** (7) **
The scope of the investigation into the
murder of the young women that had taken place the previous week
in Newcastle-upon-Tyne had widened. The Durham Constabulary were
now also involved. The location, where the victim’s had been
found, was within ten minutes’ walk of the city’s Central Railway
Station. Film footage taken from security cameras showing
passengers arriving at the station to catch late-evening trains
was examined for possible clues. Apart from local trains running
at the time, there was also a train running late in the evening to
London’s King Cross Station that made a scheduled stop at Durham
station approximately fifteen minutes after departure from
Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Two figures immediately stood out from the
other passengers waiting to board this particular train, in that
they appeared to run into the station just before the train
departed, and only managed to board with seconds to spare. It was
not possible, however, to immediately make what would be easily
identifiable photo-fits of the two figures from the rather grainy
footage. Alan Crawford had been assigned to examine the film taken
from a security camera at Durham station on the evening in
question. Unfortunately, the security camera at Durham turned out
to be faulty, and so provided no useful record of activity at that
station. It was therefore impossible to determine from the
available film alone if the two people in question had used the
London service to make the relatively short train journey to
Durham, or whether they had travelled further south. Examining
film records from all stations en-route, including the train’s
destination, King’s Cross, would be a formidable task; if it was
at all possible. Considerable effort in tracing and interviewing
the passengers on the train would be required to this end. The
film taken at Newcastle-upon-Tyne’s Central Railway Station would
also need to be enhanced if the two figures were to become
recognisable to anyone. And even then, this might turn out to be a
false lead. By Wednesday afternoon, because of other commitments,
Detective Sergeant Alan Crawford was no longer even partly
involved in the murder case.
Throughout the week, Alan Crawford had kept
Jack Hume’s concerns about the man he referred to as Mr X in mind.
He was also slightly worried about the safety of his own mother.
But up to now, Mr X had not actually broken any laws. The closest
he had come to doing anything that could invite the attention of
the police was to be seen late in the evening behind the cottages
at the top of Wet Rain Hill. Elsie Crawford had been told that she
must inform the police if Mr X. was seen acting suspiciously
again. Before returning home on Wednesday evening, Alan Crawford
decided to talk to a contact in the Northumbrian Police Force in
Hexham. He made a telephone call and asked for information about
crimes or anything unusual that had been reported in Wet Rain Hill
recently. In making the inquiry, he gave the impression that it
might be connected with the murder investigation with which he had
had some brief involvement. His Hexham contact promised to make
some inquiries for him, saying he would call back in around
half-an-hour.
Twenty-five minutes later, Alan Crawford
received his return telephone call. His contact said that one
thing out of the ordinary, but apparently only trivial, was that
the police had been repeatedly receiving calls from a couple of
villagers. The callers were beginning to be regarded as something
of a nuisance because they were trying to involve the police in
the disappearance of their pet cats, and had been told that this
was not something precious police time could be spent upon.
Slightly more seriously, the Northumbrian police force had
increased their vigilance in the area around Wet Rain Hill in an
effort to solve the reported cases of sheep rustling. One farmer
living in an isolated farm about two miles outside the village had
reported loosing several sheep recently. However, no other
significant crimes at all had been reported in the village itself
for at least the past three months.
Alan Crawford asked for one more favour.
Before leaving the village on Sunday evening and returning home,
he had made a point of noting down the address of Mr X’s flat. He
asked his contact if he could find out anything about the person
who lived in Flat 2B, Church Lane. A few minutes later, thinking
that if at all anything he would not get any information until the
following day, Alan Crawford was all set to go home when his
telephone rang again. He was told that following a new
development, which his contact had not been aware of during the
previous call, Hexham police were now themselves interested in the
occupant of Flat 2B, Church Lane, Wet Rain Hill.
