A Night With No Stars

by Sally Spedding

  Three p.m. and the regular hourly news bulletin from Radio 4 came on air. She barely listened to details of yet more farmer suicides in Cumberland, so terrified was she in the way the birds seemed to be following her every move through the glass. However, when a report of the Burton Minster fire which had just claimed the lives of famous author James Benn and his wife filled the car, she gulped in disbelief.

  ‘My God,’ was all she could say as further gruesome details were added, and while Nick Merrill was offering his own fulsome tribute, she suddenly had the overpowering feeling that she wasn’t alone.

  Jesus Christ . . .

  She turned round and screamed like she’d never screamed before. Louder than when drowning in the sea that time; louder than anything she’d heard since. Because someone with a head full of black and bloodied feathers was now sitting right behind her.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Why my breasts are tingling, swelling up like they did all those nights ago before each birth? I don’t know. Then I had too much milk which went to other new-borns. (So you see, I was a giver, not the Taker they claimed I was.) The ugly and the beautiful I had. Who’d have thought my two could be so different from the same womb? But now, when I try to sing a lullaby for them, my throat closes and the silence of this place drowns me, drowns me . . .

  *

  ‘You say my God, but I’m the only God round here,’ came a muffled yet not unfamiliar voice. ‘I’m The Dagda, you see. All powerful, all-seeing. Representing life and death. Or rather, my life. Your death.’

  YOU’RE NEXT . . .

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  Lucy tried to get out, but the intruder had somehow jammed central locking into lock mode and it wouldn’t budge. Then she angled her rear view mirror with shaking fingers, to see who exactly was sharing her space, bringing with him that unmistakeable smell, and when she saw the two brown eyes focused on her from between the feathers, she screamed again. Mark had brown eyes. Most likely Richard too. Except that Rhiannon George had said grey.

  ‘Shut the fuck up,’ it said. ‘Or you’ll get this.’

  A hunting knife whose blade glowed dully in a black-gloved hand. A blade which moved nearer her neck. Her breath barely there. She remembered her yoga but so what? Nothing could stop this terror. Never mind her mother her dead father or Anna or Jon, her mates from Uni, even Mark and Hector . . . No one could help her. Only herself.

  The ravens were pecking at the windscreen now. Their beaks opening and closing, their swollen bodies black as the sky moving in from the west. Meanwhile, the stench inside the Rav had worsened.

  ‘The police are on their way,’ she tried to sound strong, aware of that knife poised behind her. ‘Go while you’ve got a chance.’

  ‘My chance is yet to come. Anyway, they can’t get through.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘We’re all blocked in. Nice and snug.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  She tried the door handle again, because no way could she risk using her phone.

  ‘They’ll only kill you if you go outside,’ the voice said. ‘Look at them.’

  Tap . . . tap . . . tap . . .

  ‘Can’t you get rid of them?’

  ‘They don’t listen to me any more.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘You’d better.’

  Several birds were now pecking the steel strip above the windscreen. Their weight pressing down the soft top, their noise making her head spin, all logic and reason now in a land of no recall. If she had nothing to lose, so be it.

  ‘You’re Richard, aren’t you? Out for revenge, that’s what that poor woman said. Revenge for what, you sad bastard? And why me now? Go on, say something. Or haven’t you got it in you?’

  ‘Hey, hey, you fucking little gold-digger. D’you realise that’s the worst possible thing you could say to me?’

  ‘Gold-digger?’

  ‘Getting your feet under the table here. I’ve seen you at it. Crafty cow. So, it’s payback time,’ said the man, waving the knife so she could see it. ‘Now drive.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Where do you think? To my place. Down there.’

  My place? Mark again . . . It had to be . . . Yet hasn’t he just said the ravens don’t listen to him any more? That can’t be right . . .

  She started the engine as an update on Iris Carr’s rape at Elan Valley made the tail-end of the local news. The hunt was now on for an Australian camper driving a black Ford Maverick.

  ‘Turn that crap off,’ barked her captor. ‘Now. I’ve something better for you. So concentrate.’

