Mark Pearson - The Killing Season

In the moonlight its jagged, broken walls and remaining windows took on a sinister presence more suited to Halloween than to Guy Fawkes Night.

Siobhan had gripped my hand tightly as we had walked past the ruin and still held it firmly as we walked down the pathway that was lined with tall hedges and trees on both sides.

Siobhan was holding a torch and she swung its bright beam back and forth as we walked over the wet ground. I was wearing steel-capped leather boots but the girls had Hunter wellingtons in blue and pink respectively. Kate had tried to buy me a pair in green but I had drawn the line at that. I may have agreed to sell the Saab, but there was no way on God’s green Earth that I was going to join the flat-cap-and-wellies brigade.

It seemed odd to be going out and celebrating, given all that had happened. But Kate had insisted. Saying it would be good for Siobhan to get back into her normal routine as quickly as possible. She had heard some of what had happened, but I was being cast as the hero of the hour and she was happy with that. I hadn’t been a hero at all, of course: I’d stumbled my way to the truth like a blind man crashing through the hedges in a maze.

But Kate was right. Susan Dean’s body had not been found. Might never be found, nor that of Carter the dentist. But a line had been drawn under everything with the death of William Solomon Green. Both Harry Coker and I had both determined on the beach that the fall had killed him, and he had missed the night for coming back from the dead by five days.

There were other torches throwing dancing beams in the darkness and the sound of happy children laughing and joking, excited about the entertainment ahead.

There had been some talk of cancelling the event but the town had resisted it. Sheringham has a strong, closely knit community: they had been visited by a terrible sequence of evil events but they had weathered that storm, just as they had withstood the Nazi threat all those years ago, and now they were coming together as a community to celebrate their survival.

At the end of the footpath we came onto the coast road, and had to cross it and recross it to Cookie’s field where the main celebrations were taking place.

The field was abuzz with happy chatter, and all eyes turned to us for a moment or two as we appeared. The conversations were whispered but there was no mystery about the subject of them. I headed towards the hog roast and joined the queue, leaving Kate with Siobhan to chat with some friends that she had met at Elaine’s hen night. That seemed a lifetime away now, but in fact was just a week or so ago.

As I stood in the line I smiled disarmingly at those who threw me curious glances and after a while they stopped. Which was fine with me. Despite what Susan Dean had accused me of being — I was no showboater.

As I got to the front of the queue and placed my order Harry Coker came up to me.

‘Make that four, Jack.’

I nodded at the serving lady who set about filling the bap rolls with sweet and succulent pork.

‘Least I owe you, Harry.’

‘No, it’s not. You found the guy, Jack. You stopped the madness.’

‘Still no word on the super?’ I asked

‘No. Wherever she is, he took that secret with him to the grave. Albeit a watery one,’ he added.

We walked over to join the girls and handed round the hog roast baps. I took a bite. Norfolk in a bun.

Harry Coker had eaten half of his before I had swallowed my first bite. He nodded at the smaller beacon bonfire, as yet unlit, that was standing out in clear silhouette on top of Beeston Bump.

‘Solly Green may have been a mad, murdering miserable wretch of a human being. But he knew how to build a bonfire.’

Siobhan looked up and asked me jokingly, ‘Are they going to burn the Carnival Queen again?’ she asked.

I laughed. ‘No, darling, they don’t do that any more,’ I said. ‘They banned that back in the 1970s.’

I looked up at the skyline again, at the snaking column of torch-bearers who were wending their way up the hill to light the beacon bonfire.

‘Burn in hell,’ Solly had said. ‘Burn in hell.’

‘Shit!’ I said, throwing my half-eaten hog roast to the ground and sprinting towards the hill.

Once again I was glad that I had started doing morning runs. Once again I could feel my lungs pumping more oxygen into my bloodstream. Once again I could feel the heat in my thighs and the burning pain as I pushed myself harder to beat the procession of torch-bearers before they reached the bonfire.

I lost.

I charged up over the crest of the hill but the torches had already been set. The flames flickering and growing higher, stirred into crackling life by the breeze that had stiffened. Dancing towards the guy that been propped up in the middle of the bonfire.

I didn’t stop, just charged straight through the flames, grabbed the guy and kicked my way through the piled wood to the other side of the blaze.

The horrified spectators stared at me as if I was mad.

But the weight of the figure told me that it was no stuffed dummy. I laid it gently on the ground and then removed the grotesque mask on the front of its head. Someone in the crowd screamed, shattering the shocked silence.

It was the body of Susan Dean. Her eyes were closed and her face was the colour of milk-white marble.

It’s not just the smell, it’s the light in hospitals that I hate. It is a cold, unnatural and artificial light. There seems to be nothing of healing in it.

I was standing with Kate, holding her hand. Beside us stood Helen Middleton. Looking down at the still form of Ruth Bryson, Helen’s long-dead brother’s fiancée. It had been seventy-three years since Ruth had seen the man she would have married. Maybe she was seeing him now.

The line on the monitor showed flat. The doctors and the nurses had fussed with various pieces of machinery and had silenced it. The silence hanging in the room now felt like a physical thing. They had removed the drips and oxygen tubes and had left Helen a few moments to say her goodbyes to the woman who should have been her sister-in-law.

She turned to us with tears in her eyes.

‘She used to work for us once, you know.’

‘You and your husband?’

‘No. Long before that. For my parents. When I was about sixteen or seventeen. She used to bring Solly with her sometimes to the house while she was cleaning.’

‘A long time ago.’

‘A lifetime ago, inspector. Would have been in the late 1940s, early 1950s maybe. Not sure exactly when. But she needed the money. Times were hard back then. That was proper austerity. Rationing still in place. People suffered badly. Not us, of course. We had money. Mother fired her.’

‘Why?’ asked Kate.

Helen Middleton laughed, but it was a bitter sound. ‘For nothing, really. She broke a plate, part of a dinner service. Spoiled the set. And so she was flung out on her ear. She was only a poor young woman, had a child to care for and couldn’t even read and write. I didn’t even think anything of it at the time. I was too busy with school, and thinking about university and my social life.’

‘You were a young woman too, Helen,’ Kate said kindly. ‘None of this is any of your fault.’

‘I just wished she’d have come to us. If we had known about her son. . but how could we?’

‘I know.’

‘Can you give me a few minutes on my own, please?’

We walked away, leaving her to sit beside her dead brother’s love. Taking her dead hand and holding it without saying a word.

‘Why didn’t she let people know?’ Kate asked me.

I shrugged. I had got quite good at that during my years in the job. ‘She was under age, a Catholic, and she was probably worried that they would take the baby away. That the love of her life would be branded a monster. She went away and came back and got on with her life as best she could.’