by Emma Snow
“Had. She died.”
“Oh, Ben, I’m so sorry.”
“You weren’t to know.”
He lapsed into silence. Martha looked at him and then out at the site. “I lost someone I loved to,” she said at last. She waited for him to answer but he continued looking down at the ground so she carried on. “I had some friends, very close friends. They died in a fire.”
Ben looked up at her and she caught his eye before looking away, afraid she might cry if she had to look at that compassionate gaze any longer. “I know what it feels like is what I mean to say.”
He nodded slowly. “I miss her.”
“I understand.”
“Martha!” a voice called.
Martha looked up to find Joanne panting for breath as she ran over to her, stopping front of the bench. “Your group’s here early,” she said, wheezing loudly. “They want to get started.”
“I’m on my way,” Martha said, standing up before turning to Ben. “Are you going to be all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “Go do your thing.”
She tapped the top of his hand, squeezing it gently, feeling the warmth of his skin for a brief moment before turning and following Jenny back to the visitor centre.
The group were all lined up outside, looking like there was an enormous queue to get in. Martha found the group leader, a woman in a business suit with a clipboard in her arms. “This is not a good start,” she said in a strong German accent.
Martha resisted telling her she wasn’t due for another twenty minutes, managing a smile as she said, “If you’d like to bring your group through, we’ll get started now.”
At the back of the group, someone had joined the queue, unnoticed by the others. As they filed through the visitor centre, he went with them, passing by Martha so close he could smell her. He breathed deep of her scent, his heart racing. Then he passed through into the grounds and waited for her to come out.
TWENTY-FIVE
Samuel was entranced by the girl in the cafe. She was so excited by the prospect of going looking for books. He could empathise with how she felt. He was excited too. First of all because he was so close to achieving his life’s ambition that he could barely keep still. Secondly, maybe there was more fun to be had.
He knew he should be focusing on his task, on the work that needed to be done. But he couldn’t stop looking at the girl. She had a soft innocence to her face, she had never known true fear, never contorted her face in terror, never screamed for mercy. Did he have time to introduce her to those things? Perhaps. She was pretty too. How would she look running away from him? Begging him to stop? Would she look like Martha did? Would Martha look like that this time?
He watched the girl go out of the door, the wind blowing in for a brief second, making the sugar sachets on his table shift towards him. Once she was gone, he stood up. A tiny part of him wanted to follow her but he had to remind himself to concentrate. Things were moving on at a fast pace and now was not the time to get distracted.
He walked out of the cafe and through the town, making his way amongst all the day-trippers, none of them knowing how important he was, how he was going to save them all, how he would have willingly sliced the throats of any of them if they should get in his way.
Once he reached the holiday cottage near the castle, he headed through the gate and into the private garden. He was about he go inside when he heard a voice drifting towards him. His ears immediately picked it up, it was her. She was in the grounds of the castle, just the other side of the hedge. He could also hear music coming from the cottage next to his but he tuned that out, honing in on her voice, feeling a flare of jealousy as he realised she was talking to a man.
The cottage was one of three in a row. The first two were owned by Peter Robertson, custodian of the castle. The third was run privately, having been sold off back in the 1920s. Samuel was staying in the one nearest the visitor centre. The cottage itself was a detached house, built of yellowing stone with pantiled roof. It was surrounded by a tall beech hedge, most of the leaves orange and red, ready to fall. The hedge towards the back of the house was the only thing dividing the garden from the grounds of the castle. It was originally part of the surrounding lands, where the serfs would have farmed on behalf of their Lord. On the other side of the hedge, approximately ten feet from where Samuel stood, Martha and Ben were sitting on a bench talking about their respective families.
Samuel walked quietly over to the hedge, making sure he couldn’t be seen through it, standing perfectly still and listening.
He needed her more scared than this. The scourge was supposed to have set her on edge, the knight to have intensified her fear. From listening to her, she hardly sounded scared at all. That would never do.
He needed her terrified. If the offering was going to succeed, she needed to be utterly petrified. The Gods he worshipped did not like calm, they liked fear, they devoured it. He would provide it for them but he was clearly going to have to work harder to make sure she was ready.
