And they paid dearly for those lies, Ravyn thought.
Now, villagers were making a connection between the murders and the Warlock, thanks, mostly, to Margaret Banberry, who was now telling everyone who would listen she had seen the Warlock walking by moonlight. As yet, no one had made a connection to Victor Boil, but Ravyn knew it was only a matter of time before they did, and again it would likely be thanks to Margaret Banberry.
The microwave dinged. He pulled out the warmed-up food and carried it to the plain deal table where he took all his solitary meals. He ate it but did not taste it.
Stark’s idea, that inducing spinal shock was the murder’s way to kill and that taking the heart was intended solely to misdirect the police, was not impossible, but ultimately failed the test of logic. It made more sense the Warlock’s murder method had been revived to terrify and confuse villagers, but that idea was also self-defeating, as it would serve to draw attention to the murderer, who must live in Little Wyvern. Though he could not entirely rule out the idea that a member of FOG was using murder as a public relations tool, Ravyn did not see any of them possessing that level of ruthlessness, not even Agnes Swanner.
The more he considered the possibilities, the more reasonable seemed his own idea, that inducing spinal shock was nothing but a convenience. It allowed the murderer to do what he really wanted to do, what he had to do. He broke the victim’s neck, but only so he could more easily remove the heart.
The heart had to be removed. It was a dangerous action. He could have vanished moments after killing, but he risked discovery because he was compelled to remove the heart. It was his nature, and it was a nature he shared with the Warlock. The problem was that the only person about whom that could be said was Victor Boil, and he was forty-odd years dead, or was supposed to be.
Ravyn’s spoon was empty. He looked down and scowled at the empty bowl. Another unrememberable meal.
* * *
Margaret Banberry awoke abruptly from a dream. She lay still in her bed, staring at the ceiling while remnants of the nightmare began to ebb from her. Reluctantly, she closed her eyes.
Usually, she let her dreams escape, even the agreeable ones. It was no use holding on to them, she felt. The dark ones frightened her, while the pleasant ones made her sad they were only dreams, so she let them all go.
But not this one.
This nightmare, dark as it was, felt important to her. With a conscious effort she pulled back the unravelling skeins of dream. It was night and the only light came from torches held aloft by some members of the crowd.
Their shouts were archaic, as in the plays of Shakespeare she attended every summer. Still, she understood every word, as if it were her day-to-day vernacular, and modern speech naught but part of some waking dream.
The mob was angry. She struggled to see at whom they were shouting. She saw a man held fast by knotted ropes and faster still by men bearing the King’s mark. The captive was sinister in visage, like a ravening wild beast, but his captor was no less baleful, lips locked in a savage grin of blood-lust. She recognised both men, the first as the Warlock, Hezekiah Boil, also known as Heart-Eater; the second was none other that Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder General, in service to His Majesty, James II.
They were bringing Hezekiah Boil’s life to a well-deserved end, at the end of a rope suspended from an oak. He sat upon a horse as the condemnation was read. She shouted in accord with the mob, calling for his death.
She gasped when Hezekiah Boil whipped his gaze toward her, smoke billowing from the consecrated rope about his neck. His fiery eyes pierced her like a lance. The crowd fell away so that she stood alone under his stare. She tried to run, but could not.
“My beshrew is upon thee, Margaret Banb'rry!” the Warlock cried. “The passage of centuries shalt not protecteth thee. By mine own hand, thy wagging tongue shalt be still'd.”
The horse was slapped into motion, and Hezekiah dropped. He began his frenzied dance of death, all the while staring at her.
In that instant, she saw in Hezekiah’s twisted face the features of Victor Boil, a nasty-minded village boy whom she was sure had broken her cat’s neck, who later murdered his own family. Then the youthful face of the long-dead Victor Boil melted and morphed into the familiar countenance of another.
Her eyelids flew open. She should never have looked out the kitchen window, never told Mr Ravyn about what she had seen by the moon’s light, and, most of all, never told anyone in Little Wyvern that the Warlock now walked amongst them.
