Corn Dolls

by K. T. Galloway

  “What’s going on?” Annie asked Tink, her mind racing overtime.

  “Gary Donald was one of the children taken by Theobald.”

  “The organ trafficker?”

  Tink nodded slowly. “The organ trafficker.”

  Twenty-Four

  Saturday Night.

  Annie’s calves were screaming, but she couldn’t move. In fact, no one in her team had moved for the last ten minutes and the tension in the air was palpable. Swift had yet again given her the opt out of the evening’s stakeout but she felt like the end was so close she could taste it, but it wasn’t going to be the taste she expected. There was no way Annie was missing this part. Though, after nearly two hours of a stakeout in the dark, where nothing had happened except Tink having to escape behind a hedge for a wee, she was almost regretting her decision. Then the leaders had started to arrive. She was now squatting down behind the dusty window at the back of the barn, fearful of moving because the barn was filling up and the corn was noisy.

  Swift crouched beside her, his back against the wooden frame. She wasn’t one hundred percent sure that what they were doing was by the book; their team was too small to take down the entire church if the girls were brought here. How were the four of them going to get the three girls out? But Annie figured that Swift had a back-up plan. One that she hadn’t been able to talk to him about because they’d been in with Grey Donovan all afternoon. Or rather, Gary Donald if his DNA was anything to go by.

  “You okay?” Swift mouthed at Annie.

  She screwed up her face then pointed at her legs, curled under her like pipe cleaners.

  “Rookie,” Swift mouthed, holding out his hand so Annie could use it as leverage.

  She slowly unfurled, the blood rushing back to her feet and cramping the entire length of both legs.

  “Ow,” she mouthed back to Swift, who was quite obviously biting back a laugh, before his head flicked towards the barn window, his face now serious.

  He held a finger up to his lips as the lights in the barn dimmed and started moving. They’d lit the candles. Through the gap in the dusty window, Annie could see a flickering now, as though she was looking through a zoetrope. The men moved in stuttered steps; their arms held skywards like the Angel herself. Annie shuddered, her skin twitching with nerves. There must have been ten leaders in the barn, all of them male, all of them dressed from head to toe in white robes. It was like something out of a movie; one that Annie wouldn’t watch because she lived on her own and wasn’t a fan of nightmares.

  Though the wooden slats she could hear a kind of chanting start up; low, rhythmic, steady. It sent her already jelly legs into a state of catatonic fear.

  “What the fuck?” she mouthed to Swift when he removed his gaze from the window.

  Weird,” he mouthed back.

  He touched his earpiece and whispered, “No sign of Amadeus, yet. Keep me updated.”

  The rest of the team were camped out at the entrance to the track leading to the barn. They had eyes on the road, and they had a warm car to sit in. Not that Annie was cold, far from it, the shivers she had weren’t due to the weather.

  The chanting grew louder and more forceful. All the doubts Annie had about the leaders sacrificing the missing girls flew right out of the window. If they could stand around inside a derelict barn and chant to goodness knows what deity, then a little bit of bloodletting wasn’t going make them bat an eyelid. Swift tapped her shoulder and they moved silently around the side of the building, still under cover of the corn as well as the new moon. They stopped under the window of the side room, the one with the altar and the blood-covered tablet. Swift peered carefully over the sill and ducked quickly back down.

  “They’ve moved into here,” he mouthed.

  Annie dragged herself to the windowsill and peeked in. The men were all gathered around the altar, a semi-circle of white cloth swaying to and fro. She could see the back of Peter Johnson’s head, and a bald patch which she recognised as belonging to Richard Able.

  “Jeez,” she mouthed, ducking back down and leaning her back against the side of the barn.

  “There’s something fucked up going on in there right now,” Swift said, upgrading to a whisper.

  He tapped the side of his head and Annie thought he was indicating how crazy they all were, but as his eyes widened, she realised he was listening to the team in his ear.

  “He’s here,” he hissed at Annie. “Amadeus has just pulled onto the track. The windows of his car are blacked out, but Tink said there’s definitely someone in the back.”

