The Ghost Tree: Gripping historical fiction from the Sunday Times Bestseller

‘Vandals!’ Finlay placed the bucket on the table. ‘Well, you should be pleased I have standards. I have an image to protect, don’t forget.’ He glanced at her. ‘Which leads me to my news and a favour I need to ask.’

Ruth pulled up one of the high stools at the kitchen island and hauled herself onto it.

‘Name it.’

‘If all goes to plan, I’m going to have to be away for a time, filming in the Hebrides, far sooner than I expected. Would you be willing to stay here to keep an eye on the house? I know you said you would, but I genuinely envisaged being here to protect you from Timothy for a while at least. I quite fancied myself as Sir Lancelot. To leave you alone now seems churlish.’

‘Of course I’d be willing.’ Ruth was surprised at the sense of loss which swept over her at the thought of being without Fin, but she hoped it didn’t show. ‘When are you leaving?’

‘Not sure yet. We agreed a format this afternoon, one which I think will suit the producer, and the money men. Then the hard work will start.’ He gave her an impish grin, full of almost childlike excitement. ‘I’ve been working on this idea for ages. It is going to be such fun! And I want you to have fun too, Ruthie, so while you’re here, especially if you’re in charge, you must have a car to drive and as it happens I have a spare.’ Before he left the kitchen he reached up to the hooks by the door and she found herself holding the keys to the old MX5 he kept tucked away in his garage.

Champagne flutes in hand, they wandered through the dusk and stood on the belvedere, looking down towards the water, listening to the cheerful babble of the weir in the distance.

‘I thought we’d be filming here, in my own kitchen, but the powers that be like the idea of setting it in the Highlands and Islands, perhaps using the kitchens of people who still cook the traditional foods. Old black iron stoves, that sort of thing.’

‘Are there still such people?’ Ruth asked. She was watching reflected lights dancing on the ripples. Somewhere behind them an owl hooted and they both looked round.

Finlay laughed. ‘That’s what my editor said. And the answer is, there are a few, though not for much longer, I fear. TV, the Internet, modern technology, they are all conspiring to wipe out the past. People’s grannies are no longer wearing long black skirts and checked shawls and aprons,’ he sighed theatrically, ‘as they are in my imagination; they have supermarket deliveries or fly to the mainland and go shopping in Inverness or Edinburgh or Paris! But, and this is the important part, the recipes do survive, and my show will do its bit to preserve and disseminate them.’ He shivered. ‘Come away in, it’s cold out here. Let’s eat.’

Having parked his car, Timothy had crept silently along the side of the house. It was almost dark now and he could see lights on at the far end of the building. The sound of the wind in the trees masked any noise he made as he sidled closer, keeping his back to the wall. There were creepers of some kind there; they provided cover as he reached the lit window and peered in. He could see into the kitchen. It was large and expensive-looking and Finlay was standing by the table talking to Ruth. He saw the champagne bottle and narrowed his eyes resentfully, wishing he dared press his ear against the window. He couldn’t hear what they were saying.

When they had moved into the next-door room and opened the French doors he froze, his back pressed into the trellis. If they looked to the side they would see him, but the sudden darkness after the bright light must have blinded them. They stepped outside, laughing, and walked down the grass away from the house without seeing him, leaving the doors open behind them. He hesitated. What was to stop him walking in?

The sound of the owl so close beside him freaked him out. It was eerie, like a horror movie. They heard it too. He saw them both turn. He held his breath. They seemed to be looking straight at him but in the dark they didn’t see him and after a moment they went back to their conversation, talking together softly and laughing as they stared out towards the river. His nerve had gone. He took his chance, sliding back round the corner of the house and out of sight. He knew where they were. He knew that, at least for now the house – his house – in Morningside, was empty.

HMS Tartar was a 28-gun sixth-rate frigate with a complement of two hundred men and officers. She sailed from Spithead on 28 March 1764. Tom had watched a burly sailor stow his sea chest in the cockpit down on the orlop deck with increasing despair. His new uniform of blue jacket and white breeches sat uneasily on his small frame and his buckled shoes hurt. He sat down on the chest, staring round in the gloom, his cocked hat clutched defensively on his knees. They were below the waterline here and the air was fetid and damp. He looked up at his new friend Jamie and bit his lip fiercely. He would not let himself cry.

‘You’ll get used to it,’ Jamie said wisely. ‘We all do.’ He spoke from several months’ experience as a midshipman. ‘We are lucky; we have a good captain and Lieutenant Murray is popular with the men.’

Tom wiped his nose on his sleeve and took a deep breath. ‘It didn’t sound like it, not from the way that sailor was swearing.’

