by Paul Finch
He pressed on more cautiously for perhaps another three or so miles, passing a farmhouse on his right, though it was boarded up. Fleetingly, he was taut with anticipation, recognising this as a possible spot for the handover. But he’d soon bypassed the old farm, driving steadily north, and still there was no call.
‘Come on, come on,’ he said under his breath, frantic and frustrated at the same time. ‘Please … soon, good Lord in Heaven, let this be over soon.’
The phone buzzed. He snatched it up, and saw that he’d received a text:
Next right
The car was warming up again, but the sweat on his brow owed nothing to the temperature.
When a right-hand turn approached, he swung around it, paying almost no heed to the conditions. The Peugeot slithered sideways across a road so slick with ice that it might have been double-glazed. He now found himself following a single-track lane, which hadn’t even been tarmacked, his wheels jolting amid rock-hard tractor ruts. It was a terrifying thought that he was being lured further and further from civilisation, but that had probably been the appeal of the Dunholme branch in the first place; he was nobody – just an everyday bank manager, but his bank was located on the edge of extensive countryside, from where it would be quick and simple for the robbers to vanish into the sticks. Yet more evidence of how well planned this whole thing had been. But none of that mattered right now. His overwhelming desire to feel Justine in his arms again – no doubt shivering and whimpering, teeth chattering from the cold, numb with shock, but at last safe – rendered any qualms about how isolated he was null and void.
Up ahead, he could see trees: not exactly a wood, more like a copse. The narrow lane bisected it through the middle, running on straight as a ribbon.
Maybe that would be the place? It was the first change of scenery Kelso had encountered on this drear landscape in the last few minutes. In that respect, it surely signified something. And indeed, as he passed into and among the trees, he couldn’t resist accelerating again, bouncing and rocking on the ridged, hard-frozen surface – and, as such, almost crashing head-on into the white-painted pole with the red, circular signpost at the top, which stood in a concrete base and had been planted in the dead-centre of the thoroughfare.
When the Peugeot finally halted, having slid nearly twenty yards, the signpost stood directly in front of him, only its circular red plate visible over the top of his bonnet. A single word was stencilled in black lettering in the middle of it:
STOP
Kelso climbed out and stood beside the car, his breath pluming in the frigid air.
Initially, there was no sound. He glanced left and right and saw to his surprise that he’d halted on a narrow bridge. He’d been so focused on the stop sign that he hadn’t noticed the rotted, flimsy barriers to either side of him. Not that it was much of a bridge. By the looks of it, it didn’t lead anywhere in particular; it was probably for the use of livestock.
‘Kelso!’ a harsh voice shouted.
He turned full circle.
‘Kelso!’ the voice shouted again, and, realising where it was coming from, he scrambled around the front of his Peugeot to the left-hand barrier.
Some twenty feet below, he saw what he took to be a derelict railway cutting, except that this also had been adapted into a farm track, because, almost directly underneath him, a flatbed truck was waiting. Its driver, the younger of the two hoodlums, a taller, leaner figure than the older one, but mainly identifiable because, instead of a green balaclava, he was wearing a black one, had climbed from the cab.
‘Throw the cash down!’ he called up. ‘Do it now!’
‘Where’s my wife?’ Kelso shouted back.
‘Throw it now, or you’ll never see her again.’
‘All right, for God’s sake!’
Kelso returned to his car and, one by one, humped the loaded haversacks to the barrier, dropping them over. Each one landed with a shuddering crash, bouncing the truck on its shocks. From twenty feet up, fifty grand in used banknotes made quite an impact. The younger hoodlum had clearly anticipated this, because he stood well back in case one went astray. However, when all four had landed, he hurriedly lowered the tailgate and jumped on board, opening the zips on two of them to check their contents, before climbing back down and scuttling to the driving cab.
‘Hey!’ Kelso shouted. ‘Hey … what about my wife?’
The guy never once looked back. The door slammed behind him, the vehicle juddering to life, before roaring off along the cutting, frosted leaves and clumps of frozen earth flying behind it.
