A Restless Evil Read online

  Guy put down the torch and stretched in his arm as far as it would go, searching with his fingers until they touched something small and dry. His face was pressed against the damp musty soil surrounding the opening. Earth crumbled and fell into his hair and eyes. He was hardly aware of it. Eventually he withdrew every one of the objects he could reach. They were yellowish-brown in colour and appeared to have been there some time. Some were broken. One or two showed signs of having been gnawed, though the teethmarks were old. He had no doubt as to what they were. They were human bones.

  Now that he was satisfied he’d retrieved all he could, Guy took out his mobile phone and called 999. ‘No Network Coverage’ the screen informed him obligingly. He cursed softly. He was in a dead spot. An unfortunate phrase, but apt.

  He searched in his rucksack for something to wrap the bones in. The only paper he had was his map so he sacrificed that. Then he climbed up the bank, followed the deer track back to the main dirt road, plodded through the trees until he reached the far side of the wood and tried his mobile again. This time he was successful.

  ‘Which service do you want?’ enquired a voice.

  ‘Police,’ said Guy. There was nothing an ambulance could do for the owner of the bones.

  He was connected with the police. He gave his name, his home address, explained that he was on a walking holiday and he had found human remains, bones, after falling down a slope.

  The new voice, tinny and a little weary, asked where he was. He told it, Stovey Woods, or just outside.

  ‘And these bones, sir,’ said the voice. ‘You just fell over them, you say?’

  ‘No,’ corrected Guy. ‘I said I fell over. I disturbed the nettles covering the entrance to the burrow in my fall.’

  ‘Burrow?’ said the voice. ‘Most likely animal bones, then, sir, don’t you think?’

  ‘No, I don’t think,’ said Guy. ‘If I thought that, I wouldn’t have rung you.’

  ‘People often think they’ve found human bones,’ said the voice. ‘But it’s nearly always animal, a fox’s dinner. Are they very small, like a rabbit?’

  ‘No!’ snapped Guy. He was beginning to think this the most irritatingly complacent voice he’d ever listened to. ‘Some are damaged and some are incomplete, a lot are missing. But they include a clavicle, parts of two ribs, three or four vertebrae, a badly-chewed tibia and an entire mandible with most of the teeth still in it. Some of the teeth show dental work. That should be helpful to you. Unfortunately, the rest of the skull is missing. Of course, there might be more further back in the tunnel.’

  There was a silence. He thought he could hear the person at the other end talking to someone. A new voice came on, deeper, more authoritative. It, at least, wasn’t smug. It was suspicious.

  ‘This is on the level, sir?’

  ‘Absolutely!’ Guy was finding it difficult to control his frustration. ‘All I’m asking you is, what do you want me to do? Bring the bones in to the nearest police station or wait until you can get someone out here? I don’t know how you’ll get here,’ he added. ‘I’m on the old drovers’ way.’

  ‘We can get there, but you’ll understand we don’t want to be brought all the way out there on a wild-goose chase. Not accusing you of anything, sir, but you could be mistaken. This dental work, as you describe it, might just be discoloration. Old bones go a funny colour. So is there any other thing which makes you think these are definitely human?’

  ‘Why do I think they’re human?’ howled Guy. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? Because I recognise them!’

  ‘Not many people could do that, sir. Why’re you so sure?’

  ‘Because,’ said Guy, breathing heavily, ‘because I am a doctor!’

  ‘This is it,’ said Alan Markby, trying not to sound as dismayed as he felt.

  Beside him in the car, Meredith Mitchell shuffled the estate agent’s brochures and found the one she sought.

  ‘Former vicarage,’ she read aloud. ‘Early nineteenth century. Five bedrooms, three reception, stone-flagged kitchen. Outbuildings. In need of some restoration work.’

  They both peered through the windscreen at the house.

  ‘A lot of restoration,’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘Nice big garden,’ he pointed out.

  They clambered out of the car and opened the creaking gate. A path which had been gravelled, but was now almost entirely overgrown with weeds and pitted with rain-filled depressions, led to a front door curiously scarred as if someone or something had been kicking or scraping at it. Markby pressed the bell-push.

