Burial of Ghosts

Chapter Twenty-six

I wished I’d known Marcus better. I’d dismissed him that night of the funeral as a good-looking lad who’d had it easy, who’d had too little experience of the world to know what I’d been going through. Now he was dead and I thought I owed him a bit of attention. Ellen hadn’t been able to give me anything and I could hardly bowl up to his parents at a time like this to muddy their grieving with questions. I wouldn’t know where to start at the university. All I knew about him was that he was doing a degree in business administration and by now all the undergraduates would be away for the summer anyway. So I thought I’d go back to the Countryside Consortium. It was one of the links between Marcus and Thomas. If Ellen was right and Thomas had worked out the identity of his father, someone at the office might know.

The office address was printed at the bottom of the leaflet Marcus had given me at Wintrylaw on the afternoon of the church’s summer fair. I’d expected it to be in Morpeth, the county town where Stuart Howdon had his office, but it turned out to be on the edge of a village south-west of there, part of the flat, undistinguished countryside on the way to Newcastle airport. I found it on the map, next to a main road. I must have driven past it on a number of occasions.

I went the day after my meeting with Ellen, and as I approached it along a straight road I realized I’d been there before, not to the Consortium office, but to the complex where it was housed. A big sign advertised it in advance: Warren Farm. A set of farm buildings had been converted to business use, built round a central court which must once have been the farmyard. There were retail units, craft workshops, a restaurant. I’d brought Jess here after a jaunt out in my first car. We’d browsed round the shops and stopped for lunch. The café was in the main farmhouse – all stripped pine and exposed beams – and I still remembered the chocolate cake as something special.

I pulled into the courtyard. Although it was sunny and the road had been busy, there were only a couple of other cars there. Perhaps that was because it was mid-week, early in the season, but the complex had a depressed air which I hadn’t noticed on my previous visit. One of the shops was holding a closing-down sale. It occurred to me that the business people running this place would be supporters of the Countryside Consortium. They’d moved out of farming but the new venture didn’t seem to be a brilliant success either. They’d be looking for someone to blame.

That this was a natural home for the Consortium was confirmed as soon as I got out of the car. Ahead of me in the small rank of shops was a taxidermist. The window was dressed as a woodland scene, with a stuffed fox surrounded by dead leaves and two unnaturally plump pheasants perched on a log. I presume they were pheasants. It would have appealed to the hunting set, and I thought Dickon would be fascinated, but it made me feel squeamish. I walked quickly past. The next place – selling waxed jackets and a huge selection of rubber boots – was closed. Then came a shop with a blinding display of brightly coloured sweaters in the window. The door was open. A woman sat inside knitting. She set the needles aside as she saw me approaching and looked up eagerly. I didn’t know which would be most disappointing for her – if I pretended to be interested in the stock but didn’t buy, or if I asked immediately for directions. I stood in the doorway.

‘I’m looking for the Countryside Consortium,’ I said apologetically.

She pointed out the way and went back to her knitting.

The office was on the first floor above the row of shops, built into the slate roof. It was reached by a narrow wooden staircase. I stood at the bottom, putting together a scrappy cover story – something as near to the truth as I could make it – then I went up. The door at the top was glass with Countryside Consortium etched into it. I looked through into a long, narrow office furnished with half a dozen desks and computers. One wall was covered with posters. Everything seemed very glossy and new, more prosperous certainly than the rest of the centre. At first glance the room seemed empty and I thought it must be shut, perhaps as a mark of respect for Marcus. Then a middle-aged woman came into my field of view. She saw me peering through the window and for a moment seemed as startled as I was. She looked me up and down and seemed to decide that I meant no harm.

‘Come in,’ she called. ‘Do come in.’

I pushed on the door but it was locked on the inside and she came to open it. We stood staring at each other. The woman was plump and small with flyaway greying hair and dowdy clothes which made her seem older than she probably was. She seemed excited, but flustered, to see me. I’d had the same response from women in the charity shops Jess dragged me into. For some of them this was their first foray into the world of work.

‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Oh dear.’ I wondered if everything she said would be repeated. I decided to take advantage of her confusion.

‘Is Marcus in? He told me to get in touch if I decided to join.’

She stared at me in horror.

‘I mean, he’s not a friend or anything,’ I went on. ‘But he was at the fair at Wintrylaw and he told me all about the Consortium.’ When she didn’t answer I persisted, ‘I have got the right place? He said he worked here for a year.’

‘Yes,’ she said finally. ‘He did. He was a lovely boy.’

She was frozen to the spot and I took pity on her.

‘I hope this isn’t an inconvenient time.’

‘No, no, not at all.’ But the smile was fixed with panic. Something about the look reminded me of the bird in the taxidermist’s window. ‘You see, I’m the only person in at the moment and I’m just a volunteer.’ She hesitated. ‘Marcus is dead. I’m surprised you didn’t see it on the news. A dreadful road accident, they say.’

