Ann Cleeves - Burial of Ghosts

I turned and plodged out towards the shore. I could hear him following but I didn’t look round. I wrung out my dress, then sat on a flat boulder and spread it out to dry. His shadow appeared and I looked up. His hair had a hint of red and there were freckles on his nose.

‘I’ll be the only person in my class without a dad.’

I could have told him he was lucky, that I’d never even known my father, but I didn’t. He deserved his own time of self-pity.

‘Bummer,’ I said.

‘Fucking bummer.’ He sat beside me and put his head in his hands. I pretended not to notice and threw pieces of shingle at a target rock a little way off. I was a crap shot. He hit it first time.

‘Who’s your meeting with?’

‘Mr Howdon.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘Work probably.’ It could have been true.

‘Oh yeah, you work with him, don’t you?’

I didn’t answer and he didn’t seem to find any contradiction between that story and my account of having met his father in Morocco.

‘What work did your father do?’ I wasn’t daft. I’d worked it out from the eavesdropped conversation, but I wanted to hear the details.

‘Don’t you know?’ He couldn’t believe my ignorance.

I shook my head.

‘He had his own programme on the television. Only BBC 2, but still…’

‘I don’t watch much telly.’

‘He designed gardens for rich people,’ Dickon said. ‘He didn’t do the digging or the weeding. Just the fun bits. That’s what he told me. He went all over the world. That’s why he wasn’t here much until he got ill.’ He chucked a piece of shingle with full force onto the rock. ‘I was pleased when he was ill. At first. He had more time for me. When he had to stay in bed we played Jenga.’

The tide was coming in quickly now, seeping under the twisted strands of footprints, flattening them from below. I looked at my watch.

‘I’d better go. Mr Howdon will be cross if I’m late.’

‘I hate Mr Howdon,’ Dickon said. Quietly. Not showing off and demanding attention like with the other comments.

‘Why?’

‘I think he’s horrible to my mum.’

I didn’t pry. It was none of my business. He’d tell me if he wanted. He didn’t.

‘Will you show me the quickest way back to the house?’

He didn’t answer but he dusted the sand from his feet and put on his socks and shoes. I followed him back up the track. When the house was in sight he gave me a wave and ran on, too fast for me to follow.

At the house Stuart Howdon was waiting for me. The crowd had thinned. A stream of people were making their way down the drive towards the village. I looked round for Dickon but didn’t see him. The solicitor was clearly impatient. He seemed grumpy and harassed. He didn’t bother any more to smile.

‘I don’t think we should talk here. I’ll take you to my office. No need to say goodbye to Joanna. I’ve explained I have to go back to work.’

He bundled me into his fat, black car as if I were a mad relation causing a scene at a family party. It was obvious that he regretted asking me to the funeral. I thought I might look slightly scruffy with my damp, stained skirt, but hardly mad. He drove very quickly down country lanes, taking bends too fast, braking suddenly at junctions. I wondered if he was quite sober. The road between Wintrylaw and Morpeth was obviously familiar to him.

In Morpeth it was late afternoon and shoppers were making their way home. There was a queue of cars in the main street, waiting to cross the narrow bridge south over the river. I had a sense of returning to the real world which left me depressed. It was like coming back to Newbiggin after my holiday in Morocco.

Howdon’s office was in a smart terrace close to the library. There was a highly polished brass plate beside the door and a yard at the back with his name painted on the cobbles to mark his parking place. In reception a bored young woman quickly hid a magazine. She didn’t seem pleased to see us. I guessed she’d been planning to finish the article on holiday flings, then to slope off home early.

‘Tea please, Penny,’ he said. ‘Then you can leave us to it. I’ll lock up.’

‘Yes, Mr Howdon.’ She flashed a quick and grateful smile.

The tea arrived very quickly. Howdon was still making himself comfortable. He’d taken off his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair. There were patches of sweat on his shirt which made his back look like a map of the world. A leather-topped desk spread between us. Penny already had her bag over her shoulder and immediately after she left Howdon’s room I heard the outside door slam shut. The building was quiet. It seemed we were alone.

‘Where’s Mr Smith?’ I asked.

‘He died three years ago. There are a couple of junior partners…’ He caught himself being civil to me and scowled. ‘But that’s not really relevant. I’ve always dealt with Philip and Joanna’s business personally.’

‘I don’t understand what any of this has to do with me.’

‘Nor do I!’ Perhaps he felt he’d betrayed his feelings too obviously, because he continued in a more measured voice. ‘Philip had some strange ideas, especially towards the end. But I’ve taken advice. I don’t think we can contest their legality.’

He poured tea from a tarnished silver pot and lifted my cup and saucer so it was standing on the desk in front of me. As he stretched forward I smelt stale alcohol. It seemed to ooze from his pores. His hands were slender for such a big man, the fingers flexible. He lifted a sugar lump towards his own cup using a pair of old-fashioned tongs, dropped it, then watched the ripples in the liquid, mesmerized for a moment.

‘Mr Samson made me his executor,’ he went on formally. ‘He left instructions concerning you.’

‘If it’s money I don’t want it.’ Suddenly I was very angry. Not at Stuart Howdon, but with Philip. Had he thought I’d slept with him for what I might get out of it? ‘How did he trace me anyway?’

‘He was a magistrate,’ Howdon said smoothly. ‘Many of his friends were police officers. I imagine it wouldn’t have been difficult…’

The rugby players, I thought. Some of them looked like cops. And no doubt they’d told him about the court appearances, that time in Blyth…

‘I don’t want his money,’ I said again. It upset me terribly that Philip had changed his opinion of me after hearing those stories. He hadn’t believed I could make it on my own, so he’d left me a tacky little reward in his will. He’d died thinking I was pathetic. Irrational anger bubbled up in my stomach again and spread to my hands. I wanted to slap Howdon’s smug face. I imagined the finger marks slowly fading like footprints in the wet sand at Wintrylaw. Instead I kept my voice reasonable. ‘It should all go to his children.’

‘It’s not quite that simple.’ Howdon lifted his cup, wet his lips, set it back on the saucer, then paused. ‘Look, perhaps I should just read the instruction left to me by Philip. As I’ve explained, it’s witnessed and it’s legal, but you’re under no obligation to undertake his commission. As far as I’m concerned it would be better all round if you didn’t. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that. It’s Joanna and the children I’m concerned about in all this…’

I remembered Dickon’s words: ‘I hate Mr Howdon…’ It was hard to take the fat solicitor’s concern seriously. Why had he made such an impression on the boy? He opened a drawer in his desk, removed an A4 envelope, then shook out a sheet of typescript.

‘“To Lizzie Bartholomew of Sea View, Newbiggin, I leave £15,000, £10,000 as a gift to establish and equip an office for her self-employment…”’