When the Dead Come Calling

by Helen Sedgwick

  SEARCHING

  Frazer is arranging it all. A new and thorough search for Dawn Helmsteading: he’s got people out combing the villages and the countryside between, asking about any sightings of Dawn, any information at all. He’s getting into his stride now and Georgie’s caught up with that racist kid in the back room, meaning he’s free to catch a suspect. The Crackenbridge police force are heading out for a fresh door-to-door in Warphill, reporting directly to him, word for word – and by ‘force’ he knows it’s only four PCs but still, they’re out there doing something, instead of in here making endless cups of damn tea. Someone in these villages knows something, he’s never been so sure of anything in his life. These people round here, they know something they’re not saying, and he’s going to get to it. Meanwhile, in the bus depot at Crackenbridge, a printer spews out posters with Dawn’s face on and one by one the drivers, arriving to drop off and pick up, are told to keep an eye out.

  ‘Aye,’ they say, pulling their hats down and their collars up. ‘Roads flooding today. Worse than ever.’

  Posters plastered into the shelters, where they turn dark with rain cause the shelters don’t shelter much; posters taped on bus windows where they’re peeled down by passengers and read and passed back as the windscreen wipers screech and the glass fogs up with the heat of their breath. The stop at Warphill gets one too.

  ‘That lass from the GP’s,’ they say, umbrellas inside out from the wind. ‘I know her.’ No one knows where she is, though. Best they can do to find out is head to the police station in Burrowhead and see what’s going on down there.

  And the PCs knock on the doors and the folk tell each other, ‘They’re down to old Bessie Wilkie’s now,’ then a bit later on, ‘Saw them heading in to Colin Spence for a cuppa,’ though no one gets interviewed who’s actually seen Dawn these past five days. Even Kevin Taylor gets chatty once he realises it’s Suze come to talk, and sure, Kevin knew Dawn back at school, a few years older than him but still. ‘Didn’t say much, though,’ he says.

  ‘What happened to your eye then?’

  ‘Few too many down the pub, you know how it is.’

  ‘You lads,’ says Suze, shaking her head.

  ‘Have a bicky?’ says Kev.

  ‘How’s your Shona doing?’

  ‘She’s a peach.’

  They move on, another house, another nothing, while the bus that left Warphill has arrived in Burrowhead full to bursting, with brakes screeching worse than the gulls round here. Folk from Warphill don’t much like Burrowhead, but it’s not every day you get the chance to take part in a murder investigation. Down past the fountain, turning off on the road that leads to the station and sure enough, there’s Mrs Dover and Mrs Smyth on the corner, sharing a brolly, and there’s big Fergus, and some of the kids too, aye, should be in school that lot, but who can blame them? This is not your usual day hereabouts.

  So by the time Simon arrives in Warphill the streets are strangely quiet, and since the Crackenbridge search party are all in a police car it’s easy enough to avoid them – they’re in the wrong part of the village anyhow. Mrs Helmsteading’s house seems calm enough, lights on – a good sign – and no one to see him park a few doors down and wait. He’s got binoculars to watch for her, check the windows for any movement. Not that he has to wait long. The front door opens and out she steps, long mac wrapped round her and hair in one of those old-lady scarves. Making her way out of the village and heading for the coast road which takes you down past the old flats. Simon waits for her to turn, then gets out of the car. Shuts the door over nice and quiet. Pulls his hood over his head and follows her out of the village on foot.

  ESCAPE AFTER MIDDAY

  There is someone walking up the beach. I can’t even stand so there’s no way I’m running. I’ll just let them take me. What else did I think was going to happen? At least I got the truth. The chance to look him in the eye. There is whispering on the wind.

  ‘Dawn,’ it calls. ‘Dawny, are you here?’

  I think I know the voice, but the wind can play such spiteful tricks, even as I feel hands on me, stroking my hair, helping me sit up.

  ‘Dawn?’

  My eyes search her face in the strange glow. I had forgotten.

  ‘Dawn, my love, the police are coming.’

  Of course, of course.

  ‘They’re looking for you. They’ve worked it out, sweetheart. Can you hear me?’

