The Living and the Dead in Winsford (28 page)

The size was also given: no more than 25K, which as far as I knew could mean anything at all between three and fifteen pages of text. And I was convinced that the file comprised pages of text.

But what could the password be?

I started with
Castor
.

Was informed that was incorrect, and tried
Holinek
.

That was also wrong. I tried
Martin
.

Same again, and this time I was also informed that I couldn’t have any more attempts. I closed the document, and the folder as well, and started again. Surely it can’t be the same as with debit cards and mobile phones? I thought. That you only have three chances, full stop?

But it was.

Well, not quite. Another message appeared:
Try again tomorrow
.

Try again tomorrow? What did that mean? That it was okay to try different passwords the next day? Could it be so . . . so damned cunning? And above all, could Martin have invented anything so damned cunning? Three attempts per day?

Perhaps he could, I thought. If there was something especially serious involved. Something that had to be concealed at all costs.

There was good reason to think that this criterion might apply.

I cursed and looked at the clock. It was ten minutes to midnight.

Midnight? If I could manage to restrain myself for ten more minutes, that should mean I would then have three more chances. Surely that must be the case?

Fair deal, I thought, and suddenly felt like the skilful female hacker in a traditional American thriller. Or why not an English war film? What was it called? . . . Ah yes:
Enigma
.

I shook off all my film thoughts and tried to think straight. To put myself inside Martin’s head. If I had been married to a man for thirty years, surely I ought to be able to work out what password he would use to prevent anybody from penetrating his secrets?

When I formulated that question I tried to convince myself that it was rhetorical. That of course it could be answered with ‘yes’, certainly: a gifted hacker wife ought to be able to sort that out, and it was only a matter of time before I gained access to the document. I started writing down possibilities in my notebook, and by the time the clock said it was the twelfth of December I had decided on three.

Emmanuel
. His second name.

Maria
. His wife.

Bessie
. For obvious reasons.

I opened the folder and clicked on the document for the third time. I expected the little light-blue window to appear, but instead I was confronted by the same message as last time.
You have given an incorrect password. Try again tomorrow.

But it is tomorrow, you stupid berk, I hissed at the computer – shut down and opened up once again. It’s turned midnight, for Christ’s sake.

I was surprised to find myself sitting here like this, talking to Martin’s computer: Castor raised his head from the fleece rug and looked enquiringly at me. He’s usually the one I talk to, at least since we’ve been living here in Darne Lodge.

I explained the situation to him, and assured him there was nothing he needed to worry about.

Then I noticed the little indication of the time up in the top right-hand corner of the computer screen.
Wed 01.06
. And various seconds ticking away.

Swedish time, in other words. 01.06 there would be 12.06 in England. What did that mean? Unfortunately it was not difficult to work it out: I had wasted my first three attempts during the first hour of the new day, not during the last hour of the previous one as I had at first assumed. I would have to wait . . . for twenty-three hours. Until eleven o’clock the next evening.

Emmanuel
.
Maria
.
Bessie
.

Unless I hit upon something better in the meantime.

I swore at the computer and switched it off.

Took Castor with me and went to bed.

Irritation – wasn’t that supposed to be an indication that you were healthy? I seemed to remember that it was, as I switched off the light. That had been the thought that struck me some days ago – and just now I can’t remember when I had last been as irritated as I am now.

Not since I came here, in any case.

Not since I closed that heavy iron door on the beach in Poland and thought I had become somebody else.

So I’m still alive?

I decided on that interpretation.

33

I think I realize it’s a mistake the moment I turn off onto the road leading to Hawkridge.

We’ve been shopping in Dulverton. Had lunch at The Bridge Inn and visited the second-hand bookshop. There was no book by Bessie Hyatt on the shelves, but the obliging owner, who reminds me of a dying dandelion every time I see her, has promised to have acquired both of them if I call in on Monday or Tuesday next week.

‘They’re quite good, actually. I read them thirty years ago – then things didn’t go so well for her, poor girl. But I’ve never come to grips with that Tom Herold character, I’m afraid . . . Is there anything else I can tempt you with?’

I explain that I’m only halfway through
Lorna Doone
, but thank her for being so helpful.

In fact it’s Lorna Doone who makes me want to take a look at Hawkridge: the place is mentioned in the book, and we pass the worn-looking signpost every time we drive between Winsford and Dulverton. If nothing else, we could do with a walk, both Castor and I: that’s the real reason, and there are a couple of hours of the day left.

Not much in the way of daylight, however, but at least the rain that fell all morning has now stopped, and no doubt we shall find some public footpath or bridleway. But even after a few hundred metres I realize that I must tone down my expectations.

The road to Hawkridge is gloomy and full of bends. It’s also sunk down several metres below the surrounding countryside, and I have no idea where we are as I’ve left the map behind at Darne Lodge. We are like two blind rabbits in a deep ditch, and we edge our way forward with extreme care – but that is a poor image: Castor would never agree that he is a rabbit. We are a half-blind beetle – or rather, two of them of course – that’s better, on our way under the earth, on our way to . . . No, enough of all these silly images that flicker away unbidden inside my head, I think: to hell with you, for this is serious.

And fear is sitting beside me in the passenger seat: I don’t know how to cope with this, it’s new to me.

New dirty signposts pointing along even narrower roads to even more dreary places.
Ashwick
.
Venford Moor
.
West Anstey
. I don’t recall any of the names from the map, and we don’t meet any other vehicles at all. That’s just as well, bearing in mind that the road is at no point wider than three metres. Blackmore writes that the wheel didn’t reach Exmoor until the end of the seventeenth century: people moved around on horseback without carts, and it is evidently those bridle paths and winding tracks between ancient villages and dwellings that were eventually tarmacked over several centuries later to create what are now called roads. That must surely be what happened: these lanes have been trodden down by the hooves of weary horses over thousands of years.

