The Stonehenge Legacy

by Sam Christer

  The line goes dead. He breaks open the back of his phone and pulls out the battery and the sim card in order to discard them and the hardware separately. Without wasting time, he gets in his car and drives quickly but within the speed limit to the Sanctuary. He takes three detours en route to dispose of the phone. Each time he looks up and wonders whether he is being watched.

  54

  The Henge Master comes and goes unseen through his own entrance to the Sanctuary, one that only he knows, one disclosed in the sacred books that he inherited.

  He walks the unprotected passageway to his chamber and waits for Draco. Before long there’s a knock on the heavy door and he shouts, ‘Come.’

  Draco enters hesitantly.

  ‘Sit.’ The Master’s voice gives away his irritation at being summoned at such short notice. He gestures to the semicircle of stone benching opposite him.

  Draco adjusts his cloak as he settles. His voice is low and apologetic. ‘The girl chosen by the Sacreds turns out to be the daughter of the American Vice President. It’s on the news.’

  Shock registers on the Master’s face, then disappears. ‘That may well be, but as you just said, she has been chosen.’

  Fear glistens in Draco’s eyes. ‘Master, do we not need to distance ourselves from her? The US security services and every police officer in Britain are going to be searching for her.’

  ‘And they are more important than those we follow?’

  ‘No, Master.’

  ‘I repeat – she has been chosen. Has she not?’

  ‘Yes, Master, but—’

  ‘Enough.’ The Master’s sharp tone cuts right through him. ‘Our beliefs, our activities have gone uninterrupted by the police for centuries. Our existence has been kept secret for thousands of years. That is not due to luck. We are guided by the will of the Sacreds and that is a greater force than any police constabulary or government in existence.’

  Draco understands. ‘I am sorry. I believed caution would be prudent.’

  The Master nods. ‘You have done well to consider it and are right to alert me.’ He looks over his steepled fingers. ‘The girl is the one on the radio, Caitlyn Lock?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And her boyfriend – what of him?’

  Draco swallows. He fears the blunder could somehow be seen as his fault. ‘The boyfriend is dead. He died when he and the girl were taken by the Lookers. It was an accident.’

  The Master doesn’t look concerned. ‘Or it was the will of the Sacreds. Perhaps the male was not worthy. What of his body and the vehicle the press are speaking of?’

  ‘In a barn not far from here on land we control.’

  ‘Dispose of both, quickly.’ The Master rises from the stone seat. ‘We are done. I am expected back. Call the Inner Circle and inform them of our meeting and my wishes. The stars are aligning, the moon is changing. We go ahead as planned.’

  55

  Megan is assigned to run actions on the Campervan and report directly to Tompkins. In addition to Jimmy Dockery, she’s been given two other detective sergeants – Tina Warren and Jack Jenkins. Warren is a waster. She can tell that already. Fit to make tea, run errands and put petrol in a car. Jenkins is more promising. Newly promoted, a little green but bright.

  Megan divides the work. ‘Jack, get a statement from this friend of Caitlyn’s, the one she last spoke to. Ask her again about the vehicle. I know she didn’t get a description but ask. She may remember something.

  ‘Jim, take a team to the Fleet service station on the M3. We are looking for CCTV footage from the garage forecourt, also from the car park – it’s likely they used the toilets as well. Ask in the shops and restaurants, hand out photographs, jog memories. They probably bought something out there. Find out what – and who sold it to them. If we’re lucky, they asked for a guide map or even directions. Check with all the security. They may have images of the couple on a camera here or there. Tina, get interview teams at the services before and after Fleet. See if they stopped there.’

  They all look at her for further instructions.

  ‘Now, please. Treat this as though the girl’s life depends upon it.’

  Even before they’ve gone, Megan rings a friend in traffic and asks for a list of Campervans. While she waits, she goes online and sets up a vehicle search. There are dozens of campers: Fiat Cheyennes, Ducatos and Komets, Ford Transit Auto-Sleepers, Winnebagos, VW Transporters, Toyota Hiaces, Hymers, Bedfords, Mercs. Then she stops. Her profiling instincts kick in and she starts to think. Not about the vehicle. About the people in it. Impulsive people. Rich people. Caitlyn is hardly likely to move in the circle of paupers. Her lover will have money. He will want to impress her. Surprise her.