  She looks over her shoulder, as though they’re following, but I can’t hear any more whisperings. I want to close my eyes and cuddle up now, with my mum stroking my hair. Maybe we can go back.

  ‘They’re investigating your dad’s death. They’re looking for you.’

  But no, we can’t go back. No one to go back to.

  ‘Do you understand, Dawny?’

  That’s the trouble. Was the trouble. ‘Do you?’ I whisper. But she doesn’t hear me. Or she doesn’t want to hear me.

  Look at me, Dawn, he whispers.

  ‘I’ve brought you food and water. A flask of tea, just how you like it. Will we have some tea?’

  I watch as she opens a flask and the steam rises and she pours me a little flask-lid of tea, places it carefully in my hands, closes my fingers around the warm sides of it.

  ‘How did you know I was here?’ I’ve made her look hopeful now.

  ‘We found you here once before, remember? Well, not me. It was your father.’

  And I remember him coming to find me and how cold I was with my bare feet and only my rabbit for company. He promised me everything was okay. That he was going to keep me safe. He gave me a worry doll and we whispered it all away and we left her here in the rock along with what I wanted to forget.

  I curl up into a ball on the floor and I say sorry. I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry. I got it wrong.

  ‘There’s no time for this, baby. You have to run.’

  ‘But where should I go?’

  ‘Run along the coast. Today, you hear me? By this evening you’ll get to the harbour at Lillfort.’

  ‘You’re sending me to sea?’

  ‘Leave the country, my Dawny. My baby girl.’

  She strokes my hair and her eyes are sad. I drink my tea because it is in my hands and I feel the heat of it moving through me. She looks over her shoulder again. She’s shivering and I notice the cold, seeing it on her skin like that.

  ‘Do you understand what I’m saying, Dawn? You have to go. Take this money. It’s everything I have. Your passport, here.’

  ‘You’ll come with me, won’t you?’

  ‘No, my darling girl. I’m sorry.’ She kisses my head, my hands. ‘I’m so sorry.’ Her eyes are wet. ‘But you have to escape on your own.’

  ‘I don’t want to…’

  Then I feel it, a cool pressure in my hand, his fingers clasping mine: my dad is back again, like he used to be, standing beside me.

  ‘Run, Dawn.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now.’

  So I stand, pass my mum the teacup and squeeze my dad’s hand tightly. It feels good. I am lighter and faster, I can fly over rocks and sand and waves and Dad feels it too – look, he is standing tall, he is strong and kind and his eyes shine with hope—

  ‘Run, Dawn.’

  I remember running, running is what I do. But I will not run alone, not this time. ‘Come with me,’ I say, ‘come with me!’ calling it out to the cave, to the little girl, to Pauly and Rachel, to the boy clawing the air and Mary who has retreated into stone, but one by one they turn away.

  ‘I can’t leave. I can’t go.’

  ‘You can,’ Mum says. ‘You must.’

  You can, Dad says. I’m with you.

  He takes my hand and together we start to run. We don’t look back to the cave, we look out to the urgent waves and the beach of grey and gold and Mum calls out into the wind. I snatch her words from the air and I’ll carry them with me, wherever I go: ‘Forgive me,’ she calls. ‘Forgive me.’

  EARLY AFTERNOON, GETTING O
N

  The sky bruised and darkening, the rings upon rings of stains on her desk, the dirty beige paint on the walls and the thin patchy brown carpet and rage seeping out from the cells down the hall; Georgie feels heavy with it all. It’s like something’s pulling her down, the connection of her feet to the ground intensifying against her will, and there’s DS Frazer, wanting to get on with his speech, clapping his hands to gather their attention. She gives him a nod. He might be trying too hard, but at least he’s trying.

  ‘We’re restarting the Burrowhead door-to-door,’ he announces, then stops and clears his throat. ‘I think … people round here have been watching. They’ve been talking, and they’ve been saying things behind our backs. They’re hiding something. I know it.’ He glances at Georgie – and the thing is, Georgie knows it too. ‘So it’s time to find out exactly what they’re saying, and exactly what they’ve seen.’

