“I’ll do my best.”
“Bloody slavedriver.”
“Heard that.”
“You’re a bloody slavedriver, ma’am.”
“That’s better. Now chop-chop. CID won’t run itself.”
“As you wish.”
Stakowski filled the kettle. Outside, the streetlamps’ light thickened into luminous orange cones as mist gathered in the street below.
PENCILS AND CHARCOAL scratched on paper; Kev’s heels clicked on the floor. Otherwise, silence, except for the moaning wind outside.
Even in a sweater, Eva was cold. God knew what it must be like for Mark, stretched out naked on the dais in the middle of the life-drawing class. She could see the goose-pimples. Still, the college paid him for it. His eyes met hers; he winked.
“Quite still, Mark,” Kev said primly. “If you don’t mind.”
Mark looked up innocently. Eva felt her face burn. Beside her, Jayne bit her lips and looked down.
Kev came over, bald patch gleaming under the striplights. “Very good, Eva.” He sucked his paunch in, walked on. “OK, let’s take a break, people.”
Mark reached for a blanket. “Aw,” Jayne whispered. “Was enjoying that.”
“You’ll be copping another eyeful soon enough,” Eva whispered back.
“Yeah, but I’m trying to keep my mind on the drawing. Alright for you. You could get a private showing any time you fancied.”
“Bog off.”
“You know he fancies you.”
“He’s twenty-one. Go after a sheep if you put a skirt on it.”
“So? He’s got standards. Some lads wouldn’t bother with the skirt.”
“Well, you’ve always got Kev.”
“Oh, stop it.”
“Come on. Just imagine that beard tickling you.”
“Eva.” But Jayne was already giggling. It was catching, too; Eva could feel it bubbling up in her. “Honestly. And you a married woman.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Shit. Did I say the wrong thing?”
Eva forced a new smile. “Forget it.”
“’Kay. Change the subject.” Jayne nodded at the window; it was white with fog. “Lovely weather we’re having. Shit!”
“What?”
Kev bustled over. “What’s wrong?”
“Someone was looking in. Bloody perve–”
Something whacked hard against the window. She turned and saw it. A hand, splayed out flat. A moment later another slammed into place alongside it, so hard the pane cracked across. Between the hands, through the mist, what might have been a face began to take shape.
Someone screamed. Eva turned and saw a figure standing in the corner; tall and thin, clad in a black, tattered cape. A soft cloth cap hung down and shadowed its face.
A dark shape hovered in the air beside it like a shadow projected onto mist. Another appeared beside it. And another.
“Oh fuck.” Jayne had grabbed Eva’s forearm; her fingers sank in like claws. “What the fuck? What the fuck are they?”
The shadows were moving. One moved to bar the door. What good would that do? It was a shadow. But it was thickening, growing darker, more solid. They all were. There were a dozen in all, thin black tattered shapes, like the one advancing on them. Liz had stopped screaming; instead she stood rooted, face white, lips trembling, eyes fixed, even when it stretched out an impossibly long, clawlike hand towards her.
The room wasn’t cold anymore, Eva realised. It was warm; hot even. Strange she should notice that. And then the first of them was in arm’s reach, and as it reached for her she saw what it had for a face.
She screamed – everyone else was, even Kev – but then the warmth became searing heat and the world was suddenly made of fire.
“OI, SARGE?” RENWICK turned in her chair. “Where’s me brew?”
No reply. At the window, Stakowski was still, leaning forward.
“Mike?”
He turned and looked at her. No smile, no glint in his eye. She went over to him. He pointed. In the distance, she saw it: an orange glow, brighter than the streetlamps, flickering ever brighter through the fog.
It took her a moment to realise what it was. And as she did, behind them, her phone began to ring.
THE TESTAMENT OF LANCE-CORPORAL CUTHBERT WINTHROP CONCLUDED kept my head down literally down so no-one saw lasted another thirty years like that thirty fucking years gin helped gin and whisky but thats what finished it in the end cause of death cirrhosis of the liver and then howling into the dark the void howling we are all here all howling no peace no peace even in death no peace for us none
IN THE ALMA Street living room the clock ticked. Almost midnight. Martyn sat staring at the TV as he had for the last hour; saw nothing.
