The Ghost Tree

  So, MD is in London today, RuthieD typed industriously. Have they heard the gossip? Is he going to lecture about using source material from the Beyond!

  Pleased with herself, she ordered a second cup of coffee and a croissant with jam. Then she turned her attention to Ruth. Nothing there either. Ruth was as always conspicuous by her absence on the Internet. Quickly bored by the search, April began idly to look through some of the day’s news and there it was, scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

  Breaking news: THIRD EDINBURGH RAPE

  VICTIM FIGHTING FOR HER LIFE

  It was as if the world had disappeared. The gentle hubbub of the coffee shop died away and she was left in a silent bubble of horror as she read:

  After a third vicious assault in Edinburgh last night, police are hunting DNA suspect Timothy Bradford, wanted for his attack on TV chef Finlay Macdermott and implicated in two rapes in the city.

  It couldn’t have been Tim. She would have heard him if he’d gone out last night. She found she was holding her breath.

  74

  She called the boy Erskine.

  Thomas was furious.

  Margaret moved out. ‘Papa, you cannot expect me to live under the same roof as your mistress,’ she said quietly. ‘You have refused to set her up somewhere discreetly. No one would have blamed you for that, but to move her into your home, Mama’s home, that is an insult to her and to me.’

  She went to stay with Davy and Caddy and within two days Davy had come to see his father in the Lincoln’s Inn house.

  ‘You realise you are the mockery of the whole town,’ his son said, tight-lipped. ‘If you have no care to your own reputation at least have some for the rest of your family.’

  How could Thomas explain that with Sarah came Fanny, their mother, the woman he still loved to distraction? None of them understood.

  The baby boy was an angry, bawling, bundle of fury, his tiny fists clenched as he screamed his outrage at a world that he seemed already to have perceived as unfair and cruel. Thomas looked into the cradle with huge compassion, all too aware of the disservice he had done to the child’s mother and to the rest of his children, but he didn’t know how to extricate himself from the mess he had made of things.

  His son, Esmé, came to see him on the eve of his embarkation to the continent. The war with the French Empire had intensified; Esmé, resplendent in his scarlet regimentals, was now adjutant general to the Duke of Wellington. Thomas was very proud of his youngest son.

  ‘Papa. Sir, I had been going to leave Eliza and my boys to your care while I am at the war, but I feel I can’t. I am sure you know why.’ Esmé stamped restlessly up and down the room, his spurs rattling. He could barely contain his frustrated anger. ‘You have caused so much unhappiness to us all, you must see that. Margaret is distraught. I went to see Davy and Caddy yesterday, to say goodbye, and Margaret was there, in tears.’ He waited for a reply and when one was not forthcoming he went on: ‘I have asked Davy to take care of my family. As my eldest brother, that seemed my only choice. I’m sorry.’

  Thomas was tight-lipped.

  Esmé waited for a full minute then he turned to the door. ‘I’m sorry to leave you in anger, Papa, but it seems this woman has bewitched you and there is no way of making you see how terrible this is for us all.’

  There was no hug, no smile. Esmé gave him a formal salute and turned to the door.

  ‘Wait, my boy.’ Thomas’s voice was husky. ‘I cannot have my family dictating to me the way I run my life. You must see that.’

  Esmé grimaced. ‘Then we would seem to have reached an impasse, sir.’

  He hesitated for one second then he clicked his heels, bowed formally and turned for the door.

  Thomas sat down at his desk and closed his eyes, trying desperately to block out the peal of sarcastic laughter in his head, the laughter not of Sarah Buck but of the man he had last seen dangling from the end of a rope at Tyburn.

  It was several days before Thomas returned to Evergreen Hill and Sarah was not happy. She greeted him with scowls and a stamp of the foot. ‘The nursemaid you sent me is useless. I have spoken to the housekeeper and she says there is nothing she can do as the woman was your choice. So you must choose me another.’

  Thomas flung himself down in his favourite chair. The room was cold; no one had been called to light the fire and there was only one branch of candles near burned down on the mantelpiece. When he mentioned it she turned on him. ‘How was I supposed to know you would finally be returning home? Call the butler yourself, he pays scant attention to me!’

