Northern Spirit (26 page)

‘People react in different ways to stress. Linzi’s away most of the
time. She hasn’t been around to see all the trouble her father caused. George
was devoted to her. He wouldn’t do her any harm at all. David and Kathy always
got the brunt of it. Maybe David has reacted badly, but who knows how it feels
to stare death in the face through the barrel of a shotgun!’

‘I can’t believe this, Barry. How can you hate your own son so much?’

Barry chose his words carefully. ‘No one will ever understand how
George Keldas’s mind worked.’ He didn’t notice Hannah shudder. ‘Come on. Let’s
get you some supper. You’ve done a good job tonight, don’t worry about this
anymore.’ Barry led her away and, dragging the black bin-liner with him, put
out the light and shut the door.

*       
*        *

Hannah lay on her bed with her brown eyes wide open. She’d had a good
supper with Eleanor and Barry; she only ate because they wanted her to. She
felt they were trying to make her feel better, which of course they were. But
now, lying in her bed alone, she felt uneasy. If someone had said: ‘Do you want
to go home?’ she would have quickly packed her bags and gone with them. She had
never in her life been close to so much tragedy as she had this weekend. To run
away and keep her distance was the foremost thought in her mind. How could
something as awful as this happen in such a lovely place? Murder was for some
run down city, not for these beautiful hills and mountains. She knew she was
being naive but this tale of Barry’s stole away her dream of Lakeland.

She felt she could never set foot at Keld Head again, it would always
hold this grim story; and to see David again would be impossible, she would
view him differently. She didn’t want to pity him, in fact she now felt angry
with him for not telling her. But then why should he?

Then moments of guilt overwhelmed her. She felt if Barry suggested that
they visit Keld Head, she would almost certainly go with him. In fact,
something impelled her to do so; mainly to console Linzi, but also to apologise
to David. She understood what it felt like to lose a parent. When her mother
died, the emptiness inside had gnawed at her. She had thought it wrong to
laugh, and to ever be happy again would be out of the question. She’d just
worked and studied - anything to keep her mind occupied. But after meeting Linzi,
and wrongly believing her to be grieving too, Hannah couldn’t understand how
she just wanted to have fun. She wanted to have new friends and start again.
Linzi had unwittingly taught Hannah something. But now, as she thought of Linzi
and her loss, she realised it was of a different nature, it was much worse, and
there was no pride or pleasant memories of a beloved parent, there was only
shame.

Hannah had sheer love and admiration for her dead mother who had
courageously fought cancer, but Linzi had, in a sense, lost a father who no one
will ever love and respect again; a shame that will stay with the family for
generations to come; a family who people would gossip and snigger about behind
closed doors; wondering if the children would turn out to be as evil as their
father, and their fate not even settled.

She remembered the attractive man in the photograph in the kitchen at
Keld Head. She was right to have felt uneasy about him. But for his family to
keep his image displayed in the house, where he was no longer loved, only
despised, she could not comprehend. It was as if he were hung there as a trophy
of grim remembrance:
Do not remove me, in case I harm you too
. But what
respect could you have from a family who no longer loved you or cared for you,
who daren’t remove your memory in case you are found innocent.

13

VALLEY OF DEEP SHADOW

George Keldas leant forward on the desk, his thin hands tightly
clenched together in front of him with bony fingers knotted and entwined
together; the skin on his face, sallow. His head was bent low and he was
staring at the desk. You couldn’t see his eyes but if you could you might feel
that they were burning the structure of the timber beneath him.

In stark contrast was the beautiful young woman sitting opposite him.
She was wearing a silver-grey fur coat, snugly wrapped around her. Her soft
black hair was falling to her shoulders; her eyes were full of empathy and
love.

They didn’t speak, but waited for the noise around them to stop: the
banging of the doors, the turning of the keys, and the stamping together of a
pair of heavy boots belonging to a guard standing at the back of them. Then
there was peace, an echoing silence. No noise except for the breath of the man
behind them.