A shadow moved between her and the ceiling.
“Harry?” she whimpered. “Is that you?”
“No,” said the Warlock, smiling. “Not Harry.”
Chapter 8
Lo, ‘Tis a Gala Night
When DS Leo Stark climbed out of his car, he avoided looking in the direction of Superintendent Heln’s window. Aeronwy had not confirmed any of his suspicions, but he could not shake the idea the little man was somehow behind her discontent, though probably not directly. Heln’s was the hand often felt, but rarely seen. Out of the car park, he bypassed the canteen and made for Ravyn’s office.
“You look more rested, Stark,” Ravyn said, looking up from his computer. “Feeling better?”
“Yes, sir, much,” Stark replied. “Thank you.”
“Have you had any further thoughts about the case?”
Stark grimaced. After the unexpected reconciliation with his wife, he had not devoted any energy to the case.
“I’ve been trying to figure out the why of it,” Stark said. “He had plenty of time with Matthew Nevis, alias Jameson Gaites, who we now know was killed first. But with Jones, there was a danger of being found out, what with people wandering all over the cemetery, not to mention Madeline Wallace on the make for a ghostly tryst. I’ve reconsidered the idea that removing the heart was done to make people think it was the work of some ghostly avenger.”
“Oh?”
“Well, it’s all well and good for Freddie and Aggie, even for a dear old thing like Margaret Banberry,” Stark said.
“Yes, she is a dear old thing,” Ravyn agreed.
“Or the whole benighted village,” Stark added. “Point is, we’re not looking for a ghost. You said so yourself, and I never thought we were. Now, even if the lunatic is from Little Wyvern…”
“As he must be,” Ravyn said.
“Well, even so, from the village or not, he has to know we are not going to chase after any ghosts,” Stark said. “Even if he doesn’t know anything but what’s on the telly, he can’t reasonably expect the police to be as gullible and ignorant as nutters and mentals.”
“I don’t know that I would put it quite that…”
“Can anyone join in,” asked a cheery voice from the doorway, “or is this a closed debate?”
Angus Powell-Mavins leaned against the jamb. He had a grin on his face, an unlit pipe in his mouth, and a folder in his hand.
“Do come in, Angus,” Ravyn said. “Stark was in the process of constructing a logic matrix, arguing against his own thesis that the murderer had removed the hearts solely to misdirect us into chasing a ghostly killer.”
The forensics chief raised thick red eyebrows. “Is that so?”
Stark shifted nervously. What he had been doing was filling in what would have been an awkward silence. However, he really had come to question his own idea, even if that meant leaning toward Ravyn’s. Slick barristers always argued for irresistible compulsions, which he considered tosh, or at least had until Ravyn’s idea of nature versus volition. The concept was disquieting, if only because it opened the possibility that Stark himself was not quite the master of his own destiny, as he had always felt.
“What have you for us, Angus?” Ravyn asked. “Something not in the reports you provided me yesterday?”
Powell-Mavins frowned. “And whose fault is that? Didn’t I tell you a rushed report would be an incomplete report?”
“Not in so many words,” Ravyn said, remembering.
“But, yes, I concede the point. However, it was just for the Super’s benefit.”
“Ach, and how did you find the wee man?” Powell-Mavins quipped. “With your detective school magnifying glass?”
Ravyn inclined his head, as if looking at something in the hall. A stricken expression twisted the SOCO’s face. Blood drained away, making his hair and eyebrows even more prominent. He turned from the empty corridor to find Ravyn smiling blandly.
“That’s not bloody funny!”
Yes, it’s very bloody funny, Stark thought.
Ravyn shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Stark looked between the two men, unsure whether he should laugh or run for cover. After a moment, colour returned to Powell-Mavins’ cheeks and he boomed a peal of laughter. Wisely, Stark did not join in.
