Beast of Robbers Wood

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “I didn’t get my pints!”

  Frankie and Dennis, defying common sense and the landlord’s edict, growled like animals.

  “The voice of the Beast is heard in the land!” Zoriah cried.

  “The roaring in my head!” Henry tumbled to the floor.

  “Christ!” Teype pushed Henry back into his chair, then wiped up the lager. He returned Henry’s face to the table and gave his cheek two gentle pats. “Going to call your wife to pour you home, Henry Barrington. Then there’ll be hell to pay, won’t there?”

  “The Beast shall stalk the streets of Midriven!”

  If Zoriah Stoneman made any more assertions of doom, they were cut off when the heavy door soundly slammed. Teype joined Ravyn after silencing Frankie and Dennis with a threatening glare.

  “I hope you don’t get a wrong impression of Midriven, Mr Ravyn,” Teype said. “Not all of us are as mad as Zoriah Stoneman. I don’t know how his son puts up with it. And don’t hold it against us that we are…” He cast a venomous glance at Frankie and Dennis. “…blessed with two village idiots.”

  “Oi!” the two village idiots protested, though not as loudly as they might have if Teype had not threatened to bar them.

  “I make a living with the Ned Bly, as did my father and his father,” Teype said. “But I tell you, sometimes it seems not worth the trouble. The Lent Group, the developers over in Stafford, are always pestering me to sell. At times I am sorely tempted to do so.”

  Ravyn raised his eyebrows.

  “Aye, you’re right, Mr Ravyn, what would I do without the pub and what would the village do with a pub redecorated in corporate colours?” He sighed and looked around. “Probably put in Wi-Fi, an enormous telly and serve French food.” He glanced toward Frankie and Dennis. “Of course, the new muppet of a landlord might send the idiots home to their wives, so it might not be all a bad thing.”

  Ravyn smiled encouragingly.

  Teype gave a sheepish grin. “Here I am, prattling on like one of my divvies and neglecting my duties. I’ll have your room made ready. In the meantime, how about dinner?”

  “That I would love,” Ravyn said. “Outside a bacon sandwich at breakfast, I haven’t had a decent meal all day. My sergeant offered me a chocolate biscuit, but I declined.”

  “Wise choice, sir.” The door opened and he saw the evening’s customers start to drift in. “I can give you toad-in-the-hole, bangers and mash, or shepherd’s pie, but if you’re especially hungry, I’d suggest our mixed grill. All of it locally raised and grown, nothing trucked in frozen from foreign parts.”

  “I am especially hungry.”

  “Mixed grill it is.”

  “I’ll take it over there.” He pointed at Henry’s table.

  Teype looked doubtful.

  “A pint of your local for me and a pot of coffee, the stronger the better,” Ravyn said. “If he stirs, maybe I can get some coffee down him, sober him up a bit, make him a bit more tractable for that wife you made mention of.”

  Teype nodded, but he still looked doubtful.

  “And I would very much appreciate a few words with you later, as your duties permit,” Ravyn said.

  Teype’s doubtful expression turned nervous, but he smiled and said: “Aye. Anything to help find the girl.”

  Ravyn gave his kit to Teype, but kept his bag. He went to the table and noisily sat. Henry stirred, scowling at the stranger. The moment of consciousness passed. The sour smell of whiskey rose from the handyman. Teype had been correct that Henry had entered the pub drunk. Not merely pissed, Ravyn noted, but fully rat-arsed.

  Patsy set Ravyn’s pint before him, noisily smacked down a heavy ceramic mug inches from Henry’s head, and put a carafe of coffee between them. Ravyn thanked and tipped her.

  “Wakey-wakey.” Ravyn poured the steaming black liquid into the mug, then pushed it against the semi-conscious man’s cheek.

  “Bloody hell!” Henry Barrington sat up straight and rubbed his cheek. “You ‘bout took skin off, mate.”

  “Drink up, Mr Barrington,” Ravyn said.

  The handyman looked at the mug as if it were Socrates’ cup.

  “You don’t want to face your wife drunk, do you?”

  “Not sure I want to face her sober.”

  “Besides, I’d like to talk to you about what you heard when you were mending a fence out at the Tucker place,” Ravyn said. He pushed the mug closer to Henry’s hand. “Drink up.”

