Chapter Three

Jake could have followed the man’s footsteps without help, but he kept his fingers on Martin’s wrist because he was aware of the tension building up in his brother, a mixture of panic and anger which might suddenly make him do or say something really stupid. They went down a long corridor but before they’d reached the end the man stopped, knocked at a door and opened it without waiting for an answer. Jake felt a pulse of surprise run through Martin’s arm, followed by a sudden lessening of wariness.

“Come in,” said a woman’s voice. “Sit down. It’s a bit cramped for three, I’m afraid. You’re Martin and Jake Bertold? I’m Sergeant Abraham.”

“Hello,” said Jake, checking the position of the chair Martin had led him to.

“Hello,” she said. “Please sit down, Martin. I’m sorry to bring you along here like this.”

Jake began to build an idea of her in her tiny, office-smelling room. There were potted plants somewhere, recently watered. She wore quite strong-smelling scent and her voice was deep but not at all mannish. She knew she’d surprised Martin by not being a man and she thought that was funny. There was a vague suggestion of Mum about her, though she was shorter (or sitting on a very low chair) and a bit younger. She didn’t have, anything you could call an accent, but there was something a little careful about her vowels which suggested that she’d spoken differently when she’d been a kid and had taught herself to speak like this.

“What’s up?” said Martin. The remains of resentment still hung round his voice like the left-over smells of supper which are sometimes lingering in the kitchen at breakfast.

“We got a phone call from a Mrs, er, McFadyen …”

“Oh!” said Martin, the last of his tension breaking into a laugh.

“Yes, well …” said Sergeant Abraham, half joining him. “Even so, I thought I’d better look into it. It came through to me because my job’s helping kids sort out some of their problems—you know, runaways and that—so I asked the patrols on the Durham road to keep an eye out for you. It mightn’t have worked, but it did. So now, though I think I know Mrs McFadyen’s type, I’d just like to satisfy myself that you are all right.”

“I don’t see …” said Martin.

“We’re OK,” interrupted Jake. “Our Mum and Dad are in the Bahamas. They won a three-week holiday off a cornflake packet. Martin’s looking after me, but it’s half term so we thought we’d come here and hunt for Granpa.”

“Does your grandfather live here? Don’t you know his address?”

“No. He travels around, but he sends me a postcard every week to say where he’s got to. He hasn’t written for three weeks and I don’t know why. He’s quite old. He’s never missed before.”

“And what is he doing in Newcastle?”

(She pronounced it Newcassel, with all the stress on the middle syllable.)

“Looking for ghosts,” said Martin. Jake could hear he was hoping to get his revenge for her having startled him, but it didn’t work.

“It takes all sorts,” she said. “And the only way you know he’s missing is that he hasn’t sent a card for three weeks?”

“Well,” said Martin. “We wanted to try out my new bike, too. There’s that. But Jake was worrying himself stiff. I’d have given it another week, but this is half term, you see?” “We had ours last week,” she said. “Have you brought his last card with you, Jake?”

“You won’t be able to read it, I’m afraid,” said Jake, drawing the pack from his pocket and holding it out. “It’s the one on the top.”

“Braille?” she said. “Does he carry a machine with him, Just to write to you? He’s not blind too, is he?”

“No, of course not,” said Jake. “He does it with a blunt pin. He taught himself. It’s almost as neat as a machine, though.”

“Heavens! That must take a bit of patience.”

“He’s like that,” said Jake.

“He’s a good guy,” said Martin. “Nutty as a conker tree, but good with it.”

“The postmarks are pretty regular,” she said. “He doesn’t say anything about not writing for a bit, does he?”

“No,” said Jake. “Shall I read it to you?”

He reached out and waited for her to put the pack into his hand, then ran his fingertips over the pattern of tiny bumps.

