Burial of Ghosts

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘You’ve not been hearing voices too?’ Jokey, but she really wanted to know. ‘Instructions down the telephone wire? Over the radio?’

  I shook my head impatiently.

  ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘You’ve a perfectly sound grasp on reality. You’ve enough on your plate without going down that road. Trust your own judgement, Lizzie. I believe you.’ Then her pager bleeped and she said she was off to see someone more ill and less stubborn than me.

  So I wasn’t mad. Lisa said it, so it must be true. But if I wasn’t mad, Stuart Howdon must be lying. Why would he do that? Did it mean he had killed Thomas? And that idea, that someone as fat and respectable as Stuart Howdon might have stabbed a teenage lad to death, was the craziest thought I’d had all day.

  We ate in the kitchen. Soup cooked the day before and heated through. One of Jess’s specials, made from neck of lamb and pearl barley, so thick a spoon would stand upright in it. Jess wanted to ask what Lisa had said and thought she was being tactful for not asking. In fact the silence was as dense as the broth, suffocating, so at last I said, ‘Lisa doesn’t think I’m mad.’

  ‘Of course she doesn’t, pet.’

  It sounded as if she was humouring me. Like I was a kid. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe she meant it. But I lost my temper. All the tension of that day in the police station came streaming out of my mouth, all the crap of the last six months. I shouted as loud as I could, filth, words that I hadn’t used since the kids’ home because I knew Jess hated them, because I’d wanted to be different from the dumb-arse morons who couldn’t speak without swearing. She sat there and took it, a gesture as active as her sitting and waiting in the police station. She didn’t move. She just waited for me to stop. It took a long time, minutes that seemed like days, but at last the screams turned to sobs and she gathered me up in her arms and stroked my hair, pushing it behind my ear, away from my forehead.

  ‘I’ll be good,’ I said. So who was the kid, then? ‘I’ll do what Lisa says.’

  Then we opened a bottle of wine and sat together on the sofa, watching a soppy film, just as I’d imagined in the police station.

  It must have been midnight when I went up to bed. It was comfortable on the sofa, dozing in front of the story with its impossible happy ending, and I couldn’t quite face being on my own. Jess would have stayed up all night with me, but I knew she’d be tired. One of the lodgers had a New Deal job and she got up every morning to make sure he left the house in time for the bus.

  In my room I’d gone beyond the need for sleep. I opened the window wide and looked out over the sea. There was a moon, not quite full, not quite perfectly round. I thought of Philip. Listening to the water stirring up the shingle, I allowed myself a self-indulgent rerun of the last night in Marrakech. At least he would never know how his son had died. I didn’t believe in God and couldn’t imagine them meeting up for a cosy chat in heaven.

  I went over the events of the day, trying to make sense of them. Had Philip asked me to trace Thomas because he knew his son was in danger? Had he expected me to protect him? If so, I’d failed him big time.

  Come on, Lizzie, dump the guilt. It was something Lisa would say in the sessions when we talked through the mistakes I’d made in the past. I could hear her voice now, persuasive, in my head.

  But today I had more to be guilty about, another death on my conscience.

  You can’t take responsibility for all the crimes in the world. Another of Lisa’s sayings. If I wasn’t responsible for Thomas’s death, who was? Who had stabbed and cut at him, then slipped into the street just before I’d arrived? Did it really matter? Why should I care?

  I did care. I’d let Philip down. I couldn’t let it go.

  On the window-sill was a pile of papers, my unofficial in-tray: a tax return form still to be completed, bank statements, something complicated about the local authority pension, the latest sick note. And the letters Dan Meech had given me to deliver to Thomas. I’d forgotten to put them in my bag when I set out that morning. There were three of them. I lay them on the bed and tried to divine from the envelopes what they might contain.

  The first was easy. It was a bank statement. I used the same bank and recognized the long white envelope and the return address on the back. The second was postmarked in Whitley Bay. The address was handwritten in spiky italics using a real fountain pen. The third had been typed, but it didn’t look like a circular or junk mail. The address wasn’t printed on one of those labels which spew out of a computer. Then I turned it over and saw a portcullis and a House of Commons stamp on the back. A letter from an MP. Most likely a response to an enquiry Thomas had raised. About what? Homelessness? Dysfunctional families?