The young woman was the first to speak: ‘You look poorly again today.
Are you feeling unwell?’

‘I feel sick all the time,’ George whispered. ‘My stomach burns like
I’ve a worm gnawing at it.’

‘Will they let you see a doctor?’

‘This place is full of doctors, Linzi. . . . But they don’t try to heal
my stomach, they just try and mend my head.’ He looked at her lovingly. There
was no trace of the handsome face he once had, his deep blue eyes that used to
be clear and bright, were now muddied with brown and yellow veins.

‘You must ask to see a proper doctor then, Daddy. . . . You must
insist.’

‘I’ve no right to insist on anything. They would want me dead! Then
they would have no problems to solve, and they could all go home to their wives
and babies and love them and forget all about me.’

‘Don’t talk like that. You only make yourself feel worse. . . Anyway,
I’ve brought you some money and left it with the guard, then you can get
yourself a few things.’

‘The only thing I need is some powder to kill this worm in my stomach –
pain makes you act crazy, Linzi.’

They remained silent for a while. George twisted sideways in his seat,
then stretched his spine upwards to ease the pain and cautiously held his side.
‘Have you been stealing from Davey again?’

‘I don’t steal it, he lends it to me.’

‘It may as well be stealing. I bet you never give it back again do you?
What a joke.’ He leant back on the chair and laughed. ‘This is good medicine
for me.’ George gave a wry smile and then bent forward on the desk close up to
his daughter and looked hard into her face. ‘Take his money now, Linzi, because
he’ll soon have none.’

‘I’ll pay him back as soon as I can, you know I will.’

‘Don’t bother!’ he threw his head back in defiance. ‘It’s my money
anyway. And when your mother divorces me, you can have it all.’

‘Stop it. . . . She won’t divorce you. . . . She’s never said a thing
about divorce.’

George interrupted her. ‘Aye, and do you know why? Because she’ll be
out on her ear. . . . I’d fight for every penny and see that she gets blamed
for her adultery!’

Linzi tried again to alter the tone of the conversation. She was
usually clever at this, but today she was losing heart. ‘I’ve got a job as a
waitress; it’ll pay my bus fares, so I can see you more.’

‘Now what do you want to see a miserable old git like me for?’

‘You know I love you . . . I’ll never stop coming to see you.’

‘Aye well, mind you don’t. But don’t tell them, this is our secret
remember. Just me and you together. No one to interfere . . . no one to push me
around.’

‘They don’t know I come. . . . They haven’t got a clue. . . . They
never talk about you. It’s as if you don’t exist. . . . Sometimes I think Davey
wants to talk, but Mum just sweeps over things like it never happened. Besides,
Davey’s not been well. He looks thinner. I think he’s doing a good job of the
farm, though.’

‘No wonder the lad’s sick. . . . It’s his own fault. . . . He’s
probably got a guilty conscience eating away at him. Maybe he’s got a worm in
his stomach too? He has that stupid look on his face all the time. You never
know what he’s thinking. He’s laughing at me, isn’t he? It’s as well he doesn’t
come or I’ll finish the job off proper.’

Linzi had had enough. She couldn’t bear to hear him speak like this.
She still loved her father and no matter what he did or said, she would never
abandon him. She would always love him. She believed him to be the victim, not
Uncle Fred; he just got in the way. It surely was a dreadful accident. She knew
David to be infuriating at times with the arrogance he had, and an air of
self-righteousness about him. She could have smacked him herself many times.
Sometimes she felt she hated David then, other times, when she saw him playing
with Sarah and Tom, she loved him for his patience. He would be devastated if
he knew she was visiting their father. It had only once been discussed who
should go to visit, but her mother had said it best to leave him be, and so
they did, except for Linzi.

‘I’ll come again next week. Please try and see a doctor about your
pains,’ and with that, she kissed him goodbye.

