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Chapter 8

I left Ben and headed back to my desk, my mind feeling tangled and confused, as if I was staring at equations I couldn’t solve. I knew a house couldn’t really be cursed, but what if people believed it was? It could be like Pointing Bones or clusters of suicides or the placebo effect. Belief in the curse could make it true. I remembered reading about a man who’d been diagnosed with cancer, and obediently died, only for the post-mortem to reveal that the diagnosis had been wrong. There was no cancer, and the man was in good health, other than being dead. Your own brain could kill you.

‘What were you talking to Tat for?’

I jumped and looked up to see Craig looming over me.

‘Sorry? Who?’

‘Tat.’

I deliberately misunderstood. I wasn’t going to call the poor man Tat, even if his entire body was covered in them.

‘Ben Pearson,’ Craig explained as if to a small child.

‘He was the duty sergeant.’ Why was I explaining myself to Craig? I turned to my screen.

Craig laughed unpleasantly. ‘Don’t try to get him through any metal detectors. It’s not just tattoos. There’s all sorts going on in there.’

I was wondering how on earth to deal with Craig, when Jai appeared. ‘I don’t think Meg’s as fascinated by Ben’s piercings and tattoos as you clearly are, Craig,’ he said. ‘Have you got some kind of homoerotic fantasy going on?’

Craig swore at Jai and sloped off.

‘You handle him so well,’ I said.

‘I’ve had lots of practice. He’s unpleasant but he’s not that bright, fortunately. Did you find anything out from Ben?’

‘There’s something odd going on at that house. The guy who died ten years ago left a sketchbook full of drawings of the Grim Reaper.’

‘Like the carving on the wall of the cave?’

‘Sounded like it.’

‘And his daughter hanged herself in the Labyrinth where initials of dead people are carved into the wall.’

I nodded. ‘You’ve got to admit, it’s a bit sinister. But there’ll be a rational explanation. I’m going to talk to his brother. He’s a doctor. I don’t suppose he’ll believe in curses and witches.’

*

Mark Hamilton’s farmhouse sat at the end of a short, stony drive, surrounded by barns and abandoned machinery. It was in a craggy region to the west of Eldercliffe, and the Peak District hills were visible in the distance, laced over with pale stone walls.

I parked in a gravel area and climbed out of the car, and a bunch of fluffy chickens marched over and gave me a bit of a talking to. They seemed to have something important on their minds, but they scattered when I made my way to the house.

Close up, the house was run-down but lovely, the old stonework held together with crumbly lime mortar and the windows forming odd reflections with their original warped glass. I was just beginning to feel calmed by its demeanour when a ferocious growling erupted from inside and something crashed against the glass of the door. I jumped back. Was he keeping wolves in the hallway?

The door opened a fraction and a man’s face appeared through the gap. He was holding back waves of dogs like an animal-loving King Canute. Tails wagged and tongues lolled. My breathing slowed. ‘Sorry,’ he shouted over the frenzied barking. ‘They’re a bit excited. Hang on, let me get leads.’ But he didn’t actually move.

‘I like dogs,’ I yelled. ‘Don’t worry, assuming they’re friendly.’ One of my senior colleagues in Manchester had told me: ‘If you admire someone’s dog, you own their ass.’ Setting aside the fake Americanism (watching too much CSI), he’d had a point.

The man let the door open. Christ, that was a lot of dogs. Barking and leaping and hurling droplets of slobber at my face. He rushed out after them, flapping his hands. ‘Sorry! Get down!’

His clothes looked like they’d been recycled out of the laundry bin – a look I wasn’t unfamiliar with – and he hadn’t shaved that day.

‘Mark Hamilton?’ I said.

He gave a quick nod. I folded my arms and ignored the dogs, who quickly went from jumping to wiggling and wagging. I showed Mark my card.

He held out a hand, then pulled it back and examined it. ‘No, don’t shake my hand. Just been preparing dog food.’

I smiled and whipped my hand back. ‘I’m sorry for your loss. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? I know it’s difficult but the sooner we can get onto this—’

‘Yes, I understand. Come in. Sorry about the mess. Peter’s death, it’s thrown me. And sorry the place reeks of dog food. I do it in bulk – cook it, bag it up, freeze it. I have so many, it saves money, but it’s a bit gross.’

‘It’s fine,’ I said, although there was a rancid smell in the air.

‘It’s taking my mind off things today,’ Mark said. ‘They made me take the day off but I’m not sure it’s good to be at home with my thoughts.’

