comes scampering out of the kitchen – almost hysterical, like he’s being followed – sliding desperately over the lino and pushing his nose in under Mrs Helmsteading’s elbow. She lifts her arm up, to give him room, and he scrambles his way onto her lap. Mrs Helmsteading runs her hands through his fur and readjusts his position, helping him tuck the stump of his bad leg under his body the way she knows he is most comfy. Rocking him like she would a baby. She leans over and lets herself smell his fur, rest her face against that soft back of his. Just for a few minutes, she tells herself. Take a bit of comfort now, just for a few minutes. Then get back up and do what you’ve got to do.

  But as she’s leaning there, her eyes closed and her face rubbing the soft bristly hair on Rattle’s back, she feels something. A draught. Could be from the kitchen, did she leave the window open a crack? She cuddles Rattle closer, can’t bring herself to open her eyes. Breathes in the warm dog smell of him, cradles his stump while with her other hand she reaches up to touch the goosebumps on the back of her neck. There’s a high whining noise coming from the back of her own throat. Open your eyes, she tells herself. Open your eyes. She doesn’t need to, though. She can already see them: the shapes that peer out from the dimmest corners of her home. Less than knee-high, suddenly leering above her, then down by the floor again. Facing the wall, trembling. Tiny hands, open then closed, fingers spread, fists curled. Sitting, cross-legged, faces hidden in the dark. Just eyes that glisten and heads angled up unnaturally to stare at the cuckoo clock high on the wall.

  AFTER THE INTERVIEW

  As Georgie walks out towards Simon’s house, the mist that has been rising and sinking all day thickens around her and the road seems to disappear. She sways, places a foot carefully, pauses to regain her balance. To the left, a decrepit barbed-wire fence suddenly appears, its rain-strung cobwebs marking the field’s edge. To the right, tree branches loom over the road to form a canopy hanging low over her head, and there’s a flock of gulls pecking at the ground. They look ghostly white in the dying light. Unnatural. Georgie wonders what’s down there, summoning them, and she feels herself falling downwards, backwards, into a version of herself she doesn’t want to remember. The pressure of other bodies against hers, hundreds of them, anger simmering, the shout of slogans, nausea creeping up over her like sweat. Even Simon’s house seems to arrive uninvited, summoned from the gloom with its bright red door, its one lit window on the top floor, its dark squares of rooms below. She doesn’t ring the bell at first, thinks maybe he’s sleeping, and he needs that, God knows, but within seconds she hears steps from inside, a light comes on, and he opens the door as though he’d been expecting her.

  ‘Si,’ she says.

  After a second he nods, invites her in by stepping aside.

  She walks past the small side table in the hall, a couple of unopened letters that look like bills or bank statements, a ‘Sorry we missed you’ card from the Royal Mail, the kind they put through the door when they haven’t delivered your parcel. The living room is at the end of the corridor. It feels empty to her; the whole house feels empty. Like it’s given up. They sit with the coffee table between them, him on a chair, her on the sofa, facing each other as they had in the interview room.

  ‘I’m sorry, Si,’ she says. ‘But I need to ask you about Alexis.’

  She can feel him stiffen, withdraw even further.

  There’s a half-drunk cup of black coffee on the table and she wonders if it’s warm or if it has been sitting there for two days, the last remnant of what Simon was doing before he left the house that night. Before he found the body.

  ‘Of course,’ he says eventually. ‘Whatever you need.’ But his voice is flat. ‘I’d have come in to the station.’

  ‘It’s just a chat,’ she says. ‘I thought you’d be… Maybe I needed the walk.’

  ‘Has something else happened?’

  She wonders if he’s heard about Bobby Helmsteading. Maybe not, if he hasn’t left the house today.

  ‘Well, I need to know if Alexis was practising hypnosis.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hypnotherapy. Did he use it, professionally?’

  ‘No.’

  He sounds surprised, almost as though Alexis would have been offended by the question.

  ‘Or was he learning, maybe?’

  ‘No. Not that I know of. He was a psychotherapist, he wasn’t interested in anything else. And he would never have practised hypnotherapy without being qualified. He just wouldn’t have.’

  ‘Are you sure he’d have told you if he had?’

  Simon looks over to the dark mist of the window. His lips are cracked. He shrugs.

  ‘I think so,’ he says, his eyes suddenly on hers, their blue even more intense against the lack of colour in his cheeks. ‘I’d always have thought so, before. But I can’t be sure, can I?’

  ‘I don’t think he was seeing anyone else, Si,’ she says. ‘Not like that, I mean … not so far as I’ve been able to find out. Whatever he was hiding, I don’t think it was about being unfaithful.’

