‘They’re fortunate to have you to console them, Father,’ I said. ‘I’ve been asked to tell you that we can’t release the body until after the inquest, and that could be a couple of weeks away. We’ll be informing the family, of course, but the superintendent wanted you to know first.’
He waved a hand towards the window. ‘What about all the goings-on outside? The disturbed grave? I have another bereaved family to deal with out there. Not to mention the rest of the parishioners.’
‘As soon as I get back, I’ll get an estimate of how much longer we’ll be.’
I smiled at the old priest. I’d done what I’d been sent to do. Another couple of minutes of polite conversation and I could go.
Or I could do my job.
‘Father, I’m afraid I need to ask you something,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to cause you more distress, but …’
He sighed. ‘Whatever you need, my dear. I suppose you’re looking for those other two children in … similar places?’
‘We have to be open to all possibilities,’ I said. ‘So I need to ask if you’ve noticed any disturbance in the churchyard in recent months.’
Father Edward looked at me for several long seconds and then got up. He walked to the window, forcing me to turn my chair round.
Phantom Tom had obviously decided I could take it from here. He’d gone.
A whole minute must have passed before the priest spoke.
‘Twenty years ago, I was here late one night,’ he said. ‘I’d been with a parishioner, administering last rites. He was a young man, married with children, and it was very distressing. On my way home, there was something – I can’t remember what – that I needed from the church. I didn’t put the lights on: I knew if I did, someone in the streets nearby would notice and come to find out what was going on. Some of the dear ladies of the parish, well, they mean for the best. I didn’t want to talk to anyone that night.’
He glanced round at me. ‘While I was inside, the rain became very heavy and I thought I’d give it time to ease off,’ he said. ‘I was standing here, at this window, looking at the porch and remembering that old legend about All Souls’ Day. Did I mention it was All Souls’ Day?’
‘I don’t think so.’ I sneaked a glance at my watch.
‘Well, the story goes that if you sit in the church porch on the night before All Souls’ Day, you’ll see the ghosts of everyone doomed to die in the coming year pass into the churchyard. I was wondering if I’d ever have the nerve to do it, and why anyone would want to, and remembering the old story about the priest who did and who saw his own ghost, and then I saw movement in the grounds. Come and stand beside me – I’ll point out the place.’
I joined him at the window and tried not to start when he put an arm around my waist. With his other hand, he pointed to a place near the corner.
‘I saw movement there,’ he said. ‘What looked like two people, dressed in dark clothes. It was hard to tell, though, because they seemed to be kneeling down.’
‘Kneeling at a grave?’
‘That’s what it looked like. But they weren’t still. They weren’t praying. They were doing something. And this was three o’clock in the morning.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I stayed here. Actually, I think I turned round and made sure the vestry door was locked. I don’t mind telling you there was something quite chilling about it.’
‘You didn’t telephone for help?’
He gave a soft laugh. ‘It was 1947, dear. There were barely any telephones in town, let alone in the church. The thing to do would have been to rouse the sexton, Dwane’s father, as it happens, but I didn’t have the courage to go out into the night. I’ve never been a brave man.’ He turned back to the room. ‘So I sat down in that chair, that very same chair, and waited for dawn.’
I moved away, ostensibly to look at the shabby armchair by his desk, but really to be out of reach of his arm.
‘And what did you find, at dawn?’ I asked.
‘The grave had been interfered with, no question about it,’ he said.
‘What happened?’
‘Nothing. I reported it to the police, but they concluded it had been the work of foxes.’
‘But you’d seen people.’
He walked back to his armchair. ‘I saw something, but it was dark. I was tired. And upset. I knew there was nothing to be gained from pushing the point.’
The old priest dropped his head, so that his temples came to rest against his fingertips. ‘There are people in this town, important people, who don’t take kindly to anyone rocking the boat.’ He was talking to the flagged floor now. ‘It was about that time that I started having difficulties with the bishop. Groundless accusations, but mud sticks.’ His eyes closed.