‘What the …’ Kelso’s voice almost broke. ‘Good … good God almighty!’
‘Hey,’ someone behind him said.
He spun around, and almost collapsed in gratitude at the sight of the older villain, who had evidently sidled out of the trees beyond the signpost and now approached along the lane.
As before, he wore overalls, heavy gloves and a green balaclava.
Also as before, his pistol was drawn.
‘I’ve done as you asked.’ Kelso limped towards him, arms spread. ‘You saw me.’
The hoodlum pointed the gun at his chest. ‘Yeah, you’ve done as we asked.’
Kelso stumbled to a halt. ‘OK … please let’s not play this game any more. Just let me have Justine?’
‘Worried about your wife, eh?’
Despite his best efforts, Kelso’s voice took on a whining, agonised tone. ‘Please don’t do this. Just tell me where she is.’
‘Where she was before. Back at your house. Why would we bring her with us?’
‘OK … so … is that it, then?’
‘Yeah, that’s it.’ But the hoodlum didn’t lower his firearm.
Kelso was confused. ‘So … I can go?’
‘Eager to see her again, eh?’
‘What do you think? Just let me go, and I’ll drive back.’
‘Nah. I can send you to her a quicker way.’
‘What …?’ After a night of extreme horrors, Kelso, who’d thought he’d be rendered immune to this sort of thing for the rest of his life, now felt a deeper, more gnawing chill than ever before. ‘What do you mean?’
The gaze of those terrible eyes intensified. He imagined the bastard grinning under his balaclava; crazily, maniacally, a living jack-o’-lantern.
‘Oh, no …’ Kelso simpered under his breath. ‘Oh no, please nooo …’
‘Oh, yes,’ the hoodlum chuckled, firing twice into the bank manager’s chest.
Chapter 1
Present day
The church of Milden St Paul’s was located in a rural haven some ten minutes’ walk outside the Suffolk village of Little Milden. It sat on the edge of a quiet B-road, which ostensibly connected the distant conurbations of Ipswich and Sudbury but in truth saw little activity and was hemmed in from all sides by belts of gentle woodland and, in late summer, an endless golden vista of sun-ripened wheat.
The atmosphere of this picturesque place was one of uninterrupted peace. Even those of no religious inclination would have struggled to find fault with it. One might even say that nothing bad could ever happen here … were it not for the events of a certain late-July evening, some forty minutes after evensong had finished.
It began when the tall, dark-haired vicar came out of the vicarage and stood by the wicket gate. He was somewhere in his mid-thirties, about six-foot-three inches tall, and of impressive build: square across the shoulders, broad of chest, with solid, brown arms folded over his pink, short-sleeved shirt. His hair was a lush, curly black, his jaw firm, his nose straight, his eyes a twinkling, mischievous blue. To pass him in the street, one might think it curious that such a masculine specimen had found his calling in the cloth. There had to be at least a chance that he’d have certain of his parishioners swooning in their pews rather than heeding his sermons, though on this evening it was he who’d been distracted by something.
And here it came again.
A third or fourth heavy blow sounded from the o
ther side of the church.
Initially, the vicar wondered if the warm summer air was carrying an echo from some distant workplace. On the church’s south side, you could see the roof of Farmer Holbrook’s barn on the far southern edge of the wheat field next door. But that was the only building in sight, and there wasn’t likely to be much work under way on a tranquil Monday evening.
When he heard what sounded like a fifth blow, it was a sharper, flatter sound, and louder, as if there was anger in it. The vicar opened the gate, stepped onto the path and walked towards the church’s northwest corner. As he reached it, he heard another blow. And another, and another.
This time there was a smashing sound too, like wood splintering.
He hurried on to the church’s southwest corner. Yet another blow followed, and with it a grunt, as of someone making a strenuous effort.
On the building’s immediate south side lay an untended part of the grounds, the weathered slabs of eighteenth-century gravestones poking up through the long summer grass. Beyond those stood the rusty metal fence cordoning off the wheat field. It might be a sobering thought that, once you were on this side of the church, you were completely screened from the road and any passing traffic, but the vicar didn’t have time to think about that. He rounded the final corner and strode several yards along the south-side path, before stopping dead.
