Who Dies Beneath

by L. J. Hutton

  “Then will you take a friendly warning from me?” Bill asked. “Maybe as early as tomorrow, other men will come in those boxes on wheels, as you call them, to the quarry where all of the women are. Please don’t show yourselves to them. They won’t understand what you are. But they will be coming to collect the bodies of the women and take them to be properly buried, and to identify who they are so that their families can be told. They’ll be doing a very careful search of the whole area. That’s because they can put all the little bits they find together to make a sort of picture which will tell them what happened.

  “Don’t worry, they won’t be able to identify you. Their skills don’t go in that direction. You don’t need to fear that they will try to come into your world. But if you let them do their work, they may be able to find things which will make it possible for all of us to stop other men in that ‘clan’. Those other men have never come out here. They only do their evil deeds in the cities – the places you regard as destroyed. But they do prey upon innocent people, and it may be that what can be found in the quarry will make it possible to stop them too.”

  “Why are you warning us?”

  It was a good question, and one which Bill could only half answer, even to himself. “Because the people who are coming are as ignorant of your existence as the men you stopped. I don’t want anyone else getting hurt – not you, or one of my own kind if they attack you in fright and you then have to defend yourselves. There’s been enough bloodshed there already.”

  “Indeed there has. Very well, we will stay away.”

  The warrior turned as if to go, but Bill called after him,

  “Why the apple trees? What’s so special about them? And what about Hannah and Grace? Did their father kill them or are they somewhere else?”

  The warrior paused and looked back over his shoulder. “Do not fear for them. They are with us now, and will stay with us, safe from their own kind. They are at peace, having found what they wanted. You may stop looking for them. They do not want this place you have come to anymore.”

  He turned and seemed to slide into a shadow that was half beneath the trees and half something else.

  “And what about the apple trees?” Bill called after him, but got no reply.

  Chapter 16

  IT WAS ALMOST FOUR in the morning by the time Bill crept back into the pub and got into bed. Groaning at the thought that he would have to be up at eight at the latest if he was going to get any breakfast, he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep – or at least as far as he remembered by the time he woke up. He was just stepping out of the shower, having blasted himself with both hot and cold in an attempt to revive himself, when his mobile phone rang.

  “Hello, Bill, it’s Likesh,” the voice on the other end said. “Great tip-off last night! We pinged the cars first thing this morning, and they’ve shown up just up the road from you, if you’re still in Knighton.”

  “Bloody hell!” Bill forced himself to say in fake astonishment, glad that he wasn’t face to face with DI Setty where the lie would be obvious. “When I said ‘Wales’, I didn’t think it was going to be here. I was expecting the Brecon Beacons or somewhere.”

  Lying toad, his conscience prodded him. And you having let the probable murderer of Bose, at the very least, just walk away from you last night, too! Watch yourself, you’re starting to stray into dangerous ground!

  “I know,” Setty agreed. “I was starting on finding phone numbers for the Territorial Army Units, and my mate Tony said he’d just have a go with the cars’ trackers in that area. He wasn’t hopeful, but thought if it worked it would save us a lot of time trying to track down Territorial officers who might not even still be in the Reserves. He was practically dancing on the spot when both cars showed up at the same place.”

  “Well I’m glad my idea paid off for you,” Bill lied smoothly, but still with his fingers crossed on the other hand from the phone.

  “So we were about to send a message to the local lads to see if they would go and have a look ...but then I had an idea. I’ve run it past my governor, and he’s put in a call to yours. If I give you the co-ordinates, would you go and see if the cars are there or not? It’s just that it could take the Welsh lads ages to get out there, given the territory they have to cover, and ditched cars from a couple of West Mids crooks isn’t going to feature high on their importance scale, especially if something more urgent comes in. But we’re getting a bit of pressure to find Bose because of the row his mum and gobby aunts are kicking up. They’ve gone to the local press, screaming about police prejudice towards mixed-race men, and so even though our governor knows that it’s likely to turn out that they’ve fallen prey to some rival gang, we can’t afford the adverse publicity.”

