Trick or Treat

by Jackson Sharp

  Jackson Sharp

  * * *

  TRICK OR TREAT

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Epilogue

  Follow Penguin

  Special thanks to Richard Smyth

  Prologue

  Little Mouse awoke in the dark and jumped at the noise of a gunshot. It was followed by more, in staccato succession, and then by men’s voices, raised in anger and alarm. There was also an oily smoke-smell, the smell of chicken or pork left too long in the oven. He swung his legs out of bed, rubbing at his face. Had Marek the Cook put a joint of meat on to roast for supper, and forgotten about it? Or, more likely, got dead drunk on raki and passed out in the kitchen chair …

  But it was still dark! And this noise –

  He pulled aside the hessian curtain at the dormitory’s only window. He shivered and thumbed at his eyes, trying to smear away the fog of sleep.

  Light, beyond the misted windowpane. Orange light. Firelight. More gunshots, shouting – and screaming, too, wild screaming. And the smell –

  Something worse than a burned joint of meat, this. He wiped the glass with the heel of his hand and called over his shoulder: ‘Radi? Mirko? Come and look at this. Something’s going on.’

  No answer. He turned. In the darkness he could see the three white oblongs of the other boys’ beds. Blankets thrown aside. Empty.

  The brothers of St Quintus had given him his name, Mali Miš, Little Mouse, when he had first entered the monastery as a half-starved child. Timid, twitchy, scrawny and wide-eyed – that was Little Mouse. Even now, at fifteen, he stood out among the boys at the monastery for his small size, his wary manner, his quietness.

  His gut squirmed like a trapped animal.

  A scream of pure terror pierced the windows and walls of the building.

  Here in the dorm, Little Mouse thought, there is no screaming and no smoke. There are no guns and no fire. Here in the dorm I am safe.

  His throat hurt. The fear in his gut threatened to burst loose. He swallowed down a sob.

  Here in the dorm, I am alone.

  He turned from the window. He ran for the door.

  The monastery courtyard flickered white and black. Someone had turned on the big floodlight, but the generator that ran it from the basement was old and temperamental and the light could never be relied on.

  Through the shuddering darkness Little Mouse looked upon the killing.

  Men in uniform were everywhere. Not smart like the soldiers Little Mouse had sometimes seen parading through the town. These were shabby, desperate.

  At the monastery gate he saw a soldier on one knee, holding another man flat to the floor with his arm bent up his back. The man on the ground had a black beard and was shouting something over and over. The soldier had a gun in his free hand. He put it to the man’s head. Little Mouse looked away but he couldn’t close his ears to the noise of the shot. Neither could he shut his mind to the terror of the silence that followed it.

  In the shadow of the west wall, where Brother Vidić cultivated his bean plants, three soldiers with rifles stood around a woman who lay on her back. She was screaming, too. A headscarf and some other garments lay beside her. When one of the soldiers turned away Little Mouse saw first that he was laughing and then that his trousers were unfastened. There were dark stains down his front.

  Beyond the walls a fire was raging.

  Little Mouse thought that soldiers were supposed to protect people, but these men had brought nothing but violence and fire and death.

  Little Mouse took a few steps down into the courtyard. Through the gates he could see more flames, roaring from the houses and shops of the village’s main street. Gunshots rattled like hailstones on an iron roof.

  Two men, running fast, hurtled round the corner of the street, headed for the monastery gates. There was a series of quick booms, like angry rapping at a door, then the men tumbled, one after the other. Both crashed face first to the concrete.

  Little Mouse winced. Then he saw the blood pooling under their heads, more blood than you would ever get from a broken nose or a grazed elbow. A man in uniform, with no cap and his jacket open, jogged up behind them and fired his rifle three more times into their still bodies.

  The soldiers were Serbs, Little Mouse understood. Vicious enemies from another country with another religion.

  Heathens, some of the brothers said they were. But Abbot Cerbonius only called them ‘children of another god’. The abbot could sometimes be hard to understand. Subtle, Little Mouse had heard the others call him. He could tell they didn’t always mean this description as a compliment – but Little Mouse loved the abbot anyway.

  Where was he now? Little Mouse wondered. The abbot was the wisest and bravest man Little Mouse knew. He would put a stop to this horror. He would tell Little Mouse what was happening and how they could put an end to it. Little Mouse looked around, craning for a glimpse of the familiar tall, cassocked figure.

  At the eastern end of the yard, in the shadow of an arcade of brick arches, he glimpsed a hunched figure; the flickering light revealed the steel-blue of his cassock, and Little Mouse’s heart leapt –

  But in another moment he realized that it was not the abbot but Brother Markus, the stony-faced schoolteacher. And Brother Markus wasn’t alone: with him, being shepherded cautiously through the dark arches towards the rear gate, were the monastery’s other boys – Mirko, Radi, Nema – his friends!

  Little Mouse called out. But it would take a miracle to be heard over the uproar of guns, flames and terrified screams. The sounds of hell itself, it seemed to Little Mouse. But the abbot taught that God watches over us even in the darkest places – especially in the darkest places – so Little Mouse kept his faith. ‘Brother Markus,’ he called again. Again his words were whisked away by the shrieks of the tormented and the howling laughter of demons. Little Mouse whispered a prayer to Jesus, and called a third time, ‘Brother Markus!’

