A Stranger's Grave Page 14

  He imagined trying to explain all this to the DI.

  Like saying to him, I’ve got to rock them or more people will die, and it’ll probably be me. I don’t want to think about what the sisters will do to me if I deny them. I don’t want to think about how two young boys were mangled and a young girl’s sitting in a room rocking herself while sleep won’t come, or how I might end up right in there with her.

  What do you say to that? How did he know? The truth was, he really didn’t. But then...

  ‘Because I spent the night talking to his ghost,’ said Elton. That’s what you say to that.

  ‘Fuck off,’ said Francis.

  ‘What is that?’ said Davis, and pointed at the ceiling. Elton could have given him a blowjob, even on a first date.

  *

  74.

  Elton was given the honour. He pulled the pew over to the centre of the room and reached up.

  The plasterboard had crumbled away. It must have been recent, because Elton had cleaned the house top to bottom and not seen any work that needed doing.

  He pulled down a heavy leather book and blew the dust of fibres from it, the fibres from the lagging in the small loft space.

  He read the inscription on the front cover.

  1941-1944/Registry of Graves. Compiled by Mrs. John Edith Holt.

  Elton turned the pages under the watchful eyes of the DI’s and Davis. PC James seemed to be staring at the ceiling, and for a second Elton thought he saw a woman swinging from the rafters. There was no ceiling, no loft, just the rafters, the ceiling joists. He looked back at James and James shook his head. Like, don’t say a word.

  He’d seen it, too.

  The whole cemetery was unquiet, it seemed, and now it was noisy with the rattling of the dead, the creaking of hanging ropes, even during the day.

  The detectives turned back to the first page.

  ‘Any of this mean anything to you?’

  ‘Can I take a closer look?’

  ‘Sure,’ said DI Terry. ‘But I’m going to have to take it away.’

  Elton didn’t bother asking why. It was just what it was. Policemen took what they wanted. Maybe it would have some bearing on what was going on. It didn’t matter either way, because he’d got what he wanted.

  1941-1944. The three sisters graves wouldn’t be in it. That didn’t matter.

  Henry Harrison’s grave wouldn’t be in it. That didn’t matter.

  What mattered was the map.

  There were the children’s graves. There was the old section, all marked out and numbered. The numbers corresponded to names and dates later in the book.

  But all Elton needed to see was one entry and one entry only.

  The Strangers’ Graves, the annotation said, and he knew where he would be digging.

  *

  75.

  ‘You were going to tell us about Henry Harrison.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t,’ said Elton. ‘I was wrong. It must have been some other guy I met. Pretty persuasive. I’ve been tired.’

  Even as he said it, Elton knew it sounded like a crock of shit. But fuck it. He looked at the clock over the fireplace. 10:30 in the morning. A day to get ready. Preparation was ever the key for dark business. Premeditation.

  When dark fell he’d be digging up strangers’ graves. Searching for a little girl’s corpse. Digging all night, maybe.

  He needed to get ready and in order to do that he had to get the policemen out of his cottage, out of his cemetery.

  *

  76.

  ‘Mr. Burlock,’ said Francis, ‘That’s the biggest pile of...’

  ‘Shit? Shit’s all I’ve got, Detective Inspector.’

  Terry put his coffee down on the tiles and leaned forward.

  ‘We’re in a position, here, Mr. Burlock. In a bind. We’ve got two dead kids, one mental girl...Tania Reed? You remember her? She’s rocking in Hellesdon as we speak. You see why we can’t just let this go?’

  Elton shook his head. He might not be able to figure out the shape of the truth, the truth underneath the deaths of the three sisters, or Harrison, or the two kids, but he could still run rings round these four coppers all day long.

  ‘What do you want me to say? You know I didn’t do it. Flat certainty, right? Because I wasn’t there. There’s nothing to tie me to either murder. If you could ask the girl she’d confirm it, maybe, but either way doesn’t matter, right?’

  Terry looked uncomfortable, because he knew it was true, and he didn’t have any leverage.

  ‘So, what we’ve got, in fact, is a conversation between an old man, me, and PC James. You can put it down to me being nuts, if you want, but you know that won’t swing, either, because what are you going to do? You put me up in a mental ward somewhere, maybe next to Tania Reed, you know you’ve just lost an old man who is your only lead of any sort. The only person keeping an eye on the cemetery, where something’s happening...’

  ‘Mr. Burlock...’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘No one likes a smart arse. You want answers. The answers I’ve got, though, believe me...you don’t want them, and they’ll just raise more questions.’

  ‘I could take you down to the station.’

  ‘You could,’ said Elton. ‘But you won’t. Because it’s a shit load of paperwork and nothing that’ll make any sense. I’ll tell you what you’re going to do.’

  ‘We’re all ears,’ said Francis.

  ‘You’re going to do nothing, because you haven’t got any other choices. Either a ton of work getting me carted off, or a day sitting in an interview room, 12 hours, max, because you’ve got nothing to hold me on. You’re going to drink your coffee, and then you’re going to leave. You’ll drink your coffee because it’s good coffee, and you’re going to leave, because you don’t want to put anything on paper that might say you’ve spent a coffee morning with an ex-convict who thinks he’s talking to a ghost so people can take the piss.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Francis. ‘No one likes a smart arse.’

