Saxon's Bane (28 page)

T
HE POLICE
I
NSPECTOR
was inclined to believe the Vicar, even though there wasn’t any evidence. At least, not yet. Vicars tend to be sensible people, not given to wildly exaggerated claims. If it had been only the woman, the Inspector would doubt the existence of a body, but the Vicar backed the woman’s story like it was the Creed.

Besides, every fibre of the Inspector’s instinct told him something was wrong. There’d been more callouts to this village in recent weeks than there should be in as many years. It had started with reports of graffiti on the church, and then there was a vandalised car and the business of the goat’s head. That had been downright nasty. Something was going on.

The Inspector could see the smouldering remains of the bonfire in the wavering beams of the police torches, still steaming under the spray of a hose they’d run out from the nearest cottage garden. Not that there’d been much left to put out by the time he’d arrived. Still, he doubted if the remaining charred timbers were substantial enough to hide a body. He’d seen burnt bodies before, all twisted and blackened but still recognisably human even after intense fires. He’d smelt them, too, and the smell had put him off his Sunday lunch for weeks. But so far nothing here looked like a body, even though there was a lingering smell that might, perhaps, have been one.

The Inspector pointed his torch at the people he’d selected for further questioning, and tried to work out the relationships between them. He’d a habit of attaching mental labels to the players around a crime. It was easier than remembering names. He’d singled out six, this time, and they were sitting in three pairs on the tree trunks that edged the common, each establishing their distance from the others as if to prove that they weren’t together. There was the Vicar and the woman who’d made the call, the one he’d labelled Laura Ashley. They were sitting with their heads together, hands clasped as if they were praying. Those two believed what they’d told him and they weren’t in a hurry to go anywhere. Beyond them, the unnatural pulses of blue light illuminated his men as they worked their way through the crowds, looking for witnesses who would corroborate Laura Ashley’s story.

On the next tree trunk there was the big, slowspeaking guy he called the Bear, sitting with his arm around the woman he thought of as Puss in Boots. Puss was a pretty thing in jodhpurs and long leather riding boots, and all his men wanted to be the one to interview her. Those two were nervous, much more nervous than innocent people had any right to be, even when confronted with police lights and sirens. They knew something but were acting dumb. The Bear was one of the organisers and had been pointed out as someone who’d built the fire, so he’d have to stay.

Then there were the last two, the ones who’d also built the fire. One of them, the Weasel, cowered away from the beam of the torch, almost shaking with fright. The Inspector kept the beam on the Weasel’s face, watching him wince at the scrutiny. There’s the weak point. If anyone was going to crumble under questioning, it would be that one. The Weasel had denied seeing anything, gabbling his responses with the panicked defensiveness of a child caught with his hand in the sweetie jar. Guilty as hell, of something.

Which left the arrogant one, the one with the plaster cast on his arm and his shoulders braced back as if he were some tribal chieftain who demanded deference. Smart Arse. The Inspector knew the type. As soon as the heat went on, so to speak, he’d refuse to say anything without a solicitor. He’d probably even call him ‘his brief’. Now Smart Arse turned his head away from the torch, staring into the distance as if all this commotion was beneath his notice. The Inspector would bet a week’s pay that this man had form. If they did find anything in the fire, he’d probably have a story ready which would blame everything on the Weasel. The Inspector came to a decision and beckoned over his sergeant.

“Tape it off.” He waved his torch at the fire. “Treat it as a Scene of Crime. Let’s wait until daylight before we go blundering through the ashes. In the meantime I want statements from those two,” he flashed the beam at the Vicar and Laura Ashley, “and then they can go if they want. These four must stay here.”

“Am I under arrest, Inspector?” God, how the Inspector hated Smart Arses who knew their rights. “No Sir, you’re not under arrest. I’m simply asking you to stay here to help us with our enquiries. But your arrest can be arranged if you’d prefer.”

Smart Arse simply blinked at him.

By the time there was enough light to examine the ashes, the crowd had long since dispersed. Just the three couples remained, plus an enterprising burger van that had stayed for the gossip while he sold coffees and bacon butties to the police. The Inspector was glad the Vicar had stayed, even though he’d been free to go. Otherwise the other four would probably have kept silent about the goat’s head mask and strange cloak that one of the constables had found in the bushes. Tempers had flared for a while amidst accusations of Satanic practices, but they were still no closer to an answer. Nothing would surprise the Inspector any more. He’d been a copper in this county for over twenty years, and the goings-on in the rural communities had lost their power to amaze him. Finally, the Inspector waded clear of the pond of ash and charcoal, and walked up to the Vicar and Laura Ashley. As he peeled off rubber gloves and overalls he made it clear what he thought about half his force being called out in the middle of the bloody night to nothing more than a bonfire. No normal bonfire, he said, would totally destroy a body. There’d have been something left to see. So do me a favour and check your facts, next time, will you? The couple reacted with stunned disbelief, as if he’d told them that their church had collapsed, and he found his indignation fading. They believed what they’d seen, and they too would be humiliated in the aftermath of the night. But most of all in that moment, the Inspector dreaded Smart Arse’s crowing.