  Georgie glances over at Trish, who’s crossing and uncrossing her legs, lips tight.

  ‘We’ve got plenty of evidence to show that Bobby, Andy and Lee have been sending racist messages, vandalising the village and carrying out racist attacks,’ Georgie says. She’s not going to tone down her words, or Frazer’s, to make anyone feel more comfortable.

  ‘Well, Bobby was orchestrating it all, from what Andy’s told us,’ Trish says quietly. ‘Leading some of the local kids astray, churning things up—’

  ‘Got to be something there to churn up in the first place,’ Georgie interrupts. ‘But yes, he was forming a group of neo-Nazis. Lee as the ringleader, Andy too, with Bobby pulling the strings.’

  ‘And the fingerprints on the notes—’ Frazer says.

  ‘Lee, Bobby, Andy.’

  ‘Though Andy’s prints were on the one that came to the station, so we all saw him grab at that one…’ Trish’s voice trails off.

  ‘Trying to cover his tracks, presumably.’

  Trish needs to stop bloody excusing him, that’s what Georgie thinks.

  ‘They’re delinquents,’ says DS Frazer. ‘I get it. And the racism here, well… It’s going to take more than the arrest of a couple of teenagers to change things. But Bobby’s dead, and he didn’t kill himself. Dawn has to be our primary suspect. Besides, we’ve got the hair placing her with Alexis on the night of his murder, so we need to find her. As far as we know she has no money with her, and there’s a chance she’s hiding out somewhere in or near Burrowhead.’

  ‘And you think the villagers know where?’

  He’s in the middle of the room now, pacing between the desks.

  ‘They know something,’ he’s saying. ‘I’m sure of it. They’ve been watching…’

  ‘They are watching,’ says Trish, nodding her head to the window, where there are thirty or so locals gathered outside the station. ‘Doesn’t mean they’re hiding anything.’

  Georgie wishes she’d stop trying to defend the village. Reminds her of Fergus: surely not here in the village. Yes, of course here in the village. Right here.

  ‘What happened to Bobby, then? You tell me.’

  ‘Well, that,’ says Georgie, ‘that is the question we need to be asking now.’

  But just as she says it she hears this terrible beating of wings and looks out to see a flock of thirty or forty gulls rising up from the pavement outside the station to stare in through the window, judging her, pushing up against her, bodies and heat and voices, she can hear them, shouting, chanting with the beat of their wings and a scream rising up – is she going mad?

  ‘The evidence for that crime is on the knife,’ Frazer says. ‘And Cal’s going to text me soon as the results are in. Hopefully they’ll get a blood sample, and that’ll lead us straight to the killer. But for now—’

  ‘That’s the phone,’ says Trish, already reaching to answer it. ‘Suze… What? That’s what she said, seriously?’

  She turns to Georgie, still holding the phone up to her ear, but Georgie reaches for it, takes it herself.

  ‘What’s happened, Suze?’

  ‘Mrs Helmsteading’s just turned herself over to the police. She says she wants to confess.’

  MIRAGE IN THE LATE SEA MIST

  We’re running down the beach over stones and pebbles, grit, sand and all the crushed little shells. I gasp another breath and it makes my teeth sting worse than drilling. Shoes slip on the slimy rocks but I don’t fall – I keep running like there’s nothing else left. Because there is nothing else left. Just us. Dad is beside me; he doesn’t have to breathe and he doesn’t have shoes at all. We are moving fast.

  I think I saw a person up on the cliffs, a big dark shape, but they didn’t see me. At least I hope not – I have to escape, like my mum told me. I think maybe I am invisible now, invisible and invincible racing along my beach, blending in with the twisted seaweed. Gasp and breathe. My ankle gives way. Don’t stop when it hurts. Whatever you do, don’t turn round. Look up! There’s the clouds overhead with their lights on, smooth like magic, and all the while we run. I haven’t seen clouds so alive before but it’s good to see them now, good to remember we are not alone. I hope those noises I can hear behind me aren’t footsteps and breath, just the sea getting angrier with the storm winds and desperate birds helping us on our way.