Jamie laughed. ‘That was O’Brian. He is a bit of a troublemaker, but a good sort at heart. Here’ – he dived into the shadows and produced a canvas bundle – ‘this is your hammock. Let me show you how you hang it. Did you bring a pillow?’ As he moved around, the shadows cast by their only light, a candle stub stuck to an oyster shell balanced on the narrow table, leapt and flickered against the wooden walls of the compartment which served as cabin for the midshipmen, separating them from the rest of the crew. They staggered slightly as the ship moved restlessly beneath them and Jamie laughed as Tom threw out an arm to steady himself. ‘You will need to find your sea legs quickly, my friend. We’re still at anchor here!’ he crowed. He was right. As they headed out into the ocean swell, Tom began to feel sick. The feeling grew worse and worse until he thought he might die. Then one morning as he climbed, half asleep, out of his hammock at the beginning of his watch he found the feeling had gone. It never returned.

It must have been climbing trees on the edge of the River Almond and the Brox Burn at Kirkhill that had given Tom a head for heights, that and scrambling round the ruins at St Andrews, or hauling himself up into the ancient chestnuts and oaks and onto the crumbling walls of the priory on Inchmahome Island. Always, when he could, he had climbed.

As he looked up at the towering masts of the ship, the network of ropes, the huge billowing sails and realised that he was expected to climb up there, now, he felt a sudden surge of excitement. ‘Can you do it, boy?’ Lieutenant Murray looked down at him. There was a certain sympathy in the man’s eyes. He had seen too many boys quail and shudder and cling in terror to the lowest rigging.

‘I can do it, sir.’ Murray saw the glee there and recognised it as genuine. For once there was no bravado. ‘Up you go then. To the cross trees and wait there for further orders.’

‘Aye-aye, sir!’ Tom resisted the urge to spit on his palms as he had seen the sailors do. He must remember he was one of the young gentlemen and expected to behave with a certain decorum.

George Murray watched, shading his eyes against the sun, then he turned to Jamie who was standing beside him. ‘Better go with him. Keep an eye on him.’

Jamie saluted gravely. ‘Looks as though he was born to it, sir. I expect he could teach me a thing or two.’

The ship heeled slightly in the swell of the sea, heading south. On the quarterdeck the captain paused in his slow patrol. Hands behind his back and seemingly relaxed, he was watching the ship. Early days yet, but it was coming together well. His attention was caught by the movement at the foot of the main mast and he watched the two figures as they swarmed up the ratlines. He gave a barely perceptible nod. Young Erskine would make a sailor yet; and by the time he returned to England he would be a man.

‘It’s amazing.’ Tom was talking to Jamie at the end of their watch. ‘You can see the whole world from up there.’

Jamie scowled. ‘The whole sea, more like.’ He was not going to admit to Tom that he was still unhappy going aloft, clinging to the handholds, his whole body iced with fear.

‘It’s like being a bird, soaring high over the waves,’ Tom went on, oblivious. ‘The sound of the wind in the sails and the whistling of the rigging is like music. Doesn’t it excite you?’

‘No.’ Jamie sat on his sea chest and pulled off his shoes. His feet were covered in blisters. ‘These are too tight. I will have to see if I can swap them. The purser gets angry if we grow too fast! If I’m lucky, one of the lieutenants might have an old pair he doesn’t want any more.’ He groaned with relief as he stretched out his toes.

Down below the cockpit was full of the sounds of the ship, the creaking and easing of her joints, the slap of a rope against the masts, the surge of water beneath them in the bilges. Below deck they could smell the stink of it. From beyond the thin partition between them and the seamen’s quarters they could hear the low voices of men talking, the occasional burst of laughter, a shout of anger.

Tom was growing used to the routine on board; their lives were ordained by the sound of the bell every half an hour, by the division of their day into four-hour watches, by the longing for mealtimes and for sleep. At first he had thought he would never fall asleep in his hammock, but sheer exhaustion soon won and he was unconscious as soon as his head touched the rough brown canvas. Nearby one of the smaller middies was crying quietly, trying to muffle the sound in his arms as he clenched his eyelids against an intolerable world and Tom found himself aching with sympathy and at the same time relief that he himself felt, if not at home, then at least able to bear it.

As a young gentleman, Tom’s main duties were as one of the captain’s servants, the young men training to be officers; when called to perform these duties he must brush his own blue coat and make sure his hair was tidily tied back beneath his cocked hat and report to the captain, be it in his cabin or on the quarterdeck. As with everything else, he watched and learned and sometimes, with Jamie at his side, he got into mischief. Once or twice he was invited to the captain’s table not as a servant but as a guest, sitting amongst the other officers, permitted with a certain good-humoured tolerance to give his views on subjects of the moment.

