Burial of Ghosts

by Ann Cleeves

  The man’s name was Farrier. He was large, a middle-aged schoolboy with a beer belly, curly hair and round specs. Away from work I could imagine he’d be jolly, the life and soul of any party. He wasn’t fit and he wasn’t hungry. He was decent. I’d realized that the first time. The woman was a sergeant called Miles.

  ‘I didn’t stab Thomas Mariner,’ I said quickly.

  He paused. ‘But would you know if you had? Really? That’s what we have to decide.’

  There was a moment of panic when I wondered if he was right. I dredged back through my memory for a snapshot picture of Lizzie Bartholomew with her arm raised, a knife in her hand. There was nothing. And I hadn’t seen Thomas before I found his body. I was certain I hadn’t killed him. Almost.

  ‘There was no knife,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Not by the time we got there, certainly.’

  ‘I remembered stabbing the lad in Blyth.’

  ‘You did,’ he agreed. ‘But it would have been hard not to. All those people pulling you off, the noise, the fuss. Do you remember it now? Properly? Everything that led up to it?’

  I shut my eyes and lived through it again.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said as I opened my eyes. ‘I do remember it properly. Everything. Not just stabbing him, but everything that led up to it. And I remember perfectly everything that happened today.’

  I hoped he’d take me through it then, so I could get it over with. I could make a statement and get back to Jess. If they’d told her I was here, she’d be waiting outside. As she would if I was one of her junkies being bailed to her care. But Farrier seemed in no hurry to come to that.

  ‘Remind me what happened in court that time. After you stuck the scissors in that lad from Blyth,’ he said. He would know already, of course. Even if he couldn’t remember, he’d have looked it up.

  ‘Six months’ probation,’ I told him, playing the game.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘After all, there were extenuating circumstances.’

  He was talking about Nicky. My solicitor had made a lot of that. I’d hated it. Not just reliving the experience in court, but hearing myself portrayed as victim.

  Farrier looked at me, prompting me to continue.

  ‘The probation order contained a condition that I receive medical treatment.’ I forced out the words.

  He looked at me seriously. ‘Did you? Receive treatment?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it was helpful?’ He leaned forward towards me across the table, frowning slightly. I could almost believe he was concerned, that it was my feelings he was considering, not the paperwork involved in getting my medical records released before he charged me.

  ‘I suppose so.’ I hesitated, teasing him, making him wait for the information he really wanted, then continued, unemotional, as if I were presenting a report to a case conference at the unit. ‘I saw a consultant psychiatrist as an outpatient. I still see him every month. I attended some classes – relaxation, yoga. The doctor thought it might help if I went away from the area for a while. I followed his advice and took a holiday. Occasionally a community psychiatric nurse comes to the house. We talk about how best to manage my condition.’

  ‘Which is?’ His voice tailed off delicately, but I knew he wouldn’t let it go.

  ‘I have a bipolar disorder.’

  He continued to look at me and still the question hung between us.

  ‘Mood swings.’ I paused again. ‘Manic depressive tendencies.’ I knew there were only words, but they hurt. I carried them round with me like a wound. Manic depression is what real crazies have, like the mad woman on the bus.

  ‘But treatable, surely?’

  ‘With medication,’ I said. ‘Really it’s almost miraculous.’

  I held my breath and waited for a question which didn’t come.

  ‘Do they know what causes it?’ As if he were genuinely and objectively interested.

  ‘There’s probably a genetic factor.’ Bad blood, I thought. I expect my mother was mad too. That would explain a lot. I added, ‘In my case it seems to have been triggered by stress.’ I breathed regularly as Lisa, the community nurse, had taught me. ‘Breathe through the fear,’ she’d said. Then I looked straight at him. ‘The incident at the secure unit, where I was working. It took longer than I’d expected to get over it.’ I was proud that my voice stayed strong, though Nicky was in my head, smiling.

  ‘I know,’ he said kindly. ‘A bad business.’

  We looked at each other for a moment in silence.

  ‘This medication . . . You have been taking it regularly?’