  He noticed she referred to none of the staff by name. Perhaps she had not even taken the trouble to find out who they were. He took a deep breath. ‘Sarah, I have decided that it would be more convenient for you to live in your own house.’ He saw her face redden with anger and he went on, his voice slightly raised, ‘It would be somewhere quite close and I would be able to make sure that you, we, were more comfortable there.’

  She subsided, thinking. He could see her calculating, trying to work out if she would be better off in town.

  That night she came to his bedroom freshly bathed and wrapped in a lace-trimmed bed gown, her hair loose down her back. She had regained her figure; her breasts were losing their voluptuous curves thanks to the wet nurse her mother had found for her, a neighbour in Stonecutters Court who had lost her own baby only weeks after its birth. She suspected Thomas would be horrified if he knew where the woman had come from but he had seemed uninterested in the technicalities of her life; no one on the staff was prepared to help her so she had been forced to turn to her family who were all too eager to intervene.

  ‘Fanny came to me this afternoon,’ she said with a flutter of her eyelashes. ‘She thinks it would be fun to be together in a small house.’ She had curtly dismissed his valet who after a helpless glance at his master had bowed and left the room. In here there was a warm fire and Thomas had ordered dozens of candles to be lit. Outside, the wind was roaring across the heath and for a moment he wished he was out there, on his horse, galloping into the dark. Did she not realise that the very act of wearing the same perfume as Fanny was an insult? But it wasn’t an insult. It wasn’t Sarah at all. His beloved wife had slipped effortlessly into the woman’s body.

  She climbed onto the bed, exposing a length of shapely leg as she did so. ‘Tom, my darling Tom.’ It was Fanny’s voice. Sarah saw him tense, and she gave an inward smile. She had been practising Fanny’s mannerisms. She had been the mouthpiece for his wife so often now she could switch on the persona at will. Fanny did not always come to her any more but Thomas did not know that. She could see the longing in his eyes as she slipped her nightgown off her shoulders.

  Below stairs Abi and Mrs Ford, Roberts the butler, Thomas’s valet, Benjamin, and two or three of the maids gathered round the table in the servants’ hall. They too could hear the wind outside. Abi shivered. One of the maids who had been allocated to Miss Buck had been telling them what she had heard in the nursery earlier. The woman had been talking to her baby, not crooning and singing but hectoring, telling it what it had to do, who it would be when it grew up, how it would win its father’s heart. ‘I saw her face,’ the girl said, her eyes growing round as she remembered. A gust of wind blew back down the chimney and a puff of smoke strayed out into the room, making the candles flicker. No one spoke. ‘It wasn’t her,’ she whispered. ‘It was a vicious cruel man I saw there. If it wasn’t for that innocent little mite in the cradle, I would give my notice now, this minute. I swear it was witchcraft.’

  Abi caught Mrs Ford’s eye and grimaced. ‘What nonsense, girl,’ she said sharply. ‘You keep such imaginings to yourself. If I hear another word from you I will send you off.’

  The girl looked down meekly, but her expression was defiant. ‘I did, so there,’ she whispered. The words were not quite inaudible and the silence that followed was uneasy. Mrs Ford stood up and bustled over to the stove. ‘Hot toddy for everyone, I think,’ sh
e said firmly. ‘On a stormy night like this it will help keep out the cold.’

  * * *

  ‘Witchcraft!’ Ruth shivered. She reread the last paragraph she had copied down and glanced back at the letter from which she was paraphrasing. It had been written by Margaret to her brother Henry’s wife, Harriet. As an ordained priest, Thomas’s second son was perhaps the most concerned of all about his father’s liaison.

  He has at last moved her into a small house where he can visit her discreetly, but people talk. The servants talk and again and again they mention this word. Can’t Henry have a word with him? Surely as a priest in the Church he can drum some sense into Papa’s head. The woman is dangerous. I went to stay with Frances and Samuel in Sussex, and they too are worried sick. Samuel volunteered to speak to Papa but it would come better from Henry.