‘Father, that sounds as though someone tried to shut you up.’
He shivered, looked up and gave me a weak smile. ‘Nonsense, my dear. People, understandably, get very upset at the thought of graves being desecrated. What you did last night – oh, I know you had your reasons – will not be well received by the parish.’
The parish could take a running jump. I opened my mouth and, I kid you not, there was Tom again, right next to the old priest.
‘Has it happened since?’ I asked.
His eyes left mine and drifted away somewhere over my left shoulder. ‘Let’s just say being so close to the Hill means we have a problem with wildlife.’
‘So it has? Did you see it happen? Did you see people again?’
‘I think that was the last time I was ever in this church at night.’ He looked at his watch. ‘You’ll excuse me now, dear. I have a parishioner waiting and I need to leave myself.’
I stood at the bottom of three steep stone steps, wondering if this would count as stepping out of line. Probably, in DI Sharples’s eyes. All the same, a report of grave-robbing, even twenty years ago, that was something worth following up, wasn’t it? Especially if, as Father Edward believed, pressure had been brought to bear to prevent it being properly investigated.
The steps had not been cleaned or scoured, and the front door ahead of me hadn’t been painted in years. The wood was rotting in the corners, and the hinges were covered in rust. Several of the nails were missing.
‘Oh, hello,’ I said, as the door opened.
The middle-aged woman with the greying hair and the lined face was one I knew. ‘You work at the station, don’t you?’ I went on. ‘In the canteen?’
She didn’t reply, and after several awkward seconds, my smile faded. ‘Can I speak to Mr Dwane Ogilvy, please?’ I held up my ID.
‘What about?’ she asked, although she managed to do it without using the letter ‘T’.
I had a feeling that if I looked back, I’d see Tom at the bottom of the path. So I didn’t. ‘An ongoing enquiry of a serious nature,’ I replied. ‘Is he here?’
‘Through t’back,’ she told me, turning on her heel.
I followed her down a dark hallway so narrow that were I to stretch out my elbows, they would have brushed the walls and into the room that served as kitchen, dining and living room for the family.
A couple of children, tiny and disproportionately formed, too old for the nappies they were wearing, sat on a rug in front of the hearth and squabbled over some coloured bobbins. Another child, normal-sized but with a vacant air, stared at a blank television screen.
There was a mangle on the draining board with the grey sleeve of a work shirt hanging from between the rollers. Mrs Ogilvy went back to it and nodded towards the rear door. ‘Out back,’ she said.
I pushed the door open and stepped into the Ogilvys’ backyard. A washing line, suspended from both boundary walls, zigzagged across the space in between and held up sheets, shirts, pillowcases, dresses and nightwear. The starch in the air burned my nostrils as I ducked behind the first line and found myself trapped in laundry.
‘Dwane?’ I tried.
No answer, but I heard a regular, rhythmic scraping, like wood being s
awn. The garden was narrow and long, and I ducked under line after line of washing, making for the scratching sound.
I’d pushed aside five lines of it before I found Dwane. He was sitting on a long, narrow upturned box, filing down a piece of wood. Behind him was a large wooden shed with a central door and glass windows either side.
Dwane looked up and his eyes, beneath his prominent brow, opened very wide.
‘I’m WPC Lovelady,’ I told him. ‘I met you yesterday, at the church. Do you remember?’
‘You dug her up.’
I neither agreed nor corrected him.
‘Made a right bloody mess of it. I suppose you’ve come to ask me to fill it in again.’ He stood up. He had a metal file in one hand, a substantial piece of wood in the other. He was a good foot smaller than I but, I admit, I took a step back. He nodded at the box he’d vacated.
‘You can sit thee sen down,’ he told me.
Sitting down while he stood over me with a file was the last thing I wanted to do, but I had a sense he was acting out of courtesy, so I perched on the edge of the box.
