by Harper Fox
“Tell me why they’re not.”
“Don’t mix up an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty with a National Park. It hasn’t got anything like the same legal protection. Old Farmer Bowe—John’s grandfather—didn’t like the idea of being bound hand and foot for planning consent back in the 1940s, so he just demanded Carnysen be left out when the AONB was set up, and the Bowes were a big noise around Bodmin back then, so the local authority allowed it. And as for your councillors and planners today, Baragwanath knew the right ones to approach. What’s the matter—did you think people like that couldn’t be bought? Anyone can be bought, Sergeant. Anyone.”
A silence fell in the room. Shafts of dusty light drifted solemnly through the cobwebbed windows. Baragwanath, Keast & Co hadn’t attracted much in the way of big business over the years. Mitchell’s proposition must have hit them like a solid-gold brick. If someone had turned up on Gideon’s doorstep and offered him Tamsyn back, what might he not have done?
Keast was right. He was naive. He always looked for reasons, human mechanisms of love or loss, to explain criminal behaviour. And often it boiled down to sheer greed. “Right,” he said hoarsely. “I need you to tell me now—has this deal with the devil gone through?”
“Finally. Two days ago, the very day that...” Keast gave a shudder. “The day that John was killed. I had to act very slowly after Baragwanath died, make sure nothing happened fast enough to alert the AONB authorities. But yes, the land has been sold. And the grand thing about all this is that... now I’ve done it, now I’ve sold out this land and the moor and all the people who love it, I stand to come away with...” He took up a pen and tapped it on the desk top, a short, bitter tattoo. “With nothing. Even if you and your sidekick hadn’t come along.”
Light dawned on Gideon. “You’re being blackmailed.”
“Oh, spectacularly. By Councillor Robin Walsh, if you want final proof of the virtues of our noble town leaders. What—do you think I’d have said a word to you now, if I’d had anything left to lose?”
Gideon’s phone began to ring. With a sense of unreality, he saw his brother’s name flashing on the screen. He cut the call off and stood up. “Right. I don’t actually know how to deal with you, Mr Keast, but I’ll start by asking you to come down to the station with me so I can find somebody who does. All I care about is getting this monstrosity stopped.”
Pendower stood up too. “It is a monstrosity. Gideon, this was Lee’s vision—the dark fields, all the trees gone. And no water—all it would take is for the Mitchell company’s drilling or blasting to hit an aquifer rock, and...”
“All right, all right. I’m not gonna let it happen.” His damn phone was ringing again. This was twice in recent memory that Ezekiel had called him insistently. Perhaps he was just making up for the ten years when they hadn’t spoken to one another at all, but... “Pendower, keep an eye on Mr Keast. I’m going to have to take this call.”
He let himself out onto the landing. The offices were poised above a kebab shop, and the lunchtime smells that would normally have enticed him now made his guts lurch. Hard to breathe the darkness. Everything’s black now. The leaves are withered, and the moor’s gone, and there’s no water, no water anywhere. No fields, no trees... “What is it, Zeke? I’m really busy.”
“Mother’s disappeared from Roselands.”
“What?” Gideon had to struggle to extract sense from his brother’s words. They were plain enough, but he hadn’t heard that ragged edge of fear in them, the distant threat of tears, since before their decade’s estrangement. “Don’t be daft. She’ll have got in a taxi and come over to Dark to visit Lee.”
“I’m in Dark. That was the first thing I thought too. Nobody’s answering at the house. And Dev Bowe just accosted me in the street—I’m wearing my dog collar—and said he was possessed, and I think he’s right.”
Gideon took a deep breath. That was what Lee had taught him to do when the world dissolved into hopeless chaos around him, and sometimes it worked. Maybe it would help his brother too. “Ezekiel? Take one nice deep breath and let it go. Then tell me what the bloody hell you’re talking about.”
“I am telling you. Mother’s gone. Mrs Harle thinks she must’ve got confused and wandered off.”
