When the Dead Come Calling

by Helen Sedgwick

  He’d thought maybe there’d be caves or something, traces along sand he could follow, but the cliffs are as solid as they are steep, jagged and harsh, offering no cover to the beach and certainly no help to a desperate woman on the run. Anyone in their right mind would have scaled the path back up to the clifftop. They’ve got their torches out now, those who have them, but it doesn’t help much. Pools of yellow light make the rocks look even more treacherous than they were in the dim grey of the dusk. There’s already one twisted ankle, could be a possible suit of some kind – not that he imagines these villagers would think of that – and the grumbling’s getting worse as the tide edges up to their feet. It is bitter, and there’s nothing here. There is fuck all down here.

  ‘Right,’ he says, and they gather round him in a sort of circle, torches pointing inwards. Faces looming out of the dark behind. He’s always hated that effect. ‘Does anyone know any place along here where someone could have sheltered. A crack in the rocks. A beach hut maybe?’

  Whispering and moving of torches, a sort of shuffle as they shake their heads and a few manage a low mumble. The rain’s getting even worse, biting and spitting straight out of the sea. ‘Nothing round here,’ says one. ‘We don’t come to the beach much, round here.’

  He can bloody see why.

  ‘Here’s what we’re going to do.’ He claps his hands, for some kind of encouragement, but in his gloves they make a dull thud and he feels like an idiot. ‘We’re going to head right up to the cliffs there, walking along the edge far as we can, checking for anything – clothes, food, blood.’

  One of them whispers something under their breath at that. Something hits him right in the eye, rain or sand or grit.

  ‘I’m thinking she might have cut her feet… But then we take the path back up to the playground, get you all home and dry. Alright?’

  Without really saying much at all, they follow him, their lights marking a shaking path up to the cliffs where the villagers of Burrowhead tend never to go. It’s not that they really believe the old stories. Not one of them would say they thought it was actually true, about the minister and that girl he killed. Unless. Trouble is, the marks on the rocks, holes in battered pebbles, the layers of sediment ground together – in this torchlight it all looks a bit like splatters of blood. Lines and shapes in the dark, maybe just threads of quartz and iron oxide giving the cliffs that ruddy colour, but brown twisted seaweed and clumps of human hair look the same, on this kind of night. They stop occasionally, though, as they make their way along the cliffs, kick at something till it turns over or squelches beneath their boots. And one by one they all see it, and not a one of them says so: a girl, lace up to her neck, skin blacker than night, her long dress ripped and soaking, pressing herself back into the rocks until she disappears. Just the eyes left, staring out at them. Torches down. Torches out to the sea. Keep walking. The trail of them, lit by a jagged row of tiny lights, keeps moving on until the shape of the swings leers back out of the clouds above the clifftop.

  ‘Here we go,’ Frazer calls out, though he’s started to wonder if he needs the sound of his own voice just to keep him going. ‘Follow me.’

  And he leads them up, one step at a time, careful not to slip, careful to keep his mind alert to the here and now until they are all gathered by the strange-shaped scaffolds that are the swings and the frames of the creaking animals which move and groan in the wind that howls through Burrowhead playground.

  ‘Everyone can go home,’ he says, and he feels defeated as he says it.

  One by one, the villagers creep away with their quiet shame, and again he is left standing alone.

  There’s nothing here. He’s lost his suspect, and in a way he doesn’t even care. He pulls his arms close around his body and tries to deny the fear that’s creeping its way through his veins but by God this place is something dead and cold and he wants nothing more right now than to go back home.

  FORGIVENESS AFTER DARK

  Trish can still remember that day she was suspended from school. Trudging home in the afternoon’s gloom and the rain, with her fists clenched and her schoolbooks chucked in the mud for nothing but swearing and fighting, pulling posh Matty’s hair so hard the teacher thought she’d broken her neck, and how with every step further away from the school and closer to home and Uncle Walt her anger shifted a little into something tinged with dread and guilt until she was standing outside the door unable to let herself in, standing with her drenched hair dripping down her neck until Uncle Walt saw her out there. What you doing, Trish? he’d asked, opening the door, and she’d shoved past him and stormed up the stairs and waited for the shouting to start. Waited all afternoon, she did. Waited through the phone call from the school to report on her, the pacing of Uncle Walt downstairs like he was working out how to punish her, the heavy tread of his footsteps up the stairs. She’d stood by her window looking out with her back to the door and he’d come up behind her and she’d cringed away from him, and then he’d wrapped his arms around her and held her in a bear hug until the tension and the rage dissolved into tears and something began to change.

