by Harper Fox
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?”
“What about Guldize, Sergeant? It feels barely Christian to be asking in the light of what’s happened, but do we need to call off crying the neck?”
There wasn’t a flicker of Christianity in Dark’s version of the harvest-home rites, but leave it to Jen to serve it up on a doily. Still, she ran the parish council ably and well, and Gideon needed her on-side. “Where is it this year? Up by the Bowes’ farm?”
“That’s right. John said we could scythe the little field by hand and do it properly, all according to tradition.”
“Then—much as I hate to say it—I think you’d better postpone. I don’t think Bligh and Dev Bowe will want people frolicking up by the farmhouse tonight. And you’ll be coming back right over the moor after sunset, so—”
“You do think it’s the Beast, don’t you?”
Gideon met Bill’s eyes. He, Sarah Kemp and a handful of the other people in this room had seen too much, last Halloween but one, to deserve a flat denial. In any other village in the world, Gideon might have stood here and preached common sense. There is no Beast. For God’s sake pull yourselves together. But the people of Dark lived with their moors and their legends and their ghosts, and no-one from the outside ever came to help them. They shaped the world around them for themselves. “I don’t know what to think,” he said honestly. “There’s CID and forensics guys working up at Carnysen now, and I hope to God they’ll tell us what to think soon enough—because until then I don’t know who my enemy is, and until I do, I can’t look after the rest of you properly. So will you try and protect yourselves, and offer every cooperation—including staying well out of the way—to the police?”
Bill gave a snort. Under the murmur of assent that followed, Gideon thought he heard himself being called a worse bloody preacher than his brother, but he could live with that, if only the rest of them would meet his efforts halfway. There was no Beast of Bodmin, not by any sane reckoning, but maybe they could all behave as if there was until John Bowe’s killer was caught, and all would be well...
The hall door flew open. Gideon jumped as Lee appeared in the sunlit space, out of breath and pale. “Gid,” he said, gesturing back over his shoulder. “Trouble.”
***
As well as a Beast, several numinous tors and stone circles, Dark had its own local witch. She didn’t fit the bill in many ways, living in a tiny modern terrace on the village outskirts and wearing nothing more outlandish than last season’s M&S, but for as long as Gideon could remember, if you wanted your palm read, your toothache eased or your warts transferred to someone more deserving, you went to Granny Ragwen. Recently she’d developed Alzheimer’s, and was only maintained in her own home by the efforts of her increasingly frazzled daughter, Madge. She’d lived quietly enough before her illness. You had to know by word of mouth where to find her. Now she’d taken to occasional tours of the high street, declaring to anyone who would listen that she had the mojo and she wasn’t scared to use it, and so—Gideon guessed, anyway, jogging in Lee’s wake up Pellar Street, counting heads and raised voices, trying to sort out his problems in advance—her fame had spread.
Poor Dev Bowe had found her, anyway. He was standing on the pavement outside her house with a group of the Carnysen farmhands around him. He was gesticulating, almost poking Madge Ragwen in the chest. Madge, never one to take abuse lightly and well used to having to defend herself, was poking back at him, yelling into his face. This was all understandable, or would be in a minute once Gideon got them dragged apart and their separate stories told. What he couldn’t work out was the presence of the squad car parked neatly a few yards down the road, and the immaculately uniformed sergeant standing by it with his arms folded, as if he’d arrived in time for some fascinating local folk drama.
Gideon grabbed Lee’s arm to slow him down. “Who the hell’s that guy?”
“I don’t know. Thought he was one of yours.”
“Looks like he is, not that he’s doing anything to... Oh, wait.” He dropped his pace to a walk so as not to plough into the scene like a bulldozer. “I think he might be one of yours. Sergeant Weird-Shit, I presume?”
Lee gave a choked bark of laughter. “Oh, no.”
“You go introduce yourself while I break up this brawl. Do I even want to know how you knew this was happening, by the way?”
“Granny Ragwen gave me a call.”
“She doesn’t have a phone, Lee.”
“Nevertheless.”
