Burial of Ghosts

Chapter Twenty-four

Still holding the point of the knife against my skin, Nicky reaches out and switches off the light. Suddenly it’s dark. I feel my pupils widen in response, but there’s nothing to see. There are security shutters on the window. I’ve always been scared of the dark.

He puts an arm around my chest and pulls me down so I’m lying on the bed. He’s lying beside me, very close. I can smell him. One hand presses me against his body, the other holds the knife. He’s whispering into my ear. His lips brush the lobe and the touch makes me start. He’s telling me what he intends to do with me. I try to block out the words. As he speaks I feel his erection through the cotton of his sweat pants against my thigh. He unbuttons my shirt, fumbling in the dark, one-handed, then he moves the blade of the knife towards my breast, lightly scratching the skin, not drawing blood.

There are footsteps in the corridor outside.

‘Don’t move.’ The words are so quiet that even with his mouth against my ear I can hardly make them out.

The footsteps disappear.

We both know they’ll be back.

I was in Thomas’s bed. It was the same evening, still light. Marcus was standing in the doorway. I knew where I was immediately, and in the same instant I recognized that if I moved my head I’d throw up again. The next sensation was panic. What was I doing there? What had I done? I could remember stumbling into the house, holding on to Marcus. The shock of being here. Then nothing but the flashback. Carefully I slid one hand down my body. Still dressed. Relief. No sex. I’d only taken off my shoes before getting into bed. The nausea of the hangover came back and I shut my eyes.

‘Tea?’ Marcus’s voice seemed to come from miles away. From Norway. If not further. I could believe that the grey North Sea and several oil rigs were coming between us. I forced myself to look at him. He was smiling as if he’d been following my thoughts, as if my embarrassment amused him.

‘What’s the time?’

‘Nine. Nine-thirty.’

‘I should phone home.’ I’d told Jess I’d be back soon after lunch. She’d be wondering, worried. It wasn’t her place to worry, but she’d be sending Ray out on a search party if she didn’t hear soon. Even worse, she might phone Lisa.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Tea first.’ He had a mug in each hand. He sat on the end of the bed. I shuffled back so I was sitting upright and felt better, more in control.

Someone had done a seriously good job of cleaning the room. There was a new carpet, cheap grey nylon cord. The wall must have been painted. It was brighter than the others and there were no posters. All the same, it couldn’t have been much fun getting rid of the blood.

‘Sorry,’ Marcus said. ‘I didn’t know where else to put you. And earlier you were in no state to care.’ Again he seemed to have developed telepathic powers. ‘Once the police had finished, my dad paid for a cleaning company. This is my first day back here.’

‘Don’t you mind?’

‘Not a lot that I can do about it. My dad won’t pay for anything else. I suppose I thought the sooner I came home the better. The same principle as getting back onto a horse after you’ve fallen off.’

‘Isn’t your father worried about you staying here on your own?’

Marcus shrugged. ‘The police think Thomas was killed by druggies looking for something to steal. He must have disturbed them. They’re not likely to come back.’ He paused and added, ‘My father’s a businessman. He wouldn’t find it easy to sell the house while people remember the murder. So I’m stuck here. For a while at least.’

But I wasn’t really listening to that. I was thinking the disturbed burglar theory was impossible. There’d been music playing, loud enough to hear from the street. Even someone out of his head would have realized the house wasn’t empty. And then I thought Farrier wasn’t that dumb. Either a different officer with the deductive reasoning of a gnat had been talking to Marcus, or the police were spinning him a line for their own purposes. I felt suddenly uncomfortable, vulnerable.

‘Where were you that day?’ It came out spiky and accusing. Not sensible in the circumstances.

‘At the university.’ He didn’t seem offended by the question. ‘A lecture, then a tutorial.’ He smiled. ‘There were lots of witnesses.’

‘I didn’t mean…’ But then I broke off. Of course I had meant. I’d needed to check that it was impossible for Marcus to have killed Thomas. I still only had his word for it, but I felt too ill to keep up being scared.

‘The police said Thomas wasn’t in work the day he died because he had flu. Was that true?’

