Haunted Town Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  About This Book

  Dedication

  Before you read Haunted Town

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  — Epilogue —

  Thank you

  Also in the Touchstone saga

  Also by Andy Conway

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  Acknowledgements

  Historical Notes

  About the Author

  Copyright Notice

  About This Book

  A Touchstone Origins tale.

  A boy out of time. A girl to save Britain.

  A war between them...

  Drawn to a portrait of 1940s screen star, Eleanor Gale, teenager Mitch finds himself pursuing a romance across oceans of time while foiling a Nazi plot to invade Britain.

  In 1984, young Raheem 'Mitch' Mitchell is a teenager who doesn't fit. A 'young fogey' in vintage clothes, obsessed with old music and old movies, suffering fits that mystify doctors, he is a boy out of time.

  Falling in love with long lost movie star Eleanor Gale, he visits the Welsh town where her greatest film was shot...

  ... and finds himself back in time, face to face with the woman of his dreams.

  Mystery, suspense, secrets, romance, and a good old dose of derring-do. Haunted Town is the latest historical thriller in the Touchstone Origins series.

  Dedication

  To Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric

  Niven van den Bogaerde.

  A lifelong inspiration.

  Before you read Haunted Town

  THE TOUCHSTONE SERIES of books is now supported by a website featuring bonus content, including soundtracks, historical photographs and videos.

  Music is central to the Touchstone universe and several Touchstone books have an accompanying playlist, including Haunted Town.

  At regular points in this story, you will see songs from 1941 referenced. I have collected them all on a Spotify playlist, along with other songs that aren’t specifically mentioned but give a feel of the book.

  Access the soundtrack at the website:

  www.youarethetouchstone.com

  — 1 —

  MITCH STEPPED OFF THE 50 bus in Moseley village and walked to the island they called the ‘village green’. A Victorian cast-iron urinal stood tall at one corner of the triangle, wizened green, a dank stench floating up from it, ignored by the cluster of people waiting at the bus stop pasted with anti-Thatcher posters.

  The Bull’s Head pub and the battlements of St Mary’s church overlooked the crossroads. He took it in, like a tourist. He’d only crossed the city. Two short bus rides to a suburb he’d heard of but rarely visited. But you went to other parts of the city and it was like going on holiday to places strange and remote.

  He shifted the plastic record bag under his other arm. It contained his latest haul from the Music Library. Every week he’d go to the Central Library in town, take out a couple of new records, take them home and absorb them. He was working his way through their jazz collection, and some of their classical, mostly Mahler’s symphonies. Today he’d borrowed Mahler’s unfinished Tenth Symphony and a Charlie Barnet compilation.

  He’d left school two years ago and still felt that delicious freedom of being free. He could listen to any music he liked now and not be thought a freak.

  Across the street, he saw what he’d come for. Pastimes. A vintage clothes shop he’d heard about and long meant to check out. He waited for a gap in the traffic and crossed.

  As he walked into the shop, a bell chimed and he closed the door behind him, shutting out the noise of traffic. An old 1940s tune droned from a Dansette record player in the corner. Rails of clothes, musty but not unpleasant. Old British movie posters on the walls, mostly war films: The 39 Steps, Went the Day Well? and Mrs Miniver.

  Mitch sighed, recognizing a spiritual home, but something else, as if his heart had slowed to match a rhythm in the air, like he was slotting into pace with something, matching a vibration. Perhaps it was the music. A male crooner oozing velvet over mellow saxophones, longing and haunting, singing The Girl of My Dreams Tries to Look Like You.

  He stroked a row of overcoats. Someone bustled through from the back.

  “Oh, hello.”

  A lady in her forties, chic and knowing. The kind of sexy auntie a teenage boy secretly desired. Mitch felt himself colouring.

  “Hello,” he said, and nodded.

  She stared as if surprised to see him, like she knew him from somewhere, then pretended not to.

  “Feel free to look around,” she said.

  Mitch nodded and shrugged. “Thanks.” He turned from her and pretended to examine a rack of greatcoats.

  The lady pottered about and was making a cup of tea, a kettle boiling behind the counter, but Mitch could feel her stealing glances at him. He pretended to examine a movie poster but watched her in the reflection of the picture frame, staring at him as she stirred her cup. He presumed she was Mrs Hudson; it had said above the door the proprietor was a Mrs Hudson.

  He focussed on the movie poster. A lighthouse, a beam of light, dark shadows of soldiers in a field, a glamorous 1940s girl; an illustration in blue, yellow, red: The Girl Who Saved Britain.

  A sudden pang of déjà vu. This had happened before. This shop, that smell, the tinkling of a spoon in a cup, the lighthouse.

  He waited for it to pass. It always passed. A minute of that profound sense this was happening again, and then the world returned to normal.

