by Sam Christer
Lee tenses. The wave of shock hits him. He fights not to scream. A blast of adrenalin overwhelms the pain. He feels a hot scratch that becomes a burn, then an ache as the mutilation progresses across his body.
The bleeding lines of flesh create a star shape beneath the eyes of those looking on. They’ve endured the same ritual, the same naked humiliation. They know the pain that he is about to endure.
The Henge Master kneels. From beneath his cloak he recovers the ceremonial hammer. He puts the stone blade to the initiate’s skull.
‘With the blood we shed for you, we add the flesh and bone that proves our loyalty and devotion.’
The Henge Master swings the heavy hammer and sees it connect with the knife’s butt. The blade slices free a piece of scalp and skull.
Now he screams.
Darkness grabs him and holds him tight.
By the time Lee Johns recovers consciousness, the Great Room is empty. He lies where he was, still tied, face down. The marble block has once more sealed the chamber. He knows his fate.
35
FRIDAY 18 JUNE
It’s a cloudless morning, the start of what weathermen predict will be the warmest day of the year so far. Megan smothers Sammy in factor-thirty, puts the tube in her lunch bag, drives her to nursery.
She’s keen to get to work and draw up an offender profile of the burglar at Tollard Royal. The trip there yesterday provided a rich source of psychological clues – most based on the physical evidence Rob Featherby and the Shaftesbury crime team had gathered from the scene.
The first thing she does when she reaches her desk is review the evidence list: (1) Bag of tools discovered near back wall of garden. (2) Blood found on broken glass of greenhouse. (3) Small piece of cloth found on wild rose bushes. (4) Disposable cigarette lighter recovered from ground near molehills. (5) Footprints taken from soil beds, lawn and house.
Megan takes it in reverse order. The footprints are a size-ten trainer, brand to be determined. That’s a full size larger than the average UK male, giving an indication – though no guarantee – that the owner is above the average male height of five feet nine inches. She guesses he’s around five-eleven. There’s also the indentation in the soil beds. In several places he’d been on the flat of his feet, as well as on his heels. These were deep impressions, signs of slipping or being off balance. Likely he was having difficulty because of how dark it was. Or maybe he was carrying a little too much weight to make a perfectly agile burglar. At five-eleven the average male weighs about thirteen stone. She hedges her bets and puts the intruder at around thirteen and a half. That kind of weight and height mean he’ll probably have a forty-two-inch chest and thirty-six or thirty-seven-inch waist. The size is important because he may well have thrown away the clothes or even given them to a charity shop as many offenders do.
Megan considers the disposable lighter. Highly likely it’s the one the man had. She has got to trust Gideon Chase’s vision on this point at least. No mileage in not doing so. It’s a multicoloured Christmas edition BIC. Given it’s now June, it might indicate that the guy is only an occasional smoker. Or it could be that he bought it in a multipack, these things often come in threes. That would make him more regular. She hopes his fingerprints are on it. Even if he used gloves in the house, the wheel and other parts of it could produce latents.
Third on the list is a small piece of fabric recovered from the rose climber. It’s 100 per cent black cotton but according to PC Featherby, forensics got excited because the colour is so strong. They believe it’s new or at worst has been washed only a couple of times. Megan’s more cautious. It could have been bought months ago and left in a drawer. Still, there was a good chance of tracing the owner if it had been bought new.
The blood on the greenhouse is being analysed, but already she knows from the lab that it’s Rh (D) O+, the same as almost forty per cent of the country. Tox tests may provide clues to drug addiction or undue alcohol consumption.
She takes a hungry chew of an energy bar and wonders what it’s supposed to taste of. She guesses chalk and soot. Amazingly the label purports it to be Chocolatey Bliss. She wolfs it and moves on to consider the most impressive of the physical finds. The bag of tools.