  None of the vans on her screen do that. She types ‘Celebrity Camper vans’ and fifty-three thousand entries appear in a third of a second. Over fifty pages of results. The one topping her lists is the VW. She hits a link: ‘VW Campervans for hire’.

  It brings a smile to her face. It’s the Mystery Machine. The van Scooby-Doo and Shaggy drove around in. She types in ‘VW Camper vans to hire in London.’ Her heart sinks. Half a million results. She browses and it turns out not to be as bad as she thought. The keyword search is too loose, it’s inaccurate – she should have written ‘Campervans’ not ‘Camper vans’. She finds a number for a VW Campervan Association and soon assembles a shortlist of dealers in the London area.

  After a couple of hours the list is even shorter. Several people hired Campervans within the last twenty-four hours but only one stands out. He paid on an Amex Gold card and his name is Jake Timberland. Her heart jumps – the way it always does when she knows she’s got her man. Before telling the DCI, she has one more call to make. One she’s dreading. Sammy is going to need looking after again.

  56

  Caitlyn can’t move. She can’t see and can’t breathe properly.

  She feels like she’s been buried, standing up. Entombed in stone. There’s barely enough room to raise her hands to her face and feel the sweat of fear pouring off her.

  ‘Jake! ’ She screams his name but knows he’s not going to answer.

  Emblazoned in her memory is an image of him slumped on the ground inside the strange stone circle. There was something about the way he didn’t move that made her feel sick. ‘Jake!’ Somehow shouting his name keeps him alive. At least in her mind.

  Her fingers feel the rough stone in front of her. They find a tiny slit and the thin stream of air that’s keeping her alive. She just hopes whoever took her captive are professionals – seasoned kidnappers who know what they’re doing and not weirdo rapists or serial killers. If it’s a pro kidnap gang, they’re after money and her life is not in danger. Well, not immediately. Soon they’ll come and clean her up, feed her, make the film, a message to her parents most likely, and the game will start. She’s been trained for this. Eric Denver has run her through it dozens of times and her father has run her through it. Even her damned mother has gone over the possibility with her that this might happen.

  She sees now that she was crazy to go with Jake. To slip out of the safety of her own security net. A bad thought hits her. One that saps what little remains of her esteem. Maybe Jake helped set her up. Perhaps he’d been thinking about it right from the first moment he met her. The alternative is almost as bad. If he wasn’t, then where is he? She knows kidnappers rarely take two hostages at a time. It’s too complicated, too much of a struggle. She feels the sickness rise again.

  ‘Jake!’ Her scream tails off into a whimper. It’s been hours since they locked her in, since anyone talked to her. Her spine is hurting. Her shoulders, the back of her head and her knees are raw from rubbing against the stone walls. And unless she’s mistaken, and she’s pretty certain she isn’t, she’s soiled herself.

  Despite the pain, the cramp and the humiliation Caitlyn keeps falling asleep. Deprived of stimulation, her crazy overactive brain simply shuts down and she drifts off, drifts to some far away place that bears no re
semblance to this dank dungeon. She is in one of those fitful dozes when the cell wall slides back and she slumps forward. Men in brown robes and balaclavas beneath their hoods catch her and lower her to the ground.

  She comes round on her back. Dizzy and glassy-eyed, staring at a high black ceiling and a huge cast-iron chandelier ringed with thick burning candles.

  Four hooded faces appear in Caitlyn’s line of vision and a low rasping voice issues a chilling instruction. ‘Strip and wash her. The ceremony goes ahead.’

  57

  For once, Megan’s ex seems happy to have Sammy for the night. He even promises home-cooked food and not a Happy Meal. A weight off the working mum’s mind.