‘I don’t know about flu, but he wasn’t well. Some sort of virus. He was asleep when I went out that morning.’

Perhaps that was why he didn’t answer the door when I first arrived. Later he’d woken and put on his music. Had he still been in bed when the murderer came? No, because he’d been wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Had he got up to let the killer in?

Marcus left me to wash my face and hands and then I phoned Jess. I told her not to worry. I’d had a couple of drinks, so I was going to stay the night with a mate. At that point I still hoped to get home, but it was better not to promise. She’d be fidgety all night and she’d wait up. I wasn’t in any fit state to drive. I wasn’t sure I could face public transport and I wasn’t going to cough up for a taxi all the way back.

Marcus was in the kitchen, beating eggs in a glass bowl with a fork.

‘Scrambled eggs OK?’

I nodded, surprised that I felt so hungry.

The kitchen was at the back of the house, small but well equipped and tidy for a student place. I remembered the chaos of boots and shoes I’d seen in the hall on my first visit, the carpet thick with dust, and thought perhaps the cleaning company had been let loose in here too. Or perhaps Marcus didn’t mind muck but he was naturally orderly in the kitchen. I’ve known men like that. It occurred to me, watching him standing there, still dressed in the suit trousers and white shirt from the funeral, that this was the son Kay Laing would have liked. I wondered if she’d known Marcus when he was a child. Dan had described them as school friends.

‘How did you know Thomas?’ I was leaning against the door frame. If I’d gone into the kitchen I’d have been in the way.

He glanced up. He had that clean, scrubbed, wholesome look of well-educated English boys. No zits. Short hair with a bit of curl in it. A skin the colour of pale toast, pink at the back of the neck where the sun had caught it.

‘We were at infants’ school together. The two terrors of the class.’

Like Archie Mariner and Harry Pool, I thought. Still friends sixty years on, though one had made a fortune and the other struggled to live on a pension.

‘When I was eleven my father sent me to King’s. You know, the private place in Tynemouth?’

I nodded.

‘We’d moved up the coast by then anyway, and Thomas and I had already lost touch. We met up again later. School’s less important as you get older. We bumped into each other at parties. Whitley on a Friday night. Everyone you’ve ever met seems to be there when you’re sixteen.’

‘And was Thomas still a terror?’

‘Oh, not so very much. No more than anyone else. The only difference was that he didn’t mind being caught.’

‘Do you know his stepfather?’

He gave himself a chance to think about that, buying time by bending to lift a pan from a low cupboard. ‘I’ve seen him around.’

‘At the Countryside Consortium?’

‘He’s not very active,’ Marcus said. ‘There are lots of supporters.’

It wasn’t much of an answer but I let it go. He had his back to me now because the eggs were cooking and he was standing over them with a wooden spoon, teasing them away from the edge of the pan as they began to stick.

‘How did you get involved?’

‘Through my father. My parents separated when I was six. I stayed with my dad. Later he moved in with another woman. She has land up the coast. She doesn’t farm it herself but she keeps a couple of horses there and she held on to the house. I suppose she’s the enthusiast. He deals in property, a glorified estate agent really, but he considers himself a cut above the rest. He wouldn’t normally touch a place like this with a bargepole, but he could see it would do for me. His interest is in big houses, country hotels. When the landed gentry want to flog off part of the estate, they go to him. I’m not sure how committed he is to the cause. He doesn’t hunt, for example. My stepmother’s horses terrify him. I think he saw joining up as a shrewd business move, a way of keeping in with the right people, networking.’

‘And you?’

He didn’t answer for a while. He was buttering toast. Then he concentrated on tipping out the eggs. Even from where I stood, I could tell they were perfectly cooked, golden and creamy, the curd just firm. He handed me a plate and cutlery and followed me through to the living room. We sat on easy chairs each side of the mantelpiece, the plates perched on our knees. I wondered if he and Thomas had sat like this to eat.

‘For me it was just a job,’ he said. ‘I wanted a year doing something practical. My degree’s in business administration. My father spoke to someone, fixed it up. He’s good at that. And it was useful experience, a year in an office, pretty well running it, in charge of fund-raising at the end.’