  Simon averts his eyes.

  ‘His career was important to him. He did everything right, took it all seriously, from accounts to patient confidentiality. I don’t think he’d have done anything to risk that.’

  Georgie nods.
‘Thanks, Si.’ She wonders if he’s eaten anything. Thinks about suggesting he have a good home-cooked dinner, but then Georgie doesn’t like to tell others what to do, especially not others she respects as much as she does Simon. He’s a good policeman. Always gives people a fair chance, a good hearing-out. She is worried about him, though. He’s got an edge to his voice, an anger under it that wasn’t there before. She tries to remember the stages of grief. Anger is in there, after the shock, after the first wave of loss. She remembers the anger.

  ‘Will I… Would you like me to fix you some soup, Si?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Is that all, then?’ he says, standing.

  But it’s not all, and Georgie doesn’t want to leave yet.

  ‘You and Trish went to the same secondary school, didn’t you?’

  ‘Aye,’ he says. ‘Everyone from round here went to that school.’

  ‘Did you know a girl called Dawn Helmsteading too?’

  ‘Not much,’ he says. ‘I know the family, but that’s mostly ’cause Bobby was in the rugby team with me.’

  ‘You were friends with Bobby?’

  ‘No. I thought he was an arse.’

  Georgie smiles.

  ‘Besides, that was years ago.’

  ‘And Dawn?’

  ‘She’s quite a bit younger. And I left for sixth form so I think I was gone by the time she started at Warphill… Don’t think I’d recognise her if I saw her, to be honest with you.’ He looks right at her then. ‘Why?’

  ‘No reason.’

  ‘I want to help.’

  ‘You have.’

  It’s a warm house, this, actually. Not draughty and cold like half the old cottages in the village. There’s a modern feel to the furniture. Comfy sofa, too. Maybe she was wrong to think of it as empty, to imagine Simon was giving up.

  ‘How is Dawn involved?’

  Georgie doesn’t reply to that. It’s time for her to go, though she wishes she could stay. She can see the questions behind his eyes.

  ‘For God’s sake, Georgie.’

  She’s on her feet.

  ‘Try to get some rest,’ she says.

  ‘When are you going to let me back in?’

  ‘Try to have some food.’

  ‘I’ll stay away from the case,’ he says, following her down the hall. ‘Put me on desk duty. I’ll do some admin.’

  She opens the front door. The blue mist is ready for her.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ she says, turning back round to him, the gloom from outside clawing at her back. ‘Maybe tomorrow. I’m … I’m sorry, Si. I’ll be in touch.’

  Then she’s out, on her own again. She hopes the slam of the door behind her is just the noise it makes when it accidentally swings closed. Either way, she needs to keep moving forwards. She doesn’t know what’s got into her with this quiet, creeping fear of the dark; stepping down from his porch, she feels like the ground is unstable beneath her feet. Nonsense. Moving from light to dark, that’s all it is, her senses playing tricks on her. This case, all this violence. The fear of more to come. That, and the continuous effort of staying in the present when the past keeps trying to pull her back.

  HIGH TIDE

  I’m caught between the dark world of the cave behind me and the familiar thrashing of the waves beyond the pebbles at my toes. Outside I’ll be found, but in here he waits, at the back, whispering my name. Please, he says, look at me.

  But I cannot.

  I stare out to where they will come from, if they come, to the grey beach with its sea all churned up and stinking, seaweed clinging to the land like something half alive. The waves edging closer. Whispers behind me. Soon it will be high tide and I will be trapped, but I won’t look back into the cave, despite this tugging at my shirt, a fingertip gently stroking my palm—

  I spin round and glimpse what almost looks like a mess of pale hair, feel the comfort of a small hand clasping my thumb, guiding me into the cave. There are shallow pools on the floor, rainwater in the dips of the worn-down rock, and a little boy is lying on his back, hands clawing the air. He is tiny, a year old if that. I stumble, filled with pity, but there’s nothing here except whispering and a trickle of water running down through the rock. I scoop some up, splash my face, drink, and when I look up there is light shining from black skin like flickering candlelight and then teenagers, curled together on grass, waving as though they know me. I taste blueberries, the tang of juice on my tongue turning sour as my hand turns suddenly cold, and I know they are afraid. They vanish as a low grating chant emerges from the rocks; a scratching against stone, stretching shadows looming over me, sharp pinches at my skin – they are everywhere, all around me – a flash of shattered teeth, rancid breath and I fall, curl on the floor, knees clasped to my chest, my scream lodged in the back of my throat.