We eventually get to Hawkridge. There is no sign of any people in the village, which seems to comprise about ten houses and a dark grey church on a hill. At the only crossroads is a red letter box and an equally red telephone kiosk. And a tiny little parking area where we stop alongside a deserted tractor. We get out of the car and look round. It’s not only the tractor that looks deserted.

I catch sight of a sign pointing down to Tarr Steps. I gather the path must lead to Barle from the opposite direction to ours, and that it’s not possible to get there by car. I recall John Ridd’s comment to the effect that as everybody knows, the big block of stone in the
merrily flowing
river was placed there by the Devil himself, and that it is somewhere to avoid unless you have urgent business to do there.

Despite the fact that we don’t really have any urgent business to do there, we start walking down the steeply sloping road. Car drivers are warned that the slope is one in three, and that there are no possible turning places for a mile and a half. But it strikes me that a woman walking with her dog must be able to turn round whenever they feel like it, and so we head down the slope in determined fashion. There is no direction to look in apart from downwards, as the embankment on both sides of the road is more than two metres high. I assume there are muddy fields on either side of the road, but it’s simply not possible to leave it.

All of a sudden Castor decides that he has no yearning to go any further. He sits down in the middle of the road and looks at me with an expression that makes it clear he’s had enough. I explain to him that we’ve only been walking for ten minutes, and we’d agreed to walk for twenty minutes before turning back

But it doesn’t help. I argue with him for a while, but he refuses to budge. I take a couple of liver treats out of my pocket, but he’s not interested. He merely turns his head and looks back up the hill towards Hawkridge. The sky is low up there, leaden-coloured and heavy. I think things over for a while, and decide that there really are places that God seems to have abandoned. It must have been this very road that the Devil walked along when he carried the stones down to Tarr Steps in order to cross over the river to the brighter side – there seems no doubt about it.

And then I see the raven. It’s sitting on the top of the left-hand embankment ten metres ahead of us, and I understand straight away that this is the reason why Castor has refused to go any further. You simply don’t pass underneath a raven that is sitting there staring at you. Most certainly not, that’s something every dog learns in its first class at school.

And at that very moment, as I am standing there, staring at the raven while the big, black bird sits glaring at us with one eye and Castor looks studiously in another direction, it starts raining. Not the familiar, pleasant and gently caressing rain that usually falls over the moor, but a veritable cloudburst from directly above us. Fistfuls of hailstones clatter down on the asphalt. There is nowhere to shelter. I shout to Castor and tell him he is absolutely right, and we start hurrying back up the Devil’s road. Behind us I can hear the raven croaking a threatening message as it flies away. If we could, we would run all the way back to the car: but it’s too steep. My heart is pounding away in my chest as a result of the effort, and perhaps for other reasons as well, and I assume that Castor’s is pounding similarly. He is staying close by my side all the while, and he doesn’t usually do that.

It takes us much longer to get back to the church than it took us to get down to the raven, and the rain persists all the while. Aggressively and stubbornly as if it were intent on destroying something: that seems to be the kind of rain it is, and we can’t avoid it. Not for a metre, not for a second.

But it hasn’t managed to make our filthy Audi look much cleaner. At least not the front door on the driver’s side, which has been slightly screened by the abandoned tractor – and somebody has written in very clear letters rubbed out of the dirt: DEATH.

Probably with an index finger inside a glove, by the looks of it.

I stand and stare at it.

I look round. No sign of anybody. Darkness is falling fast. No lights are lit in any of the houses round about us, not a single one. The church seems to be leaning over us.

Can that message have been there earlier, when we left Dulverton? Can somebody have written it when we were in The Bridge Inn? Death?

Or has somebody written it during the half-hour we left the car in this remote place?

What difference would it make? What kind of an idiotic question is that to ask? I rub out the letters with my jacket sleeve. Castor is whimpering by my side: I let him into the back of the car, and I clamber into the driver’s seat. Soaking wet dog, soaking wet missus. But at least we have a roof over our heads now. The rain is pounding away. I lock the doors and sigh deeply.

Turn the ignition key: but the engine doesn’t start.

I close my eyes and repeat the procedure.

Nothing happens. Not a sound from the engine.

I whisper a desperate prayer.

Third time lucky. The engine starts, I back out quickly from the parking area, and drive away.

I’ve no idea in which direction I’m heading, but that doesn’t matter. I must get away, I think. Away from here.

No, it was a mistake to go to Hawkridge.

34

The thirteenth of December, a Thursday. St Lucia’s Day, the day when Swedes burn candles to celebrate the light in the middle of winter. It continued raining all night, growing less heavy during the next morning but not ceasing altogether. The usual westerly wind, the morning walk up to Wambarrows and the same route back. Six degrees. It’s getting muddier and muddier for each day that passes, and you need to be careful not to get stuck. In the afternoon we drive to Watersmeet, walk up towards Brendon and are back in Darne Lodge by early dusk soon after four o’clock. No previously unexplored paths, no strolls along steep roads used by the Devil.

Generally speaking, I feel more on edge. With a fear lurking in the background that I would prefer not to look more closely into. I’m grateful that we are going to have dinner at Mark Britton’s place tomorrow evening. Extremely grateful. I only wish it were this evening.

I play sixteen games of patience, but only solve three of them; I read a little but find it hard to concentrate. When it has become midnight in Sweden, albeit only eleven o’clock in this country, I try three new passwords:
Grass
,
Soblewski
and
Gusov
. They work just as badly as yesterday’s
Herold
,
Hyatt
and
Megal
. Perhaps I shall have to think along different lines.