Megan has seen several burglary kits in her time. Usually they contain glass breakers, tape and lightweight blankets to help get through windows without too much noise or injury. Often there are extra sacks in which to stow stolen goods and spare surgical gloves to prevent fingerprints. Heavier mobs bring along bolt-cutters, lump hammers and steel chisels to get through safes. Some carry blow torches and even plastic explosives.
Not this guy. He brought a crowbar, screwdrivers, a lump hammer, some kind of metal spike with a handle on it, duct tape and a lethal-looking axe. It confirms her suspicions that he’s not a professional. It also tells her that he probably didn’t have long to plan for the job, he just grabbed what he had in his tool shed or garage.
She wonders what the urgency was. Why move so quickly, so recklessly? Because someone had told him to? Forced him to? The absence of other bags indicates that he didn’t go with the intention of stealing multiple items. He was after one or maybe two specific things.
She looks again at the photographs Rob Featherby gave her. The axe is the most interesting. It’s not for chopping wood, that’s for sure. It looks like an expensive piece of kitchen equipment. She can’t tell without seeing it for real but it could be a boning cleaver. Maybe the guy works in a kitchen.
She turns her thoughts to how he escaped. Greenhouse racking was found up against a back wall that led to a scrub of public land and then a B-road. The thick overgrown grass had been trampled. Mud in the road showed several sets of tyre tracks. It all means he had good local knowledge. He knew where to park out of sight and was comfortable that the road didn’t have a high volume of passing traffic.
Megan nails him down as ex-military, moderately intelligent, not university material. A mixed offender: one who showed signs of organisation and planning but also a serious lack of ability to carry them through. She summarises the profile:
White male.
30–45.
Manual worker – possibly in catering business, local pub, restaurant.
Former armed services, probably army, lower rank.
Lives locally.
Drives car or van.
5 ft 11 inches.
13½–14 stone.
42-inch chest min.
36-inch waist min.
No previous criminal record.
Megan hesitates before adding another line, a final word: ‘Ruthless.’
She’s sure the offender isn’t a regular burglar or robber, but he didn’t hesitate to choke a policeman unconscious and left Gideon Chase to die in a fire.
Whoever he is, he’ll kill rather than be caught.
36
TOLLARD ROYAL
The screech of wild geese wakes Gideon.
He’s groggy and his whole body aches as he makes his way to the bathroom. Through a window he watches four of the birds fighting for territory around the garden’s small lake. Flapping and flying at each other in full beak-to-beak combat. After an ear-piercing cry, the loser and its mate flutter away low over the surrounding fields.
He investigates the old showerhead over the rust-stained enamel bath. It is coked up with limescale, yet although the pipes cough and wheeze, it runs surprisingly fast. No shampoo, but there is a bar of soap on the sink. He takes it, climbs into the tub and pulls the flimsy plastic curtain around him to catch the erratic spray.
The hot water feels good. It eases some of the tension in his shoulders as he remembers what he’d discovered in the journals he’d read late last night.
Thirteen months after the death of his mother, his father joined the Followers of the Sacreds. At first Gideon thought this was some kind of local historic society. Only it wasn’t. It turned out to be something very different. He reasoned his father took some desperate spiritual comfort from th
e stones, much in the way that many grieving people do from the church. Nathaniel called them ‘Sacreds’ and came to regard each rock as a touchstone, a source of help. His writings detailed how one stone could give spiritual renewal and banish depression, while another could provide physical strength and resilience. And there were others.
Gideon’s amused at the thought of Stonehenge as some kind of magical aromatherapy circle. Who’d have thought that his much-published brilliant father would have believed such a thing? Marie’s death must have driven him off the rails. That would explain things.
The hot water suddenly runs cold. He clambers out of the tub and grabs a hard grey towel. He dries and puts his old clothes back on. They smell of smoke from the fire but he can’t bring himself to go through his dead father’s wardrobes and drawers, not even for underwear.
