Joe Thomson, their sound man, had joined them at lunchtime with his daughter Alice who was going to act as production assistant. Joe at forty-two was balding, very tall and thin. His daughter had inherited his height and build. At eighteen she was already as tall as her father. With short cropped hair and studs in eyebrows and nose she appeared far more confident and outgoing than in fact she was. This was her first assignment – a gap job before going up to university. Half of her was determined she would not blow it. The other half was scared stiff.
Colin and Mark had been in Manningtree for two days now, staying at a bed and breakfast in Brook Street, and Joe and Alice had joined them after driving down from London. The first day had been wasted for Colin and Mark when the expected key had not been forthcoming and Stan Barker, the owner, had proved extraordinarily elusive. They had only run him to earth that first evening at the pub, so their first visit to the shop had been perhaps appropriately after dark. The atmosphere had been suitably sinister.
After the visit Mark had slept uneasily and woken early. The second night he had been shocked awake by the sound of someone screaming. Splashing his face in cold water he had stood for several minutes in the bathroom of the bed and breakfast, staring into the mirror before he had tiptoed back to his bedroom. The sound had been part of his dream, he knew that. And yet, somehow it had come from outside him. He climbed back into bed and sat there, with the table light on, huddled beneath the bedcovers fighting sleep. When at last he had dozed off he dreamed he was running down a dark road and there were people chasing him. He could hear them shouting, baying like hounds and growing closer all the time. He was still running, out of breath and drenched in sweat, when his alarm clock woke him.
Mark glanced up at the others from the clipboard. ‘I’m going to want the interviews in different settings. Perhaps some outside by the river, or some of the other places associated with Hopkins. Unless the ghosts appear there’s basically not much to see here. An empty shop. An empty upstairs. But I’d like to get some shots of that staircase if we can light it properly. I’ve got three interviews set up for this afternoon, Joe. Barker first. I’m easy where he goes, wherever he feels most comfortable, then we can fit the others round him.’
‘You don’t think he’ll back out at the last moment?’ Colin hefted the camera up onto the counter.
‘He seemed quite keen.’ Mark flipped over the page and made a quick pencil note on his schedule. ‘I had a moment of inspiration and told him programmes like this lead to dozens of people trying to buy a property after it’s appeared on TV.’
‘Not necessarily after a programme like this one!’ Colin commented dryly.
‘No, well you never know!’ Mark glanced at his watch. ‘Let’s go up and see where it would be best to put him.’
He led the way up the creaking staircase. At the top he stopped, looking into the large upper room. He frowned. Something in there had changed from when he had been in there earlier.
‘Problem?’ Colin was immediately behind him, Joe and Alice at the rear.
‘No.’ Mark walked into the room. The last person up here had been Emma. She had seen something. Felt the atmosphere. He stared round thoughtfully. ‘Feel anything?’
‘Apart from cold?’ The others had trooped in behind him. Colin shivered.
‘Cold is a start. This is August.’
Colin strode over to the window and glanced down into the street. The window sill was level with his knees and he had to stoop to see out of it. ‘We expected bad vibes. What would a haunted house be without them?’ Hunkering down he reached for the window latch and pushed the small casement open. ‘The room just needs a bit of fresh air. This place has horrendous rising damp and probably dry rot and death-watch beetle and every other scourge that old buildings are heir to. Any of that would be enough to put off a buyer, you know.’ He stood up and faced the others. ‘Mark?’
Mark was staring at the brick wall. ‘I saw something move. There. In front of the wall.’ His face had gone white.
They all followed the pointing finger and looked hard at the bricks. The temperature in the room had plummeted. For a moment they stood in total silence, no one daring to move. The traffic noise from the High Street had ceased and the quiet was unnaturally claustrophobic.
‘Can’t see anything. Shall I go down for the camera?’ Colin said quietly. He glanced at Alice. She was gazing at the wall with a slight frown on her face. If she was scared she was hiding it well.
‘No.’ Mark stepped over beside him. ‘No, it’s gone, whatever it was.’
Outside a car hooted.
‘Probably a spider,’ Joe put in firmly. He rearranged his lanky frame, folding his arms nonchalantly.
