The Craftsman

by Sharon Bolton

  Luna ignored her mother. ‘Flossie, did you see it? Was it all right? I thought it looked stupid when we stopped at Snape Street. Richie’s brother—’

  ‘It was super,’ I said. ‘Everyone was really pleased with it. We had a good response.’

  For a split second her face lit up; then her brows darted towards each other. ‘Did it work?’ She dropped her voice. ‘Did you find her?’

  ‘Not yet, I’m afraid. But we took a lot of phone calls. It will take time to follow them up.’

  ‘Richie’s uncle said you’d been called out to St Wilfred’s, that some kids had heard voices and that you’d been digging up graves. She’s not in a grave, is she?’

  ‘No, that was completely unrelated.’ I didn’t like lying to Luna, to anyone, but it was the response we’d agreed down at the station. The visit to St Wilfred’s was in connection with suspected vandalism. Nothing to do with the missing children. How long the lie would hold was anyone’s guess.

  Luna’s face twisted and her eyes filled with tears that I thought might, possibly, be genuine. You could never tell with Luna. ‘I can’t think of anything worse,’ she said.

  In the adjacent room, Sally had emptied her bag of bloody cloths and towels into the twin tub. She reached up to the bundles of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling beams and pulled out several handfuls. Lavender, I guessed, for its perfume and rosemary for its disinfecting qualities. I’d learned a lot about herbs in the time I’d been living here.

  ‘Don’t pester Flossie.’ As the washing machine began its mechanical sloshing, Sally crossed to the kettle. ‘You know she can’t tell us anything.’

  ‘Let me do it,’ I told Sally. ‘You must be shattered.’

  ‘Easy one tonight.’ She used a match to light the hob. ‘Fourth babies practically walk out by themselves. Fifty minutes from waters breaking to delivering the placenta.’

  ‘Mu-um,’ Luna moaned.

  ‘What happens to the placenta?’

  We all turned to see Cassie, the silver-haired, grey-eyed, older daughter, leaning against the doorframe. She had a way of moving around in total silence. I’d lived with the family for five months but I still found it unnerving. She had a habit of sleepwalking too, which was even creepier because none of the bedrooms in the house came with lockable doors. Shortly after I moved in, I’d woken one night to find her standing in the open doorway of my room. My yell of alarm hadn’t woken her, she’d simply turned and walked back along the corridor.

  ‘Gross,’ her sister muttered.

  ‘Most mothers eat them.’ Sally was spooning loose tea into a pot. She winked at me as she replaced the lid.

  ‘You’re kidding?’ Luna had abandoned her homework and was staring at her mother with those huge wide eyes that always – I know it’s cruel – made me think of a tree frog.

  ‘Some mums are a bit squeamish,’ Sally went on. ‘Especially the first-timers. Planting under a tree is becoming quite common. A lot give them to the midwives to take home. How was your tea tonight?’

  ‘Did you find her?’ Cassie asked me, as Luna mimed vomiting.

  I shook my head. ‘We had a lot of calls; we’ve got a few leads; we’ll keep looking.’

  ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’

  Luna’s head shot up. ‘That’s my friend you’re talking about.’

  ‘Since when?’ Cassie was several inches taller than Luna and could sneer rather well. ‘You hadn’t the time of day for her when she was alive.’

  ‘Excuse me, nobody’s said she’s dead yet. Flossie, you don’t think she’s dead, do you?’

  ‘Bed.’ Sally raised her arm to point towards the door. ‘Both of you.’

  ‘Dead as a doornail, just like Susan and Stephen, and only a matter of time before he gets another one.’ Cassie had a mean smile on her face. ‘One by one he steals them away, and nobody knows when he’s going to pounce next. Check under the bed tonight, Luna.’

  I couldn’t help myself. ‘Cassie, you’re frightening your sister.’

  The elder girl turned and flounced from the room. Luna followed.

  ‘Is that what you think?’ Sally poured boiling water into the teapot. Quite a bit of it missed and splashed down the pot’s sides. ‘Is someone doing this?’

  ‘Too early to say.’ I was trying not to think of the fresh grave less than a mile away.

