Ghosts from the Past

by Sally Spedding

  *

  I then took another chance. An even bigger one. Longstanton Road were easier and quicker than going east across country. If I saw someone coming either way, I cud duck down in the ditch that ran alongside. Deep, dry like a never-ending grave.

  That straight road stretched away from me, flat as a girl’s ribbon. Susan Deakins’ in fact, which had tightened just perfect around her bobbing little throat.

  The only sound were me breathing in and out and occasionally me boots on the loose stones by the roadside; the swish of dead grass against me legs. The bandage on me left one kept undoing and whenever I bent down to re-tie it, too much blood filled me head, bringing on a dizzy spell.

  I were just bending down again when I felt something grip me balls from behind.

  “Jesus!”

  I tried staning up, but the grip were too tight. Who the feck were it? I cudn’t even turn around.

  “Shut up. Where d’you live, runt?”

  A man. A stranger.

  Pause. Angry blue sky. Angry sun slipping down beyone the poplars along the Howse. Me a fox with no cover…

  “Over there,” I said. “Wombwell Farm.”

  He let go of me balls and gripped me neck instead.

  “You stink.”

  “So, do you.”

  “Show some respect.”

  Another hand squeezed me right ear and pulled me round to face him. A giant. The kind I’d once seen in a book of fairy tales but never got to read. A weather-brown face with the look of a fighter. His cheeks and chin covered in a reddish stubble. Fair hair poking out from under an old hat. Eyes bluer than blackbirds’ eggs. “What’s your name?”

  “Stanley.”

  “Stanley who?”

  “Bulling.”

  “Who else is at the farm? I mean everyone.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t mess with me, runt.”

  He weren’t from these parts, I were sure of that. With the strength to flatten me like I were a fly.

  “Me, Ma, Pa and…”

  “Five florins for the answer I need.”

  Five florins not to be sneezed at.

  “A family,” I said, imagining it already.

  “What family?”

  Me ear stung to buggery.

  “From down south. Hampshire, they said. Parminter’s the name.”

  He began rummaging in his breeches’ pockets and pulled out five silver coins showing the head of George V on the front and Brittania in all her glory on the back. “Who exactly?”

  “Will is the husband. Sarah the wife. The kids is Mollie and Buck.” I almost added how she were a proper little goer, but the silver were hot and wonderful in me palm. I never told him the rest. He let go of me ear. “You’ve not seen me. Understood? Or you’ll wish you’d ne’er been born.”

  The reward almost burning me palm.

  “Thank ye,” I said.

  “No, Stanley. It’s me who should be thanking you.”

  And with that, he ran across the road and disappeared behind a high, uncut hedge. I’d not even asked his name but guessed he’d never have told me. What I did know was that he were trouble, with no business being in Hecklers Green. But I were suddenly rich, weren’t I? And didn’t that make everything worthwhile?

  40. JOHN.

  Tuesday 15th November 1988. 11.43 a.m.

  To remain incognito, the station master’s mysterious caller must have used an untraceable public telephone. So far, I’d counted two on the way east. Both empty. The first in Tidswell village itself. The second, outside the Leg of Mutton pub some half a mile away.

  Neither showed evidence of a careless caller. In fact, they were spotless, without even any trace of footprints.

  But that caller had also been right.

  After those fruitless diversions, it had taken me fifteen minutes to reach Catchwell Crossing, following Arthur Stock’s very precise directions using the access road from Tidswell village, barely wide enough for a car, never mind an ambulance or fire engine.

  All the while I’d kept a look out for Stephen, without success, and as I approached the sombre yet workmanlike activity ahead of me, prayed the crumpled red car being disentangled from the front of the train, wasn’t a Ford Fiesta. Prayed too, that whoever had been inside it, hadn’t suffered.

  I’d not seen a more dismal scene since my sister and I had stood next to the similar wreckage of our parents’prized new Austin 7. Forty-five years later, the rain even seemed the same, with that same flatness all around. So flat you could imagine travelling to the far horizon and falling off the very edge of the world.

