by Gwyn GB
After the last time he’d been here, he’d tried hypnotism to see if it could retrieve his buried memories. The hypnotist wasn’t even able to get started. Harrison’s mind had become so self-controlled it wouldn’t let him in. Wouldn’t let anything else out either. His mind was locked. Whatever he did, he seemed to get no closer to his mother and the answers he sought.
He looked around him again. Perhaps it wasn’t the graves but the place. Maybe even before the cemetery was built, it had been an isolated spot where pagan rituals took place. Or perhaps it was one of the places where witches were hanged or executed. Nunhead was surprisingly high up, looking over central London and the Thames; it would have once been far outside the city walls, far enough away for unsavoury things to have taken place. Harrison used his phone again to mark the spot with his GPS. He’d get Ryan to see what he could find.
He turned his attention to what was around the headstones. One tree totally dominated the area, and it was surrounded by younger trees and bushes. They wouldn’t have been there when he’d been a child, but the tree definitely would have been. It was a huge oak with giant sloping arms that reached to the ground. Harrison wasn’t an expert on trees, but he knew they could live up to a thousand years. He peered through the branches of the younger, protective barrier that had grown up around it. The trunk of this oak was ancient, with gnarled crevices and craters in the calloused bark. It was the width of a car, firmly planted, a home to millions of flora, fauna, and insect life. An entire forest microcosm. It had to be at least five hundred years old, just from what he knew about other trees he’d seen like it. That was Henry the VIII’s time. Definitely long before they built the cemetery around it. The huge branches of the oak, dark and skeletal, protected an empty clearing beneath them. Its towering presence prevented anything else from growing in its shadow. Flashes jumped into his head. Him as a small boy standing on the edge of that small clearing.
Claustrophobic under the canopy.
The roughness of the bark on his hand.
Flames.
Moonlight on metal.
What did it all mean?
Harrison stepped back for a moment. His heart was racing. He wanted to dive in there and face up to it, but there was no way he’d get beyond that undergrowth without some cutting tool. It was too dense. He’d have to come back, but not yet. This secret had waited for him a long time. Alex Fuller needed him now. He’d already wasted enough time.
Harrison started walking back towards the gate. The sky had turned from pale-blue and white to a pewter grey that dimmed the light of the day and threatened rain. It gave the walkers a greater urgency, and people hurried past him, heading for their destinations before the skies opened.
He was just within sight of the gates when he came alongside an elderly woman sitting on a bench.
‘We’ve met before, haven’t we?’ she asked him.
Harrison nearly missed what she’d said, but he stopped and looked at her. She was dressed in a black overcoat with a green woolly hat, and a wrinkled, haggard face peered from underneath. It wasn’t a warm face. The eyes were hard, the bone structure severe. There was something about her, but he couldn’t place it, so he tried to judge whether she suffered from dementia or was just mistaken.
‘I don’t think so,’ he replied politely and went to move on.
‘Oh, I know we have. A long time ago. Sit with me a moment, would you? I think I can help you.’
He hesitated, not wanting to waste time and also not wanting to engage in conversation with a woman it might be difficult to extricate himself from, but something made him stop and walk over to the bench to sit down. Perhaps he did know her, or maybe a hidden memory was trying to surface.
‘I don’t sleep too well now. My hips ache no matter how soft the mattress,’ she said, not looking at him but staring away into the distance. ‘Anyways, I looked out my window last night and saw them, a bunch of teenagers it was, with cans of spray paint. They were heading into the cemetery. That what you wanted to know?’ She turned to him, watching his face. Her eyes seemed to bore into his skin.
Harrison couldn’t make her out. Did she just want to chat or was there something more?
He looked at her, trying to glean further clues from her appearance. Her face was a mask, her eyes shutters on her soul. He didn’t like what he saw, and his gut instinct told him to leave.
‘Thank you.’ He waited a few beats then stood to go, eager to get away from her. She made him uneasy. Was it her voice? Did he recognise it from somewhere?
‘You don’t talk much, do you?’ the old woman continued.
‘I prefer to listen,’ he said with hesitation.
‘Still miss your mum, do you?’
Harrison had been contemplating his escape route. He could just see the entrance gate from where they were, but he spun round to look at her.
‘What?’
‘I said not my idea of fun… what them kids did.’
He was sure that wasn’t what she’d said. Alarm bells sounded inside him, but he couldn’t work out why.
‘I need to get back to work,’ Harrison said, starting to back away.
‘Goodbye, then. I’ll see you again sometime soon, I hope.’ She watched him, smiling as though she’d just made a joke and it was on him.
When he looked up, the cemetery entrance was no longer clear. A black-cloaked figure stood in the middle, staring at him. For a few moments, Harrison thought he was seeing things. He was shocked. After all this time. The years of searching. This time there could be no confusion. He knew exactly where he’d seen the figure before.
The man saw him watching and spun round quickly to leave. Harrison wasn’t going to let him escape. Not this time. His feet skidded on the gravel as he launched into a sprint.
The man ran too; he was surprisingly fast. Light on his feet. And he had a good head start.
Harrison flew through the gates and onto the street outside. Left. Right. He just caught sight as the man disappeared round a corner towards a block of flats.
