Guardians Of The Haunted Moor (9 page)

“
Wow. Don’t they usually wait until I’m bewildered and
desperate before they call in the psychic?”

“
Nothing to do with you, Robocop.” Lee brushed a kiss to
Gideon’s mouth, just a moth-wing touch but enough to make him want
to sling Zeke and Ma out of the house and slam the door.
“Apparently they’ve hired an officer whose special remit is to look
into cases with any kind of... well, I forget what they called it,
but anything out of the usual run of things. Folklore connections,
Pagan, paranormal, that kind of thing.”

“
Ah. The weird shit.”

“
That’s it. And this weird-shit sergeant reckons a ritual
slaying in a cornfield on the eve of harvest festival might just be
the making of his career, so I’ve been drafted.”

“
Wait up. Who said anything about a ritual?”

“
He did. So you can see what kind of kook we’ve got on our
hands. Looks like I’ll be putting out fires, too... All of which is
far less important than the fact that I upset Ma Frayne. Better let
go of me, gorgeous—I’ve got to go make things right.”

“
No, Lee, dear.” Ma Frayne came tentatively through the nursery
door. “It’s for me to make this right. I wonder if you can
understand—I was married for fifty years to a man who would have
said that something like this was God’s will. But now he’s gone,
and I’ve come to know what a load of...” She hesitated, and Gideon
held his breath: not
bollocks
, surely, not from the
cashmere and pearls. “What an
error
that is, I feel obliged to try and fix things,
whether God likes it or not. With the result that I’ve become a
most interfering old woman.”

Lee held
out a hand to her. She wobbled over and took it, subsiding onto the
edge of the cot. “You’re not,” Lee said. “You’re a perfectly normal
grandma. Look, Gid and I are just shell-shocked. Can you give us a
couple of days to think about what we should do?”

“
Yes. Yes, of course.”

“
Is Zeke all right?”

“
I’ve tired him out. He’s gone into the garden with
Isolde.”

Gideon
glanced through the window. He’d made serious efforts with the
little moorland garden so that Tamsyn would have flowers to marvel
at, a pond, a swing. Zeke had taken up an unlikely perch on the
wooden board hanging from the hawthorn tree. Isolde was sitting on
his feet, her big mournful head laid in his lap. “Jeez, what a
screw-up,” Gideon breathed. “Right. I’m going out to try and make
things right with him, and then all of us—you included, Lee—are
going to sit back down and finish our breakfast.”

***

The
officers stationed at Carnysen field were more used to crowd
control after football matches and at Golowan when the fire-dances
got out of hand. To his dismay, Gideon encountered the first of
them frog-marching old Mrs Waite down the lane. “Michael,” he
called, recognising the young constable. “What’s going on here?
That’s our village shopkeeper.”

“
So she tells me, Sergeant Frayne, but she kept trying to get
under the tape. We can’t seem to make any of them understand...” He
paused at the sound of further ruckus beyond the stile. “That this
is a crime scene. Soon as we chase one of them away, half a dozen
of the others are trying to climb the fence.”

“
Gideon!” Mrs Waite gave an improbable wriggle and escaped the
constable’s grasp. She shot to Gideon’s side. “I’m trying to tell
him, I have to be in there. I’m godmother to young Dev Bowe, and
he’s in there, crying and sobbing over John—what’s left of him, God
rest him—with no-one to comfort him.”

“
That’s the problem, Sergeant! We try to keep ’em out, but
they’ve all got reasons for being in.”

“
That’s because they all know each other,” Gideon said, dusting
Mrs Waite off and straightening the straw bonnet she’d assumed for
her mercy mission. “Now, you listen to me, Elsie. It’s terrible to
hear Dev crying, but there will be somebody on the scene to help
him, somebody professional. Michael, tell me there’s a counsellor
in there.”

“
There is, but he can’t get started because of all the
fuss.”

“
You hear that? You’re hindering the police, Elsie. Obstructing
the course of justice. The penalties for that are heavy, and what
would Dark do for its groceries if you’re in the nick?”

“
Oh, Gideon.” She gave him a painful jab in the ribs. “You’re
such a joker.”