The Inspector wasn’t prepared for the surprise and relief on the faces of the remaining four as they were released. Even Smart Arse’s bluster was half-hearted.

They didn’t seem to be working together, but each pair believed there had been something to find in the fire. The Inspector’s internal alarm system went into overdrive.

Furiously, he marched back to the site of the bonfire, making wind-up signals to his men. In the centre of the pile of wet ash he turned, searching the scattered pieces of charred timber for any sign that would support his screaming instinct that he was missing some vital clue.

In frustration he kicked at the pile of debris, dislodging a metal object that rolled away from his boot. The Inspector bent to pick it up, but it was just an old hinge, the kind that would have fitted on the door of a cupboard or the lid of a box. Swearing, he tossed it towards the other metal debris they’d found, which included, incomprehensibly, some dumbbell weights. As the Inspector drove away, he wondered why the couple he’d thought of as the Bear and Puss in Boots still sat on a tree trunk, watching, even though they’d spent the night without sleep and had been told they were free to go. Their behaviour set his mental alarm going again. Later he’d be told that they’d sat there until the last policeman had left.

But no-one saw how the couple then pulled a bucket and a shovel from the back of a Land Rover, and brought them to where the Inspector had stood. Quietly, almost reverently, they filled the bucket with ash.

“C
ANT WE GET
some sleep first?” Hagman slumped in an armchair in Herne’s flat above the Green Man, clasping a large brandy from the bar downstairs. His eyes were red with tiredness, and now that he knew he wasn’t about to be arrested for murder, he only wanted to drink and sleep.

“You whine like a school kid. ‘Mummy I wanna go bye-byes,’” Herne taunted as he emerged from the shower, towelling himself one-handed with the kind of care an athlete might give to his body before a contest. He strutted around the room naked, flaunting himself, but Hagman looked away. He found all that muscle intimidating.

“Well we’ve been up all night and I’m knackered.” “We can’t take the risk of her making a noise and being found by walkers. We’ll do it now.” Herne’s tone allowed no dissent.

“But it’s morning. We don’t really have to hurt her, do we, not now we’ve missed Beltane?”

Herne started dressing in fresh clothes as if he was going on a date.

“Nah. We could let her go, but you made one big mistake yesterday. You let yourself be seen. You’d get at least ten years for grievous bodily harm and false imprisonment. She might also try and prove sexual assault, if I can assume that those ‘lovely little tits’ you’ve been drooling about weren’t flashed at you voluntarily.”

Hagman winced. He couldn’t understand how Jake could stand calmly in front of the mirror applying after-shave. “And worst of all, when she reports her boyfriend missing, the police might take another, much closer look at that bonfire. Just remember you’ll be the last one to be seen with him.”

Hagman squirmed in his chair. “I still don’t understand why they didn’t find nothing.”

“I told you, He looks after His own. He’s just proved it.” Herne made the sign of the Horned God, and then pushed his face close to Hagman’s, bracing himself over the chair with his hands grasping the chair arms. He was still naked below his shirt tails, and Hagman recoiled from the contact.

“Listen, if you was part of that fucking church up the road, you’d be running around waving your arms and shouting ‘it’s a miracle’. We’ve pulled off a perfect murder because all the evidence burned away, but all you can do is sit there moaning.”

“It don’t seem right, somehow, killing her. Not like the man. She ain’t done nothin’.”

“She will do, if we let her.” Herne pulled on clean trousers and finished dressing, moving briskly as if he was looking forward to what must be done. “You got us into this, now I’m going to help you finish the job. And He won’t want us to leave any loose ends. But we can have ourselves some fun while we do it. It’d be a pity to waste her.”

Herne snatched a screw-top plastic bottle of orange juice from the refrigerator and shook some pills into the palm of his hand. “Only one, I think.” He dropped a pill into the juice. “We don’t want her getting too sleepy too soon, do we? It’s more fun when there’s a little fight left.” Herne shook the bottle to mix the drug and reached for his car keys.

B
IRDSONG
. F
ERGUS WOKE
to the kind of song that comes from so deep in the throat of a thrush that its richness seems launched from the heart. There had been another noise, an echo of laughter perhaps, but now there was only the tumbling complexity of the dawn chorus. And giggles. High, girlish, angelic giggles. Fergus wondered if he was in heaven, without remembering why he might have thought he could be in heaven. Did they have hangovers in heaven?

