Wicca

by James Follett

  Ellen shook her head. `I've no idea at all, Mike. There was a wart-charmer in Chiddingfold but that's Farside and I think she died a year or so back. I think it's bored kids out to make trouble. The summer is a quiet time for witches and Satanists --most of their rituals are around the spring and autumn equinoxes. These childish outrages don't make sense at the best of times -- even less so at this time of the year.'

  Malone was silent. He had formed a bored kids theory and discarded it. The desecrations were too well-organized. Every church and chapel was being picked off, some getting repeat visits.

  `My turn, Mike. What's this favour you're after and do you have to wear a policeman's cap to ask it?'

  `'Fraid so. It's about Dan Baldock's Country Brigade.'

  Ellen placed two mugs of tea on the workstation and sat down. `What about it?'

  Malone was sidetracked by Ellen tipping some greyish powder into her mug. `What's that?'

  She smiled wanly. `Don't worry, Mike. It's a salicylate I've extracted from willow. Aspirin in other words. A bit rough but it works. I've got a headache you could stuff and mount. So what's worrying you about the Country Brigade?'

  `David's on the general staff?'

  `A stupid name for a committee.'

  `A dangerous name for a committee, Ellen. Country Brigade's a dangerous name, too. These things can become self-fulfilling. So far they've stayed within the law by acting as a deterrent with their presence on delivery wagons. I've heard that they're holding a full meeting on Sunday evening. I'd like to be invited. To go openly to advise them in a friendly way as to what is legal and what isn't. I don't want to see any of them get into trouble with the law -- not with the way it's being administered now.'

  `Brad Jackson's parents are members,' said Ellen thoughtfully.

  `I guessed.'

  `Do you think Prescott will hang him?'

  `I don't doubt it for a minute. The scaffold is finished and has been tested with a goat.'

  `God help us all,' Ellen muttered.

  `Have a word with David, please, Ellen. I'll give my word not to reveal who was there. Okay -- policeman's cap off.'

  `In that case, what was really behind Cathy Price's death?'

  Malone didn't like the question but was careful not to show it. There were aspects of Cathy's supposedly accidental death that troubled him deeply. His hunch was that she had been driven to suicide.

  `I was off duty at the time. All I know is what was in the radio report. That she'd been drinking heavily at a private party, and took it into her head to go for a drive after she'd been dropped off outside her house.'

  `Was there alcohol in her blood?'

  It was the first thing Malone wanted to know when he learned the tragic news, but Government House had vetoed the expense of a post mortem. `I'm sorry, Ellen, I know it sounds like a cop-out, but I really can't comment before the inquest.'

  Ellen sipped her tea in silence for a few moments. `I never really got to know her. But she enjoyed life, even when she was disabled. Since then she's had so much to live for. She was a good driver and she knew the A285 well.'

  Malone had visited the scene of the accident on the morning after the accident. There were no skid marks to indicate that the Jaguar had braked -- it had driven in a straight line off the road. The manager at the garage where the car had been serviced, now converting government-commandeered vehicles to run on compressed methane, had produced an MOT test certificate copy and service reports that showed the car to have been in excellent condition. `If it wasn't suicide then it must've been an error of judgment,' the manager had commented. `Afterall, she hadn't driven for several months.'

  Malone drained his mug. `This is good tea, Ellen.'

  `Another?'

  `Please.'

  She took his mug to the urn and rinsed it in a squirt of hot water, standing with her back to him.

  Malone thought of a way of steering the conversation. He didn't want to hurt Ellen but it had to be done. He chuckled. `Remember the time I made tea in here that night when those brats painted that message on your shop front?'

  `How could I forget?'

  `EX2218,' Malone mused. `I had no idea what it meant at the time. It looked like a telephone extension number.'

  Ellen didn't answer. She stood with her back to him, hands knuckle-white clutching the edge of the worktop, head bowed. He sensed rather than heard her tears and came up behind her.

  `Ellen...'

