Grave Secrets Read online

  Published 2020 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-341-5

  Copyright © 2020 Alice James

  Cover art by Sam Gretton

  Illustrations by Gemma Sheldrake

  Designed and typeset by Rebellion Publishing

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names. characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  To Barbara and Wendy…

  Chapter One

  THAT VERY NIGHT, I planned to raise Bredon Havers from the dead. He was the oldest corpse in the cemetery, and I’ve always liked a challenge. I knelt in the damp grass of the graveyard and sprinkled a generous circle of salt around the headstone. A wide margin is crucial. Tree roots and moles move things around and it’s always disappointing when your zombie comes up missing a limb. Or a head. I really hate that.

  Me: Lavington Windsor, estate agent by day, necromancer by night. I’ve never found a way of making my hobby pay, alas. There isn’t much demand for mouldering corpses in the corporate world. And while poking around people’s homes isn’t as much fun as raising the dead, it’s an OK way to make a living. Professional necromancer though? I’d certainly like that on my passport.

  I sealed the circle with a perfume atomiser, spraying over the white line until it was damp. My grandfather used stout in a plant mister, but Robert Windsor lived in a time when no one raised an eyebrow if you travelled with an emergency beer supply. If I ever got caught out, I’d be packing Chanel.

  I added a few drops of blood even though I probably didn’t need them. Practice makes perfect, they say, and I’d done this almost every day since I turned eight. I have to: it’s a Compulsion, and I don’t think I’ll ever be free of it. But then, I’d never raised a man who’d died more than two and a half centuries before. I’d summoned every other corpse in the graveyard—four hundred and twenty-three of them, to be exact. Bredon would be the last and by far the oldest, so this warm August night marked a rather special occasion. I had my pin ready just in case.

  They started burying people here about three hundred years ago and stopped shortly after the Second World War. Many of the names on the tombstones read like a roster of unlikely vintage film stars. John Doo, Ashby Rainecourt, Bailey Culpepper… No matter; old and new, I’d raised them all. Or nearly all.

  I stepped out of the circle, taking care not to disturb the moist salt, and opened my rucksack. I’d packed four family-sized packets of crisps and an entire loaf of white sliced bread made into ham sandwiches. Take it from me: a raised zombie is a hungry zombie. I opened the crisp packets and poured them onto paper plates, then arrayed them inside the circle, adding a final one with the teetering pile of sandwiches on it. Good to go, Toni.

  No eye of newt, no toe of frog. People yearning for arcane ceremonies with candles and entrails would be disappointed by the real thing, because I’d never needed to sacrifice so much as a wasp. Salt, perfume, snacks, occasionally a drop of blood, and end of story. That’s all I’ve ever needed. I suppose I’m just a natural.

  “Bredon Havers, in peace I call you. I summon you this night. Come to me.”

  The words weren’t necessary, but they gave me a little oomph, probably not a million miles from a weightlifter grunting as they hefted the bar. Words or not, Bredon Havers came.

  He stepped out of the earth with a firm stride, nothing tentative about him, and looked around with a watchful air. I could have cheered. He was beautifully intact, not a digit missing, not a mouldering limb in sight. My first thought was how perfect he was for a zombie, and my second just how tall he must have been amongst my short English ancestors back in the 1750s. He had curly dark hair, big brown eyes and a cheerful smile. He was wearing some kind of wide trousers and a long coat embroidered with peacocks.

  Sometimes, when I summon, there’s nothing in there, no soul—just a body, compliant but empty. I let them go straight away. Nature abhors a vacuum, they say, but demons love one, and a nice unoccupied body walking about… that would be irresistible. Mostly there’s at least a wisp of character left. But not one of my resurrected corpses had strode into the world like they were ready to ask for my vote. I beamed at Bredon.

  “Hi, I’m Lavington.”

  He looked just a tad taken aback, and bowed very slightly.

  “Havers, Bredon Havers. Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mistress Lavington.”

  His voice was a pleasing baritone and his English accent could have cut glass. He was in perfect nick, as though he hadn’t spent three minutes in a mouldering tomb, let alone three centuries. Such a shame I couldn’t show him off to the world. I wanted to ask him to show me his hands, to check each and every cuticle… but that might have been rude, so I just beamed a bit more.

  “So, you’re a necromancer,” Bredon said.

  Startled, I nodded. “Since I was a little girl. How did you know?”

  “I am a man of intelligence, dear lady. I died, yet here I stand in a graveyard with you…” He gestured around the moonlit hill. “It seems the obvious deduction.”

  “Ten out of ten, Sherlock,” I said.

  He looked confused and I found myself wondering how long ago the detective books had been penned. Clearly after Bredon had shuffled off this mortal coil… No, not shuffled. Bredon clearly wasn’t a shuffler. Believe me—I’ve raised a lot of zombies. There’s nothing I don’t know about shuffling.

  “I’m a necromancer, yes. And before you ask, the food is for you. I know you’re hungry.”

  That’s the trick. Get them munching right away, before they go crazed with hunger and you can’t get anything sensible out of them. I had almost forgotten with Bredon because he seemed so… so civilised.