  ‘But I’m right, and whether you like it or not, and to be blunt, I couldn’t give a shit if you like me, that’s the way it’s going to be.’

  Elton didn’t smile, didn’t gloat, but he could see from their faces they knew he was right.

  What could they do? He wasn’t mental enough to take away. He wasn’t a suspect – maybe for Detective Francis, but Terry was calling the shots.

  They’d leave him alone and give him enough rope to hang himself, or see something that might help.

  He didn’t doubt that the two PCs would be around. He’d already seen them patrolling at night, every other night. Which said plenty in itself. Said the case was going cold and that they were moving resources around. Small town? They just didn’t have the man power or the time to watch the whole cemetery every night, killings or not. MIT would still be working it, following up leads, but most of that would probably be waiting for the girl, Tania Reed, to become communicative.

  Elton didn’t think she would.

  Seeing a death like that? It was enough to make a man mad.

  He’d seen two deaths like that, and he’d done both of them.

  He wasn’t mad, but he wasn’t happy about it, either. It didn’t sit well, seeing the inside parts of a man. For a young girl? Too much to handle, for sure.

  For the coppers?

  He knew he was right, and Terry confirmed it when he picked up his coffee from the tiles and downed it.

  ‘Good coffee,’ he said with a nod.

  The others took the hint and rose as Terry did.

  ‘You know we’ll be back,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ said Elton. ‘Maybe things will change. But DI Terry? Don’t bank on it.’

  ‘I’m not a gambling man, Mr. Burlock.’

  ‘I didn’t figure you were,’ said Elton.

  None of the men offered a hand to shake.

  DI Terry turned back.

  ‘Are you a gambling man, Mr. Burlock?’

  ‘Not
really,’ he said.

  ‘I hope your luck holds, then,’ he said.

  Elton nodded. It wasn’t a threat. It was just...passing.

  Elton closed the door behind them and rested his head against the cool wood of his front door and turned and checked his clock.

  11 am. Dark sometime between six and seven. Seven hours to go, minimum, and he thought he better plan for six, because he really didn’t want to be caught out by the women or Harrison, because he didn’t know who to trust. They were all dead, as was he, but when it came right down to it, it was like his old man had always said. The only person in the whole world you should put your trust in is yourself.

  And when you can’t trust yourself?

  You’d better pray. Elton wasn’t a religious man, but he thought it was a good time to pick up a new hobby.

  *

  77.

  Elton ate a late breakfast and ate everything he had, sausage, bacon, a whole tin of beans, four eggs, scrambled, and toast, four slices. He drank a whole pot of coffee in an hour as he sat thinking.

  He thought about Harrison, being a vicar. Being dead. Thought about a man raising a little girl himself, but telling him he lived next door to a woman named Margeret, with an ‘e’, not an ‘a’. Was that true?

  Wouldn’t the vicar live in the vicarage?

  Of course he would. It would come with the diocese, or parish, or whatever it was called.

  The vicar, having an affair...devoting himself to the church?

  Of course, Henry Harrison was the vicar. Adopting a little girl? No.

  The little girl was his daughter, his real daughter.

  That was the shape of it. Nothing else mattered. The other two sisters, Harrison, even. What mattered was the angry little girl. A little girl that played at playing hide and seek, while all along she knew where her sisters were. A little girl with power and anger that he couldn’t even understand. Him, a man that had beaten two people to death.

  The depths of anger in the girl now, some fifty years after being murdered by her own father?

  It was unimaginable. And her power, growing all the time.

  Why didn’t she do anything to Harrison?

  He drank coffee, finally figured it out.

  Because Harrison was dead. She couldn’t touch him.

  Was she angry at Harrison, lashed out with her sister’s power, like a psychopath had once lashed out with Elton’s fists?

  Maybe. And maybe that was all the truth he needed, but there was something else, just out of reach, and he knew he couldn’t touch it, because it just wasn’t there.

  12pm. Dead noon. Maybe five, five and a half hours to go.

  Whatever the truth of it was, he knew he had to get the sisters back together. The dreams told him that, and now he knew the shape of it, if not what it was, he knew the little girl was dangerous, and angry, and she could be the death of him.

  But he wasn’t afraid of death, because as Harrison said, and maybe that was the only true thing he’d said, they both straddled the world of the dead and the living, and Elton was cold, so cold.

  Digging was night work. It was hard and hot and maybe it’d warm him up.

  *

  78.

  What was there to do before the night time, when dark fell and he’d be getting sweaty and dirty?

  Suddenly, even though it was day time, he was aware of the creaking where the ceiling joists were.

  ‘I know,’ he said to the woman hanging down in the centre of his front room. ‘I know. I’m going to do the best I can do. If I can get her back to sleep...I will.’

  And the creaking stopped. The woman was no longer there.

  Maybe it was her that had pulled back the boarding, shown PC Davis the ledger. The dead had power, now. All of them. The cemetery was awake, awakened by three sisters coming together and by the anger of the little girl he had to rock back to sleep.

