“Zeke, get out of here. Take the car and drive back to wherever you can get a signal. Call Jenny Spargo. She’s off duty, but if you tell her Lee’s in trouble at the Underhill house near Gotheglos, she’ll know who to send.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“For God’s sake. Why not?”
Zeke looked up from his inspection of the concrete-sealed join at the base of the wall. His glimmer of Halloween mischief had vanished. He was dressed in as much of a party costume as his character allowed—jeans and a discreetly patterned shirt—but suddenly Gideon saw him in priestly black. “Perhaps a dark presence has passed through this room,” he said. “It must be something to do with the Nancarrows. They died right here.”
“Whatever passed through here took Lee with it.”
“We can’t know that.”
Gideon banged the flat of his hands off the wall. “I know. And I’m not bloody having it. Go on!”
“What good could Sergeant Spargo do?”
“She can send me a battering ram. Or the fire brigade, or a demolition squad, or whatever it takes to get through this.”
“Gideon, listen to yourself. There’s nothing behind this wall but wasteland and a graveyard.”
“Then how do you explain a thread from Lee’s sweater being caught where it is? Please don’t try to rationalise this, like you did when they found that gold necklace inside a lump of coal.”
“I won’t, although the evidence for that is shaky to say the least. I don’t deny that something bad, something inexplicable, has happened here.” He pushed upright to look Gideon in the eye. “Which is why I’m not about to leave you alone with it. You’re not equipped to cope with that kind of spiritual evil.”
“Great. Thank you. I appreciate your saintly companionship. I need help, though, Zeke. What are you going to do?”
Zeke folded his arms grimly. “I’m going to pray.”
No good for Gideon to yell at him in frustration, shake him, try to knock him down. For a start, Zeke could handle him. And secondly, he knew from experience that his brother’s prayers were anything but a peaceful communion with his God. When Zeke climbed into the pulpit of his newly built chapel, he expected his congregation, the spirits of the place, and probably God himself to fall into line and get busy. “Right,” Gideon said in resignation. “Worth a crack, I suppose.”
“What about you? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to do what I do best. I’m gonna kick down that wall.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Pray for me, then.”
He squared up to the wall. Zeke was right, of course. But Gideon had learned over time that, where Lee was concerned, appearances could be wildly deceiving. Even though he’d banged his fists off the concrete in front of him, if he made a big enough leap of faith—not Zeke’s kind but his own—he might be able to blast the stubborn flat reality to glittering dust. “On my way, sweetheart,” he whispered, because that was part of it, part of the magic, believing against all the evidence of sense and sanity that Lee could hear. He’d kicked down doors by the dozen in his time with the police. It was easy when you knew how, confidence half the battle. He eased back onto his injured thigh, because the power would come from his good one, exploding outward from the hip.
His foot slammed off solid concrete. His effort rebounded with equal and opposite force, as if the wall had kicked back. He landed with a thud on the unyielding stone floor, knocking air out of his lungs.
“Oh, shit,” said Ezekiel. He ran to crouch beside his brother. “Your poor leg. Does that hurt very much?”
It hurt beyond endurance. Gideon let Zeke haul him into a sitting position, then buried his face in his hands so he wouldn’t scream the house down. Zeke patted him awkwardly. “Fuck,” Gideon was eventually able to say. “Fuck, hell, bugger, shit, fuck.”
“Really, Gideon.”
“You started it.”
“Are you all right?”
“I will be in a minute. That didn’t work too well, did it?”
“Nor did my prayers.”
“What are we going to do now?”
“You could try using that brain of yours, instead of just muscle.”
Gideon groaned. “Oh, my so-called brain! I do my best, and Lee provides a lot of cover, but I’m not the sharpest tool in the box, Zeke. We both know that.”
“Rubbish! You’d never have got as far in your career as you have if you weren’t smart. You could’ve joined CID if you hadn’t been injured. You’ve got a Queen’s Medal, for heaven’s sake.”
“That’s for acts of... conspicuous stupidity, not smarts.” He struggled to sit up without Zeke’s kindly prop. “Wait, though. I’ve got to think this through. All this week, Lee’s been coming home and telling me he wasn’t getting anywhere with this place, that... despite the awful stuff that’s happened here, it just feels quite peaceful. Not really haunted at all.”
“If that means the spirits of the Nancarrows are at rest, I should think he was happy.”
“He was. But he’s got his show to do, and Jack and Anna have worked really hard on this series. He wanted to get a good Halloween special in the can for their sakes, if nothing else.”
Zeke took this in thoughtfully. “Still, it’s unlike him to go on... tugging at the sleeves of the departed, if I can put it like that. Not for a whole week.”
“You’re right. But he did keep going back.” Gideon heaved himself upright. He put his hands on his hips and stared at the wall again. “I dunno. Maybe he was barking up the wrong tree here. Maybe I am.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well—the Nancarrows weren’t the only people to die here under strange circumstances. I remember a case from sometime back in the sixties. A lady had come here—a writer—to do some research for a book she was working on. She was on the elderly side, but very healthy. She kept herself to herself, so nobody noticed she was missing for a few days, until the weekly cleaner came along.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Yes. The old girl was in quite a state. But she was tucked up in bed, no signs of violence or forced entry, and the autopsy showed a heart attack, so...”
“No-one investigated?”
“That’s right.”
Zeke came to stand beside him. “On the face of it, I don’t see why anyone would.”
“No. There was just one weird detail in the newspaper report, and it caught my eye for...” A shiver passed through Gideon. “For some reason. A mask was found near to the bed, a cheap Halloween thing you could get from Trago or anywhere.”
“What sort of mask was it?”
“Some kind of Bodmin Beast, I suppose. A wolf.”
Ezekiel caught the shiver, as if Gideon had passed on a dose of flu. “That is strange. And horrible, somehow. She doesn’t sound like the sort of person who’d play around with masks in the privacy of her bedroom at night.”
“No, not at all. She was quiet, respected. I wish I could remember her name.”
“I’m not sure how you know anything about the case at all. It was long before you were born. Quite a while before I was, ancient though I am.”
“When I was first training to be a copper, I used to spend quite a bit of time researching past cases in the Bodmin area. I don’t know why—it wasn’t required reading or anything. I just felt as though the place was my turf, my patch, and in some weird way I owed it to people who’d died there before—mysteriously, at any rate, unsolved cases—to pay them some attention.”
“You were right.”
“What?”
Zeke didn’t take his gaze from the wall. Blindly he put out a hand to grasp Gideon’s shoulder. “It was right for you to acknowledge them. Some of them ended up feeling like nothing. But nobody’s nothing.”
“Zeke, are you okay?”
“Yes. But you have to remember her name.”
“I don’t think I can. It was so long ago. Wait, though. Her surname was unusual, and makes me think of Kerdrolla, although who or what Kerdrolla is, I have no idea... Oh, Ruth Cadwallader! That’s it.” He straightened up, letting the name out like a summoning bell. “Ruth Cadwallader, what have you done with Locryn Tyack-Frayne? Ruth Cadwallader!”
The third time was always the charm. A faint tremor shook the foundations of Underhill House, and the concrete wall disappeared.