Blood Harvest

48

‘THANK YOU, I HAD A LOVELY TIME,’ SAID EVI.
Alice kissed Evi on her cheek and then reached up to do the same to Harry. Gareth was standing with his hand on the front door.
‘Al, have you seen my keys?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I’ve probably hidden them from you again in your jeans pocket,’ replied Alice, giving Harry a small hug.
‘They were hanging up,’ said Gareth. ‘Just next to yours. I have to leave at six.’
‘Better get looking, then,’ said Alice. She smiled at Evi. ‘My husband loses his keys on a daily basis,’ she said. ‘Often we find them on the roof of the car. Frequently, the garden wall. Even, on one occasion, in the butter dish.’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Gareth,’ said Harry, taking Evi’s arm as Gareth turned from the front door and disappeared inside the house.
‘Thanks again, Alice,’ he said. One last smile from Alice and then she closed the front door. Evi heard the sound of a key being turned as she and Harry walked down the drive.
Harry started the engine and reversed out of the drive into the lane. For a minute or two they drove in silence. It would take them twenty minutes to get home, twenty-five if the roads were busy, and at this rate they probably wouldn’t speak all the way there. Evi had been watching Harry’s reflection in the passenger window. She turned to face him. She had to find something to say, even something really lame.
‘They’re nice people,’ she said. Yep, that was pretty lame, even by her standards.
Harry stepped on the brake and the car slowed down. At the side of the road a lone sheep looked up lazily from the grass she was chewing.
‘Who are?’ said Harry, steering round the corner and picking up speed again.
‘The Fletchers.’
‘Oh yeah, sorry,’ he said, glancing at her. ‘I was thinking about something else. How did you find Tom tonight?’
Evi thought about it for a second. How had she found Tom? Still puzzling, was the honest truth.
‘Alice said she’d mentioned schizophrenia to you,’ said Harry, when she didn’t reply straight away. ‘Is it possible?’
‘Tom isn’t psychotic,’ Evi said. Harry had shaved that evening. She could see the small scars of a rash just above the collar of his coat.
‘What about these hallucinations?’ he said, glancing at her again. ‘Alice said he hears voices in his head.’
‘Actually, he doesn’t,’ she replied. ‘He doesn’t hear them in his head.’
Ahead of them they could see the headlights of another vehicle. Harry pulled over on to the grass verge, inches from the wall. They sat, waiting for the car to reach them. Now that he was looking directly at her, Evi was finding it hard to maintain eye-contact.
‘Tom’s voices, according to everything Alice has told me, come from outside of himself,’ she continued, dropping her eyes to the wooden trim of the dashboard. ‘They come from round corners, behind doors. And always from the same source. A young girl who he thinks is watching the family, whispering to them – to him, in particular – muttering scary, threatening things.’
The approaching car drew level, flickered its headlights at them and passed by. Harry released the handbrake and set off again.
‘He’s trying to prove to us that this weird little girl of his is real,’ said Evi.
‘How is he doing that?’ Harry asked. ‘Wait, don’t tell me. Has he been trying to take her photograph?’
Evi nodded. ‘He showed me over twenty shots he’d taken tonight. Five of them show a small, indistinct figure, huddling against stones.’
‘Who did he say it was?’
They turned another bend and caught sight of Heptonclough, already some way below them, twinkling in the dark like a city from a fairy tale.
‘He said he didn’t know,’ replied Evi. ‘That he hadn’t known anyone was there. He was lying, of course, the figure was the focal point of the shots. Tom would have had to know he or she was there. I suspect he’s got some friend of his to skulk around in the churchyard, pretending to be this girl. But the point is, it’s clever and it’s rational. It suggests to me he knows the little girl isn’t real but still needs us to believe in her. He deliberately takes pictures he knows will be ambiguous.’
‘So he didn’t actually claim it was the girl?’
Another bend, another glimpse of the dark landscape below.
‘No. He still hasn’t admitted her existence to me. So I couldn’t mention her either. I have to wait from him to do that. Why are we heading up the moor?’
‘Short cut,’ said Harry. ‘What if she is real?’
