Last Rites

by Neil White

  ‘Easter eggs and Easter bunnies?’ he queried.

  ‘It seems that way,’ I replied. ‘It looks like our Easter has a background that isn't just about Jesus and the resurrection.’

  ‘So these festivals, these sabbats,’ queried Carson, his hand still on the door, ‘do they always coincide with the discovery of the bodies?’

  ‘It seems that way.’

  ‘But what do these sabbats represent?’ asked Kinsella. ‘The Christian festivals mark an event. The birth of Christ, his death and resurrection.’

  ‘You have to put the old Celtic festivals into the context of a world built entirely around crops,’ I said. ‘If the crops failed, people died. In Wicca, there are four major festivals, all built around the crop cycles and seasons. Imbolg is the second of February, when the buds first appear. Beltane is the first of May, when the blossom comes out. Lammas is the first of August, when the harvests begin, and Samhain is when the frosts begin.’

  ‘And what date is Samhain?’ asked Carson.

  I saw Kinsella's eyes grow keen. It looked like he'd guessed the answer.

  ‘It's today,’ I said. ‘We call it Halloween. In ancient times they called it Samhain, and it was the start of winter. The Celts put a spiritual slant on it. Samhain was the end of the Celtic year, and they said that it was when the veil between the land of the living and of the dead was at its thinnest.’

  ‘So that's why you are saying that Sarah Goode will die today,’ said Carson incredulously, ‘because it fits in with some ancient Celtic festival?’

  I took a deep breath. ‘It is quite possible.’

  ‘So tell me how the others fitted into these sabbats.’

  ‘Remember April Mather?’ I asked. ‘The first one, who jumped naked from Blacko Tower?’

  Carson nodded.

  ‘That was Samhain,’ I said. ‘Ten years ago today. And Rebecca Nurse,’ I continued, my hands flicking through the paperwork. ‘She was the girl who disappeared on the way to the pub, found down by the brook. That was Imbolg: the second of February. As I go through the list, it is the same thing. Mary Lacey, the nurse from Preston found by the river. Beltane: the first of May. So was Susannah Martin, the young shop assistant found in the woods.’ I put down my list. ‘Sarah will die today,’ I said solemnly, ‘and so I'll let you two get on with some police work.’

  ‘And where are you going?’ asked Carson.

  ‘Back to the beginning,’ I said, and then I left the room. But before I closed the door, I glanced in and saw the two detectives looking at the pile of papers on the desk, and then at each other. Neither of them moved.

  Chapter Sixty-three

  The wind was blowing crisply through the Pendle valley as I walked towards Blacko Tower. I had my collar hitched up to my ears and my hands thrust deep into my pockets.

  I remembered Katie's words: go back to the start. The story has to start somewhere, and Blacko Tower seemed to be the death furthest back. April Mather had jumped from it ten years earlier, and a few photographs might add a good touch. But it was more than that. I felt like I was in a race against time.

  The tower was easy to find, about thirty feet high with a castellated top, sitting proudly on a hill that rose out of the Pendle valley like a hump, but I had to clamber over a gate to begin the climb. When I got up to it, the tower wasn't very wide, with just enough room for a winding staircase leading to a view from the top, so that it was like a giant chess piece, the rook, dropped into the countryside. As I looked around, the view was spectacular, looking down onto farm buildings and a few houses from a nearby village. I took some photographs and made some notes, just first impressions, when I heard someone shout. A quad bike headed towards me, the noise of the engine getting louder as it struggled to make it up the hill.

  The rider jumped off as he got near, and I saw from the look on his face that he hadn't come over to pass the time of day.

  ‘What the bloody hell do you think you are doing here?’

  He looked to be in his fifties, too old to be on a quad bike, but his rosy skin and the redness of his knuckles told me that he'd spent most of his life outdoors.

  ‘Taking pictures,’ I said innocently.

  ‘This is private land,’ he bellowed at me.

  I looked around theatrically. ‘I didn't see the sign.’

