Curse of the Stag’s Eye (Haunted Hearts)

15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

8.49 p.m. Sitting Room.

F orty-nine minutes behind schedule. Forty-nine.

Nikesh and Dawn met us on the stairs. They’d heard the commotion and come running.

“Are you sure it wasn’t a gannet?” Nikesh asked.

Gaz turned a bit red in the face, from anger or embarrassment, I couldn’t tell. Dawn said she needed a pee so she and Nikesh headed back down to the museum. While we waited for them to return, I suggested to Gaz that he and I explore the sitting room.

Initially, I hadn’t held out much hope of finding anything as there had never been any reports that mentioned it. The room itself was more or less as I’d imagined — a circular room, a couple of old sofas, an armchair, and some framed navigational charts on the wall. An old radio, used for contacting the mainland and checking in with other lighthouses around this part of the coast, sat in one corner. When I’d popped in earlier to rig up the speakers — the thought of which by now made my ears and neck burn with embarrassment — I’d skipped this room entirely. It gave me a chill when I passed by, and I hadn’t wanted to be alone in it.

I started explaining how unusual it was for a rock lighthouse to have both rooms inside and cottages outside, how the cottages had come later, but Gaz wasn’t listening. He’d crouched by a shelf and was staring at some ships in bottles.

“Another common pastime for keepers,” I told him. “It’s a skill that takes ages to learn and they’ve got a lot of time to kill between shifts. Some keepers sold them to make a bit of extra cash.”

A row of six or seven bottles lined the shelf, each filled with intricately detailed models of sailing ships, lovingly crafted. I’ve never been into sailing ships. I prefer spaceships.

“Where have I seen this before?” Gaz pointed to one of the models, a triple-masted ship with two distinctive white lines running along the hull.

I got down on my haunches for a closer look, bringing me close to Gaz’s face. His aftershave made me a bit weak in the knees. I made a mental note to ask him what it was later. Something with bergamot and citrus, I guessed. It made me want to nuzzle into his thick neck. I remembered how his skin felt in the close confines of the store room, the warmth of his body, what it was like to have his arms wrapped around me. “Oh, hang on.” I leaned in closer to the bottle. “It’s the Branwen , isn’t it? The packet ship that sank. I wonder if these are all shipwrecks.”

“I’ve always liked ships,” Gaz said. “Give me a good swashbuckling pirate film any day of the week. I thought about joining the navy once. When I was younger.” He straightened up and examined one of the framed charts. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life once I left school. I didn’t have much money but I spent it all on a ferry across the channel and just bummed about Europe for a couple of years.”

I refrained from making a joke about bumming and asked him what he did over there.

“Oh, all sorts. I can’t even remember most of the jobs I had. Most of them were as a porter, you know, moving stuff around fruit markets, stocking up kitchens. I was a handyman in a couple of hotels for a while. I was rubbish at it but it got a me few weeks’ wages, enough to move on to the next place. I did a season on the ski lifts in France, which was an eye-opener, I can tell you. Plenty of tips, plenty of booze, plenty of sex.”

My ears pricked up at that.

“I was a deckhand in Italy for a while but I didn’t like it and that sort of put me off the idea of being a sailor for life. I spent a good many nights alone — guarding warehouses, roaming hotel corridors, walking the streets of old, old cities — and do you know, in all that time, in all those places, what I never once saw? A ghost.”

I wasn’t supposed to, but I sat on one of the little armchairs, next to an arched window. Michael would have a fit if he knew. The chair had a tartan throw over the back of it. I wondered if that was how it looked when Baines was alive. Maybe his spirit was restless because he didn’t approve of the décor. “I haven’t travelled much. A few holidays in Gran Canaria and Benidorm, but that’s about it. I’d love to do a cruise around the Mediterranean. Or the Caribbean. Or anywhere really.”

Gaz made a face. “And get stuck on a ship with a bunch of boring bastards? Nah, you want to get a little camper van, like Nikesh and Dawn’s. Take it over to France and just start driving. See where the road takes you.”

That sounded much too adventurous for me. Just go with no plan, no itinerary? What would I pack?