  Footsteps thumped down carpeted stairs and a man came through. Harrington jacket and Ben Sherman shirt. Too old to be a Mod, practically in his thirties. A Pentax camera hung at his belly. He stopped short and glared at Mitch.

  “Oh, hello,” he said, surprised.

  Mitch wondered if they ever had any customers, they seemed so surprised to see one.

  The shutter fizzed and the man wound the film on.

  The old woman coughed and glared, correcting him. Was it her son?

  What was going on?

  “Sorry,” the man said. “I thought you were someone else, mate.”

  He bustled out of the door and the bell chimed.

  Mitch felt an uneasy qualm. The mustiness of the old clothes so stale, suffocating. There was no air in this place.

  “He just took a photo of me,” he said.

  The lady shrugged, two hands on her mug of tea. “Don’t worry about Pete,” she said. “He’s a photographer. Always snapping away at everything he sees. He can’t help himself.”

  Mitch stared after him, walking up the street and
disappearing from sight. He wondered why he hadn’t protested to his face. Someone couldn’t just take your picture like that. There ought to be a law against it.

  “Perhaps he was taken with your attire,” the lady said. “You are rather smart. He appreciates a nattily-dressed gent.”

  It wasn’t that. The man had looked at him like he knew him. As had this woman. Had he been here before and forgotten about it? Mitch feared he was about to add paranoid delusion to his long list of ailments. But there was something odd about her; a feeling coming off her like petrol fumes, about to ignite, about to blow.

  The Dansette was playing another tune. A vinyl record spinning round and round. A woman whispering in velvet. I can’t remember where or when...

  Hot. So hot.

  He was having another episode.

  He made for the door.

  “Don’t go,” she called.

  He didn’t look back, just reached for the door handle and fumbled with the brass catch and pushed out. The door slammed shut behind him and he staggered out onto Moseley village.

  The strange looking facade on the opposite corner of the crossroads above the car showroom was like a castle. Leaded windows. It creeped you out, as if some dark secret was behind those latticed windows, hiding in the gloom.

  He stumbled across to the ‘green’. Beside the art deco facade of Barclays Bank, a clear shot of an alleyway and a wrought-iron gate at the end. He careened into the alley, and up its gentle slope, the chaos of the busy crossroads fading behind him. A welcome peace up here. This alley was a sanctuary. He could escape till he calmed down, and the episode passed.

  A flash of green ahead through the ornamental gate.

  The church graveyard. Of course. St Mary’s was behind the Bull’s Head and the bank.

  He turned back, wheezing, choking for breath.

  Why did churchyards scare him so much? They teemed with febrile energy, as if a multitude of voices were crying out from their graves. He’d always heard it, deafening. It was years before he’d discovered other people didn’t feel those places like he felt them. It was like discovering that only you could taste food and everyone else in the world had only four senses.

  He stumbled back to the village green and headed for the verdigris facade of the public toilet. Steps leading down to a dim basement. Dank and cool. He staggered down and retched up his lunch in a grim toilet, before climbing back up to the sunny street, feeling like a tramp. He was a down-and-out intruding on respectable Moseley.

  It had been a mistake to come. He’d heard about it being the place to be. A haven of students, hippies and media types. A relaxed vibe where no one judged you. You could walk in the pub and discuss philosophy and not get your head kicked in.

  But it was probably nonsense. It was just a posh suburb that looked down on the likes of him. He didn’t belong here.

  It was three o clock. He had to get back. His off-peak bus pass would run out at 3:30 and he had to be on the bus to Saltley before then. Any delay and he’d have to pay the fare home.

  He ran across the road, as if running back to Pastimes, but jumped on the first 50 bus, cursing that it had been a waste of time.

  — 2 —

  TIME SEEMED TO SLOW on the journey across town. His head pounding, he tried not to look out of the window at the grey city passing by.

  The 50 bus threw him out on New Street, thick with traffic, and he lumbered the few hundred yards down High Street to the 94 stop, staring at the pavement all the way.

  If he didn’t get home in the next half hour, he would fall into a faint right out on the street or on the bus. He should have a notice around his neck telling people his condition, giving his address. Except he had no condition. There was no name for it. He just flaked out when things overwhelmed him. He just lost it, felt the ground slip from under him. Was there a word for that? A sort of emotional vertigo.

  For the last leg of the desperate journey home, he closed his eyes, feeling the route simply from the way the bus shifted and swayed. The sudden, violent lurch to the right as it turned into the dual carriageway at Nechells was an easy marker. If there was a newcomer, they screamed, thinking the bus was overturning. He’d heard it happen a few times. Everyone would titter, because they too had wanted to scream the first time they’d experienced it. Somehow the bus always righted itself.

  By the time the 94 turned left at Saltley Gate his face was on his knees. He forced himself up, opening his eyes, the brutal afternoon light rushing his senses. He descended the stairs, each step a gargantuan effort, and gripped the cool iron rail as the bus lurched to a stop at the top of Membury Road and spewed him out.