  Her reaction to his tentative touch took him completely by surprise. She spun around, pulled him close and buried her face against his sweatshirt in a futile attempt to suppress the powerful, shuddering sobs that welled up from her very core. His arms enfolding her were a warm, protective cocoon that allowed her to slough off her control, to shed her customary assertiveness and let her emotions follow a natural course. She cried. For how long she knew not, and cared not for this strange man seemed to be a source of unselfish strength that she could draw on.

  `Mike...' she said at length. `They killed him... They killed Thomas...'

  `I know.' His voice sounded distant and yet soothing. `You don't have to say anything.'

  `How do you know?'

  `I'll tell you later.'

  `Tell me now -- please, Mike.'

  They stood entwined, hardly moving other than Malone's gentle stroking of her hair as he explained how he had deduced what had happened. That he was actually holding this divine creature, her every contour pressed against him, the scent of her body, her hair, filling his very being made it difficult for him to concentrate on what he was saying. `As for that logo sprayed on your shop front, I racked my brains at the time as to what it could mean. I had to know because it frightened you so much and therefore it frightened me. I found the answer on my bookcase. In the Old Testament. And some digging in the library turned up that Hebrew curse. Mekhashshepheh. The Mayday shout. I've heard it said since then. Always directed at you.'

  Ellen drew away slightly and looked up at him, the first time he had seen her face since he had held her. There was wonder in her eyes. `You've known? All this time?'

  `Yes.'

  `And the curse? You've heard it since the Mayday carnival?'

  `Yes.'

  `I thought I was imagining it.'

  `I had to find out. I was worried sick about you. I still am.' Malone had other pressing worries; Ellen was still clinging to him -- her breasts a disturbing pressure. His excellent control over his mind did not always extend to his body. He tried to ease back a little but she tightened her grip. To Ellen, that this remarkable man had been sharing something with her for several months enhanced the wondrous sensation of warmth and security she was experiencing in his arms.

  `Ellen...' He traced her temple with his finger. `I've been running. Sweating. I must stink to high heaven.'

  `You smell wonderful, Mike.' Before he could reply, she pulled his head down and kissed him, and the last remnants of her grief flowed from her like an ebbing tide. Her face became alive with a knowing smile. `And you feel wonderful, too.'

  `I ought to be going... You're busy...'

  `I'd like you to stay a little longer.' Ellen underpinned her desire with another kiss, longer, her questing tongue shredding Malone's reason, her hips moving gently against him.

  `Ellen... It wouldn't be right -- especially with the state you're in.'

  `It will be perfectly all right -- especially with the state you're in.'

  Malone abandoned his rule about rarely laughing and joined in. He scooped his arm under her thighs and picked her up without any apparent effort. `I seem to remember carrying you in here like this on that night, Miss Duncan.'

  Ellen relaxed, relishing his strength. This was something David would never do for fear that she might see it as an attempt to undermine her equality. Right now she was in favour of some serious undermining. She pressed her forehead against his temple and said mischievously, `Carrying me off the street is one thing, Mr Malone. But you'd never get me up the stairs.'
>
  Malone proved her wrong.

  Chapter 30.

  NELSON FARADAY DID A good job.

  Millicent Vaughan was not at her best having been dragged from her bed at 4:00am. She finished her examination of Brad Jackson's body that had been dumped on a stretcher beside an open coffin, and dropped her stethoscope into her bag. She wrote out a death certificate, signed it, and held it out to Prescott.

  `Asphyxiation,' she said curtly. `I'll send authenticated copies when I've finished my sleep.'

  `Thank you, doctor,' said Prescott. His fingers shook slightly as he took the form. `Please invoice Government House a 100 euros for your professional services.'

  Millicent could think of nothing to say without the risk of losing her self-control. She snapped her bag shut and looked around at the macabre tableau, illuminated by the harsh glare of a single floodlight. Every detail in the quadrangle of Government House would be etched into her memory for the rest of her life. Father Kendrick, clutching his missal, staring at Prescott, his pyjama trousers showing beneath his surplice; Nelson Faraday, sitting swinging his legs, looking pleased with himself; two ashen-faced witnesses; two blackshirts lifting the body into the coffin and screwing the lid down; a third taping everything with a camcorder. Towering over them was the high platform of the scaffold that Faraday was perched on. Higher still and almost lost in the glare was the cross-beam with its rope hanging down through the open trapdoor.

