In the Moors (35 page)

I could see Kissie's sallow features, her gleaming blade of a nose and her painted lips, stretched open in a silent cry of agony and desperation. Her eyes were staring straight at me. She could see me. She called to me with the vacuous dryness of her mouth. Around her neck was the gleaming yellow of a muscled forearm. It reminded me of the statues of Soviet Russia—the iron strength of working men's limbs. Pinchie was trying to pull her back into their grave. He was half hidden behind his wife, the shine on his hairless skull outlined against the black foundations of the cottage. His mouth was a grim line, his eyes half closed with the determination of his task.

The first time I was in this room, I had run away, gibbering with crazed fear, forgetting every magical protection. I had learned so much in the short time since then. I held the stick of smoking incense tight in both hands, and when I leaned my head on one side, Trendle's damp fur rubbed against my chin. With him on my shoulder, I could stand my ground.

Veronica Campion
, I said. Her yellow frame shuddered and I saw her husband's other arm come up and grasp her shoulder.
Veronica—surely there must be a more fitting place than this one.

I thought I heard a whimper. I was concentrating so hard that I missed the first seconds of Pinchie's sudden movement. He expanded out of the space below the joists and shot into my face. The yellow mist surrounded me. I was too shocked to shriek or even breathe. His gruesome presence enveloped me. The final days of the victims, every sensation they had experienced, permeated the aura around my body. My pulse stopped its thrusting beat for long seconds. I remembered what Cliff had spoken of: they didn't want tears. Or screams even.

Now I knew why I had run from Brokeltuft that first time. Their vile spirits could invade like a pestilence. Mentally, I swung the edges of my cloak so that not a chink of my body showed through.

I have drawn a circle around you, Terrance and Veronica Campion. No longer will you be able to move outside it. If you choose to remain here, you must stay inside your sorry grave, trapped forever. But there is no ceiling to this rim of spirit power. If you choose to go, you can rise up and leave this place forever. The spirit world is waiting to embrace your souls, help you pass to the next stage you should have reached twenty-three years ago.

I didn't speak aloud. I hadn't spoken except in my mind to the two dead murderers. They had heard me loud and clear.

I felt Terry Campion's ghostly arms wrap around my neck. The yellow flesh of his upper chest smelled of overripe fruit and chicken shit. It dried my mouth so conclusively I could not swallow. I was afraid that if I breathed in, the fog of Terry's spirit would enter my lungs. I could do nothing more than stare back at them and brandish my cleansing stick of smoke. Clearly my circle was holding them, and if I moved, I would break its power.

Then my gaze was lifted upwards. Something moved fast, rising and accelerating. It was Veronica Campion. Freed of her husband's grip, she had made her choice and taken her chance. I felt Terry loosen his hold on me as he realized something was wrong. But Veronica had already gone; she'd swum into the spirit world as naturally as Trendle dives into his brook.

Pinchie was more tenacious. His spirit was expanding, filling the circle I had drawn in smoke, pushing at its boundaries. He was not easily daunted. In life he had found pleasure in the torture and murder of the most innocent and inoffensive; I certainly did not scare him. He was searching for a way through, determined to overrun the rest of the house.

You are not welcome here,
I told him.
This
is the world of atoms and molecules. You are spirit and you must find your spirit plane.

He gathered up the last of his pitiful body and rounded on me again, so that all I could see was his roaring mouth. There was no tongue or teeth or palate. Just empty darkness.

Go
! I launched the smudge stick, tossing it from my hands. It fell through the smog of Terry's body, leaving a line of black. It crashed into the dark hole where they had lain. The last of its dying smoke mingled with the vapoured spirit of the Wetland Murderer, and wherever it mingled, it took over. The smoke seeped into him, changing him. Large gaps were torn in Terry's yellow frame. His face became a wide, black hole. I didn't know if he was yelling at me or screaming in pain. I hoped it was the latter.

“Go!” I roared aloud. I was at least as angry as he. I was livid for all the lost children, for Aidan and Cliff and even Linnet. “GO!”

