by S J Bolton
‘And do you know how it started?’ asked Evi.
‘Largely guesswork,’ replied Blake, ‘because the damage in the area was so extensive. But we understand cooking oils were kept around the cooker, never a good idea. We suspect a pan was left with a gas flame underneath. It happens a lot with omelette pans. People make an omelette, concentrate on tipping it on to a plate without breaking it and they put the pan down, forgetting they’ve not turned the gas off. The pan gets hotter and hotter until the oil left in it catches light. If a plastic bottle of olive oil was close by, the plastic would melt and the oil run out. You can see how…’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Evi, making a mental note to move the bottles of cooking oil she kept close to her own hob.
‘In this case, though, the real problem was the Calor gas,’ said Earnshaw. ‘The cottage wasn’t connected up to the mains gas supply, so the family used a cooker that was powered by Calor gas. It’s not uncommon in rural areas, but in this case, the family had three spare canisters stored in a small room just to one side of the cooker. Once they caught fire…’
‘I see,’ said Evi, wondering if she really had the nerve to ask her next question. ‘I know this is a difficult question and please excuse me for asking it, but did you ever consider the possibility of arson?’
Earnshaw leaned back in his chair. Blake was frowning at her.
‘We always have to consider arson,’ said Earnshaw after a while.
‘But on this occasion, there was nothing to cause us any undue concern. The fire had an easily identifiable point of origin.’
‘One that could be readily explained,’ chipped in Blake.
‘Had it started in a wastepaper bin in a bedroom,’ said Earnshaw, ‘or if we’d found a trail of petrol around the house, it would have been a different matter.’
‘The house was rented, so there was no possibility of insurance fraud,’ said Blake.
‘And the couple lost their child,’ said Earnshaw, as though Evi should have thought of that herself. The arson-to-disguise-accidental-death theory wasn’t going anywhere. Evi began to think she might be outstaying her welcome.
‘I do understand that,’ she said. ‘I know I’m asking insensitive questions. I’m sorry I can’t explain why.’
‘Hiding evidence of arson really isn’t that simple,’ said Blake. ‘Arsonists often use matches and then just throw them away, thinking the fire will destroy them.’
‘And it doesn’t?’
Blake shook his head. ‘Match heads contain something called diatoms,’ he said. ‘Single-celled organisms containing a very tough compound called silica. Silica survives fires. Sometimes we can even identify the brand of match used.’
‘I see,’ said Evi. ‘I’ve got one last question, if I may, then I’ll leave you in peace. How soon after the fire was extinguished did you realize that the child’s body had been completely destroyed?’
The two men looked at each other. Blake’s frown had deepened.
‘The fire burned for several hours, I understand,’ Evi went on. ‘Even after it was extinguished, you would have had to be sure the structure was safe.’
‘The upper floor collapsed,’ said Blake.
‘Yes, exactly,’ said Evi. ‘So you would have had to search through the wreckage, it must have taken quite some time, before you were sure.’ And all that time, Gillian had been traipsing over the moors, willing herself to keep believing. ‘Before you were sure the fire had obliterated the child’s body.’
‘Dr Oliver, it’s very rare for bodies to be completely destroyed in fire. Very rare indeed,’ said Earnshaw.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t quite…’
‘People who imagine otherwise don’t know their chemistry,’ said Blake. ‘When bodies are cremated, they’re exposed to temperatures of around 1,500° Fahrenheit for at least a couple of hours. Even then, you’ll still find human remains among the ashes. Most structural fires, particularly in a residential house, don’t burn hot enough or long enough to destroy a body. The house itself just doesn’t provide enough fuel.’
‘In this case, of course, the fire did get very hot because of the Calor gas acting as a fuel supply,’ said Earnshaw.
‘And is that why the little girl’s remains…’
‘We found her the next day,’ said Blake. ‘Very little left, of course, but even so… What made you think her remains weren’t found?’
Evi’s hands had flown to her mouth. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she managed. ‘I’ve been completely misinformed.’
‘What we found was very similar to what we’d expect after a cremation,’ said Blake. ‘Ashes and bone fragments. They were identified as human. There wasn’t really any doubt that we’d found the child.’
‘And what happened to the remains?’
‘They were given to the family,’ said Earnshaw. ‘To the mother, from what I can remember.’
36
21 October
‘WHY DO YOU THINK YOUR PARENTS WANTED YOU TO see me, Tom?’ asked the doctor with sleek dark hair and thick black eyelashes. Evi, he’d been told to call her. She looked like one of his sister’s Russian dolls, with her pale, heart-shaped face and big blue eyes. She was even wearing the same colours as Millie’s dolls: a red blouse with a violet scarf.
Tom shrugged. Evi seemed nice, that was the worst thing, nice in a way that made him want to trust her. Trust her was something he really couldn’t do.
‘Has something been worrying you?’ she was asking him now. ‘Is anything making you anxious in any way?’
Tom shook his head.
Evi smiled at him. He waited for her to ask him another question. She didn’t, just kept looking and smiling at him. Behind her head, a large window showed a sky so dark it was almost black in places. Any minute now it was going to tip it down.
‘How are you getting on at your new school?’ she asked.