“That was a good one, Arthur.” The Scotsman glanced into the hallway again, then back. “But your point is well taken.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Ravyn said. “You have something for us?”
Powell-Mavins moved to the desk, pulled a large glossy photo from the file and placed it before Ravyn. The chief inspector barely glanced at it. Instantly, he knew the position from which it had been snapped, the exact time of day, and the distance of the photographer from the subject, which was the pile of leaves hiding the body.
Ravyn raised a quizzical eyebrow.
Powell-Mavins pulled a second photo from the file and placed it on the first. This snap showed the leaves close up. The body had been removed. A third photo joined the first two, this showing several broad leaves, a rule nearby to indicate scale.
Ravyn sighed. “If we skip to the end, Angus, and you tell me about the prints you lifted, I will still be impressed and will still think you the cleverest lad in all Hammershire.”
Powell-Mavins scowled. “How the blazes did you…” He paused. “No, never mind, I am sure I do not want to know.” He laid a series of photos across the desk, each one showing a mounted leaf streaked with powder. “Yes, we were able to lift partial prints from several leaves.”
“Blimey,” Stark muttered, moving closer. “How could you do that? It’s been a week or so. The dew should have done them in.”
“Normally, yes, but in covering the body with leaves, the killer overturned many,” Powell-Mavins explained, turning from Ravyn to a more appreciative audience. “Being overturned, and with other leaves piled atop them, they were protected, at least for the most part, from dew and other natural processes. I saw a smudge on one of the leaves, so I had my lads and lasses sift through the whole blasted pile.” He glanced at Ravyn. “It was slow and painstaking, nothing to be rushed.” He turned back to Stark. “Once we had the leaves sorted and dusted, it was simply a matter of piecing together enough exemplars to obtain an entire handprint.”
“Brilliant,” Stark said. “Simply bloody brilliant.”
“Not quite an entire print,” Ravyn said, examining the last photo, a digitally assembled composite. “There seems to be a small blank section in the…”
“Alight, almost an entire print. It’s close enough!” Again he looked to Stark. “Truthfully, lad, I don’t know how you work with this man. I’m not sure how anyone does for any length of time and not go loopy.”
Stark wondered how long Powell-Mavins had given him in the flight-or-fail pool, but did not ask. The pool was not supposed to exist, and he was sure he did not want to know in how much, or how little regard the man had held him. He reached across and picked up the composite from where Ravyn had let it drop. It was indeed a brilliant piece of work, worthy of the forensics boffins at Scotland Yard; he never would have expected it from an area he had, and to a great extent still did, considered the hinterlands.
“I don’t know which is more impressive, piecing together of the prints or that you considered it possible at all.” Ravyn looked to Stark. “I don’t think your former mates in the Met could have done a better job that did their country cousins, do you?”
Stark frowned. “Uh, no…no, sir.”
Occasionally, Stark had heard Dr Penworthy voice exasperation at Ravyn for anticipating some medical prognosis. Once, he recalled, she had actually mused, were this the Seventeenth Century rather that the Twenty-First he might have found himself swinging in a warlock’s noose. He was beginning to understand her viewpoint.
“Did you get a match?” Stark asked.
“Indeed I did,” Powell-Mavins replied, smiling. He pulled from the file a printout and placed it on the desk between the two men. “Meet Lester Post.”
Stark stepped back. “Lester Post?”
“Aye, lad, that’s what I said.”
“Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
As Stark fled the office, Powell-Mavins leaned slightly toward Ravyn. “I knew working with you would drive the poor lad daft.”
“I think I am the least of his problems,” Ravyn said.
Stark’s return cut off Powell-Mavins’ questions.
“Lester Post was another bloke wanted for questioning about the Hatton Garden Heist,” Stark said, putting papers before Ravyn.
“No form,” Ravyn said. “No photo.”
“Fingerprinted because he worked for some high level security companies,” Stark explained. “That was why they wanted him. At first, it was simply as a consultant, but things grew serious when he abruptly dropped out of sight. They never found him.”