  Sod it, I thought. He’s been talking to Jess.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I mean, why wouldn’t I? Some days I forget, but mostly yeah, of course I take it.’

  I had stopped in Morocco. The prescription had run out and I couldn’t face the hassle of finding an English-speaking doctor to renew it. Then there’d been the experience at the palmery and I’d thought, If this is madness, give me more of it. I’d felt alive. I’d thought, I don’t want a bland, twilight world. I can put up with the lows if I can get these highs. I’d thought I was cured. I’d survived for more than twenty years without drugs. I didn’t need them.

  ‘We can check,’ he said mildly.

  The thin-lipped woman was looking at me as if I were an unpredictable dog who should be wearing a muzzle. I had an almost overwhelming urge to live up to her prejudice and smack her. I ignored Farrier’s comment and leaned back in my chair. My hands were clasped together on the table. They were bloodless and white.

  ‘I could use some coffee.’ Farrier nodded towards the sergeant.

  She got up reluctantly and left the room.

  ‘Tell me about Thomas Mariner,’ he said later, when the DS had returned with a tray and the tape machine was listening again.

  The coffee came in polystyrene cups and, although it wasn’t as nasty as I’d expected, it had an aftertaste of plastic. Miles had brought biscuits. I dipped a digestive into the hot liquid and nibbled it. It was delicious, sweet and nutty, and for that moment it was more important to enjoy it than to answer the question. Farrier seemed to understand that, because he waited patiently.

  ‘Why were you visiting Thomas Mariner?’ he prompted at last.

  I didn’t really want to tell him. It wasn’t anything to do with confidentiality. It wasn’t as if I had a professional reputation to think of. I’d lost that when I stuck a pair of scissors in a homeless lad’s arm. It’s just that in my experience it’s usually safer to keep the police in the dark. The more you tell them, the more ammunition you give them for later. Information which might seem harmless at the time comes back to haunt you. Then I looked up at Farrier and suddenly I’d had enough of being there. I just wanted to get out. I wanted to be home, sitting on the sofa in Jess’s front room, drinking cocoa and watching a crappy soap on the television.

  ‘It was work, sort of,’ I said.

  ‘Social work?’

  ‘Not really.’

  And then I told him. I didn’t go into details about my relationship with Philip, but I gave him the rest – the letter from Stuart Howdon, the funeral at Wintry-law, the commission to trace Philip’s illegitimate son. He wrote it all down. Occasionally he interrupted to ask for details, gently, so at the time I didn’t realize he wanted to test the consistency of my story.

  ‘Where was the solicitor’s office?’

  ‘Morpeth, that street opposite the library.’

  ‘And the date of the funeral?’

  ‘It was 3 June. A Thursday.’

  He seemed satisfied, jotted down a scribbled note, then looked up at me again.

  ‘How did you find the boy?’

  By that time I felt light-headed through having talked so much. I don’t like being the centre of attention. Showing off has never really been my thing. Sitting there with both of them staring at me made me feel strange. I wanted to put my hands over my eyes and pretend I was on my own.

  ‘Go on,’ Farrier
said kindly. ‘Take your time.’

  So I explained about talking to Thomas’s grandmother, and Kay Laing, and going to the hostel in Whitley Bay. I didn’t tell him the lies I’d told to get through the doors. Like I said, that sort of thing can come back to get you. And I didn’t mention Ronnie Laing. I’m not sure why.

  ‘Dan Meech, one of the residential workers in the hostel, gave me Thomas’s new address.’ I looked up at Farrier bleakly. ‘I thought I’d been really clever. A brilliant piece of investigation.’

  ‘You should consider a career with the police.’ Of course he didn’t mean it.

  ‘Do you think I could have caused his death. Indirectly, I mean? I didn’t set out to. But could I have stirred something up with my poking around?’

  He smiled again. He had a lovely smile. I wondered if he was a father, if his kids knew how lucky they were. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Shouldn’t think so for a minute.’

  ‘Do you believe me, then?’

  ‘Well, it’s a helluva story to make up.’ He stood up and beckoned for Miles to follow him. ‘Wait there for a tick.’ At the door he gave a bit of a wink. ‘We won’t be long.’