  “I thank you, Mistress Lavington. I am, I admit, more than peckish.”

  He picked up the plate of sandwiches and perched on the edge of his gravestone. He devoured about six of them in quick succession before pausing and looking up at me.

  “Would you like one, Mistress Lavington?”

  “Oh, please call me Toni. Everyone does. And no, thank you, I brought them just for you.”

  “It seems a little uncivil, um, Toni, to be eating like a wild beast while you stand there without so much as a goblet of wine.”

  Goblet. I was absolutely certain I had never heard anyone actually say that word out loud before. Goblet. What a splendid, unappreciated, underused word. But before I could interrupt, he continued:

  “And goodness gracious, you have no chair. Where are my manners? Would you like to have my,” he frowned at the lichen-flecked headstone, “my settle?”

  Goodness gracious? He said that too? He drew a white handkerchief from his pocket and began to rather futilely scrub at the surface.

  “Oh, don’t do that,” I said. “Really, don’t bother.”

  But he looked a little wounded, so—rather against my own judgement—I stepped carefully over the perimeter of salt and sat next to him, helping myself to a butty.

  “These are quite excellent, I must say, Mistress Toni. Such soft bread.”

  Ah, yes. The seventeen hundreds were probably not renowned for the availability of sliced white. Actually, I had absolutely no idea what they were r
enowned for. Infant death, no electricity and a distinct lack of female emancipation seemed likely, but beyond that I drew a blank. Bredon, meanwhile, had moved on to the crisps.

  “Delicious,” he pronounced, inhaling a couple of packets worth. “Most tasty—can these be potatoes?”

  “Um, yes. I believe they are. Probably with about a zillion E-numbers.”

  “So many graves.”

  That threw me.

  “What?”

  “Here. In the cemetery. There were just a handful in my day. How long has passed since my demise?”

  “More than two hundred years.”

  He nodded, looking thoughtful.

  “And why am I here? To do your will? To slay your enemies and bring them to justice? With a sword in my hand, you will find no finer fighter than I.”

  “I don’t think I have any enemies, actually, but thank you for asking.”

  “None? You are lucky. I lived in a time of conflict. A man needed to know how to protect his family. Tell me: is the world much changed since my death?”

  Where to start, considering I had given up history up at the earliest opportunity? I hadn’t a clue. Instead, I showed him my phone. He seemed surprised enough that I could read, explaining that—in his day—it was a skill few enough men acquired, let alone women.

  All in all, I was having the best evening I could remember in a while, and I think I would have stayed chatting with Bredon until dawn—except that my phone rang. Caller ID said it was my brother, and at two in the morning that meant only one thing. William wanted me down at the police morgue to raise a corpse. It wasn’t a favour he often asked, so I usually just said yes. Tonight, I would rather have stayed chatting with Bredon… but family is family.

  “Hi bro.”

  My brother joined the police straight from school. Other kids played train driver, spaceman, cowboy… not William. Always the copper. His heroes were Starsky and Hutch, Inspector Morse, Hercule Poirot. And William had done well—there were a lot of uniforms his age still rounding up stray cats. Or in Staffordshire, stray sheep. And Wills really cared about the victims he encountered. He cared about justice. I felt he sometimes saw me as a useful tool in helping him achieve his ambitions, but I didn’t mind enough to make a fuss.

  “Hey, Toni. I need a favour.” No surprise then. “Where are you? How long would it take you to get to the slabs? There’s not a soul here and shouldn’t be until seven.”

  “I’m at the old cemetery above Colton Hill—I could be with you in half an hour.”

  “Come as soon as you can. You’ll understand when you get here.”

  He ended the call.

  I looked up at Bredon. He had a quizzical expression…

  “Bredon, I have to go. I want you to know how much I’ve enjoyed talking with you tonight.”

  “Mistress Toni, likewise. I hope we can continue our acquaintance very soon. Should you need a protector, my sword will always be ready.”

  I didn’t tell him that he wouldn’t remember our meeting; that if we did ever meet again, he would recall nothing of our conversations and our happy discussion of the literacy of women and the wonders of modern technology. He kissed my hand very chivalrously and I stepped out of the circle. I varied the words for him—my usual discharge seemed too brusque for someone I had so enjoyed my time with:

  “Bredon Havers, I release you to your rest. Go in peace and friendship. Return to the earth from which I called you.”

  He ebbed like mist in a breeze. And then he was gone, and the circle of damp salt with him.

  I felt a little wistful to see him go, and rather glumly walked the mile back to my house through the trees. In really bad weather I was occasionally tempted to drive, but there couldn’t be good consequences from letting the rest of the village know that I visited the old cemetery in the middle of the night. Every night. In a little village like this… well, people talk.

  I’d parked my car by the kerb, although ‘car’ was a kind term for it. It was an old green Morris 1000 with wooden boot frames. It went from nought to thirty in its own time with a following wind. It was, in polite terms, a big heap of rust: my brother used less affectionate words than the BBC liked broadcasting before nine o’clock. But it was my heap of rust. And this time around it started at the third attempt within only a token protest. One day, I would get it a fourth hub cap.