“Great.” Gideon gave him a swift, hidd
en caress to the spine as they parted. They’d both managed to find a working-day mask, but Lee beneath his looked just about ready to die. It was half past nine, time for Tamsyn’s second feed and a game of where’s-the-dog, a ritual that never seemed to get old for the baby or Isolde. If Gideon was working late shift, he was often around to take part. Where’s the dog? Where’s the six-foot policeman? Oh, here they both are under the stairs again. Shrieks of joy, enough to make the neighbours think the child was being murdered... “Right,” he said, stepping between Dev Bowe and Madge. “Back up, the pair of you. Dev, I’m very sorry for your loss, but if you try to dodge under my arm and lay a finger on a woman in my presence, I swear I’ll arrest you.”
“But her ma... Granny Ragwen...”
“Is an eighty-year-old lady with Alzheimer’s. Yes?”
“There’s nothing wrong with her! She just pretends! She’s a witch, and she knows all about what happened to our John—she said she did!”
Madge, twice the bulk of frail skinny Dev, lurched against the flat of Gideon’s palm. “She said she was courtesan to Charles the bloody Second yesterday, when I had to stop her taking off her knickers in the grocery store! What were you and your bunch of pitchfork-bearing oiks gonna do to her, anyway?”
Gideon glanced at the oiks. There were only three, and matters hadn’t yet got to the pitchfork stage, thank God. He pointed at the least-aggressive face. “You! George Miller. I never saw you coming out of Ross Jones’s house with a packet of dope in your hand, did I? Good—in that case, come over here and sit Dev quietly down on that wall, while Madge goes in and puts the kettle on for her ma, who’s probably scared out of her wits.” He waited until these instructions were obeyed, Madge inside and the door safely closed behind her. “I’m ashamed of you lads—really, properly ashamed. Where’s Bligh Bowe?”
“Up at the field with the poliss,” George sullenly replied. He was blushing to his ears, as if suddenly as puzzled by his presence here as Gideon was. “He’s got no time for Dev anyway.”
Gideon knew that. John had been the loving parent in the family since Farmer Bowe the elder and his wife had died last year. He’d been fifteen years older than Dev, a good guardian to the runt of the litter. He took gentle hold of the boy’s chin and lifted it. “Come on, Dev. This isn’t like you. Why are you really here?”
“Because...” Dev looked away, tears welling, a big improvement on the blank rage. “I don’t rightly know. She did say she knew why my brother had to die at Guldize. And she does have all that stuff in her house—a skull, and a great big blackthorn stick.”
“Have you been inside?”
“No. George told me years ago, after he’d been to get his palm read.”
“That really does seem hypocritical.” Gideon glanced at George, now puce. “Not many years back, a village thought itself lucky if it had a cunning-woman, someone to help with the weather and people’s aches and pains. It was seldom they did any harm. And now they’re dying out, which ought to please you fine young heroes. It had better not happen any faster here in Dark because of you. Do you understand?”
Dev nodded. Gideon waited until the other lads had done the same, then he sat down on the wall beside Dev and offered him a handkerchief. A few yards away on the pavement, Lee looked up from his conversation with the weird-shit sergeant and frowned, as if scenting trouble on the air. Christ, Gideon hoped not. He’d had enough to last him through Guldize, Allantide, Montol and Golowan. “Thing is, Dev,” he said, “you’ve had a horrible shock. And although you might think you’re thinking straight, you’re a long way from it. Who’s at home to care for you?”
“Nobody. John cared about me. No-one else.”
“Well, your godmother was practically climbing a hedge to get to you this morning. If I let you go now, will you let George take you down to the shop? You could help her a bit, make yourself useful. That often helps more than you’d believe.” It’s almost working for me. “Agreed? And as for you other two, if I catch you near this house again, you’ll be celebrating harvest-home from an overnight cell in Truro.”
Well, that was another fire extinguished. For now, anyway—Gideon hadn’t liked the look of Dev Bowe one bit. He went to shake hands with Lee’s companion, scrambling through his brain for the right name. Sergeant Weird-Shit had fitted too well, not your traditional double-barrelled title but strangely assonant. “Good morning. Sorry about the ruckus. It’s Sergeant Pendower, isn’t it? Very good to meet you. Gideon Frayne.”
“Rufus, please.” Pendower held out his hand. He was a small, upright figure in his immaculate uniform, making Gideon aware of the barley-dust and pollen adhering to his own. “That was very interesting.”
“What was?”
“How you handled them. A combination of sympathy and force. Pretending to fall in with their beliefs, and then the boot.”