  In response a furious barking broke out from inside the house. There was the sound of scrabbling claws on parquet and a woman’s voice. Some sort of tussle seemed to be in progress. Eventually a door inside slammed and to an accompaniment of laboured breathing, the front door creaked open.

  The woman who appeared before them was tall even wearing flat walking shoes over dark woollen tights. Her untidy grey hair was nearly shoulder-length and her angular features devoid of make-up. She did, however, sport jewellery in the form of dangling earrings which looked home-made, each a grape-cluster of coloured glass beads.

  She placed a hand on the doorframe to support herself and, fixing Markby with a direct look, gasped, ‘It’s Roger.’

  ‘No, it’s, I mean, I’m Alan Markby,’ he replied, taken aback. ‘I rang to arrange a viewing.’

  ‘Yes, I know that’s who you are!’ she retorted. She’d got her breath back now and took her hand from the doorframe. ‘I meant my dog, Roger. He makes a racket but he’s a silly old thing really. Wouldn’t do any harm. Likes visitors but jumps up at them. Not everyone likes it. So I’ve shut him in there.’ She pointed at what looked like the door of a cloakroom.

  On cue, from behind it, came a lugubrious howl.

  ‘Roger doesn’t like being left out of things,’ said his mistress. ‘Are you coming in?’

  They stepped dubiously over the threshold. Roger whined and scratched at the door which held him prisoner. It rattled on its hinges.

  ‘Too big for me now,’ said the woman.

  ‘The house? Roger, the dog?’ Meredith whispered wickedly in Alan’s ear.

  He mimed her to silence but the other woman hadn’t overheard.

  ‘Can’t afford to keep the damn place up. That’s why I’m selling and why it’s going cheap.’

  Markby, mindful of the price, tried to hide his scepticism by asking politely, ‘You are Mrs Scott?’

  ‘Of course I am. But you wouldn’t know, would you? I might be the housekeeper. Well, I’m not!’ She gave a surprisingly deep bellow of laughter.

  Markby caught Meredith’s eye again and they exchanged furtive grins. Mrs Scott was leading the way, her long, drooping skirts swaying. She wore a hand-knitted sweater. Markby wondered if it had been created without benefit of a knitting pattern. He was no expert on such matters but there was an air of bizarre improvisation about the garment. It was banded in strata of rose-pink, navy-blue and orange. In places the colour ended mid-line and the next colour began as if that was the point at which the knitter had run out of wool. Back and front sections were square and the sleeves stitched on clumsily raglan-style. They were tubular and cuffless. With that and the bead earrings she was certainly colourful.

  ‘This is the main reception room,’ Mrs Scott said, throwing open a door. She stood aside for them to enter.

  It was a spacious room with attractive mouldings round the ceiling but it didn’t appear to have been decorated in years. The door paint was yellowish, perhaps once white, and round the handle dark and greasy. Its panels were scratched, too. Dust lay thick. Some quite nice antique silver on a table was black with neglect. An old sofa bulged in all the wrong places, a little like Mrs Scott herself, and strands of coarse shiny horse-hair escaped from holes in the fabric. Dog hairs clung to everything. Roger had left his mark. There was an insidious musty smell, a little like rising dough mixed with wet wool.

  ‘You have central heating,’
remarked Alan. He was staring at a huge ancient radiator with misgiving.

  ‘We’ve got it, but it doesn’t work,’ said Mrs Scott honestly. ‘Needs a new boiler.’

  The other rooms were in pretty much the same state. A small dingy retreat called grandiosely by Mrs Scott ‘the study’, was crammed with dusty Victorian furniture, some of which looked as though it might have been brought from elsewhere in the house to be stored there. Meredith, always curious to examine books, had sidled off to peer into a huge glass-fronted oak bookcase crammed with leather-bound volumes. Markby scanned the spines briefly over her stooped form. They appeared to be mostly works of theology. The bottom shelf, however, was given over to a set of the Victoria County History and a fat tome entitled Man and Myth: The Legacy of Prehistory. On the far wall an ebony and brass crucifix loomed above an oak desk. On the desk lay an appointments diary white with dust and an old briar pipe resting on a worn tobacco pouch. There was still a faint odour of pipesmoke in the room, absorbed by the furnishings over many years. He felt a prickle run up his spine as if a ghostly hand had touched it. Good Lord, he thought, it’s the same. It’s just the same.