As he listened to her voice, he thought about how lucky he was. Modern technology had worked in his favour. First Lisa and then Chloe. Both of them had mobile phones containing fingerprint recognition. Lisa’s phone, accessed with the touch to her hand, had brought him to Martha.
Accessing Chloe’s phone had been just as simple. Bound in place, all he had to do was wrench her cold hand away towards the side of the phone, press her finger in place. That was it. Her phone was unlocked. If she was still alive, he might have been able to get the PIN needed to unlock it. But dead, she couldn’t give him the number. He had cursed himself, thinking he had gone too far, that his plans were about to become unstuck. But then he had found his luck held, her finger on the phone and he gained access. It was so simple to send Martha messages, telling her how ill Chloe was, how she wouldn’t be coming into work for at least a few days, all written in the first person.
Martha would have no reason to suspect the messages weren’t coming from her colleague. By the time the truth came out, it wouldn’t matter anymore.
He thought about how she’d looked when he spoke to her. How scared would she have been if she’d known what he’d done already. In the cellar of the holiday cottage Chloe lay silently. They could find her after he was done. It wouldn’t matter then. He had one thing he needed to do and he had given no consideration to after. All his attention was fixed on the offering. After didn’t matter.
But the girl in the cafe had thrown him. What if there was an after? What if he was still around? Would the Gods be kind to him? Was his mother already up there? Would she persuade them to let him have a reward? A girl like that would make a perfect reward. He could keep her forever, like a pet. His own special pet who he’d love and feed and clothe and torture. It was a pleasant thought.
Through the hedge he heard another woman’s voice, Martha was needed for a tour. He didn’t think for another second. He jogged out of the garden and around to the visitor centre, joining the back of the queuing tour group. He was going to see her up close. He was going to stare at her and she wouldn’t have a clue what was planned for her.
He’d look at her, knowing what her body looked like under those clothes. None of the others would know but he would. The queue began to move into the visitor centre. He shuffled forwards with them, a smile flickering across his lips.
TWENTY-SIX
Martha stood in front of the gatehouse, waiting for the group to gather around her. Once they were still, she began with the next stage of the tour. “As you can see from these grooves in the walls, this is where the portcullis would have slid up and down, providing a final line of defence along with,” she pointed above her head, “the murder holes. From those, boiling water or oil would be poured, perhaps rocks onto the heads of the attacking force, corralled into this small space. Picture the invaders, hammering at the portcullis, trying to force their way in whilst liquid death splattered onto their heads, breaking in through the chinks in their arm
our, literally boiling them alive. Is it any wonder that the castle was never successfully assaulted.” She paused for effect before finishing. “Until the Civil War of course. This way.”
With a wave of her arm, she moved on, heading through the remains of the gatehouse and across the grass to the east tower. “Was there any self flagellation here?” someone shouted out.
She paused, turning to see who had asked the question. Unable to identify who it was, she spoke to the whole group. “That was more of a monastic tradition. At Rievaulx Abbey, a few miles from here, they have a scourge in the museum and it’s certainly worth a look but as far as we know, there’s never been anything of that nature in the medieval castle here.”
She thought about the scourge she’d found in the chapel, about the scourge she’d been forced to use when she was just a child. She had to bite her lip to stop her mind from travelling back. She almost drew blood in her efforts, her lip stinging as she continued with the tour. It never occurred to her that the person asking the question had spoken in perfect English, the rest of the tour group all having thick German accents.
“It is worth mentioning the abbey,” she continued. “It was founded by the owner of this castle, Walter Espec. He was said to have seen a vision of God in the sky although more modern calculations suggest it was a comet rather than a deity above his head. Certainly a celestial being, just not the kind he thought.”
That line sometimes got a laugh when she gave the tours but she got nothing back. Perhaps it was lost in translation.
“Each year, Espec made the short pilgrimage to Rievaulx, seeking absolution from the battles he had partaken of, and of course checking on the progress of the building work. The abbey was not finished in his lifetime but his descendants continued the pilgrimage and even today we have monks and nuns from all over the world who come here and walk the three miles from here to there along the same track Espec himself followed. But I’m wandering, I was talking about the Civil War, wasn’t I?”