We waded through dogs into a farmhouse kitchen. I glanced into a pantry rammed full of industrial-looking junk. There were bits of old pallets, the ends of gutters, wellies with their feet chopped off, mouse-chewed cardboard boxes.

‘I can’t throw anything away,’ Mark said. ‘I think it’s almost pathological.’

In the kitchen, piles of papers and cats sat on all the surfaces and more cats covered an Aga. An elderly dog lay in the corner, draped over the side of his basket like one of Dali’s soft clocks. Unwashed crockery filled the sink and a fly graveyard decorated the windowsill. This wasn’t just one day’s worth of mess. Gran would have said he needed a good woman. She hadn’t realised you could no longer rely on women for unpaid cleaning duties.

‘Sit down,’ Mark said, waving his hand in the direction of a scrubbed pine table. All the chairs were covered in papers or cats, some both. Was I supposed to sit on top of them?

‘Oh, you can move her.’ He pointed at a grey cat. ‘Oh no, not her.’ I snatched my hand back. ‘This one. Here.’

I plonked myself down and allowed the ejected cat to climb onto my knee.

‘I’m sorry. I take on far too many animals. Especially the older ones.’ Mark walked to the sink, ran water over his hands and wiped them on his trousers. He’d obviously read the research about excessive hygiene being bad for you. He collapsed onto one of the chairs, lifting and scooping a cat onto his knee in a practised motion.

The formalities out of the way, I said, ‘Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm your brother?’

‘You know, I really can’t. He was so normal. Not involved with any dubious characters. Everyone liked him.’

‘There’s been a suggestion he might have been depressed recently? Or possibly drinking too much?’

Mark looked at the cat on his knee and stroked it gently. ‘Yes, maybe he has been a little down.’

‘Do you know why?’

The cat stood, arched its back, and re-settled on Mark’s knee. He rubbed under its chin. ‘Just pressure of work, I think.’

‘And, well, could there be any possibility he was having an affair?’ I tried to say this sensitively but it was hard not to speak ill of the dead when conducting these kinds of investigations.

‘Peter? I’d be really surprised. I don’t know when he’d have time apart from anything else. He was terribly busy.’

‘And what about the relationship with his wife, Kate? Was it good?’

‘Yes, I believe so.’ Mark’s stroking became jerky and the cat looked up at him with an irritated expression.

‘Don’t you work in the same medical practice as Peter’s wife?’

‘Same building, different practices.’

‘And do you get along?’

‘We get along all right, yes.’ He gave a pointed sigh. ‘Look, I’m going to be totally honest here. Peter and I had an argument. I feel terrible. The last things I said to him weren’t nice. But I didn’t kill him.’

‘What was the argument about?’

Mark looked startled as if he was surprised I’d asked this obvious question. ‘Oh, as I said, he’s been very moody recently. It was just about his behaviour.’

‘What had he done, specifically?’

He scraped his chair away from me. ‘Nothing in particular – just general irritability. Work stress mainly, but he shouldn’t have taken it out on Kate or me.’

I spoke very gently. ‘Is there any possibility he could have taken his own life, do you think?’

Mark’s eyes widened. ‘Oh no, he wouldn’t do that. No, I’d feel terrible if he’d done that. After we’d argued. No, he didn’t kill himself.’

There was something I liked about this man, with his chaotic kitchen and impractical quantities of animals. At that moment, I felt like blurting out my own confession. To a stranger, even though I’d told no-one, not even Mum or my oldest friend, Hannah. But of course I didn’t. I kept it professional.

‘What about the rest of your family?’ I asked. ‘Do they live close?’

‘Beth lives in Ashbourne, and she visits Peter and me quite often. Dad lives near Stanton Moor, with Granny in an annexe. I’m afraid our mother died when we were children.’ I remembered the woman in the wheelchair, in the old photograph in Peter Hamilton’s study.

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ The cat dug its claws into my knee. I tried to shift it into a better position. ‘Peter’s wife said something about their house. About there being some kind of…’ I hesitated to show him I appreciated the odd nature of my question. ‘Curse. Do you know anything about that?’

Mark froze. It was as if the air around us went colder. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’

‘I realise there isn’t actually a curse,’ I said. ‘But sometimes there’s a reason behind these rumours. And Kate said nobody had wanted to buy their house, and there have been a few deaths there.’