No. The old lady had become more eccentric of late, but it wasn’t senility—just the spontaneous creature she’d been before her marriage enjoying a rebirth. “I don’t think so. First off, Lee’s not too well. He was going to try and get some sleep, so he might not have heard you knock. Don’t you have your key?”
“Not with me, no.”
“Shit. Have you called the police?”
“What the devil do you think I’m doing now?”
“Oh.” Gideon tugged at the brim of his cap in frustration. “Right, but you also need to dial 999 and get emergency services involved. There’s a twenty-four hour wait for missing persons but they won’t put you through that—she’s elderly and vulnerable. Wait, don’t hang up. Is Dev still there?”
“Yes. He’s trying to get into my car.”
“He’s meant to be in hospital. Can you keep him with you?”
“He’s very insistent about taking me up to some field or other. Look, I don’t have time for this. I have to find Mother.”
“Ezekiel, do as I say. Call 999 and report Ma as missing and in danger. I’ll alert the hospital about Dev. Start off with him if that’s the only way he’ll let you hang on to him, and I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Okay?”
“No! No, it isn’t okay. Where is she?”
He was on the verge of tears. Gideon was ashamed of having ever taken his harsh front for the whole man. “We’ll find her,” he said firmly. “I promise. I’ll phone the Falmouth lads and ask them to make her a priority. I’m on my way, Zeke—just hang on.”
Pendower had emerged from the office in time to hear the last part. He was herding Keast ahead of him, like Isolde with a recalcitrant sheep. “What’s the matter? More problems at home?”
“Yes.” Pendower must think he lived in a perpetual vortex of drama. “Never mind. Let’s get this guy over to Tollgate Road, and then—”
“You go and sort things out. I’ll escort Mr Keast to the station, and I’ll make sure he tells the truth when he gets there.” He riffled through his copious notes, smiling grimly. “All of it.”
***
The main street of Dark was empty when Gideon arrived. The day was oppressively hot, dried leaves barely stirring on the pavements. He pulled up in the grassy layby at the foot of the Carnysen track. He’d wanted to go home first and check on Lee, but he could see Zeke’s huge funereal Volvo halfway up the lane, more or less blocking it. Probably Zeke had got it that far before realising it would be impossible to turn it round further up.
Gideon got out of the police truck and stood for a moment, reading currents of unease in the hot air. Heavy heads of grass swayed around his knees, and the spill of dog roses over the fence—so deep a purple they were almost blue—almost overwhelmed him with their scent. He tried Lee’s mobile again, then decided that whatever new crisis awaited him this afternoon, he would let the poor sod sleep and handle it himself. If Ma Frayne had found her way to their flat, Lee would have been phoning him. The Falmouth duty sergeant had taken the news as if the old lady had been his own mother, and raised the alarm accordingly. Nothing more could be done on that front, and meanwhile Gideon’s brother was alone in a cornfield with an escaped lunatic. He set off up the track at a run.
Not alone, no. For a second in the heat-haze, Gideon thought his ma had come to officiate at some bizarre family picnic. Right in the very centre of the field where John Bowe had died, in a patch of flattened corn, Dev Bowe was sitting cross-legged, Zeke on one side of him, an elderly woman comfortably settled on the other. He was no longer dressed in his mother’s nightgown—the scene was weird enough without that—but his shirt and trousers were too big for him, as if he’d stolen them from somebody’s locker. And he was nursing a baby in his
arms.
No. Gideon rubbed dust out of his eyes. He was clutching the charred remains of the neck, the last sheaf of corn Joe Poldue had cut the night before. He’d wrapped it in a sheet of white plastic from one of the bales and was rocking it. And the old woman was Granny Ragwen. “Where’s that other nice young fella?” she cried, as soon as she clapped eyes on Gideon. “The one who was so allergic to my cat?”
“You don’t have a cat,” Gideon reminded her. “Zeke, are you okay?”
“Yes, except that this young man was very insistent about coming here. Has Mother been found?”
“Not yet. But she’s all right.” Gideon felt this as a powerful certainty. He didn’t question it, and Zeke’s raised eyebrows couldn’t shake it. “What are you doing up here, Mrs Ragwen?”
