When the Dead Come Calling

by Helen Sedgwick

  Inside the old church the stone pews are darkened by the way the light’s shining low behind them, and in the strange glow the team look like hunched shapes growing out of the ground, something monstrous about them, something primitive. She finds it hard to tell what they’re doing at all until Karen straightens her back and Cal comes striding out to where she’s waiting and the hunched figures on the ground resolve into people she knows, crouching down to get footprint casts, carefully uplifting the discarded chip wrapper after checking it for prints; doing their jobs. She notices a shading that has appeared in the sky, in the distance, a darker grey which carries an underside of gold. Every time the darkness gets too much, the sky seems to pull her back, reminds her to keep doing her job one step at a time.

  ‘Georgie,’ says Cal. ‘I want to get this bag back to the lab. See what we can find on the mobile.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  A brisk nod and he’s off, she appreciates that about Cal – he’s not a man to waste time, that’s for sure. She watches him duck under the tape and stroll purposefully out to where he’s parked and drive up the lane and out of view towards the road to Crackenbridge, which is a road that takes him north out of Burrowhead and directly past the distinctive mound of the motte where Fergus is manoeuvring his metal detector over one particular spot on the steep side of the motte’s peak. He doesn’t see Cal driving past, doesn’t see any of the cars making their way between the villages, because he is entirely focused on the ground beneath the detector and the beeping noise it makes every time he sweeps it over this particular area. There’s something down there. Under the ground. There must be.

  He tries not to get too excited, because it could be anything – an old coin, a modern coin, cans dropped by folk up here for a picnic years ago and rapidly consumed by grass and mud. Then again, they only dug the one trench when they were here, the professional team of archaeologists, and look what they found: the cauldron, fragments of animal bones, the charred signs of a fire. There must be more underneath the ground, and why couldn’t he be the one to find it? Especially if there’s something that’s been pushed up near the surface, something he can get to with his bare hands. He kneels down on the steep edge – no rope on that side, so he’ll need to be careful not to stumble – and pulls up some of the grass right where the metal detector was beeping. The rain comes on, but it’s just a drizzle and besides a bit of rain doesn’t bother Fergus, because with each handful of mud scooped up from the motte he feels himself delve back in time and he can think of nowhere he’d rather be.

  ‘Saw your Fergus on the way down,’ says Suze, after June and Whelan have left and Cal’s long gone. All trace of humility has vanished from her face and been replaced by something that looks like a smirk to Georgie, but she must be reading Suze wrong. She’s getting touchy, and there’s no good going to come of that.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ she says, noncommittal and hoping that’ll be the end of it.

  ‘He was standing on top of the motte,’ joins in Karen, standing back to supervise now most of the work’s been done, letting the junior members of the team finish combing the ground, checking the bushes behind the ruins, under the stones. ‘Looked like, er…’

  Georgie feels suddenly conscious of the weight of her heart.

  ‘Was he playing with a metal detector?’ Karen continues, sounding more baffled than amused at his expense.

  ‘He’s interested in history,’ she says quietly.

  They’re both staring at her now.

  ‘He’s setting up an archaeological society. For the villages.’

  ‘Like Indiana Jones?’ says Suze. ‘You could get him one of those hats…’ and Karen starts to chuckle. Then she stops, and it gets worse.

  ‘He’s still not having any luck at the job centre then?’ she says. ‘Shame, with all his experience and everything. You’d think an engineer would be able to find something worth doing.’

  Georgie has her eyes closed again. She just closed them without even realising she was doing it and now she’s keeping them closed.

  ‘We have a pen,’ shouts one of the boys from inside the church. ‘Looks like it was wedged beneath the upturned pew.’

  ‘Careful,’ Georgie says, back in charge – the racist notes. This could link it all together. She takes a step away from Karen and Suze; the ground’s uneven and she stumbles, catching her balance but jarring her ankle on something solid. She doesn’t want to look down. She already knows what she’s done. She takes another step, this time off the sunken gravestone and onto the grass beside it. That’s no good either. The shape of the ground, the way it rises and falls either side of where she’s placed her foot – looking behind, another gravestone, this time upright, low, old and worn and crumbling. The graves here, they are pushing their way out of the ground. She believes it, no matter what anyone says. Centuries-old coffins are creeping, slowly, up through soil, making themselves known by body-length mounds in the ground. She can’t help but know it deep within her own skin; there’s something under there they shouldn’t allow to surface, that was always supposed to remain buried. Then there’s Fergus, trying to dig it all up.

  Her mobile rings.

  ‘What?’ she says, with an uncharacteristic urgency, even rudeness, as she answers the phone. The very noise of it, in this silent graveyard, suddenly strikes her as obscene.

  ‘It’s me, Georgie,’ Cal says. ‘You need to get back to the station.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘We’ve got into the phone.’

  ‘That was quick.’

  ‘Well, it’s his. Dr Cosse’s,’ he replies. ‘Seems he was using it to record his sessions with Dawn Helmsteading. You need to get yourself to a computer to listen to this recording.’

  She ends the call and quickly writes a text message. I think this has to stop, Fergus. Then she hits Send.