  She returns to the Campervan case filling her desk and the Facebook photographs of Jake Timberland she tracked down by following the lead the Amex bill gave her. Things happen quick when there’s a break. Over in London a Met team has confirmed that the young Englishman isn’t at home in Marylebone, another is showing his picture to Caitlyn’s minders and a third is visiting Jake’s parents, Lord and Lady Timberland. Meanwhile, itemised mobile and landline phone records are being studied along with Switch and credit card bills. The wheels of investigation are turning fast.

  Megan places photos of Timberland and Lock side by side. They make a good couple. The press are going to go crazy on this one. There’ll be enough pressure to squash a battleship. She looks at their faces and figures the romance – if that’s what it is – must be recent. If they’d been an item for any length of time, they would already have been splashed across the gossip mags.

  Then comes a moment of doubt. Perhaps she’s got the wrong guy. Maybe there’s no connection between Jake and Caitlyn. Could be that he just happened to take a three-day minimum hire on a cornflower blue Camper on the same day she did her vanishing trick. Perhaps she’s up a hill in a Winnebago with someone else and doesn’t even know Edward Jacob Timberland exists.

  It could all be coincidence.

  Megan hates coincidences. Coincidences are God’s way of seeing if police officers can do their job. She hopes the motorway teams come back with video of the couple with the Camper that will prove there’s a link between everything.

  She looks again at Caitlyn’s photograph and then checks the girl’s Facebook page. Obviously handled by a publicist and vetted by her father. There is nothing too personal on there – just fashion, music and girly gossip. Bland stuff.

  She tries Twitter. Even more disappointing. Then she checks Jake’s Twitter account. Dating Caitlyn Lock would be the kind of thing any man would find difficult to keep quiet about. She draws a blank. There’s nothing from the last day – no hint of the journey to Wiltshire. She scrolls back twenty-four hours and feels her heart leap. Her eyes hook on a coded piece of male bragging: ‘I have a plan to win my new muse, to unlock her chains and make her mine.’

  Encouraging. Even tantalising. But not quite enough. She trawls back further and finds another gem: ‘I have met this American and I’m smitten. She is everything I dreamed of.’

  The remarks all point to him running off to Stonehenge with Caitlyn for some quality time out of view of her security. Lust makes everyone go crazy – even sons of English lords and daughters of American film stars. Come to think of it, especially them. They must have run off together. Gone off radar. Maybe even eloped.

  No. She’s getting carried away. They certainly did not get married. The Camper was hired for three days only. Off radar is right though. They must have conspired to trick the girl’s security and grab some time together.

  But something doesn’t make sense. Something she can’t quite put her finger on. Then the penny drops. Caitlyn must have planned to call in to her minder before the alarm was raised and everyone went crazy. Why didn’t she? It’s the kind of protocol her father and everyone would have drummed into her. Always call in, whatever you do, always call in. And she would have. Of course she would.

  But she hasn’t. That means something is wrong. Terribly wrong.

  58

  Fear stabs Caitlyn like a hot spike in the heart. A group of hooded men have her pinned to the floor. She’s going to be raped. She’s sure of it. Well, she’ll bite their throats out rather than let that happen.

  One grabs her left wrist, another her right. She kicks out. Feels her foot connect with soft flesh. ‘Leave me the fuck alone!’ Deep down she knows shouting and fighting is pointless but she sure as hell isn’t going to give in peacefully. ‘Get the fuck off me!’

  Unseen hands clasp her ankles. They pull open her blouse and tug down her jeans. They turn her over, unclip her bra and pull off her panties. She thrashes and screams until her throat burns and her energy is spent. She’s done. She has no more resistance.

  They’re going to take it in turns to debase her – she just knows they are.

  Someone pulls her hair and slides a hood over her head. They haul her to her feet and cuff her hands. She’s unsure what’s happening but is relieved she’s not been molested. Firm fingers grip her arms and shoulders. They push her in the back – force her to walk. Caitlyn’s heart is beating so fast she feels like she is going to die. Don’t panic. Stay calm. She mentally repeats the instructions Eric gave her. Whatever happens, you deal with it. One second at a time you deal with it – or you die.