“Why, I met the minister in the lane. He was going my way, and he let me take his arm.”
“Hardly. She grabbed it and hung on. I have to go, Gideon. If Mr Bowe feels in need of spiritual aid, he’s more than welcome to visit me at the chapel, or—”
“Zeke. Hush for a moment.” Gideon crouched in front of Dev. Poor Zeke—they must have made quite a procession, the deranged boy clinging to one arm and the village witch on the other. “Dev Bowe, are you listening to me? Can you look up?”
Slowly Dev raised his head. His gaze was unfocussed and blank. “Do you see my baby?” he asked, his voice as dry as the wind in the corn. “Do you see her?”
“Yes, I see her. She’s Breedie baby, isn’t she? The one we take in after the harvest, and put her by the fire in a cradle so her mother can come and find her.”
“Yes. The mother of all the fields. But the Beast came, and she was left out alone in the cold. I’ve got her now. People should look after their babies.” His brow creased in pain. “You should have looked after yours, shouldn’t you? Then maybe you wouldn’t have lost her. Would you like to have a hold of mine?”
“Dev Bowe, have you been sectioned under the Mental Health Act? Do you know what that is?”
The boy shook his head. Granny Ragwen reached out and gave him a sudden thump to the shoulder, as if ashamed of him. “Don’t you be rude to the constable! Did someone tell you at the hospital you had to stay there? That you weren’t allowed to go?”
“No. They told me I should be a good boy and get some sleep.” A terrible smile cracked his face, sharp as a scythe with cold cunning. “I can go wherever I want. I’ve already been somewhere, Sergeant Frayne—somewhere you wouldn’t want me to go.”
“If you haven’t been sectioned,” Gideon said quietly, “I’m arresting you now on suspicion of the murder of both of your brothers. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Are you able to understand what I’ve just said to you?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“And do you think I’m wrong? Because it’s ridiculous, isn’t it—a little scrap of a lad like you, killing those two big fine men.”
Dev shuddered. “Not fine. Not fine men.”
“All right. Suppose I agree with you that they weren’t. That I knew what they’d done, and I could make you a promise right here—my deepest, best promise, Dev—that I could put it right?”
“No-one can put it right. Dev tried. But John said he was mad, and locked him up in his room, and said a bad thing would happen to him just like it did to his mam.”
“John killed your mother and father—what, to get the land?” Dev nodded, and the alien jolt of his head, the vulpine snarl that accompanied it, chilled Gideon’s marrow. “Wait. Who am I talking to here?”
“Not Dev. Not Dev.”
“All right. In that case I’m telling whoever’s in there—Dev Bowe is just a little boy. I’m a policeman, and more than that, I’m...” Gideon cast around for words, memories, symbols that would make sense in this field, beneath the open sky. He remembered what Lee had called him. “I’m the guardian of this place—one of ’em anyway. I’m the good shepherd. And I can make the darkness go away.”
The boy turned to Ezekiel. “Is that right? Is it true?”
A big leap for poor Zeke, who had no idea of what was going on. But he gave Gideon a glance and said slowly, “If my brother promises, yes.”
“Then... can you take it out of me?”
“Careful, Zeke. He’s mentally ill, not possessed.”
“So much harm is done by godless men of this world who insist on the distinction. Do you believe I can take your demon from you, child?”
Zeke must have been conducting a service or a funeral. He was in clerical black, his collar gleaming in the sunlight, enough to inspire faith in anyone. The boy recoiled from him. “Dev does,” he said. “Dev believes. But the truth is, preacher, I’m too old for you. It’s a shame. I’m wearing this little body out.”
“Then leave it. Please.”
“It’s not so easy as that. Can’t you see how he’s woven me in? Learning about all the names and what they mean, creating his own mythology. Did you know...” Dev snapped his arms tight across his chest and began to rock. “Did you know the old song is all about him too? About him and his brothers... Their father sent all of them away, each in his turn, to the Duchy agricultural school, all the way over at Camborne in the west.” He began to croon. “Three men came from the west, their fortunes for to try, and these three made a solemn vow, John Barleycorn must die... John and Bligh tried their fortunes on this farm, didn’t they? What a treasure they found!”
