Long after the man had finished pacing and calculating, his footfalls seemed to echo round the house, bouncing off walls that had heard no sound in many a year. He scratched an
ear, shook his head, talked to himself for a few moments before going back to work all over again. He measured room after room, the instrument in his hand clicking with every metre he covered.
There had to be something wrong with the new-fangled digital equipment. Three times, he had measured Briarswood; three times, the result had been ridiculous enough for a Walt Disney cartoon.

‘According to this, the place should have fallen down years ago,’ he muttered. But there were no huge cracks, no faults, no gaping wounds in the plasterwork or in the exterior stone
and brick fascia. A place of this size had to have twelve-foot underpinnings – it needed a solid base. And nowhere on the architect’s aged plan did a flatbed foundation get a mention.
Anyway, why stabilize the back of the house and leave the front to chance and nature? The rear part was correct, each storey matching the one below right down to the basement, yet the front
remained a mystery.

In a huge bay window, he paused and wondered, not for the first time, whether modern science represented any real improvement in his job. Sighing, he put away the newer tool of his trade and
drew from a pocket that good old standby – a metal measure encased in bright orange plastic. He would start again. This time, he began in attics, moving down to bathrooms and sleeping
quarters, finally tackling ground floor and cellar. The answer was the same. The cellar was smaller than the rest of the house and this fact presented something of an enigma for prospective
purchasers. As surveyor, he had to hand in a sensible report and there was nothing sensible about Briarswood.

He sat on an abandoned kitchen chair and wrote down the bare bones of his findings. Never a fanciful man, he shivered and looked up, expecting to blame an open door for creating the draught, but
he was still alone. The house was dark and reeked of emptiness. Could a place express loneliness? Could a house complain about solitude and neglect? A tap dripped. Jaundice-yellow emulsion was
peeling itself away from walls. He wrote about slight roof damage, ancient rainwater goods and some broken tiling in a bathroom. He reported the need for damp-proofing, a suspicion about wall ties
in a gable, a decaying perimeter fence in the rear garden. Lastly, he remarked on the impossible: the footings were smaller than the building. There was no dry rot, no wet rot, no decaying timber.
But there was something amiss with the specifications.

Outside, he stared into a thousand eyes created by ornate leaded windows, many of whose panes were the imperfect products of primitive glassmakers. Normally, the faceted diamond effect would
have pleased him, but this place reminded him of long-ago textbooks in which, as a child, he had studied magnified diagrams of insect eyes. Like a mature bluebottle, the large house owned a
plethora of aspects through which it viewed the world. It seemed alive, yet dead. And he needed a double whisky, his dinner, his family, his newspaper.

As he climbed back into the car, he felt as if the house were continuing to watch and analyse him. It was just the sinking sun, he told himself impatiently. He wasn’t one for ghosts and
ghouls, but even he had to admit that there was something strange about Briarswood. Almost laughing at himself, he pushed the gear-stick into first and drew away. Did the house need an exorcist
rather than a property surveyor?

At the gate, he braked and looked for traffic. Ah, well. He would commit the peculiarities to paper tonight, would hand in the work, then move on to the next project. No mention need be made of
icy tingling in his spine, of hairs on arms standing to attention, of the feeling that he had been followed for two hours. It was just another house, a residence built of sandstone and imitation
string courses designed to allow the house a relationship with Tudor mansions. ‘I get dafter with age,’ he mumbled. Nothing ever went bump in the night; most certainly not at four
o’clock in the afternoon. The sun disappeared behind scudding cloud and every eye in the windows was suddenly closed.

Shadows appeared. Staring into his rear-view mirror, the man studied Briarswood. There was no one in the place, yet he imagined movement and felt sadness soaking through the building’s
fabric and right into his bones. ‘Well, I wouldn’t put my name down for a seance in there,’ he told his notebook, which he had placed on the passenger seat. In a career that
spanned some twenty years, he had never surveyed a property so creepy and odd. No wonder it had remained empty, he mused as the sun reappeared and woke the windows once more. There had been
rumours, stories of families leaving the place in a hurry, hints about disappearing objects and noises in the night. Lancashire had long been awash with such tales, many of which were aired and
embellished by folk who had taken too much ale. The whole thing was crazy and he needed to pull his ideas together and stop talking to himself before going home.

But he found himself shivering anew until he turned out of the driveway and accelerated towards Wigan Road. Someone would have to get to the bottom of the equation, and he thanked God that his
part in the business was now over.

Chapter One

1964

It was a tin of Barker’s Lavender Polish this time. He picked it up, stared at it for several seconds, turned and left the shop with the container clasped tightly
against his chest. As always, he looked like a man on a mission, not exactly in a hurry, but with no time for dawdling.

‘Mr Grimshaw?’ Eva Hargreaves moved very quickly for a woman of twenty stones and fifty years. ‘Come on, Fred, you’ve not paid.’ But he was yards ahead and the
ironmonger dared not leave her business untended. The old chap wasn’t in his right mind just now, and his daughter would bring the money. She always coughed up, did poor Agnes. Aye, she
suffered in more ways than one, had done for years. Some folk endured very bad luck and some got away with murder. It was an eternal mystery and people cleverer than Eva would never find an answer
to it. All the same, the theft was a damned nuisance and no mistake, but Glenys Timpson was entering the shop and would be waiting for her firewood, so the shopkeeper returned to her rightful
place.