‘It’s utterly ridiculous. You know what people are like. They can’t handle coincidences. You always get clusters of deaths sometimes, it’s the way probability works. It’s like these cancer clusters people get so hysterical about. Just the result of randomness.’

‘So you’ve no idea what the so-called curse is about?’

‘Of course not. It’s nonsense.’

‘And what about Peter? What did he think?’

‘I’m sure he heard the silly rumours, but he was a scientist. He didn’t believe in a curse any more than I do.’

*

The road swept steeply down to Eldercliffe, the jumbled roofs and spidery lanes spreading below me like a toy village. The hills rose beyond the town, and the old limestone quarries shone white, as if a monster had taken bites out of the apple-green hillside. I wound my way into the marketplace, and parked on a slope which made me nervous about my car’s handbrake.

I wanted to check Mark Hamilton’s and Kate Webster’s movements for the day before. The surgery where they worked was on a side street which climbed from the town centre, and I struggled up between stone cottages so tiny they looked like Hobbit houses. I wondered if there was a kind of medieval witch trial system in place, because anyone capable of making it up the hill to the doctor’s clearly wasn’t particularly ill.

The surgery sat like an ugly boil amidst the loveliness of the other buildings – a concrete edifice overlaid with square windows like a messed up Mondrian. The early evening sun emerged briefly from behind the clouds as I arrived, sending a shaft of light onto the front of the building and further emphasising its hideousness. I tutted about planning laws, and walked through automatic doors into a spacious reception area that smelt of bleach and sickness.

Both walls were lined with patients – mainly docile-looking older people, but also a child who was removing toys from a plastic box and spreading them around the waiting room with a furious enthusiasm. His hollow-eyed mother glanced up with a dairy-cow expression before returning to her copy of Hello magazine.

I showed my card to a receptionist labelled Vivian. ‘Could I have a quick word please?’

‘Yes. What’s it about?’ The woman folded freckled arms across her stomach.

‘I just need to check Kate Webster’s and Mark Hamilton’s movements for yesterday please.’

The woman sighed audibly. ‘Oh, of course. Dr Webster’s husband.’ She pushed wire-framed glasses up her nose towards her eyes. ‘They’d be prime suspects, I suppose?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Oh, nothing.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper and glanced at the patients sitting glumly in the waiting room. ‘The police always suspect the wife, don’t they?’

‘So, yesterday?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She twisted to look at a screen to her right, and tapped on a keyboard in a slow, two-fingered style. ‘Well, they were both here all day from about 8am to about 5pm, according to the computer.’

‘And did either of them go out at all during the day?’

‘It doesn’t look like it from the computer.’

‘But do you remember?’

‘Oh, no, I don’t remember. I can’t keep track of what they all do. But the computer should say if they went out. Health and Safety. Unless it’s been tampered with, of course.’

Well, she was a loyal employee. ‘Who could tamper with it?’

‘Well, any of the partners, I’m sure.’

I suspected the lovely Vivian was going to be less helpful than she appeared. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘One of my colleagues will come and take a statement from you.’

I retreated through the waiting room and out of the doors, tripping on a plastic lorry which the child pushed into my path. The glass doors shushed to a close behind me, and I glanced backwards. A young woman had followed me.

‘Are you a detective?’ the woman asked. She had long, blonde hair and a charity-shop-chic look.

I nodded.

‘I heard something last week and thought I should tell you, in case it has a bearing on the investigation.’

‘Okay, go ahead.’

‘I’ve got to be quick. I should be inside.’ She looked over her shoulder. ‘I overheard Dr Webster, the dead man’s wife, on the phone. I don’t know who she was talking to, but she sounded panicky. I forgot to knock and she slammed the phone down when I went into her surgery.’

I was a big fan of people who forgot to knock. ‘What did you hear?’

‘I heard her say something about typhus, and then she said we need to be careful, the police have been sniffing around. I remembered because of her saying about the police.’

‘She mentioned “typhus”?’

‘That’s what I heard.’

‘I know times are hard in Derbyshire, but typhus? Surely not. Wasn’t it spread by lice? In medieval times and World War One trenches?’

‘I don’t know. I just do the filing. I’m going to uni next year though and doing law.’ She gave me an appraising look. ‘I might be a detective actually. I heard something else, too.’ She certainly seemed well suited for a career in detection. ‘Something a bit weird.’

‘Weird?’

She nodded. ‘I heard Vivian, you know, the receptionist, on the phone. She sounded upset. She said Dr Webster was doing the Devil’s work.’