“It’s a bit like a telegram,” he said. “He does it to save words. ‘Newcastle. Fine town. Great be in mining country. Friston Horror blank. No witnesses. Old map marks gibbet on spot. Now nosing alleged footsteps warehouse. Cold patch church. Pub where cats get into shut fridge. Expect plenty more big old dorp like this. If not heading north. Great walking: country full bloody border murders. Tell parents have fun Bahamas. Rather them than me. Write GPO here.’”

“It sounds as if he expected to be here some time,” said Sergeant Abraham. Jake thought he could hear a new under-current of seriousness in her voice, and she sat for several seconds in silence with her fingernail tapping the plastic of a telephone housing.

“Can you describe him to me?” she said.

She asked Martin very methodical questions, and made notes. Then she picked up the phone and dialled.

“Tom?” she said. “Poll here. I’ve got a missing person. Fairly definite. Ready? Right. John Uttery. Male. Five eight. Slim build. Sixty-three. Bald. Eyes brown. Small white moustache. Complexion tanned and mottled. Own teeth, good. Good condition. Khaki anorak, blue cord cap, brown polo-neck jersey, T-shirt, colour not known, string vest. Grey slacks. Leather walking-shoes, hand-made. Educated voice. Military bearing. Left forearm severely scarred. Anything like that in the last three weeks? … Sure? … OK, check and ring me back, like a dove. Thanks.”

The phone clicked.

“Well that’s a relief,” she said. “He didn’t go through the lists but he’s pretty reliable. Nobody like your grandfather has turned up in any of the hospital accident centres or mortuaries. Not in the City of Newcastle, that is. We’re putting out an automatic check through the neighbouring districts. So where do we go from here? Do you know what your grandfather would have done when he got to a town like this? What sort of place would he have stayed in? Where would he have started looking for his ghosts?”

“He likes pubs,” said Jake.

“That one where the cat got into the fridge?” she asked. “That sounds a bit screwy to me. Not really ghosts, is it? I wonder how he heard about it?”

“He’d have gone to the local newspaper and looked at the files,” said Jake. “That’s how he always started. And if there’s a Psychical Research Society he’d have got in touch with them.”

“We thought we’d start with the newspaper,” said Martin, as though he’d planned it all out himself.

“You’ll start by finding somewhere to sleep,” she said. “I’ll ring a couple of places for you, shall I?”

“That’s awfully kind,” said Martin, unable to keep the note of surprise out of his voice.

“No it isn’t. I want you to keep in touch. You’ll need to, anyway, in case we pick up a line on your grandfather. But I’m only protecting myself. Now that Mrs McFadyen’s rung me up I’ve got to keep a check on you, because if you do get into a mess I shall be in dead trouble.”

“Honestly!” said Martin. “That woman!”

“I expect she thinks everybody’s like Terry,” said Jake. Sergeant Abraham laughed as she picked up the phone.

She found them a room in a Church hostel. The beds were hard but clean and dry, and the room itself snug. Jake was thankful for this as he lay awake and listened to the dwindling noises of the night-time city. The racket of traffic was steadily being replaced by the rising wind, which had been sharpish from the north-east all day but now was hissing and grunting among the roof-tops, and hooting where an edge of guttering caught it at a resonant angle. Was Granpa lying out somewhere, chilled and helpless under the nag and blunder of this rising storm? He wasn’t in any of the hospitals, so Missing Persons said. Jake’s own last letter was still uncollected at the Post Office. That was twelve days old. The one before had gone. At least that showed that Granpa had really vanished, and it wasn’t just that his letters to Jake had been going astray. But it only made the situation clearer—it didn’t make it any less worrying.

Of course it was wonderful to have the big police machine working to find Granpa, taking his disappearance as seriously as it took the thousands of other things it dealt with every day. Tomorrow that machine would be doing the routine search while Martin and Jake tried to check up on the ghosts Granpa had been interested in. Jake could see that they’d been extraordinarily lucky in having Mrs McFadyen ring up and pester Sergeant Abraham about them … Yes, but what about Granpa?

