Bates nodded, gratefully.
“Masterson, you’re with us.”
“Yes, Boss.” she said.
Just before they went to their separate vehicles, Powell-Mavins leaned toward Ravyn and whispered: “They don’t make minions like they used to.”
* * *
Stark’s ankle was still tender, but he moved as stealthily as he could. Easing the side door open, he peered both ways before stepping out of darkness into light. No one was in sight.
It was possible, he supposed, that some rodent rooting in one of the outbuildings, or perhaps a feral cat seeking the rodent, had upset a piece of debris, but he doubted it. It was too simple an explanation. In Hammershire County, nothing was ever simple.
He backed from the barn. Behind him was one of the blighted patches the Strykers had tried to cultivate. No one could hide among its brambles and tares. To his right was the Stryker cemetery with its weathered markers, not a honest cross amongst them. He gazed at the pathetic plot of land till he was sure no unseen watcher was hiding there.
Two outbuildings came into view as he backed, set between the barn and the distant marsh where the back fence crossed. His initial searches of them had revealed nothing, but they were, he admitted, cursory, nothing more than flashing his torch quickly into each.
He limped toward to his left, pausing at farmhouse’s northeast corner. From this vantage point, he could watch the barn’s entrance, the two outbuildings toward the marsh, and keep close tabs on the house in case anyone had gotten in and tried to escape.
Also in view were the standing stones around the hole in which he found the bones of Dale Stryker. The megaliths seemed changed. All brush had been cleared. Even from such a distance as he stood they seemed to loom into the sky like the fingers of giants, buried but not entirely dead. He was glad they were obscured the day he went down that hellish hole.
Out at the northwest corner of the property stood the Worship Oak with its load of wicked fruit. The tree seemed much smaller to him, perhaps because the stones appeared so much larger. If anyone had escaped over that back fence to thread trails through pestilential marshes or along Braikey Pond where demons and elementals dwelt, he was not chasing after.
It was not that he believed in the villagers’ foolishness. Not at all, he told himself. There were no unearthly beings waiting in the brackish waters of Braikey to steal lives or souls. The dead did not reach from stagnant pools in the marshes to pull the living down to Hell. There were no hobgoblins, ghouls, pixies, spectres, wraiths, bugaboos, banshees or bogies. The world consisted only of what he could see, and he could see the world just fine from where he stood.
Besides, he told himself, his ankle hurt, he had a crime scene to watch over, and he was waiting for people to arrive. Live people.
Just over an hour later Ravyn appeared in the company of Dr Penworthy. Following close behind were Andy, bag in one hand, litter under his arm, and Powell-Mavins with a crime scene tech. He was overjoyed to see them, but kept it to himself. Using a limb he had found as a staff, he met them.
“What happened to you, Sergeant?” Penworthy asked.
“Slipped.”
“I’ll have Andy wrap that once we get back to the van.”
“I’m fine, Doctor.”
“Don’t be silly. You’re getting it wrapped.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Stark pointed out the entrance to the barn, then told Ravyn about the sound he had heard.
“The barn was empty except for Winsell, and there hasn’t been any sign of anyone around the house, the outbuildings, the stones or the family boneyard.”
Ravyn looked northward. “Could have headed that way.”
“Maybe, but I wouldn’t have.” Stark held his breath.
Ravyn turned to Penworthy and Powell-Mavins. “You two go ahead. Stark and I need to look around.”
Penworthy lingered. “I wanted to tell you this together. I finally received the toxicology reports for you and Highchurch.”
“Bloody fast,” Stark said. “You must know the right people.”
“I took the order to Mr Heln for signature,” she said. “He gave me a complex cost analysis of how the section’s budget is strained to breaking. Then Karen came by. Fortunately.”
Stark started to snarl something, but Ravyn stopped him. “What were the results?”
“A strong psychotropic oil distilled from three main ingredients: papaver somniferum, salvia divinorum and banisteriopsis caap, plus two other plants.”
