Simon Beckett - The Restless Dead

That got a response. He slowed to a halt, and now I could see what Rachel meant about him being agitated. I didn’t feel any threat from him but he looked like a skittish animal, on the verge of bolting.

‘What lights were they, Edgar?’

His mouth worked noiselessly. He seemed calmer but still avoided eye contact, looking around as though searching for a way out. Behind him, I saw Rachel get out of the car. She came over, leaving the engine running.

‘Hi, Edgar,’ she said easily. ‘Can you tell us where you saw the lights?’

His eyes darted to the side. ‘In the water.’

‘ In the water? Do you mean they were on the water, like a boat?’

‘In the water.’

Rachel glanced at me, and again I knew we were thinking the same thing. ‘Were they car headlights, Edgar? Was it a car you saw?’

The pallid head bobbled in a nod.

‘When did you see them?’ I asked. Headlights wouldn’t last long underwater without shorting out. If he’d seen Stacey Coker’s car, he must have been there when it went into the creek, or very soon after.

Edgar didn’t answer. His eyes darted around again. Rachel briefly touched my arm, indicating that I should let her question him.

‘It’s all right, Edgar. Nobody’s cross, we just want to hear about the lights. Who was in the car?’

He pressed his bony hands together, clasping them flat between his legs as though in inverted prayer. ‘I saw her hair.’

Rachel hesitated, confused. ‘Whose hair?’

‘Like sunshine.’

I looked to see if Rachel was making any sense of this. She gave a helpless shrug. ‘Was there a girl in the car, Edgar? A blond girl, is that what you mean?’

‘It wasn’t her.’ His agitation was growing. He started shuffling forward. ‘Got to go.’

Rachel gently reached out her hand. ‘Please, Edgar, it’s important. There was a girl in the car, wasn’t there? Tell us what happened to her.’

‘No, I didn’t...’

He stumbled forward again but Rachel didn’t move. ‘Was she hurt?’

Edgar was rocking from foot to foot, misery and tension written all over him. ‘She’s asleep. I’ve got to go...’

‘Asleep where? Where is she, Edgar? At your house? Did you take her to your house?’

But Edgar had done talking. Rain dripped from the end of his nose as he stood with his head bowed. He was soaked through, and Rachel and I weren’t much better.

‘Come on, let’s get him home,’ I said.

I thought we might have difficulty getting him into the car, but after a moment’s resistance he came along meekly enough. The inside of the Land Rover filled with Edgar’s smell as he huddled in the back seat, dripping wet and hunched over like a living question mark.

‘I don’t know what to think,’ Rachel said, putting the car into gear. She switched on the radio, letting incongruous beat-heavy music mask our voices from the man behind. She turned a knob on the dashboard until it was replaced by a calming piano. ‘When he said “It wasn’t her.” It didn’t sound like he was talking about Stacey.’

I glanced into the back seat, trying to decipher some meaning from Edgar’s words. ‘Was his daughter blond as well?’

‘You mean what he said about hair like sunshine? I’ve no idea, I just know she’s supposed to have gone missing. But that was years ago, and she’d have been a little girl. He can’t have thought Stacey was her, could he?’

I was at a loss, but something about this made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I’d seen enough of Edgar to know he was acting strangely, even by his standards. He wasn’t just upset, he was frightened. Frightened enough to be heading away from his house on a filthy night like this.

Whatever had happened, it was bad.

The windscreen wipers beat across the glass with a metronomic squeak as I took out my phone. Rachel looked across as I dialled.

‘Who are you calling?’

‘Lundy.’

Or trying to, at least. The signal fluttered teasingly and then died. I kept trying as Rachel drove through the dark Backwaters, slowing to bump over a timbered bridge, then accelerating through muddy puddles that filled the road. I was glad Rachel had insisted on coming with me. The Land Rover was built for these sorts of conditions, and I’d never have found my way around here on my own.

I still hadn’t managed to get through to Lundy by the time Rachel turned off the lane. We drove down a rutted track flanked by overgrown brambles. It ended at a ramshackle old house, and when I saw it the sense of foreboding I’d been feeling intensified. It was in darkness, a tall but ill-proportioned brick cottage with cracked and boarded-up windows. Large old trees surrounded it, hemming it in behind gnarled trunks and dead branches.

Rachel turned off the engine. For a few moments only the sound of rain on the car roof broke the silence, then she turned round in her seat to face Edgar. He hadn’t moved during the journey, and showed no sign of wanting to do so now.

‘Here we are, Edgar. Home.’ There was no response. ‘Come on, don’t you want to go inside?’

He shook his head, wrapping his arms around himself. Rachel gave me a worried glance before turning back to him.

‘Why not? What’s wrong?’

Edgar hugged himself tighter, burrowing his chin on to his neck to avoid looking at the darkened house.

‘I think he should stay here,’ I said quietly, looking at the dark house. ‘Do you have a torch?’

There was one on my phone but it wasn’t very bright, and I’d feel happier keeping my phone free anyway. Rachel rummaged in the cluttered storage compartment and produced a heavy rubberized flashlight. I didn’t say anything when she got out of the car with me. I knew I’d be wasting my breath, and I didn’t want to leave her alone with Edgar anyway. I was going to suggest locking the Land Rover while we went inside, but she didn’t need to be told. If Edgar noticed the clunk of the doors locking, or realized what it meant, he gave no sign.

Without the car headlights, it was pitch black outside. The rain had almost stopped but the wind still gusted petulantly, making the unseen leaves and grasses whisper all around. When I turned on the torch, its beam threw a shaft of light across a tangle of briars and weeds. Rachel shivered as I shone it on to the dark house.

‘God, I really don’t want to go in there. Do you think we should?’

I didn’t want to either, but I didn’t see that there was any choice. Something had scared Edgar out of his house, and if there was even a small chance that Stacey Coker was inside I couldn’t ignore it. Or wait until the police arrived. If he’d brought her back here she must be seriously hurt, or she’d have contacted someone by now. And Edgar’s words still rang in my head.

She’s asleep .

‘Wait here. I’m going to take a look inside,’ I told Rachel. There was probably no need to speak quietly, but I did anyway.

She gave a nervous laugh, keeping her voice low as well. ‘Yeah, I’m really going to stand out here by myself.’

I shone the torch around the overgrown garden as we made our way to the front door. The beam picked out a series of objects in the grass. Shells, rocks and pieces of driftwood stuck up from the ground at irregular intervals. I thought they’d been left randomly until I saw an oyster shell protruding from a new-looking mound of soil, and realized what it was.

‘Edgar’s patients,’ Rachel said.

The ones that didn’t get better, at least. As I moved the torch a pair of gleaming eyes shone back at me from the darkness. An owl blinked at us from inside what looked like an old rabbit hutch. The bird and animal cemetery disappeared into the darkness as I shone the torch back towards the house.