He sighed and turned over. The shifting gusts of the storm echoed the pulses of worry in his mind. Martin had opened the window a crack, so as not to frowst, and as he drew breath for a second sigh Jake noticed something. The smell in the wind … All his life had been spent on the outskirts of a big port where, even among the traffic smells and the, garden smells and the smells from local factories, there had always been a sort of undersmell, too faint and persistent to be noticed. Even when you went inland you weren’t aware that it was missing. It was when you came back … and that’s what he and Martin had now done. He could smell the sea.

But this was a different sea—not the busy, almost tamed English Channel, that High Street of Europe’s shipping, but the wild, ship-foundering, man-drowning, gale-breeding North Sea. Only ten days ago, the night before Mum and Dad had left, Jake had listened to a TV documentary about oil-rigs, and about how those gawky steel giants had to withstand the hill-high waves and merciless winds of the most dangerous water in the world. The journalist who had spoken the commentary had used that very phrase, and Martin had said “Hey! Come off it! What about Cape Horn?” and Dad had said that the most dangerous water in the world was the puddle that froze outside your back door, and Mum had said whose fault was that when Somebody insisted on washing his car there on frosty evenings … The most dangerous water in the world. It was curious that Jake found its nearness homely and comforting, but he did, and with the smell of salt in his nostrils he fell asleep.

The man who looked after the old files at the newspaper office was busy but friendly. He remembered Granpa.

“Pleasant old bird,” he said. “Knew what he wanted, which is all that matters in this dump. (Brring) Drat that phone. ’Scuse me … Library … no, no, nothing on that, not one column inch. Not in my time … Course I’m sure … if you want to come and look for yourself you’re welcome, but you’ll be wasting your time … Bye. (Ting) Where were we? Yes, ghosts. File on that. Cold patch in St Fredegund’s? Lot on that, all dead boring because it isn’t there. Least, thermo meters won’t measure it. What I say is, tell people there’s a norrible mysterious cold patch somewhere and shove ’em into it and naturally they’ll shiver a bit, supposing they got any imagination at all. (Flip-flip-flip) There you are—that’s your cold patch for what it’s worth. Start by asking the verger—now, what’s his name? Here. That’s it—Hewison. Good Newcastle name, that. Used to be a greengrocer’s … (Brring) ’Scuse me. Library … Couple of minutes, Mac—I’ll send ’em straight down. (Ting) Where were we? Cats in fridge—that’s not on file. Collier’s Arms, Barrow Way, tidy little pub. Told him that one myself. Footsteps in warehouse—only a couple of paras on that, last November wasn’t it? (Flip-flip-flip)

Thought so. That’s all. Mice, I should think. Now, if you’ll ’scuse me …”

Granpa had stayed at the Collier’s Arms.

Mrs Rankin, the landlord’s wife, had a refined voice which slipped every now and then into a half-twang. She sounded as if life were one long fret to her.

“ … ooh, I do hope nothing’s happened to him,” she said. “Such a nice gentleman, and done us a real good turn. Didn’t leave no address, except somewhere down Southampton way …”

“That’s us,” said Martin. “Our home, I mean. He didn’t say where he was going.”

“Up north a bit, but he did say as he might be back, or he mightn’t. I wasn’t expecting him, exactly … Shall I show you the room he had? There’s been no one in since.”

They followed her up the narrow creaking stairs, but Granpa hadn’t left anything behind, of course. The room didn’t even smell of him. The three of them were hesitating in its musty silence when Martin said, “Did he have any joy with the cats?”

Mrs Rankin drew her breath in sharply, then sighed.