  Henry stared at Ravyn as if seeing him for the first time. “Who the hell are you?”

  “I could be a kindly passer-by who’s buying you a nice cup of coffee or I could be DCI Arthur Ravyn of the Hammershire Constabulary,” he said. “The choice, of course, is yours.”

  Henry sighed, rubbed his eyes and forehead, then grasped the mug and sipped the coffee. He shuddered.

  “The Tucker place is, I understand, near the western reach of Robbers Wood,” Ravyn said. “How far were you from Old Pike?”

  “Right next to it, where it curves up between the freehold and the woods.” He gave Ravyn a curious look. “Never seen you around here before.”

  “I’ve seen a map of the area.” Actually, he had seen more than a dozen maps of Midriven and its environs, from the official map to a parchment chart drawn in 1157, all fresh in his mind, layered one atop another to create a composite map, dynamic in space and time.

  “If you know anything about the area, you know the woods are deep where Old Pike skirts between them and the fence,” Henry said. “It’s not a part of the fence I like to work, but Tucker, he gives me regular work, so I does what he says.”

  “What happened to the fence?” Ravyn asked.

  “Middle rail broken somehow,” Henry replied. “Thought of putting a splice on it, but it was broke smack in the middle. Any pressure at all would snap it again, so I ended up breaking the whole thing out and putting in another. That was when I heard…”

  “Could it have been broken by someone climbing over the fence?” Ravyn asked.

  “That could be, but who’s to climb over it way out there?” He shook his head. “More likely it was the Beast what pushed against it when it was hunting for victims. After all, I heard…”

  “When do you think it was broken?”

  “Had to be early on, didn’t it?” Henry said. “Dawn or before.”

  “Anyone coming out of the west would have to climb the fence at some point,” Ravyn mused. “If he wanted to take shelter in the woods, it would make sense to cross where the forest comes right up to the edge of the Tucker place.”

  “If he were a fool, he would.”

  “Or desperate.”

  “He would be a desperate fool to enter Robbers Wood,” Henry said. “It’s stepping into the Beast’s maw. Everyone knows that.”

  Not a man bound for Stafford out of Irongate Prison, Ravyn thought. An untaught man raised far from Hammershire would not know an obscure local legend. He would only know that the woods led down to the Orm, which he could follow into Stafford.

  “…so when I heard that roar deep in the woods, I knew the Beast had awakened from its long slumber of centuries and…”

  The Suffolk Ripper murders occurred outside Hammershire, so Ravyn’s knowledge of them was limited to newspaper clippings, magazine articles and transcripts read years ago out of curiosity. The ethereal pages seemed to rise from the tabletop, hovering in the air between him and the oblivious Henry.

  “…so I thinks I better run before the Beast comes, and run I did, leaving my tools…”

  Billy Tremble plied his trade in Ipswich for two years before he was run to ground. He was a man of low intellect but high cunning. In the end, his capture could not be attributed to the skills of the detectives on the case, but to Tremble’s own bad luck, witnessed in his final murder by a spinster with insomnia and a kitchen sink window overlooking the alley where he had taken his last girl.

  “…well, Tucker gives me a dram, seeing as how I was so shook up by what I heard, and we g
ot to drinking, one thing leading to…”

  All Tremble’s victims were blonde, mostly young. The older ones were targets of opportunity and desperation. Usually, however, Tremble exhibited the patience of a predator willing to stalk his favourite prey until he could strike.

  “…drank until the roars weren’t in my ears, didn’t I, but saw the pub and knew I’d better not go home till…”

  A delicate hand slammed the table, sounding like a rifle crack.

  Henry Barrington cried in terror and dropped his coffee mug.

  The documents in Ravyn’s memory popped like soap bubbles.

  “If you thought it wasn’t safe to come home then, it’s nothing compared to what you’re going to get now!”

  “But, luv…” Henry protested.

  “Don’t you ‘luv’ me, you stinking drunk old bampot.”

  “Yes, luv.”

  The woman berating Henry Barrington was dark-haired, stern-faced and not near five feet tall. Even sitting, the drunk man seemed to tower over her. She grabbed the coffee mug and sniffed.