“
Am I? You try me and see. Someone will look after Dev, I
promise. Now go home.” He watched her bustle off down the track,
then turned back to the constable. “Right. Next?”

Next
were the Prowses, of course, Darren and Bill and a handful of
ne’er-do-well cousins from Bodmin. They were variously engaged in
harassing the officers trying to guard the stile, and ducking over
and under the uniformed arms to snap photos with their mobiles, no
doubt for a quick sale to the local gutter press. Gideon, freshly
showered and uniformed himself—heartbreak on temporary hold—waded
in. He jumped onto the stile, straightened his cap and made a quick
assessment. “Right, you lot,” he called, and the various well-known
faces, Prowse and Kemp and Priddy, turned like odd flowers to a
familiar sun. “What do you mean by crowding around here and making
a nuisance of yourselves? A man’s lying dead in that
field.”

Jack
Wilson stopped his efforts to break through the hedge. He was one
of Dark’s more sober citizens, his presence here an indicator of
general emotional pressure. “We know that, Constable,” he said, and
Gideon as usual ignored the slip: he’d been their constable for so
many long years before his promotion. “It’s John Bowe, and
something appalling’s happened to him. Why isn’t anyone telling us
what’s going on?”

“
Because nobody knows yet, Jack. Simple as that.”

“
The Prowse kid says he was dismembered. That some kind of
beast tore him apart.”

Nothing
worse than half a story, unless it was half a limb. Gideon thought
he could see one now. He gestured to the plain-clothes officer
frowning over the coroner’s shoulder. “Detective Inspector
Lawrence? Could I have a word?”

Lawrence
had worked with him on the Lorna Kemp case. She gave Gideon a look
that suggested he had cornered the market in weirdness, and made
her way gingerly out through the corn. “Morning, Sergeant. I gather
you had the pleasure of finding Mr Bowe.”

“
It was one of our village lads, actually. He’s a bit shy,
and...” Sharply he gestured Darren away from a shiny digital
tape-measure someone had foolishly left untended at the edge of the
field. “Well, it might be best if I interviewed him. Would that be
all right?”

“
Please. Knock yourself out.” She glanced around impatiently at
the crowd. “Always nice to get a good turn-out, but this is
ridiculous.”

“
Popular neighbour, ma’am, and this is the start of the
harvest. A lot of people expecting to start work in the Bowes’
fields today.”

“
I don’t see why they shouldn’t. Not this one, obviously,
although we’re about to get the wagon in here and clear up. Can you
help us with the audience?”

“
I’ll be glad to take them off your hands. Anything I can tell
them yet?”

“
I’m afraid not, but try and nix any bloody stories about the
Bodmin Beast. We had more than enough of that last time
around.”

“
Yes, ma’am.”

“
I suppose you already know that Sergeant Pendower, our
esoteric-crimes consultant, is coming up to meet your other half
later.”

“
Esoteric crimes, ma’am?”

Her
expression became weary, and Gideon wondered how much she’d already
had to put up with from Sergeant Pendower. “Someone in Truro has
decided—and I have to say, this is partly your doing, Frayne, what
with the Lorna Kemp case and then that business in Falmouth—that
what this county needs is an expert in paganism, folklore and the
wheel of the ritual year. I don’t suppose you asked for one at our
last general consultation, did you?”

“
No, ma’am. I asked for an expert in drug abuse and the effects
of unemployment.”

“
Right. Well, Sergeant Pendower is what we have. Please
cooperate, but bear in mind that his work—and Lee’s, if he chooses
to help us out—is quite separate from our main investigation.” She
paused a moment, hands behind her back, the picture of British
reticence in the face of strong emotion. “Nobody wants to pry,
Gideon, but... bloody bad business, that, about your little girl.
Everyone at Truro feels the same. If you need some time off as
compassionate leave, let us know, just...”

“
Just not right now, eh?”

“
If you could possibly manage it, no.”