  She obeyed, suddenly thinking of her date tomorrow. How unless a miracle happened, there wouldn’t be one.

  ‘In the cellar at the Hall. Stone number ten up. Fifty across. East wall. Got it?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You will. Now, move.’

  She crashed reverse gear then with the ravens still in place, began the journey down the familiar watery track until Wern Goch came into view. She’d read that victims who’d survived abduction had got their captors’ talking, formed some kind of rapport but her teeth had locked together, her dry lips sealed in fear. All she wanted was for the nightmare to end.

  But night had come early to the Ravenstone acres and fresh rain had begun to fall.

  ‘Faster,’ came the voice. ‘Or else.’

  Her precious car. She’d never driven down this dreadful track before, but even that didn’t matter now, scattering stones, slipping, sliding down towards that pool of red mud.

  Suddenly the ravens moved from the bonnet and were joined by those from the roof to fly in strict formation towards the scullery door. Then, as before, they arranged themselves along the guttering.

  ‘Let my armies be the rocks and the sea, and the birds in the sky . . .’ the man in the back muttered to himself. ‘Charlemagne said that. Neat, eh? Just about sums it all up.’

  Her heart was hurting. Where the hell were the police? And not for the first time realised that this spot she’d chosen for peace and quiet, for a new life, was nothing less than a death trap.

  No one will hear you scream . . .

  She stalled. The engine cut out.

  Mum? Dad . . .?

  And in those few silent moments which followed, she said goodbye to them.

  ‘Leave the keys where they are and get out.’

  The sharp click of central locking being released, made her jump again. Nevertheless she grabbed her bag and pulled it across both front seats as she stumbled from the car into the mud. Fearing its possible loss, she placed the strap over her body in anti-mugging mode and turned to see the bare-legged man push her driver’s seat forwards with a bang, then leap out.

  Before she could run, a black woollen arm had hooked itself in an iron grip around her throat, dragging her towards the scullery door. The smell of stale blood was stronger now, clogging her nose, invading her whole body. Her shrieks were smothered by lanolin fleece as she kicked and struggled futilely against this almost superhuman strength which surely she’d felt once before.

  Bang . . . bang . . . bang . . . This had to be Mark. Who else? But why this weird gear . . .?

  Now in grisly close-up, she saw what covered his head. A black balaclava with ravens’ feathers sewn into the fabric, congealed together by lumps of old blood. It was then she realised she’d left the scullery door unlocked.

  ‘I thought you loved me,’ she managed to say as they reached the kitchen and its lumpy floor. She glimpsed the shining orange-coloured tiles she’d only just cleaned. All that effort seemed a lifetime away . . .

  ‘I loved her. Her. . .’

  Her?

  Nothing was making sense. By turning her head a fraction she saw how those brown eyes had narrowed. Suddenly the little knife was against her right thigh. One false move and she’d be cut.

  ‘Through there. We have to wait for someone.’ His hissing breath was followed by its blade now jabb
ing in the direction of the parlour. The darkest room in the house. She remembered the same way Mark had held that bread knife so close to Hector.

  She stalled, registering the kitchen window’s lack of glass. If she could only break free and reach it. If only . . . Suddenly, she heard the sound of another car engine outside. The squeal of brakes. A white Renault van she recognised.

  Thank you God. Thank you . . .

  For a moment the grip around her neck loosened. The chance she needed. She ducked out of her captor’s grip and hurled herself towards the window.

  ‘Help! Help!’

  ‘OK, I’m coming,’ a familiar voice reassured her. ‘Hang on there.’

  Her knees, her hands bruised against the old wood but at least she was outside, melting in relief against the sawyer’s warm body.

  Mark slipped a protective arm around her waist and pushed her hair off her ashen face. ‘What the hell’s been going on? You’re all cut up. You look terrified. Shit, Lucy, I should have been here for you . . .’ His smell was different. Not sap from the forestry, but that same dampness she’d noticed in the Hall.

