From somewhere in the foggy backcountry of his mind he recalled the mysterious blonde assuring him help was on the way. Mason didn’t need to know that. ‘I just remember lying there watching him walk away and I passed out. Everything else is kind of...’
Mason squinted as if she didn’t quite believe him. ‘Well you got lucky, in more ways than one. The blade went straight through the fleshy part in your side, right under your ribcage. It missed all your vital organs and swerved your spine. A few inches to the left and you’d’ve been in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.’
He lay back against his thin white pillow feeling deflated, relieved. ‘And what else?’ he asked.
Mason frowned.
‘You said I got lucky in more ways than one.’
‘We didn’t know where you’d gone, Nick. It was half an hour before anybody knew you were missing. Jonathan told me later that you suspected the killer was still in the house and we began to assume the worst. Then we received an anonymous call to the station, some woman telling us where you were, that you needed an ambulance. Without that tip you would’ve bled out, we wouldn’t’ve reached you in time.’
His eyelids began to feel heavy again. ‘What about David Newport?’
‘We let him go. No reason to hold him, he gave us a detailed account of what happened when he left the house. His dad gave the same story.’
York nodded groggily.
‘Holly’s funeral will be next week,’ Mason muttered. She shifted uncomfortably on the plastic seat. ‘I know you’ll want to be there.’
He didn’t reply. Something else was coming; he knew Mason too well.
‘If you want we can ride together –’
‘Spit it out, Judy,’ he cut in.
More uneasy shifting. ‘Fine. You’re off this case, Nick. There’s so much at stake here and you’re too close to this now. Holly’s death is going to mess with your head, no question.’
‘I’m fine,’ he implored. ‘I’m not done with this fucker.’
‘Yes you are.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Yes you are, Nick! You’re done, it’s over. And that’s not even bringing your addiction into it. I can’t even begin to tell you how many protocols you’re in breach of by filling your veins with that shit. Tony Braddock’s already begun taking over the investigation.’
‘Jesus, that cheesy dickhead? So that’s it then. This bastard kills my partner, puts me in hospital and I’m supposed to sit here like a fucking melon!’
‘I’m sorry, Nick, I know Holly meant a lot to you. And that’s exactly the reason you’re off this thing.’ She stood to leave. ‘If you want some advice, take a couple of weeks off, watch some reruns of Star Trek, whatever. Recover, and when you come back we’ll get you into a programme, see if we can’t get you back on track. But this investigation does not exist to you anymore, is that understood?’
Not waiting for a response, she turned silently and left the ward.
Allowing his eyelids to droop, he began to drift again. He tried to put his thoughts in order but his head was fuzzy. He’d been right, already Newport was becoming an icon, a reason for things - a reason for him being off the case. He filed that away, attempted to go back to other things. Moments later, the room dissolved away.
*
When the ward reappeared, Cliff Richards, if that really was his name, was still snoring and fidgeting, his tangle of sheets amassed at the foot of his bed. A nurse was checking his chart.
He looked for a wall clock. There wasn’t one. Instead he tentatively sat up wincing at the pain in his side, which had transformed into some kind of dull ache.
‘Ah, there he is,’ called out a voice from the corner of the ward.
‘Shhh,’ grumbled the nurse. ‘People are sleeping.’
Filling a polystyrene cup from the water fountain, Will Graham held up his hand in apology.
‘Get me one of those, Will,’ York requested.
Sitting on the same visitors’ chair Mason had used, Graham handed over the water. He was smiling. ‘Good to see you up, Nick.’
‘He’s been here for about two hours waiting for you to come around,’ the nurse revealed. ‘Thank god you’re awake, he’s been hassling the nurses.’
Graham smiled. ‘What can I say, I like a girl in uniform.’
‘You’re in the right profession then.’ Smiling, the nurse replaced Cliff Richards’s chart and walked away.
‘So, I hear the Pit Bull’s been to see you,’ Graham said. ‘How’d that work out?’
York snorted. ‘Like you don't know.’
‘Yeah, I’m sorry, man. Really socked it to you is what I hear.’
