Grave Doubts (16 page)

He circled the attack in Telford, the first and third in Birmingham, and the second and third in Harlden where there had been extensive violence. The women involved had spent time with their attacker beforehand in a pub or club and were then taken home. That suggested a highly confident, socially well-adjusted individual. In the other Harlden and Birmingham crimes, the interaction had been limited.

He went home, ate a decent meal and looked in on his sleeping children, feeling guilty. By six the next morning he was awake, sweaty from a forgotten dream, and forced himself to wait until the children were up so that he could serve them a hurried breakfast before leaving. On his way to the station just before eight o’clock, he called Telford.

A bemused constable in CID heard him out, repeated back a faithful transcript of his message and said that he would pass it on. Telford rang him back at noon. A detective explained that they’d had a spate of sexual assaults that coincided with the dates Fenwick had given him but nothing that matched the crimes Harlden were interested in. Fenwick rang off feeling disappointed and tried to return his concentration to the rest of his caseload but his mind kept wandering to Nightingale’s ransacked flat. Perhaps it had been an act of random violence and the stalker was a freak who had become obsessed with the trial. He could identify with obsession. By the end of the day he had almost persuaded himself that Quinlan was right and that he was just being fanciful. The thought brought him no comfort.

Driving was exhausting, or rather it would be fairer to say that driving down to the West Country through a three-day rainstorm had been one of Nightingale’s less sensible ideas. She took her time, breaking her journey in remote yellow-stoned villages and avoiding the motorways. When she reached Dorset she sent Emails to her brother and Sergeant Cooper explaining that she had left on a long holiday far away.

She had pledged never to replay her final conversation with Fenwick again and concentrated on her driving. This flight from her previous life was about more than him, but the absence of his presence was the most significant aspect of her journey so far. Instead of experiencing renewed freedom, she was oppressed by a sense of emptiness. Some lines by Keats kept circling in her mind:

Then on the shore / Of the wide world / I stand alone, and think / Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

They made her think that the only thing standing between existence and oblivion was her own force of will. If she once stopped moving she might cease to be, but she was exhausted with the effort. She was in need of R&R and where better to relax than in the depths of ancient Britain. Her father had insisted that his family came from Celtic stock, a romantic notion that Nightingale thought unlikely given their name. What she couldn’t deny was that he came from an old Devonshire family. His sister had lived and died here, in the family farm built around their original mill.

Aunt Ruth had been Nightingale’s favourite relative and she had cried for a whole day when she died suddenly in her forties. She left the farm to Nightingale’s father. Inevitably, he had willed it to his son along with every other scrap of property, save a small annual income for Nightingale. She would never starve, but she was hardly rich. The lack of a fortune did not matter to her, but the careful measuring out in monetary terms of her value to her mother and father hurt deeply. On their deaths they had confirmed what she had always suspected, that she counted for very little.

As she peered through the windscreen and rain, she started to look out for signposts. Mill Farm was in the woods, set back from the wild north Devon coast. No one would think to look for her here. Only Simon and Naomi knew of the farm and they thought it uninhabitable. She drove past Okehampton and expected to see familiar landmarks but the road layout had changed and she passed through an unfamiliar landscape. On a side road deserted of traffic, she saw a small grey church, dripping disconsolately beside a cluster of giant yews. It looked familiar. An elderly man was walking along the road towards her, head down against the Devon rain. She drew alongside him and spotted a white flash of dog collar beneath his coat.

‘Excuse me, could you give me directions to Mill Farm please?’

He turned round, head still bent and took a step closer to the car, a hand cupped around his ear. She repeated her question, feeling guilty for sitting in the dry whilst he waited in the rain. There was no doubt that he had heard her this time, but instead of answering, he stared at her intently. The rain matted the cashmere of her sleeve as she waited for a reply.

‘It’s a while since I was asked directions for Mill Farm. Are you family?’

She nodded.

‘A Nightingale then, well, well. You don’t look like your… aunt?’ He was fishing for information in exchange for his help.

‘I don’t have the typical family looks.’

‘True, but it’s odd, you remind me of somebody.’

‘Mill Farm?’ she repeated hopefully.

‘Yes, yes. I can take you there if you want. It’s hard to explain now that the sign’s fallen down. You’ll need to spare me a few minutes to check the church though. The Cubs are marvellous of course, but not always reliable and our insurance is void if the doors aren’t properly locked. You can pull in here.’