‘Probably.’ Turning, Mark stared out of the window, taking a deep breath of the air flooding into the room. A strong smell of traffic fumes rose from the street below, where cars paused to pass each other in the narrow thoroughfare. Suddenly the room felt marginally warmer.
The interview took only twenty minutes from beginning to end. They could tell it was going to be a disaster from the moment Stan Barker walked into the shop.
‘I’m not going upstairs.’ He stood, uncomfortable in his best suit, just inside the door.
Colin eyed the florid face, the too-tight collar, the jazzy tie, and glanced at Mark with a raised eyebrow.
Mark gave a barely perceptible shrug. ‘Perhaps you could stand there, at the bottom of the stairs? I just want to ask you a few questions then we’re going to do some shots of the shop itself.’
As interviewer-cum-presenter he was going to remain out of shot. If necessary he could get Colin to insert one or two angles of himself later. They always took a few interviewer shots in case.
‘So, Mr Barker, how long have your family owned number one Church Street?’
Colin, with the camera, had positioned himself beside him; Joe had pinned a mike to Stan’s tie. Stan had the look of a man facing a firing squad.
‘My grandfather bought it just after the war.’ He hesitated. ‘The old house was split into two and turned into shops about the turn of the century, I reckon. The lad as owned this half never come back. His wife wanted shot of the place so it was going for a good price.’
‘And what kind of a shop was it then?’
Mark’s question seemed to floor him. He hesitated, then he shrugged. ‘Butcher. He was a butcher, my granda.’
They were going to have to extricate every word. It was like drawing teeth.
‘And what happened next?’
‘He weren’t well, so he suggested my dad took it over. Well, he didn’t want to be a butcher so he said no. They got a man in to manage it. Old Fred Arrow. He only lasted a year.’
Silence. Stan’s eyes were riveted to the microphone baffle on top of the camcorder.
‘And what happened then?’ Mark prompted quietly. Colin moved smoothly to one side, stepping over the trailing cable, changing the angle.
‘He said he weren’t going to stay another day in the place. Hated it, he did. Said it were haunted. He said he saw Dave Pegram – that’s the lad as was killed in the war – standing on the stairs …’ He broke off and the look he shot over his own shoulder was one of pure terror. Colin smiled. Yes!
‘Well, he went and so did the next chap and then another butcher opened up down the street and Da thought he’d pack it in. So he tried to sell the place. No one was interested. Not as a butcher’s. Then a woman came along in about 1950. She wanted to run it as a bakery. Fancy cakes and things she sold. She lasted a year – maybe a bit longer, but then she saw Dave as well –’
‘When you say she saw Dave,’ Mark interrupted smoothly, ‘would she have recognised him?’
‘No.’ Stan shook his head vigorously. ‘She weren’t local. She’d never met him.’
‘But she described him?’
Stan shrugged. ‘On the stairs, she said. And upstairs. She had a flat up there, above the shop. There were three rooms in them days and then there
’s an attic, too. She said he used to walk up and down all night. She’d lie there listening and she could hear him pacing up and down. You might well shiver, young lady!’ He addressed Alice suddenly who, dressed in jeans and a skimpy T-shirt had hugged herself with a shudder as she stood nearby with Mark’s clipboard clasped importantly to her chest. The goose-pimples on her arms were clearly visible.
Mark sighed. It didn’t matter. They could cut that bit.
‘I take it she checked there was no one there?’
‘She wouldn’t go up there. She left. Halfway through the lease, she upped and left. After that there was a whole load of different people. Dress shop. Hardware. Another baker. Bikes. A little tea shop once. None of them stayed.’
‘And I understand you asked for the shop to be exorcised?’
Stan looked uncomfortable. ‘Stupid business. But nobody would take it on after my Da died, so I got the old rector up here. We reckoned if Dave had never had a proper burial wherever he died, poor bastard, perhaps a few prayers and that would sort him out.’
‘And did it?’
The camera moved closer, focusing on Stan’s face.
He shook his head. ‘No. It wasn’t Dave, was it. We’d said the prayers for the wrong bloke. His son turned up in the town one day to see where ’is dad had lived. Turned out he hadn’t died at all – or not till years later! He’d gone to Canada with someone else’s missus!’