  Fergus, though, is elbow-deep in mud at the top of the motte and he neither hears his phone beep nor checks his messages because he’s onto something important and fascinating and this, this, is what he is meant to be doing. There’s something here for him to discover, something ancient and vital and it’s almost as though it’s been waiting for him, rising up through the soil to be ready for him. He pauses for a second though, ’cause his back’s killing him, and he straightens up and looks out to the rolling countryside beyond the motte, the gentle hills and fields that layer into the distance without the jagged edges of the cliffs or the hunched mountains beyond the horizon. God, he loves this place. Always has. Since he and Georgie first found it, that holiday they had before they were married, when the fields were a tapestry of gold and the stones of the cliffs shone maroon and terracotta and the beach glittered with quartz; he’d known then he’d found somewhere special. True, he didn’t imagine what it would be like through winter, didn’t imagine the site closing or the stench of the seaweed – good for the garden though, like Walt says, and the man makes an excellent point – but it’s his home now. Maybe he lost his job for a reason; after all, he wouldn’t be here if he were at work. Probably shouldn’t say that to Georgie. But money’s not everything, to Fergus, earning money doesn’t make your life worthwhile, and there’s something solid by his foot, where he stretched his ankle, is it another stone? He’s found lots of stone. But no, it’s in exactly the right place, where his metal detector told him it would be, and the edge of it catches the light, reflects it despite the mud and the dirt.

  He kneels and carefully brushes away more of the soil around the find, using his hands, not minding the mud under his fingernails. He gently scrapes back the earth and from it emerges a metal sculpture, simple but recognisable for what it is: a man. Legs like a stick figure, a cloak of some kind, all shaped in iron. The head pointed. Or perhaps it’s a hood. With the lack of a face, it’s hard to tell. The feet are strange: three-toed and curved like claws. The arms protrude horizontally and the hands – there’s something wrong with the hands. He’s read about these figurines. They were used as offerings, burie
d with prayers to cure illness and injury. The wrists look broken, snapped upward, and the fingers are forced together so tightly they can’t be distinguished at all, instead there’s just an upper and lower edge, thin triangles sticking out from the arms, sharp and filed to a point. Almost like the beaks of birds, wide open in greed and ready to snap.

  WHEN TO WALK AWAY

  She’s rung his bell twice already, Shona from the Courier. Simon remembers her from when she was a kid, knees always grazed and her hair in that short bob, racing about the village on her own – having too much fun going places to wait for the other kids, at least that was how she’d made it look. Not long out of school now, straight to work at the local paper. Internship maybe, or part-time, he’s not sure. She wrote that article about the climbing tree getting blown down in the autumn storms, and he liked it actually, thought it was beautiful and sad the way she described it. She’s after a different kind of story now though. He can feel it in the way she’s pressing the bell and knocking with her knuckles, like she’s not going to go away until she’s spoken to him. He’s watching from the landing window and she knows he’s there; she’s stepping back from the door now and staring straight up at him.

  ‘Si,’ she calls. Her hand held up in a stationary wave, her eyes … kind. If she’d been all stubborn determination it would have been easy to tell her to fuck off.

  He steps back from the window and slumps down on the carpet, legs stretching down the stairs. He wishes Georgie would let him get back to work. Nothing worse than sitting round here, thinking. There’s a clank – she’s pushed the letter box in again.

  ‘Simon,’ she says. ‘I thought you could use a friend, is all. Cup a coffee?’

  It’s more than emptiness he feels. He might even be willing to talk to her, if it didn’t involve the energy of having to walk downstairs. Had to force himself out of bed this morning to have a shower, get dressed, when the only thing that would make being awake less futile was the one thing he couldn’t do – work on the case. Find who did it.

  ‘Will I try the back door?’ she calls.

  Might even be open. He can’t remember.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if you’d have heard yet…’

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘About Elise. What she told the police.’

  It’s not that he doesn’t see through what she’s doing. But Georgie was round last night. With those questions. Asking about hypnosis. Asking about Alexis. And Dawn Helmsteading.

  ‘Might be open,’ he says, almost under his breath – kidding himself that she might not even hear. She does though, of course. Seconds later, he hears the back door open, Shona walking in through the kitchen, calling out to him, ‘I’m coming upstairs, Si.’

  She sees him slumped on the top stair, climbs up and sits down by his knees.

  ‘How you holding up?’ she says, her voice quiet and gentle and when he doesn’t reply she waits, quietly sitting by his knees and watching him, offering a hand on his knee when he starts to cry.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says.

  ‘You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.’

  ‘It’s just, I’m better if I can get angry or something, but when people are nice…’

  ‘Tips you over the edge?’

  ‘Aye.’

  He almost laughs then, pushing a fist over his eyes. Notices Shona’s hair is wet, her blue hoody too, becomes aware of the sound of rain hitting the slant of the window.

  ‘How about I put the kettle on,’ she says.

  ‘Wouldn’t say no.’

  So he makes it down to the kitchen for the first time today, locates a packet of ginger nuts while Shona boils the kettle, and even feels a bit better. She’s got what she wanted already – he’s going to talk to her now. Find out what Elise is saying for starters. Find a way in. Do something.

