Death Rites

by Wendy Cartmell

  He wished she’d go and live with the oldies. Make their house her home. But no, she’d rather stay with him, so she could wind him up night after night. His home had become a silent battle ground and he wasn’t prepared to put up with it anymore. He realised that he felt that she was nothing more than an annoying guest in his house and what was more, she was so bloody maddening.

  He wondered if he could formally cursed her, like their founder Anton LaVey had, against a man called Sam Brody, in response to Brody’s jealous threats and attempts to discredit him.

  But then he also remembered that LaVey’s girlfriend, the late, great, Jane Mansfield, had been inadvertently killed in a car crash along with the cursed Sam Brody. For on the night of Mansfield’s death, LaVey had been clipping a Church of Satan news item from the German magazine, Bild-Zeitung. When he turned the item over to paste it into the press book, LaVey was shocked to see he had inadvertently cut into a photo of Jayne on the opposite side of the page, right across her neck. Fifteen minutes later, a reporter from the New Orleans Associated Press bureau called Anton to get his reaction to a tragic accident. Jayne Mansfield had been practically decapitated when she was thrown through the windshield of the car that she and Brody had been travelling in.

  So maybe Bullock needed to heed such a lesson. He best be careful who he cursed. He wouldn’t want a curse on Enid to inadvertently ruin anyone else’s life.

  But as she continued to prattle away, not caring whether he was taking any notice of her, he just wanted to shut her up. Needed to shut her up. His head hurt and he was sweating and his fists were clenching and unclenching. But the bloody bitch was oblivious to him and his problems, she was still going on and on about her sodding parents, and before he knew it he’d pushed her up against the sink where she was washing up, pinning her there with his weight as he leaned against her back. Then his hands were around her throat, throttling her, choking the life out of her, shutting her up for ever.

  And it felt so bloody good.

  40

  The next morning Crane eagerly awaited Anderson’s arrival and when he heard the car horn from the car, he opened the door and stood on the front step, gesticulating wildly at his friend.

  “Where’s the fire?” Anderson shouted through the open car window. “What’s the matter? Not ready yet?”

  “I’m fine thanks. I just wanted to talk to you before we go to the office.”

  “Oh, okay, I hope you’ve got some coffee on then?”

  “Sure, come through to the kitchen.”

  As Anderson sat, Crane asked him how the enquiries with the Housing Association about Clay Underwood had gone.

  “Nothing doing,” said Anderson, slipping off his raincoat and sitting at the kitchen table. “They won’t play ball. Some officious do-goody said we needed a warrant before they’d even see if they’ve a forwarding address for him.”

  “Will you get one?” Crane said as he put the coffee on the table between them.

  “No, everything we’ve got on him is circumstantial. Realistically all we have is that he wanted a particular tattoo. That doesn’t mean much does it?”

  “No, our best bet is to find him.”

  Anderson said, “But how? The only thing we can do is put his face out to the patrol cars and the neighbourhood police and hope someone sees him.”

  “Well,” said Crane. “While we’re waiting, I’ve done some more research on the Satanic Church. You remember, you asked me to research it at home, in my own time?”

  “How is that going to help?” Anderson grumbled, not appearing convinced.

  “I think it will help profile who we are looking for. I think we’re looking for a Satanic Grotto.”

  “You what?”

  “In the Church of Satan, each local cabal is called a Grotto, which reinforces the hidden and mysterious aspect of the Church of Satan. Grottos are designed to exist organically, solely to serve the specialized interests of a particular association of local members. Chartered Grotto Masters regularly report their activities to Central Office, which by the way is in America and their charters are subject to yearly renewal.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “If only I was. I’ve also found out the rules they live by, you know a bit like the 10 commandments, only they’ve got eleven.”

  Anderson grinned, “That figures.”

  Crane shared the humour, but then pushed a piece of paper across the table to Derek. “Here they are.”

  The paper was a print-out from Crane’s computer.

  The Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth.

  Do not give opinions or advice unless you are asked.

  Do not tell your troubles to others unless you are sure they want to hear them.

  When in another's lair, show them respect or else do not go there.

  If a guest in your lair annoys you, treat them cruelly and without mercy.

  Do not make sexual advances unless you are given the mating signal.

  Do not take that which does not belong to you, unless it is a burden to the other person and they cry out to be relieved.

  Acknowledge the power of magic if you have employed it successfully to obtain your desires. If you deny the power of magic after having called upon it with success, you will lose all you have obtained.

  Do not complain about anything to which you need not subject yourself.

  Do not harm little children.

  Do not kill non-human animals unless you are attacked or for your food.

  When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask them to stop. If they do not stop, destroy them.

  “Bloody hell,” said Anderson. “I’m not sure what to make of those.”

  “Well, what I find most interesting is the one that says do not harm little children.”

  “Why?” Anderson peered at the paper again.

  “Well the children haven’t really been harmed have they?”

  “Come again?” said Anderson.

  “Well, they have not been sexually abused, bruised, or broken in any way. Just used for something, some sort of ritual probably. They’ve terrified them, yes, but not harmed them.”

