When the Dead Come Calling

by Helen Sedgwick

  And look, there’s a boat, a big ship, the cruise liner with round windows winking yellow lights shining out into the dark. The coast smells of seaweed that’s more rotten than fresh but I breathe it in anyway, since it’s to be the last time. I hand over some money. The man nods. I walk on board. Easy as mince and potato.

  Such a big cruise ship, with all these tourists stopping off to see my little patch of coast. Strange thing that they should want to see it, but who am I to question their motives? It should be simple enough for me to get lost among all these faces. Already I’m blending in, see, walking more slowly, turning my own face into a smile. They even have showers on this boat. I’ll take a shower, soon as we leave the harbour. And then we’ll sail on round the coast, round the country, through the night, and on to France and on to Spain. Maybe I’ll get off the boat in Spain. I like the idea of that. Think of all the sunshine. I’ve never been to Spain before but I have a good picture of it in my mind, with big blue sky and a bright golden sun and no faces in it at all. There can’t be anything too bad going to happen to me, in that kind of sunshine.

  EYES OPEN

  Georgie drives slowly away from Burrowhead, Fergus in the passenger seat beside her. She flicks on her full beams and watches the tiny moths fluttering in and out of her path. Trish and Walt are back home, where they belong, and she’s glad of it. But now Georgie’s got to go home, with Fergus, and for the first time in her life she doesn’t think she wants to. She pulls into the drive and turns the lights off and sits there for a minute, in the darkness.

  ‘Are you going to come in?’ Fergus says, eventually.

  It’s like neither of them is able to move.

  ‘You know, I do understand,’ he says. ‘I’d be frustrated with me, too. I’d be—’

  ‘I’m not frustrated.’

  ‘Angry, then. I know this has been a long time coming.’

  A part of her wants to deny it, but she can’t.

  ‘I’m sorry I wasted all that money on my master’s a few years back.’

  ‘It wasn’t wasted—’

  ‘Well, what use was it? All I got was six years of unemployment.’ He tries to laugh, then stops. His face looks serious, his eyes deeply sad. ‘This is your house, Georgie. I’ll move out.’

  ‘That’s … oh, Fergus. Come on. Let’s go inside and talk.’

  They walk together to the door, into their home and through to the living room, where he’s been laying out newsletters and posters and what looks like home-made bunting covered with photos of the standing stone alternating with triangles of bright glittering fabric. It’s the spring fair tomorrow. She’d forgotten. She doesn’t know how anyone could have remembered, but this is the village spring fair and Burrowhead doesn’t cancel its village fair for anything. She feels nauseous.

  ‘What do you think?’ he says.

  ‘It’s…’

  ‘Pami helped me.’

  ‘Pamali?’

  ‘She had lots of spare fabrics, so she brought them round, and I think it was good for her to have the company. She’s going to join the archaeological society. She’s my first member.’

  ‘Pami…?’

  Georgie kneels down on the floor and holds a triangle of silver-threaded purple satin in her hand.

  ‘She said she wanted to come tomorrow,’ Fergus says, quieter now. ‘Forget about…’

  Georgie stares at him.

  ‘I thought we could all go together. I mean, if you want, if you feel up to it… I love you, you see.’

  But Georgie is pulling the bunting through her hands and on the photo she’s holding there is a close-up of the side of an old iron pot, its sides carved with figures of men wearing long cloaks and awful, threatening pointed hoods.

  ‘What is this?’ she says, suddenly throwing it away from herself.

  ‘That’s the cauldron they found during the motte excavations. I told you there were some amazing artefacts…’

  ‘But the carvings, those hoods.’

  ‘I know, love. They reminded me of the Spanish Inquisition.’

  ‘The Klan,’ Georgie frowns.

  ‘But it’s older than that. It’s Iron Age, see. Celtic. They’d have worn hoods and cloaks like that for all their ceremonies, maybe. Rites of passage and the harvest, I guess and… They’re basically our ancestors. The ancestors of the village, I mean, from thousands of years—’

  Her phone starts ringing. It’s Cal.

  ‘Bit of good news for you, Georgie,’ he says cheerfully. ‘We compared Mrs Helmsteading’s DNA sample with the blood trace we found on the knife. It was hers, Georgie. She was the one who killed Bobby. You’ve got a good case after all. HQ will have to be pleased. Stay of the executioner and all that. Result, eh?’

  Result. Station might survive another year. She might get some sleep. Case closed. But not. Very much not.

