Burial of Ghosts Read online

  Ann Cleeves

  Burial of Ghosts

  PAN BOOKS

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Prologue

  My nightmares feature knives and blades and blood. I don’t do falling down holes or being chased through deserted streets. And though usually I dream in black and white, the blood is very red, glossy, and it slides out from the rest of the scene, which is flat and dull. The worst thing is that when I wake, I realize it wasn’t a dream at all.

  I’m in Blyth. It’s market day and I’m there to shop for Jess. There’s a stall where she buys all her fruit and veg – she knows the bloke who runs it and he always gives her a good deal. It’s mid-morning, with lots of people about. It’s not long before Christmas and everyone’s in the mood when they have to buy, even if the stuff’s crap, otherwise they feel they’re not prepared. A foggy, drizzly day, and cold with it. There’s a raw east wind which cuts into the skin. But it doesn’t draw blood. Not like the scissors I buy in Woolworths. I ask the assistant to take them out of the plastic packet to check that they’re sharp. I run my thumb across the blade and there’s a small red line and then tiny, perfectly round red drops like jewels. I fumble with the money when I pay, not because of the cut, which is already healing, but because my hands are freezing.

  From Woolworths I wander back into the market square to pick up Jess’s vegetables. I stop for a couple of minutes to look at the cassettes and CDs and chat to the ageing punk who sells them, and again to buy a quarter of a pound of coconut ice from the sweetie stall. I have a very sweet tooth. It’s all still in pounds and ounces, of course. There are no kilos in Blyth. Then I notice a lad coming towards me with a pile of Big Issues. He’s wearing combat trousers and big boots, expensive boots, new not second-hand. I walk round him, trying not to catch his eye. Why? Because his thin face reminds me of someone I don’t want to think about. A lad called Nicky with a poet’s face. Because I don’t have a pound and I don’t want to wait for change. And anyway he must be working some sort of scam because of the boots.

  I’m almost at the vegetable stall. There’s a smell of cabbage leaves and oranges. Someone behind me touches my shoulder.

  ‘Big Issue, Miss?’ Aggressive, sneering, so close I can feel his breath on my neck.

  I swing round and stab him in the fleshy part of his upper arm with the scissors. He’s a Blyth hard man, only wearing a sweatshirt despite the cold. I get him first go, feel the rip of the skin and the crunch of the bone as the blade hits off it. But when I lift my arm to strike again, someone holds me back. The bloke from the veg stall recognizes me and shouts, and the crowd joins in. They’re all screaming. The lad has dropped the pile of papers. The blood soaks through the grey sweatshirt and spatters the newsprint in slow motion. Black and white and red all over. Like the joke.

  Chapter One

  In Morocco I didn’t dream at all.

  It was midday and hot, only April but there’d been no rain all winter and the river beds were dry. Not that you’d believe that here, where the fields were irrigated and green. Some stream in the mountains had been tamed and channelled through open wooden pipes to a reservoir, then to the tiny fields, the date palms and the hedges of tamarisk, jacaranda and bougainvillaea. The colours of the flowers were exploding in the sunlight. Like it was some sort of trip or mystical experience. Like I was in paradise.

  So I was in paradise, riding a donkey led by an eight-year-old beauty with shiny black eyes, a torn skirt and bare feet called Latifa. An Australian backpacker who was staying in my hotel had sent me there. He’d given the directions to the palmery.

  ‘Worth a visit,’ he’d said, super-cool. ‘If you want to get out of town. Nice views.’

  He hadn’t mentioned it was on the tripper route and when I got there, bouncing the clapped-out Renault I’d hired for a week over the rocky track, there were two tour coaches from Agadir spewing out German housewives in shorts and vests. After a week on the beach, their skin was the same startling pink as the bougainvillaea petals. I’d almost turned round and gone back. Not my scene. I’m a traveller, not a tourist. I don’t do crowds. Then Latifa had come up, dragging the donkey behind her, hustling.

  ‘You like donkey ride, Miss?’ Some sixth sense telling her I was British. I looked at her over my shades.

  ‘How much?’

  She named a price in dirhams. The equivalent of three pounds, the first bargaining move.

  ‘OK.’ She was shocked. Even tourists knew they were supposed to haggle. ‘But I don’t want to go where they’re going.’ I nodded towards the Germans, who were being hoisted onto donkeys of their own. ‘Somewhere quiet.’

  ‘No problem. They go to hotel. Drink Coca-Cola. Eat big meal. Tagine. Couscous. Bread. Eat, eat, eat.’ She puffed out her cheeks. Not a credible imitation of a fat German, but I knew what she was getting at. She clapped her hand over her mouth, thinking her honesty would cost her business, thinking I’d be offended, that we were all members of the same tribe.

  ‘That’s OK, then.’

  She still looked at me as if I were crazy for not trying to get a better price. I got out of the car. It would be like a sauna when I returned. The coaches had parked in the only shade.