  And now she’s thinking about Andy in that cell. What are they going to do, lock him up with a load of kids ten times worse than he is, teach him yet more violence, allow the anger to grow and spread – what’s the point in any of that really? But there’s Georgie looking angry and stubborn and guarding Andy’s cell like she’s never going to let him out.

  ‘You’re the one who says we should always try to understand,’ Trish says.

  Something’s happened to Georgie though, because of this case, the things that have happened this week, and Trish isn’t sure exactly what’s caused it but somehow she’s on a different side of things to where she normally is. Georgie’s given up on Andy, while Trish wants to go in and help him, talk to him, give the boy a hug. He didn’t mean it, she’s sure of that; he took a wrong turn is all. He’s just a kid.

  ‘You were right in the first place,’ Georgie says. ‘We should lock them all up.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Didn’t mean people like Andy? Who exactly did you mean then?’

  ‘I’m supposed to be the angry one,’ Trish says, with a smile. ‘And here I am, keeping my temper, showing a bit a sympathy.’

  ‘Think about who you’re showing it to,’ Georgie says.

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  Georgie doesn’t reply to that.

  ‘I just want to try,’ Trish says. ‘I’ll take responsibility for him. Please?’

  Georgie sighs. After a minute, though, she steps away and passes Trish the key, and Trish opens the door to Andy’s cell. It was just a room once, back when there was one police officer for the village and the station was his family home as well. Criminals would have been locked up in a barred corner of his living room till they were either let off or sent to the bigger courthouse at Crackenbridge, sentenced to lashes or stocks or whatever other cruelties the town’s ancestors might have come up with. Andy’s sitting down against the far wall, legs bent and head on his knees, looking for all the world like a daddy-long-legs. Such gentle creatures they are, gentler than people, Trish has always thought. So vulnerable. She sits down beside him.

  ‘Do you understand?’ she says. ‘Do you understand how badly you hurt Pamali?’

  Andy says something muffled into his knees. When he looks up, there’s something resentful in his eyes, something like Trish felt once, when her mum was gone and she slept on a camp bed in Uncle Walt’s living room and she had to wear second-hand uniform to school; when she got suspended for fighting but no one ever asked her what she was fighting about.

  ‘Did you want to hurt Pamali?’

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘I told you already.’ There’s the anger, like he thinks he’s got a raw deal, but Trish waits it out. His hand rises to his mouth, he bites at a nail.

  ‘I’m listening,’ she says eventually.

  He looks into her eyes at last.

  ‘I�
�d never want to hurt nobody,’ he says, and his shoulders drop a little and he sniffs and he’s Andy again, and Trish thinks maybe there’s a way through.

  ‘Do you understand that those racist notes you were sending hurt people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you know they were going to hurt people before you sent them?’

  He takes a deep breath. ‘Yes.’ Then lets out the sob he’s been holding back since she sat down. ‘I’m s-sorry,’ he stammers, ‘I didn’t think I … everyone was saying… I didn’t want to look like, like what people say, weak and that…’

  ‘Did it make you feel strong then, to hurt Pamali?’

  He shakes his head miserably.

  ‘Do you think Lee is strong, for dislocating Pami’s shoulder?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And your dad now. Do you think he’s strong?’ Trish pauses for a beat. ‘Is it strong to bully people?’

  Andy’s cheeks are wet with tears now.

  Trish gets up, and Andy puts his head back on his knees. ‘Time to stand up now, Andy. You think you can do that?’