  Bill could sympathise with that. The moment someone like Vijay Bose died, they were suddenly elevated to the sweetest little boy who’d ever drawn breath, rather than the vicious thug they’d been even before they’d left primary school. But it was all too easy for their equally devious families to manipulate the feelings of the local communities, some of whom undoubtedly had genuinely been wrongfully stopped and searched by the police. It was one of those situations where the police couldn’t win whatever they did, because failing to scrutinise the darker side of the victim’s life could end up resulting in gang warfare, where some other innocent got caught in the crossfire – sometimes literally. It was just that of all the options he’d thought of, this one had never remotely crossed his mind.

  “I’ll have to ring my DCI,” he said cautiously. “It’s not that I doubt your guys made the call,” he added hastily. “It’s more that our super’ isn’t the best at relaying messages down the line, and I don’t want my governor fielding a call about me being out here, and her wondering what the hell I’m playing at.”

  “Fair enough. In your place I’d want to make sure that I was well covered, especially as it looks as though the location might even be over the border.”

  Keep calm, Bill, his inner voice told him sternly. Remember, you’re not supposed to know where it is. “Is it on the far side of the Teme, then?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Setty admitted. “All I can tell you is that it’s to the west of Knighton somewhere,” and clearly having no idea where even Knighton was.

  “Oh bugger! Well if it’s due west from here, then it probably is into Wales. Shit! The Powys lads are really going to love me – after all, it’s only a couple of weeks since I found that deposition site of Justin Pickersleigh, the paedophile.”

  “Ouch! I’d forgotten that Ray told me about that. Sorry, Bill. Are you sure you want to do it in that case?”

  Bill sighed. “It’s a bit hard to refuse, unless the bosses tell me not to. And I am on the spot, so to speak. Look, give me the grid reference and I’ll make some calls.”

  When Setty read out the coordinates, Bill knew straight away that they were for the quarry, and so he hurried down to breakfast, grabbed what he could, and then went outside to stand and make the call where he wouldn’t be overheard by the other guests.

  Mercifully, Suzanne had already had the message from the West Midlands Police passed on to her, so she wasn’t surprised to hear Bill calling in. She was much more stunned to hear that he was going to have to go across the border again, though.

  “Oh bollocks, Bill. That’s messy,” she agreed with him after he’d finished explaining. “Look, don’t move for the moment. I’m going to have to ring through to Powys and explain things to them. After that it’s really up to them if they want you to go and check on the motors.”

  Remember, as far as anyone but you knows, there’s nothing but a couple of dumped cars out there, Bill kept reminding himself. If they think anything at all, it’s that there might be some prints inside them which might provide a clue as to where bloody Bose has sodded off to. Only you know what a hell-hole really exists there, so don’t overplay this. Don’t give it any more urgency than it would warrant from their point of view.

  “Fai
r enough,” he agreed. “I’ll hang on here at the pub and top up my caffeine levels. If you don’t need me, I can easily go for a walk afterwards – it’s not as though I’m in a hurry or anything.”

  Leaving it at that, he went back inside and used his charms on the landlady to get another pot of coffee; explaining that he was an off-duty detective, but that he’d just had a call from work, and now needed to linger for a while for a follow-up one. He went and got his maps from upstairs, and settled himself by a window. Yet for all that he stared at the map, he wasn’t really seeing it, let alone working out any future walks. Instead his mind was working on how to break the news.

  At least now he didn’t have to worry about taking his car right up to the quarry and leaving tracks, and if he then pulled it back to where he’d parked it before and over his original ones, he now at least had the legitimate excuse of getting the Subaru out of the way of the forensics team and the pathologist. Dare he ask for Carol straightway, though? She was the most senior pathologist in the wider area, and so with multiple bodies involved, it would be natural for her to become involved at some stage.