Stark frowned.“ I know the second was Salvia, but the other…”
“The opium poppy and the ayahuasca vine,” Ravyn said.
“The what vine?”
“Plant from the Amazon Basin.” Ravyn looked to Penworthy. “The other two botanicals?”
“There, the lab drew a blank,” Penworthy replied. “They will keep at it, but I doubt they’ll be able to determine much more than the formulae. I think they’re either unknown species or extinct. One may be related to ergot, the other a distant relative of nicotine.”
“The oil is topical?”
Penworthy nodded. “Absorbed through touch and immediately into the bloodstream. Rapid heartbeat, increased respiration, loss of muscle control, hallucinations, vertigo, difficulty with vision, paralysis – the symptoms appear very quickly.”
“Not mine,” Stark said. “I drove awhile before it hit me.”
“Thank the porous nature of your steering wheel cover for that, Sergeant,” she said. “Apparently, whoever tampered with your car did not realize the steering wheel would absorb most of the oil. You received a much smaller dosage than intended.”
“That is why your attacker took such direct action, forcing your car off the road,” Ravyn said. “He became worried when you did not immediately pull to the side. At the first opportunity to approach you, panic took over, with predictable results.”
“I’ve e-mailed both of you the reports,” she said. “Sorry. Must be off. Have a body to examine. Don’t want Angus inconvenienced or Andy to get carried away, do we?”
When they were alone, Ravyn said: “I’ll search the house.”
Stark started after him.
“Keep an eye open if anyone comes running out,” Ravyn said. “Trip him with your stick and beat him insensible.”
Stark scowled at Ravyn’s back. The guv’nor was possessed of a peculiar sense of humour. Fortunately, he did not express it often. About five minutes later, Ravyn reappeared, shaking his head.
“We’ll check the outbuildings after a brief stop at the barn.”
“It may be nothing,” Stark said. “It was just the once. It may be nothing but me letting this godforsaken place get to me.”
“You’re a trained observer and a reasonably good logician,” the chief inspector said. “Deductions require information, but we ever acquire data, even when it comes to us subconsciously. It’s why so many scientific problems, such as August Kekulé’s solution to the structure of the benzene molecule, come in dreams.”
Stark was not sure whether Ravyn was citing something real, mocking him in some way, or simply continuing with his peculiar vein of humour. He followed him to the barn.
“Keep an eye on the outbuildings,” Ravyn said. “I’ll be back in a few moments.”
Ravyn was surprised to find Andy zipping the body bag and the SOCO team starting in.
“I’ve no idea, and I am not going to speculate,” Penworthy said before Ravyn could open his mouth. “Don’t even ask. He’s dead, and that’s all I can say till I open him up.”
“Stark said there were no apparent marks on the body.”
“And he was correct,” she said. “For all I know, your man may had died of natural causes.”
They both looked at the magic circle.
“Well, as natural as anything is in Hammershire,” she said.
“In films, magic circles are usually chalk, but this one is made of some kind of light sensitive crystals,” Powell-Mavins said. “Any idea what was
going on here?”
Ravyn shook his head.
“We’re going to record the circle photographically, then try to transport it in sections,” the SOCO chief said. “Using a casting resin to maintain the integrity of the blasted thing; then going to section it and put the segments on layered wood. Enough of that around.”
“Well done, you.”
“Don’t pat my back just yet,” Powell-Mavins said. “Still plenty of time for us to make a dog’s dinner of it.”
“How long?”
“The resin is fast setting, but the time-consuming part of it will be sectioning, laying out and transporting. Say, hour and a half, maybe two. No more.”
“You and the sergeant still looking around?” Penworthy asked.
“Won’t take long.”
“Unless it does,” she said. “I still want Andy to wrap Stark’s ankle. Andy is looking forward to having a live patient.”
Ravyn joined Stark and they headed for the outbuildings.
“You seem to be hopping along with a bit more alacrity.”
“Feeling much better, sir.”
“Still going to be wrapped, I’m told. Andy is quite excited.”
Stark groaned.