  She reaches out her hand to him and he takes it. Looks over at the open door. The fluorescent strip has come back on and light’s spilling into the cell.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Andy says. He’s up now, lanky as he is, but his face looks soft and sad and sorry. ‘We going somewhere?’

  ‘You have a choice to make, Andy. A choice about your life. Don’t you think it’s about time you made some changes? Started making some better decisions for yourself?’

  Andy just nods, head down. He’s like a wee boy is all.

  ‘Well, you can stay in a cell getting angrier all the while. Or you can promise me you’re going to stay in the village and we’ll let you go home tonight. What’s it going to be?’

  ‘You’d do that?’

  He wipes his eyes with the cuff of his hoody. Frayed sleeves, his thumb sticking right through a hole there.

  ‘I believe there’s good in you, Andy. But there’s going to be charges brought against you. There’ll be a trial. You’re underage, so you might get community service. Maybe a stint in young offenders. But for now, I’m opening this door and I’m trusting you to start making things better. What do you say?’

  ‘I’d… I’d like to go and say sorry to Pamali. At the weekend. Would that be okay?’

  ‘If we go together,’ she says, ‘I think it might.’

  WEEK’S END

  As DS Frazer gets back to the station he sees DC Mackie standing outside giving Andy Barr a hug. He hangs back, out of sight of them till the boy’s wandered off in the direction of the farm and DC Mackie is leaning back against the station door watching him go.

  ‘You’ve decided to forgive him then,’ he says, as she notices his approach.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She shakes her head.

  ‘Easy for you, I guess.’

  A frown flits across her forehead, but it’s hurt he sees in her eyes.

  ‘He seems sorry. He fucked up—’

  ‘He certainly did.’

  ‘Didn’t you make any mistakes when you were a kid?’

  He smiles at that despite himself. He’s made his fair share, and he’s not sharing them with DC Trish Mackie, that’s for sure.

  ‘Find anything then, on the search?’

  He opens the door for her, and she kind of hesitates like she’s about to argue then walks through ahead of him.

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ he says. ‘Except the knowledge that the locals don’t particularly want someone like me around here.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that.’ She strides ahead and gets to the office door first, opens it for him with a flourish. ‘Folk round here take a bit a time adjusting to something new, that’s all. I wouldn’t give up on them just yet.’

  ‘But we’ve got nothing,’ he says.

  ‘We’ve got Mrs Helmsteading…’

  PC Simon Hunter turns round from his computer to look at them both.

  ‘No sign of Dawn then?’ he says quietly.

  ‘Whatever it is she’s guilty of, she’s gone now. A suspect in two, maybe even three murders, if we count her dad’s death as suspicious, and we’ve lost her.’

  ‘You don’t think it was her, do you?’ DC Mackie says, and she’s got a point – he’s not behaving like someone who’s just been told the killer of his partner has escaped. ‘What do you know that we don’t?’

  ‘Nothing, it’s just… You’ll think I’ve lost it.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I was down on the beach earlier, and it was so beautiful. You ever feel like that here? A moment when it’s you and this coast, the golden-red rocks and this never-ending sea…’

  And it’s strange, but somewhere below the sympathy Frazer feels for him – and he can see the pain, within his eyes, hovering behind his words – he feels a pang of jealousy. He wasn’t able to see any beauty out on that beach. Felt nothing but threat.

  ‘According to what Mrs Helmsteading said, Bobby should be our main suspect for at least one of the murders,’ DC Mackie says. ‘And it was Bobby who kidnapped Dawn when she was a kid. Him and some others. Hid their faces to terrify her, threatened to cut her throat, to strangle her.’

  ‘Then it seems more in character to me that Bobby is a killer.’

  ‘Except that it was Dawn’s hair we found,’ DI Strachan says, from the doorway. Her voice is different to how Frazer remembers it. Colder, more edge to it. Two days ago she’d been the one offering to make a brew, handing out chocolate digestives. Not any more. ‘And why was Alexis’s car left at the old flats?’

  ‘Maybe Dawn was there,’ PC Hunter says at last. ‘Maybe … say she and Alexis were there together, at the flats where Dawn was kidnapped. They walked together to the playground – retracing the way she must have been taken – but then Bobby found them. He could have gone there to confront her. Or to silence her.’