  No CCTV, I noticed, once I’d parked out of the way on an overgrown verge. Catchwell Crossing really was back in the Dark Ages.

  “Unauthorised personnel forbidden,” barked a male voice from somwhere as I approached the unmanned level crossing, where two chequered police cars, both empty had been jettisoned in a hurry. An ambulance faced the narrow road it would be taking on its return journey. A green light flashed on and off above its dashboard, and further away, in the falling rain, welders’ sparks glowed then died.

  “I am authorised,” I retorted, ID card at the ready, still not knowing where this so - far invisible person was, until I saw him walking away from a portable wc. half-hidden by the ambulance

  It can’t be...

  Connor Morris. A constable when I’d last worked with him in Nottingham.

  “John.” He held out his hand, newly washed and smelling of soap. “Detective Sergeant, Norwich CID.” A man twice the size as I remembered him. His grey suit beneath his open cagoule was tight in all the wrong places, but his eyes hadn’t changed. Alert and focussed. His cropped brown hair glistening in the rain.

  A wedding ring, too.

  Despite my hang-ups about having retired too early and its loss of status, I was glad to see he’d risen swiftly through the ranks, and I hoped my commendations had helped. “You were a right good boss,” he added. “Firm but fair, excuse the cliché. Took no prisoners…”

  “Thanks. You weren’t bad either.”

  His smile soon died as we scanned the busy scene ahead. He checked his watch. A punctual and reliable cop. Above all, keen to use his initiative. Norfolk was lucky to have him. “I heard about both your adventures in France,” he said. “Can’t match them, I’m afraid, and out here it’s pretty quiet except for stuff like this.” He turned to me. “Mostly suicides. Not enough jobs, that’s the trouble.”

  I could believe it. But my main questions were still unasked, because I’d learnt that timing was everything.

  “Were the crossing lights working?” My first question.

  “Perfectly. That’s the mystery. You couldn’t miss them. Even in this drizzle.”

  “Or any sign that the deceased might have been shunted into danger?”

  Morris looked surprised.

  “Nope. Not yet.”

  As we neared the carnage, I relayed the station master’s brief account of the accident and explained why I was in the area at all. That I was staying with a Professor Stephen Vickers and his wife of Wombwell Lodge. She, missing since Sunday morning, and him not answering his home or office phone.

  Morris jotted down these and other details in an enviable shorthand into a damp notepad, and just before he closed it, I added how this normally stable friend had just freaked out on me at Tidswell Station.

  “I’m very concerned about him,” was my understatement of the year. “And her, too. She’s got a brother who’s…”

  “Look, John,” Morris closed his pad. “We’ll catch up afterwards.” He passed me his personal card giving a home address near Diss and unhooked the police cordon by the track to allow me through. “We could be of use to each other, and I’ll be in touch.”

  “Who’s the dead man?” I asked, nevertheless.

  “How did you know he was dead?”

  “Someone phoned Arthur Stock, the station master at around 11 a.m. A man, so he claimed.”

  Tho
se keen eyes widened.

  “Really?”

  I filled him in with what I’d done, then suggested those two local phone boxes should be sealed off and forensically examined. Just in case.

  Morris frowned. Yes, I’d gone off limits, but was, as he’d admitted, clearly useful.

  “Will do,” he said. “You never know.”

  “Whoever it was, must have seen the crash. But from where?” I indicated the section of railway line from which another ambulance, presumably carrying the train driver, was speeding away out of sight. Its lights and siren at full blast. “Perhaps there are other recent tyre tracks. Maybe its driver saw someone else near the scene.”

  “He’s still unconscious. But he’ll live.”

  “And the victim?”

  “White C. Mid-late twenties - hard to say. Traces of black leather and, believe it or not, an undamaged crucifix around his neck…” He angled his head towards the track. “They’re getting him out now.”

  Mid-late twenties… A crucifix…

  “Make of car?”