Evi thought for a second and then smiled at his profile. ‘According to his parents, Tom talks about this girl in terms that suggests she’s not human,’ she replied. ‘And, by the way, there are no short cuts across the moor. Are you kidnapping me?’
‘Yep,’ he said. ‘What about someone who looks unusual? Tom only sees her at night, from what I understand. He could be getting confused. What if there is someone who likes to hide, play tricks on people, maybe somebody a bit disturbed?’
They climbed higher and the darkness spread itself around them like a pool of black ink, flowing across the moors. From somewhere below a firework exploded. As the sparks died away, Evi could see the dark outline of trees against the sky.
She thought for a second and then shook her head. ‘Only Tom sees and hears her. Where are we going exactly?’
‘What if Gillian hears her?’
‘Gillian?’
‘Gillian hears her dead daughter calling to her. She swears it’s Hayley’s voice. Did she tell you that?’
Gillian had never told her that. No, she’d said, I never see her. Never see her?
Harry was slowing the car. He switched the headlights on to full beam and turned off the road. They were driving across the open moor now, along the faintest hint of a farm track. Ahead of them seemed to be … nothing.
‘She says someone comes into the flat,’ he continued, slowing to a crawl as the car began to bump and jolt over the uneven ground. ‘Someone moves things around, especially Hayley’s old toys.’
They’d reached a small open area of land. Harry switched off the engine and headlights. The sudden absence of noise was startling, the disappearance of light even more so. At her side, Harry became little more than silhouette and shadow, and yet, for some reason, it was even harder to look at him.
‘Gillian and Tom are my patients for a reason,’ said Evi. ‘They both have problems.’
He was moving – impossible not to catch her breath – but he only reached up to the car roof and unlocked it. The soft leather folded back and the night, shimmering with wood smoke and gunpowder, wrapped itself around her like a cool blanket. Above Evi’s head, the sky was the colour of damsons and the stars seemed to have moved a light year or two closer to earth.
‘Tell me when you get cold,’ he said, settling back into his seat. A second of silence and then: ‘What if I’ve heard her?’
She risked a proper look. ‘What?’ He was leaning back in his seat, hands behind his head, staring at the sky. Whatever he was about to tell her, it was something he wasn’t comfortable talking about.
The night air felt damp in Evi’s nostrils; rain wasn’t far away. A volley of violet stars hurled themselves into the sky, distracting them both for a second.
‘Your eyes are that colour,’ said Harry. ‘And, yes, I’ve heard voices too. Eerie disembodied voices, coming from nowhere.’
And he hadn’t thought to mention it. ‘When?’ she asked, pushing herself a little more upright in the seat. ‘Where?’
‘When I’ve been alone,’ he said. ‘Only in Heptonclough, though. Only in and around the church. I’ll bet Tom doesn’t hear his voices at school, does he?’
Evi leaned back again. ‘I need to think about that one,’ she said. ‘What are we doing up here, exactly?’
‘I found this spot a couple of weeks ago,’ said Harry, as he leaned forward to switch on the cassette player. It started to hiss as he pressed the Play button. ‘We’re about twenty yards from the edge of Morrell Tor, the highest spot on the moor. I promised myself I’d drive up here and watch the fireworks.’
He was nuts. And she had to stop smiling, she was just encouraging him. ‘You’re three days too early,’ she pointed out.
He turned to her, his arm sliding along the back of her seat. He was inches away. She could smell the beer he’d drunk at the Fletcher’s. ‘In three days I couldn’t have been sure of having you with me,’ he said. ‘Do you dance?’
‘Do I what?’
‘Dance. You know, move your body in time to music. I chose this track specially.’
Evi listened for a second. ‘Dancing In The Dark,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘My mum used to play this. Where are you …?’
Harry had climbed out of the car and was walking round the front of the bonnet. He held open her door and offered his hand.
Evi shook her head. Definitely nuts. ‘I can’t dance, Harry. You’ve seen me. I can barely walk by myself.’
