Murderer in Shadow

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  She smiled.

  “So, unless you’d rather have me send for a duty inspector from the nearest constabulary to handle the…”

  “No, sir. I’m fine with you. I trust you.”

  “The only thing you should trust, Constable, is that I will do my job thoroughly and without prejudice, going either way.”

  “I understand. I can’t ask for a better guarantee.”

  They walked to the constabulary. The cool grey of dawn had given way to unseasonable warmth. Ware thought she might have to slow her tread, compensating for the much older man, but she found herself hard put to keep up. She was panting as they rounded the path and came into sight of the constabulary. She stopped, touched his arm, but he had already halted.

  “You don’t leave your door open, do you?”

  She shook her head. “It’s rarely locked, but I always close it, and anyone stopping by closes it when leaving.”

  Ravyn approached right, Ware left. She stepped through before Ravyn could take point. It was, after all, she told herself, her office, not his. She froze, letting Ravyn walk past her and check for a pulse.

  “She’s dead.”

  Ware barely heard him. In fact, she no longer saw him. All she saw in the tiny office was Mabel Link sprawled in the chair behind the desk, legs spread, dress pushed up past the knees. Her left arm was thrown up, as if reaching for something, her right stretched out. Her mouth was open in a noiseless scream. Her eyes bulged and her tongue extended outward like a dead snake.

  Her long neck was disfigured by purple bruises, the marks of big fingers, fingers strong enough to jelly an old woman’s throat.

  Ravyn’s mobile chimed. It was Stark.

  “We’ve had a spot of trouble here too,” he said after listening to his sergeant report. “I’ll send Dr Penworthy and SOCO your way when they finish here. I’ll join you then.”

  “Trouble?” Ware asked after Ravyn finished.

  “Stark found Winsell at Stryker Farm,” Ravyn said. “Dead.”

  “How…how did he die?”

  After a moment, Ravyn said: “Magic.”

  Chapter 14

  Magic Circle

  Searching Knox’s cottage had been a time waster, but, in retrospect, Stark wondered how he could have expected otherwise. He had, he supposed, let himself be infected by Ware’s naivety. He should have known better and he should have let her come with him. No, he should have sent her alone, let her squander her own time. He could have returned to Venture Cottage for another look-see, or maybe not, for what had she accomplished but send Lebbie Rodgers to hospital and land herself in a cauldron of hot water? A witch’s cauldron, he thought with a smirky smile. Silly girl! He might not have caught the yob trying to steal some old stone, but she had done herself no favour by preventing him. He did not quite understand all Ravyn had told him about what was going on between her and Heln, but… He sighed. Well, at least it all puts us on the same side, but it’s a hell of a way to convince the silly mare that the guv’nor and me ain’t out to hang her.

  Stark found no clue to where Knox was or that he and Winsell were together. The only positive was a negative, the absence of the yellow Prius, which meant the two men, if indeed together, needed transportation out of the local area. Obviously, they were not in Knight’s Crossing, but there were a dozen other villages they could have gone to for tea and sympathy, not to mention Stafford.

  Why Stryker Farm? To Stark, it was the least likely. There was nothing there. Despite his claims to the contrary, Knox must surely have visited the old place, if only to gather information for his poncey books. As to Winsell, who really knew what was going on with that bloke? What was to be gained for either by going there?

  If there were a significant link between Knox and Winsell, as the guv’nor seemed to think, why would it involve the Stryker case? Both were young men when it happened, but Knox had probably been as effete then as he was now. Winsell, living Denby Marsh, had been just another untrusted and snubbed strapper.

  Well, there’s magic binding them, isn’t there? Stark had seen what Ware called the ‘protection stone’ at the cottage, but what did that show but a shared delusion? So what if they were connected by a pathetic belief in magic? In any other village, that might mean human sacrifices at midnight and dirty work at the crossroads, but in Knight’s Crossing, it was just business as usual.