  ‘How did you get through?’ she asked. ‘That madman who made me drive here said everywhere’s blocked off.’

  ‘What madman?’

  ‘Someone parading as the Dagda. He’s got a knife.’

  ‘Leave it to me, okay? I can handle it. Now then, let’s get you inside out of this piss.’

  ‘No! He’s in there!’ She felt faint, her trainers sticking to the mud. Her heart on hold.

  ‘Let’s take a look, eh?’ he nudged her nearer the door where the wet ravens waited, their hunting eyes missing nothing. Her struggle subsided as his grip strengthened, forcing her back into hell. This time there was no scream, because what greeted them inside the parlour knocked the air out of her lungs. Two men were waiting motionless in the shadows. Not a balaclava in sight.

  She blinked. Something was seriously wrong. For a start, Hector was slumped against the far wall, gagged by a length of rose-printed cloth – identical to those fragments from the chimney – while his hands and ankles were bound by orange baler twine. His self-inflicted bruise had darkened to a liverish purple around his eye and someone had removed his boots and the soles of his bare white feet were filthy. She noticed too how his lap was littered with bloodied ravens’ feathers. His eyes full of resignation.

  ‘My God, Hector. Who did this to you?’ She tried to reach him, but Mark restrained her with an iron grip, this time around her wrist while the man with tanned and booted legs next to him bent down and untied the former policeman’s gag.

  ‘Leave him be,’ Mark ordered. ‘And put that back on. I brought him here to listen.’

  ‘You?’ she gasped, then remembered what he’d said about the bread knife to cut twine.

  ‘Tough,’ said the other, standing up to face him, as Hector licked his dry lips. ‘I want to fucking hear him.’

  ‘Well, well, well. So it’s happy families time again,’ interrupted Hector, glancing from Mark to the man she now recognised as the mineralogist from Bristol. Although his flattened hair seemed more brown, cut into a monkish tonsure style, and the eyes weren’t blue, there was no mistaking that even-featured face, that tan, just the way he stood there. The reason she’d desired him more than anyone she’d ever met before. But happy families? What on earth could Hector mean? This was Paul, surely?

  ‘If you are Paul,’ she demanded, ‘why the hell were you in the car with me just now saying I was a gold-digger? Scaring me to death?’ But the man merely looked at her with a blank expression, as if he’d never met her in his life before. As if they’d never shared that meal. Never kissed. However, when the ex-copper finally caught Lucy’s eye, everything about him said sorry.

  ‘I really didn’t mean to frighten you up at the Hall,’ he explained, ‘but I banked on you getting Mark from work and bringing him to where we can all be together again. I knew Richard had come back, you see. I knew he was hanging around. And now,’ he nodded his head to the man on his left, ‘I’m paying the price for interfering.’ He glanced up at the taller man next to him. ‘This is Richard, my eldest son, by the way . . .’

  She shook her head. ‘He can’t be.’

  R’S BACK . . .

  ‘He is, I assure you,’ Hector went on. ‘And Mark of course, you’ve already met. Now then, son, let go of her please.’

  ‘No. She belongs to me.’ He gave her the weirdest look she’d ever seen, and she turned away.

  ‘And you’re her author who’s up his own backside? Fun, eh?’ snarled Richard. ‘Do what the old geezer says. There’s a good chap.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  Nevertheless, Mark eased his grip, but Lucy’s growing panic rooted her to the spot. She thought of her car out there in the mud; its little dancing figures on the upholstery; its welcoming interior. How even that had been violated. However, she could still be out of all this in minutes, leaving them to it. But two against one wasn’t much of a bet. There really was no escape.

  She also thought of her lowly flat in Albany Villa with a degree of love which just then was overpowering. Her one window on to that busy street. The nearness of ordinary things. The life she’d tried to live, whereas all that was near in this receptacle of horror, was imminent slaughter. Why? Because Mark Jones had just pulled the bread knife from inside his jacket. It glinted, rigid in his left hand.