  Ruth smiled. Family gossip. This was what she had so missed in her own life and was, perhaps as much as anything else, why she was so engaged in this story. It was so much more than an enthralling tale, it was her own family and she shared their deep concern for Thomas. Sarah had wormed her way into his affections through her skill at channelling Fanny; whether that was real or pretend she had no way of knowing, but it was obviously compelling. And intriguing. She turned the page in Margaret’s letter:

  One of her nursery maids was sacked for claiming she saw Sarah’s face change into that of a man. A vicious cruel face, she said. Abi told me. Mr Roberts had dismissed the story as women’s gossip but then the girl saw it again and she ran screaming out of the nursery and Miss Buck sacked her on the spot. Papa gave the girl some money and a reference, but it didn’t stop her telling the whole world what had happened.

  A vicious cruel man. Ruth swallowed hard. Farquhar.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the doorbell echoing up the stairs. She went over to the window looking out towards the front of the house. There was no sign of a car. The doorbell rang again more insistently this time and then she saw him as just for one second he stepped back and looked up. It was Timothy. She froze. He can’t get in, she told herself firmly. You know he can’t. She turned and grabbed her phone off the table.

  ‘He’s here now.’ The emergency number she had been given by the police picked up instantly. ‘On the doorstep. He rang the bell.’

  A local police car was there within fifteen minutes, followed sometime later by a second from Edinburgh. ‘I’d rather you didn’t stay here alone until we’ve located him,’ Jack Jordan said to Ruth after he had conferred with the local officers. She couldn’t wait to go. The shock of seeing Timothy there, on the doorstep, looking up at the windows, perhaps spotting her before she ducked back out of sight, had left her sick with fear. Leaving his backup to search the hillside, Jordan waited for her to pack her bag and grab her laptop and briefcase, then he drove her to Edinburgh.

  On the way, she told him about the smell of cooking from Number 26. He grinned. ‘Good to know your neighbour is keeping her eyes open. Why don’t we go past and check?’

  The policeman on duty said no one had been near the house, and Sally, when questioned, was overwhelmed with embarrassment. ‘I’m so sorry to have brought you all this way. It turns out it was my neighbours at Number 22. I checked and they said they were having a barbecue.’

  They didn’t go in.

  Jordan dropped Ruth off at Max’s flat in Heriot Row, at the heart of Edinburgh’s elegant Georgian New Town, and waited until he had opened the door and let her in.

  ‘Why can’t they catch him?’ She found her hands were shaking as Max handed her a cup of strong black coffee. She was sitting next to Fin on the sofa in the sitting room of Max’s beautiful first-floor flat.

  ‘They will.’

  ‘But what about Farquhar? He can walk through walls. I couldn’t tell Jack Jordan about him.’

  ‘I think you should,’ Fin said. ‘He must be used to dealing with people who are, or think they are, possessed.’ He paused, aware of the expression on both Ruth’s and Max’s faces. ‘OK.’ He raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘Perhaps not. So, what do we do?’

  As she sat on the edge of the bed in Max’s second-best spare room that night she was clutching her folders of papers to her chest as if her life depended on it. Max had smiled at her as he showed her in. ‘It’s a box room really. I’m sorry it’s so small. But there is everything you need and you’re next to the bathroom.’

  Curling up against the pillows she reached for the latest little volume of Thomas’s diary. Beside the bed, sitting next to one another on a small chair, sat her teddy and the voodoo doll.

  As Ruth was driven away from the Tower House, Timothy was high on the hillside above them peering down from the woods. He had seen the police cars, gaudy in the sunshine, parked outside the front door, the uniformed figures first on the doorstep then separating to circle the building. Well, they wouldn’t find him there. He leaned back against the trunk of a larch tree, adjusting his back to the sharp stubs of old branches and he watched, enjoying the show. They reconvened at the front after a while and stood staring round. He saw them look up to scour the hillside and he held his breath, afraid they would spot him, but they couldn’t possibly see him from there. He felt a surge of triumph which was dissipated somewhat when he saw Ruth emerge and climb into the back of one of the cars. So, she had been there all along.

  He wondered whether they had found his car. This one he had taken from a petrol station forecourt while its idiot owner had gone to pay, leaving the keys in the ignition. He knew the CCTV would have caught him at the pumps. No matter. The keys to the stolen car were in his pocket. Unlike its owner, he had locked it when he left it tucked into the trees further up the brae. He turned and began to lope down the path.