Get up. Do summat. But couldn’t. Like having flu. Couldn’t so much as get up. Every little job was suddenly massive. A monkey on your back; gripping tighter, squeezing harder, never letting go.
Eva’d be in the pub now, sipping a Britvic orange juice with her girlfriends, that ponce of a tutor. And that pretty-boy model – Christ, he wasn’t even thinking about him. Eva was everything. Even more than Mary. He knew it shouldn’t be like that, but it was. And Eva still turned heads. Men still looked at her. But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t cheat. Would she?
The doorbell rang. Relief; she was home, and getting out of the chair was suddenly easy. The bell rang again.
As he turned the handle he remembered: Eva had a key. Why ring the bell, then? But the door was already open, and a blue light flashing in the street outside.
THE PAINTED MASK
‘B’ BLOCK
Dead hair and rodent bones in lightless corners; layers of dust on wooden sills and steel surfaces. Windows dimmed with grime. Thin pale light gleams on motes in the disturbed air and settles on dusty rows of ceramic arms that hang from hooks on the wall, fingers caught seemingly in the act of closing, as if they’ll form fists the moment your back is turned.
CHAPTER TWO
Monday 16th December.
IT WAS FIVE miles’ drive from Roydtwistle Psychiatric to Kempforth, over dull brown moors thick with mist. Anna turned Minnie the Micra’s foglights on, palms damp on the wheel; nearly ten years on, places like Roydtwistle still made her feel cold and alone.
“You’re in my room,” she said.
“Eh?” In the passenger seat, Martyn blinked. Jeans, sweater. Two days’ stubble and an old carrier bag in his lap. A wavering smile and dark rings under eyes that flicked from place to place. Her brother. This was her brother, now.
“Mary’s in the spare room. She’ll want to be near you.”
“I can’t take your bed–”
“I’ve got a camp bed in the study.”
“The what?”
“Loft conversion. Remember?”
“Study?” He chuckled. “Get you.”
If he could joke, that was a good sign. Wasn’t it? “I’ll be fine. Used to it.” He didn’t look sure. “Honestly.” She needed some privacy. Pull up the drawbridge. “I’ve moved all my stuff upstairs anyway.”
Remember your family, lass, Dad had used to say. Owt else comes and goes, but your family’s always there. Something else she’d have to do. The monthly trip to the Garden of Rest. Take Dad some flowers.
The hills around Kempforth came into view as she turned onto Dunwich Road North. Her gaze drifted to the furthest one, lost beneath its thick growth of pines and rowans, like a pelt of fur and bones: Ash Fell.
Eyes front, she told herself, and drove on.
HER LITTLE TERRACED house on Trafalgar Road. Slate-roofed houses of grey or yellow stone. Hers was yellow. Dad’s old house. Mum and Dad’s. Hers now. She filled the kettle, put it on. Coffee, milk, sugar. Checked her mobile.
“There’s plenty of time yet.”
“Mm? No, it’s not that. Just checking to see if Carole’s called.”
“Carole?”
“From work? The library?”
“Oh.”
“There was something I was trying to find, about Ash Fell.”
“That place again.”
“Anyway, she was going to let me know if she found it.” Change the subject, Anna. Something less morbid. “There’s some of your stuff in the bedroom. From... anyway, it’s there.”
“From Alma Street.”
“Yes.”
“You can say it. I’ll not fall apart if you do.”
“OK. Look, I’d better go pick up the princess.”
“Already? School’s not out yet, is it?”
“Mrs Hartigan wants to see me.”
“Alright. I’ll... unpack.”
“She’s really glad you’re back.” She didn’t say back home. For Martyn, home was still Alma Street, radioactive with the past.
“Mrs Hartigan?”
“Mary, you silly sod.”
“Aye?”
“We both are.” But Mary most of all. “I got her a present from you.”
“Eh?”
“Christmas. You’ll need to sign the label for it.”