Glenys tutted when Eva came in. ‘He wants putting away in the asylum,’ she said, sour mouth even more down-turned than usual. ‘Doesn’t know what he’s doing.
There’s no rhyme and no reason to his carryings-on. That Agnes Makepeace wants to stop at home and see to him. God knows he looked after her for long enough.’

Eva Hargreaves didn’t want to lose a customer, yet she chose to reply. ‘Agnes’s husband isn’t paid over-well by them in yon big house. Family needs her cleaning money.
Her pop will get better – he’s better already; it were only a small stroke. She’s gone from the house nobbut three hours a day, and she looks after her grandparents for the other
twenty-one hours. The old fellow walks in the night as well, you know. It’s nobody’s fault. Agnes has always done her best, and I dare say she’ll carry on the same
road.’

The customer sniffed. ‘Two lots of firewood, Eva. I’ve company expected at the weekend, so I’ll be wanting a parlour fire.’ She inhaled again. ‘For his own good, he
wants putting somewhere safe. Mark my words, he’ll be under a bus any day now. What price a little job in the pub when that happens, eh? She should know her duty – and not just to her
kin, but to us as well.’

‘It were only a tin of polish.’ The shopkeeper placed two wired bundles of kindling on her counter. ‘And he’s miles better than he was. Takes time, getting over a
stroke.’

‘Happen it were only a tin of polish, but he’d not get away with it in town, would he? Then if the court says he’s insane, which he is – a few raisins short of an Eccles
cake if you ask me – he’ll definitely get put away. Agnes’d be best doing it the right road, through her own doctor. No use sitting about waiting for a disaster. It wants sorting
out now, before he goes from bad to bloody ridiculous.’

Eva offered no comment. She knew Agnes Makepeace and couldn’t imagine her parting with the man she called Pop. Agnes was well aware of her duty and would see her elders through to the
bitterest of ends. ‘Anything else?’ she asked her customer.

‘Nay, just the firewood.’ Glenys stalked to the door, then turned as an afterthought processed itself before pouring from her lips. ‘Were he in his pyjama top?’ she
asked.

‘Yes.’ Eva was rearranging bottles of Lanry bleach. Fred Grimshaw was in his pyjama bottoms, too, though they were almost covered by a pair of tattered, unclean overalls.

‘Nowt good’ll come of it,’ pronounced the redoubtable Glenys before striding homeward.

Eva sat on her stool for a few moments. She was getting too tired for this lark and her weight didn’t help. Poor old Fred Grimshaw – what was he up to this time? Should she close her
shop and dash along to the pub for Agnes? No, he’d be long gone by now. For a man with health problems, he could shift at a fair rate of knots. ‘He is getting better,’ she
reminded herself through clenched teeth. ‘And he deserves to get better, bless him. There’s no man finer than Fred Grimshaw.’

She found herself praying to a God who would surely have mercy on a poorly gentleman, because Fred had been just that – one of Nature’s better creatures. Then she stood up to measure
paraffin into a container. Life had to go on; customers wanted their goods and homes needed to be heated, even in summer once the sun went down. Like Agnes Makepeace, Eva Hargreaves was completely
powerless. Fred had likely gone missing again and there was nothing to be done.

Fred Grimshaw had never been late for work in his life. Even during this war, he still stuck to his tools, turning out ammunition instead of wrought-iron gates. His skills were
required. All those railings wanted melting down and the place was full of women these days. Hard workers, all right, but they chattered a lot when his back was turned. A foreman needed eyes in the
back of his head, that was a fact.

He stood outside the factory and blinked. Entwistle Motors? Ah, that must be a government thing, a way of hiding what really went on inside those sheds. Hitler was planning an invasion and he
and his army needed to be confused. Entwistle Motors. Unimpressed by the new name, Fred entered his little kingdom.

Where was the furnace? Where was his lathe? The women had all gone home, curlers rattling beneath turbans made from headscarves. It wasn’t home time. Bullets didn’t make themselves,
did they? How the hell could he carry on with no equipment and no workforce? Was he supposed to supply the army on his own?

He dropped the tin of polish and it rolled away across a flagged floor. The place was full of motor vehicles, some in one piece, others with their intestines spread out across floor and benches.
His jaw dropped. How could things change overnight like this? Only yesterday, he had stood here making casings for bullets – he even remembered bandaging his thumb after he’d . . .
There was no bandage on his thumb. He had made another mistake and another headache threatened.

Sam Entwistle raised himself out of a pit. ‘Fred?’ The unhappy wanderer was here once more, body intact, head nineteen years or more late. ‘Come on, old lad. Let’s be
getting you home, shall we? Don’t start upsetting yourself.’

Fred blinked. ‘I’ve done it again, haven’t I?’

‘You have. Your mind’s playing tricks because of your stroke. And I can’t keep taking time off to drive you home, can I? These here apprentices get up to all sorts while
I’m off the scene.’ He shouted across to his second-in-command. ‘Keep an eye on that crowd of buggers while I run Fred home.’ Sam sighed. Fred was known far and wide as a
man of opinions, a man who liked to speak his mind and shame the devil. He had even been labelled cantankerous and loud, yet he had been reduced to this in one cruel, fell swoop. ‘Come on,
Fred.’

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