‘You should have used one of them,’ he said, indicating the box I was sitting on. ‘You put it next to the grave and the earth goes in the box. Then when you’re ready to backfill, it’s all there, not spread all over t’shop.’
‘I want to ask you how sure you are that the grave hadn’t been interfered with,’ I said. ‘One of the theories we’re working on is that the young girl’s body was put in the casket after the funeral.’
‘No one touched that grave,’ Dwane said. ‘Were you not listening? You think anyone can dig a grave?’
He turned and strode towards the far wall. He had a peculiar, swinging way of walking, swaying a little from side to side with each step, as though his legs had to work extra hard to carry his oversized body around.
Heavy tools were lined up against the wall. I saw a small-bladed, sturdy spade, a much bigger shovel, a pick, a fork. And a large wooden outline of a rectangle, which I realised immediately was a template for a grave.
‘First you have to move the turf,’ he said, picking up the smaller spade. ‘You cut it neat, and you keep each piece in its right place so you can put it back.’ He pointed to the opposite wall. I turned and saw a sheet of plywood. ‘That’s my turf sheet. Then you break up the ground.’ He pointed to the pick and the fork. ‘It can take hours if you don’t know what you’re doing,’ he went on. ‘I can dig a grave in virgin ground in three hours. How long did it take you?’
Pretty much three hours, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. Besides, I’d been working with soft ground.
‘Suppose someone watched you work,’ I said. ‘Suppose they knew about storing the turf and putting the earth in a box. Those tools of yours can be found in any hardware store. Isn’t it at least possible that someone could have learned from you? They weren’t working with fresh earth, remember? You’d made the job easy for them.’
He thought about this for a second, and his thick, wet lips spread apart. He shook his head. ‘No one touched it. Want to know how I know?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘I shape it.’ He started weaving the spade around, as though moulding earth with it. ‘Special to me. I make a shape that only I know how to do. I can show you, if you like.’
‘So when we were at the grave yesterday afternoon, was it shaped the way you say?’
He nodded slowly, his lips pressed together. If he was telling the truth, if he had some particular way of finishing off a grave, like a cake-icer’s signature flourish, then Patsy must have been in the casket when it was interred. Which meant someone had accessed the funeral parlour.
‘Mr Ogilvy, I need to ask you where you were on Sunday evening between nine o’clock and eleven o’clock.’
It was the time period when Patsy had gone missing. If he realised the significance of the question, he didn’t let it show. ‘Here,’ he told me. ‘Watching telly.’
‘How about Wednesday, 16 April, a little earlier?’
‘Here, watching telly.’
‘Are you sure? You can check a diary if you want. A calendar, maybe?’
He stared at me.
‘What about Monday, 17 March?’ I asked him. ‘Early evening?’
‘Black Dog,’ he said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Black Dog,’ he repeated. ‘Pub on Riley Street.’
‘You seem very certain,’ I said. ‘It was three months ago.’
‘Friday night and Saturday night I goes to t’pub. Seven o’clock till eleven o’clock. Sundays Mam won’t let us go. Mondays I go, and Tuesdays. Wednesday and Thursday I’m usually skint. I get paid Friday.’
‘I see. So the landlord will vouch for you?’
‘Landlord’s three sheets t’wind by half nine.’
‘Do you mean drunk?’
He nodded. ‘Ted Donnelly’s always been a big drinker. His missus too. Mind you, it doesn’t stop her—’ He stopped, looking troubled. ‘I have my own stool,’ he finished.
‘I was speaking to Father Edward before I came here,’ I said. ‘He told me the churchyard gets disturbed from time to time.’
Dwane’s eyes fell to the ground. ‘Churchyards get bothered. It happens.’
‘He implied it was animals – foxes, maybe badgers, possibly even dogs – that were responsible.’
‘I like the way you talk,’ Dwane said.
‘Thank you. So what do you think? Do you think it’s a wildlife problem?’
He shrugged, but still didn’t look at me. ‘What else? Do you like small things?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Small things, do you like them?’