  This was it. Annie’s whole body fizzed with nerves. She heard the crunching of tyres over the gritty track and the ticking over of the engine as Amadeus pulled to a stop. Annie and Swift stared at each other, their eyes not wavering as she counted not one, not two, but three car doors open and close. Amadeus almost had a car full. With three girls in the back that would make sense. Swift breathed into his hand as he whispered something to the team.

  “Stay close,” he whispered to Annie, unwarranted, as there was no way she was leaving his side now.

  Both of them lifted their heads up to peer into the window. Annie could kneel on the scratchy floor of the field and be at a perfect height. Swift crouched slightly so the top of his head wasn’t so prominent. Luckily there was no light behind them, and the window was dirty enough to cover their faces from the inside. But, as Annie watched the men swaying more violently now, she didn’t think they’d even notice her if she knocked on the glass and read them their rights anyway. They seemed to be in a sort of trance. Hypnotised by the chants and the candlelight and the smell of some sort of joss stick that was wafting out into the night.

  She watched as Amadeus entered the room. His body lit up like a deity himself as he passed through the door between the well-lit large room and the sacrificial room. Dressed in a slick black suit, he was mafia-esque, the complete opposite to the white-robed leaders. Annie held her breath as the chanting silenced; all eyes turned to Amadeus as he raised his hands in a salute.

  “Angels of the Waters,” Amadeus’s voice boomed out through the walls of the barn. “Welcome.”

  A loud cheer rang through the group of men. Annie could see movement in the barn behind Amadeus but she couldn’t quite see who was there, it was just shadows.

  “This is a special night for us,” Amadeus continued, not moving from the doorway. “A celebration of our birth. A remembrance of the night the Angel rose from the waters of the Broads and greeted us like family. We celebrate not only the original Angels, but all the new Angels who have joined our congregation since.”

  Another cheer rang out. Amadeus’s face twisted into a grin that turned Annie’s stomach.

  “And as such,” Amadeus continued. “I have a very special treat for you all tonight.”

  No cheer this time, just a silence that swept over the crowd. Amadeus stepped back.

  This was it. The moment Annie and Swift had been waiting for. The moment that Grey Donovan, or Gary Donald, had told them to be prepared for. Swift grabbed Annie’s hand and squeezed it so hard that her knuckles ground together. She was too on edge to notice the pain.

  “Leaders of the Angels,” Amadeus cried, stepping forward, a hand in each of his as he led two naked women into the fold. “Welcome to your newest recruits.”

  “What?” Swift barked, forgetting himself for a moment. “Who are they? Where are the kids?”

  Annie couldn’t speak, she was too busy watching the robed men close in on these two unsuspecting women like coyotes. But as the women broke free of Amadeus’s grip they didn’t cower like Annie would have done, butt naked in a room full of strangers. They started to dance, gyrating like pole dancers without their poles.

  “These aren’t new recruits, Swift,” Annie said, prodding the DI in the back as he hissed into his earpiece for the team to check the car.

  “What?” Swift said, spinning on his haunches.

  “They’re not new recruits,” she repeat
ed. “Look at them. They’re quite obviously comfortable enough to dance naked around a bunch of drooling men. I’d bet my life savings—which are pretty non-existent, but even if they weren’t—that they’re strippers or prostitutes.”

  “This makes no sense,” Swift said, running his hands through his hair. “I was so sure that Amadeus had those kids. Where the hell are they?”

  Annie turned back to the window and watched the men losing it over the sight of the women. The chanting had been replaced by some sort of dance music, a tape recorder in the corner of the room belting out a heady bass as one of the women climbed on top of the plinth and started pouring red wine all over herself. The other, obviously spurred on by her friend, dipped her finger in the wine and started drawing a symbol on her impossibly flat stomach. It was the five-pointed star surrounded by a circle, only it looked different. Annie’s brain whirred.

  Why is it different? Is it just because it’s dripping off the skin of a dancer?