  ‘Do I need to tighten up the house rules for the girls? Have a curfew time, maybe? Make sure they never go out by themselves.’

  ‘We’ve no reason to believe Patsy and the others have come to any harm …’ I started to say.

  Sally looked at me with the tiny, polite smile that was her habitual expression and blinked suddenly, as her grey eyes moistened.

  ‘I would,’ I said. ‘Yes, definitely. Keep them safe.’

  18

  Wednesday 18 June 1969

  Tired as I was, it took me a long time to get to sleep. The reconstruction had seemed such a good idea, but if it led to nothing concrete, all we’d done was draw even more attention to our failure to solve three disappearances. The super would carry the blame nationally, but Tom was right: here in Sabden, it would be down to me.

  When I did drop off, I slept badly, waking continually before sinking back into vivid and frightening dreams. Predictably, I dreamed I was trapped in a dark, enclosed space. Tom and Dwane were above me, banging on the lid, trying to get a response, but I was unable to speak.

  When I found my voice, Tom and Dwane had gone, and I was screaming for my mother.

  I started awake, wrapped tight in damp nylon sheets, afraid for a moment that I’d been calling out loud. When no sounds came from the house – my screams had been silent after all – I sat up and pulled open the curtains. I couldn’t see the moon, the starlight was soft and muted, and the Hill was only a vague shape, blacker than its surroundings.

  I didn’t think I would sleep again that night.

  My mother. Thinking of her hurt so much, so most of the time I tried not to do it. Every so often, though, she’d catch me unawares, sneak up on me in a dream, or a random memory. And she always came for a purpose.

  That night, I found myself thinking about a time when I was twelve years old and out driving with her. It had been just the two of us in the car – my brothers were at home with the nanny – and the rare treat of her undivided attention had made me chattier, more confiding than usual. I can’t recall what I said to her, but I remember her stopping the car at the side of the road and suggesting we get out to stretch our legs. We climbed a stile, crossed the upper edge of a poppy field and then up onto another stile, where we balanced and looked towards a large village about half a mile distant. I learned later it was called Bletchley. At its centre was a huge Victorian mansion of tall red-brick gables and archways with a domed lead roof on a circular corner window.

  ‘One day, Florence,’ she said, ‘you’ll hear your name being called.’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say I heard that all the time. With three young brothers, there was always something the grown-ups needed help with, but I sensed that wasn’t what she meant at all.

  She was staring towards the red-brick mansion. ‘When it happens, you can’t hide away and pretend you didn’t hear it. You have to put your hand up and say, “Yes, I’m here.”‘

  Over the following years I gathered, because I wasn’t told outright, that my mother had been involved in the war. Something had brought her from her native Hampshire to Buckinghamshire, where she’d met and married my father. She never spoke about it, and I hadn’t thought about that day in years, but it came back to me as I sat on my bed, staring out at Pendle Hill.

  Somewhere in the darkness, Patsy Wood was calling my name.

  Outside, the Hill was a shadow on the horizon. I turned my back on it and unlocked the garden shed with a key I’d borrowed from the kitchen. I pushed the door open gingerly, knowing it creaked. The shed was windowless and for a second or two I couldn’t see a thing. I was on the point of risking my torch
when I heard the low, throaty growl.

  In a corner of the shed, on a nest it had made for itself out of sacking, lay a black dog. Small and skinny, with slick, short fur, the dog blinked as the torch beam shone in its face. Its nose was long, its ears enormous and bat-like. A male. I had never seen it before. The Glassbrooks kept no dog that I knew of.

  The whippet – I think it was – growled again. It didn’t move, though, and I didn’t believe it to be an immediate danger. In fact, the biggest threat it posed was that it would start barking and wake the house.

  So I ignored it, spotted the heavy-duty spade I’d come for and grabbed it. I closed the door and turned the key. I’d deal with the dog later.

  Getting to the churchyard via the roads would take me forty minutes or more, so I went across country, climbing the wall at the top of the Glassbrooks’ garden and then following the upper line of properties at the foot of the Hill. At first it was easy – there was a well-beaten trail to follow, and the spade doubled as a walking stick – but after ten minutes or so, the scrubland gave way to open moor and I had to fight my way through thick fields of bracken.