  Just then, Morris was summoned by a middle-aged woman wearing a white lab coat beneath her mac. So much for timing, I thought, guessing she was the police surgeon. They stood together deep in conversation before she moved towards the car’s charred core, still surrounded by firemen and a team of paramedics. The rest of its blackened, twisted wreckage lay strewn far and wide. A portion of chassis here, a crushed wheel hub there. And was that a foot or a stone, tilted up against the nearest rail?

  No sign of a rear number plate, which was odd. Or any manufacturer’s mark on what remained of the boot. The station master’s informant had been correct. For one unlucky driver, this had been a terrible collision. For the service train’s driver, a miracle that he’d cheated death. His cab was being winched on to a flat-bed truck. Its jagged, gaping front revealed a fuel tank already encased in fire-retardent foam.

  Once this truck had been driven away, both empty carriages stood forlornly bearing witness to a slower, more painstaking process taking place behind a makeshift screen until the paramedics guided by the police surgeon, finally brought out the crash victim, bit by bit. Tension stabbed at the wet afternoon, and tempers flared. Connor Morris joined her to help calm proceedings while the bloodied remains were passed from hand to hand to a stretcher and quickly smothered by a standard-issue blanket. A brighter red than the blood.

  Occasionally Connor Morris glanced my way. Surely not seeking approval after all this time? But my daring to think this might be so, gave me the shot of adrenalin I needed.

  *

  I phoned Wombwell Lodge for the second time and still got no reply. The answerphone still switched off. Odd, I thought, then remembered my recent chat with Jane Calder-Brown at Catherine’s publishers. I called them again. One thing I had to know, and prayed she’d be there.

  She was, sounding tired, so I was brief and to the point.

  “You’re asking if Catherine’s young companion wore a crucifix?” she repeated my question. “Well, Mr. Lyon, I get all sorts of enquiries, but none like this.”

  “It’s vital. Please.”

  A pause, during which Clerkenwell’s traffic seemed weirdly close by.

  “Yes. I did notice it, because such a thing doesn’t usually go with nose and ear studs…”

  I paused for a second. She’d just backed up what Nicholas Beecham had told me.

  “That’s most helpful,” I said.

  “Is something wrong? I mean, is he alright? Is Catherine? We’ve still not heard from her. You did say you’d keep us informed.”

  “I did, and of course, I will.”

  “I recall that he and Catherine did seem close. Very at ease with each other, if you know what I mean.”

  “Thanks, Jane.”

  But with the ambulance and most personnel gone, the fag ends of death scarring what was in fact quite an attractive, rural spot, I felt a sudden, deep sorrow.

  *

  Connor Morris caught up with me near his Sierra. Despite moist eyes, his movements

  were brisk, purposeful. I only wanted to detain him for a moment with my latest news. That Piotr, despite his black leather gear, sported the very same crucifix.

  “Are you sure? His grip on his car’s door handle tight as a vice.

  “Catherine Vicker’s brother and her editor were. Maybe he didn’t wear it all the time, as…”

  “Where are you off to now?”

  “The university of West Norfolk. Stephen Vickers may well have turned up there. He certainly didn’t want to come with me on the train to Norwich Police Headquarters, that’s for sure. Perhaps why he knocked me out. Simple as that.” Although I didn’t really believe it.

  “See what you can dig up, John. Something’s going on which might explain why the Vickers couple are still missing. Power stuggles, revenge, possible blackmail.”

  Morris was clearly warming to our renewed association, but I was aware of too many big gaps in the information I’d given him. How could I have told him everything during that afternoon’s crisis? And it wasn’t over yet.

  He pulled out that same damp notebook, checked his watch and added the time. I was impressed. Perhaps too easily.

  “What’s with this brother of hers?” he asked.

  “The Reverend Nicholas Beecham is fifty-seven and lives at The Vicarage in Vicarage Road, Snodbury…”

  “Just over our border.”

  “One of his three parishes, all in Suffolk. Now for the interesting bit. Stephen Vickers told me he employs a twenty-two-year-old Pole called Piotr. A fervent Catholic, apparently. As for the surname, no way was he telling me that.”