  The monk turned his head. He looked directly towards Little Mouse. A miracle, Little Mouse thought fleetingly. Christ protects the meek and Little Mouse was the meekest of all his children. He felt sick with relief – he would escape with the others and Brother Markus would take him far from the vicious Serbs.

  But then Brother Markus’s face hardened. The monk turned away and followed the boys into the shadows, and none of Little Mouse’s calls or prayers brought him back.

  You saw me, Little Mouse thought, tears blearing his vision. You saw me, an idiot boy, a half-witted kitchen lad. Christ turned your head towards me, he thought, bitterly, angrily. Ch
rist gave you the choice: save me, or desert me. And it was the man in you that made the choice. God forgive you, brother!

  Little Mouse took a few hopeless steps towards the gates. He blinked in the smoke. Two soldiers hammered at the unmoving body of a man with their rifle butts. A woman knelt on the ground with her face buried in her hands while a soldier postured behind her with a hunting knife.

  Across the wide concrete street he saw frantic cassocked figures silhouetted against the flames that played against the windows of the monks’ quarters. Soldiers drank and smoked cigarettes in the street outside while the building burned. When one of the figures smashed the window and began to climb through to escape the fire, one of the soldiers raised a gun and shot him dead. His body hung as limp as a doll’s, half in and half out of the broken window.

  There was laughter from the soldiers, and a shout: ‘Goreti, goreti.’ Burn, burn.

  Flames consumed the still body of the fallen monk.

  Little Mouse thought of that smell, that inescapable smell, the smell of oily kitchen-smoke, of something left too long in the oven –

  ‘Little Mouse!’

  He spun round, whimpering in dread, to see a huge figure bearing down on him, arms outstretched. He flinched, raising his hands to protect himself – but then, shadowed against the flickering floodlight, he made out a shock of untamed white hair, and heard the apparition again say his name, ‘Little Mouse,’ in a familiar deep-chested voice, and knew that the abbot had come back to save him.

  Little Mouse sobbed out a noise as Abbot Cerbonius grabbed him and clutched him to his chest. The abbot’s crucifix dug into the boy’s cheek but he cherished the pain.

  ‘We must act quickly,’ the abbot said. He loosened his embrace and gripped the boy sternly by his shoulders. The old man’s grey gaze was steady and calm but his voice betrayed overpowering emotion. ‘Only we remain, do you understand? When the devils grow weary of murder they will plunder our treasures. The glories of our Church. They are coming now, Little Mouse, do you understand me?’ He straightened, looking around wildly. ‘The treasures are the sacred responsibility of our order, and we must protect them. We are the only ones left who can stop the devils, child. Praise be to Christ Jesus. We are the only –’

  He broke off. Little Mouse watched him, puzzled. The abbot stared at something above Little Mouse, his jaw hanging open. Something in the sky. A vision! Little Mouse thought. He knew that only the most faithful of God’s servants were blessed with such a gift.

  Then he saw the dark-red coin appear on the abbot’s high forehead, a circle the size of a dinar piece, then a five-dinar piece, then a heavy tear of dark blood rolled from the coin and down the abbot’s face, painting a red stripe across his open eyeball.

  The abbot crumpled to the floor. Behind him stood a soldier, chewing gum and gripping the butt of a revolver with both hands. He began to lower the gun – but then he saw Little Mouse and the black eye of the revolver’s muzzle lifted again.

  ‘Fucking stinking Croat shits living in filth like rats in a sewer,’ the soldier said in a dull voice. ‘And you bastards here with your cellars stuffed with gold. Living like fucking kings, huh?’ He cocked the gun. ‘Don’t remember when I last got paid. And we should’ve got extra for all the overtime we put in at Hrasnica.’

  Little Mouse’s throat was dry. He looked at his beloved abbot’s still body.

  I have nothing, he wanted to say. No gold. No friends. No family. I have nothing in the world.

  ‘I’ll give you five seconds for one last prayer,’ the soldier said. He smiled with just his mouth. ‘Better make it a quick one.’

  I have nothing, Little Mouse thought. You have taken from me the only father I ever had.

  He looked into the eye of the gun and swore to God that he wouldn’t blink.

  ‘Crazy little bastard,’ the soldier said. His finger tightened on the trigger.

  Chapter One

  4 October

  White face. Staring eyes, red-rimmed in the car’s headlamps. A trembling hand holding a half-empty bottle of water.

  Christ, Rose thought. The things that call themselves coppers nowadays.

  She killed the engine, got out of the car. It was cold – it was always a few degrees colder out here in the bloody cabbage fields. She pulled on leather gloves as she crossed the road to where the PC waited by his patrol car.

  ‘M-ma’am,’ he stuttered.

  She flexed her fingers into the gloves and looked him up and down.

  ‘What are you?’

  ‘PC Ganley, ma’am.’

  ‘Where’s Conners?’