  He was still mulling that one over when his phone rang. “Okay, Bill, you’re on,” Suzanne declared rather cheerfully. “Seems we’re in Powys’ good books by saving them a trip out on what might well be nothing at all. Apparently they’re dragging their uniforms in to deal with a bunch of animal rights protesters who’ve turned nasty at a chicken farm down by Brecon. It’s the usual tale of the peaceful protesters getting a sudden reinforcement from the troublemakers, so they’ve got their hands full today.” Unable to keep the humour out of her voice, she added, “Apparently eggs have been thrown! Fancy that at a chicken farm!”

  “Aagh, that’s nasty,” Bill groaned. “They’re an absolute sod to get out of your uniform, as I remember. In my younger days I had to deal with one of those protests at a battery farm on the outskirts of Birmingham. Never did fully get the stain out of those trousers, so they have my sympathy.”

  “Always unpleasant,” Suzanne’s distant voice agreed. “Most of the protesters have a point. My dad would never keep chickens in those conditions. The chickens on our farm run free except for at night, and that’s only so that the local foxes don’t get them. It’s just a shame that the well-intentioned get tarred with the same brush as the lunatic fringe. Anyway, off you go then, Bill, and keep out of mischief.”

  “I’ll do my very best,” Bill quipped back, hoping he sounded less dreading than he actually was. “I’ve got a nice walk planned for along the Teme when I’ve finished.”

  “Well, keep me posted, won’t you,” and Suzanne rang off.

  Bill leaned back in the chair and breathed deeply. How long should he leave it? On the one hand, he couldn’t seem to have just walked straight to the spot. On the other, everyone who knew him knew his ability with maps, so dawdling too much would look equally suspicious. He looked at his watch. Ten-thirty. Probably best to aim to get to the quarry about eleven. That would be believable, especially if he was going to have to give directions so that the forensics and pathology folk didn’t do endless trips up and down the road, hunting for the turn under the railway bridge.

  But while he went and got himself ready, there was another part of his brain which was turning over his odd encounter of the previous night. He acknowledged that he’d been aware that arresting the strange warrior was never going to be an option. Wherever he’d come from and whatever he was, he could almost certainly have slid back there never to be seen again, and as for trying to get him all the way back to a police cell, well that was just laughable. But Bill had enough of a sense of moral duty to know that if the sword he’d seen had been the one used on Damien Farrah, then he had to ensure that it didn’t get turned on some unwitting soul just out for a night-time stroll. Therefore if he was to do that, then he had to get the warrior to speak to him again, because it was only going to be with words that Bill would be able to prevent him acting again.

  Yet upon reflection, he now realised that even at the time he’d picked up on the warrior’s words about ‘showing’ those men what they’d done. And remembering that sensation of the strange not-quite-human man’s words being as much in his head as spoken, Bill was more convinced than ever that something close to telepathy had been involved. So if the mysterious women were of the same kind as the warrior, wasn’t it possible that all they had done was to show this handful of degenerate and defective men exactly what they’d inflicted on their victims, and in a deep and very interactive way? Made them feel for themselves the pain and anguish they’d been so quick to dole out?

  That might very well account for the expressions of outright terror on the faces of Pickersleigh, Costa and Mulligrew. To suddenly find themselves effectively in the position of their victims would be a dreadful lesson, and if they had been unable to withstand even a fraction of what they had dealt out, then wasn’t the fault more in them than the ones showing them? Wearing his detective’s ‘hat’, Bill knew that if this had been a case of these men being forcibly abducted and then raped, or abused in some other way, then the law would take a very grim view of that, because whoever did that was doing nothing less than doubling the crime.