  The wind is singing a grit-song now, spitting the sand at my eyes. Groaning high and low like it wants us to give up, but we mustn’t stop. I know where the harbour is. Where the boats come in full of tourists in the summer – the harbour on the edge of Lillfort, further up on the coast, a few miles yet but reachable before dark. I hope the person on the cliffs wasn’t real, because if he saw me he might have run down and started chasing me; Mum said the police could be coming. But block out the noises and you’ll see it’s no one but me and my dad and sometimes other bits of me, all running together in the same direction at last. Dawn the child and Dawn the victim and Dawn the killer.

  I don’t like to think of that word.

  But Dad has let go of my hand and is floating out to sea, bobbing up and down like a fishing boat smashed by the waves. I’m sorry, Dad, I call out when I see him, I said I was sorry, but he doesn’t reply. Maybe the wind’s in the way. The wind and the waves crashing up as the tide rises. I took care of you, Dad, for a while, until the wrong faces started appearing in my dreams. And even then I cared for you with kindness. But you were innocent of it all, Dad. You are my innocent, my wrong face. I couldn’t see it at first, but I see it now. I’m sorry. But not that sorry, because now I want to survive. The shape, that shape, is not on the cliffs any more. It’s on the path higher up the beach. Racing towards us; getting closer. Run now! Everyone, faster along the rocks and don’t stop. I look behind and see him, he’s with us now, he’s running too and I’m floating up and over the stones and we all hold hands, little girl Dawn and scared Dawn and strong Dawn, we hold hands and we rise up off the ground like we’re angels.

  INTERVIEW AT 14:30 HRS

  The station is humming with badness, that’s what Georgie thinks. Fluorescent lights flickering in the corridor, causing an instant headache to settle over her right eye. Even through the closed door she can feel it, the buzzing of sharp lights. She wonders what would happen if they just went out, if the whole station went dark with only the grey of the outside seeping in through the small square windows, the locks on the cell doors opening and Andy and Lee, all full of violence and rage, spilling back out into the world.

  She tries to shake herself out of it. Mrs Helmsteading needs her help.

  ‘We need to ask you about Dawn—’ she begins, but Mrs Helmsteading is already shaking her head.

  ‘I want to tell you the truth now. It’s time.’

  Yes, Mrs Helmsteading needs her help. It gives her focus. Makes her feel like Georgie again.

  ‘We’ve been looking into your husband’s death,’ Georgie begins. ‘Let’s start there.’

  ‘I killed him.’ She almost interrupts, like she wants to be the one to say it first.

  Georgie closes her eyes against it, just clos
es her eyes.

  ‘How did you do it, Mrs Helmsteading?’

  Georgie tries to imagine her smiling. She hasn’t seen Mrs Helmsteading smile.

  ‘I suffocated him,’ she says. ‘It was very easy. He was so weak by then. I held his wet flannel over his face… I’d been using it to cool his head down, you see. Maybe he was sleeping…’

  Georgie opens her eyes. ‘Maybe?’

  ‘Trying to be accurate, that’s all. He had his eyes closed. I didn’t want him to realise what was happening.’

  ‘But you wanted him dead?’

  ‘I thought… We… I’d got it wrong. That’s why I’m here now, telling you everything. He was innocent.’

  Silence but for the nail-scratching click of the fluorescent squares on the ceiling. Georgie has to force herself not to put her hands over her ears.

  ‘He was a kind man, my husband. Gentle and loving. I’d forgotten, but I know that now. He was a good man, and I should be judged for what I’ve done.’

  ‘What made Dawn decide to kill him?’ Trish says.

  ‘No, no, aren’t you listening to me?’ Her voice louder, high-pitched. ‘Dawn didn’t kill him, or anyone else. Dawn couldn’t. She wouldn’t hurt a fly, my Dawny.’

  No smile now, of course. Just a desperate, lined face and a longing to go back.

  ‘What exactly is it you’re trying to tell us?’

  Her deep breath seems to rattle; at least that’s how Georgie hears it.

  ‘My Dawn, well, she was seeing a therapist. Alexis Cosse – you know this bit.’