York shrugged. ‘I had it coming.’
Graham leant in. ‘Well listen, I have some juicy facts for you. How’s your hearing?’
Meeting the technician’s gaze, York's eyes widened. ‘I’m supposed to be off the investigation.’
‘Which is why,’ whispered Graham, ‘I’m not telling you this stuff. In fact, I was never here.’
York sat up.
‘For starters,’ Graham began, ‘Kilroy took another mould from Janine Bluestock’s heart. There were only very slight variations to the mould taken from Harriet Fuller’s heart, so he's pretty confident that they belong to the same man, perhaps wearing some kind of mouth guard.’
‘What about our guy, has he contacted the station again?’
‘Not yet, but get a load of this. I have a fingerprint sample from the last crime scene that Braddock, seconded by Mason, is choosing to ignore.’
‘Choosing to ignore,’ York echoed. ‘Why would they do that?’
‘Let me finish. We took the print from the knife that was found…erm, found in…’
‘It’s okay, Will, you can say it.’
Graham looked embarrassed. ‘The knife that was…you know, in Holly. I couldn’t work it out, he’d been meticulous so far. Why would he suddenly not wear gloves?’
York knew the answer to that. ‘Same reason he didn’t take her heart. The whole thing was rushed, bodged. He was careless.’
‘We ran the print and it belongs to a Julian Faulkner, owns a house up in Lincolnshire somewhere. His fingerprints are on file because, get this, he tried to burn down his own house. Nothing in the file to suggest why, but I hear he didn’t even try to deny it. He had no insurance so no fraudulent charges were brought to him. Guess he just woke up one day and decided he didn’t like the colour.’
York pondered briefly. ‘So who lives there now?’
‘Oh, erm, no one,’ said Graham. ‘A portion of the house is still fire damaged and no one’s ever bothered to repair it. But it’s up for sale. So we called the agency it’s listed to, and guess what, the contact details for Julian Faulkner have expired. Frank Blithe, the guy at the agency said, and I quote: It’s like the man dropped off the face of the planet.’
‘So he’s just abandoned the house?’ York queried. ‘Never goes back there?’
‘Doesn’t look like it,’ said Graham. ‘Anyway, Mason is considering it a dead end, but I definitely think it’s worth checking out. All depends on whether or not you fancy a road trip.’
York glanced over to Richards. ‘Like I said, Will, I’m off the case.’
‘Well I wouldn’t imagine that would stop a man like you now, would it?’
York smirked. ‘Where’s my hat?’
49
After three and a half days and a handful of blood transfusions, York discharged himself from hospital against the belligerent advice of a German doctor, a couple of well-informed nurses, and Cliff Richards. He told them he felt fine, which was a lie. A smouldering poker was jousting through his side and the painkillers weren’t making a dent.
The drive up to Lincolnshire took a little under three hours. The address Frank Blithe had given him directed him to a small town called Market Rasen, a rural diamond with a racecourse and one of those old police houses.
After a healthy-sized gammon steak in a
pub called The Cup of Blood, he headed out of town. Julian Faulkner’s house was a couple of miles further out on the beaten skirts, one of a quartet in a small estate tucked away in the trees, well-trodden dirt track leading up to it. It had been easy enough to find.
The size of the estate was a little over six acres and so none of the four properties were close together. All the surrounding land was used for cultivation and farming, the only things encroaching on private property the grazing sheep and horses.
Pulling over at the bottom of the driveway and climbing from the car, he was hit with the aromas of the countryside. He loved that smell. It reminded him of growing up, his mum and dad taking him and his brother out to the Lake District where they stayed in an old converted barn on Ullswater.
Those memories were his fondest from childhood. His only memories. That was before everything changed. After the incident they never went back there. Like he’d spoken them yesterday, he recalled his dad’s potent words: Everything ends badly, son, otherwise it wouldn’t end. He hung himself the next day.
At the head of the driveway was the agency’s For Sale sign and an American style mailbox standing on a post, flap open as if awaiting unwanted mail. The scratched letters of the family name remained stencilled in green onto the box’s flank: F ulk er Resid n e.