Downstairs, he finds an opened box of Bran Flakes but no milk. He pours a handful into a cup and dry chews his way through them while looking out the kitchen window. Several pheasants strut by as though they own the place, glancing at him as they go about their business. He finishes the meagre breakfast, grabs a glass of tap water and takes it back upstairs.
Books are strewn all over the place but he’s in no mood to tidy. All he wants to do is read. Devour the text until he can make some sense of it all. He picks up last night’s final volume and follows the decoded notes he made in pencil above his father’s writing:
The ways of the Craft are wonderfully simple. Divinely pure. Our ancestors were right. There is not one single god. There are many. No wonder the leaders and followers of every religion fervently believe that they alone have discovered the Messiah. They have merely discovered one Messiah. They have stumbled upon spiritual trace evidence of the Sacreds – of lives the Sacreds have touched – of gifts they have given.
It is a shame that these followers pray so indiscriminately to their particular gods. If only they knew their deity was capable of delivering a single specific blessing alone. Man’s desire to monopolise religion has closed his mind to its multifarious benevolence.
Gideon tries to stay open-minded. Evidently, his father believed that the stones were vessels. Houses for the Gods. Was it so mad? Billions of people have believed similar things: that gods live in their places of worship, that they hover mysteriously in golden tabernacles on high altars, or that they can be conjured up by ritualised gestures or mass prayers. He guesses his father’s beliefs are no more ridiculous.
He looks down at the book in his hands and the dark ink from his father’s pen. The page has physically absorbed the man’s inner thoughts. Even decades after they were written, the words convey something that he can’t quite grasp – an emotional contact with his father. It’s almost like he’s touching him.
Gideon wonders if that’s what happens when you touch the stones? Do you absorb thoughts and feelings, wisdom, from people who lived long before you – the wisest of the ancients – people so great that they were considered to be gods?
Only now when the notion of the Sacreds doesn’t seem so insane, does he return to the words that troubled him.
ΨΝΚΚΦ.
Blood.
ΖΩΧΗΠΤΠΧΥ
Sacrifice.
Only now does he dare read the entry in full:
The Sacreds need renewal. It needs to be constant or else their decay and decline will be accelerated. The evidence is already there. How foolish it is to think that we may draw from them but not replenish them. The divinities are rooted in the blood and bone of our ancestors. They gave themselves for us. And we must give ourselves to them.
There must be sacrifice. There must be blood. Blood for the sake of future generations, for the sake of all, and especially that of my darling son.
Gideon’s shocked to see himself mentioned. But not as shocked as when he reads on:
I will willingly give my own blood, my own life. I only hope it is worthy. Worthy enough to change things. To alter the fate that I know awaits my poor, motherless son.
37
‘Have you found my missing person, yet?’ DCI Jude Tompkins bowls the question down the corridor to Megan Baker, who is skittled while carrying a cup of tea from the pantry area back to her desk.
‘No ma’am. Not yet.’
‘But you’re doing it, right? You’ve been through the file I gave you and you have some leads?’ She gestures grandly in the air. ‘And I’m absolutely sure that you’ve also already contacted his family and got your hands on at least one photograph.’
Megan ignores the sarcasm. ‘Ma’am, I’m still working the Nathaniel Chase case.’
‘I know. I’m not Alzheimic. I recall with total clarity that you’re also working the missing person case I gave you – so work it.’ She gives a caustic stare and veers off towards her own office.
Megan curses. She walks to her desk, slops hot tea from the flimsy plastic cup on to her fingers, and curses again. She wipes her hands on a tissue and flips open the MP file her boss dumped on her. She’d been hoping to sub-dump it on Jimmy Dockery but he’s gone AWOL.
She reads through the summary: the twin sister of some twenty-five-year-old bum called Tony Naylor has reported him missing. Several times by the look of things. Naylor is unemployed, has an alcohol dependency problem and appears to make a bit of cash-in-hand labouring on building sites.