  The stumble down the street to his front door was a blur.

  It opened, he lurched in and fell to the carpet.

  “Omi!” his sister shouted, “Raheem’s fainted!”

  — 3 —

  A DOCTOR CAME. THROUGH a fog of fever Mitch sensed it. A doctor leaning over him with a stethoscope, crisp white shirt with a blue tie, smell of fresh lemon soap. He said something like, “You are sick, aren’t you? It’s really knocked you for six.”

  His mum hovering at the door.

  Later, perhaps an hour later, because the birds were still singing in the garden and the evening sun was blazing against the curtains, she came up with a bowl of tomato soup on a tray. Dry toast cut into triangles. He tried to sit up and spoon some into his mouth but sank exhausted into sleep again.

  It was morning when his mom came in again, in a silk blouse all ready for the office. She sat on the bed in a pleasant cloud of perfume and stroked his forehead.

  “I have to go to work, but your sister’s going to look after you.”

  He nodded and said, “I’m fine. I’ll just stay in bed.”

  “You have to go and sign on or they’ll cut your money.”

  The thought of getting out of bed made him sweat, let alone walking to the Benefit Office. Like walking up a mountain. His eyes fell on the vintage war poster in the alcove. A British soldier in full kit, rifle in hand, standing in front of a ticket booth, pointing out and asking, Is Your Journey Really Necessary? “I’ll be fine. I can manage on my own.”

  “Your sister will look after you. She’s worried about you.”

  He knew that wasn’t true. Sameena would be fuming.

  Mum left and his sister came up and sat on the end of the bed in a banana yellow sari, looking at him curiously, like he was faking it.

  “The doctor said you’re not ill ’cause there’s no physical symptoms. So he can’t give you any pills.”

  “I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus.”

  “He said you need psychiatric help, ’cause it’s all in your head.”

  “What did Mum say?”

  “She told him to get lost. Her son isn’t a loony. She’s wrong, of course. You definitely are a loony. Just look at you.” She looked around the room at the posters, the books, the records; the bureau with its old fashioned green banker’s lamp and his typewriter. “You’re like living in the olden times. You’re probably dying of some olden days disease like the plague or lupus or something, that’s why he doesn’t know what it is.”

  “Cheers, sis.”

  She got up and strolled up the narrow strip of rug between bed and stereo unit. “Look at your walls. You’re supposed to have pictures of Page 3 girls, not old war guys. At least you don’t have Hitler on the wall anymore.”

  A vintage war poster a schoolmate had sold him. It came with the Is Your Journey Really Necessary? poster. A portrait of Hitler with the slogan Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer! Mum had asked if it was appropriate, tacitly enquiring as to whether her ten-year-old son was becoming a Nazi. And shouldn’t he be concentrating on his French homework at school instead of privately studying German in his spare time? Shocked, he’d explained that it was just an old war poster, genuine vintage. It was like collecting a German bayonet or helmet. It didn’t mean you supported the Nazi Party. The poster had stayed up for a year before he’d q
uietly taken it down. And he’d given up collecting German words and phrases in the little notebook and passed his French exam instead.

  “There are girls,” he croaked, nodding to the cluster of screen siren postcards above the record player.

  “Ingrid Bergman’s dead. They’re all dead.”

  His sister was right. He did have an unhealthy obsession with women from another time. They were unattainable and therefore safe. Women from now didn’t interest him. Except that wasn’t true. It was the kind of women the media shoved at everyone and said were sex symbols: the Page 3 girls and trashy movie stars with big hair and big lips.

  But he’d noticed a lot of girls were going around with their hair bobbed in a perm that was distinctly 1940s in style. They weren’t your average girls. They were the kind of girls who read books, liked indie bands and hung around the Arts Lab cinema.

  Maybe that was why he’d taken the trip to Moseley. There was more likelihood of seeing that type of girl over there. But he was never going to ask a girl like that out. The thought horrified him. And not just the fear of stuttering some awful pick-up line. Not just that. Because what was the point in committing to a relationship, anyway? It would always end and leave you heartbroken. You just ended up like Mum, putting on a brave face for the rest of your life but with half of you ripped away and gone with that other person.

  Books didn’t leave you like that, or old films, or photos of old film stars.

  “Anyway, I’m bringing up your breakfast,” his sister said. “And you better eat it. You need to walk up the road to sign on at two.”

  She came back up with a bowl of two Weetabix soaking up hot milk. He ate as much as he could before it congealed into wallpaper paste, and sank down exhausted to sleep for a couple of hours.

  At lunchtime she brought up the bowl of tomato soup, reheated in a saucepan. He sipped at it, burning his tongue in a pleasant way, and felt it revive him a little. He had to get up and get to the Benefit Office.