  She turned and went through the doorway that led to the lobby. Prescott followed her, trailed by his bodyguards. `I'm sorry it was such short notice, Milly. But this way, doing it 24 hours early, we nip any trouble in the bud. There was to have been an all-night vigil starting this evening. It could've led to trouble.'

  Millicent made no answer. She crossed the lobby and went down the steps into the dawn-lit, silent square. A blackshirt was holding the bridle of a pony harnessed to a cart, waiting to deliver the coffin to the executed youth's parents.

  `If you need an escort home--'

  `No!' said Millicent, stopping abruptly and turning to face Prescott. For the first time she had looked at him properly and saw something she had never seen before. His face was drawn with anxiety, as though the grisly event they had just witnessed had brought home to him the nature of the irrevocable step he had taken and its likely consequences.

  `It would be wise--'

  Milly gestured contemptuously to the hovering bodyguards. `I have nothing to fear from the people of Pentworth, Mr Prescott. Either from the town or the country. And please, don't ever again call me Milly.' She turned and walked across the square, her heels echoing on the flagstones.

  Prescott watched her for a moment. He turned to enter Government House and had to step aside for the two blackshirts bringing out the coffin. They slid it onto the cart, closed the tailgate quietly, and climbed aboard -- sitting on the coffin. The driver flicked the reins and the cart set off in silence. The pony's feet were muffled with sacking and the cart's wheel rims were bound with rubber strips cut from old tyres.

  Faraday appeared with a notice. `Just pin this on the door and that's the end of the matter, sir.'

  Chapter 31.

  MALONE WAS IN the library, reading a book on the origins of morris dancing, and trying to stay awake having worked a double shift, when his senses were sharpened by the sound of a diesel engine vehicle pulling up outside and doors slamming. Books were usually delivered by cart and managed to arrive without a lot of shouting.

  Dennis Davies watched apprehensively as Malone approached his desk, thinking that the police officer had thought up some more questions in connection with Cathy Price. He had nothing to add: she had been sent on a 4th floor errand and that was the last time he had seen her alive although he had heard that she had carried out the errand. She had seemed her usual self at the time.

  `You don't normally have books delivered by truck, Mr Davies?' Malone queried, moving past the librarian and looking out of a front window.

  `No, indeed,' said Dennis, joining Malone at the window.

  Below was a battered pickup with a cargo of shotguns. Some sporting guns in smart cases but mostly they were farmers' working guns that had never seen a case since purchase. The vehicle had blackshirts guarding it while colleagues were unloading two firearms security lockers bearing Sussex Police logos.

  Deeply concerned, but not showing it, Malone went downstairs to the lobby where Nelson Faraday was holding a clipboard while checking the contents of an ammunition box. Blackshirts were carrying shotguns into the lobby and dumping them on the floor.

  `Looks like it's going to be quite a shooting party, Mr Faraday,' Malone observed. `But it's still a while to the Glorious Twelfth. Out of season pheasant pie will make a nice change. Mind if I come?'

  Faraday glanced at Malone and turned to harangue a blackshirt who was checking that a 12-bore was unloaded. `I said I wanted everyone checked before they're brought in!'

  `No point,' said Malone. `They've all been checked at the nick.'

  `I'm busy, Malone.'

  `Glad to hear it, Faraday. I wouldn't like to think of you hanging about with nothing to do.'

  Two blackshirts came through the door carrying one of the Sussex Police firearms lockers.

  `This is the one with the Sterling submachine-gun and the magazines, Mr Faraday,' a blackshirt reported.

  `One can't help wondering what Sussex police want with such a weapon,' Faraday commented.

  `It was handed in by a member of public just before the Wall appeared,' said Malone.

  Faraday ignored the police officer.

  `Let me guess,' said Malone. `Our chairman has issued a directive that the armory is to be transferred here?'

  `Perceptive of you, Mr Malone. We have better security here than you have at the police station. And as Mr Prescott is the firearms issuing officer, it makes sense to move everything here. If you will excuse me -- I'm busy.'

