The hill was steep, and as they disappeared into the shadows of the trees the loss of the moonlight made it harder to see. Stray branches and roots snagged at their feet, and unseen dips and hollows almost sent them tumbling. Charlie’s ears were keen, listening out for the sound of someone approaching, sure that the rattles of Patrick’s car must have attracted their attention, but all he got was the soft rustle of leaves and the creak of branches straining under their own weight. Ted’s breathing seemed laboured, and he shouted out as he stumbled to the floor.
‘We need to go quieter,’ Charlie whispered.
Ted didn’t respond, just scrambled himself upright and walked on ahead, his footsteps faster now, so that all Charlie could hear were the rustles of his feet as he rushed to keep up. The view ahead was just gloom and darkness, the brightness of the moon just slipping through in places, lighting up their faces as ghostly apparitions moving through the trees. Charlie’s white shirt caught the light, so he buttoned his jacket and pulled up the lapels.
Charlie was breathing hard too, his legs aching from the climb, his lungs fighting back against too many long nights bar-hopping and the escape from Donia’s flat. Neither of them was in suitable gear; Charlie’s suit was torn and ragged, his feet clad in leather-soled brogues.
Charlie stopped. He put his arm out. There was something ahead. Mumbles and murmurs, but the voices were fast and sharp, as if they were angry. They couldn’t be far away. Charlie tilted his head to the edge of the woods. They needed to get a better view.
They moved slowly to the edge of the treeline. Charlie sheltered behind a dead tree, the top gone, as if it had once been caught in a storm, so that all that was left was the trunk and two large branches sticking out to the side. He peered out over the field towards the cottage. They were more level with it now, near the top of the slope, and the cottage was framed against the glow coming from the moon. As he focused on it, Charlie saw again what had attracted his attention. There was a small cluster of standing stones, spread out into some kind of haphazard semicircle. There were people gathered in the middle of the stones, around a large rock that was flat against the ground, fifty yards from the house and in the middle of the field.
‘We need to get closer,’ Charlie whispered, and pointed towards the hedgerow at the top of the field. ‘We’ll go along there. It will get us nearer to the cottage.’
The hedgerow was twenty yards away, but it provided some shelter from the moonlight, so that Charlie thought they could get closer without being seen.
He ducked back into the shelter of the trees and crunched his way to where the hedgerow joined the wood. Ted was behind him, making his way more slowly, carefully.
Charlie stopped to let him catch up.
‘They won’t harm Donia,’ Ted said, looking towards the stone circle. ‘Not yet anyway.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Think about it. They’ve got her because you’ve got something they want. If they kill her, they won’t get it.’
‘And just in case you’ve forgotten, they don’t seem too humane,’ Charlie hissed. ‘So let’s not pretend there’s going to be any kind of amicable handover.’
‘So what are we going to do?’
‘We’re going to find out what’s going on, and then call it in.’
‘The police will think it’s some kind of prank,’ Ted said. ‘Anarchist nut-jobs in the woods, and my name won’t help it too much.’
‘The police already know about Donia. They just don’t have a location.’ Charlie stepped out of the shadows of the trees and into the darkness of the hedgerow. He looked along and tried to work out the landscape.
There was a ditch that ran in front of the hedgerow, and as he jumped into it, he knew that it wasn’t waterlogged. They would be able to go along its length until they were just a short dash from the house. It would at least give them a chance to see what was going on so they could report it.
They moved slowly, hunched down, trying not to make a noise. It was hard to work out what was going on. There were around six young women standing around the central stone, and three or four men. They were struggling with something, but Charlie couldn’t make out what it was.
They got to the far side of the ditch, where it met the wall that ran up from the house. There was some shouting, an increase in activity. They tried to keep low in the ditch, just to watch. He could see an outline of someone through a window at the side of the cottage. He thought he recognised the frizz of her hair. Donia.
Charlie gripped Ted’s arm when he saw, and was about to say something, when he heard something that made his stomach pitch and cold shivers ripple up and down his skin.
A long, shrill scream came from the group and echoed around the valley.
Horne looked to Murch.
‘So go on, I’m listening,’ Sheldon repeated. ‘Why now?’