  ‘You don’t use this room much now?’ he heard himself ask.

  ‘It’s as he left it,’ was Mrs Scott’s reply.

  Alan Markby said, ‘Yes, it is.’ He was aware of the sudden, surprised look Meredith turned on him. He should have explained to her before they came. Now explanations would have to wait.

  The kitchen was huge, a cavern of a place, with the old range still in place, pitted and rusted, alongside a fat-spattered gas cooker. Upstairs, someone had made an effort to brighten up the master bedroom with liberal amounts of sky-blue paint and very little talent with the brush.

  ‘Nice room, this one,’ said Mrs Scott. ‘Got a good view of Stovey Woods. Come and see.’

  They followed her to a sash window which she pushed up with an effort. ‘Bit stuck, most of them are.’

  They peered out. They could see the road which led through the village, winding towards the distant dark mass of the the wood.

  ‘We’re a dead end,’ said Mrs Scott. ‘No through traffic. Nice quiet village, this. No one comes here who hasn’t got business here. It’s popular with the second-homes crowd. When they’re not here, you hardly see a car. Well, I’m blowed. That makes me a liar, doesn’t it?’

  A car had appeared as she spoke and not just any car. This was a marked police vehicle. It cruised past as if uncertain where it was going. Markby leaned out as far as he could and watched it wend its way towards the wood.

  ‘What do the cops want, do you think?’ asked Mrs Scott. ‘Someone loosing off a shotgun in the woods, may be? Haven’t heard ’em. Would only be after pigeons, anyway. Nothing for the police to worry about. Bit of deer poaching?’

  ‘Alan?’ Meredith touched his arm.

  He pulled in his head regretfully. ‘What? Oh, yes, could be anything. Well, is there anything else we should see, Mrs Scott?’

  ‘Only the downstairs cloaks where Roger is.’

  ‘We’ll give that a miss,’ Markby said hastily. ‘Would it be in order to look round the garden?’

  ‘Help yourself.’ She clearly didn’t intend to accompany them.

  As they strolled down the path between abandoned flower-beds and overgrown vegetable patches, Meredith asked the question which had been hovering on her lips since the study.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d been in that house before?’

  He hesitated. ‘It was a long time ago. It was still a vicarage then and I had reason to call on the incumbent. Police business, you know, routine stuff.’

  ‘Was that Mr Scott, by any chance?’

  ‘What? Oh, no. It was a chap called Pattinson.’

  ‘Is that why you wanted us to view it? Because you knew it already? Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘I don’t – didn’t know the place. I wasn’t shown over it back then. I was shown straight into the vicar’s study and after I’d spoken to him, I left. I didn’t even see into the other rooms.’ He added, ‘It’s in a bit of a state, I know.’

  She did her best to put an optimistic gloss on it. ‘It’s a beautiful big drawing room. Expensive to heat, though. Did it look better, smarter, when you saw it years ago?’

  ‘I told you, I only saw the entrance hall and the study. It looked all right. Not that I was paying much attention then. I’m pretty sure that bookcase and the desk in the study were there then, and the crucifix, but polished up and clean.’

  ‘She’s a nice woman, batty but nice.’

  Markby stopped and turned towards her. Her face was hidden by her ruffled brown hair. She’d pushed her hands into her jeans pockets and was idly manoeuvring a broken piece of ornamental edging with the toe of her trainer. He caught her lightly by her upper arms. ‘Don’t pretend. You make me feel guilty. It was a mistake coming, all right? I know you don’t like it. Just say so.’

  ‘Well, I – oh, all right.’ She tossed back her hair, slipped her arms free and began to number off the points on her fingers. ‘The heating’s broken, the windows stick and I wouldn’t lose my money if I bet there was something wrong with the plumbing. Against that, it has large rooms, some lovely period features like the mouldings, and the garden is your dream, I know that. But,’ she sighed. ‘The village does look a teeny bit, well, dead. I’m sorry. Perhaps you’d love the place. I wish I could tell you that I did. But I don’t. You did ask,’ she finished defensively.