“Right.”
“You’ll be OK, yeah?”
“Aye. Go on.”
“OK.”
“Anna.” She turned at the front door. Martyn drew himself all the way upright, took a deep breath. “I’ll do me best not to let you down.”
“It’s Mary you’ve got to not let down.”
“I know,” he said. “What Eva would’ve wanted.”
His whole face trembled when he spoke her name.
MRS HARTIGAN LEANT back in her chair. A Newton’s Cradle clicked on her desktop; a small Christmas tree wrapped in threadbare tinsel perched on the windowsill.
“So how is Mary’s Dad?” she asked.
“He’s only come home today.” Click, click, click. The headmistress steepled her fingers. “He seems OK. But... the whole point is that it’s on a trial basis. Just for Christmas. For now anyway. The doctors at Roydtwistle thought it might help. A first step.”
“Sounds to me like they’re treating his daughter as a guinea pig. It’s been less than a month since–”
Ten days after the college fire, two days after the funeral, Mary had called her at the library, scared and weepy. Anna had come over; Martyn had been slumped in his chair, conscious, but unmoving and silent. Once Mary was out of the room, he’d calmly told Anna how he’d spent the night planning to hang himself from a ceiling beam. Anna had called their GP straightaway. Sod keep it in the family; better Mary saw her dad sectioned than dangling from a rafter.
Anna kept her voice level. “Mary loves her dad. And he’s pretty much all she’s got right now.”
Click, click, cl– “She has you.”
“And I love her. I’ve given her all the love and care I can. But she’s still, effectively, lost both parents. At least she sees one of them for Christmas this way.”
“Well,” Mrs Hartigan sniffed and glanced away. “The decision has been made.”
Bite your tongue, Anna. Don’t rock the boat. Martyn’s not out of the woods yet. And no-one else knows you’re gay. That shouldn’t stop them letting you care for Mary. Times have changed and it’s not even as if you do anything about it. But this is Kempforth, and here old attitudes die hard.
Click, click, click.
“Where’s Mr Griffiths now?”
“At mine.”
“Alone?”
“He’s not a suicide risk anymore.”
“Let’s hope not.”
It won’t come to that. It won’t. But if it does, make sure Mary doesn’t see. She comes before everything else now. She blinked. Calm down, Anna. Don’t be silly. He’s not at risk. With your past you ought to be more understanding.
Mrs Hartigan tapped a pencil against her teeth. Then smiled. “I’ll walk you to the classroom. May as well meet Mary there.”
“Thank you.”
Children ran shrieking down the dim corridor, fell silent when they saw Mrs Hartigan. Watercolour paintings of Father Christmas in various guises grinned from the walls. Mary’s classroom was at the far end, the door open. A few children still struggled into coats. Miss Rhodes, Mary’s teacher – a sweet, rather vague woman with unruly hair, huge glasses and a liking for baggy sweaters – tidied papers at her desk.
“Hi Mary.”
Mary’s blue eyes flicked to Mrs Hartigan, then back to Anna. A heart-shaped face, achingly solemn for a child of ten; Eva’s copper hair.
“Say hello to your aunt, Mary,” said Mrs Hartigan.
“Hello, Aunty Anna.”
“Hey, princess. Guess who’s waiting for us back home?”
Mary’s eyes went wide. “Daddy?”
“Got it in one.” She took Mary’s hand. “And how about fish and chips for–”
Thud. The crack of glass. Mary grabbed Anna’s arm. A black shape at the window, hands splayed against the glass. Thin silver cracks fled outwards from them; a HAPPY CHRISTMAS banner peeled loose from above and fell.
Anna’s heart thudded. Her last fight had been thirty years earlier, in the playground outside, and she’d lost. But she stepped in front of Mary. It wasn’t courage; just simple necessity.
“Get away from the window!” Miss Rhodes shouted.
Two other figures stepped up to the window to flank the first. Miss Rhodes – vague no longer – strode towards them, metre ruler in hand. “Children, get out into the corridor. Do as you’re told. Now.”