  And she took me into paradise. She led me down the sandy paths round the little fields into that light and that colour. It was like swimming into a stained-glass window only there was sound too – everywhere bird-song and the humming of insects. I was as much a part of the jacaranda and the water trickling through the wooden pipes. More than that, it was as if the whole scene had been laid out for my enjoyment. For a moment I lost myself in it. I heard Latifa’s voice, as if from a distance, chatting about her family and school, hoping maybe for a few extra dirhams tip for being friendly. Because I’d already proved I was an easy touch.

  Driving back to the town I made up my mind it was time to go home. I’d stopped being angry. And after today everything else would be an anticlimax. In Taroudannt I returned my car to the garage and organized a ticket for a bus to Marrakech. The next day I’d begin to make my way back. But slowly, because I’d need to get used to the idea. I’d lost the habit of making plans.

  Later I walked through the streets which had already become familiar. My path took me past the bread shop, where the flat loaves were wrapped in a grey blanket, and the shop selling acacia twigs for firewood, past the souk, avoiding the skinny boys chasing goats and the young men with soft, dark eyes who wanted to practise their English or sell me a carpet, or a silver Berber bracelet, to the poshest hotel in town. The one where the German tour
ists would stay if they had more class. I ate an expensive dinner on the terrace and drank most of a bottle of wine. Then I swam in the pool, which was built into the red stone of the city wall and surrounded by a garden. More jacaranda, more palms and vines. I swam until it was almost dark and I was the only person in the water.

  I walked back to the place I was staying, a not-so-posh hotel which got its mention in the Rough Guide for being central and providing reasonable value for money. I walked slowly, knowing it was the last time. Outside the cafés old men with stern faces drank coffee. Bats dipped in and out of holes in the wall. The muezzins were calling the faithful to prayer from the mosque on the square. The Australian backpacker was waiting for me alone and hopeful by the bar of our hotel. I bought him a beer, then went to bed. Without him. You’d have thought I’d kicked him in the gut.

  The bus would take eight hours and cost me less than half the meal I’d bought the night before. It would cross the flat plain of the Souss valley, then head up into the mountains. The other passengers seemed to be local, mostly women and young children going to visit their families. The older women were wrapped up, so all I could see of them were curious eyes and a henna tattoo on the ankle. On the back seat a couple of teenage boys were full of themselves and giggling. At first I thought I would be the only European on it, but then, just as the bus was about to start, a man jumped on. He was middle-aged but lean and fit as a Berber hillsman, not a scrap of flesh on him. He was blond. It was hard to tell from his hair, which was shaved convict short, but his eyebrows and lashes were almost white. There were other seats available, but only next to Moroccan women, who were already looking away from him, willing him to keep his distance. I knew he’d come up to me.

  ‘Do you mind?’ He smiled in a shy, self-deprecating way which made him seem half his age.

  I did mind but I could hardly say so. How could I explain? Actually I had a near-mystical experience wandering around a bunch of date palms with a girl and a donkey. I want to see if I can re-create it crossing the High Atlas.

  As I nodded for him to sit down, I was thinking too about his voice. Only three words, slightly accented, but I could place him on that. North of the Tyne and south of the Scottish border. He came from the same place as me. Except, of course, I could make no assumptions about my place of birth.

  We talked.

  ‘Lizzie Bartholomew,’ I said, turning in my seat and holding out my hand, mock formal, a Brit keeping up appearances away from home.

  ‘Philip.’ No last name. I wondered fleetingly if he had plans for the encounter. Was he saving himself from embarrassing consequences even then? The impression was confirmed when he took my hand. He was wearing a wedding ring. It was slightly too loose on his finger. ‘And where, exactly, do you come from, Lizzie Bartholomew?’ My fellow Northerner had placed me too.

  ‘Newbiggin-by-the-Sea.’

  Mocking. The full name made the town sound attractive – picture-postcard pretty. You’d imagine a little harbour, children playing on the beach. I was drawn to it. I loved the big church on the headland, the double-fronted stone houses on Front Street. In one sense it was precisely where I’d come from, where I’d been created. But pretty it wasn’t. He’d know of Newbiggin by reputation. He’d have heard stories of kids marauding round the council estate, burnt-out cars on the golf course, the black beach caused by washed-up coal dust. I doubted if he’d ever been there.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Upmarket, eh?’

  It wasn’t said cruelly. He was curious, that was all. We both laughed.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Newcastle originally. Further up the coast now.’ Still giving nothing away.

  ‘You’re a long way from home,’ I said lightly. ‘Holiday?’

  ‘Fulfilling a dream,’ he said, deadly serious.

  ‘What dream would that be?’

  ‘Trekking in the Atlas Mountains. When I was a kid there was a picture in a geography textbook. For some reason it caught my imagination. Exotic, I suppose. A bit different from Heaton.’

  Heaton was a Newcastle suburb. Not rough like the West End, but hardly smart either. From his voice I’d have said he’d gone up in the world.

  ‘You’re on a bus,’ I said. ‘Hardly trekking.’

  He smiled slowly. Everything he did was slow and deliberate. I thought he’d be a good lover. Patient. I wondered what he planned to do when we arrived in Marrakech. Jessie always said I was shameless.

