Ann Cleeves - Burial of Ghosts

The kitchen floor was still tacky underfoot where it had been mopped. There was a smell of disinfectant. In a corner a washing machine grated and churned. The rest of the house seemed quiet. I looked out into a long corridor. At one end was the front door, at the other the big room where the kids played pool and watched television. The hum of the washing machine seemed a long way off and there was something unsettling about the silence. It wasn’t natural, like a school in the holidays or a pub before opening time.

If the girls were in the house, where would they be? I left the safety of the kitchen and moved down the corridor towards the common room. There were other closed doors on the way and I listened at each one. Nothing, not even the shuffle of papers or the clunk of a keyboard. The common room was empty. It was a gloomy, shabby room with a smell of stale smoke, but the woman I’d seen in the kitchen had been there too. It was tidy. The carpet had been hoovered and the pool cues lay in line on the table, the magazines piled, edges together, on a veneered coffee table.

I remembered the startled faces of the girls as Dan had led me on his conducted tour of the house. They hadn’t been here, with the other kids. They’d been peering out of their room on the first floor. I thought that’s where they’d be now. I imagined them hiding out there, bored and scared, listening to the alien sounds of a world they didn’t understand.

I ran up the stairs and along the first-floor landing. I’m not sure what prompted the hurry, the sudden sense of urgency. The fear of more bodies, more blood? I was still tormented by the thought that if I’d not put off my visit to Thomas’s, if I’d not drunk coffee that morning, I might have reached him while he was still alive. All the time I was trying to get my bearings, to remember the only time I’d seen the girls who looked so similar that they could be twins, the glimpse through the door just before it closed. When I found it I recognized it immediately. A wide door, painted pale yellow, next to a fire extinguisher and a sign pointing to the emergency exit. I knocked. There was no answer. I listened but heard nothing and knocked louder.

‘It’s all right.’ A whisper, but in this silence it seemed to echo. ‘I just want to talk to you. I’m a friend.’

I turned the door handle and pushed. It caught for a moment on a shred of frayed carpet, then opened. No one. No blood-spattered walls, no cowering girls. No sign that they’d ever been there. The beds had been stripped. The duvets were neatly folded on top of the pillows. There were no clothes in the wardrobe and, though I searched the drawers, under the bed and in the bathroom, there was nothing which might give me an identity or a clue to where they’d gone.

I went back onto the landing and shut the door behind me. The anticlimax had left me washed out, so when I heard the front door open and voices in the hall below me, the response wasn’t fear but a petulant irritation. I just wanted to go home.

‘I really think we should tell them.’ It was Dan, the tone wheedling, as if this was an argument which had been going on for a long time. He was in it for the long haul.

‘No.’ It was Nell, sharp and assertive. That confidence again, which made me want to weep with envy. If I’d spoken to Dan like that, would he have cared more about me? ‘Not yet. There’s too much to lose.’

‘But if you’re right…’

‘I don’t know if I’m right. It’s a guess, speculation. When I know I’m right we can come to a decision.’

I could have wandered down the stairs. Hi, you two. I was just looking for you. I could have asked them what the row was about. I could have asked them where the Romanian girls had moved on to. But I was still shaking and drained, and I couldn’t face them yet. I didn’t want to explain what I was doing there. I waited until I heard them go into the kitchen, the water filling the kettle, the click as it was switched on. I hurried down the stairs and slipped out into the street.

I’d parked my car at the end of the road, tucked behind a brewery lorry which had been delivering to the hotel on the corner. I got in but I didn’t drive straight home. Although the lorry had moved away I didn’t think the car would be recognized from Absalom House and I sat there and waited, going over the girls’ disappearance, slowly becoming more relaxed. It was lunchtime. A few lads wandered past, sharing a bag of chips, but they were in school uniform and they didn’t go towards the hostel. I didn’t care. Perhaps because I could convince myself that this was a purposeful activity, the restlessness had gone.

I’d started to doze when Nell and Dan came out. Dan pulled the door tight behind him. Neither of them looked towards me. I waited until they’d reached the end of the road before getting out of the car. I was stiff and sleepy. It seemed an effort to go after them.

The town was busy. There were holidaymakers and daytime shoppers – workers on their lunch hour, elderly couples, women with babies. Outside the pubs lads with bare chests sat on the pavement and drank too much lager from plastic glasses. And everywhere kids, shirts out, ties off, queuing outside the bakeries and chip shops. My mind wandered. I was still half asleep. Why didn’t Nell spend more time at school? Perhaps once the exams were finished the sixth-formers weren’t expected back. What were her plans? At the same age, the summer after A-levels, Kay Mariner had become pregnant with Thomas. But Nell was too canny for that. I tried to focus on the couple as they made their way through the crowd. Now I’d started on this, I didn’t want to lose them. They walked slowly, hand in hand, as if they were killing time. I just followed. I had no plan of action. I was killing time too. Perhaps jealousy had something to do with it. They were so obviously happy that I took a perverse pleasure in watching them. It was like scratching a midgy bite or sticking your tongue in a loose filling.

They stopped to buy a Big Issue from a guy outside Woolworths. I’d noticed him there before. He was one of the cheerful ones who put their heart and soul into selling, but I’ve always felt awkward around the Issue sellers since that time in Blyth and I looked away. When I turned back Nell had seen me and was waving. They seemed friendly and unsuspecting and I felt a bit of a rat for snooping round Absalom House and then following them here.

‘We meet again,’ I said.

‘We were just going for something to eat,’ Dan said. I couldn’t tell if he wanted me around. At least he didn’t ask what I was doing in Whitley.

‘Lizzie’ll come, won’t you, Lizzie?’

Nell put her arm through mine. It was a long time since I’d had such intimate physical contact, but I didn’t like it. It reminded me of the time I was arrested as a kid and the policewoman put her arm around my shoulder, then pushed my head to get me into the cop car. But I let Nell pull me along.

They took me down an alley through a hole in a rank of shops towards the sea. I’d never been down there before. There were high walls on either side, so we were in shadow, and the path was so narrow that Nell and I scarcely had room to walk side by side. Beyond one wall there was a garden. I could see the tops of apple trees. Despite the crush, Nell didn’t let go of my arm. She was wearing cropped black trousers and a thin batik top in purples and pinks; the sleeves were rolled back to her shoulders, which were very brown. Her skin was warm and she smelled of sandal-wood. I think she and Dan continued talking to each other, but I don’t remember what was said. I was feeling uncomfortable, trapped and panicky, and I had to concentrate on not letting it show.