  The whole village, or nearly so, was mental. Even without his debilitating phobia, Winsell was just as a much a lunatic as Franklin Knox or Mabel Link, or maybe even Police Constable Hillary Ware, come to that. In a village of hocus-pocus and hanging men, so what if Winsell and Knox knew each other? To Stark, it proved nothing in this benighted, mad-as-a-hatter village where everyone lived in each other’s pocket.

  Finally despairing of turning over anything relevant in Knox’s cottage on the borderland, Stark set off for the old Stryker farm. It was a drear place, plagued by old terrors and dark splatters of blood, but it was a dead place, not actively haunted like the land and water around Knox’s cottage. After a while Stark had stopped looking out the windows at the woods on the other side, half fearing he might see something looking back.

  He loved Aeronwy, but now cursed her for telling him about the gwiddons of her native Wales. As to Knight’s Crossing, if magic were real, he would have banished this one-horse dorp to oblivion, lock, stock and cauldron pot. It was just another blighted village, picturesque and bucolic; scrape that veneer and reveal the spiritual corruption beneath. He thought of Ravyn’s analogy – the shadows were pleasant enough, but Stark was loath to turn around and see the terrors casting them.

  He drove through a pestilential land, to a farm like a maggot-infested wound, but Stark preferred it to Knight’s Crossing and the beautiful, menace-haunted vistas embracing Knox’s cottage. It held secret horrors, but it was honest about its nature.

  He stopped at the end of the washed-out, guttered road. No sign of yellow Prius or green Renault. Stark halted so abruptly he almost skittered down into a narrow ravine. He massaged his twisted ankle. Despite the pain, he grinned. A green Renault! Somehow, thinking about the one car had caused a forgotten memory to bubble up from wherever normal people kept memories hid.

  Ravyn, he knew, would be pleased, but Stark was annoyed he had taken so long to sort it out. Nothing would be said, but Ravyn’s silence was more damning than could be any chastisement.

  If the Prius was not here, it was not at the farm. A Range Rover might have made it across the corrugated land and up the remains of the lane, but not a poofy car like a Prius, a yellow one at that. He was tempted to wait for the guv’nor to join him, but knew Ravyn well enough to dismiss the idea. With a little sigh of self-pity, he stood and he made his way upward.

  The last time he visited Stryker Farm he was accompanied by upwards of a dozen people and was preoccupied with finding the Drinkwater boy. And he had Ware to feel protective about and the stolid Ravyn to draw strength from. There was so much activity, he had barely noticed the silence.

  Now, he was alone and the silence was so profound it almost crushed his eardrums. The small sounds of his passage were quickly devoured. He thought of whistling to relieve the emptiness, but would have rather done it in a graveyard.

  Out of a sense of due diligence, and because he knew Ravyn would ask, he checked the farmhouse and the outbuildings. No sign of earthly wizards or unearthly bugaboos.

  He approached the barn, where, according to the reconstruction, the first victim, Old Ezekiel, had been murdered. He paused a few yards short of the door in its side. And he waited.

  Go on, you silly git! But he held his place, listening to the quiet, suddenly assailed by a sense of being watched. Check the sodding barn and get it over with, then you can wait for the guv’nor back at the bloody fence line.

  Sweat broke out on his forehead that had nothing to do with the heat. Finally, his sense of shame and self-disgust overwhelmed his inexplicable apprehension. He almost plunged through, but caught himself
on the doorframe, hanging half in and half out, and shined the torch’s beam into the barn’s murkiness.

  He saw nothing as he switched the beam back and forth, yet he tarried at the doorway. Despite urging himself forward, he could not move from where he clung.

  “Anyone there?” he called. Of course there was no one in the barn, he told himself, yet he called again, this time a little louder than before. “Police! If there’s anyone there, show yourself.”

  The hot stillness remained unbroken by sound or answer. He started to issue another challenge to his unseen watcher, then told himself he was being a blasted fool and stepped though the door.

  Death.

  He saw no evidence, but knew death had visited Stryker Farm.