  She ends the call while Cal’s still talking. They can charge Mrs Helmsteading with Bobby’s murder, her confession backed up by forensics, the motive revenge for what Bobby did to Dawn and Alexis. They can charge Lee and Andy for attacking Pamali, the motive racism, Bobby the ringleader now deceased. So why does she feel like this has only just started? Why does she see it every time she closes her eyes – the circle of bodies tightening around her, eyes glaring out of slashed fabric, a rope held out to her neck and the graves in the old church pushing their last few inches out of the ground. She drops the phone. Fergus is trying to talk to her now, asking her what’s wrong, saying she can tell him, but she needs to think—

  ‘I know,’ he’s saying, ‘I know you can’t give me details, but if you want to talk…’

  She sits back on her heels. There is bunting on her living-room floor, figures in masks and hoods, but her anger’s gone and that’s good because there’s something she’s trying to work out.

  ‘Georgie,’ he’s calling to her. ‘Georgie?’

  ‘Be quiet!’ she shouts, and there’s shock on his face, total unguarded shock, but she needs quiet—

  ‘I’ll try harder to find a job somewhere,’ he’s saying. ‘Maybe when they open up that new Tesco outside Crackenbridge…’

  The hate in those notes, the shattered look on Pamali’s face, Kevin Taylor’s throwaway bigotry, Georgie’s own brother lying dead on the street with blood spilling out of his neck.

  ‘I want to make things better, Georgie.’ He puts a hand gently on her face, and she looks at him at last.

  ‘There’s danger here,’ she says. ‘I know it. I can sense it.’

  ‘Surely no one’s going to hurt us,’ Fergus says.

  ‘You mean you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You mean no one’s going to hurt you. They could very well be planning to hurt me.’

  Fergus looks horrified. Worse, he looks shocked.

  ‘Surely not…’ he stammers. ‘They … they’re our…’

  But it wasn’t just Bobby who attacked Dawn when she was a little girl. He was the one holding the knife, but there were others. A circle surrounding her. People from the village, probably people she knew.

  ‘Come with me tomorrow, love. All our friends are going to be there…’

  Like the story of Mary and the minister, passed down from parents to children over generations: the circle of villagers surrounding them.

  ‘The forecast says the sun’s going to be out and everything,’ Fergus is saying, with his big hopeful eyes.

  Of course Andy and Lee are not the only ones reading that racist hate on the internet, passing it on. Then Walt’s words, about how they used to protect the village, to take care of their own, but what did he mean? Protect it from whom? And Ricky Barr, there’s something spiteful about Ricky Barr.

  ‘It’s going to be beautiful.’

  And at last Georgie can see them, on her own terms, in their long robes and hoods. They’re not just the thugs attacking Dawn, they’re not hidden in the dark and they’re not her own memories either. They are people from the village. They are old and young, women
and men; they are surrounding her but she is not afraid. She is calm. She is thinking. She is watching them now, and their masks are slipping.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I am deeply grateful to my outstanding editor, Jenny Parrott, who believed in my writing at a time when I truly needed it. Jenny, your insight and skill turned my wild idea into a meaningful reality. Thank you!

  My agent, Cathryn Summerhayes, is such an inspiration that words of gratitude don’t seem to be enough. Cath, you are extraordinary. I am so lucky to have you both as my agent and as my friend.

  To the team at Oneworld and Point Blank: you are all amazing. Sarah Terry, my wonderful copyeditor, Paul Nash, Margot Weale, Jennifer Jahn, Tom Sanderson, Ben Summers, Aimee Oliver-Powell, Mark Rusher, Anna Murphy, Thanhmai Bui-Van, Bala at Geethik Technologies, and everyone who has been involved from brainstorming titles to bookselling, thank you.

  To everyone at Curtis Brown, with a special shout out to Alice Lutyens, Irene Magrelli and Luke Speed: you are a shining light among literary agencies.

  I completed the first draft of this book at beautiful Moniack Mhor. How lucky we are in Scotland to have such a gorgeous creative writing centre. Scottish Book Trust also provides the most exceptional support for writers, and I will be forever grateful.

  To my friends and family who have provided feedback, encouragement and invaluable support in all sorts of ways – Viccy Adams, Jane Alexander, Margaret Callaghan, Merryn Glover, Mandy Haggith, Kirsty Logan, Aoife Lyall, Mairi and Seamus MacPherson, Katy McAulay, Laura Morgan, Philip Paris, Ally Sedgwick, Kate Tough, Liz Treacher, everyone at Highland LIT, my mum and dad – love and thanks to you all.

  This book is dedicated to my daughter, Hazel, who showed remarkable patience and understanding (for a one-year-old) while I edited it.

  Michael, none of this would have been possible without you. My love, always.

  A Point Blank Book

  First published in Great Britain, the Republic of Ireland and Australia by Point Blank, an imprint of Oneworld Publications, 2020

  This ebook published 2020

  Copyright © Helen Sedgwick 2020

  The moral right of Helen Sedgwick to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved

  Copyright under the Berne Convention

  A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-78607-569-7 (hardback)

  ISBN 978-1-78607-570-3 (ebook)

  Typeset by Geethik Technologies

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Oneworld Publications

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  London WC1B 3SR

  England