Burying Ground

Mark David

Description

'Mark is a wonderfully descriptive writer' Peter JamesCumbria, 1967. Grieving the loss of her son, Cordelia Hemlock is in the village graveyard when lightning strikes a tomb, giving her a glimpse of a fresh corpse that doesn't belong among the crumbling bones. But when the body vanishes, the authorities refuse to believe her, a relative newcomer to rural and ancient Upper Denton. Cordelia persuades Felicity, her new friend from the village and the only other person to have seen the corpse, to join her unofficial investigation. But the other villagers don't take kindly to their interference. There are those who believe the village's secrets should remain buried . . . whatever the cost.

Sujets

• Cumbria
• Cumbrie
• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Canongate Books
• Date de parution: 06 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838850951
• Langue: English

Extrait

David Mark was a journalist for fifteen years and now writes fiction full-time. The first novel in his DS McAvoy series, Dark Winter , was chosen for the Harrogate New Blood panel (where he was the Reader in Residence), selected for the Richard & Judy Book Club, and was a Sunday Times bestseller. Dead Pretty was longlisted for the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger in 2016. @davidmarkwriter | davidmarkwriter.co.uk
Also by David Mark
Novels
A Rush of Blood
Borrowed Time
The DS Aector McAvoy Series
Dark Winter
Original Skin
Sorrow Bound
Taking Pity
A Bad Death
Dead Pretty
Cruel Mercy
Scorched Earth
Cold Bones