Anna recognised them. But from where? The man seemed very tall and very thin; a black cloak hung in tatters around him, clinging to him one moment, then flapping loose. His face – pale, immobile, like a mask. You’d remember a face like–
The newcomers spread their hands against the window. Fingers long and thin as broom twigs scraped the glass. They couldn’t be real.
And Anna remembered. No, they couldn’t be real – not just the fingers, but the men themselves. They couldn’t be real. Couldn’t. She’d seen them when she was–
More screams, further down the corridor.
“You!” Miss Rhodes advanced on the window, aiming the ruler at the central figure two-handed, like a sword. “This is school property. Go away at once.”
The three stiff, smooth faces all turned to stare at her. Miss Rhodes stopped in her tracks. “I’ll call the police,” she said, but with less authority than before.
Anna thought Miss Rhodes would look away from them at any moment, but it was the three cloaked figures who turned away, as if they’d been called. Perhaps they had, further back in the mist Anna saw a fourth figure: tall and cloaked like them but different, somehow. The fourth turned and vanished into the mist; the others trailed almost meekly after it, and were gone.
Mary’s fingers dug into Anna’s arm; she covered the small hand with hers. Miss Rhodes put the ruler down and went to one child who was crying. In the corridor, Mrs Hartigan was still pressed, frozen, against the wall.
“WERE YOU FRIGHTENED?”
“No. I know how to deal with nasty men like that.”
Anna had to laugh. “Oh do you now?”
“Yeah. Kick ’em in the goolies and run. That’s what Mummy–” She stopped.
Anna almost ruffled her hair, but didn’t. Mary was sunk down in her seat, looking dully out of the window. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter – older, even. “We shouldn’t tell Daddy about this, should we?”
“No,” Anna said. “Probably not.”
“No. He’d get upset.”
“Do you want some music on?”
Mary grinned, eyes bright again. “Yeah. Please.”
“OK, princess. What shall we listen to?”
“Silly-bellus?”
“Sibelius it is.”
She let the music fill the car, focused on that and driving Minnie the Micra safely back across town. Better that than thinking of thin, immobile faces, black cloaks blowing tatters around bodies of sticks; she’d seen them when she’d been in Roydtwistle. Her and no-one else. Because back then, she’d been in
sane.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE DROVE OUT of their way, through the town centre; Mary loved the Market Hall, a Victorian gothic beast in sulphur-coloured stone. The town centre’s lampposts were Victorian too: black-painted, wrought-iron, electric bulbs installed in what had been gas-lamps. Any days of greatness Kempforth had known had been in the nineteenth century; no wonder it looked back to it. If it made Mary smile, Anna didn’t care.
Mist and dusk thickened together as they drove; when they got home visibility was down to five feet. “There we go.” She turned off the engine, cutting off The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. “Come on princess, out you get.”
Mary turned back to Anna at the front door, grinning.
“How about Chinese for tea tonight, princess?” She knew one that delivered. Better that than braving the mists again.
“Yeah!” Fish and chips were forgotten; Chinese food was the one thing Mary loved more. Anna smiled back at her, feeling her eyes prickle. Other people never know what they do to us, how their tiniest act can melt us somewhere deep.
Better to think of that than what she’d seen at the school. Or that others had seen the same. She unlocked the front door and pushed it wide. Silence. A faint whiff of cigarette smoke. She’d have to speak to him about that.
“Martyn?” Her hand on Mary’s shoulder – hold her back, she mustn’t see if–
“Daddy!” Mary shot past into the house; Anna’s hand grabbed only air.
“Who’s that I can hear?” Footsteps on the stairs.
“Dad-dy!”
Martyn embraced Mary slowly, as if she’d break. Anna hung up her coat and went into the kitchen. Martyn said something Anna couldn’t quite catch. She only heard the low-pitched timbre, so very like Dad’s voice: solid and rooted, like an old oak tree. Mary still thought he was. God knows what Dad would’ve said if he could’ve seen his son now. Nothing good, most like. In the living room, Mary laughed.
The Faceless Page 2