Hexham police had suddenly become interested
in the resident of Flat 2B, Church lane, after being contacted by
his landlord concerning his disappearance. The landlord had
arrived at the premises earlier in the afternoon to make a spot
check, only to find that his tenant was not at home. Claiming that
he had not planned to enter the flat without the permission of his
tenant, but after looking inside through a window, the landlord
had been disturbed by what he had seen. Chairs were overturned,
and what looked like the remains of a meal was strewn all over the
floor. And even though it was mid afternoon at the time, many of
the lights had been left turned on. Following this observation,
the landlord had let himself into the flat using his own key, and
began looking around. The tenant was nowhere to be seen, but there
were indications that he had left the flat in a hurry and perhaps
in an agitated state. In the only bedroom, dressing table draws
were pulled out and lying on the floor. Dirty clothes lay
scattered around. The bathroom was also in a terrible condition.
Parts of the floors and walls were splattered with vomit. The
landlord had also noticed a small polythene bag partially filled
with some kind of white powder lying in the washbasin. It was at
this point that he had called the police.
The downstairs flat, converted from one floor
of an original two-storey house, had been let out to a man who
went by the name of William Avon. The landlord owned several
properties in the region, most of them in the city of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne. And because of his experience in letting out
properties to overseas students in the city, he had a habit of
asking for photocopies of all his tenant’s passports. The
photocopy of Avon’s passport revealed that he was aged forty-three
years. The passport in question was a replacement passport, issued
by the British Embassy in Bangkok over two years ago. Avon had not
been able to provide a previous address within the United Kingdom
for the past ten years to his landlord, and had explained that he
had lived in Thailand during this period. The departure stamp on
his passport from Bangkok Airport revealed that he had left
Thailand and presumably entered the United Kingdom around
two-and-a-half months ago. His passport also revealed non-tourist
visa stamps that gave him permission to remain in Thailand legally
up to the time of his departure. There was, however, no indication
in the passport of his occupation or profession in Thailand. Also,
the section in the back of his passport for providing emergency
contacts had been left empty.
After surveying the flat and removing the
polythene bag found in the washbasin for analysis, the police had
made some initial inquiries with the neighbours. William Avon’s
immediate neighbour in the flat above was an elderly lady. She was
asked if she had seen him recently, and had replied that she had
not done so since last week but remembered hearing him inside his
flat very late on the previous Saturday evening. He had been heard
speaking very loudly, even shouting, but she hadn’t heard any
other people in the flat. The neighbour thought that Avon might
have been on the telephone at the time. Later, she could recall
hearing doors being clashed and what sounded like furniture being
knocked over. This type of thing had never happened before, and
she had supposed he was drunk. Normally, he was reasonably quiet
and quite reserved, generally keeping himself to himself. The
neighbour eventually fell asleep that night, and since then hadn’t
heard anything more from him. Similar stories emerged from the few
other neighbours who were in at the time the police made their
inquiries in the late afternoon.
Alan Crawford now felt that it was his duty
to disclose to the Hexham police what he knew about the tenant of
Flat 2B, Church Lane. He mentioned that William Avon had been
observed behaving suspiciously on Wet Rain Hill. He also explained
how his mother’s next-door neighbours were particularly anxious
about Avon’s behaviour. Finally, Detective Crawford told Hexham
police that he himself had seen Avon late on Saturday evening
entering the Blackbird public house in Wet Rain Hill in what
appeared to be a distressed state.
At home that evening, Alan Crawford
telephoned his mother in Wet Rain Hill. He wanted to check if
everything was okay. She confirmed that everything was fine. He
confirmed with her that the family would be visiting at the
weekend as usual. After this, he telephoned Jack Hume, and told
him about William Avon and the circumstances surrounding his
disappearance from the flat in Church Lane. And with the
understanding that the information was confidential, he also told
Jack Hume that a polythene bag filled with what was suspected to
be an illicit substance had been removed from the flat for
analysis by the police laboratories. It appeared to be that Avon
was a user of drugs, and a social misfit who may have formed some
interest in Jack Hume’s wife because of the Thailand connection.