Murch and Horne exchanged glances, until Murch held out his hands in a gesture to continue.
Horne sighed. ‘Amelia called us,’ he said. ‘It was last week. She said she was worried about Abbott, but she wouldn’t tell us why. She just said we had to get him out. She seemed agitated. No, more than that. She seemed scared.’
Sheldon remembered what Charlie had said, that the calls had been made after she had spoken to Billy Privett.
‘You had no idea at all about why she was worried?’
‘No. There was something wrong, we knew that, but if Abbott had contacted her, she would have told us, because he would have contacted her in order that she could pass it on. Or he could have called us directly. We could have gone up there and pulled him out, and we were talking about doing that.’
‘How?’
‘Just go up there and arrest him. Produce a fake warrant, for non-payment of fines or something.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
Horne looked at Murch, who was silent, with his arms folded.
‘Because we weren’t sure,’ Horne said. ‘We thought that perhaps Abbott was biding his time, so as not to attract attention.’
‘But Amelia’s call came last week. What has changed? Why this week?’
Horne started to look more nervous. He rubbed his thumb on the palm of his other hand, as if he was trying to rub some dirt away.
Sheldon stepped closer. ‘No more bullshit,’ he said, his voice quieter. ‘I want the full story. This is cop-to-cop, so it stays confidential, but I want to know.’
The two men exchanged shrugs and raised eyebrows, and then Horne relented.
‘Amelia called us again, the morning it was discovered that it was Billy Privett who had died. She told us that Billy had called her the day before, said that he was going to keep out of the way for a while, that he was going to that hotel. On the way into work, she saw the police cars there. When she tried to call him, she got no reply. So she called us. She was angry now, and more scared. Someone had tried to break into her office. So we went to see her.’
Sheldon thought back to what he had been told, that the two men in suits had been seen coming out of Amelia’s office, and they had gone looking for Charlie in his home.
‘You found Amelia’s body, didn’t you?’ Sheldon said.
They both nodded.
‘And then you broke into Charlie Barker’s home.’
They nodded again.
‘We were worried for him as well,’ Horne said. ‘We tried his phone, but it was switched off, and so we kicked in his door to find him. Except that when we got in there, we saw him running away.’
‘He thought you were after him,’ Sheldon said. ‘He didn’t know who you were.’ When neither Horne nor Murch said anything, he continued, ‘What did Amelia tell you at her office?’
‘Not enough,’ Horne said. ‘She said she had specific instructions from Billy. She was to disclose what Billy had told her, but everyone had to find out at the same time.’
‘Why?’
‘Maximum effect, I suppose. She said there wasn’t too much of a rush, because Billy was dead.’
‘Except she hadn’t planned on herself being in danger,’ Sheldon said. ‘Amelia had prepared copies for the local police, and the BBC, the local paper, and to Ted Kenyon. Billy knew he was in danger. He feared for his life. Billy’s instructions were to send this out if he was killed, so that the truth wouldn’t stay silenced. Billy was scared, that’s all. That’s why he stayed quiet.’
‘So why hasn’t anyone received them? They must have been sent yesterday?’
Sheldon gave a rueful smile. ‘Her secretary didn’t realise the importance, because Amelia hadn’t told her what they were, and so she just didn’t get round to sending them. Mason’s group pinched the discs.’ Then something occurred to him. ‘You don’t seem surprised.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Your involvement with Amelia was to get John Abbott into the group. That had no connection with Billy Privett.’
‘We didn’t know at first, but then when Amelia called us after Billy was killed, we started to wonder about it. When Amelia was killed, well, it became more than a guess.’
‘So why didn’t you tell me?’ Sheldon snapped. ‘I was in charge of the Billy Privett investigation then. You should have come to me.’
Horne started to say something, and then he stopped and looked at the floor.
Sheldon stepped closer. ‘It was time to cover your arse, wasn’t it?’ he said, glowering. ‘You’d lost your undercover man, and so you thought that if Henry’s group had killed Billy Privett, then perhaps Abbott had taken part. How close am I?’
Horne nodded but didn’t look up. ‘Too close.’