  She reached out to squeeze his hand reassuringly. ‘We’ll find the right house if we keep looking.’

  ‘And then we’ll get married?’

  ‘Then we’ll get married. I’m not backing out, Alan.’ She was looking up at him anxiously under the heavy fringe of hair.

  ‘OK,’ he said, kissing her. ‘Just so I’m sure. It’s not me, it’s the house.’

  ‘It’s not you. The house is like Dracula’s weekend retreat.’

  He laughed and they set off back towards the gate.

  ‘I wonder what that squad car was up to?’ Markby mused.

  ‘Nothing for you to worry yourself over, Superintendent. Do you think Mrs Scott knows you’re a copper?’

  ‘I didn’t tell her when I rang. I don’t go round announcing myself. Hey, I’m a policeman! It doesn’t go down well.’

  They got back in the car.

  ‘We could,’ Markby said tentatively, ‘just drive down to the woods and take a look.’

  ‘At the woods or at whatever has taken the police down there?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Go on,’ she said resignedly. ‘You won’t rest until you know. But count me out. I’ll go and take a look at the church, if it’s open. I’ll wait there for you, anyway. Pick me up on your way back from your busman’s holiday.’

  Chapter Two

  As Markby’s car neared the woods, the road, or what passed for it, grew worse. Only a remnant of its original asphalt surface remained, cracked and weed-strewn. The edges had broken away and he rattled and shook his way in a wavering middle course over potholes filled with water from the afternoon’s downpour. He hoped he didn’t meet the police car careering towards him. Here and there parts of the dry stone walls lining the road had crumbled and sent mini-avalanches of lumps of yellow stone to encroach on the track. No one had troubled to remove them. No one, he guessed, came down here in a car. What, never? Well, hardly ever.

  ‘I am the captain of the Pinafore …’ he hummed in an out-of-tune way. He was as near tone-deaf as made little difference. He regretted it. He’d have liked to enjoy music. He did enjoy Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas but for the lyrics rather than the tunes.

  He fell silent and thought back to the house-viewing. That had been a notable lack of success. He should, perhaps, have mentioned to Meredith that he’d been in the house before. But it had been so long ago and as he’d tried to explain, the only room he’d seen had been that claustrophobic study. Yet it hadn’t been an unfriendly place. Rather pleasan
t, as he recalled it. The vicar, Pattinson, had been an elderly man, a little on the dithering side and vague, but sharp enough when defending his flock. The book which had lain open on the vicar’s desk on that occasion, Markby recalled, had been that massive volume on myths which he’d glimpsed still there in the bookcase. ‘It is by way of being a little interest of mine!’ the vicar had said apologetically.

  Living in Lower Stovey, a man would need a few interests to pass a long evening. Markby had to confess it was rather more cut-off than he remembered it. Surely, there had been more people about when he’d come here many years ago? There had been children running home from the village school. Women had stood gossiping outside a shop. Someone had run a shoe and bridle-repair business from a dilapidated lean-to by his cottage. Perhaps the lean-to had finally fallen down. There was no sign of it now. Also gone were school, store and inevitably children, as young families moved out given the lack of the first two. It had left a deserted wasteland of a place. An inhabited wasteland of second homes and prosperous two-car commuter couples, yet a wasteland nevertheless.

  They had an agreement, he and Meredith. They’d find a house and then they’d get married. At the moment he had a Victorian villa in Bamford and she had an end-of-terrace cottage. They’d tried living together in his house and it hadn’t worked. She was adamant it wouldn’t work in her house, either. It was that much smaller than his. They’d fall over one another at every turn. Yes, clearly the answer was to look for a new house, but where to find one both of them liked? So far they’d viewed five. Not many, Markby supposed. But enough to be discouraging. For that reason, he’d pinned his hopes on the old vicarage at Lower Stovey. First sight of it today had disposed of his sanguine expectations. He didn’t blame Meredith for not fancying it. He just wished he could quell the secret suspicion he harboured that she might have another reason other than the house’s obvious flaws. She might, just might, be playing for time.