‘And what was it for Thomas?’ I asked.

‘Ah,’ he replied. ‘For Thomas it was a crusade.’

‘I don’t get that. I wouldn’t have thought it would be his thing. I mean, he was brought up in the town. Wasn’t he into music, clubs, shops?’

‘Sure. All of those. But he liked the idea of the countryside, the fantasy. England’s green and pleasant land. You know. I told him the reality wasn’t like that, but he had this dream of living in the hills, self-sufficiency, not being bugged by his mother or anyone else.’

I thought it sounded ludicrous, but there was something chilling in Marcus’s description of the dream too. There was a touch of the wild American survivalism in there as well as The Good Life. Patriots and shotguns along with the organic carrots. But perhaps I’d got it all wrong. Perhaps a love of the country-side was in Thomas’s blood, inherited from Philip. That thought moved me naturally to Joanna. I meant to ask if she was one of the Consortium’s supporters, but Marcus got in with a question of his own.

‘Why did you come here? The day you found Thomas’s body, I mean. What brought you to the house?’

‘His family was concerned. They didn’t know where he was living. I’m a social worker. They asked me to trace him. No fuss. Unofficially.’

He accepted my explanation but he said, ‘Ronnie knew.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Ronnie knew that Thomas had moved in to help with the rent. I told him. Not long before Thomas died. I felt really bad about it afterwards, because Thomas hadn’t wanted anyone to know he was here. It was a big thing for him. He’d almost sworn me to secrecy. The typical grand gesture that he really liked.’

‘What happened?’

‘There was a CC pro-hunting rally in town. By the Monument. I wasn’t taking part. I don’t actually believe in hunting. I went out with my stepmother a couple of times and couldn’t see the point. And now I’m not working for them… But I was in town anyway and I watched from the pavement with everyone else. Ronnie was in there, taking it all really seriously. I mean he was marching, head up, not shuffling along like the rest of them. He saw me, recognized me as a mate of Thomas’s. He came over and asked if I’d seen anything of him lately. I told him I’d asked Thomas to move in.’

‘Why did you tell him? If Thomas had told you not to?’ I can’t stand a grass.

Marcus looked awkward. ‘It’s hard to say no to Ronnie Laing.’ I thought that was just an excuse but I didn’t say anything.

‘When was that? Exactly?’

‘I don’t know. A week or so before Thomas died.’

‘Ronnie didn’t say anything to Thomas’s mother.’ I remembered how Kay had looked when she scribbled her work number on a scrap of paper, asking me to let her have news of her son. And she’d given me the hostel address. She hadn’t known he’d moved on. I told myself that Ronnie was trying to protect his wife from anxiety. She’d think Thomas was safe if he was in Absalom House.

‘He didn’t like having Thomas around,’ Marcus said. ‘I can understand it in a way. He could be a pain and Ronnie likes a quiet life. You know, needs his own space.’ Suddenly it seemed Marcus knew more about Ronnie than he’d originally let on.

‘Why’s that?’

But Marcus just shrugged. He wasn’t going to give anything more away about Ronnie.

‘Tell me about Thomas.’

‘He tried too hard. It was like he could never relax. He had to be entertaining, playing to the crowd, making sure people liked him.’

‘Exhausting,’ I said.

‘Yeah, for him and for us. I think that’s why Nell dumped him. He wore her out.’

‘How did he take that?’

‘He was absolutely sure he’d get her back.’

We looked at each other. We both understood the folly of his certainty, both felt sad that we’d never get a chance to be proved wrong.

‘What were you doing at Wintrylaw that weekend? Why help the Consortium if you don’t believe in what it stands for and you don’t work for them any more?’

‘I believe some of it.’ He was defensive. ‘Anyway, they were paying. A percentage for every member I joined up.’

‘That’s why you were so keen to recruit me?’

‘Of course.’ He gave a smile which was arrogant and disarming all at once. ‘Why else?’ He stood up. I watched him carry the plates into the kitchen and stack them neatly beside the sink. He called through the open door, ‘Coffee?’