He reached in and pulled out the wad of backlogged post: nothing of interest, most of it junk, damp, or both. The majority was still addressed to Julian Faulkner, some of it to an Arthur Faulkner. His father? Replacing the mail, he locked the car and began up the dirt track.
By the time he reached the house he was sweating freely, the trek mostly uphill and mostly under the harsh afternoon sun. The final section of track was hidden from the sky by colossal overhanging oaks. He was thankful for the reprieve.
Suddenly there it was, the abandoned Faulkner house, a fifteen-minute trek into the woods. For a moment he paused, gawped in awe at the breathtaking sight. The entire right side of the structure was only framework, charred sections of wood and brick lying where they had fallen. The left-hand side of the building was still intact and was overgrown with untamed vegetation, as if the surrounding trees were trying to absorb it piece by dead piece. Next to where he was standing was an old well, wooden pail lying splintered by its side, the only water it saw these days falling from the sky.
He found it difficult to move forward. He couldn’t tell if it was his imagination, but something about the house felt…off. Finally he started up to the structure, the black windows staring hollowly back at him. Stepping over blackened debris he climbed up onto the recessed porch, a largely undamaged lounger-bench propped up against the wall, the front door swinging on its hinges.
Gingerly, he stepped inside. A clichéd floorboard creaked under his weight, and his nostrils were invaded by the fusty stink of negligence and abandonment. The house had been gutted. The floors had been stripped leaving naked and buckled wood. Not a single item of furniture remained, and he found himself wondering why the lounger-bench had been spared. Dust mites swirled in the lancing bars of sunlight as he made his way through the house room by room. He found only torn out shells of disappointment. Perhaps Braddock had been right. Maybe the Faulkner home really was a dead end. In the kitchen he paused, standing on a tattered and worn green carpet. It didn’t make sense. Why had only this room been permitted to keep its ill-fitting carpet?
He took off his hat and placed it on the sink, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his jacket. At the back wall of the room the carpet didn’t meet the skirting-board, its corners curled up. Closing his eyes against sporadic dust, he gripped the green matting and yanked it upwards. It came away easily. He threw it against the opposite wall revealing a small trapdoor in the floorboards, rusted ring-pull embedded.
With a sharp yank the hatch door came up without too much trouble and for a moment he peered into the darkness below, the only light to penetrate creeping in through the hatch. A set of wooden steps led down into the basement and he tentatively took each one until his feet found the concrete floor. He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust and took in the sheer enormity of the underground chamber. Some kind of bomb shelter maybe.
No one had been down there in a long time. Everything was iced in thick dust. Nothing had been moved in months, probably years.
Here: boxes of old LPs, books. There: fusty bedding, pillows. Here: an aging typewriter sitting atop a dusty cabinet. There: plastic storage crates filled with tins of old currency, some battered cine film reels, World War Two memorabilia. Built onto the farthest wall was a stained gun rack devoid of weapons and directly beneath it was a dustsheet covered picture frame.
Gently removing the sheet, he took a step back. The photograph was a sepia image of a handsome man in his early thirties, very stiff and serious. Severely parted hair, crisply starched white shirt and black tie, the man appeared official, almost regimental, though there was nothing in the image to suggest military. There was something very captivating about the man’s features, and for a few seconds York felt as if everything around him had dissolved away, leaving only the picture in clear focus. Finally, he tore himself away feeling strangely unnerved.
Replacing the sheet, he picked up the shoebox containing the cine film. He hadn’t come all the way to Lincolnshire to go back empty-handed.
Back in the kitchen he threw the trapdoor closed and replaced the carpet. He left the house via the back door, finding himself in a large grassy backyard, that familiar floral aroma all around. About to turn and leave he spotted something at the bottom of the garden that begged a closer look.