The paperback edition first published in Great Britain,
the USA and Canada in 2020
by Black Thorn, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
Distributed in the USA by Publishers Group West and in Canada by Publishers Group Canada
First published in 2019 by Severn House Publishers Ltd,
Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY
blackthornbooks.com
This digital edition first published in 2020 by Black Thorn
Copyright David Mark, 2019
The right of David Mark to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 83885 094 4
eISBN 978 1 83885 095 1
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
Benjamin Franklin
Contents
PROLOGUE
CORDELIA
FELICITY
CORDELIA
CORDELIA
FELICITY
EXTRACT. TR 046.
CORDELIA
FELICITY
CORDELIA
FELICITY
CORDELIA
FELICITY
CORDELIA
FELICITY
CORDELIA
FELICITY
SECRET HERO
CORDELIA
CORDELIA
FELICITY
CORDELIA
FELICITY
CORDELIA
FELICITY
CORDELIA
FELICITY
EPILOGUE
PROLOGUE
October 2, 2010
The voice is brittle. Raw. The words sound as if they are being scratched into sandpaper with a coffin nail.
yrja alttawaqquf yrja wade hadd laha ich habe keine informationen
The sounds rasp up and out of the old man, grinding into the dead air around his face. It seems that some invisible force is pushing on his chest. The utterances spew onto the front of his paisley pyjamas. They froth onto his stubbled, red-veined chin. They spill into the bristly caverns of his big pink ears and rain upon a woollen blanket that has taken on the appearance of an unwrapped shroud.
What s he saying? asks the elderly lady in the high-backed chair beside the bed. She is in her early eighties. Beneath her tights, her legs are swaddled in bandages. Her feet are clad in mauve slippers, cookie-cutter holes snipped out to accommodate matching bunions. She wears a pleated skirt and pale blue jumper. She has a pleasant face and kind eyes.
It s almost sad. You feel so helpless. They look at you like it s your fault - like you should be able to make it stop. You end up feeling angry at yourself and at them and then at the whole world. You sometimes wish it would all just end.
The whole world? asks her companion, who stands at the foot of the bed and leans on the mattress, her hands planted either side of the old man s feet.
The lady in the chair watches her companion s mouth as she speaks. She is deaf in one ear and has grown used to reading lips these past few years. She has a habit of imitating the words of the speaker while they talk so it seems that the room contains a faint echo.
The pain, she explains. The suffering.
Seems a silly wish to me. You don t get to pick the bits that you like in life. You agree to the whole lot. Pain and suffering are part of it. And if you want to know what he s saying, he s asking for it to stop. Asking for the pain to end.
It will soon, says her companion.
Too bloody soon. His Arabic s terrible. German s good. Wherever he is in his mind, he s not having a good time. Wouldn t be eligible to serve these days. You talk in your sleep and you re out of the service. There were experiments with shock treatment to try and prevent it, back in the 50s. I read the files. Horrible.
I do wish you wouldn t tell me these things, says the woman in the chair, shuddering. Hands hurting, are they?
Her friend scowls then looks down at her hands as if they are enemies. Her knuckles are twisted and swollen so that her fingers spread out and twist like the roots of an ancient hawthorn. Anybody who tells you pain is all in the mind can take a running jump, says the woman. Pain is in the bloody nerve endings.
Despite the suffering they cause her, the woman still wears her rings. There is a diamond and a gold wedding band on the third finger of her left hand, and a modern, Aztec-style twist of silver on her thumb. She has long white hair and a thin, sharply angled face. Her eyes are lapis-blue. She wears a fitted white jacket over a clinging blue top and smart, neatly-pressed trousers. She is a handful of years younger than her friend but could easily pass for sixty. She looks younger still when she smiles.
I should have switched to a typewriter, she mutters, sighing. Or a computer. Writing by hand will kill your joints. Damn things. She glances at her friend, an incongruous and impish smile chasing the anger and sadness from her face. They re not nearly as ghastly as your legs.
Ooh, you ve a nasty side to you, smiles her friend. You could twang a raw nerve like a violin string, you could. My legs don t hurt. They re just annoying.
They re bloody horrible to look at.
I know. Our John says they look like those sausages you get abroad.
More like a pair of nylons stuffed with haggis.
I ve never liked haggis.
You tried it?
No.
The silence stretches out for a moment. Neither feels compelled to talk. They have been friends for a long time.
The younger woman screws up her face. Tastes the air. It s supposed to smell of disinfectant and boiled cabbage in places like this. I can t smell anything at all.
It s nice. I enjoyed my last stay.
You re not meant to enjoy it, Flick. It s a hospital.
Not really. It reminds me of that B&B where I stayed when I was down in Bournemouth. Nice people. Lots of chatter. A few people who don t know what day it is
Sounds lovely.
Aye well, it was good enough for us, says Flick. I tried abroad. Didn t like it.
There s a lot of it, I ve told you that before.
Well I didn t like the bit I saw. We ve been through this before, Cordelia.
Cordelia rolls her eyes. She looks back at the small, frail figure in the bed. She fancies she could pick him up and carry him and he would weigh no more than a sack full of bones.
Shall we wake him? asks Flick, cautiously. It seems wrong, somehow. I know we ve come a long way but it was different just talking. It seems wrong being here. I don t feel like I should.
Cordelia scratches her forearm and the scent of her fruity, floral perfume fills the small, comfortable room. This is a pleasing space in which to die. The walls are a sunshine yellow and hung with pictures of local landscapes. There is a TV mounted on a stand in the corner of the room and though the curtains are closed, the window by the far wall usually offers a view of the front garden. Cordelia would like to open the curtains. Outside, a light rain is falling from a grey-blue sky. She enjoys such weather. It reminds her of home.
It s now or not at all, says Cordelia, quietly. The nurse said if we can steer him onto the right path, all sorts of recollections might pour out. He might have fooled them into thinking he doesn t know who he is but that s only because they don t know the truth of him. He s been so many different people it s no surprise he s in a muddle. But here, at the end, I have a feeling the centre of him, the truth of him, will want to make itself heard.
I don t know if I want to know. Not really. Not now we re here.
We ve waited half a bloody century, Flick.
But look at him. Whoever he was, he s not him any more. People change
We can t make him suffer any more than he already is, says Cordelia, gently. Whatever he can see in his dreams, he s in his own hell. He would thank us for the reprieve.
Flick turns to look at him. She seems to be considering her own mortality, her own mounting frailty. Don t ever let me get like that, she says.
You already are, says Cordy, and her face splits into a smile that her old friend shares.
They take a moment. Pause; revelling in this last, final instant in which they can still walk away. They are two figures upon a clifftop, leaning forward into the wind, held upright by a gale that could drop without warning. Then Cordelia walks to the side of the bed and leans over the decrepit figure who fits and cries and prays in his tortured sleep.
Wake up, she says, and closes her fingers around his nose, flinching a little at the contact and the pain the action causes joints. We have questions. You have answers. And if you keep pretending, I ll bury you. I ll put you in the ground, just like the body in the blue suit.
Beneath her hand, the old man coughs. His breath is warm upon Cordelia s wrist. She applies more pressure and his fragile body twists. Only when he seems about to burst do his eyes slide open.
He looks up at the white-haired, blue-eyed figure, lit from behind by a glowing golden bulb.
He smiles the smile of a man who had expected to wake in Hell.
CORDELIA
October, 1967
I was lying in a grave the first time I met Felicity. It was the day the storm came. The clouds were a mound of dead doves; all grey and purple, silver and mu