  ‘Well, look harder.’

  ‘Is it your land?’

  The man shook his head. ‘No, but I help the owner keep an eye on it. This time of the year, all the Goths and black arts crowd come here to hum at the moon, or whatever they do.’

  I smiled. ‘I suppose what happened to April Mather must make the landowner nervous.’

  He stalled at that, and then looked at me with suspicion. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Jack Garrett, a reporter. I'm writing a story on the tower.’ It was a partial lie, but it was too early to tip people off about the story. ‘Do you remember the April Mather death?’

  He nodded slowly, unsure whether he should respond.

  ‘Did it seem suspicious at the time?’

  He started to smile. ‘Not with all those witnesses.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Like I say, Halloween attracts all the local weirdos. Most people go to Pendle Hill, but a few make their way here, and back then, Halloween at the tower was like a bonfire party.’

  ‘And April Mather? Did you know her?’

  ‘Everyone knew April Mather,’ he said with a smirk.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Her father was some local big-shot,’ he replied, ‘and April seemed to like pissing him off. I used to see her in the pubs round here from when she was fourteen. No one asked her age because she took up with the local biker crowd.’ He shook his head dismissively. ‘They are worse than the tree-huggers for lighting fires.’

  ‘Wasn't she a bit young for them?’

  He chuckled. ‘If you were young, attractive and promiscuous, they only cared that you were legally old enough, and she was by the time they got round to her. Just.’ He leaned in and whispered, even though there was no one around to overhear, ‘The police raided a pub once, because the landlord was serving cheap ale to the local kids. When they got there, they found April Mather lying on a pool table, wearing nothing below the waist but the hairy-arsed biker she was humping, with the rest of the pub either cheering her on or standing there with their dicks in their hands, waiting their turn.’ He shook his head. ‘She was seventeen years old.’

  ‘I can see why she would be remembered,’ I said. ‘But the April Mather I read about was a married woman with a child.’

  He curled his lip in distaste. ‘She was a mess, in here,’ he said, tapping his head with his finger, ‘and people started to get sick of her. So she set up with one of the bikers more seriously, kept herself in with the crowd, and they set up a bike workshop together, knocking out custom choppers. They had a little boy, and for a few years she calmed down, but then she started drinking again, and I mean seriously drinking. I saw her a few times staggering along the lanes. Almost hit her once.’

  ‘What, she lived nearby?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, turning round to point at an old stone cottage on a ridge a few hundred yards away. ‘That's what drew her here, to the tower. I reckon she saw the bonfire and came over, hoping for a party. She was drunk when she got here, and brought some whisky with her.’

  ‘You sound like you were there,’ I said.

  He gave me a wry smile. ‘I was. That's why I keep people away from here now, because of what I saw.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Some pissed-up biker girl making a nuisance of herself. She was falling around, shouting, flirting, with men and women. She upset a few people, and we would have taken her away, but we didn't want her coming back with a pack of angry bikers, so we just put up with her.’

  ‘So how did she die?’ I asked.

  He seemed to lose some of his smile at that, the memory of April's death souring his relish at reco
unting the tale.

  ‘She started getting all maudlin, like whisky drinkers do, crying and complaining, saying that she was evil. There was some scaffolding around the tower, just for some maintenance work. At midnight, she climbed up the tower on the scaffolding. When she got to the top, she stripped naked and started to shout at us below.’

  ‘What did people do?’

  ‘Laughed, mainly. Some told her to be careful, but we were all drunk by then as well. But what we didn't know was that she had taken a ten-foot length of wire with her and hooked it around a scaffold pole. The other end was in a loop, and it was as sharp as cheese wire. She stood on the edge and made a speech, something about, “Do what you will and it harm none”.’ He looked down and took a deep breath. ‘Then she jumped.’ He looked at me, and I saw the pain in his eyes. ‘She'd put the loop around her neck, and it took off her head like a pea being popped from its pod.’