Fergus groaned and moved, feeling a dry scratch and rustle underneath him. The giggles came again and he opened one eye. Above him a corrugated metal roof was festooned with cobwebs. There was something he needed to remember, something important about a bad nightmare, but it was fading with the daylight. Fergus turned his head, wincing as his vision speckled with little flashbulbs of pain. Where the metal roof ended, the sky beyond was the fragile blue of a perfect morning. Below the blue stood one of the stable girls, her eyes sparkling with laughter. A name formed in the fog of his brain. Emma. Maybe. Probably. Synapses fumbled blindly in his mental soup, and gradually connected. Emma.

“You must have been well drunk.” Emma was enjoying the moment, relishing a story she could tell and retell among her friends. Fergus sat up, blinking at the pain, and wondered where he was. A heavy horse rug slid off him into a gap between bales of hay. He stared at it while his tongue probed at his lips, tasted something foul, and retreated. Hay. Hay barn. Stable girl. He was at the stables.

“How...?”

“Eadlin and Russell brought you back yesterday. My friend Lucy was doing the evening feeds when they came back, and she says you was snoring. They made her promise not to tell anyone, but Lucy’s my friend so it’s OK. They put you in here to sober up while they went back to the party on the common.” The stream of information made no sense. Fergus reached back through the fog for solid memories, finding only images of morris dancing and men in grotesque green costumes. He’d drunk beer at the White Hart, perhaps a couple of pints, but somehow he’d become more pissed than he’d ever been. Fergus slumped back onto the hay bale. There was something crucial that he needed to remember. He ran his fingers through his hair, and noticed his arms.

Fine red scars lay in hoops across the skin. Fergus put his wrists together and the scars matched. Someone had tied him up, and he’d struggled against his bindings. There was a bruise and the puncture mark of a hypodermic in one arm. But no watch. Panicking, he searched his pockets. Fragments of memory started forming in his head.

“What time…?”

“It’s only six. I’m on the early shift. Me dad dropped me off on the way to work. You lost something?”

“Watch, wallet, phone, car keys, everything.” There was a reason, if only his brain would work.

“So you was robbed. And you missed all the excitement last night.”

“Excitement?” One-word questions were about all he could manage.

“Mrs Foulkes and the Vicar said there was a body in the bonfire and called the police. There was cops all over the place. They put the bonfire out and made Eadlin and Russell and Jake Herne and Dick Hagman stay there all night.” Emma was almost hugging herself with the excitement of the story. “They was just packing up as we came past this morning. Jake Herne looked well stroppy.”

Body in bonfire. Jake Herne. The thing he must remember took shape in his mind, and it had the face of Jake Herne saying “I’m going to fuck your girl.” Fergus almost fell off the hay bales and steadied himself against them while the spots in his vision faded.

“Do you have a phone?”

“Sorry.”

“Come on, every teenager has a phone.” Fergus heard the desperation in his own voice.

“I’m out of credits until payday, if you must know.” Emma sniffed, no longer finding the conversation amusing.

“I’ve got to make a call.” Fergus started out across the yard towards the office.

“And I don’t have the key to the office, neither. Only Eadlin has that, remember? You’ll have to wait till she gets back.”

Of course he remembered. The farmhouse was also her home. As Fergus’s mind cleared he realised that by the time Eadlin returned to the yard, Herne could be at the Blot Stone.

“Do you have a car?”

“Do I look like I can afford a car? I told you, me dad gave me a lift.”

Fergus staggered to a standpipe against the wall of the barn and put his head under the tap, gasping as the cold hit his scalp, but holding himself there until his brain started to work. As the base of his neck began to ache with the cold he straightened, staring at the line of hills, and building a mental picture of the terrain as he weighed up alternatives. About three miles across country to the Blot Stone, four by road and track. Well over an hour on foot, even at his best speed. It would take him as long if he went via Allingley and picked up his car or bike. Plus he’d have to add the time to wake up Mary Baxter so he could fetch his spare keys. But to wait and do nothing was unthinkable. Fergus spun on his heel and strode towards the tack room.

“I’m taking Trooper out.”

“What, on your own? Eadlin will go mad!”

“I’ll live with it.” Fergus hauled the saddle and bridle into his arms.

“You’ll bloody kill yourself. You’ve never ridden anything out on your own before, have you? Let alone a horse like Trooper. He’s well sharp.”

“Depends who’s riding him. And you sound just like my mother.” At that she shut up.

Five minutes later, Fergus had his first battle with Trooper before he even left the yard. Emma laughed at him and called out “I bloody told you so” as the horse spun under him, sensing his tension, and protesting at being put to work before the morning feed. Without the steadying tail of Eadlin’s chestnut to follow, this was going to be difficult. When the horse was briefly under control Fergus called over to Emma.

“Emma, when Eadlin gets here, ask her to meet me at the Blot Stone. It’s very important.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Emma was in a huff.