‘How awful! You must have been very close. Working in the same office. Sharing in the same ideals.’ I was laying it on thick, but she was taken in by it.

‘Oh, yes. We’re all very committed to the cause.’

I didn’t want to ask her about Thomas or Ronnie. I couldn’t pretend to a credible chance relationship with them too. So I tried an indirect approach. ‘It must be a good place to work. It makes a difference, doesn’t it, if you can believe in what you do.’

‘Oh, yes,’ she said again. ‘We’re very happy here.’

‘None of the niggles and bitchiness you get in most offices, then?’

She answered without hesitation. ‘Dear me, no. Nothing like that.’

If Thomas had written to Shona Murray about events at the Consortium, it seemed unlikely that this plump volunteer would know anything about it.

‘Wasn’t Philip Samson one of your workers?’ I made my voice as gushing as I could manage without throwing up. ‘I used to love his television programmes. Tell me, what was he like in real life?’

She was tempted to lie, I could tell. But in the end her conscience got the better of her. ‘I never actually met him. He was a supporter of course and his wife, Joanna, is here all the time. But Philip never got involved with the day-to-day work of the office.’

So, if Thomas became a volunteer here in the hope of meeting his father, he would have been disappointed.

‘I do hope you’d still like to join us,’ she said. ‘I can help you with that.’

‘I think I should.’

‘We volunteers try to do our best.’ I wondered how many real staff were usually employed here, but it seemed tactless to ask. It would imply that I didn’t think she was up to the job. ‘Just take a seat and I’ll find a membership form.’

She turned and pulled open a drawer in one of the big filing cabinets. The brown jersey skirt was stretched and baggy around the bum. She lifted out a file and returned to the desk.

‘I wish now I’d joined the organization when I was talking to Marcus,’ I said. ‘So he realized he’d talked me into it. He almost persuaded me then, but you know how it is. You need time to think about these things.’

‘Oh, I do agree.’ She bent earnestly across the desk towards me. One of the walls was made up almost entirely of windows and the sun was streaming in. I caught a whiff of smelly armpit. ‘We none of us take the Consortium lightly. It’s a difficult decision to make to become involved. But we do have to come together over these important issues. I see it as a moral fight. I don’t think that’s putting it too strongly. We can’t let our enemies have their own way. We simply can’t.’

She wrung her hands. It seemed an extreme response. This was interesting. Thomas had talked about a crusade. What had fired them up to this point?

‘Enemies?’ I asked lightly, not mocking her but sounding as if I needed to be convinced.

‘Oh, yes! There are people all over the countryside who have a vested interest in seeing the Consortium fail. Politicians, conservationists, woolly-minded liberals…’ She paused. She wanted to add to the list but she was running out of steam. ‘Ramblers!’ she cried triumphantly.

‘I see.’

Obviously I sounded sceptical, because she really started to wind herself up then. ‘Let me tell you, young lady, that two young men involved in the struggle have died recently. One of them was your friend Marcus. The police might see that as a coincidence, but I don’t.’

If she was hoping to shock me into listening to her seriously she succeeded. While the idea of a vendetta against the Consortium seemed ludicrous, it was an angle I hadn’t considered before, and there was a logic, a simplicity in her theory, which was appealing.

‘Do you really think they were killed just because they worked for the Consortium?’

‘Yes,’ she said firmly. ‘I do.’

‘Who by?’

Woolly minded liberals? Ramblers?

‘As I’ve told you. Enemies of the cause.’ Her eyes were wild. She believed absolutely in what she was saying. But then, some people had believed that foot and mouth had been introduced by Greenpeace to get back at the farmers.

‘If you have any evidence,’ I said carefully, ‘you should go to the police.’ What I really wanted, of course, was for her to share any evidence she had with me.

She opened her mouth to speak, but before the words came out there were footsteps on the stairs. I turned to see Marjorie, Stuart Howdon’s wife, looking very Conservative Ladies Luncheon Club in a blue silk dress. For a moment she seemed not to recognize me and directed her attention to the woman on the other side of the desk.

‘How are you coping, Doreen?’ she asked brightly. ‘Any more queries from the press?’

‘If they ring I just say that no one’s available to speak to them at present.’

‘Good girl.’ As if Doreen had been six. Then she turned her focus to me. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘This young lady wants to become a member.’ Doreen beamed.

‘I don’t think so. I don’t really think Miss Bartholomew shares our aims and objectives.’ She stood back, leaving the way to the door clear for me. It was a hint and I took it.

I waited in the car for more than an hour, hoping that Marjorie would leave and I could get more information from Doreen, but there was no sign of her. By now, I thought, as I drove off, Doreen would have been persuaded that I was one of the enemies of the Consortium and I’d get nothing from her anyway.