  I knew exactly what I should do with those letters. I should put them back on the window-sill and in the morning I should phone Mr Farrier and tell him about them. But I left them on the bed and stared at them, as if with enough concentration and willpower I could develop X-ray vision and see what they contained. I found myself calculating the chances that Dan Meech would tell Farrier he’d given them to me. Practically nil. Farrier would talk to Dan, of course. If I hadn’t killed Thomas, the most likely suspect would be one of the kids from the hostel. They’re unstable, the homeless. According to the cops. Capable of anything. But Dan has a memory like a sieve. He’s famous for it. I’m surprised he recognized me that day in the street.

  Then I thought, Well, I can give Farrier the bank statement. How interesting can that be? If Dan does remember giving me letters to deliver he won’t remember how many. And at the same time I was thinking again, Why am I doing this? Why interfere? I promised Jess I’d be sensible. The only answer I could come up with was that I wanted to take some control. I hated the sensation of things happening to me.

  I opened the handwritten note first. The envelope wasn’t very firmly stuck. I slid my thumb under the flap and separated the gummed paper carefully, managing not to rip the envelope at all. If need be I could restick it and no one would ever know. Inside was a square of red card. Written on it in the same italics were a couple of lines:

  I’m really sorry to have given you that grief. Can’t we still be friends? I hope they forward this. Please forgive me.

  No name at the top and no signature, but I thought it must be Nell, Thomas’s girlfriend. There was no address for her, which was a bummer, but Dan Meech had mentioned her surname: Ravendale. The family might be in the phone book and it wasn’t a common name. I scribbled Ravendale on the back of the card so I wouldn’t forget it, then realized what I’d done. It would be impossible to hand the thing back to Farrier now without explaining that I’d opened it. Stupid. And why would I want to trace the girl anyway?

  I opened the letter from the House of Commons without any attempt to keep the envelope intact. It was from our MP, a woman called Shona Murray, newly elected in a by-election. She had a reputation for being radical and honest, but then she was very new. I’d seen her once on Question Time. I remembered a lot of hair, wild in an untidy, untamed way, not as if some designer had spent hours with a comb and the mousse. I’m not sure what she’d said – pretty much the party line, I think – but she’d impressed me with her humour. She, or more probably her secretary, had written:

  Dear Thomas

  Thanks so much for the information. I do need of course to be certain of its accuracy before I can use it. I’m sure you understand the responsibility of an MP in a situation like this.

  The letter was laser-printed, but Shona Murray had signed it. The use of Thomas’s first name seemed significant. Had there been a regular correspondence? Had they met?

  I felt suddenly exhausted. It was too much to take in. I returned the letters and the unopened bank statement to the window-sill. A container ship was moving slowly towards Blyth docks. I didn’t expect to sleep but lost consciousness immediately.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It’s evening. I’m pacing a long corridor. There are pools of shadow where the security lights don’t reach. No sound. The chil
dren are asleep.

  Then, ahead of me, I see a boy. He seems to have appeared from nowhere. It’s Nicky, a fifteen-year-old with a fine, drawn face and the pallor of a pensioner. I think of him as one of my successes and approach him without any sense of danger.

  ‘Miss!’ His voice is urgent. His eyes burn as if he’s just woken up from a nightmare.

  ‘Back to bed, Nicky. It’s all right. We’ll talk in the morning.’

  I’m close enough to touch him. Nicky killed his grandmother. Recently I’ve persuaded him to speak about it. Everyone here has to confront their offending behaviour. The necessity of doing that is a fundamental belief, as essential as the belief in God in a monastery.

  ‘Just a few words, Miss.’

  That’s when I see the knife. Was he holding it all the time? Behind his back perhaps? Through the white fingers I see the yellow handle.

  ‘Nicky . . .’

  But his arm is round my neck, choking me to silence, and the knife is pointed at my stomach.

  He kicks open the door into his room and pulls me inside. We fall onto his bed like lovers, our legs tangled, his arm still around me.

  He squirms free and sits over me. The point of the knife is held at my throat. He makes a sound, a bubble of excitement. In my head I scream to the mother I have never met to save me.