In Alan Crawford’s mind, nevertheless, it seemed to be a
disturbing coincidence that Avon had been in Thailand when the
Humes had lived there, and that after they had moved, he had
effectively followed them back to Wet Rain Hill.
** (8) **
December finally arrived. Night seemed to be
almost continuous, interrupted begrudgingly by a few hours of cold
grey daylight. Icy rains fell. Easterly winds blew across the
stark dormant landscape where two thousand years ago men from
warmer lands had been here to witness this lowest ebb of the
seasons. Cursing and complaining, they had stamped their feet to
keep warm on the ramparts of the hilltop fort. They had watched
vigilantly over this northern frontier of civilisation, searching
for any signs of the approach of their implacable foes. Foes who,
apparently against the normal run of nature, thrived in this damp
and chilled land. Off duty, these soldiers of Rome had warmed
their hands over campfires and had written letters back home to
loved ones. They had told of how much they missed the comforts and
pleasures of home, and of how they counted the days to the time
when they could leave this alien and uncomfortable outpost of the
known world. Some also spoke of their fears of a strange cave
situated down the hill from the fort and within sight of the great
rock that the Brigantes called the Table of the Lizards. A cave
rumoured to be an entrance to the lower world: the darkened place
where Pluto ruled over the shades of the dead.
Back in the present, in the season of
darkness, the countdown had begun to the celebration of that
ancient festival of light. Christmas decorations of every
description, and degrees of garishness, could be seen in almost
every home in the village of Wet Rain Hill. Doorways, windows and
even gardens were decorated. A large Christmas tree with large
bulbous fairy lights had been placed on the village green. The
village church notice board was covered with a poster that laid
claim to this festival of light. ‘Thank God for Christmas’ said
the poster. But even the guardians of the hilltop fort would have
recognised aspects of what was taking place. This had been, after
all, originally their festival of light and of feasting, which
they called Saturnalia, after Saturn, father of Pluto.
Flat 2B, Church Lane, Wet Rain Hill, however,
was devoid of Christmas decorations. It stood cold and empty. Its
former occupant had not been seen or heard of since his
disappearance about two weeks earlier. The white powder in the
polythene bag taken from the flat by the police had now been
analysed, and had been found to be an extremely potent and as yet
unnamed hallucinogen made from types of plant fungus. The
hallucinogen was similar in many respects to the commonly known
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, or LSD. It was known that such types
of drugs were generally not physiologically addictive and usually
not a drug of choice for dealers. Nevertheless, given the
extraordinary potency of the drug, the police were still concerned
about finding it in rural Northumberland.
Efforts by the police were underway to find
William Avon. The possibility that he had left the country, and
even returned to Thailand, was being considered. The British
embassy in Bangkok had been contacted, and had agreed to approach
the Thai immigration authorities to see if they could check their
records for his entry into the country. But on a national scale of
criminal investigation, and even more so on an international
scale, the search was considered a matter of relatively low
priority. The tracing of terrorists, murderers, swindlers,
child-molesters and the whole motley bunch of miscreants who flit
back and forth across international borders had a higher priority.
And even when the relevant authorities were eventually motivated
into action, there could be no doubt that the procedure would take
some time.
In the period leading up to Christmas, the
Crawford family continued to make their weekend visits to Elsie
Crawford’s cottage in Wet Rain Hill. And every Saturday evening,
David Crawford made a point of spending some time in his
grandmother’s garden looking down Wet Rain Hill. But he never saw
or heard again anything out of the ordinary. He had never confided
with anyone the strange sighting from the previous month. Within
the relatively short time that had elapsed, he had even begun to
view what he thought he had seen as perhaps no more than a figment
of the imagination. But in his dreams, mostly unremembered on
waking, the image he had seen would once more pass before his
eyes. On one occasion whilst asleep in his grandmother’s cottage,
he awoke suddenly as if from a nightmare. And switching on his
bedside lamp, the first thing he noticed was the stuffed crocodile
Nok Hume had given to him as a present. It was poised on top of
the small wardrobe in his dormer bedroom. Its squat scaly form
provided ample inspiration for every manner of imagined horrors in
the stillness of the night and the partial illumination of the
bedroom. On that particular occasion, he got out of bed and had
reached up and pushed the crocodile away out of sight.