  They walk her down dark mazy passageways, then make her step into some kind of pit. They pull the hood from her head and from the blackness above a waterfall of steaming hot water is unleashed. The shock makes her gasp for breath. She’s in some kind of step-down shower. Isn’t she?

  Then Caitlyn realises. It’s not water. It’s blood.

  They’re showering her in blood.

  59

  When Draco and Musca pull into the car park at Stonehenge, it’s crowded with staff busying themselves for the solstice. People are everywhere. Extra toilets are being set up and bins slotted on poles, ready for the avalanche of litter that will inevitably come.

  Serpens wanders away from the group he’s been supervising and slips in the back door of the Merc. Draco doesn’t even wait for him to settle. ‘We have to get rid of the Camper and the body tonight.’

  The Looker’s instinct for survival kicks in. ‘I’m not driving it. There are police on every major road.’

  ‘What about your boy?’ asks Musca. ‘Would he do it?’

  ‘Lacerta is young but not stupid. He’ll get stopped. You know he will.’

  ‘Sooner or later the police will find the vehicle,’ says Draco. ‘They are checking all roads, car parks, anywhere the dopeheads can hide. It is only a matter of time.’

  ‘What if we use the Ecstasy we found in the glovebox?’ says Musca. ‘Make it look like he and his girl overdosed.’

  Draco shakes his head. ‘You can’t just cram drugs down his throat. He won’t be able to swallow and digest, none of the chemicals will be absorbed. The autopsy will show you did it after he’d died.’

  ‘What if there’s nothing of him to autopsy?’ presses Musca. ‘We torch the van and him in it, make it look like they had an accident.’

  Draco’s interest is awakened. ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, they were tired, pulled off the road, parked up in the field for the night.’ Musca struggles to complete the picture, then adds: ‘Maybe the guy was making a cup of tea and the stove blew. The cooking gas canister went up. You should get a good explosion from one that size.’

  ‘Can you rig something like that?’

  Serpens nods. ‘It can be done. But they’ll only find the man’s body. They’ll wonder what happened to the girl.’

  Musca tries to fill in the gap. ‘They had a row. She walked off. Hitched a ride. Got dropped at the train station and is now out of the area.’ It’s the best he can manage. ‘If she’s out of the county, she’s someone else’s missing person and the police will slacken off.’

  ‘Can you deal with the body?’ Draco looks deep into Serpens’s eyes. ‘We need you to do this.’

  He feels like he doesn’t
have a choice. It was his blow that killed the guy. He wants a drink. Needs one badly. Finally he nods.

  ‘I’ll help you,’ volunteers Musca. ‘You don’t have to do this alone.’

  60

  Caitlyn opens her eyes and gasps. Blackness. She’s upright and back in the mind-numbing void that’s become her personal prison. She has no recollection of them returning her to this hell hole. She must have passed out in the shower. The shower of blood.

  Slivers of light are bleeding through what must be a panel right in front of her eyes. One that can be removed so they can see her. Feed her maybe. She realises now that it’s not the same hole as she was in. It’s slightly different. The space is bigger. Not much, but still bigger.

  Gradually she notices other differences. The handcuffs are gone. She can lift her arms from her sides. She feels the walls that enclose her. Stone to the front, the sides and the back. She is certainly in another crevice, no change there. She stretches her arms as wide as she can. Probably less than a metre. She can’t raise her hands beyond her elbows.

  There’s something touching the back of her legs, at knee-level. A ledge? She tries to sit and finds it takes her weight. It feels like a blessing. She’s still barefoot but has been dressed in some sort of robe with a hood. She moves her head, shoulders and hips, lets the fabric rub against her. It’s rough. Feels like sandpaper against her breasts.

  She starts to piece together the missing parts of the night before. They stripped her of her clothes. Showered her in blood. Dressed her in their robes. Words come back too. There weren’t many to analyse. But one was enough.

  Ceremony.

  That’s what someone had said. ‘The ceremony goes ahead.’

  But what kind of ceremony? And what in God’s name are they going to do to her?