  ‘Qu-questioning the lad who found the b-body, ma’am.’ Ganley gulped. She almost felt sorry for him. Made damn sure not to show it.

  ‘Then who’s guarding the body, Constable Ganley?’

  The constable looked out into the darkness of the field. His Adam’s apple bobbed.

  ‘I wouldn’t w-worry, ma’am.’ He looked her in the eye briefly, then looked away. ‘She’s not going anywhere.’

  She could have slapped him. He knew as well as she did that that wasn’t the bloody point. Instead she said: ‘Next time you throw up on duty, Ganley, be sure to turn your back to the wind. Find a tissue and get that puke off your shoes. And I’ll be mentioning this to Sergeant O’Dwyer.’

  She turned away. She saw Pete Conners, notebook in hand, talking to a man who had his back to her. Conners gave her the slightest of nods. Solid man. Ex-Met. She looked at the man he was talking to. Tall. Shock of hair under a woolly hat. Narrow trousers, corduroy coat. Student? Long way out of town for four in the morning. But then, they get everywhere, students, Rose thought – like woodlice.

  Conners and the suspect – because that was what he’d end up being, whatever his story was – stood at the edge of a broad sweep of grassy field that vanished into darkness beyond the glow of the patrol car’s headlamps. A row of black trees about a mile away screened the weak crown of light that marked Oxford town.

  Rose clicked on her torch and stepped into the darkness. The waist-high grass sighed. She looked back over her shoulder.

  ‘Are you in any state to help, Constable,’ she called out, letting a twang of impatience enter her tone, ‘or do you want me to just wander around in the dark till I stumble across a corpse?’

  She knew Conners and the suspect were looking at her, but a bit of theatre never did any harm. Let the suspect know he wasn’t going to get an easy ride. Give Conners something to grin about – he’d need it, what with this coming at the end of an eight-hour night shift. And get this young lad Ganley’s mind off – well, off whatever it was he’d seen out there.

  Ganley jogged awkwardly down the verge – ‘Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.’ – and pointed his torch beam along a faint diagonal pathway someone’s feet had made in the grass.

  ‘Along there,’ he said, making the torch beam wag. ‘A hundred metres or so. You can’t miss it,’ he added, in a sick voice.

  ‘Who made the path?’

  ‘Here when we got here, ma’am. Could’ve been the killer, or maybe the lad Conners is talking to.’

  ‘Or a curious passer-by. Or the press. Or a coachload of Japanese tourists for all you’d know.’ She breathed out hard through her nose. ‘Jesus, Ganley. Never leave a crime scene unattended.’

  ‘No, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.’

  ‘Now piss off out of it. Go see if Conners has got any sense out of our friend over there.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  She waited till his clumping footsteps had faded – heard the murmur of him and Conners talking by the car. The tips of the grass stems bristled against her bare wrist. Then she moved forwards, into the field.

  It was like stepping into the sea. The dark grass, petrol-blue in the gloom, moved with the wind in soughing waves. It felt cold and heavy about her legs as she walked. Her torch beam danced, neurotically alert, a narrow beam, designed to pick out detail.

  A hundred metres, he’d said. She’d s
ee it soon. She forced herself to breathe.

  She’d never liked going in the sea, as a kid. Too much you couldn’t see, too much mystery. Too many monsters.

  A little way ahead the grass path widened into a clearing of stamped-down grass. She paused, tracking the torch beam carefully, right, left, right, left. The crime scene might not yet be a completely lost cause, in spite of stupid young Ganley’s best efforts. She moved forwards carefully, peering into the darkness. There’d be a body, sure, she was ready for that and God knew what else, but a crime scene was about so much more than a body. Even in her granddad’s day they’d known that, and now, with DNA fingerprinting, forensic serology, blood-spatter analysis – now you could build a prosecution case on a quarter-inch of a blade of grass, and make it stick.

  A body at a crime scene is a cry in the dark. But when you’re a copper you have to listen for the whispers, too.

  The narrow torch beam picked out a foot. A small foot, a woman’s bare foot. Rose squinted. The body wasn’t lying on the ground. It was hanging, or pinioned. But there was a fresh breeze blowing from the north and the foot didn’t move, the body didn’t sway – and anyway, what was there for it to hang from out here in the middle of a field?

  The leg, in some sort of hippy-type hessian trouser, was angled away from the vertical. Rose’s torch beam crept upwards through the darkness. The folds of the hessian made vivid shadows. Legs loosely apart. No visible damage yet, no stains. It wasn’t the horror-movie bloodbath Ganley’s reaction had led her to expect.

  Her top, too, was woven from coarse fabric. An inch of pale belly showed between the top and trousers. Ill-fitting and ugly. The round torch beam took in the dead woman’s skinny torso, shoulders, hips. Her arms were spread. She was spreadeagled – on a hay bale, a stack of timber, something like that. Funny that her clothes were all intact, then.

  It’ll be the face that spooked Ganley, Rose thought. There’s something about faces – and something about us, something that means we can’t stand the sight of another human face that’s been messed with, fucked up, made wrong.