  “What about the dead kid then?”

  “I think that may have been an accident,” Crane said. “Now all I’ve got to do is to find this branch of the Satanic Church and the members, to prove my theory.”

  “No problem, then. Case solved.”

  “Your sarcasm isn’t appreciated,” snapped Crane.

  “Well excuse me, but finding a branch of the Satanic Church is about as easy as finding Clay Underwood.”

  Unfortunately Crane had to concede that Anderson had a point.

  41

  DS Bullock got ready to leave his house the next morning with a sense of satisfaction of a job well done. He’d been able to get up, drink a cup of tea, have a shower and get dressed, all in wonderful silence. At his own pace, in his own place. Bliss.

  Last night after dealing with Enid up, he’d cleaned up the kitchen, chucked out the disgusting chicken casserole and unplugged the phone. Then he’d gone to bed and had the best sleep he’d had in ages.

  As he checked he had his wallet and mobile phone with him, he glanced through the kitchen window into the garden and wondered if anyone would notice the newly turned soil in the flower bed at the end of the garden? He held his breath and then let it go. No, there were six foot high fences all around it, so probably not. So he relaxed. But had someone been looking out of their bedroom window in the early hours of the morning? He ground his teeth. Surely not. It wasn’t that sort of neighbourhood. Everyone worked. Everyone would be fast asleep at 2am. He would be fine.

  If he’d had more time and had planned Enid’s death properly, he wouldn’t have buried her in the garden. But he wasn’t really thinking straight at the time. When he’d seen her lying dead at his feet he’d had to put her somewhere. He couldn’t leave the body in the house, it would soon start smelling. He couldn’t leave her
in the boot of his car, what if DI Anderson wanted driving around? He just hadn’t had the energy to drive all the way out to the farm and bury her there. So the garden had had to do. Maybe he’d move her later. Once everything had quietened down.

  He looked down at his hands which were full of scratches. He’d just have to hope that nobody noticed them. At least they were clean. He’d managed to scrub all the ingrained dirt and soil from his hands. He should have worn gloves, but he hadn’t been thinking particularly clearly.

  Doubts continued to plague him as he drove to work, but by the time he walked through the front door of the police station, he was fine. Confident. And anyway he was so bloody relieved that the bitch couldn’t nag him anymore that that thought alone put a smile on his face.

  “You seem happy this morning, Bullock.”

  Anderson’s voice gave him a start.

  “Oh, well, you know, guv, the sun’s shining and all that. Better than being miserable, eh?”

  Bullock couldn’t believe that the first person he met at work was the boss. How typical was that?

  “What happened to your hands?”

  “Eh?” Bullock was still flustered from meeting Anderson and his brain wasn’t working properly as his body flooded with fear.

  “Your hands, man. They’re all scratched.”

  “Oh, I’m trying to tame the new garden, as we’ve just moved in. You know how it is, but gardening isn’t my forte.” Bullock’s mouth was running away with him but he couldn’t seem to stop it. “I forgot to put on my gardening gloves when I was pruning the roses.”

  “Does it seem better now?”

  “What?” Bullock felt he was swimming underwater, his limbs were getting heavier and his brain was shutting down.

  “The garden?”

  “Oh, yes, guv, much better thanks.” Bullock managed to get his legs to move and started to edge away from Anderson. “I’ll, um, just get a coffee, then get on.” Still walking backwards he didn’t notice DC Douglas behind him and trod on his toe.

  “Hey,” Douglas shouted, causing Bullock to stop walking. But he couldn’t stop colliding with Douglas, who was holding a full mug of coffee and promptly spilled it all over the floor as Bullock bumped into him.

  “Oh, God, sorry, um, I’ll get a cloth,” and Bullock turned and ran towards the kitchen.

  Once there, he grabbed the sink and tried to calm himself down, taking deep breaths.

  The flashback took him by surprise.

  All of a sudden his head was filled with the image of his wife pushed up against the stainless steel sink in their kitchen, making strange choking noises as he increased the pressure on her throat.

  He sprang away from the sink in the toilets, feeling as though the metal of the sink had burned his fingers, and the action seemed to clear the unwanted image from his head. With shaking hands he ran cold water from the tap and put his burning hands underneath it. It would be alright, he kept telling himself. She was gone and couldn’t hurt him anymore. No one knew what he’d done. He just had to hold it together. What he’d just told Anderson was true. He had been doing the gardening; only he’d not been pruning the roses, but pulling them up. The worst part was over. He’d got away with it. Things could only get better from here on in.

  42

  DS Bullock was still checking the missing person files, when Crane and Anderson called the team to attention. He knew that checking the files was a waste of time, of course, but no one else did, so he was pretty much on automatic pilot. As long as he kept clicking through the records, then he could fool people into thinking he was beavering away at his allotted task.

  He looked up from his monitor, irritated at being interrupted, to find Anderson had an image from the overhead projector spread across the back wall. It was a list of some sort. He peered at it, only to remember that he had his reading glasses on. Taking them off, the blur instantly clarified into readable text. It was the Eleven Rules of the Earth. He sat transfixed. Who had found them?