“A couple of warm tops, a handful of T-shirts, a pair of jeans, and a pair of shorts.” Gaz listed them on his fingers. “Oh, and two pairs of socks. One to wear, one to wash.”

“No underwear?”

He shrugged. “Most of the time I don’t wear any.”

The amount of energy and personal strength it took for me to keep my eyes above his waist at that moment was nothing short of Herculean and deserved an award of some kind. A certificate at the very bloody least. “How did you end up doing charity work?”

He put his hands in his pockets. “I met up with a few guys in a bar in Austria who were driving lorries back to Dover. One of them had taken ill and they thought the lorry would be stuck. I offered to drive it, ended up back in England, then back in Sheffield. I saw an ad asking for volunteers at an LGBTQ helpline, and I’ve been involved with them in some capacity ever since. I didn’t expect things to go the way they have, but then I’ve never been one for plans — not in work, not in life.”

He sounded like a superhero to me and I told him as much. The idea of just letting the universe take you wherever it wanted to scared me more than a hundred ghosts.

“It does us good to get out of our comfort zone every once in a while.”

“But I spent so long doing it up and getting it just how I like it. It’s so comfortable there.”

He grinned then. He had a lovely grin, did Gaz. His cheeks puffed out and his eyes went all sparkly. “Have you really never been camping?”

“Oh, God, don’t.” I stood up and dusted my backside. “I joined the Scouts when I was a lad. Lasted a week. They took us camping in the woods. No shower, no toilets, not so much as a scatter cushion. I cut my hand trying to put up the tent —that took all bloody afternoon, let me tell you. There were four of us sleeping in each tent so that smelled lovely, as you can imagine. One lad kept belching all night, and another kept wanking and trying to get the rest of us to join in. I didn’t get a wink of sleep. Swore I’d never do it again.”

Gaz laughed. “You need to come with me. I’ll show you how to do it properly.”

“The camping or the wanking?” I asked. “Because I’ve pretty much got one of those figured out.”

He laughed again. He flicked a switch on the radio, and I reminded him that we weren’t supposed to touch anything.

“Like your arse touched that chair?” He pointed to the tartan throw. “It’s not plugged in anyway.” He flicked the switch a couple more times either to confirm it wasn’t working or to make a point, I wasn’t sure which. Then he stopped and lowered his ear to the speaker.

“Can you hear something?”

He winced and held a finger to his pastel pink lips. He shut his eyes, straining hard to listen. “It sounded like… scratching. Like a nib on paper, over and over. It’s gone now.” He stood up. “Might have been a residual static charge. What did you call this place? A rock lighthouse, wasn’t it?”

So he had been listening. I explained that keepers consider there to be three kinds of lighthouse: a land light was built on the shoreline, and a rock light was built on a patch of land but at sea — little islands, islets, outcrops, that sort of thing. They had space outside that was never covered by the sea. And then there were tower lights, structures built out at sea with no land whatsoever around them.

“I wouldn’t fancy being cooped up in one of those,” Gaz said. “Not being about to get out into the fresh air, have a change of scenery? It would drive me barmy.”

I was starting to understand why he was single. He didn’t sound like the type to enjoy being stuck in one place for very long, didn’t enjoy being tied down. I won’t lie, my heart sank a little when I realised this. I know I said I was trying to keep it professional but I was only human, and all night I had a little thought in the back of my head that Gaz and I might meet up for a drink after all this. Talk about what happened and get to know each other a little better.

I don’t know what had come over me in the storage room, kissing him out of the blue like that. I was pretty sure he was going to say he fancied me. Even still, I’m not usually so forward, but something in the moment just compelled me to go for it. And he’d kissed me back! That was the main thing I tried to remember. He didn’t do it out of politeness, and he didn’t try to brush me off afterwards. He’d gone for it just as much as I had. And what a kisser he was. I wondered then, after what he’d just said, if he was only after a quick shag. I wouldn’t say no, mind, but still I’d be disappointed if that was all he wanted. Which it was. Clearly. Definitely. No, I resolved not to get my hopes up just as Nikesh’s giggling echoed up the staircase.

“They’re on the way back up,” I said. “I suppose we’d better go meet them.”