He’s a typical drifter, the hand-to-mouth kind. No mum and dad. No fixed abode. Just wanders around drawing benefits and working on the quiet. A ghost in the machine. She reads on. The only regular contact he seems to have is with the sister, Nathalie. He calls her – reverse charge – once a week.
Megan looks for a number, dials it and lets it ring.
‘Hello.’ The voice is hesitant.
‘Miss Naylor?’
‘Who is it?’
‘This is DI Baker from Wiltshire Police. I’m following up on reports you made about your missing brother.’
‘Have you found him?’
‘I’m afraid not. That’s not why I’m calling. Do you have a few minutes to talk?’
The young woman lets out a frustrated sigh. ‘I’ve already gone through everything. I’ve given all the details to the policemen at my local station. Why don’t you talk to them?’
‘I’m from CID, Miss Naylor, you spoke to uniformed officers.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She seems to understand the distinction. ‘All right then. What do you want to know?’
‘When did you last talk to him?’
‘Three weeks ago.’
Megan checks her notes. ‘I’m told he usually rings you every week.’
Nathalie corrects her. ‘Not usually. Always. He never forgets to ring me.’
‘Do you know where he was and what he was doing work-wise when he last called you?’
Nathalie hesitates. ‘Listen, I don’t want to get Tony in trouble. Can I tell you something without it affecting his benefits?’
Megan knows better than to make deals. ‘Miss Naylor, you called us because you were worried. I can’t help find your brother unless you’re honest with me.’
There’s a pause, then Nathalie opens up: ‘When I last spoke to him he said he’d been in Swindon. Helping out some Paddies, I think. Digging and cementing and such like. He said it was a job somewhere over near Stonehenge. He fancied going, he said, because he’d never seen the place.’
‘And you’ve heard nothing since?’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘Any names for these Irish guys?’
‘No. He talked about a Mick, but I’m not sure if he meant Mick as in Michael or as in the Micks, you know, the Irish.’
‘And you don’t have any contact numbers for him?’
‘None other than his mobile and that’s dead. Sorry.’
Megan moves on. ‘The last time you spoke, did you and he argue about anything?’
‘No!’ She sounds almost offended.
‘Miss Naylor, if there is any bad blood, recent or previous, between you and your brother, I ne
ed to know.’
The sister gives an ironic laugh. ‘Tony and me are like chalk and cheese but we never fall out. We’ve never had a cross word in our lives.’
Megan sees no reason why she should lie. ‘Okay. Does he have any other friends, particularly any lady friends that you know of?’
‘No, no special ones. He’s a bit of a lad, given the chance, but …’ she dries up. ‘Put it this way, Tony isn’t the kind of guy that a woman wants to spend a lot of time with.’
‘Why’s that?’
She blows out a long breath. ‘Where to start? He’s not so hot on his hygiene. A shower once a week is more than enough for our Tony. And he’s not romantic. Tony probably can’t even spell romantic.’
Megan finishes writing. ‘If I send a PC round, could you give him some photographs, recent ones of Tony?’
She thinks for a minute. ‘Latest I’ve got is one of them passport ones, you know, the type you have done at the train station.’
‘How old is it?’
‘About five years. It wasn’t even for a passport, we was just messing about after a few drinks. I made him have his picture taken with me.’
‘Should be fine. You give it to the bobby I send round and I’ll start chasing things up and we’ll see if we can find him. All right?’
‘Yeah. Thanks.’
Megan hangs up and finishes the last of her tea. She has a bad feeling about Tony Naylor. His sister was his only anchor and without a falling out, there’s no reason why he’d set himself adrift. Which means he’s going to be easy to find.
He’s either in jail, or in the morgue.
38
It’s a fifteen-minute drive from Tollard Royal to Shaftesbury. But Gideon Chase makes the journey last twice as long. He checks and rechecks the map and goes at a snail’s pace in Ashmore and East Melbury.