A man with longish red hair, wearing patchwork green/brown khaki, was striking with a wood-axe at the vestry door. He grunted with each stroke, splinters flying, going at it with such gusto that he’d already chopped a hole in the middle of the door, and very likely would soon have the whole thing down.
The soles of the vicar’s black leather shoes had made barely a sound on the worn paving stones, but the man in khaki had heard him; he lowered his axe and turned.
The mask he wore had been chiselled from wood and depicted a goat’s face – but it was a demonic kind of goat, with a humanoid grin and horns that curled fantastically. The worst thing about it, though, was real: the eyes peering out through the holes notched for them were entirely human, and yet they burned with living hatred.
The man came down the step from the door and approached, axe held loosely at his side. The vicar stood his ground and spoke boldly.
‘What are you doing here? Why are you damaging church property?’
‘You know what we’re doing here, shaman!’ a voice said from his right.
He glanced sideways: three more figures had risen into view, each from behind a different headstone. They too largely wore green; he saw old ragged jumpers, ex-military combat jackets. They too were masked: a toad, a boar, a rabbit, each one decked with additional monstrous features, and each with the same hate-filled eyes glaring out.
The vicar kept his voice steady. ‘I asked what you are doing here?’
‘You know the answer, you holier-than-thou prick!’ said a voice from behind.
When the vicar spun backwards, a fifth figure had emerged around the corner of the church. This one also wore green, but with brown leather over the top. His wooden mask depicted a wolf, and as he advanced, he drew a heavy blade from a scabbard at his belt; a hunting knife honed to lethal sharpness.
The vicar looked again at the threesome in the graveyard; Toad now smacked a knotty club into his gloved left palm; Rabbit unhooked a coil of rope from his shoulder; Boar hefted a canister of petrol.
‘In the name of God,’ the vicar said, ‘don’t do this.’
‘We don’t recognise your god,’ Wolf replied.
‘Look … you don’t know what you’re doing.’
‘Oh, very good,’ Wolf sniggered, as they closed in. ‘Very fucking saintly.’
‘This is sanctified ground,’ the vicar advised them. ‘Use more blasphemies here, and I’ll be forced to chastise you.’
‘Really?’ Wolf was so surprised by that, that he almost came to a halt. ‘I can’t wait to see how you do it.’
‘I warn you, friends …’ The vicar pivoted around. ‘I’m no martyr.’
‘Funnily enough,’ Wolf sneered, ‘the ones before you didn’t go willingly to it, either.’
‘Ah, now I know who you are,’ the vicar said.
‘Always a good thing to know thine enemies.’
‘You’re on your final warning.’
‘Perhaps your god will strike us down?’ Wolf was only five or so yards away. ‘Maybe throw a thunderbolt this fine summer evening.’
The vicar nodded solemnly. ‘I fear one’s coming right now.’
A rasping chuckle sounded behind the lupine mask. ‘You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that.’
‘I also have this.’
From out of his trouser pocket, the cleric drew an extendable autolock baton, which, with a single jerk of his brawny wrist, he snapped open to its full twenty-one inches.
Before Wolf could respond, the baton had struck him across the mask in a backhand thwack. The carved wood cracked as Wolf’s head jerked sideways and he tottered, dropping his knife. As the rest came to a startled halt, the vestry door burst inward and the figure of a man exploded out, launching at Goat from behind. This figure was neither as tall nor as broad as the vicar, just over six feet and of average build, with a mop of dark hair. He wore blue jeans and a blue sweatshirt with a police-issue stab vest over the top, but he also carried an extended baton, which he brought down in a furious, angled swipe at the elbow joint of Goat’s right arm.
The axe clattered to the floor as the target yelped in disbelieving pain. He grappled with his injured joint, only for a kick in the backside to send him sprawling onto his face. His assailant leapt onto him from behind, knees-first, crushing the air from his lungs.