  I woke with a start to a knock on the bedroom door. I knew immediately it wasn’t going to be a good day, but it took a moment to remember why. Jess was standing in the doorway with a mug of tea in one hand. She’d never done that before, not even when I was ill. I’m not much of a tea drinker but it was a kind thought. She was looking harassed. She’d woken me up to talk. I hope she didn’t notice the opened letters on the window-sill.

  ‘The phone hasn’t stopped ringing.’

  ‘Farrier?’ I knew he’d want to talk again.

  ‘The press. Not just the Journal. Some from London.’

  ‘Put on the answerphone.’

  ‘But that’d make things worse, pet, wouldn’t it? They’d just come round, camp out on the doorstep.’

  ‘They’ll do that anyway.’

  ‘I don’t think they will. Not now.’

  She waited for me to sit up and handed me the mug. I took a sip. The tea was strong. I thought I could taste the enamel dissolving from my teeth.

  ‘I lied,’ she said. ‘I told them you’d been trouble ever since you’d got here and I’d thrown you out. This was the last straw.’ She paused so I could tell her how clever she’d been.

  I obliged. ‘You didn’t!’

  ‘Do you know, everyone believed me. Every single one.’ She was indignant. ‘As if I’d do a thing like that.’

  I didn’t tell her she was different from most landladies. I was miserable, ungracious and not in the mood for giving compliments. ‘What else did you tell them?’

  ‘That I thought you’d gone to stay in Heaton with an old friend from college.’

  Heaton. Where Philip had grown up. Did his family still live there? Was there another set of grandparents for Thomas?

  Jess must have said something, but I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I didn’t hear her. When I came round she was looking at me, concerned. She’s not a daydreamer, doesn’t understand it. I made a show of reaching over to the bedside table, shaking a couple of pills from a little brown bottle and taking them with the last of the tea. She didn’t say anything but she left the room beaming.

  I started phoning Stuart Howdon’s office at nine o’clock. The woman who answered wasn’t the receptionist I’d met there after Philip’s funeral. This person was older and she had a Scottish accent.

  ‘Oh, he isn’t in the office yet,’ she said, as if I was mad to expect it.

  He must have arrived by the time I rang at ten, because the response was different, if just as chilly.

  ‘Who should I say is calling?’

  I gave my name without thinking. A mistake. ‘I’m sorry, Ms Bartholomew, he’ll be in a meeting all day.’

  I wanted to go to Morpeth and drag him out of his meeting, but Jess persuaded me not to.

  ‘Leave it to Mr Farrier, pet. It’s his job. He knows what he’s doing.’

  I wished I could believe her, but Farrier was convinced I was guilty. He just didn’t have enough evidence to keep me in custody.

  At lunchtime Dan Meech turned up on the doorstep. He’d tried to phone, but Jess had given him the same story. He hadn’t been taken in by it. He was carrying a bunch of flowers, as if I was an invalid or the one who had died. As if there’d been an accident and he wanted to mark the spot.

  ‘The press have been to Absalom House too,’ he said. ‘Daft bastards. They’ve been handing out money to the residents in return for a story about Thomas. Of course they’ll get a story that way. It’ll probably be a fairy tale, but what do they care? I shouldn’t stay long. Ellen’s on her own there, fighting them off.’

  I waited for him to mention the mail he’d asked me to deliver to Thomas, but he didn’t bring it up. Not then or later. Unless the police specifically asked him, I didn’t think he would.

  ‘It was kind of you to come,’ I said.

  It was kind, but it was weird too. We’d been close at one time but not recently, and he’d never much cared about my feelings. I wondered if a ghoulish curiosity had brought him. Like the readers of the journalists who were pestering us both, perhaps he wanted the details. To know just how much blood there’d been. A description of the scene in close up and Technicolor. He looked awkward and embarrassed when I repeated ‘very kind’, so I thought I was right.

  But he added quickly, ‘It’s Nell.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She wants to speak to you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s got it into her head that you spoke to Thomas before he died.’

  I couldn’t take it in. It was as if he were accusing me of murder. I felt I had to defend myself. ‘He was dead when I arrived at the house. There was someone with me who can confirm . . .’