  But in his soul, Bill was now certain that that wasn’t what had happened here. These beings had done nothing more than showing, albeit possibly with the full array of sensations. The fact that they could do more than hold up a purely visual mirror to men like Costa, Pickersleigh and Bose admittedly took it to a different level. Yet even though he knew he was splitting hairs over this, Bill still felt that there was a difference between dispassionately giving the perpetrators what amounted to a ringside seat to their own violence, and handing out the same treatment for real. That brought him back to his thoughts about the supermarket murder, and those disquieting feelings of rough justice having been served on someone who would now forever evade the legal system’s justice for the dreadful misery he’d inflicted. Something within him had changed with that case, and Bill was forced to admit that he might never feel quite the same ever again; which in turn made his response to the strange warrior very different to what it might have been only a year ago.

  And it was also going a long way towards answering the nagging question about the escalation of violence. If Tufty Harbottle had been killed by Vijay Bose, and not the strange warrior, then the only actually violent death amongst all of them was Damien Farrah’s, and knowing now of how aggressive he had been, Bill was much more inclined to write that one off as self-defence on the strange beings’ parts. It didn’t alter the fact that these almost mythical semi-humans were acting as vigilantes, but the more Bill thought about it, the more he was also convinced that they hadn’t gone looking for these men. The violence had been brought to what they no doubt thought of as their home, and maybe even their sacred ground. It had come to them, not the other way around. And in that case, they were unlikely to pose a threat to anyone else unless some idiot decided to come out here and do the same. They certainly weren’t going to expand their searches to other places, hunting for more of the same, of that he was somehow absolutely certain.

  Nonetheless, Bill was still keen to know whether it had been the death of Thomas Mulligrew which had started this all off. There was something about that area around the old hill fort which made him think that it was the epicentre of that ‘clan’s’ territory, and that it was only after they had been awoken to the dangers that they started what amounted to patrolling their borders. What he could do about that, though, was a very different matter, and for now he had other things to deal with.

  Getting into his car, he drove back up to the quarry, this time pulling right into the opening gap before stopping at the point where he could see the two other vehicles. The scene didn’t look any better than before. Tufty was still sprawled close to the rear of the Hilux, and there were enough of the women’s bodies visible from where he was to make it plausible that he could call it in as a multiple homicide. Taking several photos from w
here he stood with his phone’s camera, Bill then made the call to Suzanne.

  “Found them already, Bill?” was her cheery greeting.

  “You’re not going to like this,” Bill responded sombrely. “I’ve just sent you some images. Brace yourself. It’s pretty grim.”

  “Oh bollocks,” he heard her sigh, then waited as she retrieved the images, and her softly sworn, “Fuck! ...Fuck! ...Fuck!”

  “Sorry,” he said, this time not having to fake the mournful tone. “You’d better get all hands on deck for this one. Because I hate to tell you this, gov’, but I think there might be more bodies beyond those big boulders. There were a couple of magpies taking an abnormal interest in whatever’s back there when I arrived, and I think I can see what looks like some tattered bit of cloth fluttering in the breeze back there too.”

  “Oh shit, Bill, you really are keeping us busy this month,” Suzanne sighed. “Still, this is hardly your fault. We sent you out there, and I suppose in one way it’s better that you found this rather than some poor rural Special Constable – because that’s who’d otherwise have been sent out to that one.” She sighed again. “Well I don’t need to tell you what to do, or rather not do. Hold the fort and I’ll start making the calls.”

  “Will do,” Bill replied, unable to stop himself from adding, “That’s my walk this afternoon buggered.”

  “Afraid so,” his DCI sympathised, “but that’s what you get for being a magnet for the bizarre. Only you, Bill ...only you!”

  Knowing he was in for another long wait, Bill reversed the car out of the quarry’s entrance, but only pulled down far enough that he didn’t have to look at the remains while he waited. For a while he listened to Classic FM, but the radio signal was patchy up here even on digital, and so once the drop-outs became annoying, he switched it off and went to stretch his legs along the land a bit. Had it not been for him knowing what horrors lay in the quarry, it would have been an idyllic spot. And so it was only when the bright colours of a woodpecker flashed across his path, heading into the trees, that he looked any harder in that direction and realised that he was at the bottom of the gully he had come down through.