‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to keep drooling for a while yet. How’s everything here?’
‘Oh, you know, fine.’ He was thinking how to break the news about the skeleton upstairs — without totally freaking her out.
‘I’ll go up and see Jade — how was her day at school?’
‘OK. But not very happy with her music teacher today.’
‘I thought she really liked him.’
‘So did I.’
Caro paused for a moment, then she said, ‘So where are we going to meet Mr Ghostbuster and his mate? In here or in the drawing room?’
‘I think in here,’ Ollie replied. ‘It’s warmer for a start — unless you want me to light a fire?’
‘Here’s fine,’ she said. Then she peered at him. ‘You’re covered in dust — what have you been doing?’
‘Oh — I was down in the basement earlier with the builders,’ he said.
‘Are you feeling OK, Ols?’
‘OK?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You don’t look OK.’
Nor would you if you’d just hacked through a wall and found a manacled skeleton, he nearly said. Instead he replied, ‘I’m just looking forward to these guys coming. I’ve got a good feeling about them.’ He was thinking that perhaps he could use them to help soften the shock of the skeleton to Caro.
‘I wish I shared your optimism,’ she said bleakly. ‘I don’t have a good feeling about anything at this moment. I’m going to change. I think you should too, you look like you’ve just come off a building site.’
‘I have!’
‘Yes, well, I think it might be respectful to look a little smarter, OK?’
‘It’s all going to be fine, darling. It will be.’
Caro said nothing for some moments then she said, ‘I don’t think we should stay here for a bit, Ols. Mum said we could stay there until the damp and stuff is sorted. Why don’t we do that? We can’t go on like this here.’
Ollie had memories of staying with his in-laws for several months, five years ago, while renovation work was happening to their Carlisle Road house. After about three days he had been ready to murder his father-in-law and after five days his mother-in-law, too.
‘Things are being sorted, Caro.’
‘Good, well, when they are sorted, we can move back in.’
‘I need to be here on site to manage all the workmen.’
‘Fine, you can commute. We can stay in Mum and Dad’s basement — Jade can have her own room. At least we’ll be safe — and dry.’
And insane, Ollie thought. ‘Shall we see how we feel after the vicar and the minister have been?’
‘OK,’ she said, reluctantly. ‘But I’m not totally convinced. They might be able to clear ghosts, but I doubt they’ll know much about putting in damp-proof courses and stopping wallpaper from falling down.’
‘Well, if God can part the Red Sea, I wouldn’t have thought a spot of damp would cause Him too much of a problem,’ Ollie said and grinned.
She gave a faint smile. ‘Let’s see.’
Feeling a little more confident with Caro home, Ollie went upstairs, washed the dust off his face and brushed it out of his hair, and changed into clean clothes. Then he went up to his office to deal with his emails until the two clergymen turned up — they were due in an hour and a half. He sat down at his computer and logged on, worried about what he was going to find next.
Suddenly his iPhone pinged with a text message. He looked down and saw the words:
And, as before, a second later the words vanished.
55
Ollie sat and stared at his phone, where moments earlier the message had been, in desperation.
Yes, Fortinbrass and the minister were on their way and they were going to clear the shit out of this place. But how the hell did whoever was doing this know? He was aware hackers could access phones as well as computers — was that the source of this and all the previous taunts?
Desperate for them to arrive, and feeling powerless, he attempted to turn his focus back to the urgent task of sending apologetic, damage-limitation emails out to all the other classic car dealers to whom the unfortunate Cholmondley email had also been copied. After that he sent a holding response to a query from a criminal law firm in Brighton who were looking for a new website design — the recommendation had come via one of Caro’s partners in her firm. He couldn’t deal with it properly now, his mind was all over the place, and his hands were shaking so much he was struggling to type.
Shortly after 6.00 p.m. Ollie heard a deep metallic boom, some distance away, like two giant dustbins that had been swung into each other. Then, after another quarter of an hour, he was again distracted from his emails by another sound, this time the wail of a siren in the far distance. When they had lived in Brighton these sounds were part of the ambient noise of the city. But out here, they were rare.
It was getting louder. Closer. Then it stopped, abruptly, only a short distance away. He glanced through the tower window overlooking the drive, and looked down towards the lane. Although it was only a quarter past six, it was already growing dark — there was perhaps another hour of daylight left, if that. He could hear another siren now, then a third one as well. A few moments later Ollie saw slivers of blue light moving fast, glinting through the trees. Then they all halted.
Although he couldn’t actually see all the way to the end of the drive from here, he estimated, with deepening dread, that it was roughly where the emergency vehicles had stopped. His office door opened behind him. He swivelled round and saw Caro, looking anxious. At the same time, he heard yet another siren.
‘Ols, something’s going on. I hope there’s not a fire or...’
He nodded. ‘Shall I go and take a look?’
‘It sounds really close — like on the road outside. Whatever’s happening might be stopping the vicar and this minister from getting here. They were due fifteen minutes ago, weren’t they?’
He glanced at his watch and saw she was right. ‘I’ll jump on my bike and go down and take a look,’ he said.
The wail of yet another siren added to the din.
‘Be careful, Ols.’
He hurried downstairs, out through the atrium door and strode towards the shed where his bike was kept. As he pedalled down past the field of alpacas, careful not to let the flapping legs of his jeans catch in the chain, misty drizzle stung his eyes and he regretted not having put on a baseball cap. Nearing the gates, he saw a blaze of strobing blue lights directly outside them.
He braked and dismounted, his heart in his mouth.
Ten yards or so down the hill a tractor was halted, at an odd angle. Beneath it he could see the remains of a small purple car. It looked as if the tractor had T-boned the car, ploughing straight across the passenger compartment, which was almost crushed flat. A crimson ribbon of blood, widening as he looked, was spreading across the wet tarmac.
It was the same tractor he had seen before on a number of occasions, belonging to the local farmer, Albert Fears. He saw several police cars, two ambulances with masked-out windows, a slab-sided Fire and Rescue truck, and a group of police officers in white caps, two of whom were kneeling beside the purple car.
The car he recognized. It was the one he had seen, twice, on Saturday.
The Reverend Roland Fortinbrass’s Kia.
‘Please stand back, sir,’ a woman police officer said to him.
‘I–I live just up there,’ Ollie said, lamely, unable to take his eyes from the carnage. ‘I’m expecting visitors,’ he added, looking at the car again, and unsure why he said that.