“I suppose you’ve a right, sort of,” she said. “But you won’t tell anyone? He said not to tell anyone. It was our Tyrene. I still don’t know how he got it out of her. We’d asked her, of course, but she’s only three. She was jealous of the new baby, Mr Uttery said—course, he does take up a lot of my time and I hadn’t really noticed how I wasn’t paying so much attention to little Tyrene—there’s a pub to run and all, you see? Anyway, it seems when the baby was on the way I’d explained about it to Tyrene, and the way I’d done it was telling her about the time the cat had kittens, and poor little scrap she’d got muddled in her mind and she thought she could stop any more babies coming by shutting the cats away. Do you see? You probably can’t remember how your own minds worked when you were that small.”

Jake couldn’t, but he remembered Granpa sitting in the lounge in the early morning telling a small boy a story about crocodiles.

“My husband wanted to wallop her,” said Mrs Rankin. “Two of the cats had died, you see. But Mr Uttery talked him round and we took her to the circus instead, and I always give her a bit of a cuddle when she goes to bed and now far as I can see she’s as happy as a lark. Oh! There’s that dratted baby. I must run now. I do hope you find him, really I do.”

“Mice!” growled Mr Smith. “Mice scuttle, that’s what A told him. Why yes, that’s what A told him.”

“But there’s a sort which hop,” said Jake. “If the space between the floor-boards and the ceiling below is just right you get …”

“And that’s what he told me!” interrupted Mr Smith, making it sound as though he’d scored another point in the argument by being told the same thing twice.

They sat in his stuffy little front room. It smelt of dust and polish and coal. The chairs felt as though they weren’t often used—prickly and slightly dank. Mrs Smith, who had a creaking limp, had brought Mr Smith’s tea-tray in from the kitchen and gone away without saying anything, but the tea had included a plate of smoked haddock whose lively pungency cheered the glum air of the place. Mr Smith’s voice had the same effect. He sounded elderly and spoke with a real Newcastle accent, a twanging lilt with most of the sentences rising up the scale as if they were trying to become questions. Jake had heard snatches of this talk in the streets and had barely understood a word because of its quickness and its strange, hard vowels, but Mr Smith spoke it like an actor, as though everything he said was full of enormous interest which he wanted to share with his listeners. He was the security guard at the warehouse and had been sleeping most of the day.

“What happened?” asked Martin impatiently.

“Why, nothing,” said Mr Smith. “We sat up all night and not a footstep anywhere. Your Granddad said it was mice and our voices frightened them away, but A told him it was a ghost and the same applied. A got him there, didn’t A?”

“Are you sure it was Granpa?” said Jake. “His name’s Mr Uttery.”

“Why yes. That’s him.”

“Only usually he doesn’t let people even whisper while he’s after one of his ghosts.”

Mr Smith cackled.

“There’s silence enough in the warehouse other nights,” he said. “A get sick of the sound of it. Why, yes, A got your Granddad gossiping soon enough. It’s only natural—a feller like him as doesn’t believe in ghosts and a feller like me as does, we’d want to talk it over, wouldn’t we? Talked all night, matter of fact. He knew a pile of good stories, spite of putting the wrong answers to most of ’em, and A told him two or three good ones back. A’ve got to keep my end up, haven’t A?”

“What did you tell him?” asked Jake.

“Did you tell him any new ones?” said Martin at the same instant. Both boys almost yelled their question.

“Did A?” said Mr Smith triumphantly. “You ought to have seen him scribbling away in his little black notebook. Course, he knew already some of what A told him, but …”

“Could you tell us the ones he wrote down?” said Martin.

“Why yes,” said Mr Smith. “A’ll lend you my pen, young feller, if you want to write ’em down too.”

“No, it’s all right,” said Martin. “Jake’ll remember.”

Mr Smith grunted, accepting the fact as if it were one of his ghosts, strange but true.

“Were they all in Newcastle?” asked Jake.