  I nodded, understanding, attempting to stay calm, but my mind was trying to remember the quotes. It didn't seem like the right time to pull out my notepad, and I cursed myself for not switching on my voice recorder.

  ‘So it was a definite suicide,’ I said, almost to myself.

  He nodded at me. ‘Unless there was an invisible hand that pushed her, she did it all herself.’

  I thanked him and set off back down the hill, heading for my next visit. As I got lower, wondering how a suicide fitted in with Sarah Goode and the other murdered girls, I heard an engine start and saw the roof of a white van setting off along the country lane.

  I ran to where I had left my car, and just made it over the gate when I saw the van disappear around the corner.

  Chapter Sixty-four

  I called Olwen before I set off for his house. I owed him an update, although I wasn't sure what I had to report. April Mather had been a definite suicide, and so I was down to three murders. I checked my watch. It was just after one, the day moving on too fast.

  I had an address and directions for a house on a country lane, and I almost missed it, just a small sign obscured by long grasses. As my tyres rattled over a cattle grid and then echoed between dry-stone walls, I got the feeling that I had been there before.

  Olwen's home had a name, Tindale Cottage, not a number, written in bold white on a black sign. It was two-storey, with a centre porch and ivy creeping up the walls, and as I stepped out of the car, my footsteps scraped on stones on the dirt track and I shielded my eyes as sunlight twinkled off the damp grass.

  I had been there before, though, I knew it, and I scanned the fields around the cottage, my hand over my eyes so that I could see.

  Then I saw it, just a glimmer, a flash of light in the grass.

  I ran to the side of the house, away from its shadow, and jumped onto a stone wall to get a better view. ‘Shit!’ I exclaimed, and jumped down. I was by Sabden Brook, where Rebecca Nurse had been found. I looked further along the lane and I saw where I had been the day before. I had come in the opposite way, that's all.

  I glanced at Olwen's house and got a sense that something wasn't right. Why hadn't he mentioned this the night before? Was I being played? And how easy was it to get to the site of the body from his house?

  I walked away from his house and towards the brook, and the lane seemed suddenly secretive and hidden, high walls stopping anyone seeing into it.

  Sabden Brook was the same as it had been the day before, just a trickle of water, and stones scraped and wobbled as I scrambled over the wall next to it. When I got to the place where Rebecca had been found, I knelt down and touched the ground. I didn't know why. Perhaps it was a desire to make it real, to touch something as solid as a rock, so that it would become more than a collection of old murder stories bundled together by some crackpot theory.

  The grass just felt like what it was: coarse strands of moorland grass blowing in the breeze beside a slender ribbon of water. I felt no great connection. Instead, just deflation.

  I whirled around quickly when I heard something behind me, a rustle in the grass. Olwen was standing there, his hands behind his back, his ponytail blowing in the wind.

  ‘Did it give you any special inspiration?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I replied, wondering how long he had been there.

  ‘It's nothing special to you, is it?’ he said. ‘Just an old story, a forgotten murder in a quiet Lancashire field.’

  I looked back at the rock. ‘Did you scratch that symbol?’

  He nodded. ‘People forgot too quickly.’

  ‘But why didn't you tell me that you lived next to where she was found?’

  His eyes twinkled. ‘The story isn't about me.’

  ‘What else are you keeping back from me?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing else that matters.’ Before I could respond, he continued, ‘Why did you want to speak to me?’

  ‘Professional courtesy,’ I replied. ‘I went to the police this morning, told them what you told me.’

  ‘Did you tell them about me?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don't reveal sources, I told you that.’

  He nodded at me. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Do you want to know any more?’

  He shook his head. ‘You will have done what you thought was right.’

  ‘And what now, Olwen?’

  He smiled. ‘It is Samhain, and we will pray for Sarah.’

  I grabbed his arm. ‘Is that it?’ I asked, shocked. ‘You told me that Sarah will die today, and all you are going to do is pray, leave me to do everything?’