  Switching off the torch lest he make himself too good a target, he let his eyes grow accustomed to the dimness. Faint threads of light peered though chinks in the old building. Then he saw a body on the floor of the barn, partially obscured by coils of rope.

  He started forward, then halted. It was surrounded by a circle of some kind, gently glowing blue. While still some yards from the body, Stark turned on the torch, illuminating the man’s colourless face and the glowing lines surrounding him.

  Henry Winsell, and he was most certainly dead. The body lay at the centre of a double circle, the space between the lines filled with all sorts of symbols unknown to him, but which he assumed must be magical in nature. Five points shot out from the circle in a pentagram. Stark frowned as he played the light over the body.

  There were no wounds of any kind. Had Winsell’s mortality not been so obvious, the man might have been merely asleep. He was flat on his back, feet together, arms at his sides. The symbol around the dead man was composed of crystals resembling rock salt. Fear of disturbing the magic circle kept him from approaching the body more closely. At least that was what he told himself and even half-believed.

  He swept the torch’s beam around the barn one last time, but he was alone. Satisfied, he pulled out his mobile.

  “I’m out at Stryker Farm and just found Henry Winsell dead in the barn,” he said when Ravyn answered. “He’s lying in the middle of what looks like a magic circle, strange symbols and one of those devil signs like you see in films. Not a mark on him.”

  Stark listened to Ravyn tell of Mabel Link’s murder.

  “Well, at least you can be sure what killed your Mabel,” he said. “With Winsell, maybe he was poisoned, maybe he was killed by one of Satan’s little helpers, or maybe he decided today was as good as any to lie down and die.”

  Ravyn told him he would bring SOCO and Dr Penworthy.

  “All right, sir, I’ll hold down the fort till you and the others get here,” he said. “I’ll wait for you at the barn. Outside the barn.”

  “Very well,” Ravyn said. “I’ll be there soon as I can.”

  “One other thing, sir.”

  “Yes?”

  “It was a green Renault.” Stark said. “The car that hit me. It was a green Renault.”

  “Make and model?”

  Stark was silent, embarrassed, uncomfortable.

  “Never mind,” Ravyn said. “I’ll pass the information to Ware. It should help in her quest. Overall, satisfactory.”

  Which meant, Stark thought, he could have done better. “Thank you, sir. Means a lot to me.”

  “At a convenient time, you must tell me how you managed to recover the memory.”

  Stark rang off. Bloody hell! The memory of the green Renault in his mirror was already fading. Ravyn and the others would not arrive for at least an hour, plenty of time to think of something that made him not seem quite such a half-wit. Maybe.

  Stark stiffened.

  Somewhere, wood clattered noisily against wood.

  * * *

  “Not much of a mystery in this one, Arthur.” Dr Penworthy usually spent an inordinate amount of time examining a body, or so Ravyn often thought, but was ever loath to render any pronouncement prior to the official post mortem. “Strangled by the direct application of manual pressure. Hands to throat – end of story.”

  “A man obviously,” Ravyn said.

  “Unless one of your suspects is also a contestant in the World’s Strongest Woman competition.”

  Ravyn absently shook his head, but did not take his gaze from the dead woman. Poor Mabel. Life had always dealt with her most cruelly, she contended, but much less so than someone had in the last moments of her life.

  Penworthy motioned for Andy, her assistant and driver, to take the gurney to the van. He zipped the white body bag, then wheeled the transport like he drove the van, nearly hitting the doorframe and two loiterers. Ware rushed in as he exited.

  “She was killed where she was found?” Ravyn suggested.

  “Opposed to being transported as a forensics countermeasure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your suspect is not sophisticated; he killed her here.”

  “The position of the body…” Ravyn paused. “The positioning seemed organic.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean,” Penworthy said. “Did you note her right arm?”

  Ravyn nodded. “As if reaching for something, maybe trying to keep something from being taken from her.”

  “The latter.” Penworthy held up a small evidence bag. “I found this gripped in her right fist. A printout, or at least a fragment of one. Her killer has the rest, I assume.”