  ‘Today I’m on a bus. I’ve been walking in the hills for three weeks with local guides. I came back for a few days to rest in a decent hotel.’

  That would explain the lean, fit look.

  ‘The Palais Salaam?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I was there last night.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I saw you swimming.’

  ‘Travelling alone?’

  ‘Ah.’ He leaned back in his seat and narrowed his eyes. ‘My wife’s a saint. She’d deny me nothing.’

  I waited for him to continue, but he drifted into sleep. He slept for the first hour, his breathing regular and shallow, not waking even when we stopped in noisy squares to drop off and pick up passengers. I looked out of the window at endless citrus orchards surrounded by vivid orange walls, then at acacia scrub, the trees grazed bare by the goats which scrambled through the branches. When the bus started climbing he woke and continued the conversation as if the nap had never occurred.

  ‘Why are you in Morocco, Lizzie Bartholomew?’

  I mumbled something about needing a break. ‘Sometimes things are complicated, you know?’

  ‘What sort of complications could you possibly have?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘It’s a very long bus ride.’

  So I told him my story. Not all of it. But the stuff I’d spilled out over and over again, trying to impress new acquaintances, to get sympathy, to explain my choice of career. And he was hooked. I could tell.

  ‘I spent most of my childhood in care. Lots of different children’s homes.’

  ‘I thought they tried to find foster homes these days.’

  ‘Oh, they tried. Just not very hard. And I wasn’t an easy kid . . . Some of the homes were OK. Some were awful. Even in the good ones, the staff were distant. I suppose they had to stay detached or they’d go crazy. But you don’t understand when you’re a kid. Occasionally there’d be someone I really liked, but they always moved on in the end or I’d be shunted away. Then there’d be the first day at another school, more kids to laugh, because however hard the staff tried, we always looked different. Clothes that didn’t quite fit, no parents to come to open evenings or school plays.’

  I was getting absolutely the response I wanted. I should have been on the stage. He was almost in tears.

  ‘Tough,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied with a bit of a sneer. ‘Tough.’ What would he know? ‘When I was sixteen I left. Or was thrown out. They didn’t like me much. Too lippy. Bolshy. Stirring up insurrection among the rest of the kids. And I drank too much. Way too much. They found me a place in a hostel, a sort of B&B for losers, dropouts and druggies, in Newbiggin. A social worker came once a week to check I was OK. I hated her. If I offered her a cup of tea she always said she’d just had one. She was afraid of catching germs. Or something worse.’

  ‘And were you OK?’

  ‘I was brilliant.’

  Then I told him about Jess, who owned the place. ‘She wasn’t paid to be kind to me or worry about my psychological welfare, only to wash my sheets and cook my breakfast. So when she was kind it counted.’

  Jess had been a dinner lady in the primary school. Her aunt had died and left her the big stone house with its view of the sea. It was too big for her, but she couldn’t bear to sell it. So she set up in business. Perhaps she’d been hoping for respectable guests – the birdwatchers who turned up in the autumn, businessmen, students, reps – but she ended up with us. If she had space she never turned anyone away. We we
re like the bairns from the infant class she used to treat for grazed knees and elbows. She gave us more sympathy than we deserved.

  ‘Jess persuaded me to go to the tech to take A-levels.’

  She was a stubborn woman, as wide almost as she was high, dressed usually in charity-shop jumble, jogging bottoms and a man’s checked shirt. That day she’d smartened herself up. She dragged me to the college open day, stood with me at the enrolment desk.

  ‘What do you fancy then, bonny lass?’

  I’d taken English because I liked the look of the teacher, a moody guy with hooded eyes, a shaved head and a leather jacket, psychology because Jessie thought it would be interesting and sociology because she said I had to do three. You couldn’t get to university without three. None of her lodgers had been to university before. I’d be the first.

  ‘I did it to humour her. Thought she was mad.’

  ‘Of course, you passed,’ Philip said. ‘Flying colours.’ He hadn’t spoken while I was describing my time at Jess’s, but I could tell he was listening. Properly listening. Not just letting the words wash over him.

  ‘Two As and a B.’ I grinned, remembering Jess’s face when I waved the flimsy results slip under her nose. ‘Only five marks short of an A in sociology.’

  Philip smiled too, as if he was sharing my triumph, but I thought I should probably be more cool. Probably he and all his friends had brilliant A-levels.

  ‘What did you do at university?’ he asked.

  ‘A social work diploma.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I thought I could make a difference to kids like me.’ I paused. ‘Cheesy, huh?’

  He didn’t deny it, grinned again. ‘What did you do when you graduated?’

  ‘I wanted to work in residential care. I took a post in a secure unit.’

  ‘Young offenders?’

  ‘Mostly. Or kids who were very disturbed. Likely to harm themselves or other people.’

  I expected another facetious comment, but none came.

  ‘I loved it. Every day was different and challenging. I thought I was getting through to them. I thought I was developing some sort of relationship.’