  At one point, I stumbled and when I gave myself a moment to get my breath back, I saw lights on the Hill.

  I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Definitely lights, torches or lanterns, about halfway up, and a bigger one that might be a bonfire. There were people on the Hill in the middle of the night, and just the sight of those lights, darting and dancing about, went against all my police instincts of what was normal, rational behaviour.

  And now that I was still, that was drumming that I could hear.

  Distant, at times hardly audible, carried to me on the wind, and almost certainly not heard by anyone in town, the steady, rhythmic beat continued. Not the simple, repetitive rhythm of a marching band: this sounded altogether more primitive. I was pretty certain it was coming from the Hill, from the point where I could see the lights.

  I should call it in. The nearest police box was a ten-minute walk from St Wilfred’s. The station officer could have a car investigate.

  And I’d have to explain what I was doing out at two o’clock in the morning, armed with a spade.

  I turned my back on the lights, walked quickly so that the sound of my treading steps drowned out the drums, but my confidence was faltering. For the latter half of the journey to the churchyard, I was acutely conscious of the night around me, of the wind rushing through treetops and smothering other sound, of bracken moving at odds with the wind. It was almost a relief to swing over the wall and be among the dead.

  The grave was exactly as I’d left it, likewise the children’s den. I stood at its foot, knowing that in a couple of hours people would start getting up for the early factory shifts and that I had a decision to make. So far, I’d done nothing wrong. Once I started digging, I was committing a serious crime. Were I to be caught, it would be the end of my police career and might even see me charged.

  And for what? Even if Patsy were beneath my feet, she’d be dead by this time. I should turn round and go home. And yet …

  Help me, the six-year-old boy had heard, coming from the ground. I could almost hear it myself, a desperate voice pleading not to be left to her fate.

  I didn’t really have a choice. Dead or alive, she wasn’t staying down there, abandoned by everyone who was supposed to take care of her. I lifted the wreaths one by one and laid them alongside the grave. Then I started digging.

  In, lift, throw. In, lift, throw.

  After twenty minutes, I gave up any hope of being able to return the grave to a pristine condition. I’d have to do my best and flee, get away before first light.

  In, lift, throw. Repeat over and over again. Despite the cool night air, I was soon sweating. After a while, I stopped looking round every few seconds to make sure I was alone. I was too exhausted to care. In, lift, throw. The floral tributes were soon buried under loose earth. The hole became too deep for me to stay on top of the grave, so I gave in to the inevitable and climbed down.

  I carried on digging. I was hot, tired, and my hands were sore, but I was getting lower in the ground with every minute that went past.

  Thud. My spade struck wood. I carried on. Not digging now but loosening and scraping, sliding my spade along the casket top.

  Then I heard something. Something that wasn’t the wind, or the sliding back of dislodged earth. Something like … A moan?

  I pulled myself together and carried on. The dead did not wake up. Not even when someone was banging with a spade on their front door. My hands on the spade were shaking, so I dug faster.

  The wind picked up, and the sound of the trees rustling made me think of whispered threats. By the time I could see most of the casket lid, the sky had lost its unrelenting darkness and I could no longer ignore the sense that something had changed. The disquiet I’d been pushing to the back of my mind since I’d entered the churchyard had become a deep unease. I was no longer hot, in fact quite the reverse.

  I did not believe in the supernatural. I did not believe the dead have any power over the living, but as I froze in the grave, I was finally able to crystallise the uneasy dread that had been creeping over me. It was simple, really. I was no longer alone.

  No sooner had I admitted that to myself than I became aware of a shadow on the ground. Someone – or something – was standing right behind me on the rim of the grave.

  19

  ‘You all right there, Florence?’ Tom Devine said. ‘Need a hand with anything?’

  I turned slowly, not wanting to show how shaken I was. In jeans and a denim jacket, Tom was standing at the side of the grave.

  ‘How long have you been there?’

  ‘Do you want the full embarrassing story, or do you want to get this over with?’ He reached down. ‘Get the hell out. We can’t open it with your weight on it.’