  Ravyn gazed at it a moment.

  “May I see it, please?” Ware asked.

  It was a corner of a sheet, presumably A4 paper from a dot matrix printer. The words: Received fo… full amo… repa… £25.3…

  “Hard to make anything of it,” she said.

  Ravyn started to take it.

  “May I make a photocopy, sir?”

  “Why?”

  “I thought I could ask around the village about Mabel. If I find out anything, it might be handy to have a copy of that. I don’t know that it would lead to anything we might…”

  “Good idea,” Ravyn said. “You knew her better than I, and the villagers might be more willing to talk to you than me, but do keep two things in mind.”

  “Sir?” Ware retrieved a copy from the office’s Konica Minolta and handed the original to Ravyn.

  “The first is that I expect highly detailed interview records,” he said. “If you cannot retain exact memories, keep detailed notes. If you cannot do either, make recordings.”

  She glanced at Penworthy, who nodded.

  “And the second, sir?”

  “One of the villagers you’re interviewing may be the killer. Do not take any chances.”

  Ware nodded.

  Ravyn passed the scrap to Penworthy without a second glance. In a sense, he had already made his copy.

  Angus Powell-Mavins opened the door. “Saw the body go out.”

  “All yours, Angus.” Penworthy handed him the fragment.

  The SOCO chief shooed in two forensics technicians.

  “Fingerprints on that, and see if Questioned Documents can do something about reconstruction,” Ravyn said. “I doubt it, but ‘hope doth oft spring from smaller seeds, presaging daily miracles’.”

  Ware looked confused.

  Angus scowled.

  Penworthy smirked.

  “As to the rest of the constabulary, the usual,” Ravyn continued. “I would go into details, but you’re more versed in such matters than am I. Carrying coals to Newcastle, don’t you think?”

  “I doubt that, but we can run a crime scene without kibitzers.” The SOCO chief turned to Ware. “Sorry, miss, but for the rest of the day your office will be my office.”

  “Sorry, Angus, but you have miles to go before you sleep.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “You have another crime scene,” Penworthy said. “And I have another body.”

  “I can send Bates and Masterson,” Powell-Mavins said. “I’ll do what I need to do here, then join them.”

  “Actually I’d rather you took direct con
trol of the second crime scene and left one of your minions in control here,” Ravyn said.

  “They’re not minions,” Powell-Mavins protested. “Well, not exactly minions. What’s so special about the second murder?”

  “It’s at Stryker Farm.”

  Powell-Mavins shrugged.

  “Victim in a magic circle incorporating a pentagram,” Ravyn added. “Might have been killed by magic. It might even have been part of a ceremony to summon the Devil”

  Powell-Mavins growled and gnawed the stem of his unlit pipe like a Mastiff with a rib. He had seen every horror film ever to come out of Hammer Studios, and DCI Arthur Ravyn knew it.

  “Well, I suppose I could take a look at it for you, if that’s what you want,” he finally said. “Bates!”

  A young woman in white forensic coveralls and thick glasses looked up. She was dusting the desk for prints. So frozen in alarm was she, the powder seemed suspended between brush and desk.

  “Mr Powell-Mavins?”

  “You’re in charge of this crime scene.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you.”

  “In charge?”

  “That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

  “Me? In charge?”

  “Yes. You. In charge. Think you can handle it?”

  “Well, I’m not sure if I…”

  “Of course you can. Just go by the book.”

  She gulped, but nodded.

  “Masterson and I will pick you up on the way back from the second crime scene.” Powell-Mavins smiled. “You’ll do just fine, lass. You’ve done this hundreds of times before.”

  Her smile would have been familiar to Jack Ketch.

  “Tell you what, lass,” Powell-Mavins said, taking pity on the crime scene technician. “After you’ve finished, pack up your gear, and wait for us in the pub.”

  “Me? In the Pub?”

  “Maybe it would be better if you waited here.”