“Why no. But all up this bit of the world, if you follow me. A told him about the Bandon Curse for a start, but he knew that one. Amazing how thorough he’d been into it, reading all the books and that. Said it was a pile of coincidences and half of ’em hadn’t happened either. Almost got me thinking there never was a curse at Bandon at all … Why yes, but he’d never heard of the Roman soldiers up on Sloughby. Sloughby Moor, that’s getting along twenty miles north of old Hadrian’s Wall. You get a lot of fogs up there, coming down sudden, catching hikers and such. Twice, far as A’ve heard tell, there’s been a man up on Sloughby when a fog come, and he’s lost the path and cast about to find it again. There’s bogs up on Sloughby too, deep enough for a horse and cart to founder in but looking like good firm ground—so these fellers A’m telling you of, when they heard shouts in the fog they’d make towards them, running a bit when they get nearer, and all of a sudden they see the Romans, nine or ten of ’em, wearing skirts and brass armour, drawn up in a ring back to back and staggering around and slashing with their swords like they were fighting, when all the time there’s nothing to fight but bits of mist. And then it comes on thick again, and the shouting stops, and when it clears there’s not a Roman to be seen.”

He was a good story-teller, quiet but dramatic. No wonder Granpa had decided to chat with him rather than listen for hopping mice.

“What do you think, Jake?” said Martin.

“It’s his sort of thing, I suppose. At least it would be worth taking the bike up to Sloughby and asking the people who live round there …”

“Live round there!” exclaimed Mr Smith. “Who’s going to live up on Sloughby, saving it’s a few grouse and ravens?”

“I think Granpa would go and look, anyway,” said Jake. “What else did you tell him?”

“Why yes, A told him about Penbottle Pele. You lads know what a Pele is, then?”

“’Fraid not,” said Martin. Jake could hear that he was interested and excited by the feeling that they were making progress in their hunt, but at the same time irritated by having to listen to a lot of stories about ghosts and longing to get on the BMW and roar up to the moors.

“A Pele’s sort of half way between a house and a fort,” said Mr Smith. “You see, for years and years those murdering Scotties would come raiding down across the border, burning what’d burn and stealing what’d steal. You’re a farmer, miles out from any walled town, so what do you do? You build your house like a fort, stone walls a yard thick, doors of four-inch oak, not a window less than twelve foot from the ground and those no bigger than a man can poke his head through. You have just the one big room downstairs and that’s your cattle-barn or byre, and you have steep little steps, like a ladder almost, running up the outside of the house to the rooms above where you live. So when the reivers come raiding you can shut your cows in the barn and your family and yourself in the upstairs. And the Scotties take a look at your Pele and go off to find a softer nut to crack, or failing that they get into your barn and drive your cows away, but they leave you and your kids unmurdered, not being worth the trouble. That’s a Pele.”

“Did it always work?” asked Martin.

“Why no. Maybe the Scotties would starve you out, or maybe they’d burn you out, but that’s not what happened at Penbottle. The Pele there belonged to a rich farmer, a sort of cousin of Lord Percy, A’ve heard it said, and he’d built it like a castle. One night when the Scotties came they battered at his door till morning without getting in while he mocked ’em from above. And the dawn came, and they started to skulk away, and the farmer took his cross-bow and shot at the last man and nailed him, and that man was first son of the chief of the Scotties. And when the second son saw his brother was dead he cried out a vengeance on the farmer, and the farmer laughed. But for all his mockery and laughter he was a careful man so he sent word of what had happened to his cousin Lord Percy, and next time the Scotties came he let ’em get into the barn, but it was full of Lord Percy’s soldiers and they killed almost every man of the Scotties, the chief’s second son among them. Now that chief had three sons, and the last of ’em had gone to soldier for the King of France. But when he heard of how his brothers had died he came travelling back through England, making out he was a Frenchie and peddling bits of silk and pretty trash. So in course of time he came to Penbottle Pele asking for shelter. A’ve forgotten to tell you this farmer had a wife … Why, don’t they say there’s more ways through a door than kicking it down? That third brother, he must have been a handsome lad, and known it. The farmer gave him supper, and by way of thanks he sang French songs at the hearth side, and gave the wife a fine silk scarf from Paris, and went his way in the morning … So there … Course, there were days when the farmer would have to travel to town, or to his cousin Lord Percy’s castle, and he’d come late home, and one such night he rode up the path and saw the lantern shining in his little window and the smoke going up from his chimney, silver in the moon … you go to Penbottle Pele on a night like that, young fellers, and maybe you’ll see …”

