‘Arthur Faulkner?’
‘You’ve done your homework.’
‘What about the mother?’
‘The mother?’ echoed Blithe. ‘I never met her. I couldn’t even tell you her name. But I know she died of polio. Suffered with it for a long time. I can tell you the nanny’s name, though. She used to come into town and run errands for the Faulkners.’
‘There was a nanny?’
‘Yeah,’ said Blithe. ‘Margaret Mayfield her name was. Everybody used to call her Maggie May.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘Nobody knows,’ said Blithe solemnly. ‘It was a scandal at the time. The woman just disappeared. There was an inquiry but nothing ever came of it. Of course, rumours began floating around that Arthur had killed her and buried her somewhere. When they finally put him away, the rumours strengthened. He denied it, told the police she just wasn’t there one day, but no one ever believed that. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a great deal of evidence to suggest otherwise.’
York finished his pint and waved to the tolerating landlord to pour two more. ‘You still see either of the Faulkners, Julian or Arthur? They still in this area?’
Sneeze. ‘Ah, that’s where the homework ends, I see.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Look, Nicolas, the story of the Faulkner family is legendary around here. The speculation surrounding what went on in that house is breathtaking. You say you’re chasing ghosts, then you’re in the right place because ghosts are all you’ll find.’
The landlord brought the fresh pints over. He lingered slightly. Anything for few extra seconds away from the bar lout, no doubt. When he walked away, York said, ‘So start at the beginning.’
Blithe examined his pint. ‘You don’t give up do you?’
‘It's important,’ York replied.
‘Arthur Faulkner was a World War Two vet,’ Blithe revealed. ‘I wasn’t born at this point, but rumour has it that the Arthur Faulkner who left for the trenches was not the same Arthur Faulkner who returned. I mean, I don’t know what happened to him out there, but I heard he was a POW, endured years of brutality…
Sneeze.
‘I don’t know how much of that is true, but when he returned his mind was broken. I mean, he was gone.’
‘Gone?’ For some reason, York recalled the sepia photograph in the basement of the Faulkner home.
‘Yeah,’ Blithe muttered. ‘There’re people around here know more about it than me, but apparently the man could no longer distinguish between civilisation and warfare. The town folk, they tried to warn the local coppers, you know, said he was dangerous, a menace. It went on for years. He lost it a couple of times in town, snapped at locals, threatened to kill people. But no one listened. The police kept an eye on him when he came into the market, but they didn’t interfere. And then the worst happened and they had no choice but to lock him up.’
York leaned in, pint forgotten. ‘What did he do?’
‘He shot the doctor who was at the house treating his wife,’ Blithe whispered. ‘Shot him in the chest with an old German pistol. Apparently when they took him away he was screaming about them coming for him, calling the coppers Nazis and Gestapo scum. His wife was so sick, she died that day. The doctor was on his way to break the news to Arthur, and when he found him in one of the upper rooms, Arthur had the pistol levelled at him.’
‘Jesus,’ York murmured.
‘Yeah. Mid 1960’s, Julian would’ve been eleven or twelve at the time, suddenly parentless. He was taken to an orphanage. Best thing for him you ask me. Stories were, Arthur used to put the kid through hell, training him for combat. You can’t’ve missed the assault course in the back yard.’
‘No, I saw it,’ he said. ‘He used to put Julian through that?’
‘And worse. We heard that Arthur locked him in the basement for days at a time with no food or water, and then he’d be dragged out to hunt in the woods for sustenance and the like, anything wild that was edible. And get this, apparently Arthur taught him to not waste any part of the prey. He forced his own son to eat everything, the liver, the heart, the intestines, the lot. Poor kid probably didn’t know any different in the end.’
York took a deep breath and shuddered, the image of the teeth marks in Janine Bluestock’s heart flashing to mind. ‘So no one knows where Julian is now?’
Blithe sneezed again. ‘Nah, he’s been gone for years. He came back for a while when he was old enough to get out of the orphanage, but after he tried to burn down the house he disappeared. It’s like he fell –’
‘Off the face of the planet,’ York finished.
‘Yeah, exactly.’
‘And Arthur?’
‘Oh, he’s still alive,’ Blithe declared. ‘In his seventies now, I suppose. He’s been in Rampton Secure Hospital over in Retford since the incident. They can probably tell you more if you drive up there, but I doubt they’ll let you see him. I’ll bet the man’s in a cell with more padding than a schoolgirl’s bra.’
York finished the dregs of his second pint. Blithe sneezed into his.
Julian Faulkner. The Valentine Killer. Trained for combat from an early age. Goosebumps rose on York's arms as he recalled how easily he’d been overcome in the alley and left for dead. The sheer strength and manoeuvrability of his assailant had been astounding. Everything clicked, all the patterns fitting together like pieces in a jigsaw. Only one thing remained for him to do in the East Midlands. Go and see if Arthur Faulkner really was as far gone as Blithe made out.
51
The air had grown cooler