  “Coffee, Mrs Barrington,” Ravyn said. “To sober him a bit.”

  She was clearly disappointed she could not pepper the stranger with acidic invectives for contributing to her husband’s state. “Well, I’ll thank you to mind your own bloody business.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But, luv, this man is… Owww!”

  Henry howled in pain as he was dragged up and out of his chair by the ear. His wife maintained a death-grip on that appendage as she pulled him, bent over and crying, all the way to the door. Their exit was accompanied by laughter and hoots.

  “Don’t know when we’ll see Henry again, but he’ll be black and blue when we do.” Patsy put Ravyn’s platter before him. “Poor old sod. He’s smitten with the little dragon. Ain’t love grand?”

  “Alas, that love, so gentle in his view, should be so tyrannous and rough in proof,” Ravyn quoted.

  Patsy laughed. “Ain’t that the truth!”

  Ravyn noted the other diners and drinkers. It was clear most of them knew who he was and those who did not soon became well-informed. People entering cast quick glances in his direction, then looked away, proof that news of his overnighter in Midriven was spreading like fire. Such was life in a village, he thought, where rumours and gossip were as vital to living as air and water.

  The mixed grill, Ravyn had to admit, was one of the best he had ever had. He could well understand why the Lent Group, now under the control of the late Oscar Lent’s dim-witted son, was keen to buy the Ned Bly out from under Morris Teype. But he knew as well as Teype they would muck it up, replacing everything that was traditional and beloved with passing fads and crass fancies.

  Though he seemed totally involved in his dinner, Ravyn kept a keen eye on the clientele, his ears open for snippets of conversation. They spoke openly, assuming the anonymity of a crowd, but their sense of security was illusory this evening, for Ravyn knew who said what, who grabbed the limelight or speculated in shadows, and every face was entrusted to memory.

  Lisa’s disappearance was still discussed, but was overwhelmed by worries of the Beast. A few believed she had run off, but more saw the Beast as a reason. She would surely only be the first victim. The Beast would feed till it returned to slumber. If found, Lisa’s body would be mutilated, raked by giant claws, in accordance with the ancient fireside tales upon which villagers had been weaned.

  Patsy took away the platter and put down another pint. “You’re quite the star tonight. Morrie ought to give you a cut of the till, all the trade you’re bringing in.”

  “Do you know Lisa?” Ravyn asked.

  “Know her mum better,” Patsy replied. “Morrie wanted to call her in tonight, but I told him don’t be stupid. Last thing she needs is a bunch of pissed wankers talking about how her kid either ran away or got taken by the Beast.”

  “Which do you think it is?”

  “Do I look simple?” Patsy asked. “Lisa is snarky and has big dreams, but she wouldn’t leave her mum. All they got is each other. I don’t count that dead-brained plonker Pym. As far as the Beast is concerned, it’s as real as Father Christmas, and you know it.”

  “Do I?”

  “I heard you talking to Henry,” she said. “You think a stranger is hiding in the woods, someone who takes girls like Lisa.” She looked around. “Some out there ain’t got their heads screwed on tight either.” She smiled. “Gotta get back to work, but you signal if you need anything else. I hope you find Lisa. She acts tough, but she’s got a good heart.”

  As the evening waned, people grew weary of watching a chief inspector who only watched back. By slow degrees the pub emptied. Ravyn noticed that few people left alone.

  Teype sat across from him. “I’m here, but I still don’t know Lisa much, just her mum.”

  “What about Annie Treadwell?”

  “Seen her and Lisa now and then, friends they are,” Teype said. “Feel sorry for her saddled with a barmy dad. If you’ve met him…” Ravyn nodded. “…then you know he’s unpleasant. He’s barred.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Temper,” Teype said. “He don’t like people not agreeing with him. And after two or three drinks he doesn’t need a reason. He runs his house like a prison. It’s a marvel Annie gets out as much as she does, probably because Treadwell can’t be home all the time. Manages the Building Association in Stafford. Rakes in a shed load of cash, not that he needs it, marrying money as he did.”

  “The wife, Ella, holds the purse strings?”

  “Not any more,” Teype said. “He took care of that first off.”

  “Have you seen any strangers around, or heard tell of any?”