  I then relayed both sightings of him with what had definitely been Beecham’s red Fiesta on Sunday morning. “But, unless there are ten-a-penny doppelgangers wearing crucifixes floating around, he has to be the poor sod on that crossing.”

  “Does this Beecham drive?”

  “A beige Peugeot. Ten years old.” I then added what I’d discovered in the barn. How extra clean the car had seemed. How the Reverend might even have been armed.

  “Any family? I mean, this Piotr.”

  I stalled. Morris relaxed his grip on his car door handle.

  “What’s up?” he peered at me. “Have I just walked on your grave?”

  “He’s Catherine Vicker’s son, but not by Stephen.”

  Morris paused, frowning again. Like me, aware of too many possibilities, loose ends and conjecture.

  “Now he tells me.”

  “Sorry, but it’s tricky. Beecham doesn’t know.”

  “Oh Jesus. If our dead driver is this Piotr, our net must tighten fast. I’ll pay this Reverend a visit now. Suffolk’s hillbillies can wait.”

  “He’s a shifty piece of work.”

  “And ambitious. His photo was in the latest Sunday Times no less.”

  “Don’t talk to me about the media. It’s worse round here, and nothing’s going out till we’re ready.”

  “You’ll be lucky.”

  With that, my companion pulled off his wet cagoule and threw it on to his Sierra’s rear seat. Then, ignoring his visibly annoyed superior - a well-built female Detective Inspector with a strong jaw and no make-up - said through his open window, “John Lyon. The best cop in Sherwood Lodge. To old times.”

  *

  I watched his saloon turn and move off in a spray of dark shale. We both knew what he’d meant by that, but did I want it? Of course, I bloody did. My new home could wait, and just then it represented a retirement cage with Bran Flakes every morning and Horlicks every night. I wasn’t ready for that, just yet. I wanted a fight.

  Meeting Connor Morris in such grim circumstances had been the spur I needed.

  I had to unravel just what the desperate Dr. Vincent Lovell had been up against almost seventy years ago. To find Catherine and Stephen and discover why - if that burnt parcel of flesh now on its way to the morgue in the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, had indeed been Piotr - he’d wanted to en
d his short life in such a terrible way.

  Also, when and how could the news be broken to his mother?

  41. SARAH.

  Wednesday 28th July 1920. 4.30 p.m.

  Mollie and Buck seemed contrite for the rest of the afternoon, having been coerced into digging the water pit as a punishment for their misbehaviour.

  Will had finally responded to my pleading and read them the Riot Act about the dangers of running off without telling either him or myself.

  “In the war, we had to keep each other informed to the nth degree,” he’d said. “It was a matter of life or death.”

  Buck had listened, wide-eyed. His wheezing less obvious in the relatively cool kitchen, while Mollie’s faraway look in her large, blue eyes never wavered.

  As for myself, I still resembled a tinker. Still hot and sticky between my legs. How I yearned for a cooling dip in the sea, a chance to wash my hair and dry it with one of those new-fangled hairdriers my female friends had mentioned back in Swayhurst.

  Dream on, Sarah, I told myself. In the scheme of things, other matters were far more important. Stanley Bulling for a start. I’d chosen not to mention his fun and games in front of his parents, still snoring in the front parlour. My fears about him had grown almost out of all proportion, so it had been a huge relief to see those two policemen gradually catching up with him. I’d prayed yet again he was safely locked up, preferably somewhere far away.

  But what of the other man who’d traded on my naïvety almost fourteen years ago, when I should have known better? Who’d used this physical strength again like the smiling turtle-killer turning his prey over on to its shell to invade the soft underbelly?

  As a miserable sinner, I had no words…

  *

  Despite her bone-hard exterior, Ann Bulling seemed, like me, to harbour more than one dark secret, yet during a break for another cup of brownish water which she barely touched, she and her husband spoke about plans for the farm once the drought was over. How, if things worked out, Will could even be made a co-partner in the expanding business, which could include cattle. Even horses for hacking and hunting, then in great demand since the losses in the War. Neither mentioned Stanley’s name, as if he were already a departed spirit whose absence had brought them hope for the future.