Mr Smith stopped and coughed a little embarrassed cough. “It’s all right,” said Jake. “I know what you mean. Go on. What’d I see, supposing I could?”

“Sorry, laddie, A got carried away. There’s no roof to Penbottle Pele now, and no floors neither, only the four thick walls and the little stair leading up to the narrow doorway. But on a moonlit night a man who climbed the stair and looked through the door might see a woman opposite him. He might think she was standing, or maybe dancing, though there’s no floor to stand or dance on; and then he’d see that she wasn’t either, but she was hanging, not that there’s a beam to hang from. And he’d know that he was seeing just what that farmer saw before the Scotties cut him down, his own wife that had betrayed him hanging from the roof-beam in front of his own hearth.”

There was a longish pause before Martin said, “Nasty,” and Jake said, “What did Granpa think?”

“Questions, questions,” grumbled Mr Smith. “You’re as bad as he was. How did A learn the story? My grannie told me. How’d my grannie learn it? Her grannie told her.”

“Granpa says you hardly ever find somebody who’s actually seen a ghost,” said Jake. “They always know somebody else who saw it, only that somebody’s dead or something.”

“Obstinate old feller,” said Mr Smith. “That’s what he said when A told him about Annerton Dyke Mine. Coming from the south you won’t have heard of the Annerton Dyke Disaster.”

“Can’t say I have,” said Martin.

“Why yes,” said Mr Smith. “Annerton Dyke Disaster, 1837, and your granddad expects me to find someone still alive for him that was there!”

“Is that a ghost too?” asked Jake.

“Why no. Not a ghost exactly. Can’t say A know what it was. My grannie told me again, and that’s as good as you’ll get because her uncle Jack was the only one, man, woman or boy, to come out of the mine alive that day. Annerton Dyke, up beyond Alnwick. A don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s no good natural harbours between the Tyne and the Tweed, so to fetch their coal away the coalmasters had to make harbours. Why yes, even Blyth, that’s a made harbour. Annerton Dyke was a middling pit for those days. There was about a hundred men and women working it, right on the coast, with its own little harbour. There’d always been mining there, since Domesday. Why yes, Annerton’s in Domesday. Think of that! But at first they’d only drifted in from the cliff …”

“Drifted?” said Martin. “Doesn’t sound very strenuous.”

“That means the coal seam came out at the surface and they were able to get at it sidelong,” said Mr Smith. “But coal seams don’t lie level, and at Annerton the seam ran tiltways up into the hill, so when the big iron-founders and steel-founders started and they was begging for good coking coal, it paid the coalmaster at Annerton to sink a pit from the top and fetch the coal out that way. That’s the main Annerton Pit, where the Disaster was.”

“What happened?” said Martin.,

“Why, nobody knows.”

“I thought your grannie’s uncle got out alive.”

“A’m coming to that,” said Mr Smith mysteriously. “Those days, when a miner died in a pit, there was never an inquest. Think on that! What’s a few dead miners, they said, when there’s coal to be won so as the coalmaster’s missus can buy a few more diamonds to wear at the balls in London? So there was never an inquest at Annerton, though there was questions in Parliament and a bit of a fuss in the London papers. But the papers up here, they belonged to the coalmasters too. A whole shift dead, forty-seven men and women and boys and girls— why yes, they’d little girls in the pits them days, younger than you are, laddie—and the papers said it was from natural causes! Eeya! Think on that!”