  “None that aren’t doing anything but passing through, antiquers and the like,” Teype said. “Anyone who stayed would be noticed.”

  “But someone hiding in Robbers Wood?”

  “You think someone is?” When Ravyn held silent, Teype said: “Have to be an outsider. Hard to get volunteers, wasn’t it? We steer clear of the woods, even newcomers not knowing anything about our ways. No one hunts in the woods, lest he himself is hunted. Come across the temple hid at its heart—you’re screwed. You may laugh, but the Beast is more real to us than is the outside world.”

  Later, Ravyn typed verbatim transcripts, which he e-mailed to Stark along with instructions.

  He looked at the clock, then sent an email to Superintendent Heln, a blind copy to ACC Ramsey. He explained his layover in Midriven, then added what to Heln would seem inconsequential collateral information. Karen Ramsey would recognise the simple substitution code they had used when she was a detective constable, when she had learned that not all villains were on the other side of the law. She would understand that the Hook and Eel would have to wait till another night, and why.

  He stood at the window and gazed over the darkened village and the black mass of Robbers Wood beyond. Out there somewhere was a lost girl. And a Beast, he thought, of one kind or another.

  At times like this, he reflected, people of old looked to higher powers for protection from forces of darkness, temporal or spiritual. In the cottages below, many were probably responding to that ancient impulse. Some were likely praying to the Christian God and calling upon the name of Jesus, but in a place like Midriven there would also be others supplicating before strange altars and burning herbs to propitiate beings who were old when Satan was a pup.

  Up from little Arthur Ravyn’s memory, gleaned from a vesper service to which Aunt Blossom, the Church of England vicar, had taken him, came the verse of an evening hymn:

  From all ill dreams defend our eyes,

  From nightly fears and fantasies;

  Tread underfoot our ghostly foe,

  That no pollution we would know.

  Chapter 5

  Second Girl

  Chief Inspector Ravyn heard the pounding of a tremendous heart, like native drums beating out a tattoo of terror, of impending doom. He opened his eye
s to a grey dawn. Then he recalled where he was and realised someone was banging against his door. He pulled on his dressing gown. When he flung open the door, a woman almost fell through. PC Vainglory stood behind her looking worried, scared and extremely annoyed.

  “You’ve got to help me, Mr Ravyn!” the woman cried. “She’s missing! She’s gone! I checked her bed and she’s not there. She has run away like that Lisa girl.”

  Ravyn caught her, held her up and restrained her. He looked to the resident constable.

  “This is Ella Treadwell,” PC Vainglory said. “She claims her Annie is missing.”

  Mrs Treadwell turned to Vainglory screaming: “I don’t claim anything, you bloody fool! She is missing!”

  “Mrs Treadwell, please go downstairs with PC Vainglory.” He looked to the constable. “Have Mr Teype give her tea.” He turned to the distraught woman. “Give me a minute to make some calls and get dressed. We’ll get people started on this right away.”

  She gazed at him as if he were speaking a foreign tongue.

  “Mrs Treadwell.” He took her by the shoulders. “We will find Annie, but you must keep calm. Please go downstairs.”

  She nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you.”

  As Ravyn remanded Mrs Treadwell into Vainglory’s care, he put his lips close to the constable’s ear. “Take care of her, be gentle with her, and lose that put-upon expression right now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ravyn rang up Stark at home. He was to coordinate with the nick in Deeping Well and also bring some uniforms from Stafford. If locals were going to quail at searching the woods, then outsiders would be brought in, and sod all if they did not like it.

  He substituted a brisk scrub for his morning shower, dressing quickly. His pyjamas and dressing gown went, neatly folded, into his overnight kit. Pausing a moment before the mirror, he adjusted the trim of his pocket handkerchief, then grabbed his computer bag and went downstairs.

  Mrs Treadwell sat at a table, a cup of coffee untouched before her. Vainglory was nowhere in sight. Teype, bleary-eyed and grim, stood by the bar. He motioned to Ravyn.

  “If you’re looking for that worthless Delbert Vainglory, he’s not here.” In answer to Ravyn’s expression, he added: “I have no idea where he’s at. Came down with Ella in tow, told me to give her coffee, then lit out of here. Didn’t say another bloody word.”