‘It could be dangerous, guv,’ Clare said.
‘That’s as maybe, but we’re here to uphold the law, not to pussy foot around with this bunch of country yokels. Besides, I’m armed.’
‘These people are murderers.’
‘I want to see the face of the enemy when we walk into that bar and order a couple of drinks.’
‘Is that how you see them?’ Clare asked.
‘You’ve not seen them rushing to help us.’
‘No.’
‘Then they’re the enemy, and from what I can see, very dangerous.’
***
Clare, reluctant to join Tremayne at the pub, had no option. The two arrived at the front door to find a burly man blocking the way.
‘We’d like a drink,’ Tremayne said. The man stood to one side, making sure to brush up against Clare as she pushed by. At any other time, she would have seen his action as sexual intimidation, but in Avon Hill she knew it was not, more a case of this is our place and you’re not welcome.
Tremayne had missed the man’s response at the door, or maybe he hadn’t. Clare wasn’t sure, but her DI acted as if nothing had happened. She looked around the bar for familiar faces, but there were none she recognised immediately, and besides, the majority of the patrons were out the back in the car park.
‘Check them out,’ Tremayne said. He had a pint of beer in his hand, orange juice for her.
‘No cost,’ the publican said. The pub was warm, the smell of sweating men still noticeable, even the traces of cigarettes: both were anathema to Clare. Once Harry had come near her after a night in the Deer’s Head reeking of stale beer and body odour coupled with the lingering smell of cigarettes. She had wanted him, but not in that condition, and it had taken a couple of showers and thorough brushing of his teeth before he was deemed worthy. She took her glass of orange juice and looked out of the window to the rear of the pub; she could not see very much. It was clear that whoever was out there had no intention of coming back into the warm bar with its open wood fire, at least not while there were two police officers there.
Tremayne brought his pint over to the window. Clare noticed that he had not drunk any.
‘Anything?’ Tremayne asked.
‘Too dark for me.’
‘Then we’d better go out there and have a look,’ Tremayne said. He made a phone call to Hughes first. ‘Any more bodies?’ he asked.
‘It’s perishing cold down here,’ Hughes’s reply. ‘What’s it like where you are?’
‘The locals are cold, as is the beer, but the pub’s warm enough.’
‘Then I’ll come up there with some of the team.’
‘Don’t expect the traditional country pub welcome.’
‘We won’t.’
‘Come on, Yarwood. Let’s go and stir the pot,’ Tremayne said.
Clare could see it was dangerous. She knew out in that car park were murderers who had killed, would kill, for some malignant reason that made no sense.
The two walked through the door at the rear, Tremayne almost knocking his head on the lintel above the door. The assembled group outside turned towards them and glared. Someone shone a light in Tremayne’s face. ‘DI Tremayne and DS Yarwood,’ he said.
The person holding the light lowered its beam.
‘Thank you,’ Tremayne said. ‘We’re looking for Dr Wylshere,’ he said.
‘He’s not here,’ two men said, almost in unison.
‘Then who is?’
‘This is our village. You’ve no right coming here with all your people disturbing the peace,’ a voice at the rear of the group said.
‘Come forward, identify yourself,’ Clare said. Nobody moved.
‘You’re wasting your time, Yarwood,’ Tremayne said quietly to her, ensuring that the group did not hear.
‘We’ve every right to be here,’ Clare said. She was nervous, desperate not to show it, but her voice was quavering. She remembered the man as she had entered the pub, imagined that those in front of them would be of the same ilk: capable of intimidating, capable of violence, capable of murder.
‘We’ve found a body down behind the church,’ Tremayne shouted.
‘It’s a church. What did you expect?’ one of the men said.
‘In the woods, not the graveyard,’ Tremayne replied. Clare studied those opposite, almost silhouettes from where she was positioned. She looked for a reaction, saw none. She moved to one side, aiming to use the light from the pub window to her advantage; it helped.
Clare did a rough count. There appeared to be more than twenty individuals: some were dressed in suits, others in work clothes. She scanned for Edmund Wylshere.
‘The body’s not been there for more than a day,’ Tremayne said. ‘We need someone to conduct an identification.’
‘You know who it is,’ Clare said, mindful to keep her voice down. She had moved back closer to Tremayne. She almost felt like grabbing his arm for emotional support. She was shivering from the intensifying cold. Tremayne, she noticed, was cold as well, but he was still standing firm, unwilling to move from where he was until someone said something or even made a move. He knew he should not be there baiting these people, and he should have brought armed backup, but he was desperate for answers.
‘We don’t know who it is,’ the man at the front said.
‘And your name?’ Tremayne asked.
‘It would be best if you leave.’
‘Is that a threat or a request?’ Tremayne answered back. Clare could feel the tension in the air; it was electric. It reminded her of a movie where the opposing sides faced each other across open land, brandishing spears, hurling insults, but this was not fiction, this was real, and the odds were stacked against the side of right over wrong by at least ten to one.
‘We need to back off,’ Clare said.
‘You’re right. They’re not going to budge,’ Tremayne said. He had the measure of what they were up against. He picked up his phone and made a call.