The swirls of gas struggled against my bidding for what seemed a long time. My ears felt as if they'd been plugged with wax, so that all sound came from inside me. His evil smell forced the contents of my stomach into my mouth. I compelled myself to stare into the streaks of yellow, watch their torturous movements until the very last smear of Terrance Campion had strayed upwards and followed his wife from their grave.

My head felt as if it had been blown up like a helium balloon. There was a trail of sick staining the front of the protective gear. My knees wouldn't straighten from my cross-legged position. I was locked into it. Strong hands were helping me up, my feet dangling uselessly. I focused on a familiar face.

“Well done, Sabbie,” said Rey.

“Rey. I thought you hadn't come.”

“I got held up. I really hoped to be here before you arrived. To say thanks for doing this. It can't have been easy.” The tone of his voice, if not contrite, was grateful.

He took me out of the house and back to the van and placed me in a lightweight chair next to Gloria. She spat on a tissue and wiped my face. There was a glass of water in my hand. I couldn't remember taking hold of the glass, but I hadn't spilt it, for which I was grateful. I was even more grateful that I had not peed my pants during the ordeal, something that I'd been close to doing at several moments.

“How d'you feel?” asked Rey.

“Okay,” I replied. “Bit like I've just woken up from an anaesthetic.”

“I've got a message for you. Might cheer you up. Stella and Garth want to say thank you.”

“Oh, gosh,” I said. “How's Aidan doing?”

“Not bad, apparently. Pleased his mum and dad have got back together, I think.”

“Stella's gone to live in the van without wheels?”

“Not at all. Garth Stanford has gone to live with them at Nora's.”

“I don't believe it. Garth and Nora come from different planets.” I remembered the yearning I'd detected when I'd held Aidan's Buddha. “It was his deepest wish,” I told Rey. “Before any of this happened. For his mum and dad to be together.”

Rey looked away. “Seems a hell of a thing to have to endure to have such a simple wish come true.”

“Aidan was amazingly brave.”

“You were brave, too, Sabbie,” said Rey. He lurched suddenly forward and captured my hand. His hands were warm and I could feel the roughness around their edges, but there was a softness in the heart of the palm that made me want to cry. “I—I didn't trust you enough, did I?”

“Couldn't blame you. You were right. I am a ‘damn dumb civvie'
.
”

“No,” said Rey, “no, that's not the case. You've come here as a professional and you've really helped—the team are so grateful.”

“Have you seen Linnet, Rey? Are you still interrogating her?”

Cliff had already explained to me how Linnet had managed to infiltrated his life. She had never been the family lawyer, as the police had assumed, nor was she a duty solicitor. She'd turned up at the station and asked to see Cliff Houghton the morning after his initial arrest and, as a respected local lawyer, she'd been shown straight to an interview room. It was Cliff who had assumed she was on duty. He'd refused legal representation directly after his arrest, believing a request for legal aid was tantamount to a confession of guilt. By the time Miss Smith arrived in her full regalia of matching blue accessories—shoes, scarf, and fine quality leather gloves—he'd changed his mind.

“Only hours after Aidan had been snatched,” Cliff had told me, “she turned up at my flat. I didn't think solicitors did that, but she was very kind. We sat down and she advised that I go about my usual business.”

Then she'd asked if she could use his loo, taken Josh's Slamblaster
from her document bag, and slipped it under his bed.

“Yes, that did come up in questioning,” Rey was saying. “She has also confessed to planning to plant further evidence with Aidan's DNA on it at Caroline's house.”

“She asked me to go with her. While I thought Caroline already knew Linnet, she knew that I already knew Caroline. She'd've dropped the stuff and initiated the search for the planted evidence. Masterful.”

“Psychopaths often are,” said Rey.