  I gave Tom my hand because there was nothing else to be done. Despite what he’d said about my weight, he pulled me up easily.

  ‘Don’t suppose you remember what that undertaker bloke said about the fastenings?’ he said.

  My resolve had crumbled. ‘Tom, you can’t be serious. We’ll be in so much trouble.’

  ‘Less of the “we”, Florence. If we find nothing, I’m out of here. You’re on your own.’

  Well, he couldn’t say fairer than that. Without exchanging another word, we dropped to our knees and lay flat. We both reached down and found the concealed locks. I talked him through the twisting and pulling that would release the mechanism and the casket lid bounced an inch open.

  The smell hit us hard. I’d expected it to be bad but not nearly so intense. It was as though something tangible had rushed from the open casket and slapped me full in the face.

  ‘Florence, on your feet and take a couple of steps back.’ Tom didn’t look up. ‘Actually, I need you to run down the road and call the station. Get someone out here.’

  ‘We need to be sure first.’ I took a gulp of fresh air and leaned back in. ‘Come on. I’m OK.’ I was trying to talk without breathing. I was hoping to suspend breathing until this was over with.

  ‘Florence, that isn’t an embalmed corpse we can smell.’

  I risked another breath. I had no real idea what an embalmed corpse smelled like, but I supposed there would be strong chemicals overriding the decaying flesh. Not vomit. Not excrement and urine. Not putrefying meat. Not the disgusting cocktail that was tainting the air around us right now.

  ‘I think you were right, Florence.’ It was still quite dark, but when I looked across, I thought Tom’s face was noticeably paler. ‘I think she’s in here, I think she’s dead, and I don’t think this is something you need to see.’

  When I thought about his gallantry later, I wasn’t sure whether I felt more touched or patronised. At the time, I reached out and took hold of the casket lid. Tom did the same. The lid wouldn’t stay up by itself, so I held it and Tom shone his torch down onto Patsy Wood’s pitiful dead face.

  While we wa
ited for the others to arrive, we made a cordon round the grave with tape from Tom’s car and some willow twigs. All the time we were working, I tried not to let him see my face. Which was a waste of time, as it turned out.

  ‘If it helps, I feel like crying too,’ he said, when we’d done everything we could and were leaning on the churchyard wall. ‘But I’d get it out of the way before the others arrive.’

  I was not going to cry, not properly. I couldn’t stop the tears trickling down, but—

  ‘How long were you …?’ I began. ‘When did you …? How?’

  ‘I knew you were planning something stupid,’ Tom said, as we caught the first flicker of blue lights in the distance. ‘I came out here to teach you the error of your ways. By midnight, you hadn’t shown, and it was starting to drizzle, so I crawled inside that kids’ den.’ He nodded over to the shelter we’d seen earlier. ‘Fell asleep,’ he admitted.

  ‘You were asleep? All the time I was digging?’

  He pulled out cigarettes. ‘What can I say? I’m a sound sleeper. And I’d had a couple of pints in the Star. I only woke up when your spade clanged against the lid. The damage was done by then.’

  I asked the question I really didn’t want to hear answered. ‘Do you think she was alive? When we were here earlier?’

  His cigarette glowed warm in the chill dawn air. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Definitely not. You saw her just now. She’s been dead for more than a few hours.’ He took a great long drag on his cigarette.

  The tears were coming back. I didn’t think I’d be able to hold them off this time. ‘Tom, what she must have been through …’

  He turned to me. ‘No. Cut that out. Her family will torture themselves with that. So will her friends. We have a job to do. We have to find the bastard who put her in there.’

  The first of the patrol cars had arrived. The flickering lights died and a uniformed officer climbed out.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ I said to Tom.

  ‘I’m glad you brought that up,’ he said. ‘We need to get our stories straight. You couldn’t sleep, you came back here to pay your respects to whoever is legitimately down there – you might want to check who it is – and you heard noises from below ground. You had no choice but to dig it up, with a spade that had been conveniently left lying around. When you saw it was Patsy after all, you called me for advice. I came out here, checked and we called it in. Happy with that?’