Curse of Weyrmouth Read online

  “Not at all,” said Park, attempting a smile. “I am, in fact, very much on your side.”

  A smile as warm as the silver plate on a coffin, thought Erin.

  “Why should I trust you?” she asked. “And how did you just turn up here? And what were those – children, I guess?”

  Park held up three fingers.

  “Let me deal with the second point,” he said. “I have reason to believe that Professor Maspero was killed because his research came too close to revealing some rather sensitive truths about our town.”

  “That stuff about patterns?” asked Erin. “The quincunx?”

  Park nodded, held up two fingers.

  “As for the first question, you must decide whether to trust a man who has quite possibly just saved your life.”

  Erin frowned, thinking about the moments immediately before Park appeared.

  The ghosts – why not call 'em that – seemed to be hesitating for some reason. Hell, maybe this guy is in it with them somehow. He looks like a walking corpse.

  “I'll pass on that for now.”

  Park gave his dead smile again, closed his fist.

  “The third question is the most difficult. Those boys are the Seven. Little is known of them except that they died during the completion of the cathedral just under seven centuries ago. That much is fact – there is a record of their disappearance from the monastery. The rest is folklore.”

  “They were orphans?” asked Erin. “The kids?”

  “You catch on quickly!” said Park, without any obvious hint of sarcasm. “They were unwanted. Their disappearance was not seen as especially significant.”

  Erin nodded. She knew enough of medieval European culture to understand how little most powerful people valued the lives of the poor.

  “So you mentioned folklore? What does it say about those – those kids?”

  Park raised his hands in a self-deprecating gesture.

  “I am not the main authority, here. Someone like Professor Maspero could tell you a lot more.”

  “Quick précis, then?” said Erin.

  But before Park could respond, Erin's phone rang. It was Louise Tarrant, sounding shaken and almost frantic with concern. As soon as Louise mentioned the paper, Erin understood the problem.

  “I've already had some little visitors,” she told Louise. “I'm okay. Not exactly whistling a happy tune, but okay.”

  “Destroy the paper, Erin,” urged Louise. “It seems to be – cursed in some way.”

  “Cursed?” repeated Erin, looked at Park. He gave a curt nod. “Okay I'll do that. See you tomorrow? We can talk then?”

  After Louise hung up, Erin turned and took Maspero's paper from the desk. She offered it wordlessly to Park, who shook his head. There was no trace of his cold smile this time.

  “You're sure? It's very informative,” she said, taking step towards him. Park actually flinched this time.

  Well, he believes in curses and such like, she thought.

  Erin tore the sheets into small pieces and put them into the waste paper basket.

  “Think that'll do it?” she asked. “Or should we take it outside and set it on fire?”

  Park stood up, straightened his black suit and paisley tie.

  “There are no guarantees with the Seven,” he said, ominously. “But I feel that we have at least bought some time.”

  “That stuff with the salt,” she said. “You some kind of magician? Because I wouldn't hire you for a kids' party.”

  Park laughed, then, emitting a sort of asthmatic croak.

  “I claim no special powers, but traditional beliefs sometimes have a core of truth.”

  “Why would salt keep evil spirits away?” Erin countered. “They can't be watching their sodium levels.”

  Park shook his head.

  “I only know that magic works in irrational but rather well-defined ways. Perhaps it works because they believe in it. And don't you think it's unwise to try and be too rational when there are ghosts involved?”

  Got me there, she thought. Ghosts. I am having a conversation with another adult about ways to stay safe from creepy kids who are nearly seven hundred years dead.

  “Where did you hear about this job?”

  “What?”

  The question threw Erin. She could not recall exactly where the post of assistant director had been advertised. She remembered filling in the application, one of dozens. That was clear enough. The name of the city had struck her as strange, quaint in a British way. But she struggled and failed to recall exactly how she had known there was a suitable job for her in Weyrmouth.

  Weird, but stress can mess with your mind. I'll remember it in a second.