I didn't argue with that assessment, but I couldn't buy it. I had returned to Brokeltuft
mostly because Rey had asked me, and partly because it was right that the Campions' spirits should be released. But I'd also done this for Linnet, although no one would want to hear that. The media was awash with the story, but while Cliff was being hailed as a misunderstood and dreadfully abused person, Linnet had been painted as Kissie and Pinchie's sidekick, the girl who'd enticed Cliff into the house of torture, rather than the one who had helped him escape.

I could not think of her in that way, even after she had hurt and abused me. I had met her tormentors, and all I could find in my heart for her was pity.

“Right, girl.” Gloria revved her car up the lane, as if very glad to be away from the shrouded cottage. “I'm going to buy you a drink. You deserve it, for God's sake.”

I raised my head, which I'd been leaning against the car seat. I'd been deep in an airbrushed memory, back in the police van tearoom, replaying the moments between Rey and me. I'd wiped out the reality—that Rey was on duty and I'd lost the power of speech. In my dream, our kiss was shy and tentative at first, deep with promise by its breathless end. In actual fact, we'd shaken hands like colleagues.

“You should get paid directly into your bank account. You do have one, don't you?” Ray had asked.

“Of course. Don't forget, it's not all scrape-a-carrot-from-the-soil.” My cheeks went dusky. Would he remember he'd said that of me at the Sunday boot sale? And if so, would he think it odd that I'd remembered his exact words? Which meant I was obsessing about him. But he was a lager-and-crisps-supper bloke—would he work that one out? And did it matter anyway? Wasn't it better if he knew I was a bit keen?

A
bit keen
? I was as bitten as dog with fleas.

“Good,” he'd said, oblivious. “Well, you're on the payroll, now. Any time we need a shaman …”

I couldn't tell if he was joking. But I did know one thing: we were still shaking hands. Just as we had on that first meeting. If Gloria hadn't handed me my coat, we might still be there now, idiotically pumping our hands up and down and staring into each other's eyes.

“There has to be a pub round here somewhere,” said Gloria, pulling up at the junction ahead.

“Not a drink, Gloria.” I had the feeling that if one unit of alcohol passed my lips that day, I wouldn't stop until I was senseless. Besides, Gloria hates pubs, unless they're serving Sunday lunch. She only ventures across their portals when someone has given her a push from behind.

We'd reached the triangle of green, the signpost that still read,
Middlesprings Farm,
and I remembered Sandy, and Trevor the dog, and the box of free vegetables with the flyer hidden at the bottom. Without that connection, I would never have found Brokeltuft Cottage.

“I can think of something much better,” I told her. “I'm going to give you a treat you won't be able to resist.”

She flashed what I think of as the Gloria Glance—a sort of old-fashioned disapproval—but followed the directions I gave her.

“What's happening with the lad who was released?” she asked.

I breathed in. “Pretty shattered. Now he has to recover from the recent traumas, wrongful arrest, and time in prison, as well as all the other stuff he'd blocked out for years.” I turned towards her, like a plea. “I don't know where to begin. I've suggested he sees a counsellor, but he wants to carry on with me.”

“Quite right,” said Gloria. “He'd be in jail if it wasn't for you.”

“I think I just have to trust to my former judgement. My plan had always been to rescue the parts of his shattered soul from where they've become hidden in his spirit world.”

Cliff had arrived for our first session since his release looking drained of blood. We were gentle with each other—we drank a lot of tea and talked openly about what we'd both been through.

“Cliff is actually a very plucky person,” I told Gloria. “Now he realizes what was holding him back, he's really dealing with it. He's been to the barbers for the first time in twenty-three years. He's back at work, and he's joined a local history group. I'm hoping he'll find friendship there. Oh Gloria, turn up here—slowly—it can be muddy.”

Sandy recognised me as soon as I came into her shop. “How are you?” she asked.

“Ready to treat my mum to the best food you have in your shop.”

We chose a lovely piece of venison. I wasn't going to enjoy a single morsel of it, but I knew that Gloria would cook loads of the veg we were piling up in the cardboard box on the counter, a Sunday lunch to beat them all, and she'd even make me that special gravy from caramelised onions to pour over everything.