‘So you let them stay free because you were protecting your department?’ Sheldon said, incredulous. ‘They killed Amelia the next day. If you had passed this on, we could have locked them up straight away. Amelia would have been alive.’
‘I know,’ Horne said, all the resolve gone in his voice.
Sheldon sat back down on the windowsill, shaking his head.
‘Chief Inspector Dixon,’ Sheldon said. ‘She has looked worried the last couple of days. Is that why? She let you onto her patch and you’ve caused mayhem?’
Horne shook his head. ‘Dixon doesn’t know about Abbott.’ He exhaled noisily. ‘You might as well know. Dixon
couldn’t
know about Abbott.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because Dixon’s daughter is with the group.’
Sheldon paled. He remembered how Dixon acted when he brought Lucy into the station, when everyone thought she was Billy’s housekeeper.
‘It was Dixon who arranged for Lucy to be seen with Ted Kenyon,’ Sheldon said, trying to work it out through his head. Now, it seemed clearer. ‘It was done to stop him campaigning and getting too close to the truth. She was protecting her daughter.’
‘That’s how we read it now,’ Horne said, ‘but we hadn’t known there was any connection with Billy Privett.’
Sheldon went to the door. Before he got there, he turned round and said, ‘What’s the name of Dixon’s daughter?’
‘Gemma,’ Horne said. ‘Gemma Dixon.’
Henry handed the knife to Gemma, his eyes wide with excitement.
Dawn was screaming, long lung-bursting shouts of fear, but Henry showed no reaction. They were a long way from anyone who might hear them.
John’s heart felt like fast finger taps. Dawn was thrashing in front of him, and he knew he should intervene, but he was excited by it. He tried to shake it away, but it was there, seeing Gemma enjoying it so much. Gemma looked at him and gestured with a cock of her head that he should join her. He looked around the group. Everyone was looking at him, expectant, and so he stepped forward, stood alongside Gemma.
She smiled as he got next to her. He glanced over at Henry, who smiled almost paternally. Arni glowered, the intensity in his eyes telling John that he was turned on by this.
He looked down at Gemma’s hand, at her slim fingers around the handle of the knife. The blade seemed to blink with reflected light. He could feel the presence of everyone else. The breaths they were holding, the anticipation. He looked up once more at Henry, who nodded. It was time.
All John heard were the sounds of Dawn’s struggles. Her heels and elbows on the stone, the bang of her head, skin catching on the rock. Panicked cries.
Gemma’s hand moved forward until the tip of the knife rested against Dawn’s skin, just pressing inwards, making a dimple, just under the ribs. Dawn winced.
Henry held up his hands, and everyone turned to him.
‘No battles are won without spilling blood,’ he said, his voice low. ‘It’s been the same throughout history; progress has cost lives. And so without the shedding of blood, we cannot move ourselves forward. We are free men and free women.’
Gemma grinned and whispered, ‘As it is.’ Then she pushed with her hand.
Dawn bucked as the blade disappeared into her side, blood rushing onto the knife. It went in so easily, John thought. Dawn screamed again, except this time it was the sharp scream of pain. John shuddered and he felt himself go light-headed. The field swam in front of him. He had to hold on, he knew that. He was the only one reacting. This had happened before. There was nothing new. And they were watching him. This was his first real test.
He looked down and watched as Gemma withdrew the knife. Blood ran quickly from the wound down to the stone, gushing out in spurts as Dawn’s chest rose and fell rapidly. Her eyelids flickered. She was in shock.
Gemma turned to John and held the dagger to him. ‘Now you,’ she whispered.
John looked around the group. Everyone was smiling.
‘Don’t be uncertain,’ Gemma whispered to him. ‘This is the way. We all take a turn, so that we have all banished her.’
John swallowed and felt his mouth go dry. He looked at the hole in the ground, waiting for her, a large stone lying flat alongside.
Gemma followed his gaze and smiled. ‘We bury her, in the stone circle. A stone for her, just like the rest.’
A headstone, John thought.
Gemma’s hand went around his. Her fingers felt warm, and he remembered how they had been on his body. He could feel her breath on his cheeks, the soft brush of her hair against his neck.