There was nothing in the closest of the two outbuildings other than rusted farm implements, old trunks, and the flotsam and jetsam of generations. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust and dirt. Ravyn eyed the boxes and trunks. This, he reflected, may be the very building in which young Dale discovered the book that became his grimoire.
They flashed their torches in the second building. Their beams simultaneously froze on a glistening stain partially hidden. Stark felt sick, not from the discovery, but from having missed it previously.
Ravyn kneeled. “Blood. But we’ll have Angus check it.”
“Knox’s?”
“Most likely.”
“Tacky,” Stark said. “Fresh, at least within a few hours, but the Prius wasn’t here when I arrived and I didn’t pass it.”
“That’s the most direct route, but it’s also the most visible, with no way in or out but one,” Ravyn said. “I wouldn’t go that way If I didn’t want anyone to see me.”
“But the only other way would be…” Stark shut up, dreading the alternative. It was not that he feared anything on the far side of the fence, not that there was anything there, but an old stick was no kind of support to rely on while traipsing through quagmires.
“It would be slow, probably hazardous, but the trails…” Ravyn recalled a satellite map he had seen at the MOD a few years earlier. “Yes, it could be done, but just, even in a Prius.”
When Ravyn headed for the north fence, Stark had no choice but to follow. They passed under the shadow of the gruesome oak, and approached the fence. On the other side, the marsh was layered with yellowish fog.
“Get over that fence all right, Stark? Good man.”
They found the yellow Prius less than twenty yards away, lost in mist, half sunk in a stagnant pool. Knox lay on a solid hump of land, legs in the car.
“He’s alive,” Ravyn said. “Get Dr Penworthy. Quickly!”
Knox’s eyes fluttered open as Ravyn dragged him from the car and rested the man’s head in his lap.
“Ah, it’s you, Ravyn.” Knox’s voice was faint. “Thought he had found me…come back to finish me off.”
“Peter Vogt?”
“Yes, my good and ancient friend, Peter.”
“Ezekiel had three acolytes: you, Henry Winsell and Peter Vogt,” Ravyn said.
“Yes, but how…” He gasped and closed his eyes in pain. “How could you know?”
“Lionel Marquest figured some of it out, eventually,” Ravyn said. “At least enough to be dangerous.”
“The sergeant? Yes, I remember him.” Knox coughed blood. “I thought him sharp, for a strapper that is, much more so than his guv’nor, whom we barely saw.”
“He had years to obsess over the Stryker case,” Ravyn said. “He couldn’t believe the boy who wrote this…” He showed Knox the grimoire, then slipped it back into his pocket. “A boy like this could not have killed his family, especially his mother.”
“As I suspected; your question was much too specific,” Knox said. “You’re very clever. You don’t have the Gift, but you have a natural talent. Probably why the hex-mark Hillary gave you had little effect. Its purpose was merely to confuse. I don’t think she would have done it had it actually been harmful,”
Ravyn remained silent and his expression did not change.
“We all believed Dale had killed everyone,” Knox said. “Well, we wanted to believe that, didn’t we? The alternative was too awful to consider.” His voice faded. “We were friends…”
Ravyn moved his mouth closer to the dying man’s ear. “There were three of you: Hawk Claw, Stone Heart and Owl Screech. You, Winsell, and Vogt.”
Knox grinned through the pain. “I nearly fainted when you mentioned those. Been a long time. We were named by the Master. I was Hawk Claw. He considered me a little sharper than the others. That’s why he was going to give me Heather, his favourite.”
“To bring you into the family,” Ravyn suggested.
Knox nodded. “Anyone can be an apprentice. Adepts take them on all the time to settle obligations and traditions, and for other reasons, but to learn deep magic you have to be the Master’s son.”
“And Winsell was going to get Millie?”
“Henry was a strapper, out of Denby Marsh,” Knox said. “But he was nearly as sharp as me. Stone Heart – that’s what the Master named him. You have to have passion and fire to work magic, but you also need a hard heart. Henry certainly had that, perhaps why he did so well in the City after we parted company.”