Metal and china clattered as he slid his plate across the table. Then the little room filled with the reek of treacle-sweet tobacco. Jake heard the faint whisper of paper being carefully rolled into a cigarette.

“Where’s the ghost?” said Martin.

Mr Smith grunted, too absorbed in getting his smoke just as he wanted it to think of anything else. At last he lit up.

“Why yes, the ghost,” he said. “Now there’s one thing you’ve got to know about Annerton. They had never any trouble with gas, never any explosions or foul air. Don’t ask me why—there’s pits like that, and there’s others where you’re in trouble if the fans stop for a couple of hours only. Now there’s a tip at Annerton on the cliff top—not a tall pointy one like you see from the railways, more of a big mound. You know what a tip is? Why, it’s everything that comes out of a mine that they can’t sell as coal. They’d have dumped it in the sea, except that they didn’t want to go silting up their harbour. So there’s this thundering weight of rock and stuff on top of the cliff that God never set there. Maybe it was that, maybe it was something else, but all of a sudden, July nineteenth, eighteen hundred and thirty-seven, the men working above ground heard the whole hill groan. Like a great beast in pain, it was. And then there came a crash and next thing they knew, was the main shaft had all caved in. It was lined with timber, of course, but my grannie told me it was just as though the hill had clutched that timber like a man crumpling a letter in his fist. And there was forty-eight miners trapped below!”

“How far down?” said Martin.

“Not far. Why, no. Twenty fathom, something like that. Course, the night shift was back at the pithead straight away, and digging. They was full of hope, because like I told you Annerton was always a clean pit. So they dug all the first day, until toward evening somebody come from the shore saying they’d found my grannie’s uncle Jack wandering down there, clean out of his wits. My grannie wasn’t born then, of course, and Jack was only a boy. He was drenched with water— not seawater—and they made out he must somehow’ve got himself washed out down the drainage cut that carried the water out of the pit. They got no answers out of him, so his Mum put him to bed and he lay there, shuddering and weeping until the pneumonia caught him and he near died of that. Course, there was no way back along the drainage cut, but his getting out so unexpected made them look for other ways in, and while the digging went on at the main shaft they thought to explore down an old bye-pit. A bye-pit’s more of a ventilation shaft, but sometimes it’ll have rungs in it, or an iron ladder, if the pit’s not a deep one. So there was this bye-pit, and that was blocked too, but nothing like so bad, and they’d dug their way down through it by the middle of next morning. And what did they find?”

“You tell us,” said Martin.

“Why yes, A will. They found the rock-slip had not been down in the mine at all. It was in the layers of rock above, and the coal seam was just as it always was, with only a bit of a roof-fall here and there. And the air was good and clean too. But every miner, man, woman and child, was dead. Dead and cold. And the face men that should have been trying to dig them out from below had dropped their picks in the galleries, and they’d all clustered to the foot of the shaft, and there they’d died. Not starved, not gassed, not burned. Just died.”

“What of?” asked Martin.

“Ask your granddad,” said Mr Smith sharply. “A’m telling you what A know. They brought the bodies up through the bye-pit, and never a man of them would go down into Annerton Mine again. There was still coal down there, but the coalmaster couldn’t hire the miners to work it. The word went around that there was something in Annerton Pit, or maybe just that it was an unlucky pit.”

“What do you mean, something?” said Martin.

“A don’t know. But my grannie’s uncle Jack, he lived a long while and he never got his wits back. Not that he was raving mad. They never needed to put him away. But he couldn’t speak sense, and some days he’d sit from morning to night in the corner, shuddering. Only when he came to be dying and my grannie was sitting by his bed he woke up in the middle of the night and looked at her like he’d suddenly remembered who he was. ‘We let it out,’ he said. ‘We loosed it from the rock.’ He said it quite plain, though for forty years he’d never done more than mumble. And then, before she could ask him what he was talking about, he was dead.”