‘It’ll not work,’ the spokesman for the opposing force said.
‘Why’s that?’ Tremayne asked. He had tried to phone for a dozen men, armed and ready for whatever the night brought.
‘We’ve isolated the village.’
‘Let’s get away from here. We can get one of the uniforms to drive out to Wilton,’ Clare said.
‘You’re right. Drink your orange juice, and we’ll be off.’
‘How about your beer?’
‘I only used it as an excuse, I don’t intend to drink it. I’ll have a hot drink with you when we get back to the church.’
Tremayne and Clare walked away and around the side of the pub. Two minutes later they were back at the church.
‘What was it like?’ Hughes asked, his team still at the crime scene.
‘Dangerous. They’re as mad as hatters up there. Keep your men away if you don’t want trouble.’
***
‘I expect you to play your part this night,’ Edmund Wylshere said. He had seen the events in the car park from an upstairs window. He had seen Tremayne attempting to bait those outside into an inappropriate response. The idea to remove the power from the mobile communication towers within a radius around the village had been his, although it had not been wise to tell the two police officers.
‘I will play my part,’ Gerald Saxby, a local farmer and one of the elders, said.
‘And the others?’
‘What is to become of us?’ Saxby asked. He had lived close to the village all his life. He did not want to leave, knew that the current situation could not continue.
‘Have you made provision for your future?’ Wylshere asked. He was aware that he did not intend to leave, and if he were to die in that village, then that would be his fate. As for the others, he had only a mild interest in them, although Saxby had been a loyal servant.
‘I will not leave, whatever happens. My wife is no longer well and able to travel, and why should we
? We have placed our trust in you. We expect you to protect us.’
Edmund Wylshere sat on the small bed in the room. He looked at the man in front of him and knew he had gone soft.
The door to the small room opened and two men entered. ‘It is beyond our control,’ Wylshere said.
The two men, one tall and overweight, the other a runt of a man, not even up to the shoulders of the other, nodded their heads in agreement.
‘Good. Then sit down here while we discuss what will happen.’
‘Is there no other way?’ Michael Carter, the local butcher, asked. Of the four assembled, Wylshere was the only one convinced that their village had reached a turning point in history and there was no way going back.
‘There is no other way,’ Wylshere said. ‘If we hadn’t dealt with Eric Langley, he would have told all; led them to the village and shown them where the offerings are buried.’
‘But now they are here, and they are finding the bodies,’ Slater, the vet, said. He could trace his ancestry back hundreds of years, good and bad, and he had enjoyed the ceremony, the dressing up in ancient robes, the masks, the pretence that something alien existed. But now it was all to come to an end, and he wasn’t sure what to do. The outside world was there for him, but he would be tainted. Slater wondered, in that small room, what had happened. Even as a young man, when he had first been invited to partake in the ceremonies, he had revelled in their crassness, their cruelty, their camaraderie. And Wylshere had found him a wife from another community, something that he would not have achieved on his own due to his profound stutter and his stunted build, the result of inbreeding. And now his wife was causing trouble, threatening to leave, threatening to talk. He knew he should tell Wylshere about her, but in the small room surrounded by the other elders was not the right time.
If they survived, he would tell him, or maybe he wouldn’t. His wife, he knew, deserved better than him, but she had stood by him even when he had failed to provide her with children. Regardless of her nagging, her constant fastidiousness about cleanliness, and her coldness towards him for the last few years, she was still the best thing in his life.
Michael Carter, an unsociable man, did not like the other men in the room. A willing participant, he had arrived in the village eighteen years previously. He remembered the intimidation at first, the veiled and not so veiled threats, but he had legal title to the butcher’s shop and to the small house at the rear, thanks to his distant relative.
Wylshere had confided years later, once Carter had established his credentials and his willingness to serve, that the arrangement had been that the relative was to have ceded his property and his business to him and that he would hold it in perpetuity for the community.
Carter, a cruel man used to the slaughter of animals in the farmyard, wringing their necks, slitting their throats, had known then, as he did now, that Wylshere’s interest was not beneficial; it was solely financial. As for the gods, the verdict was out on them, although he had seen things that defied logic. And now, Wylshere, through his need to maintain discipline, had brought the police to their village. Even at the time, he had thought that such an intricate death as Eric Langley’s had been unnecessary. It would have been so much easier to give him a slow-absorption and undetectable poison. The man had been old and physically weak as it was, and Wylshere was a doctor: easy for him to arrange, and then no police enquiry, no Mavis Godwin, and indeed no Reverend Harrison.
Carter knew he was trapped. He’d have to go ahead with Wylshere, hoping there was a resolution that would protect his life, although there were still the bodies behind the church. Someone would have to pay for their deaths, and he was as guilty as the others.
Chapter 31
Tremayne realised the situation was dangerous. Not only were the mobile phones not working, neither were the police radios. In fact, nothing seemed to be working correctly. The generators used to power the floodlights around the crime scene were starting to have problems, and some of the lights had failed already.
