Peter James - The House on Cold Hill

‘He’s as old as God, Morris is!’ Beeson said to Ollie with a grin, and loudly enough for the old man to hear, then turned towards him. ‘You’ve been here in the village — what — forty years, Morris?’

‘Forty-two it is, this Christmas,’ the old woman said.

Her husband nodded. ‘Aye, forty-two. We came down here because our son and his family moved here.’

‘Morris were engineer on the railways,’ she said, inconsequentially.

‘Ah,’ said Ollie, as if that explained everything. ‘Right.’

‘Don’t know of anyone like that,’ she said.

‘I’ll ask around for you,’ Beeson said to Ollie, helpfully.

‘Thank you. I’ll give you my home and mobile phone numbers — if you hear anything.’

‘If he lives anywhere around here, someone will know him.’

‘Old as God, did you say?’ the old man suddenly called out to Beeson. ‘I’ll have you know, young man...!’ Then he began chuckling.

Later that day, when Caro came home from work, Ollie again said nothing to her about the strange old man with the pipe.

Caro said nothing to Ollie about her encounter with Kingsley Parkin.

With Katy Perry belting out through the Sonos speaker, Jade sat at her dressing table, which doubled as her desk, doing her maths homework, and allowing herself — willing herself — to be distracted by just about anything. She hated maths, although at least her new teacher at St Paul’s made it more interesting than the dull one at her old school.

That, she had gleefully Instagrammed to all her old friends, was one very big plus of St Paul’s. No more annoying Mr G! God, he was so dreary. So — well — just so annoying .

Annnnnooooooyyyyyyyyinggggg! she typed out and posted beneath a photograph she had taken, surreptitiously, of Mr G in class some months ago, then pinged it to all her old schoolmates.

She put her iPhone back down on the table, then watched several ducks in the distance swimming in convoy across the lake, heading to their island sanctuary in the middle. Good, she thought. Smart ducks! Keep safe from the foxes overnight! As if reading her mind, Bombay suddenly arched her back, jumped down from the bed, walked over to the water bowl Jade kept up here for her, and began lapping at it.

‘I bet you’d like a duck if you weren’t so lazy, wouldn’t you, Bombers?’ She slipped off her chair, knelt beside the cat and began stroking her. Bombay nuzzled her head against Jade’s hand and started purring. ‘But I would not be happy about that, OK? No ducks!’

Her room was a lot straighter now, at least, with all of her things out of the boxes and on shelves or in cupboards. But she wasn’t entirely happy. She still felt too isolated from her friends. And Ruari wasn’t messaging her as often as he usually did. What was that about, she wondered, suspiciously? And although there seemed to be some nice people at St Paul’s, she’d not yet made any new friends. In fact, there were a couple of girls in her class who seemed quite bossy and rude.

She sat back at her desk and, instead of returning to her maths, opened up the Videostar app on her iPad and went to the current pop video she was making with Phoebe, which she hoped to complete at the weekend.

In the video, set to ‘Uptown Funk’, she and Phoebe, in matching zebra-striped onesies, were dancing, alternately in colour, then in black and white, then just in silhouette. She’d got the idea from some of the silhouette shows she had watched on YouTube. As the video progressed, they were to fade more and more into silhouette, but the idea was not yet coming across as she wanted.

Her phone rang. She froze the video, picked the phone up and saw it was Phoebe on FaceTime, her blonde hair hanging untidily over her face as normal in a ragged fringe.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey.’

‘Missing you, Jade!’

‘Me too. I wish I was back with you guys.’ Then she paused for a moment. ‘You know what — I was just watching the shadows. I think I’ve had an idea! We can do this over the weekend — I’ve—’

Phoebe frowned. ‘You’ve got a visitor,’ she said, suddenly.

‘That’s Bombay! She’s with me all the time, just like in Carlisle Road.’

‘Not the cat, your gran.’

‘Gran?’

‘Behind you!’

Jade felt a sudden icy chill and spun round. There was no one there. The door was closed. She shivered and turned back to her phone. Then she shot another wary glance over her shoulder.

‘Phebes, my gran’s not here today.’ She was conscious that her voice was shaking.

‘I saw her, honestly, Jade. The same lady that came in last week — last Sunday?’

‘Describe her?’

‘I could see her more clearly this time, she was closer, only a few feet behind you. All in blue, with a creepy old-woman face.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah!’

‘No, no, for real , Jade!’

Taking the phone with her, Jade walked over to the door, waited a moment, then pulled it open sharply. There was nothing there. Just the long, empty landing, with closed doors to the spare rooms, the door to her parents’ room some distance along, the stairs up to her father’s office in the tower at the far end, and the staircase down to the hall. ‘There’s no one here. Are you joking, Phebes? You’re trying to spook me out, aren’t you?’

‘Honest, I’m not!’

‘Whose idea is it? Yours? Liv’s? Lara’s? Ruari’s? Trying to freak me out for a prank?’

‘No, I promise you, Jade!’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘Hey!’ Ollie called out, immensely relieved to see the old man again. He was standing at the bottom of the drive between the entrance pillars, pipe clenched in his mouth, staring up at him, squinting against the intensely bright sunlight. Ollie ran the last few yards as if terrified the old man would walk off. ‘I’ve been trying to find you, but it’s not easy!’

‘No, well, it wouldn’t be,’ he said. ‘That’s for sure.’

He looked exactly as he had last week, with his rheumy eyes, his pipe and his gnarled walking stick.

‘I never got your name?’ Ollie quizzed him.

‘Oh, I like to keep meself to meself.’ He nodded with an almost sage-like expression on his face.

Ollie proffered his hand. This time the old man took it and shook it, weakly, with bony, clammy fingers. ‘I needed to come and find you again, Mr Harcourt, you see. There’s things you need to know about your house.’

‘That’s why I was trying to find you. I wanted to ask you more about what you told me last week. Would you like to come up and have a cuppa, or a cold drink?’

The man looked afraid suddenly and shook his head vigorously, almost in a panic. ‘Oh no, thank you, I don’t drink nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘I’m not coming up to the house. Not going near that place, thank you very much.’ He stared at Ollie levelly, his eyes filled with an almost immeasurable sadness. ‘I don’t know what to tell you, that’s the truth. I don’t know. Have you seen her yet?’

‘The lady ?’

‘Have you seen her?’

Ollie suddenly had the idea of taking a photograph of the man. If he showed a photograph, then someone would identify him.

He didn’t think the old man would give permission if he asked him straight out, so while they talked he sneaked a glance at his iPhone, which he was holding in his right hand, and swiped the camera symbol up with his thumb. Just as the old man appeared, blurrily, within the camera viewing screen, the phone rang. It was Caro.

Ollie couldn’t believe his luck!