  When he had awoken late that morning to find that April had gone out, he was furious; he wanted her to cook him breakfast. However, on second thoughts he could not face her shrewd narrow-eyed gaze and sour ill humour, and he had a bit of money in his pockets; he would go out and have a fry-up somewhere. He went back upstairs to find his jacket and it was while he was searching through the pockets that he found the blood. The jacket was torn, the zip broken and there was blood all over the sleeve. He stood staring at it as his night’s activities came back to him in a rush. He remembered the thrill of the busy late-night streets, the lights, the noise, the crowds of young people out enjoying themselves; then the dark alley, the confidence with which he had stalked his prey. The girl had fought. She might have been drunk but she had been strong and furiously angry. He remembered hitting her hard to subdue her. He felt no regret; in fact, he felt nothing at all. It was as if it had happened to someone else. He went on systematically emptying his pockets, carefully collecting every last penny.

  Now, as he watched the police below him, he found himself wondering if the girl was badly hurt. If she was, it would be on the news and April would be incandescent with rage. Perhaps he would leave it until later to go back to Edinburgh. Besides, the police might search Number 26. If they did, they would find out that he and April were living there. But why should they search it? They had been patrolling the street and not spotted him. He felt a flash of intense disdain. He was so much cleverer than them; what chance had they of catching him?

  The sound of the helicopter in the distance didn’t register at first, it was so far away, but it was coming closer. He could see it now as he craned upwards through the branches of the trees, a tiny dot in the sky. It seemed to be making straight for him. He felt a stab of fear as the sound of the rotor grew louder. He watched, holding his breath as it hovered over the conical roof of the turret, then began systematically to sweep in ever-growing circles the surrounding hillside and the woods. Dry-mouthed, he turned off the path and forced himself into the thicker undergrowth where they couldn’t see him as the sound of the rotor grew deafeningly loud.

  It was only a few yards further on that he spotted the clearing in the trees and saw the small stone building standing in a patch of sunshine. r />
  After dropping Ruth off at Max’s flat Jack Jordan had gone back to his headquarters to find DI Grant. ‘At least she’s safe where she is for now,’ he reported. ‘That woman must have a death wish; to stay all the way out there alone is insane.’

  Sue looked up from her screen and sighed. ‘I know how she feels. She doesn’t want to be victimised by the creep. You reckon he’s still out there?’

  Jordan nodded. ‘Yup! I could feel the bastard watching me.’

  She looked up and he saw the flicker of humour in her eyes. ‘Another psychic in our midst?’

  He held her gaze. ‘Don’t knock it. It’s called police intuition.’

  ‘Have we left anyone there?’

  ‘A couple of local guys are keeping an eye on the place.’

  ‘Good. I’ve called for a helicopter search and dogs. This man is dangerous. If his latest victim dies he will be up for murder. When is Malcolm Douglas coming back?’ She squinted back at her screen.

  ‘A day or so, I think. That’s another thing I don’t understand! How could he let her stay there by herself?’

  ‘Maybe he agrees with her. She needs to feel in control of the situation. I can’t imagine he could stand up to her if she was really determined.’

  Jordan grimaced. ‘Heaven save us from powerful women!’ He caught her eye. ‘Sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean you, naturally.’

  She ignored the remark. ‘Out,’ she said firmly, ‘or you’ll find yourself back there, patrolling the woods for a month!’

  * * *

  Pushing open the door, Timothy ducked inside. The helicopter wouldn’t be able to see him in here. He closed the door behind him and looked round the shadowy building, expecting to see a derelict ruin. The light seeping in through the small narrow window and the cracks around the door showed him the table, the chair, the crystals, the statue, the candle on the table. It was a little church. His eyes strayed to a small dish, on which lay a box of matches and he tiptoed over to pick them up. Whoever came to this place, and he guessed it was Douglas, obviously cared a lot about it. It took only seconds to break up the chair and pile the remnants in the middle of the floor, then the table, smashing everything on it as he did so. Striking a match, he dropped it onto the pile where it flickered and went out. Scooping up a handful of the dry leaves that had drifted into the corners of the building he tried again and this time the flame caught. He watched it lick over the wooden splinters of the furniture and stood smiling, distracted by the satisfaction of seeing the fire catch hold. It was only the sound of the helicopter in the distance that reminded him it was time to go.