  Malone jogged to the police station where Russell Norris, one of the original police constables, was on duty. He showed Malone the strongroom, which had been piled high with seized and impounded weaponry -- mostly shotguns, was bare. There were craters in the walls where the steel cabinets had been jemmied free.

  `What the hell was I supposed to do, Mr Malone? They came in mob-handed with a seizure warrant signed not an hour ago by Mr Prescott. I phoned his office and they called back to say that the warrant was genuine and that I was to co-operate. I tried calling you.'

  `I'd left my radio on charge,' said Malone, his face impassive as he surveyed the stripped armoury. `Even the CS gas has gone.'

  `They were thorough,' said the morris policeman ruefully. `They've had everything away, including that Sterling. They were in and out in fifteen minutes.' He grinned and pulled a police baton from his breeches. `They didn't find this, though.'

  `I feel better already,' was Malone's droll reply.

  Chapter 32.

  ANNE TAYLOR LOOKED AT the envelope in dismay. `Oh, no.'

  Vikki paused in her task of checking the tyre pressures on her bicycle. `What's up, mum?'

  `I've a horrible feeling that this is Pentworth's first junk mail.' She peeled open the envelope carefully so that it could be reused. Its contents confirmed her fears. It was a letter from her bank. Mounted at the foot was an embossed papier mache credit card with a small print interest rate that spelt big profits. The letter said that the government were to allow 10 per cent of bank deposits, frozen when the Wall appeared, to be converted to Pentworth euros.

  `Ads on the radio, more money in circulation, and now credit cards,' she sighed. `We're going back to all the bad old ways.'

  Vikki started pumping her rear tyre. `Maybe I could become a double-glazing salesman when I leave school?'

  `I really think you should give today a miss, Vikki,' said Anne anxiously, bending the credit card back and forth while wishing that Vikki would use her left hand properly. To continue to ignore such a wonderful gift from God was wrong.

  `But i
t's Saturday, mum.'

  `You worked yesterday and the day before.'

  `I promised Miss Duncan that I'd be in everyday that she needs me now school has broken up,' Vikki replied, stowing the bicycle pump. `She's got a lot on her plate. Sarah's working all hours, and besides, the radio said that the town was quiet.'

  `I don't believe anything I hear on the radio anymore,' said Anne emphatically. `With the hanging this morning, there's bound to be trouble.' She succeeded in tearing the credit card in half.

  `A day early, mum. No one would've had time to organize anything.'

  `But a hanging... Dear God, and to think that I thought the Wall was good thing.'

  `We all know it was Brad Jackson that raped Debbie French last year,' Vikki replied, mounting the sports machine. `He had it coming to him.'

  Anne wondered what was happening to the liberalism she thought she had impressed on her daughter. `You'll be back by two?'

  `I thought I'd go and see Sarah after I'd finished. She hates being back with her mother.'

  Anne raised no objections. She had sensed that Vikki had been wanting to tell her something for several days and hadn't pushed her. Boy problems, she thought. Understandable that she'd rather confide in a close friend. `All right then, Vikki. Give Sarah my love. And bring back a fresh loaf. Yesterday's delivery was stale, and I'm out of flour. You'll need a box.' Anne went into the house and reappeared with a Tupperware container. Most goods were supplied loose and shoppers had to provide their own containers. Household refuse was now a thing of the past; and all organic waste went on compost heaps.

  Vikki crammed the box into her saddlebag.

  `Come straight home if there's the slightest sign of trouble,' said Anne worriedly.

  `I will. 'Bye, mum -- and please don't worry. I'll be okay.' She blew Anne a kiss and pedalled into the lane.

  As it happened, Radio Pentworth had been telling the truth. The town was going about its Saturday morning business although there was an impressive turnout of hard-faced blackshirts in Market Square, looking hot and uncomfortable in riot gear. A sprinkling of morris police were chatting with home and allotment growers and even helping them set up their market stalls and unload handcarts. Any likely trouble arising from the vigil outside Government House planned by the Country Brigade had been spiked by the early morning news report that Brad Jackson had been executed at 4:30am -- a day early. His distraught parents had passed a message to their supporters saying that his body had been delivered to them.