Rather than wait in the car, Nightingale found her umbrella and followed him down a gravel path, slippery with moss. The churchyard was crowded with ancient graves, headstones pressing upon each other and leaning out eagerly towards the path. Some plots had ornate crosses mimicking the old Celtic style, others were more traditional with rounded headstones from which the inscriptions had been erased by time and lichen.

Inside the church was dark and cold. Pale unlit candles on the altar glimmered like ghosts in the faint light from the narrow side windows, a silver crucifix glinted between them.

‘Good, everything’s off. We can go.’

‘You don’t want to check the vestry door?’

He muttered and shuffled off, leaving her alone in the dark. Goosebumps sprang up along her arms and she shivered. To distract herself she went to investigate one of the stained glass windows. Beneath it stood an extraordinary font. Carved from green-grey marble, the creatures in its relief seemed to spring to life from the stone. The quality of carving was almost freakish in its naturalism. She ran her fingertips over the nose of a fawn. The chill of the church made the nostrils feel wet and she twitched in shock. Despite the font’s sacred use it was one of the most pagan things she had seen.

The priest returned.

‘We can go, come on.’

He ushered her outside and pulled the door closed before walking away briskly.

‘Ah, excuse me.’ Nightingale hovered in the wooden porch. He turned round looking impatient. ‘The door? Does it need locking again?’

He almost flounced back and she had to turn her head to hide a smile. How many times had the Cubs been blamed for his forgetfulness?

‘This way, young lady. Come on. I haven’t all day.’

For an old man he walked fast and she broke into a jog to catch up. In the car their damp clothes steamed up the glass and she had to drive with the heater full on and windows cracked open.

‘Left!’ The priest thrust out his right hand, almost hitting her nose.

‘Left, left, come on!’ He gesticulated fiercely with his hand, suddenly caught sight of it and said without pausing, ‘indicate then, right just here, yes, up the hill.’

Nightingale changed down and eased her car onto the narrow track that ran between two stone posts. An iron gate lay in a ditch to the side of the road, smothered by ivy and brambles.

‘I think I know my way from here; can I take you back?’

‘It’s no trouble, come on.’ There was a sense of excitement about him. ‘I haven’t been up here for years, not since Ruth died.’

‘She was my father’s sister.’

‘Went mad and threw herself into the sea. Coroner called it accidental so I couldn’t avoid burying her by the church in the family plot. Pity. Strange woman. Ran in the family.’

At that moment Nightingale had to negotiate a string of potholes and a sharp bend so she had an excuse for her silence. She wasn’t so much shocked by his callousness as by the priest’s wholly unchristian attitude.

‘Maybe you should get out here if you really don’t need a lift home.’

‘Yes, I think I will and no, no lift, thank you. I take my constitutional whatever the weather. Come on unlock the door then. Oh, it is unlocked. The house is at the end of this track, two miles or so. Holy Communion is at eight on Fridays and Sundays. The main service is at eleven and there’s a prayer group at six. I’ll see you then.’

He was gone before Nightingale could reply, strutting off down the hill like an old crow. The car protested as she slipped it into first gear and the back wheels span in the mud until they caught and she lurched forward. After a mile the thick woodland started to clear and she could see another gateway ahead, this time bordered by a wall that disappeared off into the margin of the wood. One of the keys her brother had given her opened a rusty padlock on the gate. Beyond, the path dipped down to follow a fold in the hill and crossed a stream before rising again through a stand of rowan trees.

This part of the journey was familiar. The sudden descent, even on the sunniest of days, brought with it a chill of mystery. As a child she had felt that she was crossing into another world as they cleared the stream and had said as much once to her father. He had accused her of being fanciful and dismissed such feeble-mindedness with a customary wave of his hand but he had then grown expansive with his own memories.

‘It was a mill as well as a farm,’ he’d said. ‘Water powered the wheel. When I was a boy we had a bridge here, don’t need it now unless there’s a flood.

‘There’s a spring by the house, runs all year, the purest, cleanest water in the world. Until the Seventies it was just enough to keep the wheel turning but it doesn’t now. The mill was the original source of our money. There were so few in this part of the world. Family changed to retailing in the nineteenth century when we bought those shops and never looked back. Wouldn’t have had any money without the mill though. That’s why it’s so important.’