Christmas day finally arrived. For the first
time in about twenty years there was truly a white Christmas. A
deep soft white blanket of snow had covered the village and the
surrounding hills. Low in the sky, the sun shone bright but cold.
The Crawfords ate a hearty traditional Christmas lunch together in
the cottage. Because he lived alone, Professor Brock had been
asked to join them for Christmas lunch, but had declined the
invitation. Instead, he had stayed in Durham for Christmas with a
friend.
After lunch, Jack and Nok Hume briefly
visited the Crawfords to exchange Christmas gifts. For Nok Hume,
the concept of Christmas was something with which she was vaguely
familiar. It was, however, essentially a Western tradition that
lay well outside her cultural framework. She enjoyed the evident
high spirits and heightened sense of friendliness found in people.
But the festivities were something that she could really only
relate to as an observer and not as a participant. For her, there
was no emotional involvement. Christmas brought no rekindling of
childhood nostalgia, except that in some respects it reminded her
of a corresponding festival from her own cultural and religious
background. As a result, it engendered in her a deep and almost
despairing sadness at the fact that she was currently separated
from her parents, her younger sister and her former
friends.
Whilst everyone else was busy talking in good
cheer, Nok Hume walked over to the patio doors in Elsie Crawford’s
cottage and pushed her face against the cold glass. She gazed out
onto the snow-covered hills behind the cottage. In the rapidly
failing light of late afternoon, the view resembled that of the
landscape of an alien planet whose desolate surface was sparingly
warmed by a dim and distant sun. Up until a few days ago, she had
never encountered snow first hand, though she had long wanted to
do so. And now it enveloped and even seemed to define the world in
which she found herself. Everything was all so very
strange.
Later that evening, David Crawford went
across the road to visit Paul Jackson. They exchanged gifts and
laughed when they discovered they had given each other gift tokens
for exactly the same value and from exactly the same shop. David
indicated that he could only stay for a short while. Paul
Jackson’s girlfriend, Wendy, had also called by. She sat watching
the television. David accepted a glass of sherry from Paul
Jackson’s mother, and proceeded to drink it quickly. The rather
quick consumption of the drink had the opposite effect to that
which he had intended, which was to finish quickly so that he
could leave quickly. Before he had the chance to say that he would
now be on his way, Paul Jackson’s mother had produced another
glass of sherry. She had noted that he evidently had a liking for
the spirit. He sipped the second glass of sherry much more slowly.
Eventually, he found himself drawn into a conversation with Paul
Jackson’s girlfriend. They talked about her favourite subjects,
which were the supernatural and the unexplained. Holding a
dialogue, however, with Wendy Newton was not easy. She was the
type of person who tended not to listen and had the habit of
talking over her interlocutor. Paul Jackson, as well as his
parents, showed no particular interest in what Wendy Newton said;
they had probably heard it all before. Instead, they remained
absorbed in watching the television. David felt rather irritated
by the fact that he wasn’t able to manoeuvre himself out of his
predicament. And so, for about half-an-hour, as Wendy Newton rode
her hobbyhorse, he nodded perfunctorily, making several
unsuccessful attempts to break into the monologue.
She had already covered a diverse range of
topics, including the efficacy of pyramids as pencil-sharpeners
and the truth behind alien abductions, by the time she moved onto
the strange experience of her grandmother. As if to back up the
story, she produced from her handbag a piece of paper. At this
point, Paul Jackson appeared to take some interest in what his
girlfriend was saying. “And this is what my grandmother saw in the
graveyard of St George’s last month,” she said handing a folded
piece of paper to David. He opened it up and saw upon it a pencil
sketch. An icy heat spread through his body. He said nothing as he
looked at the sketch, and after a while handed it back to her.
