Juliet Bell - The Heights - A dark story of obsession and revenge

‘Nits? That filthy gyppo brat’s got nits? Get him away from me.’ He shoved Heathcliff so hard, he almost fell over.

‘Stop it!’ Cathy jumped between them. ‘It’s me that’s got the nits, not him. Leave him alone.’

Mick stepped away. ‘Well, I ain’t gonna put that stuff in my hair. It stinks.’

‘You have to,’ Cathy said. ‘The nurse said so. Mum’ll make you do it.’

‘No, she won’t. She won’t make me do anything ever again.’ Mick spun away, kicked open the gate and walked out.

Cathy frowned. What did he mean by that? She looked towards the house. There was no light in the kitchen. Her mum should be cooking dinner by now. There was a light upstairs in Mick’s room, but it was the only one.

She was a little bit scared as she opened the back door.

The house was in total silence. She turned on the kitchen light and almost screamed when she saw her father sitting at the table. There was a beer can in his hand and two others lay on the table. That was wrong too. Her dad only ever drank one beer each night.

‘Dad?’

He looked up at her, and blinked a few times, as if he was struggling to remember who she was.

‘Ah. Cathy.’ His eyes moved past her. ‘And Heathcliff too. Um…’

Cathy glanced sideways at Heathcliff. He looked as frightened as she felt. She darted forward to stand at her father’s knee.

‘Daddy?’ she asked in a tiny, tiny voice.

‘Are you hungry, sweetheart?’ he asked. ‘I guess you both must be. I don’t think… I sent Mick here to ask your mum to get some food together. But he didn’t come back. I thought… But when I got here…’

‘Where’s Mummy?’

Her father put a hand on her head to comfort her, but it slipped away as if he didn’t have the strength to hold it there.

‘Your mother’s gone, Cathy.’

Cathy frowned. ‘What do you mean gone?’

‘She’s left. Gone away to live with someone… somewhere else.’

‘But she can’t just leave. She’s got to put stuff in our hair. Hers too. We’ve got to do what the nit nurse said.’ She was close to tears.

Her father shook his head slowly, as if he hadn’t really heard her. ‘It’s just us now.’ He ruffled her hair. ‘Cathy, you’re the woman of the house now. You have to do what’s needed. For all of us. You and me. Heathcliff too.’ He didn’t ruffle the boy’s hair, but he did try to smile at him.

‘And Mick too?’ Cathy said slowly.

‘Yes. Mick too.’ Her father didn’t sound so sure. ‘We’ll be fine, just us,’ he said. ‘Now, I need you to give me a few minutes, then we’ll think about dinner. Maybe get some fish and chips. Give me a few minutes…’

They left him there, sitting in the kitchen, which now seemed even emptier than before. Cathy didn’t think there would be any fish and chips. But that was all right. She had some chocolate bars stashed in her room.

At the top of the stairs, she was stopped by the sight of Heathcliff’s things, heaped at the back of the landing.

They stood side by side and stared for a few seconds.

‘I guess Mick won’t let me sleep in his room any more,’ Heathcliff said.

‘You can sleep in my room,’ Cathy declared.

‘Your dad won’t let me.’

‘He doesn’t have to know. Come on.’

Under Cathy’s direction, they set up the camp bed in the small space at the back of the landing. They put Heathcliff’s clothes in the bag he’d had with him the day he arrived and slid that under the bed.

‘See. Dad will think you’re sleeping there. Now, come with me,’

She took Heathcliff’s hand and led him through into her room. They sat on the bed together, while she doled out a supper of Mars bars. They didn’t say much, but when they had finished eating, they lay down side by side on the bed. Cathy’s hand found Heathcliff’s and their fingers entwined.

‘Everything will be all right,’ she said in a firm voice that might make it true. ‘Nothing will hurt us as long as we’re together.’

Chapter Six

2008

Even after all these years, the stone church was familiar. Lockwood had never been inside, but the police van had driven past it every day during the strike – taking Lockwood and his fellow officers to the mine head and the picket lines. He’d never paid it much attention. Looking at it now, he could see the rough texture of the stone, stained with generations of grime from the now-silent pit on the other side of the valley. St Mary’s was neither large nor impressive. Not even well-kept, it was a poor cousin to the clean, bright, Protestant church near the top of the town. This church, with its narrow windows and a roof sadly in need of repair, had served the miners since the young Queen Victoria sat on the throne. The rituals and sermons, the fire and brimstone, had been as much a part of their lives as the fire of the ironworks and the smell of gas in the dark and dangerous tunnels.

Lockwood had a more recent memory of the church. He’d seen a photo in the library archive yesterday. Not much happened in Gimmerton, so this particular funeral had been enough to capture the attention of the local newspaper. This funeral had been special. The deceased was a teenager. A seventeen-year-old boy. He’d been to the funerals of kids before. Standing discreetly outside or at the back of the church, looking to see who came, who was acting out of character. It was part of the job. Lockwood shook his head. He’d been a copper too long. Every case now seemed to remind him of the one before.

He dragged his thoughts back to the here and now. You couldn’t get the result you wanted every time. Nobody did, but he had a second chance with this one. He stared at the church, thinking back on the pictures of that funeral. Normally such a tragedy would be expected to bring a crowd of mourners to a church. Parents and grandparents. Schoolfriends and teachers. Maybe members of some sporting team.

There had been so few people in that photo. A priest and four anonymous pallbearers carrying a cheap coffin. As for the boy’s family, there had been just four of them, each standing slightly apart from the others. Not a family so much as a group of people whose lives had somehow all been linked through that dead boy. And the one furthest from the grave – that had been his father – Heathcliff.

Lockwood leaned on the rusty iron gate that looked across the churchyard and the ranks of graves, becoming ever more overgrown and neglected as they marched down the hillside. Were the answers to some of his questions to be found out there?

The gate creaked as he opened it.

The lawn nearest the church was mown, not neatly, but better than nothing. There were two recent graves, one with a little flash of colour still showing in the withered flowers that rested on them. He glanced at the headstones, but these were not the graves that had brought him here.

A very light rain was starting to fall. More mist than rain, it obscured Lockwood’s view of the older sections of the graveyard. He turned up his coat collar against the damp and decided he would come again tomorrow.

‘How can I help you, my son?’

The voice was rough, the accent thick. Lockwood turned slowly. The priest was old, his face lined with hard use. His eyes, though, were bright and a dark steely grey that spoke of long, passionate sermons about sin and guilt. This was an old-style priest of the fire-and-brimstone variety. He was wearing a cassock and dog collar. Despite the cold, he wasn’t wearing a coat.

‘Hello, Father…?’ The face was familiar, but the name eluded Lockwood.

‘Father Joseph.’

He remembered now. Father Joseph. The priest had been on the picket lines as often as the miners themselves. Lockwood could remember the anger on the priest’s face as he exhorted others to violence from the back of the crowd. They hadn’t arrested him. He was too much of a coward to throw a punch himself, and the Inspector had thought arresting the priest would have only made matters worse. He might have been right.