Harrison’s stomach had lurched so hard when he’d seen him that for a moment he’d worried he wouldn’t be able to breathe. Wouldn’t be able to run.
He belted along the road. If the man reached cover, it would be easier for him to hide.
A car came round the corner. Harrison swerved out the way—just in time, but he’d nearly tripped up the kerb.
Every molecule in his body screamed. Every fibre of his being was focussed on one thing: catching this man.
Harrison pulled himself to a stop underneath the flats. It was a concrete patio area. No people in sight. He spun round to the sound of a door as it slammed shut. The glimpse of a black cloak.
He was off.
He yanked the door open. A young woman with a pushchair was about to come through. She looked startled. He hurtled through the door so fast he had to grab hold of the frame to stop himself from falling onto the pushchair. He garbled an apology but didn’t stop. More valuable seconds lost.
The lift had a sign stuck to it: out of order. There was nowhere else the man could have gone except up. But which floor? He launched himself up the stairs. Two steps at a time. One flight. Two flights. He stopped and listened. Laboured breathing and footsteps above him.
The sound of a door closing. Then again. Another door?
He ran up. His chest pounded. What flight was he on?
The sound of his breathing rushed from his lungs to his mouth and roared in his ears.
Through the window in the door on the next floor, he saw an elderly man bent double. He was leaning on a stick, struggling with some shopping bags. Shuffling along the corridor with tiny steps.
There had been two doors closing. Had the cloaked figure gone to the top? Was there another way out?
Fourth floor. Nothing to be seen.
Fifth and he’d reached the top.
Where was he? He could see no sign of the black-cloaked figure.
Harrison ran out onto the walkway
which covered the length of the block of flats. Could the man have gone into one of the flats here? He started trying the doors out of desperation, but they were all locked.
Someone opened their flat door.
‘Oi, what you doin? What you want?’ a gruff bald-headed man shouted at him. Harrison pushed past without a word and ran back the other way. This was ridiculous; the man couldn’t just disappear. He had to have gone into a flat.
He peered over the balcony, trying to scan the floors below. Down to the ground.
The only people he saw were the young woman with the pushchair and the old lady from the graveyard at the bus stop in front of the flats.
The lift machinery started behind him. The sound of whirring and clunking as it screeched and whined its way down the shaft.
Then it stopped.
Harrison bent over. He felt sick. He’d lost him.
The realisation hit. The lift was supposed to be out of order.
He peered over the balcony again. Down below him the entrance door opened and an old man with shopping bags walked out. It was the old man he’d seen in the corridor below, only this time he wasn’t shuffling—he was striding. Striding towards the bus stop and the old woman who stood smiling at him.
The penny dropped.
Harrison thumped the railing and headed back to the stairs. He had to get to them before the bus arrived.
He slipped and flew down the stairs. Not worrying about the burning sensation on his hands from the rail, or when he’d rammed his shoulder into the wall, which sent the breath bursting from his chest.
In the entrance lobby, he stole a glance at the lift door. The sign had gone. Then he was outside.
He ran towards the bus, but it was already pulling away. That would not stop him. This was the first chance in fifteen years that he’d got anywhere near close to him. He had to catch that bus.
For once Harrison was grateful for the London traffic.
He raced down the road, trying to dodge pedestrians. The bus was ahead of him, turning the corner. If he could make up some ground, he’d catch-up with it at the next stop.
He ran, his breathing laboured with exertion. He would do it.
Once he rounded the corner, he could see the bus. It had stopped at a traffic light and was in a queue, wedged in between a black cab and a delivery van. He was going to catch them.
Adrenaline coursed through him; he ran into the road. The pavement, too cluttered with people, slowed him down. A driver beeped at him. A cyclist yelled something, but he didn’t hear or care.
The bus pulled away again, starting to get some speed up. It indicated; it was pulling into a stop.
The last couple of hundred metres.
Harrison watched as no one got off, but a few people were gathered around the bus entrance waiting to board. The last person had just disappeared inside when he caught up with it and launched himself onto the bus, to the surprise of the driver and some passengers at the front. As Harrison paid, he scanned the faces on the lower deck. The young woman with the pushchair was there, but she didn’t even blink at him. There was a middle-aged woman reading a book. A young mum with two toddlers who were whining and complaining, and a guy who looked like he was on his way back from working as a security guard. Where was the older couple? They must have gone upstairs.
He was oblivious to the driver’s anxiety at the large, red-faced man in front of him, wired with laboured breathing and eyes darting everywhere. Harrison was hot and tired, but he wasn’t going to let them get away.
With one final double-check around the ground floor, he bounded up the steps to the top deck.
Empty, except for four teenage girls sat giggling at a phone. They barely acknowledged his presence.
Harrison collapsed onto one of the seats. They’d tricked him. How could he have been so stupid? The sweat beaded on his forehead and his back felt wet with the exertion. Yet again, they’d got away, but why show themselves at all?
He’d been searching for them for years. Now it seemed they’d found him.