Almost as soon as they had set sail, Thomas and the other young gentlemen had been summoned to the quarterdeck to begin their lessons in navigation and it was then Tom discovered that this was to be no ordinary voyage. Not that he had any idea what an ordinary voyage entailed, but he could sense that this was special. The captain himself was there and with him their two civilian passengers, William Harrison and Thomas Wyatt. Sir John was, he explained to the boys, to oversee the sea trial of a special timepiece which would help navigators work out the position of the ship through an accurate knowledge of longitude. A prize was to be awarded to the first person to invent a chronometer that was sufficiently accurate and much was at stake.

With the aid of his calculations Mr Harrison predicted that the ship would arrive in Madeira on 19 April and the exact distance the ship would have sailed.

Tom stared at the watch. It was beautiful. He had only a vague idea of what the men were talking about but one thing swiftly rose uppermost in his mind. How envious his brother David, with his fascination for the stars, would be of this chance to see these trials. He would write to him and tell him all about it, make his brother envious. He was gleeful at the thought, unaware that at that moment the captain happened to glance his way and caught sight of the fierce excitement on the young midshipman’s face. His uncle had told him to keep a special eye on young Tom Erskine and suddenly he understood why. It was more than a benevolent family interest; there was a good brain there and a spark that could be cultivated.

At dinner that night, with Tom amongst the invited guests and, for once without Jamie, who was rapidly becoming his faithful sidekick, Sir John encouraged the boy to listen and to talk with his two distinguished guests. He was impressed that Tom appeared to know so much about the movement of the stars and had so swiftly grasped the basics of navigation. He did not know that the slowly growing pile of letters addressed to Lord Cardross in the bottom of Tom’s sea chest were the way Tom was assuaging his homesickness and at the same time proving to his eldest brother, secure in his academic haven in Scotland, that life at sea was something to be envied.

Thomas

Cross though I was with my parents and my brothers, blaming them for my being press-ganged, as I considered it, into the navy, I wrote to them all. To my father I sent a short, polite note, informing him that I was still alive and moderately well. To my mother I wrote in warmer terms, withholding any news which I believed would be upsetting, though my mother was to my mind far better able to bear bad news than Papa. To David I was formal; I would never let him think I had been upset by my sudden relocation into the middle of the ocean. Only to Harry did I unburden myself at length, describing the worst parts of the experience, maybe, in spite of myself, allowing hints of my fear and homesickness, a sorrow compounded by the fact that I no longer knew where my home was. Certainly not Bath. I had been there but a few months. The house of my parents in Walcot was, I suppose, the nearest thing to home that I had known, but in my own mind I considered that they had cast me out. My brothers still lived and studied in Scotland, and Scotland was the land of my birth. It was there that I had grown up; it was there that I had explored a world of confusing contrasts. I was of noble birth, but poor. I was loved, at least by Mama, but I was also their youngest and least important child. I was in my heart a country boy but lived in a city. I had been privy to the conversations of the greatest minds of the enlightened age, encouraged to listen and watch and study, to express, albeit only occasionally, my own small opinions as I grew. I was allowed to make books my friends and to write and have dreams of academe, then told that all of my expectations and certainties were no more than that: dreams.

The place I now found myself was, I supposed, at present my home, the only certainty I knew upon the great wastes of the sea, and I put that at the head of my letters as my current address: HMS Tartar.

I sealed my letters and stowed them away at the bottom of my sea chest. I did not know if they would ever reach their destination. Perhaps it would be better if they did not.

14 (#ulink_52b78401-4d6c-527d-bf66-cc8657f66747)

April looked at her watch. There was no sign of Timothy and it had long ago grown dark. Presumably he had followed the Daimler for miles, then in his usual clueless way he had got himself lost. She felt a disproportionate wave of hatred for Finlay sweep over her. Everything about him, his complacency, his posh car, his celebrity status – which obviously brought money as well as fame – added to her fury at his decision to get involved and try to thwart her plans.

Sitters they had called themselves. The name had pleased them hugely. Squat. Infiltrate. Take. Hence the acronym. They would look for an empty house to use as a base – surprisingly easy even in this day and age. Then they’d move in, their story of distant relatives ready should anyone ask who they were, and begin to leaflet the area. They offered cleaning services, odd jobs, help with shopping, ‘no job too small’ and targeted elderly people who seemed to be living on their own. They then befriended them. Hence the sitting; not babysitting, but sitting with the elderly. Timothy at least had convinced himself they were doing the old folk a favour. They were lonely, abandoned by the world. It pleased them to have a friend. They entrusted their money, their credit cards, their PIN numbers, in order to get the shopping done, and she and Timothy had done that shopping, keeping meticulous records in case anyone ever asked. Until the money ran out. Which it inevitably did. That was the point. Sometimes they found the pension was enough to make it worthwhile sticking around, but not usually. Someone might notice. Time to move on. This was business. Their last target had been in Leeds. Before that in Birmingham.