A snort of laughter from Alice broke the tension abruptly. Joe and Colin both glared at her. Mark continued soberly: ‘So, what happened after that?’
‘Well, we thought maybe the prayers would work anyway, but the noises got worse.’ Stan looked down suddenly as though afraid to stare any longer into the camera lens. ‘Much worse.’
Mark found his mouth had gone dry. The question he was about to ask died on his lips. There was a long silence. Colin glanced at him with a frown. He stopped filming. ‘That’s great. Do you want any more, Mark?’
Mark fished in his pocket for a handkerchief and mopped his face with it. ‘Yeah. I do. We need to come up to the present. Why you’re trying to sell it again now.’
Stan shrugged. He shifted uncomfortably as Joe moved in to adjust the microphone clip and Colin started filming again. ‘There’s always noises. People walking up and down.’
‘And at what point,’ Mark took a deep breath, ‘did you decide that the house was haunted by Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General?’
Stan stared round wildly. For a moment Mark thought he wasn’t going to answer, but he turned back to the camera and speaking fast and confidentially he started on an explanation which sounded, Mark thought suddenly, just a bit too rehearsed.
‘Him – the Witchfinder – he’s been seen in all sorts of places in the town. And they’ve seen him up at Hopping Bridge and at the Thorn at Mistley. That’s named after him, you know. The Hopping Bridge. So, why not here, too? The worst place is in the Indian across the road. Used to be the Guildhall or some such, that little place where they tried them. The witches. Well, I thought to myself, supposing it’s him here. And it was.’ He stopped almost triumphantly.
‘How do you know it was him?’ Mark glanced down at Joe, who had resumed his position slightly behind him, on one knee, second microphone in hand. Joe raised an eyebrow.
‘ ’Coz I do. I seen ’im.’
Mark wasn’t sure whether the shifty look in the man’s eyes was because he was lying or because he was afraid to admit the sighting.
‘Can you describe him for us?’
‘Tall. Wearing large boots. A pointy sort of hat. And a goatee beard. Everyone as sees ’im says he’s got a goatee beard.’
‘And he was here in this house?’
‘On the stairs. Right behind where I’m standing.’
He turned and they all followed his gaze to the point where the uneven oak risers disappeared around the corner. As Colin focused in carefully and panned the camera across the breadth of the stairs, Alice gave a small whimper.
Mark persevered. ‘And was there a historical connection between Matthew Hopkins and this building?’
‘He walked the witches here.’ Stan folded his arms defiantly. ‘Up and down. All night. Didn’t let them sleep. In the end they was so muddled they didn’t know what they was saying. He’d get a confession out of them, then they’d be packed off to the dungeons in Colchester Castle.’
‘What a bastard!’ Alice’s voice was shrill.
‘Cut!’ Mark brought his hand down sharply in a chopping motion. ‘Alice, one more interruption and you’re going home!’
Joe turned to his daughter with a frown. ‘Get a grip, Alice. You knew what this job was. Groovy, I believe you said!’
Alice shuffled across to the counter. She was scowling. ‘Sorry.’
Mark looked back at Stan. ‘So, having decided the building was haunted by Cromwell’s witchfinder, you decided to cut your losses and sell it. But no one wants to buy, is that right?’
Stan nodded gloomily. ‘Trouble is, the place is falling down. It needs all sorts of repairs. The roof leaks.’ He shrugged. ‘I can’t afford to keep it on. Don’t want it. No way. And I need the money. I thought people would like a haunted house. Someone told me there was a market for such like. But, no one has gone for it yet.’
Joe glanced at Mark and winked. So, they had finally got there. The old bugger was making it up. He thought he’d get a better price for the shop if it had a famous ghost. Mark hid his irritation. This wouldn’t do a lot for the credibility of the programme.
‘Thanks, Stan. I think that’s all we need for now.’
‘Right.’ Stan moved away from the stairs with alacrity. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then. Just you remember I want you out of here by tomorrow. There’s a new tenant moving in Monday.’