  “How is that even remotely relevant to whatever the hell just happened, Mister Park?”

  The cadaverous man shrugged.

  “On the face of it, it's a totally irrelevant and rather trivial point. So why don't you just tell me? How did you learn about the job you got the day before yesterday in this northern English city, hundreds of miles from London, where you live? And where about ninety percent of the jobs you're qualified for happen to be?”

  “News you can use, fella,” replied Erin, feigning more confidence than she felt, “there's this amazing thing called the Internet, all the kids are into it. Some even use what they call 'electronic mail'.”

  Park shrugged.

  “You learned about the job online? Interesting.”

  He stood up, reached inside his jacket. Erin felt herself tensing up.

  Ridiculous. He's not going to pull a gun on you. This is England. He's more likely to produce a wet fish and slap you with it, Monty Python style.

  Park produced a black leather wallet and from it took out a piece of paper. A newspaper clipping, Erin realized. He handed it to her. She took it gingerly. Her fingers brushed Park's and she flinched, but there was no flash of weird memory from either the paper or the man.

  “This is the only advertisement for the job that I know of,” Park said. “It appeared in a local newspaper, and as you can see it's not exactly large. The idea, you see, was to fulfill the technical requirement of offering the job to anyone while in fact giving it to the internal candidate.”

  Erin looked at the clipping. She felt sure she had never seen it before but the details were familiar.

  “As you'll have noticed,” Park continued, “Weyrmouth Museum is not exactly rolling in money. They couldn't afford to advertise in the national media even if they had wanted to. You can imagine everyone's surprise when you applied. The perfect candidate.”

  Erin nodded, only half-paying attention.

  So where did I hear about the goddam job? Damn it, I ought to know.

  “Okay,” she admitted, “I can't remember how I came to apply for the job. But I did, so I must have stumbled across your obscure local newspaper online. Yeah?”

  Park shrugged.

  “I suppose so. It's possible. But isn't it odd that you can't recall? Almost as if the process that brought you here was somehow subconscious, isn't it?”

  Erin realized she was gawping up at the tall stranger, stood up to bring her eyes level with his chin.

  Really missing those heels, she thought.

  “Okay, assume you're right? You're going to tell me this is all part of some big pattern? That my destiny lies in the mysterious old seaport of Weyrmouth, is that it?”

  “I don't know,” admitted Park. “But is having a destiny such a bad idea? Most people just flap about with the vague conviction that they might be in control of their lives while clinging to, rather shallow, examined belief in a higher power.”

  Like mom, thought Erin, with her crazy religious buddies at their local megachurch.

  “I don't do destiny,” she said. “I'm destiny-free, it's all the rage. And now I'd like you to leave, Mister Park.”

  Without another word, Park walked to the door, opened it, and stepped out into the corridor. Erin was expecting a parting shot, though, and he didn't disapp
oint her.

  “I suppose the best way to demonstrate you're destiny-free would be to turn down the job, and go back to London. Or America. If you stay, of course, I'll see you around!”

  Bastard, she thought. How much does he know about me? Was he the creep taking pictures the minute I arrived?

  Erin shut the door and sat down to do what she always did in a crisis. She took a blank sheet of paper, and started to list the pros and cons of her situation. Then her phone chimed. It was the police.

  Great, she thought. That's all I need.

  ***

  “That's two more people who've had – let's call them weird experiences,” said Jen Deighton, ending her call to Erin.

  “The American woman – Ellen Cale, it is? She okay?” asked Carr.

  Jen nodded.

  “Erin Cale. She sounded more annoyed than anything,” she replied. “As if her day had been ruined. But she was cagey about what happened. Said she thought there were intruders in her room but she was mistaken. Total bollocks, of course, but she had to say something vaguely rational. She may even come to believe it herself.”

  “Understandable,” said Carr. “But where does that leave us? There's still no crime here that I can see – just a fatal accident, an apparent suicide, and some weird incidents.”

