When the Dead Come Calling

by Helen Sedgwick

  The Archaeological Society of Burrowhead and Warphill

  There are photos: the pockmarked standing stone against a threatening sky, the church ruin emerging from snow.

  Learn more about our history

  A Celtic carving of a bird: the beak wide open, vicious.

  Celebrate our local heritage

  And then she sees it, standing on the table, her coffee table: a small twisted metal figurine, a featureless face, sharp hands like beaks and that pointed head, ugly and rusted and threatening, mud still clinging to its robed torso – it’s one of them, a carved figure of one of the men who attacked Dawn, right here in her house, and she’s staring with something dangerously close to hatred.

  ‘What is it?’ Fergus says. He’s followed her down. His voice is cautious, concerned.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ he says, kneeling down beside her. ‘I found it in the motte yesterday, about a foot deep in the earth.’

  She can feel the heat of him from here, the sleepy warmth of his body, and it makes her turn away.

  ‘It’s awful,’ she says. ‘It’s—”

  ‘It’s ancient, Georgie.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘There have been similar figures found all over the Celtic world. They’re offerings to the gods.’

  ‘Offerings for what?’

  Fergus shrugs. ‘A better harvest. The cure for an illness. A child, maybe. Whatever they couldn’t control…’

  He’s reaching out towards it, like he’s drawn to it, like he needs the feel of it between his hands.

  ‘I think you should get rid of it.’

  ‘But that’s—’

  ‘There’s something rotten in all this, Fergus.’

  He swallows, looks at the figurine, drops his hands back to his knees. His bunting looks garish and inappropriate – maybe he’s finally noticed.

  ‘How is the … how’s it going?’

  He doesn’t say case, or investigation, or violence, or murder. For a second she wants to describe to him exactly what she’s seen, make him witness it too. Would that change him, a brutal jolt like that?

  ‘I don’t know what could make people do such awful things,’ he says. ‘I don’t understand it, Georgie.’

  It’s true, he doesn’t. And she can’t be the one to make him.

  ‘Because there’s none of that darkness in you,’ she says.

  ‘You mean us.’ His face is gentle, those hopeful eyes again. ‘There’s none of that darkness in us.’

  She leans forward and rests her head against his. Is it possible that the reason you start loving someone can be the very same reason you stop?

  ‘Sometimes I want to leave this place,’ she says, her voice low, like a confession.

  ‘But why? Not everyone, not all… It’s our home.’

  Georgie leans back, away from him.

  ‘I was down at the old church yesterday,’ she says. ‘The ground out there, all uneven from the graves.’

  ‘The soil pushing back?’

  ‘So they say. Soil or something worse maybe.’

  ‘It’s just the kind of earth we’ve got here. Always moving about.’

  ‘Do you believe in that story, Fergus? The one about Mary and the murders… The villagers hanging the old minister.’

  Fergus breathes. He’s not really a sigher, but when his thoughts take a dark turn his breathing gets heavier, like he’s trying to hold something back, or something in.

  ‘I believe there’s elements of truth in it,’ he says. ‘We might have the details wrong. But there were slave traders hereabouts, just like all over the country. Plenty for the old villagers to be ashamed of. To want to bury.’

  ‘I think the school kids are hanging round out there again. Loads of litter. Cans and that, crisp packets.’

  ‘That’s no good,’ Fergus says. ‘I might swing by there later, get that rubbish up.’

  But it’s not enough. In fact, none of the things that used to be enough seem to be helping any more. Breakfast in bed, home-made soup, warm gloves, picking up other people’s litter. None of it can make things okay. She closes her eyes for a second then looks at him, feels a wave of grief for something that hasn’t even happened yet.

  ‘What is the point in this,’ she says.

  His head shakes, just slightly.

  But now the phone is ringing. Georgie has a terrible sinking feeling – it’s been getting worse every morning this week. Fergus lifts the receiver; Georgie swallows down dread. Please don’t let it be another death, she thinks to herself. Please no more of this. Please not Dawn. Please not Mrs Helmsteading. She sees a flash, an image of Fergus on top of the motte, arms spread and body hanging limp and she doesn’t know where it’s come from, only that her mind is telling her there’s something very wrong and she can’t shake it.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he says, and she looks up at him, into his eyes that for a second she doesn’t recognise. ‘Oh God, not Pamali.’