  ‘Good coffee,’ she says, heaped scoops landing in the cafetière.

  ‘No milk.’

  ‘Tastes better black.’

  ‘Come on then,’ he says. ‘Why are you really here?’

  ‘It’s not like that. I mean, I can write an article if you want? Interview maybe, a call for information?’

  ‘What did you mean about Elise?’

  Shona takes a bite of ginger nut and a crumb gets stuck on her lip. Makes her look innocent.

  ‘She came to me after speaking to the police. You know how she talks… I don’t know how much she’d thought it through. Guess it made her feel important or something, the fact that she knew Alexis, and she had been seeing him just before—’

  ‘What’s she saying about him?’

  Shona looks at him like she’s not sure she wants to say it now, even though she was the one who brought it up in the first place. She pours the coffee, hands him a cup.

  ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘There’s nothing you can say that’s going to make me feel worse than I already do.’

  She nods at the chair, takes a seat and waits for Simon to sit down opposite her.

  ‘She said he was being … unprofessional.’

  He feels a flash of anger rise up his throat, then swallows it back down again.

  ‘Unprofessional how?’

  ‘Said he was pushing her to be hypnotised so he could ask her all these weird questions.’

  It’s what Georgie was on about last night. Not that Georgie was able to tell him anything. But if Elise is gossiping to everyone she speaks to, no reason for him not to know as well. He’d been expecting some remarks about their relationship maybe, the usual homophobic crap, some delving into his past or assumptions being spread around, but not this stuff about hypnosis. It was the kind of thing Alexis would always argue against – not at all the way he saw his practice. No evidence for it even working, he’d said once, though Simon had heard plenty folk talk about how it helped them stop smoking and the like.

  ‘What kind of questions?’

  ‘Apparently he was asking if any of her friends had gone missing when she was a kid. And asking about her dad, who his friends were, what he was like.’

  She could be lying. But then why would Elise lie? ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Maybe she’s trying to discredit him?’

  ‘Why would she want to do that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And why wait till now, anyway? It’s too late, isn’t it? Why try to discredit him or blackmail him or whatever, after—’

  ‘I don’t know. But I was wondering…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you know of any kids who went missing, say fifteen or twenty years ago?’

  Simon shakes his head. He could find out though. If he could get back to the station.

  ‘Or did Alexis keep recordings of his sessions? Maybe if we could listen…’

  ‘All that stuff’s at his office. Or with the police.’

  ‘Could you check his office? Maybe they missed something.’

  Georgie would kill him. She’d be right to and all. Simon takes a swig of his coffee. Shona’s not ready to stop though.

  ‘It just seems to me that Alexis might have found something out,’ she says. ‘Something he thought his clients wouldn’t talk about if they knew what they were saying. Something people round here didn’t want him to know.’

  Simon feels something shift in him.

  ‘Like what?’

  Shona shrugs. ‘But you’ve heard about Bobby Helmsteading? The way he was killed over in the derelict flats? And from what I’ve been able to find out, seems Dawn is missing and all.’

  Suddenly his legs want to move. He stands.

  ‘So that’s got me wondering, did they know each other?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Alexis. And Dawn.’

  BACK A FOUR

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this, Dawn?’ Alexis says. ‘We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.’

  He sounds kind. Hesitant. Thoughtful. Just like Georgie remembers him.

  ‘I need to know who it was,’ Dawn replies. ‘Otherwise t
hey’ll get away with it, won’t they. And it will happen again.’

  ‘You’ll need to relive it.’

  ‘I relive it every day,’ she says.

  It’s strange, the way gloom can pervade a room even when the fluorescent lights overhead are so bright they are almost blinding.

  Trish is pacing. Frazer’s standing over by the window, has been since the first time they played it – he hasn’t said so much as a word.

  The voices they can hear sound alive; Georgie can feel the pulse and breath of them, rescued from the static of data on a mobile phone, transmitted through air as the rise and fall of waves from Crackenbridge to Burrowhead. As real as having Dr Cosse standing here, talking to them, in this room. His hair styled, his shirt buttoned up to the collar. He had such a handsome, gentle sort of face. Petite, but not sharp-edged. Full dark eyebrows over intelligent eyes. And his voice – a rich tone to it, almost melodic, as she hears the words: ‘Describe for me the room you are in, Dawn. Describe for me what you see.’

  Again Georgie is catapulted back to the derelict flat, standing in it the way she was standing in it yesterday morning, but now instead of the body on the floor there is a table with a young girl sitting underneath, on a deep red carpet with blue and green swirls of leaves and flowers, dulled through years of use and prickling her knees, prickly tickly. She is clutching a soft pink rabbit with floppy white ears. Her voice is the voice of a child with the vocabulary of an adult, Mummy is cooking dinner, she says, mince and potatoes, she says, the smell of onions frying. And the light in Georgie’s mind darkens from morning to dusk, she imagines a woman, a younger version of Mrs Helmsteading, pulling the curtains closed, telling her daughter to sit on the sofa, to get up off the floor.