‘OK.’
‘Can you tell me the names of some of your new friends?’
She’d tricked him, she’d asked him the sort of question he couldn’t answer with a yes, no, OK or a shrug. Friends were OK, though, he could talk about friends. He could talk about Josh Cooper, he was OK.
‘Are any boys at school not your friends?’ she asked, when they’d talked about boys in Tom’s class for a few minutes.
‘Jake Knowles,’ Tom answered, without hesitation. Jake Knowles, his arch enemy, who had somehow found out that Tom was seeing a special doctor and had made his life extra miserable about it for days now. According to Jake, Tom was destined for the madhouse, where they tied you up and kept you in a padded cell and sent electric shocks through your brain. The special doctor would see he was nuts and send him away and he’d never see his mum and dad again. Worst of all, he wouldn’t be able to look after Millie. He wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on Joe.
‘Do you want to talk to me about what happened a week ago last Saturday?’ Evi was asking him now. ‘When something frightened you and you ran into the churchyard?’
‘It was a dream,’ said Tom. ‘Just a bad dream.’
37
M ILLIE HAD CLIMBED DOWN THE BACK STEPS INTO THE garden. She pushed herself upright and looked all around. When her eyes found the yew tree her little face lit up. She set off towards it.
‘Millie!’ Tom had appeared at the back door. ‘Millie, where are you going?’ He jumped down and crossed the garden to his sister in three strides, then bent to pick her up.
‘Millie shouldn’t be out on her own,’ he said, as she started to squirm and he carried her back to the door.
Millie looked back at the yew tree as she was carried indoors and the door was firmly closed behind the two children. She wasn’t allowed to be alone any more, not even for a minute.
38
23 October
‘SCHIZOPHRENIA IS QUITE RARE,’ SAID EVI. ‘ONLY AROUND 1 per cent of the population develop it, and it’s only in a very few of those cases that we see an onset of symptoms before the age of ten. Most importa
ntly, neither you nor your husband have any family history of the illness.’
It was Evi’s first meeting alone with Alice Fletcher, in the family’s large, colourful sitting room. The two boys, both of whom she’d already met individually, were at school, Millie upstairs napping. So far, it was proving to be an unusual meeting. From the outset, Alice had almost seemed determined to charm her son’s psychiatrist. She’d shown an interest in Evi personally, which patients, normally rather self-obsessed, rarely did. She’d tried to make her laugh, had even succeeded a couple of times. And yet it was so clearly a facade, and a fragile one at that. Alice’s hands had shaken too much, her laughter had seemed forced and before the meeting was twenty minutes old she’d broken down and confided her fear that Tom was suffering from COS, or child-onset schizophrenia.
‘But these voices…’ she was saying.
‘Hearing voices is just one symptom of schizophrenia,’ said Evi firmly. ‘There are quite a few others, none of which Tom appears to have.’
‘Like what?’ demanded Alice.
‘Well, for one thing, his emotional reactions seem quite normal. I’ve seen no evidence of what we call thought disorder. And other than his insistence on this little girl – who he still hasn’t mentioned to me, by the way – there’s no sign of any delusional behaviour.’
Alice Fletcher interested her, Evi decided. A long way from her own home, she, more than the rest of the family, might be expected to find it hard to settle in Heptonclough. The question was, how much of the children’s problems were the result of their picking up on the mother’s anxieties?
‘Even when schizophrenia is diagnosed in childhood,’ Evi continued quickly, ‘it’s nearly always preceded by other diagnoses.’ She started ticking them off on her fingers. ‘Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Bipolar Mood Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Do you know what any of these conditions-’
‘Yes,’ interrupted Alice. ‘And the OCD, the obsessive compulsive thing, that fits too. Tom goes round the house every night, checking and re-checking the locks on all the doors and windows. He has a list. He ticks things off one by one and he won’t go to bed until he’s gone through it. Sometimes he gets up in the night and starts running through the list again. What’s that all about?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ said Evi. ‘But I have noticed Tom’s anxiety about his little sister. Joe shares it too, incidentally, although he may just be picking up on Tom’s fears. Have they seen something on the news, do you know, something to make them especially anxious about her right now?’
Alice thought for a moment, then shook her head. ‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘They only watch children’s television. Several times I’ve found him asleep on Millie’s bedroom floor.’
Evi glanced down at her notes. ‘Just to come back to this little girl, for a while,’ she said. ‘Because from what you’ve told me, most of what’s bothering Tom seems to centre around her. Is it possible that there is someone in town who just looks a bit odd, maybe behaves in a strange way? Have you thought about that?’
Alice nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘And I have asked a couple of people. Not many, I don’t want everyone to know what we’re going through, but I did have a quiet word with Jenny Pickup. And with her grandfather, Tobias. They’ve lived here all their lives. They’d never heard of anyone remotely fitting the description Tom gives.’
Alice paused for a moment.
‘Besides,’ she continued, ‘Tom talks about this little girl as though she’s barely human, the sort of thing we see in nightmares. This is a strange town, Evi, but harbouring monsters? How likely is that?’