  She scanned the room, her eyes darting past the white robes that were quickly being disbanded.

  “Swift,” she whispered, frantically. “It’s Amadeus. He’s not in there anymore.”

  “What?” Swift’s head popped up to join hers, his breath hot on the side of her face. “Where’s he gone?”

  Swift ducked down and crunched his way around the building to the window of the main room. Annie followed close behind. The adrenaline was slowly seeping out of her body now, and she was starting to ache all over; the night air pinched around her hands. They both looked through the clean patch they’d made in the glass and saw Amadeus in the main room with another man Annie didn’t recognise. As they shook hands, she saw a pile of taped-up bundles at the door, ready to be lifted from the barn.

  “Are you seeing that?” she asked Swift.

  “Yep.” He held his hand to his ear. “Alert the drugs squad, they’re going to want to get here ASAP.”

  “This was never about those girls, that’s what Grey was saying,” Annie whispered. “This was always going to be about drugs.”

  “So where the hell are those girls?”

  “Shit, Swift?” Annie’s brain finally clicked all the pieces that had been annoying her into place. “Satanism. That’s it, it’s not Satanism, it’s Wiccan.”

  Swift’s eyebrows knitted together.

  “What?” he said. “What are you on about?”

  “The symbols, I’ve been reading them all wrong!” She smacked her hand onto her forehead. “Swift, I need to see those symbols from Orla’s bedroom again, and the ones from Jodie Carter. I think we might have this all wrong.”

  “Shit,” Swift said, as he shifted on his knees and looked at Annie. ‘What have I done?”

  The sirens broke their gaze, cutting through the quiet night like a foghorn. Annie watched as Amadeus pushed the other man out of the way and hurtled out of the barn. He didn’t get far. Swift and Annie raced to the front of the barn just in time to see him thrown to the floor by a uniformed officer.

  “Get Tink and Page to Tammy Carter’s house and drive me to Katie’s!” she shouted to Swift.

  Twenty-Five

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Annie said, tapping away at Google on her phone as the 4x4 raced down the country lanes. “I was focusing too much on the ritualistic meaning of the symbols. My brain automatically flew to the Satanical, weird ideologies.”

  “You weren’t the only one,” Swift laughed ironically.

  “But I think that’s the point,” Annie continued. “I think we were led down that path by someone who was very cleverly hiding behind the Angels of the Water.”

  They pulled up outside the block of flats where Katie Green lived. Swift cut the engine and swivelled in his seat.

  “Tell me why we’re here before we go in, O’Malley,” he said, hitching a leg up underneath him.

  “Something hasn’t felt right since the first abduction,” Annie said, feeling her way with the words, because her brain kept scrambling them when she tried to formulate them silently. “I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew there was something.”

  “Good old gut instinct,” Swift smiled. “You were built to be a copper.”

  “Maybe,” Annie quickly batted away the idea. “It was as though we were being pointed in the direction of the Angels of the Water. A great ruse, as now we know they probably had nothing to do with the girls going missing.”

  “Yeah,” Swift said, biting the inside of his cheek.

  “But why? Why were we led down that path?” Annie continued. “It was something Maggie said on the very first visit we made to her that sparked my initial doubts.”

  “Go on.”

  “Do you remember when she denied knowing the Angels when we showed her the leaflet?”

  Swift nodded.

  “But then she agreed with her advocate’s views on how they were heathens?” Annie said, wide-eyed.

  Swift nodded again.

  “I wondered why she though they were heathens if she’d never really heard of them. She’s not religious at all. Why would she be praying for someone’s soul?”

  Swift creased his forehead. “And that made you suspect her?”

  “No! But all of the mothers we’ve seen have been on the wrong side of neglectful to their daughters, don’t you think? Tammy leaves Jodie to fend for herself while she has a lie-in. Mrs Green leaves Katie outside the shop while she’s in there buying alcohol. Maggie, well Maggie seems different, she’s not neglectful as such, but Orla’s dad was, and the house is in a state. Then it was something you said,” Annie garbled. “Do you remember?”