  The unrest was getting worse. Haunting during the day. The ghosts of the dead so restless even daylight could not stay them.

  Get ready, Elton, he told himself.

  In order to do a job ‘til the end, you’ve got to know where to start.

  He put his shoes on and took a walk to the strangers’ graves.

  He didn’t see Henry, but then he didn’t expect to. He looked for him just the same, though, out of curiosity more than anything else. Then Elton found Henry after an hour or so of walking. It wouldn’t have made any difference if he’d had the ledger, he knew. Because whatever lies Harrison told, he did really go insane in 1961, after killing his daughter, but he didn’t go to a mental hospital. He went into the grave, just like PC James had told him.

  The inscription on Harrison's grave was simple.

  Henry Harrison.

  Father.

  Husband.

  1901-1961.

  Sixty years old? Then Harrison wasn’t the man Elton had seen, was he? He was older, for sure, but then, he was a ghost, too. He could be whatever the hell he wanted to be, maybe. Like a little girl with one beautiful eye, her sisters, white and black, one rancid and rotten and the other lush like dew on fresh mown grass.

  The epitaph was simple, not one written with love. Had his wife died before him? Elton thought she had, but wife and husband were not together for eternity.

  But then she wouldn’t want to be, would she? Not after Harrison’s third daughter by a mistress. Infidelity, a man of the cloth? Back in those days? The shame must have been immense. Crushing. Enough to take her own life, and eventually, for Harrison to go insane...

  Had he really been insane?

  He’d cut his own throat. Murdered his own daughter.

  Insane, though?

  Possibly.

  And Elton had almost believed him some of it. Still, the tickle was there. And Elton knew well enough that the best lies had a kernel of truth at the core.

  But he set it aside, because he was still sure that no matter what, he had to rock the girl to sleep, and to do that he’d be digging. Digging was night work, dark work, and the sun was high in the sky. He didn’t dig.

  People went through, walking dogs, laying flowers, or just out to enjoy the spring sun.

  It was the kind of sun that told you it’d be getting cold come nightfall, but Elton didn’t think he’d be getting cold. He’d be working up a sweat.

  He tried to figure out what he’d need as he walked through the cemetery.

  Light. A spade. A pick axe, in case he needed to break through a coffin that hadn’t rotted.

  Graves used to be six feet deep, but that was back when coffins were made solely of wood and the earth sank as the coffin rotted.

  He’d be digging old graves. Six feet down – less, to the top of the coffin. Should all be rotted now.

  He’d need something to block his ears from their calls. The woman in white and the one in black. They hadn’t killed him yet, but he couldn’t bank on it. He wasn’t a gambling man. They needed him, he was sure of it. He was their tool, as much as they were at the beck and call of the little girl.

  But he wouldn’t be able to do the work that needed doing with the two sisters calling to him. He’d need to be...

  Sane. Yes. And they could push him the other way, because God help him he was already talking to ghosts, seeing ghosts...fuck, come to that, believing ghosts.

  He walked round the plots, the children’s graves. The strangers’ graves. He was careful not to step on the grass above the dead.

  The grave would be shorter, so not as much digging. He’d be digging child’s graves. Back when graves used to be six feet deep, no so long ago, still births used to be buried in a stranger’s grave. Sometimes the baby would be taken away from the mother. Some mothers never even saw their stillborn children. Some mothers never even knew they might have taken that first breath. They never knew where they were buried. Plain markers for some, headstones for others, but all the headstones and markers were smaller, as though in deference for the small, sad graves at their feet.

 
It was where he’d be digging.

  He’d need coffee, too, he figured, because there were something like thirty graves, and he had no idea which of the children’s graves held the little girl. He had no doubt he’d know when he found her corpse, though, because she’d have that deformed arm, her one tooth in her head, and just a single socket where her beautiful green eye had once been.

  *

  A Stranger’s Grave

  There’s a stranger’s grave in a cemetery in a small Norfolk market town.

  The grave holds the body of a little girl. She was named Emily Harrison, for her father.

  When she was three, her father, who gave her a name, smothered her while she was awake in her buggy.

  Back in the 1960s it was not unusual for still born children to be buried in a stranger’s graves. Their bodies rest in cemeteries across the country, unmarked and forgotten.

  A woman once filled a ledger with a list of the long dead in the cemetery. She did not fill the ledger with the names of the forgotten dead, because most never had names.

  The little girl, Emily Harrison, had a name. She was not still born.

  And yet she lies unmarked in a grave six feet deep, beneath a little boy, his skeleton not even fully formed.

  But then neither was hers.

  Born in sin, she paid the price for her father’s indiscretions, all the while growing in power. Power greater in death than ever it was in life.

  Like a lodestone for her sisters. Bringing them to her.

  *

  79.

  In the dark the cemetery was a different place, a different world, full of strange noises and a disquieting sense that the dead watched and waited.

  Elton stepped from his cottage into this dark world. The street lights cast an orange glow by which he could see his domain. The undersides of the low cloud were tinted the same orange, maybe a little blacker, like there could be rain, or might not. It could go either way.