‘Stan!’ Mark called suddenly as the old man moved towards the door. ‘What about the other part of the house. The shop next door. Isn’t that haunted, too?’
Stan shrugged. ‘Never heard that it was. They only walked the witches here, see.’ He jerked his thumb towards the stairs. ‘Never took them to the nicer side of the house. That’s where the family lived. Couldn’t hear them scream from that side of the house!’
There was a long silence after he had gone.
Colin eased the heavy camera off his shoulder and put it down with a groan as Alice closed the door behind their interviewee and stood watching him walk out of sight.
‘Christ, only one more day! I thought we’d got a week at least,’ Mark complained as Joe began to coil up his cables. ‘He told me it’s going to be an end-of-line discount shop, this and that, probably most of it fallen off the backs of lorries – just till Christmas. You’d think they could give us a bit longer.’
‘We can do it.’ Colin retrieved the clipboard from Alice. ‘If we spend the whole day at it tomorrow – and there’s always tonight, of course.’ He grinned at her. ‘After all, ghosts appear at night, don’t they?’ He sighed. ‘I was more worried about his remarks about ghosts being a selling point. What do you think? Have we wasted the whole afternoon? If he’s made all this up, the programme has gone. Damn! If he hadn’t said that!’
‘We’ll cut that bit,’ Joe said. He was lighting up a cigarette.
Mark shook his head slowly. ‘We’d still know he’d said it.’
‘I think he’s telling the truth.’ Alice hauled herself up onto the counter and sat, swinging her legs. ‘That last bit was awful – how they couldn’t hear them scream in the other half of the house.’
Mark shrugged. He was inclined to agree with Alice. ‘The trouble is, he’s after a quick sale. But perhaps it’s backfired on him a bit. People like ghosts, but not these particular ghosts. Not to live with. I’m afraid the shop’s history, if it’s true, will put purchasers off. Still,’ he paused and gave a wry grin, ‘I suppose when one thinks about it, for our purposes, it could add credibility to the film.’ He walked across to Alice. ‘Let’s see the interview list. We’ve got two more today
. Out and about. I wonder if we should reschedule them and concentrate on this place for now. There’s a couple more tomorrow. That’s fine. We can do atmosphere here. Then we want corroboration and a few shots of Colchester Castle and its dungeons – you checked for permissions for that, Alice? Good. Then that should about do it. Nice piece. OK, folks. Let’s get some film in, of the attic and the first floor. The shadows are moving round a bit now. It’ll look a bit more spooky. That’s what Emma called it. Spooky. And that was unprompted.’ He smiled at the recollection. ‘Then we can get some street shots. OK?’
As they busied themselves collecting camera, lights and clipboard a shadow appeared on the staircase by the newel post in the corner where the dusty oak steps disappeared out of sight. Alice glanced round sharply. But it had gone almost as soon as it had appeared.
None of them noticed the sound of footsteps on the dirty boards upstairs.
9
Out at sea the wind had dropped. The waves rose and fell in an uneasy swell, lapping around the Gunfleet Sands. On the shore a man walking his dog in the last of the light along the beach at Frinton stopped and stared at the North Sea. Where, minutes before, he had seen the distant horizon wreathed in a rack of stormy cloud and the waves breaking over the shallows, suddenly he could see nothing. He frowned uneasily. The sky was changing colour as he watched. It was turning a thick dirty yellow. The air was becoming colder and suddenly he could smell deep ocean currents and salt, the smell of northern seas, the smell of the ice floes. The man’s dog noticed. It had abandoned its excited sniffing of the weed and shells on the sand and was standing beside him, staring out as he was. It lifted a front paw, pointing, its ears cocked, then glanced up at him, seeking reassurance. The man shrugged his shoulders uneasily. ‘Time to go home, boy,’ he said quietly. The dog needed no second telling. With an unhappy yelp it turned tail and headed towards the low cliffs and the greensward above. Within minutes the mist had reached the edge of the beach. The cold clammy air lapped at the man’s heels. In it he could hear echoes of different places, different times. The distant call of a horn, the shouts of angry men. He turned for a second, terrified; he had imagined it, of course. The smell of the haar, and the swiftness of its arrival, had unnerved him.