The Ghost Fields (Ruth Galloway) (39 page)

Chaz leaps out and Nelson follows, leaving Tim to help Sally. The water comes up to his knees. Chaz pushes at the front door and it opens, bringing a tidal wave of brown water gushing in behind it.

Nelson steps into the hall. ‘Ruth!’ he shouts.

He can hear faint banging sounds coming from upstairs. Chaz runs past him and climbs the stairs two at a time. ‘Dad?’ he calls.

Nelson stands in the hallway, listening. Tim appears behind him. ‘Shall we search the house, boss?’

Nelson turns to Sally. ‘Where would your father-in-law be?’

‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘He likes to prowl around the house in the mornings.’

I bet he does, thinks Nelson. ‘Ruth said she was hiding. Any ideas where she could be?’

‘I don’t know.’ Sally sounds helpless and near to tears. ‘It’s a big house.’

‘Let’s go,’ says Nelson. He strides off towards the kitchen when a figure blocks his way. It’s Old George dressed in pyjamas and a dressing gown and carrying an old Second World War pistol.

‘You didn’t tell me we were expecting visitors, Sally,’ he says.

Ruth manages to haul herself onto the window ledge. Maybe those trips to the gym are doing some good after all. With her head and shoulders out of the window she can see the side of the house and, bizarrely, a giant yellow duck, like a child’s bath toy, floating towards her. Somehow Ruth scrabbles herself through the window and falls headfirst into the water.

It tastes horrible. She struggles to her feet, choking. ‘Nelson!’ she shouts, as loudly as she can. ‘Nelson!’

But of course the shouting and the splash has brought Hazel to the window. He climbs onto the sill, as agile as a cat burglar. Ruth is half wading, half swimming towards the duck. She doesn’t know why, perhaps because it’s the only spot of colour in the grey-green landscape. The duck will save her.

‘Hallo, Dad,’ says Sally. ‘You know DCI Nelson and DS Heathfield.’

‘I remember their faces.’ Old George lowers the gun slightly.

Nelson has had enough of this. ‘Where’s Ruth?’ he says. ‘What have you done to her?’

‘Ruth?’ Old George looks around doubtfully.

Then Nelson hears it. Ruth calling his name. It’s coming from outside. Regardless of the old man with the gun he runs back towards the door. Tim takes advantage of the moment to grab Old George’s arm and force him to drop the gun.

‘I’ll take that,’ he says.

‘Come on, Dad,’ says Sally. ‘Let’s go into the drawing room and have a nice sit down. You’re freezing.’

Nelson splashes through the water. The duck boat has drifted off towards the left and he heads towards it. ‘Nelson!’ Ruth’s voice again.

‘I’m coming!’

Rounding the side of the house, he sees Ruth wading towards him. As he watches, a man drops from a window and, maintaining his balance, levels a gun.

‘Stop!’ shouts Nelson. ‘Police!’

In answer a bullet shoots past his ear.

‘Ruth!’ yells Nelson. ‘Get behind the duck.’

Ruth obeys him, moving towards the floating amphibious boat, but the trouble is the water makes it impossible to move quickly. Everything happens in ghastly slow motion. The man shoots again but he’s aiming at Nelson and misses. Ruth has almost reached the boat.

‘Police! Drop your weapon!’ Another voice behind Nelson. He turns and sees Tim, also holding a gun.

The man laughs wildly and raises his arm again.

‘Watch out, boss!’ shouts Tim and shoots.

The man screams and falls face-forward in the water.

The duck boat lets out a triumphant blast of birdsong.

In the drawing room, Sally settles her father-in-law by the fire. There are still some embers from last night and it’s marginally warmer than the rest of the house.

‘I had to do it,’ he says. ‘The Hall is mine.’

‘Of course it is.’

‘I want to leave it to George after me.’

‘Don’t worry about George,’ says Sally. ‘He would be happy living anywhere.’

‘Not your George,’ says the old man contemptuously. ‘My other son George.’

Sally looks at the man she has spent half her life caring for. She knows that he’s an old monster but some subconscious nurse’s instinct makes her want to look after him. He doesn’t look at all well this morning; he’s shivering and his lips have a bluish tinge.

‘I’ll get you a blanket,’ she says.

Old George is about to answer when the door opens. He looks up and sees a man silhouetted against the morning sun. A dark man, dressed in mud-stained clothing with a gash over his eye.

‘Fred?’ he says.

‘No,’ says Sally. ‘It’s Chaz. What have you done to your eye, Chaz?’

But, with a strangled gasp, Old George lurches forward and falls onto the hearthrug.

CHAPTER 37

Nelson turns the man over in the water. He’s still alive although a pink pool of blood is spreading around him.

‘Who is he?’ he shouts to Ruth, who is still holding onto the duck boat.

‘He’s called Hazel,’ Ruth shouts back. ‘He’s Old George’s illegitimate son. I’m pretty sure he killed Patrick.’

‘Help me get him into the house, Tim.’

Tim wades over and takes Hazel’s feet. Tim looks shaken, thinks Nelson, but otherwise perfectly in control. As they struggle with the weight of the injured man, Nelson runs through events in his head. There will have to be an enquiry. Tim shot a civilian with a weapon that wasn’t police issue. But the civilian was armed and it was clearly in self-defence. Nelson and Ruth can both be witness to that. All in all, Nelson thinks Tim displayed great courage and presence of mind. There’s also a distinct possibility that he saved Nelson’s life.

The journey to the house seems endless. Ruth leaves the boat and comes to join them. It takes all three of them to carry Hazel through the deepest stretches of water. His head falls back and he groans but at least he’s still alive. Seeing the tattered druid’s cloak, Nelson says, ‘I know who he is. He’s Cathbad’s friend, isn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ pants Ruth.