“Dev!” Gideon seized his wrist. “You have to fight this. How could your brother be one of those men and John Barleycorn at the same time?”
“Because he knew by then. He knew what he’d done. He was sorry, but it all had gone too far. The best sacrifice is a willing one. He went out into the midnight field on Guldize Eve on purpose to meet the Beast, and we were there. And as for Bligh, all we had to do was... show him our face.” Dev gave a guttural laugh. “God, how he screamed!”
Ezekiel had gone pale. “Gid, tell me someone’s coming to look after this... boy.”
“Yes. They should be here soon, but—”
“But what good could they do him while he’s like this?” Granny Ragwen had finally stirred from her easy crouch in the corn. She was as neat and prosaic as ever, in her M&S leisure wear, but she looked as though she’d spent several centuries sitting by cauldrons, waiting on her natural throne of earth for events to turn. She put down a hand to Dev. “Too old for the preacher, are you? You’re not too old for me. Come along.”
Dev scrambled to his feet. Gideon and Zeke got up too. “Careful, Mrs Ragwen,” Gideon warned. “He’s not himself.”
“That’s just the problem, isn’t it?” She smiled back over her shoulder, leading Dev away through the corn. “What harm can come to me here, with you two big lads looking on? Come along, now, you creature of earth and sky. What are you doing in a little flesh cage? I exorcise thee, Dev Bowe,” she went on conversationally, picking up his hand and lightly shaking it, “that thou cast out from thee all the impurities and uncleanlinesses of the spirit of the world of phantasm. That’s one of Gerald Gardner’s old blessings for water—or Doreen’s, or Aleister’s, depending on who you believe—but it works pretty well for beasts too. Do you hear?”
Dev came to a dead stop. He laced his fingers through Granny Ragwen’s and bowed his head. The air tightened like a violin’s overdrawn string. Unthinkingly Gideon drew close to his brother, the way he had before the age gap and their disparate natures had driven them apart. “What is she doing?”
“I don’t know, but shouldn’t you be stopping her?”
“You’re the minister.”
“You’re the policeman, for God’s sake!”
Their eyes met. They waited in silence, and after a moment the moorland around them became silent too. The larks ceased their burble, and the linnets left off their high-pitched defence of every gorse bush for miles around. “I d
on’t think you should look at Dev or the old lady,” Zeke said tonelessly. “I think for a minute you should just look at me.”
Gideon swallowed painfully. “Okay.”
A wind sprang up. It didn’t come from the tors or the faraway Atlantic. Its breath was hot as a wolf’s, and rich with pheromone messages of death and change. Its density altered, coalescing from air to flesh, and in this manifestation it circled the place where Gideon stood with his brother. In this manifestation it knew him: passed behind him once, close enough to swipe at his shoulder. He staggered and Zeke caught him, and a low growl filled the air. “You’d better go now,” Zeke said to something behind him. “I don’t know what you are, but I think you’d better go.”
The growl spiralled up into a roar. Gideon had heard it before, just as he’d felt the passing of that vast force, breathed the ozone and blood-bright copper it left in its wake. Something swept once round the cornfield, a wing or a thunderclap. He clutched at Zeke and they braced each other, and then with a swirling, gale-throated howl, the thing was gone.
Granny Ragwen was on her knees with Dev. He was whispering to her, his face a mask of blanched-out fear. She got up unsteadily, brushing bits of corn from her velour. For the first time in Gideon’s acquaintance with her, she looked a little discomposed. “Right,” she said, straightening her beads. “He ought to be all right now. I’ll wait with him here. But you have to go home now, Constable. He says he was angry when your Lee got inside of his mind. He says he’s done something bad to him. You have to go.”
***
Gideon took a flying leap across the stile, barely noticing it was there. He pounded down the lane to where Zeke’s car was parked: reached out and hauled his brother past when he slowed to try and find his keys. “No! By the time you’ve turned it round we could be home.”