‘Why not?’ I thought perhaps I should offer to wash up, but I still wasn’t sure I could stand without the dizziness coming back. And he’d brought me here, hadn’t he? I was his guest. He filled a machine with water, spooned coffee into a filter paper and switched it on. The smell of coffee dripping into the jug helped clear my head.

I asked, ‘Did Thomas ever talk about his work at the haulage yard?’

‘Not much. It wasn’t like a vocation, was it? He was there for the pay cheque, like me at the Consortium.’

‘Did he seem worried by anything that was going on there?’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘I’m not sure. Health and safety issues? Drivers working too long without a break? Lorries not being properly serviced?’ Red diesel? Green diesel?

What else would have made him talk to Shona Murray about whistle-blowing?

‘There’d been something going on between him and his boss.’

‘What sort of thing?’

‘I don’t know. A row. A misunderstanding. At one point Thomas talked about leaving. I told you he was a dreamer. He was going on about setting up in business on his own. Then it all seemed to blow over.’

‘You’ve really no idea what it was about?’

Marcus didn’t answer. ‘What’s going on here?’ he said. He brought in the Pyrex coffee jug and two mugs and put them on the carpet between us. ‘I mean, what has it got to do with you?’

He seemed very young and unformed standing there, looking down at me. He’d experienced so little I thought there was nothing for me to get to know. A pretty face. Perhaps that’s why I was tempted to confide in him. He couldn’t understand what I’d been through, so it didn’t matter. It was almost like talking to myself.

‘I’m interested,’ I said. ‘I try not to be, but I can’t help it. The police had me down as the killer for a few days. They almost had me convinced I’d done it. I suppose I think I’ve got a right to know what happened.’

‘You should let it go,’ he said roughly.

‘What do you know about it?’

‘Nothing. But if you don’t it’ll become an obsession. No one can live like that.’

I thought, What can you know about obsession? What can you know about anything with your sheltered life, and your riding, and your daddy who has enough money to buy you a house and clean away the remains of your murdered friend?

Then I thought I was being unfair. I stretched out and poured the coffee. He took a mug and sat down. The question I’d failed to ask earlier came into my mind. ‘Is Joanna Samson one of the Consortium’s supporters?’

‘She’s the patron.’

‘What does that mean?’

He shrugged. ‘She’s a well-known photographer. She lets them put her name on the letter heading, holds fund-raisers, garden parties.’

Like the queen, I thought. She’d enjoy that.

‘Do you know her?’ he asked.

‘I knew her husband.’ Just saying that made me feel good.

He leaned down and poured more coffee. The mugs were matching, white with royal-blue bands.

‘Have you ever heard of Stuart Howdon?’ I asked. ‘Is he involved too?’

He twisted the mug, his long fingers splayed across the rim, moving it backwards and forwards over the carpet. ‘I’ve told you. You should let it go.’

‘Do you know who killed Thomas?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Why did you bring me here?’

‘Perhaps I fall for older women. Something to do with my mother having walked out when I was so young.’ I could tell he regretted the flip remark as soon as it had shot out of his mouth. ‘I’m sorry.’ He paused a beat. ‘You were drunk. You wouldn’t tell me where you lived. I didn’t want you driving.’ He broke off again, this time for longer. ‘Honestly. I told you, this is my first day back. I couldn’t face coming back here alone after the funeral.’

‘Is there anywhere else you can go? Or I could probably stay tonight, if you like.’

He shook his head. ‘It was just then, coming in through the door. Knowing he wouldn’t be here. It’s not that we were close. Not specially. Not any more. But we’d been friends for a long time.’ He stood up. ‘I’m OK to drive. I’ll take you home.’

I let him, though nobody else connected to Thomas’s murder, except Dan, who for some reason didn’t seem to count, knew I lived in Newbiggin. I made Marcus park at the church and said I’d walk from there. It wasn’t raining but way out to sea there was a storm; a crack of lightning lit the horizon. He’d got out of the car to say goodbye, opened the passenger door to let me out. The perfect gentleman. I had the impression there was something more he wanted to say, but he just stood awkwardly, next to the open door. I pulled his head towards me and kissed his forehead, then his lips lightly. I suppose I was still drunk, but it seemed the right thing to do.