16
The walk back to Harrison’s motorbike helped him calm down, but he had to stop for a few minutes and gather his thoughts. He was so bloody angry with himself. He’d lost his concentration and self-control. Everything he had trained himself to do had gone in a moment of pure fight-and-flight mode. He was ashamed of himself.
Had the whole thing been a setup? The graffiti to lure him out? Her in the graveyard, him at the gates to draw Harrison away so they could both escape? They must have planned the whole thing. The lift notice, the stick and bags for the old man’s disguise. He should have seen it was him. Should have looked properly and not assumed, but the chase had blinded him. The question was, why did they go to all this trouble? The only reason he could see was to taunt him. To show him he wasn’t as in control as he thought he was. Well, it had worked. They’d pressed the right buttons, and he’d lost it. He’d let his mother down again.
When Harrison returned to New Scotland Yard, he put his hand in his pocket to pull out his ID to get into the building. Instead, his hand found something else. It was the photograph Sally Fuller had given him yesterday. Harrison looked at the faces captured in the shot. Alex, his sister, and their parents. Smiling. Happy times when they couldn’t even contemplate the nightmare they were going through right now. He wouldn’t let his own personal crusade get in the way of saving their son’s life. His had been ruined many years ago by two evil people. He couldn’t let them ruin his chances of helping Alex now.
By the time he’d got down to his basement bolthole, he had calmed down. This had been a huge lesson for him and one he’d learn from. They wouldn’t make a fool of him again.
As he approached his office, he didn’t need to see her to know that Dr Tanya Jones had come to pay a visit. Her perfume left a trail of scent down the corridor. She seemed to have more on than usual. Perhaps she’d had to work a particularly nasty-smelling scene. He almost turned round to walk the opposite way, but while his mind was wary, his body kept walking. He wanted to see her. Perhaps she’d brighten his day.
As he entered, she was looking at the Ouija board, her pretty face frowning at the bone planchette she held in her hand. He allowed himself to watch her for just a moment.
‘That’s how I solve all my cases,’ he said.
Tanya jumped at his voice and nearly dropped the planchette onto the Ouija board. She quickly regained her composure, but he knew she wasn’t sure if he was joking or not.
‘If you believe the rumours…’ he added.
She smiled, relief on her face, and he couldn’t help smile back with his lips and eyes.
‘That Ouija board was used by Maggie Osmond who, over the course of her spiritual career, conned her clients out of several hundred thousand pounds,’ Harrison said. ‘One of them committed suicide as a result.’
He watched as Tanya raised her eyebrows.
‘She got six years, but apparently she’d not learnt her lesson and tried to conduct a séance at Holloway Prison. One of the inmates believed herself to be possessed by a demon afterwards. They found Mrs Osmond strangled in the showers a year into her sentence.’
As Tanya put the planchette pointer gently back on the board, she wondered how many hands had held it, their hearts jumping into their mouths as it seemingly moved across the board, spelling out messages from the spirits. Harrison had startled her, but she was glad he’d turned up. When she’d arrived to find him not in, disappointment had been an understatement.
‘I was just on my way back from a location visit and thought I’d let you know I’ll be emailing you a report on the Bible scriptures in the next couple of hours. We’re almost done.’
‘Good,’ Harrison replied. Then, ‘Thanks,’ as an afterthought.
Tanya nodded, making an effort to look around at the other artefacts and not at him. It wasn’t easy.
‘What’s this?’ She pointed to a strange creature that looked like a deformed miniature human. ‘Plea
se don’t tell me it’s real?’
‘Well, I guess that depends what you mean by “real”’. Harrison took a couple of steps closer to her and now stood next to her in front of the shelf. That was a mistake. He felt the warmth of her body radiate next to him, and when she turned to speak, her breath was on his neck. It took him a few moments to stop imagining just turning round to her and kissing those pink lips of hers.
‘I mean it wasn’t an actual living thing, was it? It’s grotesque.’
Harrison regained his composure by focussing. ‘The story goes that in Cornwall, a family walking on the beach following a storm one day in the late seventeenth century, came across this poor washed-up creature, the Welaman. It was still half alive, and they tried to help it. It told them it had special powers to grant wealth and fertility to those who touched it.’
Tanya raised her eyebrows and reached out gingerly to place her hand on the object.
Harrison smiled but reluctantly moved a step back from her. It seemed as though his presence had made her more nervous. He could feel her discomfort. ‘The legend is that the Welaman brought gold to the men and babies to the ladies.’
‘Oh!’ Tanya exclaimed and withdrew her hand as though it had been burnt. ‘I’m not quite up for that yet.’
She looked at Harrison and saw him smiling broadly. She smiled just as broadly back, but wished he hadn’t stepped away from her. Tanya had enjoyed his closeness. It was the most she’d ever seen him smile, and it was enough to make her knees go weak and her stomach do a flip. She’d touch the Welaman every day if she could see him smile like that at her. She stopped herself short of imagining having his babies too.
‘But the Welaman also came with a warning. It had been washed up and injured in a storm, and every time a storm returned to the coast, his own kind would come looking for him. They didn’t like humans. They’d kill any living creature found on the beach as they searched for their friend. He told the family that because they’d been kind to him, and he wanted them to be safe.’