  The uniformed policewoman who came in to sit with me brought more coffee and a plateful of biscuits. I think they were probably Farrier’s idea too. He was longer than I expected and I was starting to feel twitchy again when he came back in. I half stood in my seat, thinking they’d let me go immediately, but he returned to his chair on the other side of the table. He looked troubled, slightly puzzled. It could have been an act, but I didn’t think so. Miles wasn’t with him and he asked the policewoman to stay. She must have given her name for the machine but I don’t remember.

  ‘Is there anything about that story you’d like to change?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ I didn’t get any sense of danger. I was tired. My concentration had gone.

  ‘I’ve just spoken to Mr Howdon. That letter he sent, asking you to meet him after the funeral, did you keep it?’

  I’d had it with me when I went to Wintrylaw. I’d shown it to Howdon in his office, as a proof of identification, before he started explaining about Philip, but afterwards he had held on to it. I felt exhausted, too tired to explain all that, so I just shook my head.

  ‘No matter.’ Farrier still sounded cheerful to me. ‘The bank will have the details of the cheque you paid into your account.’

  ‘It wasn’t a cheque. It was cash. There’ll be a record of that.’

  ‘Not quite the same though, is it? It could have come from anywhere. And it seems a bit odd. A respectable solicitor carrying round a bundle of used tenners.’

  ‘Twenties,’ I said. ‘And fifties.’ At last his scepticism cut through my apathy. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Mr Howdon . . .’ He paused, and I could hear the quotation marks. ‘. . . doesn’t recollect meeting you after Mr Samson’s funeral. He doesn’t think you were there even.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  They decided to let me go in the end, though I could tell Miles didn’t like it. Even walking to get bailed by the custody sergeant, I was still trying to persuade Farrier that I’d been telling the truth.

  ‘There was a receptionist at Howdon’s office. Show her my photo. She’ll know me.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  But I could tell he didn’t hold out much hope. Nor did I. She worked for Howdon, didn’t she? She’d do as she was told.

  He felt sorry for me. Like the bystanders that day in Blyth, he thought I was a nutter. He felt a bit foolish because he’d been taken in by my story, but, as I’ve said, he was a kind man. He suggested I make an urgent appointment to see my psychiatrist. ‘No trekking in the Atlas Mountains this time, though, pet, whatever he says. You mustn’t leave the country.’

  I nearly told him about the feeling I’d had in Delaval that I was being followed. It was possible that there was someone else in Isabella Street that morning. But I couldn’t. All I’d had was a sense of being watched. Glimpses of shadows. He couldn’t take that seriously and nor could I.

  Jess was waiting for me by the front desk. I’d been bailed to stay at her house. She didn’t see me immediately. She was sitting on a padded bench which ran along one wall, staring ahead of her. Not reading or knitting, just sitting, as if sitting was an active pastime in its own right. She was making a statement and she wasn’t going anywhere. Then she saw me and she opened her arms wide.

  ‘Eh, bonny lass,’ she said. ‘Fancy stumbling on something dreadful like that.’ To show me and the officers with me that she didn’t believe for a minute I was capable of hurting a fly. She never believed any of her lodgers were guilty of the crimes they were charged with, but it was still comforting. She pulled me onto the seat beside her and gave me a hug. I wanted to cry, but I’d save that for later. We stood up together and walked out to the car park, where Ray was waiting patiently in the van.

  As we joined the Spine Road a big brown cloud covered the setting sun and the light seeped out from behind.

  ‘I’ve asked Lisa to pop in,’ Jess said casually. So she intended to treat me as an invalid, not a murderer.

  ‘Jess, man, it’s eight in the evening. She’ll want to be out.’