“No bride for Vogt?”
Knox tried to shake his head, but the effort was too much. “Owl Screech – bit of a joke, that. Owls are wise, but Peter was just a lot of noise. Stupid as dirt, but full of guile. We all knew what he had done to old man Lea. Didn’t like it, Henry and I, and especially not what he did to Mabel, but a magician is not bound to the same kind of morality as mundane men.”
“With no bride…”
“Well, he would have been out, wouldn’t he?” Knox chuckled up more blood. “Took him long enough to understand the Master accepted him only to collect a monthly fee.”
“A fee?”
“Even a magician has to live, Chief Inspector,” Knox said. “It’s the alchemists what turn base metals into gold, not us conjurors.”
“Were all three of you having an affair with Martha?”
“Martha told me one long night that Peter tried, but she wanted naught to do with him.” Knox sighed with bitter remembrance. “It was only recently that Henry told me I was not the only one.”
“Did the daughters know about your infidelity?”
“No, but only because it would have caused trouble,” Knox said. “They wouldn’t have cared, not them. They loved themselves, each other and their grandfather, in that order. They were marrying only because he told them to. A loveless match, aye, but all would still have been quite wonderful.”
“And then everything went wrong.”
“Yes.” In that one word, Knox unloaded thirty years of bitter regret and devastating loss. “Everything good in my life ended that night. We went our own ways. Henry fled to London to worship the Bitch Goddess Money, Peter took up a mundane life, and I…well, I became the effete little busybody I had been before the Master told me I had potential for so much more.”
“You knew Winsell had returned?”
“Yes, I lied about that, but I never contacted him,” Knox said. “Why would I? What would we talk about? The first time he saw me after thirty years was that day at the farm, and the first time I heard from him was after you found the bones.” He sighed. “Poor Dale, thirty years dead and cursed every single day. When we knew it had not been Dale, we knew it had to be one of us…I knew it was Henry or Peter.”
“Henry convinced you of
his innocence, and you him?”
“Not until today.”
“How?”
“The primary purpose of magic is not divination, but there are ways to resolve the truth,” Knox said. “That’s what we did in the dead of night, deep in the woods at a crossing of paths. I was found free of deceit, and so, also, did I find Henry. We knew it was up to us to avenge the Master…and Martha.”
“What happened in the barn?”
“The purpose was to make Henry a whole man,” Knox said. “What happened was Peter Vogt. He attacked me. I escaped.” He glanced toward the mired car. “Not more than a few feet and the Prius let me down. I couldn’t crawl away, so I waited to die.”
“And Winsell?”
“The only thing more powerful than a work fulfilled is a work interrupted,” Knox said. “Powerful and extremely dangerous. He died because my curative spell could not be completed.”
“Why did Vogt kill the Strykers?”
“To absorb their blood’s magical power.” Knox paused. “And maybe Peter went a little crazy when Martha refused him.”
“I don’t know that I would want argue the former in court.”
Knox laughed. “We dwell in a magical world, but not all see it. Your science is not the answer to…” A sudden convulsion took his breath away. “Oh dear.”
Dr Penworthy was the first to see Ravyn and Knox, followed by Andy and Stark. They stopped.
Ravyn shook his head. “He’s dead.”
“A three-fer,” Andy muttered.
“Shut up, Andy.” Penworthy’s voice was without fire.
Ravyn slipped Knox’s head off his lap and eased it down with the gentleness of a mother laying a babe down for a nap. He stood, dusted down his trousers and looked to Penworthy.
“We’ll direct Angus to you on our way out.”
As they jumped the fence, Ravyn pulled out his mobile.
“Ware,” he said to Stark’s expression. “I want to her to watch Vogt but not approach him.” He closed the mobile in disgust. “Went straight to message.”
* * *
“It’s a shame what happened to poor Mabel, no doubt of that, but am I surprised?” Peg Wolfe shook her head as she wiped down the bar. “No, and you know why? Unlucky stars. No one could help her, not even Peter, though he tried. How that man tried, bless him.”
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