  Jen sighed, got up, and went to a filing cabinet.

  “I'm going to show you something now,” she said. “Promise me you won't laugh.”

  She could see Carr's mind working, shook a warning finger.

  “This is no time for one of your dirty jokes.”

  She unlocked a drawer marked MISC DOCS and took out a brown cardboard folder that had seen better days.

  “Bloody hell,” said Carr, as Jen laid the folder on the desk between them. “That must be the Jack the Ripper case file? Looks old enough.”

  “I inherited this,” she explained, sitting down again and opening the folder, “from Superintendent Broadbent. Remember him?”

  “Vaguely,” said Carr, sitting upright. “Met him at a party once, I think. He retired a couple of years before I was posted here. Sharp mind, I thought.”

  Jen nodded, and started laying out sheets of paper. Some were old-style typed crime reports. Others were sheets of paper with newspaper clippings pasted to them.

  “I've often thought of digitizing this lot,” she said, “but putting it on our system would mean that somebody could get it.”

  “A locked drawer is a lot more secure,” conceded Carr, reaching for a sheet. “Ah. Strange deaths?”

  “Yes,” she said, “but also a lot of disappearances. The latter are more worrying, in a way.”

  Carr raised an eyebrow.

  “You know how many people go missing every year. Most of 'em turn up eventually.”

  “Not round here,” Jen said, shuffling through the ill-assorted documents. “Look at this.”

  Carr frowned at a chart drawn in colored pencils on old-fashioned graph paper.

  “Broadbent put a lot of work into his hobby. My God, this goes back to the 1850s!”

  The chart showed a number of events per year. There were two wavy lines, one in blue, and one in yellow. The blue line was marked 'Unusual deaths', and held more or less steady at two or three a year, with occasional spikes to four or five. The yellow line, for 'Disappearances', was far more erratic. Most years showed one or two vanishings, but there were four major spikes in which disappearances rose as high as twelve. These peaks were circled in red with question marks beside them.

  “Well, that does look bloody peculiar, on the face of it,” admitted Carr. “Have you got more recent figures?”

  “Yeah,” she said, “but there's been no increase in disappearances as yet.”

  “You think there will be? After all, there's no discernible pattern here.”

  Jen smiled.

  My turn to be clever, she thought.

  “Take a look at this.”

  She handed over another sheet of paper. This reproduced Broadbent's graph but with another set of data penciled in along the time axis. Under the first spike in disappearances, Jen had written 'Great Storm of 1854'. Under the others were similar references to historical disasters, natural or man-made. The last was 'German air-raids, 1940-42'.

  “But surely that solves the mystery,” said Carr. “People vanished in storms, raids, fires – you name it.”

  Jen shook her head.

  I shouldn't be relishing this so much, she thought. But I've had so many Streetwise Older Cop lectures from you, John, let me have my moment.

  “Take a closer look,” she said.

  Carr peered at the chart again, and she saw realization dawn. Jen had added other major disasters in Weyrmouth's long and troubled history. These ranged from the Cholera Epidemic of 1883 to the Great Flood of 1946.

  “Why did you put those in?” he asked.

  “Doesn't it strike you as odd?” she asked. “The disappearances all coincide with events that would damage buildings, physical structures, as well as people. Fires, bombs, storms. But other disasters that mostly harm people and leave buildings intact–”

  Carr snorted, threw the papers down.

  “Come on, Jen! Are you saying somebody is making human sacrifices? Why? To appease the pagan god of real estate? And how do you square that with the flood in '46? That must have ruined lots of people's homes and businesses.”

  Jen felt a flare of anger.

  “Okay, it's not a perfect fit!” she snapped. “But for Christ's sake, John, just turn down your skepticism a couple of degrees and think!”

  “Again, Jen,” he said, clearly trying to control his tone, “we've got no actual crimes to investigate, have we?”