39
27 October
HARRY WAS GETTING CLOSER TO THE TOWN. THE silhouettes of the great stone buildings were bigger every time he turned another bend in the road. Over his left shoulder a firework burst in the sky. He slowed the car a fraction more. He’d always loved fireworks. Maybe on 5 November he’d drive up the moor again, park the car and watch the fireworks exploding from a hundred different bonfire parties, stretching all the way across the Pennines.
The tarmac of the road gave way to cobbles and he turned the last corner that would bring him into town. Gold stars burst in the sky to his left and he was looking at them, not at the church, as he drew up and parked. He switched off the engine and got out of the car.
He’d been visiting one of his oldest parishioners. Mrs Cairns was in her nineties and almost bed-ridden. Afterwards, her daughter and husband had insisted he eat with them. By the time he left it was nearly nine o’clock and he still had to collect the church accounts from St Barnabas’s.
His feet had just made contact with the smooth stones of the church path when he knew something was wrong. He’d never considered himself a particularly sensitive man, but this feeling wasn’t one he could ignore. He knew he had to turn round and face the ruined church. And he really wasn’t sure he could bring himself to do it.
He had turned. He was looking. He just didn’t believe what he was seeing.
The ancient ruins of the abbey church were still there. The great arches still soared upwards, towards the purple sky. The tower, tall and forbidding, cast its shadow across the ground. Everything was just as it had been since the day he’d arrived. Pretty much as it had been for several hundred years. Only the figures were new. Sitting in window frames, leaning against pillars, sprawled along the top of arches, squeezed into every conceivable gap in the stonework were people. They sat, stood, leaned, sprawled, still as statues, mouths leering, eyes staring, surrounding him. Watching.
40
29 October
THE INTERMENT OF TWO-YEAR-OLD LUCY ELOISE PICKUP, only child of Michael Pickup and Jennifer Pickup née Renshaw, was the last entry in the burial register. Harry flicked back to the beginning. The first entry recorded the burial of Joshua Aspin in 1897. A church register had to be closed and taken to the diocesan record office when the oldest entry was 150 years ago. This one hadn’t got there yet. He was about to close the book when he spotted the Renshaw name again. Sophie Renshaw had died in 1908, aged eighteen. The words ‘An innocent Christian soul’ had been entered after the basic details. Harry glanced at his watch. It was eleven o’clock.
He turned the page and spotted names he recognized: Renshaw several times, Knowles and Grimes more than once. There it was again, halfway down the third page. Charles Perkins, aged fifteen, buried on 7 September 1932. An innocent Christian soul. He looked at his watch again. Three minutes past eleven. Harry leaned back in his chair and glanced round the room. No damp running socks drying on the radiator; the draining board was clear of used tea-bags.
A sudden noise from the nave made him jump and almost overbalance. He lowered his chair until all four legs were firmly on the ground. No one could be in the main body of the church. The building had been locked when he’d arrived, he’d opened just one door, to the vestry, and that was less than three yards away. No one could have entered without him seeing them. And yet what he’d just heard had been too loud to be the random creaking of old wood. It has sounded like… like scraping metal. He stood up, crossed the room and opened the door into the nave.
The church was empty, of course, he hadn’t expected anything else. It just didn’t feel empty. He stepped backwards towards the vestry, his eyes roaming the chancel, looking for movement. He was listening hard. It was almost a relief to close the door. He might as well admit it, he just didn’t like this church. There was something about it that made him feel uneasy.
Scared, you mean. This church scares you.
He looked at his watch again. It was ten minutes past eleven and his visitor was indisputably late. Could he wait outside? Not without looking a complete prat, he couldn’t. He picked up his mobile. No messages.
He jumped again as a knock sounded on the vestry door.
Evi pulled up behind Harry’s car. Using her stick as a lever she pushed herself out of her own. It was a long walk to the vestry door and using her chair was the only
really sensible option. Her stick would fold up and slot along the back, the briefcase would sit on her lap, she’d be able to push herself across those smooth old flagstones in a matter of seconds. Faster than many people could run. And Harry would see her in a wheelchair.
She locked the car and began the slow walk up the path. She walked for two minutes, keeping her eyes firmly on the ground, wary of uneven stones. When she stopped for a breather a shadow caught her eye. The sun was throwing the outline of the ruined abbey on to the grass in front of her. She could make out the tower and the three arches that ran up one side of the nave. She could see the arched gap where a stained-glass window had once shone. What was left of the window ledge was fifteen feet above the ground. Should someone really be sitting on it?
Using the stick for balance, she turned and looked at the ruin. What in the name of…
Life-sized figures, wearing real clothes but with heads fashioned from turnips, pumpkins, even straw, filled the ruined church. Evi counted quickly. There had to be twenty or more of the things. They sat in empty window frames, lay across the top of arches, leaned against pillars; one had even been tied by its waist to the tower. It dangled, high above the ground. Unable to resist, Evi took a step closer, then another, taking herself almost within the confines of the church. They were guys, exceptionally well made from what she could see. None of them slumped, lifeless and flattened, the way guys normally did. Their bodies were solid, their limbs in proportion. They appeared remarkably human; until you looked at their faces, on each of which was carved a wide, jagged grin.