  Lisa was a party animal. Her idea of business wear was a short leather skirt and fishnet tights, a skimpy cardie which left nothing to the imagination, and a jacket on top to make her look professional. Often she turned up on a visit with a hangover. She’d done a stint attached to the drug and alcohol abuse clinic. ‘I know,’ she said, when I’d pointed out there might be a tad of hypocrisy in her position. ‘I met a couple of patients in the Bigg Market the other weekend and I was in a worse state than they were.’ She’d been brought up in Ashington, had one of those accents which pinpoint where you were born to a couple of streets. During our first session she’d invited me to talk about my family. ‘After all,’ she’d said, ‘our parents are always with us.’ When I’d explained that mine very certainly weren’t, she choked with laughter over one of Jess’s milky coffees and apologized for not having read my notes properly. After that we’d got on fine.

  ‘She was on call anyway,’ Jess said. The three of us were squashed in the front of the van, with Jess in the middle, and I felt her tense. ‘Humour me, eh, pet? I feel the responsibility, you know. I’d rather have a professional give you the once-over.’

  Ray dropped us in the back lane. He wouldn’t come in. He muttered something about his neighbour’s ballcock, but I suspect all the talk of madness was making him feel uncomfortable.

  A couple of lodgers were sprawled in front of the telly in the front room. You could tell their minds weren’t on the programme. They’d stayed in especially to find out what had happened with the police. Murder was well outside their league and I sensed a new respect. They were probably disappointed that I was there at all. It would have been much more dramatic if I’d been arrested. Jess got rid of them, bribed them probably with a couple of quid each to spend in the club. Then we sat looking at each other.

  ‘I spoke to that Mr Farrier,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t think you did it.’

  ‘No? You could have fooled me.’

  She ignored the interruption. ‘Not possible, he said. Time-wise. The boy wasn’t long dead when you found him. Mrs Russo remembered you in the icecream shop. You were sitting there like a wet weekend, she said. Apparently. Then there was that lassie that let you into the house and went up with you. She went in first, didn’t she? She swears you couldn’t have killed him then. So when could you have done it? And what did you do with the knife?’

  ‘I was at the house earlier. No one was in, but I could have done it then and got rid of the knife.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You were too long in the ice-cream shop. And why would you go back to the house if you’d killed the lad?’

  She stared at me. A challenge to be rational. I wondered how she’d got all that out of Farrier. Why had he given away the information? She went on, ‘What were you doing there, anyway?’ So t
hat was it. He’d asked her to find out.

  I gave her exactly the same story as I’d given the police. ‘But Farrier doesn’t believe I’d been asked to trace Thomas. He won’t accept that’s why I was there. He thinks I’m crazy. Or lying.’ I paused. ‘Did I show you the letter from the solicitor, Jess? The one telling me about the funeral at Wintrylaw?’

  She shook her head slowly. ‘Sorry, pet. I never did see it. You were outside, do you remember, when the postie came. But of course there was a funeral. Why else would you get Ray to take you all that way up the coast? You’d never heard of the place before, had you?’

  That was true. Philip had never mentioned it.

  Outside in the lane there was the sound of a car being driven too quickly, the painful squeal of brakes. Lisa had arrived.

  ‘That lass’ll kill herself one day,’ Jess said automatically. It was what she always said. She caught my eye and gave an awkward grin to show she realized she was repeating herself, then stood up to let Lisa into the house.

  Tonight Lisa was in casual mode: jeans which seemed moulded to her backside, a sleeveless top and nothing else apparently except short shiny boots with big heels. Jess very obviously left us alone. She said I must be starving – she knew she was – and she’d sort out some food. Lisa seemed to have skipped that part of her training which emphasized the need for a non-judgemental approach, for tact and discretion.

  ‘What’s been going on, then?’ she demanded. ‘Jess says you’ve not been taking your pills.’ Thanks Jess, I thought. Who else have you told? Perhaps you put a note in the Newbiggin parish magazine?

  I explained how good I’d felt in Morocco, how I hadn’t thought I needed them.

  ‘You’ll need them now.’ No argument, no discussion.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘No maybe. It’ll be a stressful time. Don’t you think anyone walking into a room and finding what you did would be shocked? For Christ’s sake, Lizzie, accept that you’re human.’

  ‘Could I have dreamt up my whole reason for being there?’ I asked suddenly. ‘I mean, could it be a symptom of the illness? Like the dreams and the flashbacks.’