  ‘No.’ He almost shouted the interruption, realizing too late how I’d taken the words. ‘Not like that. Of course not. She thinks you might have phoned him to make an appointment to visit. Or met him on a previous occasion.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t.’

  ‘Could you tell her that?’

  ‘What?’ The question was pitched louder than his interruption.

  ‘She’s out of her mind. She won’t take it from me.’

  ‘She’s a bit young for you, Dan, isn’t she?’ It was a snide remark, intended only to hurt, but he coloured, twisted the flowers in his hands, scattering petals. I took them from him, set them on the kitchen bench and invited him in.

  ‘Is that what the row between Nell and Thomas was about?’ I asked carefully. ‘You?’

  ‘He didn’t know it was me. Nell told him she’d met another man. Someone older. He didn’t take it very well.’

  ‘I wonder why.’ I was amazed that Dan could be so crass. Thomas had been dumped by everyone he’d ever cared about. ‘Is that why he moved up to Delaval?’

  ‘One of the reasons. If he’d still been going out with Nell he’d probably have hung around.’

  He looked up and saw my face, gave a melodramatic shrug, a gesture to slide off any trace of responsibility. ‘I thought he’d get over it. People do. How was I to know that he’d die when he was still angry, before Nell had a chance to make things up with him?’

  It was very similar to the tone he’d used with me when we were still in college. Hey Lizzie, I didn’t know you felt like that. How could I realize you’d take it seriously? We’re mates, right. It was a bit of fun.

  As an actor, I thought again, he had a limited range. No wonder he’d had to find a day job.

  There was a pause. In the distance I could hear Jess hoovering the upstairs rooms. I sat, refusing to break the silence.

  ‘I could take you now,’ he said. ‘Nell hasn’t gone into school today. I’ve borrowed Ellen’s car
.’ Suddenly his voice went flat and bleak. ‘Please, Lizzie. You don’t know the state she’s in. I can’t go back without you.’

  I considered him suspiciously. Was he better, after all, than I’d realized? A bit hammy but with more emotional tone than I’d given him credit for? Then I thought none of that mattered. If I went it wouldn’t be for Dan. It would be for the girl. She’d be blaming herself and me and Dan and her parents. Everyone except the person with the knife. And what else did I have to do? I stuck the flowers in a milk jug and left a note for Jess on the table. She’d only have tried to stop me. I closed the kitchen door quietly behind me, but I didn’t think she’d hear anyway, above the hoover. Dan drove to Whitley Bay in silence, which meant either that he really cared for this girl or that he had more sense than to be triumphalist.

  Nell’s family had a house in one of the streets parallel to that where the Laings lived. Presumably Dan had been on his way there when we’d met the week before. It was on a corner, detached, mellow brick with ivy growing up the side, a more modern extension built on the back. At the gate I stopped, blocking the path, so Dan had to listen to me.

  ‘How did you know I’d found the body?’

  ‘Radio Newcastle.’

  ‘I was named?’

  He nodded. ‘A twenty-five-year-old social worker.’

  Oh, well, I thought, it could have been worse. Farrier could have added, ‘Who’s currently on sick leave following a mental breakdown.’ I’d always thought he was decent.

  I stepped aside and let Dan past. He led me round the back of the house and opened a door in the flat-roofed extension. I expected to step into a kitchen, but this was Nell’s room, a cross between an artist’s garret and the Blue Peter studio. Everywhere was colour. One wall was orange, with Pollock-like splashes in red and brown, another was washed deep blue fading into lilac. On that body parts had been printed in black gloss – not just the handprints you see in nursery schools, but feet, arms, buttocks and some smudgy marks which were probably tits. There was a big window looking out over the garden. A long trestle table had been built beneath it. Below the trestle were sets of drawers on castors, baskets with brushes and tubes of paint; beside it, a couple of high stools. Everything was messy and chaotic. The tubes of oil paint had tops missing. On the opposite wall was a sink. More brushes stood in jars of white spirit on the draining board. On the floor were piles of paper. I saw some pencil drawings which made me think for the first time that Nell was more than a spoilt brat who didn’t look after her things. In one corner a construction was under way, involving chicken wire and plaster. Perhaps it was finished and making a statement about impermanence, but I don’t think so. There were splashes of plaster on the floor and they still looked wet.