Did he mean himself? ‘I suppose,’ I said, a little nervously. ‘What sort of small things?’
He gestured that I should get up and follow him to the shed. It was only three paces for him, one for me. He pulled open the door and indicated that I should go in first.
The table in the centre of the shed was an old snooker table. I recognised the thick, carved legs and saw a sliver of green felt beneath the plywood sheet covering it.
On the plywood surface sat a miniature town. A model of Sabden. I couldn’t count the different streets, but I recognised the town centre, the war memorial, the park and the bandstand. Every shop along the main road had been reproduced perfectly. I saw Glassbrook & Greenwood, Kenyon’s Bakery, the record shop, Sherwin’s butcher’s, the Flower Pot. I saw the covered market and the town hall, the large, open area where the buses and trams stopped. I found the Black Dog with its pub sign swinging outside, and the great cellar doors open to the street. Beer barrels were being unloaded from a Thwaites brewery wagon.
The long rows of terraced houses fanning out onto the moors on the edges of town had been painted dark grey to resemble soot-blackened stone. The roads weren’t smooth. I put a finger down, hesitantly, but Dwane didn’t stop me, so I touched the surface of a cobbled street and felt the bumps. They were actual stone. He’d made the streets from tiny chips of pebbles.
It must have taken him years. There was washing strung across the ginnels, tiny squares of white fabric hanging from cotton thread. There were fences made out of matchsticks and tiny tin cars.
Getting my bearings, I followed the route I’d taken up from the station – the station was there, with a tiny helmeted constable on the steps – towards the church. St Wilfred’s was perfect. The wall round it, the trees, the headstones were all there.
It was an exact reproduction of the town. I walked round the table, following the outer boundary as it rose up the Hill, to the Glassbrook house.
‘That’s my bedroom window,’ I said. ‘But the curtains aren’t right. My curtains are blue; these are lilac.’
I stopped, worried I’d said the wrong thing, but he didn’t seem upset. He was watching me the way cats watch birds.
‘It’s exquisite,’ I said quickly. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. You’re quite the craftsman.’ I’d been about to sa
y that he was wasted digging graves, but something in his face had changed. No one could describe Dwane as a handsome man, but at that moment there was something decidedly unpleasant in his expression. The set of his eyes seemed to deepen; his brows contracted until they became one thick line across his protruding forehead. His mouth had fallen open, and his lips gleamed red and wet.
‘Why would you say that?’
He’d actually taken a step away from me. He was looking at me in a way that was making me feel distinctly uncomfortable and yet he almost seemed to be the one afraid of me.
‘I have to get back to the station now,’ I said. ‘Thank you very much for your time.’
He backed out, not taking his eyes off me. I walked ahead of him, through the house, pausing briefly to thank Mrs Ogilvy and step over a sprawled child. I was down the steps and walking towards my bike when Dwane called.
‘You should have come for me,’ he said. ‘I’d have dug her up for you.’
29
‘“I’d have dug her up for you”? I’ve got to hand it to you, Flossie, as chat-up lines go …’ Detective Sergeant Green put down the glass paperweight he’d been admiring, a gift from my grandparents in the shape of a police box.
‘Sarge, what do you make of this business of graves being disturbed? I’m sure Father Edward and Dwane knew more than they were letting on.’
‘You aware of any reports of grave-robbing, Tom?’ Green called over the top of the filing cabinets.
Green, Tom and I were the only people in the room. Rushton, Sharples and a couple of the constables were out at the town meeting, due back anytime. The rest of the division were on the streets, in the pubs and factories, continuing enquiries. CID, I was learning, worked until the job was done.
Tom’s head appeared over the top of the cabinets. ‘Can’t say as I have, Sarge,’ he said.
‘Any road, where’s the connection?’ Green said. ‘Whoever put Patsy in that casket was donating to a grave, if you get my drift, not robbing it.’
The Craftsman Page 11