Nightingale smiled as she recalled her father’s words. It had been a long speech for him but then it had been about money and family, his favourite subjects. To Nightingale, Mill Farm hadn’t represented wealth but something far more important, security. Crossing the ford took her into a private place, cut off from the outside world, in which as a child she had felt happy.

Her Aunt Ruth had loved her as no one else ever had before or since. During the summers here her dreams had been filled with adventures in which floods or snows cut off the hill from the rest of the world, and she and her aunt had survived on food grown in the garden, fish from the sea and game in the forest. Week after week she walked in the hills, swam from the rocky beach or read her favourite books snuggled by the big green Aga on rainy days.

That same sense of adventure returned as the car crept forward, dipped into another fold in the hills and then climbed steeply up the final slope. Only a few miles behind, people huddled under umbrellas in busy towns but here it was as if they had ceased to exist.

The rain eased and she switched off the wipers. Ahead, the last of the saplings gave way to tall grass and thistles. Beyond them, as faint as smoke, was a hint of grey slate and her heart leapt. The roof came into view, then a badly pointed chimney, and at last, the farm. She drove over weeds and nettles, hearing brambles scratch at the paintwork of her car until she reached the front door. She turned off the engine; she was home.

A gust of wind splattered heavy drops of rain on the roof of the car, then there was silence. She stared at her house. One window on the ground floor was broken, another above the front door swung on its hinges. Birds had built their nests in the guttering and old swifts’ nests studded the walls under the eaves. There had been hollyhocks once and sunflowers in a perfect cottage garden. Now, a crop of dangerously green nettles fought with docks and a dog rose, showing pink-white petals among the remaining hips from last autumn.

A large iron key fitted neatly into the front door lock. It turned easily but the door held fast. In the end she slipped through the broken window into the musty flagstone hall, treading carefully over glass on the floor. The front door had been wedged shut with a chair, which she moved to one side. A flight of stairs rose up before her; the fireplace opposite held the skeleton of a large bird. Beyond, a passage led to the back of the house and the kitchen. At some point someone had camped out here. Most of the kitchen chairs had been broken up for fuel and an old mattress lay mouldering against the chimney wall. Despite the desolation she felt elated and went to explore the rest of the house.

Whoever had squatted had been selective in their invasion. The dining room with its enormous dark oak sideboard was untouched. With a smile that her aunt would have recognised, she skipped forward and pressed her fingers beneath the top. With a deft twist she released the lock of the secret draw and it sprang free. As a child she had been trusted with this most important confidence on condition that she promised never to look inside. She never had until now.

As she pulled the drawer open a small sigh escaped into the room. Inside, she found a bundle of correspondence tied in faded blue ribbon, a diary, a photograph and her aunt’s rosary. On top was a letter, written in her aunt’s sloping hand. With a chill that raised the hairs on her neck, she saw that it was addressed to her. It was as if the ghost of her aunt had been waiting for her to return all these years and she felt guilty that it had taken her so long. It was unthinkable to read the letter in the cold of the house so she took it back to the car, her new-found energy already drained by the discovery. But she had to read it; after all this time how could she ignore her Aunt’s words? She broke the seal on the envelope. Inside there were two handwritten pages.

My dear Louise,
[her aunt had always called her by her preferred name]
I doubt that I shall see you again and there is still so much I have to tell you. Firstly, you are a wonderful girl, never forget that.

You have special gifts, not least your intelligence, your warmth of spirit and your insight into human nature. Never let anyone persuade you that you are not creative because you are. I don’t know what form your creativity will take but it is there, it must be, because you are like your mother in so many other ways.

Nightingale stopped reading in surprise. She had thought that her aunt and her mother had barely tolerated each other.

After I’m gone, people will say a lot of unpleasant things about me but my love for you is strong and I shall be looking over you from where I go next.

I have been trying to decide these last few weeks, how much to tell you of matters I doubt you even suspect. You are too young to know the full truth and it would be unfair to your father to reveal what he should tell you himself. He made a promise to me once that he would speak to you when you come of age and I must trust to that.

But then I worry. What if he breaks his promise or forgets? So I have done the next best thing. In our drawer with this letter, you will find some of my diaries and letters. If you are clever enough, and I think you are, and when you are experienced enough, which you will be in a few more years, you will be able to work things out for yourself.