  Pamali?

  Georgie is up.

  Georgie is running.

  FIRST BIT A LIGHT

  Simon’s creeping around his own home. Lights off, just the sliver of dawn trickling in through the windows and the faint snoring coming from the living room. What the bloody hell has he done? Losing it on the street, pinning Kevin Taylor to the ground, grilling him about what he was doing sneaking into Alexis’s flat and then what, the sudden realisation that he might report him, that he might have been caught on CCTV; thinking like he was the criminal. So he helped him up, made sure he was okay – didn’t want to send him home so brought him back here instead, with the offer of a drink and all – cleaned up the grazes on his head and picked the gravel out of his hair. Gave him an ice pack for his jaw, another for the black eye. Jesus. A glass of whisky and an apology, then Kevin had crashed out on the sofa.

  Bloody Shona, sending a kid like him to go breaking into Alexis’s office – as if Kevin Taylor was going to find some vital piece of evidence the police had missed. He didn’t know what Alexis had stumbled into, but he knew Georgie would have found anything there was to find there. Damn idiot in his balaclava. There he is, waking up now.

  ‘Alright mate,’ Kevin mumbles, sitting up and fluffing his hair in a failed attempt to make it look stylishly messy. ‘S’the time?’

  ‘Bout six.’

  ‘Fuck…’ He seems to have just remembered the eye. Holds his hand to it and winces, gingerly pats it again. ‘Thanks for this.’

  Simon raises an eyebrow. ‘Breaking and entering. Attempted burglary.’

  ‘Alright, alright. I’ll no be telling anyone if you don’t.’ He touches his jaw, almost grins. ‘Lucky for you I can take a punch better than you can deliver.’

  ‘I was going easy.’

  ‘Course you were.’

  Simon shakes his head.

  ‘What the bloody hell was Shona thinking?’

  ‘Someone’s got to find out what happened, don’t they?’

  A fox screeches in the distance, but Kevin doesn’t even notice.

  ‘And I know my way around his office, from my therapy—’

  ‘So you just had to do what Shona told you to do?’

  ‘I told you. She’s my girlfriend…’

  ‘Serious is it?’

  ‘Aye.’

  She seems about five years older than Kevin, but they’d have been in the same year at school right enough. What a girl like Shona would be doing with him is anyone’s guess. She confirmed his story though.

  ‘There’s coffee there.’ Simon nods to the side table, where he’s left a mug of black.

  ‘Ta.’

  He picks up the mug, wincing again. He does look bruised.

  ‘What exactly did she think you were going to find?’

  ‘Files,’ he says. ‘Any connection between Dr Cosse and the Helmsteadings.’

  ‘Because of Bobby?’

  ‘Aye, and Dawn.’

  ‘I take it she’s still missing the
n.’

  ‘Police have been calling round everyone, and no one’s seen her – I heard folk talking about it on the bus on my way over. Everyone’s looking for Dawn Helmsteading.’

  Simon shakes his head. They’re doing a good job of keeping things quiet, then. This connection with Dawn though, there might be something there.

  They did know each other, in a way, Alexis and Dawn. It wasn’t anything he’d have remembered really, or ever thought about again, except that now with her missing it was building up to something in his mind, something he was working out how to use. They’d been out on one of their walks – one of the first ones, in fact, several years back – out along the coast path one evening. Must have been late summer. The montbretia was flowering, swathes of orange. Coral sun and sea full of diamonds. When they got to the bench past the curve of the cliffs there was a woman there. Simon just saw her back at first, her pale hair twisted and clipped; he recognised her as Dawn a second or so before he realised what she was doing, with that urn in her hands and the dust on her fingertips, on her clothes. He was going to walk past without disturbing her, it was such a private moment, her standing there in the golden light scattering her dad’s ashes out over the cliffs, but she must have heard them approach. She turned and Simon went to smile. She wasn’t looking at him at all, though. She was looking straight at Alexis. Her expression was almost defiant – no tears, no sobbing, nothing like that. Alexis said her name. That’s all it was.