As though he hadn’t heard, he reached across her to turn up the volume. Then he’d taken her by both arms and was lifting her out of the car. Evi opened her mouth to tell him it wouldn’t work, she hadn’t danced in years, they’d both end up sprawled on the ground, but with his arm wrapped tightly around her waist, she found she could walk quite easily across the few remaining feet of farm track and on to the rock of the Tor. He took her right hand in his, his other arm stayed round her waist to hold her up. His jacket wasn’t fastened. His hand felt like ice. Holding her tightly against him, he began to move.
The old-fashioned cassette player seemed to distort the music somehow, making the drumbeat louder, more insistent than she remembered. And it was ridiculously loud, they’d be able to hear it in the town … but impossible to worry about that, to think about anything but Harry, who danced like he was born to it, holding her up without effort, singing softly in her ear.
The wind blew her hair across his face, he tossed his head and pulled her into the curve of his shoulder and still they kept moving, swinging backwards and forwards in a four-time movement, on the hard rock of the Tor. And she’d thought she’d never dance again.
‘The singing, dancing priest,’ she whispered, when she sensed the track coming to an end.
‘Played in a band at university,’ said Harry, as the vocals faded and the notes of the saxophone curled out across the moor. ‘We used to do some Springsteen covers.’
The sax drifted away. Harry dropped her hand and wrapped both arms around her. She could feel the heat from his neck against her face. This was insane. She could not get involved with him, both of them knew that, and yet here they were, on what felt like the tip of the world, clutching each other like teenagers.
‘I’ve had a very weird day,’ he whispered, as a new track started.
‘Want to talk about it?’ she managed.
‘No.’ She felt a soft brushing on her neck, just below her ear, and couldn’t stop herself shivering.
‘You’re cold,’ he said, straightening up.
No, I’m not. Don’t let go of me.
He stepped back, one arm dropped away, he was taking her back to the car. She stopped him with a hand on his chest. ‘I’m not cold,’ she said. ‘Why are you a priest?’
For a second he looked surprised. ‘To serve the Lord,’ he replied, looking down at her, then up at the sky. ‘Was that rain?’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I need more than that. I need to understand what makes a man like you become a priest.’
He was still smiling but his eyes looked wary. ‘That’s a lot to ask on a first date. And that was definitely rain. come on, back in the car.’
She allowed him to lead her back to the passenger seat and hold the door open until she was sitting down again.
‘You said this wasn’t a date,’ she pointed out, as he joined her in the car and twisted round in the seat to refasten the roof in place.
‘I lied,’ he muttered, locking the hood and switching on the engine. Then he seemed to change his mind and switched it off again.
‘I never intended to become a minister,’ he said. ‘I come from a working-class family in Newcastle who weren’t churchgoers and it simply never occurred to me. But I was bright, I got a scholarship to a good school and I met some very impressive teachers. History was my thing, religious history in particular. I became fascinated by organized religion: its rituals, history, art and literature, symbolism – everything really. I did religious studies at university, not theology.’
She waited for him to go on. ‘What happened?’ she asked, when he didn’t. ‘You had a road-to-Damascus moment?’
He was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, he wasn’t comfortable talking about this. ‘Sort of,’ he said. ‘People kept telling me that I’d make a good priest. There was just this little problem of faith.’
The rain came from nowhere, thudding down on the soft roof of the car like small stones. ‘You didn’t believe?’ she asked.
He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I was almost there,’ he said. ‘I could tell myself that I believed in all the distinct parts, but they were still just a whole load of separate theories. Does that make any sort of sense?’
‘I think so,’ said Evi, although it didn’t really.
‘And then one day, something happened. I … saw the connection.’
‘The connection?’
‘Yep.’ The engine was on again, he was reversing away from the Tor’s edge. ‘And that is all you’re going to see of the inner man for one night, Dr Oliver. Fasten your seatbelt and prepare for take-off.’
They drove down the moor at a speed that had Evi wishing she believed in a deity she could pray to: for her own personal safety. She didn’t dare try to talk to him again, to say anything that might distract him. Besides, she’d just been ridiculously indiscreet. How could she tell herself she wasn’t involved with him, when she knew that the skin of his neck smelled of lime and ginger, and the exact point on his chest her lips would touch if she leaned towards him?
Within minutes of the rain starting, small streams were racing down the sides of the road. A quarter of an hour later, they’d left the moor and were depressingly close to her house.