‘And he killed Patrick?’

‘He was definitely in it with Old George. He’s been trying to kill me all morning.’

Nelson looks down at the wounded man. ‘Bastard,’ he says.

As they reach the front of the house, a great beating sound fills the air. The water around them is churned up and a shadow hovers overhead.

The chopper has come at last.

Hazel is winched onto the police helicopter and taken to hospital. Old George, who is lying dead on the sofa, is going nowhere.

‘Can’t take a dead body, I’m afraid,’ said the pilot over the intercom to Nelson. ‘Let’s concentrate on the living.’

Good advice, thinks Nelson as he goes back into the house. No one wants to go into the drawing room where Old George is lying with a blanket over him, so they congregate in the kitchen. Chaz is holding a handkerchief to the wound on his face.

‘How did you do that?’ asks Sally, who is, of course, making tea. Alone amongst the Blackstocks she had wept when she realised that her father-in-law was dead.

‘Grandpa had locked Dad in his room. I broke the door down. Slipped and banged my head on the dressing table.’

‘I was no help at all, I’m afraid,’ says Young George. Nelson wonders how often he has said those words.

‘So let’s get this straight,’ he says, sitting at the table next to Ruth. ‘None of you knew that Granddad had killed his brother all those years ago.’

The Blackstocks look at each other. It is Sally who speaks. ‘We knew there was some secret. George got so upset whenever Fred or Lewis was mentioned. And this business about finding the body really unhinged him. But I don’t think any of us thought that George . . . I mean, he was only eighteen . . .’ Her voice trails off.

‘He told me that he killed Fred because he wanted Blackstock Hall for himself,’ says Ruth. ‘He thought I was Nell so he told me the whole thing. He thought Lewis had died in Japan and Fred had been killed in the plane crash. He was alone in the orchard when Fred just turned up. He’d survived the crash and had been sleeping rough. Fred was exhausted, bleeding from a wound in the head. George shot him with Lewis’s pistol.’

‘And when he saw me in the doorway he thought I was Fred,’ says Chaz. ‘That’s what gave him the heart attack.’

‘You do look like Fred,’ says Ruth. ‘And you were bleeding from the head. He must have thought that Fred had come back.’

Nelson would have given a lot to hear Old George’s tone when he thought he saw his brother. Was there contrition in his voice? Anger? Fear?

‘George said that Lewis found Fred’s body when he went to bury his dog,’ says Ruth. ‘He left home – probably couldn’t cope with what he’d seen after all he’d been through in the war – and everyone assumed he was dead. But, of course, he wasn’t.’

Nelson thinks of Lewis saying that where he was from the land was red with blood. He must have been thinking of this. One brother killing another for their birthright. Jacob and Esau, if he remembers his Bible right. The sight had sent Lewis mad, but he had escaped and been able to build a life for himself in Ireland. The only problem was that, somehow, his son found out about the Blackstocks and had been unable to resist the temptation to visit his ancestral home.

‘Lewis wasn’t dead,’ says Nelson. ‘Not till years later anyway. But his son, Patrick, came to find his family and, within a day, he was dead. Did Old George say anything about that?’

‘He said that he and his son had got rid of him,’ says Ruth. ‘At first I thought he meant you.’ She looks at Young George. ‘Sorry.’

‘It’s OK,’ says George.

‘But he meant Hazel. I only realised when Hazel called Old George “Dad”. And, of course, Hazel’s real name was George too.’

That’s why the DNA analysis showed that the Red Devil attacker was a direct relation of Young George’s. Except that Hazel was a sibling and not offspring. Turns out Young George wasn’t an only child after all. Nelson remembers Judy’s interview with Cassandra and the texts from ‘Georgie’. Was this Hazel, distracting Cassie so that he could be sure of creeping up on her unawares? And did the text messaging imply that Hazel had distinctly non-avuncular designs on his niece? Nelson decides not to pursue this just yet. He needs to get some other things straight first.

‘So none of you knew that this Hazel was actually Old George’s son?’ he says.

‘I suspected,’ admits Young George. ‘I knew that Dad was never faithful to Mum and Hazel did look an awful lot like Chaz. That’s why we always let him stay at the Hall, have his yurt in the grounds and all that.’

‘I never suspected.’ Chaz sounds affronted. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me? I had Hazel to stay at the farm and everything. I never thought that he’d turn out to be my uncle.’

‘Do you think that Hazel killed Patrick?’ Young George asks Nelson.

‘We’ll certainly be putting it to him,’ says Nelson grimly. ‘Hazel seemed obsessed with his Blackstock heritage. He probably attacked Cassie when he heard that she was the heir. He attacked my sergeant when he heard that he could be related to the family. Knowing Clough, he was probably going on about being the long-lost heir, and Hazel lost his head and went for him. Patrick
was
the long-lost heir and that’s why Hazel killed him. He probably knocked him over the head and dumped his body in with the pigs. You say he knew the farm well, Chaz. Would he have known which pigs were likely to be . . . er . . . hungriest?’

‘Yes.’ Chaz looks slightly sick.

‘You were probably next on his list,’ says Nelson. ‘You’ve had a lucky escape.’

‘Old George must have told Hazel about Fred being buried in the pets’ burial ground,’ says Ruth. ‘When Devil’s Hollow was sold to Edward Spens, Hazel moved the body there to try to stop the development.’

‘He was always obsessed with stopping the building work,’ says Chaz. ‘I thought it was some weird druid thing, sacred land and all that.’