  ‘… And then I saw Trish driving back to the station with her mum in the back seat.’

  ‘Wait, who?’

  ‘Mrs Helmsteading. Yesterday afternoon.’

  ‘They’ve arrested her?’

  ‘Don’t know about that. But she was taken into the station, so Shona’s fair convinced the Helmsteadings are involved.’

  ‘It was still a stupid thing to do, planning a break-in.’

  Kevin grins.

  ‘You could have been arrested.’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Still might be.’

  ‘Not now I’ve been in your home and all. Bloke like you could’ve taken advantage…’

  ‘Get out.’

  He should never have brought the little shite back here. Kevin’s grinning again though. ‘Thanks for the whisky,’ he says at the door. ‘See you round.’

  ‘No doubt.’

  Then Simon is alone again and pacing and thinking, and he doesn’t want Kevin Taylor to be right about anything but the thing is, Alexis did stand him up to meet someone on Monday night. Didn’t tell him who or why, even though he must have known it would start a fight. It must have been important. He was trying to keep something hidden. Or someone. And when they saw her on the cliffs four years ago, it was intimate, the way he said her name, just once like that.

  VISITING HOUR

  The hospital smells of cabbage and there’s a hole in the floor by reception. Georgie has been driving round for ten minutes just to find a bloody parking space. When are they going to sort out the car park here? Just cause they’re in the country they don’t all need to behave like total amateurs. Fergus touches her arm. She takes a deep breath. Asks the man on reception to direct her to Pamali’s ward.

  ‘Visiting hours start at two,’ he says.

  Her badge is out like a flash.

  ‘She’s been attacked. I’m the police. I need to see her. Now.’

  She strides up the corridor, Fergus following behind – the corridor’s not quite wide enough for two, at least not with the beds along the side there – to the shared ward where they’ve left Pamali to sleep a bit. She’s not sleeping though.

  ‘Oh, Pami.’ Georgie rushes to her bedside.

  She’s lying propped on some pillows, her left arm in a sling. A bruise on her face.

  ‘Pami, oh my God, I am so, so sorry.’

  ‘I’m okay, Georgie.’

  ‘I came as soon as we got the call. Where is everyone?’

  ‘They’ve just left. The forensics people, I mean. Took my clothes, checked my hair, my nails—’

  ‘I meant—’

  ‘I don’t think they’ve called anyone else yet. You’re my in case of emergency person.’ Pamali smiles.

  ‘And I wasn’t there to help.’

  ‘You’re here now, Georgie. And Fergus, thank you for coming.’

  Fergus crouches down by her bedside and takes her hand – the one not in a sling. He pats her wrist, gently. Looks at her face, shakes his head. Georgie can see he doesn’t know what to do.

  ‘I think there are chairs round there.’ Pamali nods to the end of the ward, by the window. There’s an old woman sleeping in one of the other beds, her snores coming in waves, and an old man over in the corner staring vacantly at the TV screen over on the wall. Fergus stands, collects a couple of chairs, brings them back to Pamali’s bedside. He sits in one while Georgie stares at the other.

  ‘This is too awful, Pami,’ she says.

  ‘It’s just a dislocated shoulder.’

  ‘It’s not just a dislocated shoulder.’

  ‘No.’

  Georgie sits on the edge of the bed and holds Pamali in a hug, her body lifting in a sob, but she pulls back from crying. She needs to do something more useful than that. Fergus reaches over, places a careful hand on each of their backs. Georgie shakes him away.

  ‘I thought…’ Pamali begins, then stops. Her breath is all jagged. ‘I thought, at one point, they were going to kill me.’

  Georgie holds her tight, holds her and rocks silently on the bed.

  ‘But they didn’t,’ Pamali says eventually, pulling back and straightening up. ‘I’m not sure they even meant to do this.’ She looks down at her arm. ‘At least, I don’t think they both meant for it to happen.’