‘So where do we go from here?’ asked Harry as he turned into her road.
‘I’m seeing Tom later this week,’ she said. ‘He seems to be relaxing more around me now. Maybe he’ll open up a bit. If he’d just admit the existence of—’ Harry had stopped the car outside her building.
‘I wasn’t talking about the Fletchers,’ he said, in a voice that seemed to have dropped an octave.
‘I should go,’ she said, bending down to find her bag. ‘I have an early start in the morning and … it was a good suggestion about tonight. Thank you, I think it will help.’ She turned her back on him and found the door handle, conscious of being watched. She was going to have to do this quickly, she could call goodnight over her shoulder as she walked up the path. It was a short path, hardly two yards to the porch.
The engine fell silent. Behind her, Harry’s door was opening. He was much faster than she was, he would make it round the car before she was even standing up. Yes, there he was, holding out a hand, and was there any point in telling him she could manage? Probably not, and in any event, this was a new Harry, with darker eyes and who seemed to have grown taller; a Harry who didn’t speak, whose arm was around her waist as he hurried her along the path, through the downpour, to the shelter of the porch. Definitely a new Harry, who’d turned her to face him, whose fingers were reaching into her hair and whose head was bending towards her as the world went dark.
Oh, this couldn’t be a kiss – this was a butterfly, bruising its wings against her mouth, settling lightly on the curve of her cheek, the point where the smile begins.
Was this a kiss? This soft stroking of the lips? This crazy feeling that she was being touched everywhere?
And this certainly couldn’t be a kiss, not now that she was spinning away into a place lined with dark velvet. Hands were tangled in her hair – no, one was at the small of her back, pressing her closer. The rain against the porch roof felt like drums in her head. Fingers stroked the side of her face. How could she have forgotten the smell of a man’s skin; or the weight of his body, pushing her against the wall of the porch? If this was a kiss, why were tears burning in the back of her eyes?
‘Do you want to come inside?’
Had she said that out loud? She must have done. Because they weren’t kissing any more, just close enough for it to make no difference and his breath was swirling around her face like warm mist.
‘There’s nothing I’d like more,’ he said, in a voice that was nothing like Harry’s.
The keys were in her pocket. No, they were in her hand. Her hand was reaching out for the lock; his was closing around it, slowing her down.
‘But—’ he said.
Why was there always a but?
He’d brought her hand back, was holding it to his lips. ‘We still haven’t done the pizza or the movie,’ he whispered. She could barely hear him above the rain.
And you are a priest, she thought.
‘And I really don’t want to rush this.’ He released her hand and tilted her chin upwards so that she was looking directly at him.
‘That’s rather sweet,’ she said. ‘And more than a little womanly.’
At that, Harry was back, grinning at her, scooping her up and holding her tightly against him. ‘There is nothing remotely womanly about me,’ he hissed into her ear, ‘as I fully intend to prove before too much longer. Now get inside, you baggage, before I change my mind.’
When the phone rang, Harry’s first thought was that he’d only just fallen asleep and that it would be Evi, asking him to come round. He turned over in bed, unable for the moment to remember which side the phone was on. You know what? Sod it. Sod the pizza, sod the movie, sod everything, he was going.
No, that side had the clock. It was 3.01 a.m. He turned over and reached out. He could be dressed in two minutes, at her place in ten. By 3.15 he could be …
‘Hi,’ he said, pressing the phone against his ear.
‘Vicar? Reverend Laycock?’ It was a man’s voice. An elderly man.
‘Yes, speaking,’ he said, his stomach cold with disappointment. He’d be going out after all, but not to a woman’s warm bed.
Someone was dying. Sex or death – the only reasons to call someone in the middle of the night.
‘Renshaw here. Renshaw senior. My son asked me to call.’
Tobias Renshaw, his churchwarden’s father, ringing him in the small hours?
‘My son apologizes for not calling himself, and for waking you, but I’m afraid you’re needed at St Barnabas’s straight away. You’ll see the police vehicles in the lane. When you arrive, you should make yourself known to Detective Chief Superintendent Rushton.’