  I had driven to the morgue in the middle of the night only twice before. Why so seldom? The fact remained that Staffordshire was a sleepy county—people just didn’t murder one another. Most sudden end-of-life incidents in the county tended to involve tractors. Or cows. Sometimes both. My brother seldom called on me because he seldom needed to. The coroner wasn’t kept busy—he moonlighted as a conveyance solicitor. Mysterious deaths? They just happened somewhere else. Maybe in London. Or Birmingham. You could try Liverpool. Round here we had Young Farmers’ nights and the Women’s Institute. Murder and mayhem? Indeed no—they passed us by.

  But not tonight, it seemed. I pulled the car in a couple of streets away and walked to the back door of the morgue where Wills was waiting. He pulled me inside and gave me a brief hug.

  “Thanks, Toni. I appreciate this.”

  “Hey, it’s not a problem. This is my party trick remember. Our grandfather taught me well.”

  “Still…”

  “Just leave the sheet on this time, OK.”

  He laughed. He’d seen it all before and wasn’t squeamish. I hadn’t seen very much of it and wanted to keep things that way.

  We made our way to the cool room, where bodies were kept until they could be post-mortemed. It was super cold, and I kept my coat on. Usually the corpses that dwelled here were nothing suspicious—unfortunate cow-related events or the odd tractor accident—but today there was something bad, something Wills didn’t want to risk messing up. Someone who needed justice.

  “Her name’s Fenella Hampton May—she’s seventeen. She passed her driving test just yesterday and was beaten to death with her own wheel lock. Her parents and her boyfriend were waiting for her in a restaurant. She never arrived.”

  Fenella was under a sheet. I didn’t ask Wills to remove it—nor did I go any nearer than I had to. Raising the dead and buried is one thing. Raising corpses that have barely cooled is another. I drew the salt circle very carefully, trying not to raise my eyes above the tiled floor but failed briefly. There was a toe. It had a label on it. Ick. I lowered my eyes from the toe and took out my atomiser. Confined in the room as we were, the air took on a heady, dense aroma.

  “I need to buy you better perfume,” said Wills cheerfully.

  I was less cheerful, down on my knees finishing off the circle, my ear just inches from a toe. Don’t think about the toe. I stood up and moved back from the line of salt.

  “God, but you’re picky. Fenella Hampton May, in peace I call you. I summon you this night. Come to me.”

  She sat up, and the sheet fell to the floor, revealing pale skin with freckles. She was wearing nothing—her clothes probably heading right that moment to a crime lab—and I could see she had been a skinny teenager, flat-chested with a runner’s legs. Her face was blood-stained still. I hoped to prevent her from turning round. I didn’t want to see the back of her head. What surprised me was how little of her spirit was left. Bredon had been full of spirit, hundreds of years after his death. Fenella was barely there at all. If I’d waited a couple of weeks, I doubted there would have been anyone to question, just an empty corpse. My theory is that how long your spirit—soul?—hangs around depends on how much you influenced the world. Fenella had trod lightly through life.

  No matter. Best to get things over with:

  “Fenella, do you remember your death.”

  “Yes.”

  Her voice was soft and uninterested. She didn’t look either at me or at Wills. I handed her an open packet of crisps, and she devoured them rapaciously.

  “Tell me how you died.”

  “I was driving to the restaurant. It was
sunny. I was nervous so I pulled over and drank some squash in the layby where the old pub burnt down.” She paused, looking at her hands in a distracted way and picking at her nails. “I saw Max.”

  “Max who?”

  “Maximilian Fisher. He was in the field with the sheep. Literally with the sheep. Can you believe it? My whole netball team wants to date him and he’s a sheep shagger.”

  She stopped again. I wanted to prod her, but my jaw had fallen open and I couldn’t make it shut. Eventually I managed:

  “So, what did you do?”

  “What do you think? I began to video it on my phone.”

  Of course she had. Because that’s what teenagers did… I shook my head in disbelief.

  “But then he saw me and ran after me. I left it too late and then when I tried to run, my heel caught and I tripped. I dropped my keys, and by the time I’d found them and got into the car he was nearly on me. I tried to start the engine, but it kept stalling—I was panicking, you know. Then he killed me.”

  Her voice trailed off. She didn’t seem very interested in talking about her murder. She looked at me hopefully and I handed her a second packet of crisps. This time she just tipped back her head and poured them straight in.

  “Where’s your phone?”

  “I dropped it in the field. I don’t think Max saw where.”

  I looked at Wills.

  “You have enough to go on?”

  “More than enough. We didn’t search the field because there was no reason to think she’d left the car. There’s no signal from her phone, but if I know where to start looking… well, it hasn’t rained and the video should be on there. And there are fingerprints on the wheel lock. We just didn’t know whose and they aren’t in the database.”

  I nodded and turned back to where Fenella was sitting.

  “Fenella Hampton May, I release you. Return to the earth from which I called you.”