Clare had found a hot drink for her and Tremayne on returning from the pub. She knew she had been frightened up there, as had Tremayne, but in his usual manner he had shrugged it off.
Tremayne had told her before about his visit there when he as a junior officer at Bemerton Road Police Station, and now she could see what he meant, although then they had not been violent.
One of the police cars was dispatched to Wilton, the nearest police station, to organise more police officers to come immediately to Avon Hill.
Tremayne wasn’t sure how long they would take to arrive, and, if they did, there’d still be the debate, especially with Moulton, about the need for a heavy-handed approach.
Moulton had been updated about the rumours, and he, like Tremayne, had been sceptical.
Regardless, Constable Dallimore, still upset over the death of his former drinking pal, Vic Oldfield, left Avon Hill and headed up to the main road, and then into Wilton.
‘Whatever you do, don’t let them browbeat you into submission. We need help, and we need it now,’ Tremayne had told him.
Dallimore had seen that Tremayne had not been lying as he drove past the pub. His car misfired as it passed, but did not stop. The main road was no more than two miles, although the road could be treacherous, especially in winter.
The police constable picked up his phone and speed dialled: nothing. He keyed the speech on his radio: nothing. The vehicle continued to move forward. What the …? he said to himself.
Dallimore looked in his rear-view mirror; the village was no longer visible. In front of him, visibility had reduced almost to zero. He had briefly seen the lights of the cars on the main road at the top of the rise, almost within walking distance, but now he could see nothing except for the snow that was falling. He remembered that he had liked snow as a youth: throwing snowballs at his friends, sliding down a hill on a homemade sleigh, diving head first into a snow mound, only to receive a telling off from his mother.
The snow that confronted the young constable now was neither fun nor slushy; it was heavy and getting heavier. The windscreen of the vehicle was being pounded by the relentless snow coming at it horizontally. He knew he had no option but to stop the car and attempt to walk to the main road. There, he would be in his police uniform and flagging a car down should not present any difficulties.
Dallimore switched off the car engine, put on the jacket that had been lying on the back seat of the vehicle, and opened the door. The cold was intense, too cold for snow, but yet it was still coming at him, stinging him as it hit. It was not like the snow that he remembered; this was laden with ice, and it was sharp and it was painful. He swore loudly, although no one could hear.
Dallimore realised that he would not make it to the main road. He peered in front of him through squinting eyes. He briefly glimpsed the lights of the main road, even saw a moon hovering beyond it. The snow continued to pound him. He grabbed hold of the car door handle.
I’ll be warm in there, he thought, but the door would not open. The cold was getting worse, and his joints were starting to ache. Dallimore, realising the desperation of the situation, attempted to open the car boot. It opened without difficulty. He took out the jack handle and used it to smash a rear door window. He leant forward and put his arm through the broken glass; he opened the door from the inside. Once back inside the car, he reached over the front seat and inserted the key in the ignition and turned it. The ignition light momentarily flickered before dying. Dallimore climbed out of the car, a snow bank was already starting to form where it had previously been clear.
He struck out on foot for Avon Hill. Soon he was sinking into the snow, almost to his waist at times. Twenty minutes later, or was it two, or was it five, Dallimore could see the light of the pub.
‘You’ll not leave this village.’ A man stood in Dallimore’s way.
‘I need help,’ Dallimore said.
‘You’ll not find any help here.’
/> ‘I’m Police Constable Dallimore.’
‘I don’t care who you are. I’m not here to help you.’
Dallimore, approaching hypothermia and shivering uncontrollably, looked at the man. He could not distinguish him from any other, and he did not remember him from those who had stood outside the pub.
The man raised his arm and hit the constable across the head. Dallimore fell down, unconscious.
‘Nobody leaves here tonight,’ the man said, as he turned around and walked back to the village. After fifty yards, the snow that had determined the fate of an honest and decent man had subsided. Back in the pub, on his arrival, Edmund Wylshere approached the man.
‘It is done,’ the man said.
‘Good. Then let’s begin,’ Wylshere replied, an evil smile creeping across his face.
***
Jim Hughes returned to the temporary crime scene headquarters next to the church. Tremayne and Clare were inside, waiting for an update. ‘We can’t carry on for much longer,’ Hughes said.
‘The weather?’ Tremayne replied. Since leaving the confines of the warm pub, even if its inhabitants were anything but warm, the temperature had continued to plummet.
‘It’s them,’ Clare said.
Tremayne chose to ignore his sergeant’s sombre analysis. He had asked Harry Holchester enough times to make her see sense that the supernatural only existed in the mind of the believer, not in fact, but even her lover had not been able to stop this fascination with the unnatural. Tremayne realised that he, as the crusty old detective inspector, wasn’t likely to have much success, but it was a distraction. It was true, though, that it was perishing cold, the heater in the garage no longer worked, and even the tea urn, previously piping hot, was no more than tepid and getting colder.
Tremayne had to agree that the situation was unnatural, but unholy he couldn’t swallow. It was clear that a cult existed in Avon Hill, and that it was led by Dr Edmund Wylshere, but why and how Tremayne did not know.
Death Unholy Page 23