  She stood and started gathering up the scattered sheets.

  “So maybe we should start investigating something else. Something we can't put a name to. Or won't.”

  “Just a minute,” said Carr, reaching out to put a hand on hers. He took one of the documents from her and examined it.

  “This says a girl disappeared after leaving her home in Cathedral Close. Were any other cases linked to that area?”

  Jen felt sudden elation.

  At last! He's taking it seriously.

  “I don't know,” she said. “Most of the old news reports are pretty vague. But we could dig deeper, use census records for addresses?”

  “We'll look like prize idiots if anyone finds out,” observed Carr,

  “When did you ever care about that?” she retorted. “I've seen your taste in underwear, remember?”

  Chapter 9: The Mystery and the Storm

  “Hey Joe!” called Abdul, leaning out of the window of his cab. “There's a big storm coming!”

  For a moment, Abdul thought the old man had not heard him, but then the grizzled head turned and Holy Joe stared across the street.

  “You wanna get inside, mate!” Abdul warned. “Big storm coming!”

  Joe shambled across the road, not bothering to look and see if anything was coming. He was lucky – traffic was light. It was late on a weekday evening, cold, and blustery, with ominous clouds rolling in off the hills inland.

  “What did you say?” asked Joe, leaning down close to Abdul's face.

  The taxi driver tried not to gag at the gust of reeking breath.

  “Oh, man!” he exclaimed. “You been eating dead pigeons or what?”

  “I did not come here to be insulted!” exclaimed Joe, drawing himself up to his full height. Abdul felt ashamed of his reaction.

  “Sorry, mate,” he said. “But I was just warning you, get back to that hostel. It's gonna rain cats and dogs.” Abdul closed the window and got out of the cab. With Joe looking on went to the trunk and took out a sports bag.

  “You are not working tonight?” asked Joe.

  “Taking the night off for rehearsals,” explained Abdul. “I'm Balthazar. You know, one of the Three Kings. Magi, Wise Men.”

  “You are in the Mystery Play?” Joe looked incredulous.

&nbs
p; “Hey, I was surprised when the director bloke asked me,” said Abdul, smiling. “But he told me I'd be perfect. Apparently these Magi were from the three continents they knew about back then – so they needed one European, dead easy. Then they got an African, a bit harder but they found this student from Ghana. But the director said they were having trouble finding an Asian. Well, you don't get more Asian than Bangladeshi, right?”

  Abdul closed the trunk and locked his cab, then turned to cross onto Cathedral Green.

  “You shouldn't go,” said Joe, stepping in front of Abdul.

  “Why not?” asked the cabbie, looking up uncertainly at the old man. “It's just a bit of fun, man. For the kiddies at Christmas! My girls will love seeing their dad all dressed up, playing it large with King Herod and that!”

  Joe reached out and put his hand on Abdul's arm.

  “Please,” he said, his voice so gentle now that it was hard to make out the words over the rising wind. “Please, young man, for your children's sake, go home tonight. Be with them.”

  Abdul gently disengaged Joe's hand, noting for the first time the man's missing fingertip.

  Poor old guy, he thought. He's been through the wringer.

  “I'll be okay,” he said. “It's just a play, mate!”

  Joe shook his head, as if trying to shake some thought loose.

  “It is not a house of God!” he shouted. “Not entirely, no. Remember that!”

  Abdul circled warily around Joe and headed for the cathedral, hoping he was not already late for his first dress rehearsal. As he arrived at a side door, the storm broke with a flash of lightning followed only a couple of heartbeats later by a clap of thunder.

  That was close, he thought. Isn't it a one-second delay for each mile? That means the heart of the storm is almost on top of us.

  Shivering, he rushed inside, slamming the door against the sound of rain pelting the withered autumn grass. Inside he found Tim the director and a dozen or so players milling around, looking grumpy or mildly amused.

  “Hey guys, I'm not late, am I?” asked Abdul.