The vicar swung to face Toad, Boar and Rabbit, holding aloft a leather wallet, displaying his warrant card. ‘Detective Inspector Reed, Serial Crimes Unit!’ he bellowed. ‘You’re all under arrest on suspicion of murdering John Strachan, Glyn Thomas and Michaela Hanson!’
Wolf fled towards the southwest corner of the church, only to slam head-on into another huge figure, this one even more massive than the vicar. He too wore jeans and chest armour, and he greeted Wolf with a forearm smash to the throat.
As Wolf went down, gagging, a deep Welsh voice asked him: ‘What time is it, Mr Wolf? Time you weren’t here? Too bloody late for that, boyo.’
The other three ran energetically towards the boundary fence, only to be stunned by the sight of more police officers, some in uniform and some in plain clothes, all armoured, rising from the wheat and spreading into a skirmish line.
‘You don’t have to say anything,’ Reed intoned, watching the fleeing trio as, one by one, they were overpowered, unmasked and clapped into handcuffs, ‘but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you may later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
‘You’re also under arrest for being a sacrilegious little fuck,’ the big Welsh cop whispered, leaning into Wolf as he fastened his hands behind his back.
‘We don’t fear your god,’ Wolf hissed in an agonised voice.
‘You shouldn’t.’ The Welsh cop yanked the fractured mask off the lean, sweaty features underneath. ‘My God’s merciful. Problem you’ve got, boyo, is … there’s a long, hard road before you get to Him.’
Beside the vestry door, the cop in blue snapped a pair of cuffs onto Goat, who, without his mask, was gaunt and pale, his carroty red hair hanging in lank strands as he cowered there.
‘Get up,’ the cop said, standing. His accent was Northwest England.
‘Shit … think you …’ Goat’s voice became whiny, frantic. ‘Think you broke my arm.’
‘No, I didn’t … just whacked you on a nerve cluster.’ The cop kicked him. ‘Get up.’
‘Can’t feel anything under my elbow.’
‘You’re facing three murder charges.’ The cop grabbed him by an armpit and hauled him to his feet. ‘A dicky elbow’s the least of your problems.’
‘Christ!’ Goat sc
reamed. ‘My arm’s broke … God-Christ!’
‘Thought you boys didn’t believe in Christ?’
‘It’s killing me, mate … for fuck’s sake!’
‘Sucks when you’ve come to hurt someone and found it’s the other way round, eh? Who are you, anyway?’
‘Sh … Sherwin …’ the prisoner stammered.
‘First name?’
‘That’s my first name. Last name’s Lightfoot … Oh shiiit, my fucking arm!’
‘Sherwin Lightfoot? For real?’
‘Yeah … oh, sweet Jeeesus …’
‘Fair enough. You’re also getting locked up for having a stupid name.’
‘Everything all right, Heck?’ Reed called.
‘Heck?’ Lightfoot said. ‘Look who’s bloody talking …’
‘Shut up,’ the cop called Heck retorted. ‘Everything’s smashing, sir. Why wouldn’t it be?’
‘Easy, Sarge.’ Reed ran a finger round the inside of his clerical collar but made such a dog’s breakfast of loosening it that its button popped off. ‘I was only asking.’
‘I have done this before, you know.’
‘Good work, everyone,’ a female voice interrupted.
Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper was never less than impressive. Even now, in jeans, a T-shirt and body armour, and clambering over a rusty farm fence, she cut a striking figure. With her athletic physique, wild mane of white-blonde hair and fierce good looks, she radiated charisma, but also toughness. Many was the cocky male officer who’d taken her gender as a green light for slack work or insubordination, or both, and had instantly regretted it.
‘This lot been cautioned, Jack?’ Gemma asked.
‘They have indeed, ma’am,’ Reed said.
‘Responses?’
‘The only one I heard was this fella.’ Reed indicated Boar, who, having had his mask pulled off, resembled a pig anyway, and now was in the grasp of two uniforms. ‘Think it went something like “fuck off, you dick-breathed shitehawk”.’
‘Excellent. Just the thing to win the jury over.’ Gemma raised her voice. ‘All right, get them out of here. I want separate prisoner-transports for each one. Do not let them talk.’