  ‘Don’t excuse them,’ Georgie says. ‘Not for a bloody second.’

  Georgie doesn’t think Pamali’s ever seen her get angry, but if ever there was a time, now is it. She’s not sure why Pamali seems so calm. Or why Fergus is hovering behind her.

  There is a window in this ward, a square one, with the flimsy blue curtains pulled over to the side and a view over the disused field behind the hospital. Beyond the window there is a flock of seagulls, ugly and grey, pecking at the grass and sometimes at each other. Georgie’s mind reels back to the old church, following connections that won’t connect: Alexis’s broken wrist, Pamali’s shoulder, bodies pushing against hers, graves forcing their way up out of the earth.

  ‘Can you tell me what happened, Pami?’ she says. ‘Only if you’re ready. Just what you feel able to.’

  ‘I can tell you everything, Georgie. I know exactly what I need to say.’

  It dawns on Georgie that Pamali is angry too, but she’s been carefully shaping it for this moment.

  ‘There were two of them,’ Pamali continues. ‘Locals. They go to the high school.’

  ‘They were kids?’

  ‘Teenagers. Boys. And one of them…’

  ‘What?’

  Pamali swallows. Her eyes are clear now, her expression calm but certain, and Georgie feels a swell of admiration for her.

  ‘One of them was Andy.’

  Georgie blinks. She must have misheard.

  There’s silence between them for a beat, nothing but the click and pad of hospital noises and the gulls outside.

  ‘Andy who?’

  ‘Andy Barr,’ she says quietly. ‘Your Andy. It was him and his mate.’

  Georgie is staring, just staring at what they’ve done, at Pami’s arm and the bruise shading her left cheek.

  ‘Not young Andy,’ Fergus is saying. ‘No, he can’t have meant… I’m sure he wouldn’t have…’

  Shut up, thinks Georgie. Shut up, shut the hell up—

  ‘He was spray-painting the racist stuff on the counter,’ says Pamali firmly. ‘His friend, Lee I think it is, he was the one who dislocated my shoulder. Andy didn’t like that. He didn’t stop it though.’

  Georgie’s skin has gone cold, there’s a stinging pain behin
d her eyes.

  ‘They tied me up and dislocated my shoulder, hit me, smashed up the shop, swore, called me names, and then they ran off and left me there, tied to the chair with my arm…’ She’s talking fast, determined, like she’s got to say it all now. Like she’d been rehearsing it while she was tied up there. While she was terrified. ‘There was a cloth in my mouth, so I couldn’t scream. I passed out for a while. When I woke up, the string had been cut. The twine tying me to the chair. I was shaking like… The shock, I guess. I was sick soon as I stood up. Collapsed. Then I heard the ambulance arriving.’

  ‘Who untied it?’ Georgie’s voice is distant, even she doesn’t recognise it.

  ‘I don’t know. The ambulance brought me here. Sorted out my shoulder. Next thing I know it’s light out and they’re telling me police are on the way.’

  She takes Georgie’s hand, but Georgie can’t stop staring out of the window, watching those wretched gulls.

  ‘Georgie?’

  Georgie shakes her head. Shakes her head and forces herself to speak. ‘I’m so ashamed,’ she says.

  ‘None of this is your fault.’

  ‘Some of it is. I’ve failed you, Pami.’ Things have changed now. She is changed. ‘Failed to see what was going on. But I’ll bring them in,’ she says. ‘Lock them up for starters. They’ll go to jail. They’ve ruined their own lives, that’s what they’ve done. Oh, Pami.’ Georgie wants to stop and lie down or stand and scream but instead she pulls up Trish’s number on her phone. Then skips past it.

  Simon’s voice when he answers the phone is gruff. But he’s been saying for days he wants to help, and now there’s a way he can.

  ‘Si,’ she says, ‘Si, we’ve got to make an arrest. They’ve attacked Pamali. There’ll be interviews to do as well. Meet me by the gate to the Barr farm?’