  ‘We’ve not got enough evidence to prove it either way, that’s the point.’

  Frazer shifts on his feet. He’s not done well here, he knows that much. It’s no wonder the DI is frustrated.

  ‘But if Bobby arrived, planning to kill Dawn, then Alexis would have stood up to him,’ PC Hunter says. ‘Maybe … well, could be Alexis saved Dawn’s life.’

  Frazer’s watching the room through all this, watching the small, mismatched team of police trying to reason their way to an explanation in their dim, outdated office, but none of them are watching him: DC Mackie is watching PC Hunter and PC Hunter’s avoiding her gaze and the DI’s staring out of the window like there’s something threatening to break in. There’s a heaviness to the atmosphere in here, no doubt about that. Maybe it’s the wood everywhere, the peeling wooden window frames, the unmatched, thick wood desks, old and lined and worn and solid. In contrast to the crisp white furniture of his open-plan office, with its glass-fronted entrance and automatic doors, Burrowhead station feels both alarmingly makeshift and immovably permanent at the same time.

  ‘I think that’s…’ DC Mackie speaks, her voice strangely gentle, different, almost distant. ‘I think that’s a good way to remember it, Si,’ she says. ‘He saved her life.’ She reaches over and touches his arm. ‘And then maybe Dawn avenged his.’

  ‘We don’t have the evidence,’ DI Strachan snaps, suddenly turning to face the room. ‘You want to give them an excuse to close us down?’ She sighs into the silence that follows, straightens up a bit. ‘At least we’ve got Andy and Lee. Pamali’s statement, fingerprints, the notes, their own confession, CCTV, physical evidence they were meeting at the church ruin… Should be enough to lock them up. It’s time we started to fight back.’

  DC Mackie looks like she wants to fight back right now, but she doesn’t say anything, and PC Hunter looks lost to his thoughts. Frazer’s got that feeling again. Like he’s stumbled in on something that’s been going on for so long it’s become a part of the silence. He’s an outsider here, no denying it. And he can leave if he wants
to.

  ‘I should, er…’

  ‘Yes?’ DI Strachan’s eyes snap to his.

  ‘It’s late,’ he says. ‘I’m soaked through. I’ve been working since first thing. If there’s nothing else that needs to be done tonight, I’ll head off.’

  DC Mackie’s chair scrapes back against the floor and almost like a harmony the birds start up outside, there’s dozens of them suddenly rising as one, and the racket makes Frazer’s teeth ache right through to their roots. DI Strachan looks like she’s pained by it, even clasps her hands over her ears at first. A grimace on her face like none he’s seen her make before.

  ‘I think there’s something rotten been trying to get up out of the ground in this village,’ she says. ‘But I’m not letting it take me over.’

  Frazer stares at her, and DC Mackie does the same. The quiet that settles across the office is like a knowledge that’s going to be spoken for the first time.

  ‘The graves are pushing their way up, right out of the ground. In the old churchyard. Coffins rising up after hundreds of years buried. You’ve seen it.’

  ‘It’s the soil, Georgie.’ DC Mackie’s voice is lower than usual, barely more than a whisper as a shudder passes through the room.

  ‘It could be a fault line in the ground,’ PC Hunter says. ‘Or a sinkhole maybe?’

  ‘It’s not a sinkhole, Si. And it’s not finished yet.’

  ‘You’re as bad as Uncle Walt.’ And all of a sudden DC Mackie is crying and she’s leaning down, her head pressing tight into her knees.

  ‘He’s not come home, has he?’ says the DI.

  ‘I don’t think he’s planning on coming home.’ DC Mackie’s voice is muffled. ‘He’s gone and the bees are gone and I just… I just…’

  There’s a bike outside. No wonder the birds scattered; someone just cycled up to the station, left their bike leaning against the low wall in the car park.

  ‘What do you want?’

  At first Frazer thinks the DI is glaring at him, but she’s not, she’s looking behind him, so he turns and sees Fergus – there’d been no sign of him after the search.