The squats had varied. Some were in empty houses and they had made do with basic second-hand tat to furnish them. Some were already furnished, as this one had been. They knew who had lived here from sorting through the post that still cascaded through the door. Where the old woman had gone they did not know, but she had had good taste. April liked this house. She would be sad when it was time to go. Edinburgh had been trickier than anywhere else had been so far. She had found it harder to make contacts, to know where to go. But this new enterprise was the best so far; a potential gold mine.

They had tried the inheritance scam once before, in Exeter; it had worked like a dream. No one had questioned them, no one had cared. Her only sorrow had been that they hadn’t chosen a more ambitious target. ‘Start small,’ Timothy had said, and she had listened. But now at last they were about to hit the big time. She had looked up the house prices around Number 26 and they were astronomic. Once they had pocketed the deeds to that place and sold it on, she had calculated they wouldn’t have to work again. And now it was all being threatened by this bloody greedy daughter who had never cared for the old boy anyway and by Finlay Macdermott, of all people. She could hardly contain her rage.

With a sigh she turned out the lights in the kitchen and stamped up the stairs to the small back bedroom. Drawing the curtains before reaching for the light switch, she hauled a heavy suitcase out from under the bed.

Opening the lid of the case she looked down at the newspaper-wrapped contents. There were candlesticks, spoons and forks, small dishes. She pulled out a large square parcel and unwrapped it. She knew what this was. She had seen it on an antiques programme on the telly. A standish. A sort of pen and ink holder. The glass bottles for the ink had hall-marked silver lids. There weren’t any pens with it any more. She ran her finger over the intricate designs carved onto it. Victorian, she supposed. It was sad that it would have to be melted down; the swirls and curls on the silver appealed to her. The other stuff was more austere. Georgian probably. She had made good use of her study of daytime TV. The value of silver had dropped, but it was still all worth a lot of money by their standards.

She couldn’t see how Tim’s claim to that old boy’s inheritance could fail. She had thought of everything, even the DNA. It had been a shock when they discovered he had a daughter, but that almost certainly didn’t matter. Donald Dunbar hadn’t mentioned her to Timothy in all those months; it would be clear to the solicitor that he had intended to disinherit her. She shivered. It had only been chance that Timothy had spotted the letter on the mat from the solicitors to Ruth that day; otherwise they wouldn’t have known what was going on.

She replaced the standish in the suitcase and shoved the case back under the bed. Standing up, she turned away and caught sight of the pictures with their gilded frames stacked behind the door. She wasn’t sure he should have bothered to remove them; they would have come anyway with the whole inheritance. But if anyone asked, he could always say it was to keep them safe in case the house was burgled. She gave a wintry smile. Shuddering, she studied the picture facing her. Ghastly woman in a lace-trimmed bonnet. Hideous face! But an oil painting nevertheless and who knows, it might be by someone famous. Or of someone famous. The jewellery she had locked in a drawer, all except the small bag of rings that Timothy had pocketed and she had demanded back as soon as they got home. There was other stuff too, which Timothy had removed little by little over the last few months. He was fairly certain he had taken everything of value. Poor old Donald had been oblivious, pathetically grateful for the attention that had been given him, clinging to her hand when she had gone to visit. She did not allow herself to remember the time when, with tears in his eyes, he had called her Ruth.

She moved over to the table by the door. There was a cardboard box she hadn’t even bothered to unpack; odds and ends Timothy had taken from the cupboards upstairs in Donald Dunbar’s house. Reaching in, she pulled out a small painted wooden box. She shook it experimentally then wrenched off the lid. There was a bundle of old sticks and rags inside. She stared down at it, puzzled, not making any sense of what she saw. Was it some kind of a primitive doll? Whatever it was, it was a dusty mess which smelled revolting and gave off an icy breath as though it was alive. She slammed the lid back on and rammed the box into the cardboard container. Why in God’s name had the idiot brought that here? She shuddered and reached towards the box with the intention of taking the object, whatever it was, downstairs and binning it, but she couldn’t bring herself to put her hand anywhere near it again. It emanated evil. She backed away from the table, aware that her whole body was trembling. Reaching the door, she groped for the handle, not taking her eyes off the box, dragged the door open and dived through it before slamming it shut behind her.

Standing on the landing she could feel her heart thumping in her chest. She grasped the newel post and hung on desperately, afraid she was going to pass out; her mouth flooded with bitter saliva and she realised suddenly she was going to vomit. She just made it to the bathroom, throwing herself down in front of the toilet, drenched with sweat as she retched again and again.