Ravyn glanced at the CV Powell-Mavins had provided, then at Stark’s notes. On paper, Lester Post was a highly skilled security expert, consulted in the installation of many protective systems for important companies, including Universal Imports and Holdings a year before the theft.
“One can see why Post and Nevis are connected,” Ravyn said. “One is a villain, the other seems not to be, but they do meet at the nexus of the security system. It makes Jones odd man out.”
“Not necessarily, sir,” Stark said. “Nevis had experience in knocking over intricate security systems, but not like that one. Post could give him what he needed, but Post’s knowledge was a year old. Even without modifications, it’s likely there had been changes in day-to-day procedures at Universal Imports and Holdings. They needed to know of any such changes, but neither man could afford to be caught on CCTV.”
“So they use small-time confidence man and would-be author Simon Jones to do some reconnoitring,” Ravyn said. “Jones sets up a simple but effective fiction to explain his presence in the area, and the company itself, while gathering information needed to bring his partners up to date.”
“And they’re all seventy-five million pounds richer,” Stark said.
“Except they’re not, are they?” Ravyn pointed out. “At least two of them are not. Jones is pounding out potboilers and leading ghost tours while he drinks himself to death, and Nevis leads a quiet and modest life far off the grid.”
“Well, I’ll leave you gentlemen to it,” Powell-Mavins said. “I have to get the team over to Odin’s Mark to process a body found in a barrel floating in Wiccens Canal.”
“Sounds interesting,” Stark said.
“Depends on how long it’s been floating, if you get my drift.”
“Thank you for this,” Stark said.
“Yes, thank you, Angus,” Ravyn agreed. He absently touched the file, continuing to stare ahead. “Good job, Angus. Well done.”
Powell-Mavins glanced at Stark and rolled his eyes. They both knew Ravyn had entered a realm that did not include them.
“Hang in there, lad,” Powell-Mavins whispered, leaning close. “You can learn much from that man, if he does not drive you mad.”
Stark forced a thin smile.
“A falling out,” Ravyn said.
“Sir?”
“If Jones, Post and Nevis did the Hatton Garden Heist, there was a falling out,” Ravyn said. “Immediately after the robbery.”
“It would fit.”
“Nevis reinvents himself, takes on the Gaites persona and keeps himself to him
self, staying off everyone’s radar,” Ravyn mused. “Post may have done the same.”
“Jones didn’t change who he was,” Stark said. “But, then, he’s never been anything but an outlier. He may have been paid just to do a job. A share may never have been in his future.”
“The pettiest of criminals harbour the biggest dreams,” Ravyn said. “Even if he did not know the true scope of the robbery, he would still have known the haul would be in millions, not thousands. They might have drawn him into the scheme with golden promises, then left him high and dry.”
“He daren’t say a thing to betray them,” Stark said. “But would they hide from him? I can’t believe Nevis would shuck his life to avoid a bug like Simon Jones. Murder would have been easier.”
“He might have hid from Post.”
Stark thought a moment, then said: “There’s nothing in Post’s background suggesting violence, but you know what they say about still waters.”
“Seventy-five million pounds is a big incentive.”
Stark nodded. In London’s East End he had seen murder done for lesser sums by the meek, impatient to inherit the earth. At times, it seemed the City was powered by the evil men did to each other, from the yob on a thrill kill dare to the radical gathering heads for entry into Paradise. Daily, indescribable malevolence rained on the weak and innocent, and there was no way to stop it. He had told Aeronwy that he had fought the transfer tooth and nail when it came down, but the truth was, he had not fought it much at all.
“If we conjecture Post and Nevis were hiding from each other, since the police had no connecting evidence and Jones would have been easy to kill, it gives us a working hypothesis,” Ravyn said. “Nevis and Post perpetrate the robbery. Almost immediately, there is a turnabout, one trying to take the swag for his own and murder the other.”
Village of Ghosts (DCI Arthur Ravyn Mystery Book 2) Page 16