George Keldas had seen a doctor; in fact, he had seen several. But he
didn’t remember; doctors were all the same to him. They gave him pills for his
stomach, which he confused with pills for his head. He had a dim memory that
someone had told him he had kidney stones, or was it gallstones, or even
gravestones. George just didn’t know. One day they would have to take him to
hospital for an X-ray and then maybe some surgery, but to get him to co-operate
was another matter. No one could ever get any sense out of him.

He was much aggrieved that he hadn’t finished the job he intended to
do; David was still alive and free to take his land and squander his money.
George didn’t expect old Fred to jump in the way.
Stupid old Freddie! Always
poking his nose in where it didn’t belong.
And
George had reasoned,
with a heart full of vengeance, that he’d done Fred a favour.
The man was as
good as dead anyway
.

‘Any way, if I see that lad again I’ll wipe that smirk off his face for
good!’ These were the last words he spoke to Linzi.

*       
*        *

It was raining heavily when Linzi left the prison. She ran across the
wet pavement to the waiting bus; she was tired and hungry and had a long and
complicated journey back to her lodgings. She wanted to cry; she always felt
like this when she left him.

She thought her father seemed worse today, but at least he had talked
to her. Some days he never spoke at all and only cursed her for coming. And
then on other days he would ramble on and on, totally incoherent. Today he was
bitter and there was still no repentance - never any repentance. She could tell
he loved her and that meant a great deal, as Linzi knew she was his only ally.

Linzi would never tell anyone what he said to her, admitting his guilt
or not. She dreaded the trial but, even if it meant going against her mother
and her brother, she would never speak against her own father.

If Linzi could have talked to her mother, she would have found that she
wouldn’t have stopped her visiting; in fact, Kathy pitied George, as did David.
None of them hated him; the only reproach they could give him was to ignore
him. David had done this purely out of his mother’s wishes, not to antagonise
him. He knew his father was sick and it did grate on his conscience that he
didn’t visit; David hadn’t seen him since the day of the shooting. As for
Kathy, well she’d tried out of duty to visit but George’s speech and behaviour
was cruel and cutting and it pushed her away and the peace she felt without him
was so wonderful.

Kathy knew that the trial would be the final reckoning, that the
lawyers pleading his case would have to wheedle out of her any information that
could either release him or incriminate him. It remained to be decided whether
he was innocent or guilty; and hopefully to understand what his intentions really
were. He surely hadn’t meant to kill Fred Keldas, but had he meant to kill
David? And David was the only witness left to tell, and what he would say no
one knew.

As darkness fell, Linzi slipped into her apartment. Her fellow students
were all home from lectures. Loud music was blaring from upstairs and the thud
of its beat penetrated the bricks of the house. There was a television playing
loudly in another bedroom, where someone was trying to compete with the noise.

Linzi’s friends had wondered where she was, and why she hadn’t been in
lectures. She was well dressed but this gave no clue of her whereabouts. One
girl presumed that Linzi had a secret lover somewhere and took frequent days
off to meet him. She certainly kept them guessing, and in no way would she ever
reveal to them her true destination.

Some of the girls did know of her family history and they’d comforted
her and pitied her. One of her friends had been back to Keld Head with her,
purely because she wanted to meet Linzi’s brother. She had figured that a girl
so beautiful must have a good-looking brother also. But she’d been disappointed
in David’s personality and shocked by George Keldas’s attitude, so she’d,
consequently, kept away.

Linzi made some tea and went straight to her room. Despite the noise
and the company around her, she felt alone. But today she didn’t mind; she
wanted to think and plan how she could best help her father. She wondered how
long she could keep this burden to herself, but her flatmates were not the
people to confide in, nor were her family; she couldn’t possibly betray the
trust her father had in her. She guessed David wouldn’t blame her for visiting:
she lived nearer the prison than all the others. David couldn’t possibly go,
and he was already under stress as it was with the work load, the trauma of the
shooting, and the trouble he’d been in over Joanne Milton. Linzi then had an
idea.

She changed into some comfortable clothes, turned her stereo on to mask
the other noise, curled up on her bed and started to write a letter. The only
person she felt she could confide in without any prejudice was Hannah Robson.