As he drew nearer he shivered in the afternoon sun, the monstrous creation entangled in intestinal roots and foliage. At first glance it looked like a kids play unit, on second, it was revealed as the maniacal contraption it really was: a full-sized assault course. Cargo nets, mud ditches, scaling wall, crossbeams, plunge pit, the works. He’d seen this kind of thing a couple of years ago at a military camp in Gloucestershire. They were implemented for young soldiers training to go into Iraq, preparation for integration into Desert Storm. But they’d been around since long before that. The question was, what the bloody hell was one doing out here?
50
Four days he’d gone without a hit. That had to be some kind of record on someone’s list, somewhere. His dealer was over two hundred miles away. That was probably a good thing.
Back in the small market town, York headed to the main street and parked up. Time was getting on now, the sun much lower in the sky, cooler. Some of the shops on the main street had begun closing up, and Hartford & Clay’s Real Estate was following suit. Out in the street was a rotund man in his mid-forties wearing a black shirt and purple tie hauling down the shutter.
‘Hello,’ York called, startling the man. ‘I’m looking for Frank Blithe. He still around?’
The man turned and held out his hand. ‘You found him. What can I do for you?’
‘DCI Nicolas York,’ he revealed taking Blithe’s hand. ‘I called earlier.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Turning away, Blithe retrieved a handkerchief and sneezed into it four times. ‘Excuse me, Detective, bloody hay fever out here is a killer.’
‘I’ll bet. Listen, I can see you’re locking up, but I was wondering if I could bend your ear for a few minutes. I’m not here officially. Just chasing up a ghost actually.’
Blithe sneezed again. ‘Well, sir, if you’d be happy to sit across from me while I indulge in a pint, I’d be happy to talk to you. You haven’t sampled England’s best ale until you’ve had a pint around here.’
*
Sneeze.
Sneeze.
Sneeze.
‘So,’ said Blithe wiping his raw nose, ‘Nicolas, did you say?’
York nodded. The Cup of Blood was quieter than earlier, the lull period between folk leaving work and coming back later. Sitting at the bar was a surly regular being very vocal about football to the aging landlord. The old guy’s face said that he’d
heard it all before, a million times over, about a million different clubs. The only other sounds emanated from a fruit machine chiming away in the corner.
Blithe had been right about the ale, it was one of the best pints York’d had.
‘You say you’re up here chasing ghosts?’ asked Blithe. ‘Well, if you’ve been up to the Faulkner house, you already know that ghosts are all that’s left up there. The place has been stripped.’
‘I saw that,’ York confirmed. ‘Who stripped it exactly?’
‘No one really knows,’ said Blithe. ‘Pikey’s come through here a lot, though. Chances are it was cleared out by them. When they’re around they set up camp not far from there…are you okay, Inspector? You’re looking a little pasty.’ Sneeze.
‘I was stabbed a few days ago,’ replied York matter-of-factly. ‘So what do you know about the Faulkner family? Did you know any of them?’
Slightly taken aback, Blithe said, ‘Erm, yeah, I knew Julian a little bit. He didn’t come into town much, and I tended to give him a wide berth when he did.’
‘Why's that?’
‘Don’t know really. There was just something about him. He was quiet but so intense, as though he might explode at any second. His father was more of a mystery, barely left the house. I saw him around from time to time when I was a kid, but I never knew him.’
‘Arthur Faulkner?’
‘You’ve done your homework.’
‘What about the mother?’
‘The mother?’ echoed Blithe. ‘I never met her. I couldn’t even tell you her name. But I know she died of polio. Suffered with it for a long time. I can tell you the nanny’s name, though. She used to come into town and run errands for the Faulkners.’
‘There was a nanny?’
‘Yeah,’ said Blithe. ‘Margaret Mayfield her name was. Everybody used to call her Maggie May.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘Nobody knows,’ said Blithe solemnly. ‘It was a scandal at the time. The woman just disappeared. There was an inquiry but nothing ever came of it. Of course, rumours began floating around that Arthur had killed her and buried her somewhere. When they finally put him away, the rumours strengthened. He denied it, told the police she just wasn’t there one day, but no one ever believed that. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a great deal of evidence to suggest otherwise.’
Hunting Abigail: Fight or Flight? For Abigail, it's both! Page 27