“Her grandmother lives in the Forestry Flats,” explained Paul
Jackson.
“He’s already seen it,” said Ms Newton gesturing
towards her boyfriend.
“Seen what?” gasped David nervously.
Wendy Newton looked at David with a mixture of surprise and
incomprehension. It was Paul Jackson who spoke next. “I saw her
grandmother’s sketch a couple of weeks ago. Cool isn’t it! She
used to work as a graphic artist, didn’t she, Wend?”
“That’s
right. In fact, she used to design Christmas cards.”
Paul
Jackson grinned. “I’m sure she never put anything like that on one
of her Christmas cards,” he said.
“I believe that she did see
something strange. Anyway, I think it’s important to have some
mystery in our lives,” responded Wendy Newton.
“The
disappearance of my cat was enough mystery for me,” said Paul
Jackson.
“Well, there you have it. Maybe this explains why your
cat went missing,” suggested Wendy Newton. “Isn’t she scared?”
asked David.
“My grandmother scared? Not really. You see she
has Alzheimer’s disease. Bless her. She’s probably already
forgotten. My parents are at her house right now. We had Christmas
dinner together today.”
“What about the time when she first saw
it?” asked David. Wendy Newton looked at him with renewed
interest, evidently impressed by the fact that he seemed to be
taking the whole matter rather seriously. “I’m not sure if she was
sacred at the time, but I’m sure I would be,” responded Ms Newton
with sufficient flippancy that suggested, in all truth, she
herself didn’t take the matter too seriously.
“Show him the
others,” said Paul Jackson. Wendy Newton pulled some more pieces
of paper from out of her handbag. The additional sketches she
produced all represented Christmas scenes, but with a difference.
On one of the drawings, Father Christmas wore a traditional jovial
grin, and carried with him a sack overflowing with skulls and
bones instead of the usual toys. In another scene, he was standing
nonchalantly by his sleigh watching his reindeer being devoured by
a crocodile. And a third scene showed church bells being rung by a
grinning crocodile bell-ringer standing upright on longish hind
legs, pulling at the bell-ropes with human-like hands on its
forelimbs. This representation was similar to that on a wall
poster designed for children that he had seen in the waiting room
of a dentist’s surgery, where a cartoon crocodile stood upright
displaying an immaculate set of white teeth whilst holding onto a
giant toothbrush. David finally commented that the drawings were
impressive, and handed them all back except for the scene with the
crocodile campanologist. He asked Wendy Newton if he could borrow
it for a few days in order to make a photocopy.
Across Church Lane, only a few minutes’ walk
through the church graveyard, the vicar Geoffrey Adams was
settling down in front of the television in the vicarage with a
glass of Irish whiskey. Both the Christmas Eve and the Christmas
morning services had been rather poorly attended. There was
usually an upsurge in the number of people attending church
services around Christmas time, but this year the turnout had been
generally rather disappointing. Nevertheless, the sermon and the
nativity play had gone without a hitch. Now he could relax. His
mother, who was visiting him from Morpeth, passed him a
chocolate-coated raisin from a box on her lap and commented about
the celebrity who was currently on television. “He’s that local
lad: Jimmy Nail. Sang that song ‘Crocodile Shoes’, and made all
those detective stories.” Geoffrey Adams nodded his head in casual
acknowledgement. After a fleeting thought about the oddity of such
a surname and a mental picture of the singer wearing some form of
reptilian footwear, his thoughts somehow wandered to consideration
of the Thai lady, Nok Hume, who lived on Main Street. He had
studied comparative religion at college, and supposed that as she
came from Thailand, she was probably a Buddhist. The majority of
Thais, after all, were Buddhist. What did she, he wondered, make
of Christmas? Neither she nor her husband had ever attended one of
his church services. If the Thai lady had been present at church,
he would certainly have noticed her. After the conversation with
Detective Sergeant Alan Crawford in the Blackbird public house
last month, he had started to notice her in the village even more.