  ‘That’s not going to get you very far, son,’ Hector observed, unflinching. ‘I suggest you put it away.’ His voice now persuasion plus something less pleasant. He must have been a good cop after all, she thought. An iron fist in a velvet glove and all that. Then she wondered how she could possibly untie him now.

  ‘And I suggest that for once in your stupid unproductive life, you listen. That so-called son of yours there, dressed up like God-knows-what, is a rapist and a killer. I parked my van out of sight and sneaked back in to hear you take those calls from Sydney. Liza Docherty eh?’ he taunted. ‘Poor cow. He couldn’t resist, could he? And what about me? What have I got to show for fourteen bloody years. Tell me? Watching you drink yourself stupid. Night after night. Day after day. That’s where our money’s gone. And what about my head eh?’ He tapped it with his knife. ‘All screwed up, that’s what. Thanks.’

  Hector flinched. She felt Mark’s hot breath on her skin – the only warmth in that damp old space which wasn’t big enough for all this. She’d heard him deride his father often enough before now, but nothing like these accusations spoken in such a chilling way. And was this true? Were they the root cause of all the misery at Ravenstone? Whatever the answer, she knew then, that like his brother standing silently opposite, Mark Jones wasn’t the man she’d believed him to be. Yes, she’d had her doubts, huge doubts, which had often outweighed her gratitude to him, but here, now, with that weapon fixed in his grasp, death was surely waiting in the wings.

  ‘Put it away,’ Hector growled.

  ‘It’s all I’ve got.’

  She thought of Anna. She thought balls. Then took a deep breath, looking from one man to the next.

  ‘So who’s been following me? Who wrote that YOU’RE NEXT note?’ She dug in the duffle coat pocket and held out the crumpled pink tissue. ‘I recognised this writing as yours, Mark. But I’d like to think it could easily have been copied. And which sicko murdered the sweep and carved away his mouth?’

  Hector grunted, shaking his head until Richard spoke at last, catching her by surprise. ‘Try asking that blowie.’ He pointed his hunting knife at his brother. ‘You were probably making him nervous.’

  ‘Prove it, you liar.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what any of you say any more. After our mam was killed and I’d gone away, I wrote every bit of the truth down and sent it to someone. Someone else outside the family who had to know what really happened here.’

  ‘Who was that, son?’ Asked Hector, an alarmed expression on his haggard face.

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’


  ‘And what is the truth?’ Lucy interrupted, thinking that maybe, just maybe, major carnage could be avoided. She remembered the tales her mother told about the school playground. How in a dispute, she’d listen to the kids. Hear all sides of the story. The trouble was that here, it wasn’t skipping ropes and Pokémon cards which lay to hand, but two lethal weapons.

  ‘Mam was a tart. You both knew that,’ Richard said scornfully to both Mark and Hector.

  ‘She was a Taker, was our Tina Twilight,’ his father said abruptly. ‘Just like the Morrigan. And you, son, encouraged her.’

  Lucy shivered as Richard’s mouth became a coy smile.

  ‘Yeah. I guess I did. But she never said no. Twice we had a naughty . . .’

  Hector tried to move to silence him.

  ‘That’s enough!’ He looked worse than ill.

  ‘No it wasn’t. Because when I was up for it again, to try and go one better, she went all prim and proper on me. Just like the first time. So far and no further. Like she’d never . . . never let me, well, you know . . .’

  ‘Stop it!’ Hector roared, writhing futilely to prevent any more being said.

  ‘Was that here, in Wern Goch?’ Lucy asked, her voice wavering.

  ‘Fuck no. She wouldn’t have slummed in this dump. In the bathroom up there, it was,’ he jerked his head in the direction of the Hall. ‘Both times. Plenty of steam, fluffy white towels. It had a lock on the door then. Nice and private, till you removed it, you slimy perv.’ He glowered at Mark who was rubbing his knife blade back and fore against his black leather sleeve before repositioning it. ‘You see, she knew I loved her. And she loved me. While you,’ he snorted. ‘You jealous little runt, thought you could have the same. But you couldn’t, could you? Tough, eh? Instead, you went and told Dada.’