Gideon
could stand here and burst into tears at this touch of awkward
sympathy, or he could start chucking his weight about. There really
wasn’t anything in between, so he drew a deep breath and turned to
face his villagers. “Right, everyone,” he barked. “This isn’t how
we act when trouble comes to Dark. We don’t hang about and get in
the way of the people trying to help us. All of you have questions,
and all of you will be heard, but not here—get down to the village
hall, and I’ll join you there in ten minutes.”

He didn’t need to ask twice. Immediately some kind of raggedy
line formed in the lane. He wondered at their cooperation, then
remembered something Lee had said a long time ago—at their first
meeting in Sarah Kemp’s kitchen, in fact, before they had so much
as shaken hands.
Gideon’s worked all his
life to keep everyone safe in this village.
Gideon had been at a nadir, and the words had stayed with him.
He cleared his throat, lowered his voice and addressed DI Lawrence
again. “Don’t suppose petty cash would run to tea and biscuits down
there, ma’am?”

She was
watching him, smiling faintly. “Go ahead.”

Chapter Four

“
There wasn’t much blood,” Bill Prowse declared. “That means
poor John was dead before he got chopped up.”

Gideon
took his cap off and laid it on the table amongst the
harvest-festival offerings, careful not to damage anyone’s broad
beans. He waited until the chatter caused by Bill’s pronouncement
had died down. An expert on most things, was Bill, by dint of long
service in front of the TV. “Yes,” he agreed carefully. “And that’s
horrific, obviously, but I hope no-one thinks the alternative would
have been nicer.”

He let
them have a think about the alternative. He’d gathered a couple of
dozen of them, and strictly no kids—Darren Prowse had been sent
off, complaining bitterly, to the summer school that was meant to
help reform his character. They all had their tea and biscuits, and
were ranged before him on the plastic chairs as if for a talk on
archaeology. Sarah Kemp got there first. “Ugh, Gid,” she said,
dunking her rich tea with no less appetite. “It’s like he was
butchered.”

“
Oh, right,” said Frank Pawley, who ran a flourishing meat
business on the high street. “Always look to us first, like this
was Jack the Ripper. Like your brother-in-law was any better than
he should be—”

“
Frank!” Gideon thundered. He’d clearly chosen the wrong time
for a straight-faced, lame-arsed joke. “Sorry. The point I was
trying to make is that speculation is useless. The forensics lads
haven’t even finished clearing up the field, and until they do, and
every scrap of DNA is scraped off John Bowe’s barley stalks, bagged
up and analysed, we won’t know a thing more than we do
now.”

“
So what have you dragged us here for?” demanded Bill Prowse,
who’d been first through the door for his cuppa and the gory truth.
“Waste of my time, this is.”

“
Nevertheless, spare me a few of your precious minutes. It’s
particularly important because your boy not only found John, but
ran around scaring the crap out of everyone as much as he could
afterwards. If I had a kid—” Gideon’s words turned to acid in his
throat and he stood for a moment, waiting to be able to breathe.
“If someone in this village has flipped out and started hurting
people, we shouldn’t let our children be conspicuous.
Agreed?”

He got a
surprisingly fervent response. How many of them knew about Tamsyn?
He couldn’t handle direct sympathy, but was grateful for the
compassionate vibration in the air. “All right,” he went on. “I
haven’t brought you here to tell you what happened to John. I’m
just here as your village bobby, same as I ever was. Something
bloody catastrophic’s befallen one of our neighbours, and I want to
keep the rest of you safe. Who has to work on the Bowe land today?”
The several hands went up. Harvest was a good chance for casual
work. “Right. Obviously Carnysen field’s out of bounds, but DI
Lawrence says you can go and get started once the coroner’s van and
the other vehicles are gone. I’m going to add this. Come straight
home once your shift is done, and curfew your kids. I want no-one
under the age of sixteen out on the streets after seven, and no-one
of any age, man, woman or child, out on the moors after dark. Is
that clear?”

He was
trading on his loss. He hadn’t meant to, but under normal
circumstances he’d have had to deal with an absolute barrage of
protest, and this was a hell of a lot easier. He laid his hands on
the table and for a moment let himself look as tired and sick as he
felt. “Thank you,” he said, breaking the unnatural silence, and was
almost relieved when Jenny Salthouse raised her hand. “Yes,
Jen?”