  He pulled his arm away. ‘Sometimes prayer is all we have,’ and then he stepped away, walking back to his cottage.

  I didn't move until the door to his cottage closed. I looked around and saw the chimneys of Newchurch in the distance, the church tower in the middle, squat and square. I could see paths worn into the countryside around me, the hikers' trails that headed off in all directions. I realised again why it would have appealed so much to someone involved in murder. So many paths in, so many paths out, but hidden from view.

  ‘There's only one thing for it then,’ I muttered to myself as I looked towards the church. ‘It's time for some spiritual inspiration.’

  Carson glanced over as Joe came into the Incident Room.

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Carson asked.

  Joe waved some computer print-outs. ‘I've pulled some of the information on the names Garrett gave us before.’

  ‘And?’ Carson asked.

  Joe's mouth twitched, unsure, and then he gave a small smile. ‘He might have something.’

  Carson put his head back and breathed out noisily. Everyone else looked up, the pressed shirts, the scrubbed faces.

  ‘What do you mean, “he might have something”?’

  Joe held up the print-outs. ‘I thought it when he said it, that the names were familiar. And he was right, the deaths did happen on the dates he mentioned.’

  ‘That doesn't mean anything.’

  ‘It means it isn't bullshit.’

  Carson had his hands on his hips, unsure what to say.

  ‘Do you know something else about East Lancashire?’ Joe asked.

  ‘The gene pool gets shallower the nearer you get to the hills?’ replied Carson sarcastically. ‘I don't know, surprise me.’

  ‘It has the worst record in Lancashire for unsolved murders,’ said Joe.

  Carson waved it away. ‘Populations distort figures,’ he countered. ‘A couple of rogue cases in a rural area make it look like gangland, but really it means nothing.’

  Joe shook his head. ‘I'm not talking per head of population,’ he said. ‘I'm talking absolute figures. The cold-case drawer must be bulging around here.’

  Carson paused, thinking about what Joe was saying, and then said, ‘It's also the divorce capital of England, so maybe the domestics count for most.’

  ‘They would be easier to solve, by definition,’ said Joe. He looked at Carson, tapping his lip with a pen. ‘I want to keep digging,’ he said. ‘And
I want McGanity with me.’

  ‘McGanity?’ queried Carson, and looked around the room. The faces staring back at him were waiting for his answer, wondering whether Joe would be allowed to make a fool of himself.

  ‘She's the one who can tell us what Garrett is doing,’ Joe added.

  Carson scowled as he thought about that, and then snapped, ‘All right then, but keep me in the loop.’

  Joe nodded, smiling, and left the room. As everyone else watched him go, Carson barked, ‘If any of you have got any better ideas, then speak to me, but until you do, button it,’ and then he slammed the door as he left, heading for the station yard. He needed to be on his own for a while.

  Chapter Sixty-five

  I walked to the church yard again, looking for the vicar. I remembered our last conversation, and I reckoned he knew things about Pendle's other religion, and Olwen, its apparent leader. The wind was picking up, so the sound of my footsteps on the gravel was drowned out by the crackle of branches as they blew against one another, but the church yard was deserted.

  I found the vicarage further up the hill. The vicar was at home, although when he opened the door I saw that he wasn't wearing his dog collar. He must have caught me looking at his throat, because he gave me that icy smile and said, ‘It's a collar, not a shackle.’ He stepped aside. ‘Come in.’

  I had to stoop as I walked through his house, the ceilings and oak beams right above my head, the doorways designed for a time when people were much shorter. Local landscapes dotted the walls, and I was shown into a room lined with books. I saw an open one by a high-backed chair in front of an open fire. The heat hit me in a blast, and straight away I felt comfortable. It was a room to fall asleep in, with a view over the fields and the crackle of burning wood by my feet, and I wondered whether the vicar felt closer to God in his room than in his church.

  ‘Do you remember me?’ I asked.

  ‘You're the young man from the church yard,’ he replied. ‘And you've come back.’