  They were here all along, waiting to finish what they started.

  I thrash; my feet slip against stone, my head hits rock but they follow, their lips splitting and peeling back into darkness. But no. I remember eyes: human eyes, deep with hate. The way he reached out, like he was trying to tame me. I remember the smell; I remember what I have in my pocket: the lucky charms I carried with me to the cave. My fingers curl round them and feel their heat, their strength. Quick as a bite I lash out, scratch, scream—

  A voice. Please, he says. Please. Look at me.

  I can’t!

  Then the shadows are gone, and my worry doll is lying on the floor beside me.

  THE SHAPES OF THE EVENING

  Simon waits until Georgie has disappeared up the road before stepping out into the cold. He doesn’t bother locking his front door. He’s wearing black jeans and a dark winter coat, collar up. Trainers on, to keep his footsteps nice and quiet.

  God but he wishes Georgie would stop telling him to eat. He’s a grown man and he’s trying to get through the week the only damn way he knows how. There’s a twitch at the blinds of Mrs Dover’s house, but he’s keeping back to the shadows. He ducks off the road soon as he can and takes the lane between the fields heading out of the village. Burrowhead Hill rises gently to his left, a dark lump in the land this time of day without the green of its slopes. At its peak a row of oak trees, each one taller than the next, leading out to the coast. Not got their new leaves on yet, still bare-branched, all knuckles and twisted bark. The lane doesn’t take him up the hill, though, just skirts along its lower slope then follows the laurel hedge beside High Street all the way out to the playground. The swings are nothing but dark diagonal lines in front of the glittering black sea that’s been calling him. He doesn’t let his steps falter. Keeps walking the way he does, hands stuffed in pockets, rucksack on his back, straight past them without looking at the ground, only stopping when he gets to the bench that looks out over the cliffs.

  That’s where he sits, though the wood slats are wet from the salt spray and the wind is angry as it gets, up here, straight from the sea with no respite to be found. No matter. He reaches into his bag and pulls out the flask of hot tea he’s brought with him, followed by a plastic cup. For himself, he’ll use the lid of the flask, like he always does. Like he always did.

  He watches the waves for a while, cradling his flask-top of tea in his hands. The rhythm helps. Beside him, steam rises from the cup of tea sitting next to him on the bench. Maybe Alexis was right, he’d never have been able to leave Burrowhead; the sea would never have let him. He won’t turn around to the swings, he refuses to do that, but he can hear the creak of the roundabout as it slowly rotates and the groan of the springs from the horse and donkey getting buffeted back and forth. They’ll be headbutting the ground if this wind gets much worse. He watches the horizon, looking for any boats out there tonight, but it’s too misty to see far; a smudge of light, perhaps, to the south, but he can’t be sure. The moon caught in the mist or haze – could be sheets of rain out beyond the coast. He pulls his hat lower down, zips his coat up to his chin. Watches the dark mass of stones on the beach. Feels the
prick on the back of his hands that tells him someone is watching him.

  He’s up on his feet. No one in the playground. No one on the road. The dark of the hedge, solid. Movement: up on the hill, by the trees, a figure, no, a branch. He can’t tell. Fuck. There’s someone there, in the dark, by the trees, his flask-top is dropped, tea splatters the ground, his shoes, but he’s running, three steps to the edge of the playground, three more but there’s no one there. Just the twisted black trees in the wind. Gnarled branches like broken arms silhouetted against the sky. The human croak of the roundabout as it turns. The ache of it.

  He reaches down, picks up the lid from where it fell on the ground. Slumps back on the bench and pours himself some more tea. After a moment or two he tops up the other cup, which is untouched but turning cold. Do you see? he says, to Alexis, to the empty shape that is no one sitting beside him. Do you see what you’ve done to me?

  LOCKING-UP TIME

  Trish, sitting at Georgie’s desk, has been through all their departmental records. Arrests, witnesses, interviewees, victims, even members of staff – and she’s been through addresses and the phone book too, and not just in Burrowhead either. She’s done the whole area, up to and including Warphill.

  Alexis Cosse’s mysterious N.P. is nowhere to be found.

  She goes striding into her office to where Frazer is sitting at her desk, staring at her computer. She glares at the wobbly chair leg, willing it to collapse under him, but no such luck.

  ‘Well, if he exists at all, he’s not local,’ she announces to the back of his head. His hair has formed a little tuft there, from where it’s been squashed under his hat.

  ‘What makes you think he’s a he?’

  Oh, bugger off, she thinks.