  Anderson was prattling away and Bullock caught a name - Crane. That explained it. He’d been wary of Crane finding something like this when he’d taken a look at his search history on his computer and found he’d been looking at pages about Satanic worship. Mind you, he didn’t think Crane had seen him do it, but it meant that to a certain extent he was prepared for what they’d found. Or at least he’d thought he would be. Prepared that was. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  Anderson was talking about profiles, the type of people they were looking for; they would be followers, easily led, prone to accidents, unable to fit into normal society, oddballs. He felt the anger rising within him at being described so glibly. They had no idea what they were talking about. How dare they ridicule his beliefs? His rituals?

  “You all right?” a voice hissed next to him.

  He turned to see DC Douglas, looking at him and questioning him yet again. Why couldn’t everyone just leave him alone? “Of course I am, why?” he snapped.

  “Because you’ve just broken yet another pen.”

  Bullock looked at his hands. They were covered in blue ink and the plastic casing of the pen itself was cracked and broken.

  “I was listening and concentrating, alright? Which is what you should be doing?” he hissed back, unleashing his anger at the stupid young man.

  By the time Crane and Anderson had finished their briefing, Bullock was sweating so much that he had large damp patches under his arms, discolouring his shirt.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  It was that idiot Douglas again.

  “Only you look ill.”

  Bullock was saved by his mobile phone. Turning away from Douglas he answered it and a croaky, wavering, elderly voice said, “Hello? Hello? Is anyone there?”

  It was his father-in-law. “Yes, George. What do you want?”

  “Where’s Enid? She’s not come. She didn’t come last night and she’s still not here. Where is she? What you have done with her?”

  “Nothing.” Bullock wanted to add, ‘you stupid old man’ but stopped himself just in time.

  “I need help with mother,” the tremulous voice wouldn’t stop. “Mother has soiled herself and I can’t clean her up. Where’s Enid?”

  Bullock ended the call in disgust. Cleaning up soiled knickers was a gross thought. Enid had a lot to be grateful to him for. At least he’d saved her from all that crap.

  43

  At Crane’s insistence, he and Anderson had taken a short stroll outside to the nearest coffee shop. “I need an infusion of real coffee,” he’d declared. “I can’t think straight without my regular caffeine fix.”

  It was with a great deal of satisfaction that Crane sank into a chair and picked up his coffee. He was just savouring the delicious, full-bodied aroma, when he was interrupted.

  “Guv?”

  Someone had spoken to Anderson.

  Lifting his eyes, but not his nose, Crane saw the young civilian analyst attached to the team, Holly somebody or other.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  Crane was just about to say that they were having a break and couldn’t it wait, when the young girl went on.

  “I’ve something I need to tell you about and I didn’t want to do it in the office.”

  She glanced over her shoulder and seemed pleased with what she saw, as her shoulders relaxed a little.

  “Come on, then,” said Anderson. “Sit down. Want a coffee?”

  Crane groaned inside. He’d wanted just a few moments away from the case, but it seemed it wasn’t to be.

  “No, thanks, I only drink green tea,” she replied, which didn’t surprise Crane in the least. Her brown shoulder length hair was pulled into two plaits. Nothing strange about that. But when you added a startling blue fringe and pink sides, it started to look rather avant-garde. Her long sleeved tee-shirt in muddy green matched her many pocketed cargo pants. She was painfully thin and rather studious in her large framed glasses. She pulled out a chair and sat down. And didn’
t speak.

  “Well?” Crane asked before taking a sip of the elixir that was his flat latte with extra sugar.

  “I’ve found an anomaly in the missing person’s database, boss.”

  “Anomaly?” echoed Anderson.

  “Something that shouldn’t be there.”

  “Ah,” said Anderson as if he agreed, but Crane knew better. His friend was a computer dinosaur.

  “What I think has happened is that someone looked at an entry in the data base and deleted it.”

  Now that was something that even Anderson could understand, thought Crane. Both men leaned forward to listen, Crane’s coffee momentarily forgotten.

  “I found it when I was checking the data at the end of the day yesterday.”

  “Who deleted it?”

  “Don’t know, boss. All I know is that it was done. Here’s what was deleted and when,” and she handed Anderson an envelope.

  He looked uncomprehendingly at the address written on it and the stamp stuck above it.

  “It’s a ploy, sir. Nothing but a decoy, in case the person who deleted the record saw me going after you. I thought it would look better if I seemed to be going to the post-office.

  Anderson grinned. “We’ll make a detective out of you yet, Holly.”

  But he wasn’t grinning when he read the entry. Passing it to Crane he said to Holly, “Get back to the office. This meeting never happened, right?”

  “Right, sir. Thanks,” and she melted away into the crowd.

  Crane looked at the piece of paper. It was the entry of a missing child from Birmingham. The image staring at him from the piece of paper was the young girl currently residing in the morgue at Frimley Park Hospital. Crane picked up his coffee but putting it to his lips realised that it had lost its allure.

  “Back to the office?” he said struggling with his stick and his chair, but Anderson was already up and away, leaving Crane to limp in his wake.