Gideon raised an eyebrow. “I’m with you as far as the boot,” he said. “But...”
“Your speech about the village cunning-woman. Very good. Do you understand the meaning of the word cunning in that context?”
If I didn’t understand, I wouldn’t bloody use it. “Kenning. Conning in the French sense of connaître—somebody who knows things. A wise-woman.”
“Yes. Marvellous! It’s not often I meet someone who shares my fascination with the origins of words.”
“ I tell you what, Pendower—next time you see a street brawl break out between a lone female and a group of big lads, do feel free to jump in.”
“Ah. DI Lawrence might have told you that my role’s purely observational. Anyway, I could see that the cavalry was on its way.” He turned to beam at Lee, who was watching him in polite astonishment. “While you were busy, I’ve been making the acquaintance of Mr Tyack. I was meant to meet him later, but I’m sure his presence here is far from a coincidence.”
“Well, nor is yours, Sergeant,” Lee said pleasantly. “Rufus here was just telling me how he met the Carnysen lads down in the village, rampaging round and looking for a fight. So he asked them—given the ritual aspects of this case—if anyone around here happened to dabble in such things.”
“Wait.” Gideon rounded on Pendower, who took a step back. “You sent those lads up here?”
“Of course not. They were going to go somewhere, though, and I—”
“You just directed the flow. Then drove up here in your panda car to watch the results.”
Pendower looked delighted. “Panda car? I haven’t heard that in ages. Yes, I was very interested to see how Mrs Ragwen would respond when directly confronted with an accusation of witchcraft. It’s a pity that her daughter intervened.”
Gideon met Lee’s gaze. The days were long gone when Lee could convey only calm down, Gid with such a look. Now it said, through the growing intensity of their bond, keep calm, and at some point today will be over, and I’ll take you home and shag you by the fire. “Never mind,” Gideon said civilly to their new colleague. “I’m sure there’ll be other opportunities for you to scare an old lady to death. What exactly is your remit here, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I’m sure DI Lawrence has already told you. I’m to work with Mr Tyack here in looking into any folkloric, esoteric or apparently paranormal aspects of this case.” He beamed at Lee. “I don’t mind admitting I’m a huge fan. Have you been watching Spirits of Cornwall, Sergeant Frayne? I don’t know if you’re aware of his approach, but...”
Gideon couldn’t resist. DI Lawrence clearly hadn’t told Pendower everything. He picked up a look of resigned permission from Lee, and smiled broadly. “I know a thing or two about him, yes. He’s my husband.”
Pendower blinked. Gideon could see the cogs whirring, Cognitive dissonance, he’d learned it was called, when evidence came along to clash with an established world view. It wasn’t a homophobic response—just an insular Cornish one, and left untended could result in the blossoming of UKIP posters in front gardens around election time. “Husband,” Pendower echoed, as if he hadn’t quit
e heard right, or Gideon had just got his words mixed up and made an embarrassing mistake.
No time like the present to do a little weeding. “That’s right. Lee did me the honour of marrying me last July—didn’t you, love?”
Lee stepped forward, hands in his pockets. “I did that.”
Pendower was blushing furiously. But he tugged his jacket straight, adjusted his cap, and after a couple more displacement actions was able to say, with some grace, “Well, my best congratulations to you both.”
“Thank you.” Gideon glanced at Granny Ragwen’s firmly closed front door. “Right. I gather you wanted to take a look at the field where poor John Bowe died.”
“I... Er, that’s right. To see if Mr Tyack can pick up any psychic impressions.” Pendower collected himself. “He really is quite marvellous. I can dismiss most alleged clairvoyants as frauds with no effort at all, but... Well, I don’t need tell you. You’ll know all about him, of course.”
“Some. But he keeps surprising me. Shall we move on? The coroner ought to be finished by now.”
“Oh, no. I really must interview Granny... er, Mrs Ragwen.”
“You have to be kidding. You don’t seriously think an unhinged eighty-year-old had anything to do with this?”
“Directly? Of course not. But if she’s a self-styled witch, who knows what kind of influence she has over impressionable minds in an isolated place like this?”
Gideon looked him over. Neither of them could pull rank—it was sergeant-to-sergeant, and a clash out here on the pavement would be unseemly, after Gideon had just broken one up. “I’ll interview her, if someone has to,” he said. “You’re welcome to observe.”