He considered her to be quite the most beautiful woman in the
village, if not the county. Then he checked himself before his
thoughts ran any further in that direction.
Receiving one more chocolate-coated raisin
from his mother, Geoffrey Adams attempted to sublimate his
thoughts. He began to wonder if it would be possible to convert
Nok Hume to Christianity. It was surely something less
controversial or problematic than say converting a Moslem to
Christianity. Buddhism was a passive religion, which traditionally
made no strenuous efforts at proselytising non-Buddhists, and in
some respects could be considered to be more of a philosophy than
a religion given the lack of explicit references in its teachings
to some type of godhead. Maybe next week he would push through her
door one of his new glossy pamphlets showing Christ on the cross,
explaining how his crucifixion represented mankind’s victory over
death. But on second thoughts, he wasn’t sure if she would be able
to read English sufficiently well enough to understand the
pamphlet in detail. Moreover, he would feel uneasy trying to
explain the argument in person on her doorstep. Then he thought
that maybe he could just invite her to one of the ladies’
functions at the church, and get her involved that way. But once
again, his thoughts about Nok started to drift in a decidedly
un-clerical direction. “More tea vicar?” asked his mother,
rescuing him momentarily. She often used this well-worn joke to
indicate that she was going into the kitchen to put on the kettle.
In response, he held up his unfinished glass of Irish whiskey.
“I’m fine, thanks,” he announced as his thoughts drifted back to
Nok Hume.
Jack Hume poured himself a glass of Scotch
whisky. He had received a bottle of whisky as a Christmas present
from the Humes. Nok Hume was sitting on the sofa and had been
watching television, but was now looking at her husband with the
glass of spirit in his hand. As far as she could recall, she had
never seen him drink whisky before. “It’s Christmas,” he said by
way of offering an explanation and perhaps an excuse. She smiled,
and returned her gaze to the television set. The programme was
supposed to be a Christmas ghost story, but much to her
disappointment half-an-hour had passed and there still hadn’t been
any appearance by a ghost: only gusts of wind in corridors, doors
being closed by unseen forces and mysterious footsteps in the
darkness. If this had been a Thai ghost story, she thought to
herself, the ghost would by now have already made numerous
appearances hovering in the air and doubtless frightening some
people to death.
Jack Hume walked over to the back of the
living room with his glass of whisky. Standing by the patio doors
were the two large wooden carvings that had been shipped from
Thailand. Before returning home from Thailand, he had overseen the
packing of the carvings together with the rest of their belongings
and had made the arrangements for their transportation. Jack Hume
had arrived in Britain about one month before the arrival of Nok
Hume. She had been forced to wait in Bangkok until her visa
application to enter the United Kingdom had been processed by the
British Embassy. During this month, he had been able to prepare
the cottage for habitation and had begun the work of opening the
Siam Kitchen Thai takeaway in the village.
Jack Hume picked up a long piece of tinsel
from the Christmas tree that stood nearby. He then whimsically
tied one end of the tinsel around the head of the large wooden
carving of a Siamese cat sitting upright. The other end, he placed
around the head of a large wooden carving of a crocodile standing
unnaturally upright with its front legs outstretched like hands.
Nok Hume looked over at him once again, and saw that what he had
done was to imitate the Thai wedding tradition where the bride and
groom are joined together by a thread to represent the union or
binding together of two people in matrimony. They had done exactly
the same thing at their wedding. “They are now married,” she said
smiling, acknowledging the symbolism. “Now they can be happy,” she
added.
David Crawford had now returned to his
grandmother’s cottage and was helping to put the refuse out in the
back yard when he happened to glance next door. The Humes had not
yet closed their curtains. The snow lying on the small lawn and
patio in their garden glistened under the light from inside the
living room. He noticed the two wooden carvings standing
prominently behind the patio doors. On this Christmas evening, a
Siamese cat and a crocodile stood gazing out over Wet Rain Hill.
(Click here
for Chapter 9)