  “You’re going to have to narrow it down a bit, Annie,” Swift said, his eyes darting between hers. “I’ve said a lot of things to you since you joined the team on Monday. God, was it really only Monday?”

  “About Grey, Gary, Grey, whatever his name is,” she said, gesticulating wildly. “He took Katie out to the coast, didn’t he? And you said he probably did it to give her a jolly! Get some ice-cream, have some fun. Except as he’s not actually Grey, he’s Gary — a child who was kidnapped at a young age and probably didn’t know fun from that moment on.”

  Swift gathered up Annie’s hands in his and guided them down to her lap.

  “Breathe, O’Malley,” he said. “I get it, I’m the same when I make a breakthrough, there’s no better feeling. Except maybe arresting the perp. But you have to remember to breathe. Especially when I have no idea what you’re about to say and the whole case could rest on you being able to get out a coherent sentence!”

  Annie took a deep breath, trying not to think about Swift’s strong hands gripped around her own sweaty little paws. “I think I know who’s got the girls. My brain couldn’t put all the pieces together until just then, at the barn. When the naked woman was painting a symbol on her stomach with red wine.”

  “What?” Swift said. “I must have missed that; I was too busy watching the leaders try to catch the wine falling off the other one with their mouths. What a night!”

  Annie raised an eyebrow.

  “Right, sorry,” Swift added. “Looked awful, really boring.”

  “Focus, Swift!” Annie said, shaking her head but with a smile on her lips. “The symbol, it was a circle with a five-pointed star enclosed inside.”

  “Like the one we saw in Orla’s bedroom?”

  “Right.” Annie said. “Only it wasn’t the symbol we saw in Orla’s bedroom.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Swift said. “I’m pretty sure it was a circle with a star inside.”

  Annie peeled her hands away from Swift’s and looked around the car for a pen and paper. She grabbed a receipt from the glovebox and a pen from the centre console and started to draw. Two circles, as circular as she could get them with nothing to lean on. Inside each circle she drew a five-pointed star. The first one had a point of the star at the top of the circle, in the second, the point faced downwards.

  “Look,” she said, shoving the receipt in Swift's hand. “This one, where th
e point is upwards, is the sign of the Wiccan. A positive symbol, a sign of—,”

  She grabbed her phone and read from the screen. “A symbol of five elements; spirit, water, earth, fire, and air. It’s associated with earth; a grounding stabilising element that can bring peace and comfort.”

  She looked up at Swift.

  “And this?” He pointed at the second picture.

  “This one is inverted,” Annie said, almost shouting, turning again to her phone. “It can be a symbol of evil. Some believe that it attracts sinister forces because it overturns the proper order of things.”

  She put her phone down and turned once again to Swift, who was studying the pictures, his eyes wide.

  “I automatically assumed, because a child had been taken, that we were looking at the inverted pentangle meaning. But,” Annie said, hammering her finger down onto the first picture she drew. “But this is the symbol that we saw in Orla’s bedroom. The Wiccan symbol of faith. And the triquetra, I thought it meant the three beings; father, son, holy spirit. But if the five-pointed star is pagan, then the triquetra could be intended to symbolise the life-cycle of the woman. And this all makes sense now!”

  “To you maybe!” Swift huffed.

  “Don’t you see?” Annie added, breathless. “The corn doll wasn’t a warning, it was a protective talisman, a symbol of fertility. God, I’m so stupid.”

  “So, what does this mean?” Swift asked, leaning in. “And why are we here?”

  Mrs Green had taken on the hollow look of the two other grieving mothers Annie had seen that week. It was a sort of lost look, perhaps worse than grief, as they were stuck in the hellish limbo of not knowing where their child was or if she was safe. Annie knew that people often filled in gaps in information with worse case scenarios, but in this case, maybe they were right to.

  “Mrs Green,” Annie said, sitting on the edge of the sofa. “When we were last here you touched on the fact that you knew Grey Donovan, that he was your drug dealer, is this right?”