past Pete, she ran to the door. She stopped abruptly. Patrick was slumped against the wall in the passage outside.
‘Paddy! Her voice rose to a shriek. The boy opened his eyes. ‘Paddy. Are you all right?’ Flinging herself down beside him she hugged him tightly.
He nodded vaguely. ‘Tired.’ He could barely speak.
‘Tired and very brave.’ Jon had followed her out. He extended a hand to the boy. ‘He’s OK.’ You could tell from the eyes. Alison’s blank stare did not compare with this blurred, sleepy moment of disorientation. ‘Come on, old chap. Stand up and come to the fire.’ He smiled at Diana. ‘He’s OK. I’m sure he’s OK. Just exhausted.’
Diana nodded. Behind the door in the study Roger lay, cold, on the camp bed. She had to tell Patrick that his father had died. She had to tell the others. Tears filled her eyes but she said nothing as Jon helped Paddy through to the fire and lowered him into a chair. Now was not the moment. She couldn’t face even talking about it. Not yet.
They all stood huddled together, looking round. A spatter of rain hit the window. From the icicle above the porch a steady chain of drips began to fall onto the step. Inside, the temperature was still dropping. They stared at one another.
Anne frowned. ‘He’s still here. Looking for energy,’ she whispered. ‘I can feel him.’ She shuddered. ‘My God, I’ve never felt anything like this before.’ She stared round at the frightened faces. ‘Concentrate. Fill your minds with something. Think hard. Recite poetry. Anything. Don’t let him in. Recite! All of you together. Now. Something you all know. Quickly.’
For a moment the room was totally silent. Then Diana, her daughter’s hand clutched in her own, began slowly to intone the words of a nursery rhyme. ‘The owl and the pussy cat went to sea, in a beautiful pea green boat…’
With a shaky smile Cissy joined her and after a minute Pete joined in. ‘They took some honey and plenty of money wrapped up in a five pound note…’
Was it their imagination or was the room growing less cold?
‘Go on. It’s working,’ Anne whispered.
‘Again. Again. Another.’ Diana had screwed up her eyes as if she were praying. ‘Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and – ’
They all felt the sudden easing of tension in the room.
‘He’s gone.’ Greg’s whisper cut them short.
There was a moment’s silence.
As swiftly as it had come the cold prowling menace had left, and with it the strange, sudden, enigmatic smell of Roger’s tobacco.
For the time being the encircling shadows were empty.
LXXI
The police Land Rover slid and bucked down the track with Joe in the front between the two uniformed constables. Behind them Doctor Jamieson clung on for grim death to the back of the seats as they skidded through the increasingly wet slush. ‘Not far now.’ Joe peered through the windscreen. ‘Down through those trees and we’re there.
A gust of wind rocked the car sideways and the driver swore as he fought to keep it on the track. In front of them the radio crackled and spat with interference. The younger constable, Bob Garth, grinned at him, his face grey with fatigue. He had already been on duty for forty-eight hours. ‘You reckon your ghost will be waiting for us then, do you?’
Joe had told them the whole story as far as he knew it. It was greeted with solemn interest by the two policemen. The doctor, an old friend of the Farnboroughs’, was more forthcoming. ‘If I didn’t know you better, Joe, I’d tell them to breathalyse you. I’ve never heard such a load of bollocks. You’ve all been letting the solitude get to you.’
‘I’ve heard stories about Redall Bay before,’ Bob Garth put in. ‘A lot of the locals reckon it’s haunted. If not by the Black Dog then by a whole range of sinister things. You won’t catch them going down on the marsh or the beach in the dark. When I was up here the other night I reckoned it felt strange. There was something very funny about all that business at the cottage.’
‘The ghosts the locals are afraid of were invented by the smugglers to keep the revenue men away,’ the man at the wheel put in. Mat Larkin had lived nearby all his life. ‘You don’t want to believe a word you hear about them.’
‘I suppose not.’ Joe did not sound too sure. He too was local born and bred.
‘Nearly there now.’ Mat swung the Land Rover expertly round a slippery bend. The wheels skidded in the wet slush, throwing muddy white spray across the bushes.
‘Looks peaceful enough now.’ All four men peered through the windscreen at the farmhouse as they drew up outside. Climbing out, both Joe and the doctor instinctively hung back allowing the two policemen to go first. A face at the window showed them that they had been seen. Seconds later the front door opened.
‘Come in. Quickly. For God’s sake, look! He’s tried to take Susie too!’ Cissy, near hysteria, grabbed the doctor’s arm.
Joe stood looking down, paralysed with fear as Hal Jamieson knelt and felt the girl’s pulse. He pulled up her eyelid and peered at her eye and then laid his hand on her forehead. ‘She’s asleep,’ he commented tersely. ‘Heavily asleep.’ He turned to Alison and frowned. His examination this time took longer. He glanced at Diana. ‘Her temperature is low and her pulse is weak. She’s suffering from exhaustion. They should both be in hospital – Good God! What was that?’
The crash upstairs was louder than any before. They all looked at each other. Greg gestured towards the staircase. ‘Up there,’ he said weakly.
Glancing nervously at one another the policemen disappeared and the others heard their footsteps pounding up the stairs and along the landing.
A few minutes later they returned. ‘Nothing.’ Bob Garth sat down at the kitchen table and felt in his pocket for his notebook. The sooner they had taken statements the sooner they could be on their way. He glanced up with a shiver. There was something nasty here. He could feel it.
Kate talked to him first. As calmly as she could, she related everything that had happened since she had arrived at the cottage, watching as she did so, the doctor examine Greg’s foot, rebandage it and nod to himself in apparent satisfaction. He moved on to Cissy.
‘And you actually saw this figure?’ Bob turned the page on his notebook. His mouth had gone dry. ‘You are a writer, Miss Kennedy. Are you sure you haven’t imagined some of this?’
‘No, she bloody hasn’t!’ Greg had been listening. ‘You heard that bang yourself! Did you imagine that?’
‘I think,’ Hal Jamieson put in, ‘that all this is academic at the moment.’ He straightened with an exhausted sigh. ‘What we need to do is to get these people out of here to hospital. Cissy needs an X-ray, Alison should have a CAT scan, in my opinion as soon as possible, and both girls need a complete checkup before I’ll be happy with them.’
‘We can’t take everyone, sir,’ Mat Larkin put in.
There was a moment’s silence. Kate felt her heart sink. For a moment she had thought it was all over; that they were safe.
‘I don’t suppose we could get your old banger going, Joe?’ Bob Garth put in. ‘Supposing we give it a jump start.’
Joe nodded. ‘It’s worth a try.’ He felt in his pocket for the keys.
Kate gnawed at her fingernail as they waited, looking from one tense face to the other as, through the closed door, they heard the sound of Joe gunning the dead engine. Nothing happened. Again he tried. Again nothing, then they heard the sound of the two bonnets slamming shut. ‘No go, I’m afraid. The old girl seems to have had it,’ Joe said grimly when they were back inside. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘OK. You take the injured to hospital, Mat,’ Bob Garth said firmly, overcoming his own reluctance. ‘I’ll stay here