She began to explain how the wall of the East Tower had fallen but her mind was still trying to take her back, fear rising within her as she thought about the scourge, about the knight that she’d found, about how she had a horrible feeling that she was being watched. It felt ridiculous, of course she was being watched, the tour group were all staring at her. But it was more than that. It was the sensation that something was out there, something bad.
For the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel that the castle was a sanctuary. She began to feel that maybe she was going to have to move on. She knew Peter wanted her to look after the place but she had to put her own well being first. There was no point remaining at a place where she was beginning to feel permanently on edge.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Ben sat with his father feeling oddly at ease. The feeling wasn’t one that he was used to. It was like being little again, as if at any moment his mother and sister might come in and join them for dinner.
He was at the kitchen table, a mug of coffee in front of him. At the counter top, his father was slicing carrots, having stubbornly insisted that he was going to make them both lunch. Ben had expected him to give up with plenty of swearing after less than a minute’s effort but the old man was still hard at work, leaning on the counter top, his crutch nearby, ready to grab when he needed to move.
“She turned this whole place around,” Peter said, picking up the pile of sliced carrots and dropping them into the waiting pan on the hob. “Did you know that?”
“How did she even end up here? She hasn’t got a local accent.”
“It was a few years ago now. We’d advertised on one of those heritage websites for three people, we needed them in the shop. Your mother thought it was a bad idea, shelling out for wages when we didn’t have the profits coming in but it was more complicated than that. We needed more staff to sort the queues out. You can’t sell to people if you haven’t got someone to operate the tills.”
“And she just showed up, just like that? And now you want to give her the castle?”
“She didn’t just show up, Ben. She worked her fingers to the bone. In six months our profits went up by seventy percent. She was telling me what was selling best, what products to drop, what people were asking for that we hadn’t got. It was only meant to be a temporary contract. The other two went at the end of the season but I kept her on and she’s been pretty much running the place for the last year.”
“Are you still making money, then?” Ben asked, thoughts of what Jenny had said to him fresh in his mind.
“More than ever. I spent so long in the red, I hardly know how to feel about being in the black at last. It’s a wonderful feeling and your mother just how to spoil it, trying to persuade me to sell up.”
Ben shook his head slightly, not willing to go down that line of conversation. “How much do you know about Martha?” he asked to change the subject.
“Do I detect a hint of interest that’s not entirely professional?” Peter replied, reaching for his crutch. “Do you still like peas?”
Ben nodded.
“I’ll chuck some in.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
D.C.I Gregg was glad he got the warrant. It had been touch and go for a while. He had tried simply knocking on Timothy Burleigh’s front door when he finally got there but there was no answer, nor was there any sign of life inside.
With the warrant, he was legally permitted to enter. It was a gamble, he’d had to suggest he was more certain that Burleigh was involved in Lisa Kirke’s death than the evidence could back up. If he was wrong, he’d be in a world of trouble. But his instincts had told him to go for it.
He sat at Timothy’s computer, working his way through the documents folder. He had just opened a file marked “The Comet,” when his phone rang.
He dug it out of his pocket and answered it. “Chief?” the voice on the other end said.
“What is it, Lucas?”
“We’ve identified the gaming piece found in her hand.”
“And?”
“You were right, it is bone.”
“Human?”
“Looks like it but they’re running a few more tests to be sure. A knuckle bone carved into shape and then painted.”
“Any way of identifying the paint? Where it came from?”
“Already working on it.”
“What’s your gut telling you, Lucas?”
“That either Samuel Lyons is back from the dead to pick off the two that got away or our copycat is pretty dedicated to attention to detail. Anything from Burleigh’s computer?”
“I’m working on it. Call me when it’s been confirmed and in the meantime, see if you can find Burleigh’s daughter, ask her if she knows where he might have gone.”
“Will do.”
Lucas rung off, leaving Gregg to continue trawling through the computer. A message beeped on his phone. They’d found a letter at Lisa Kirke’s house. It was possible that Martha Coleman was working at Helmsley Castle. Gregg looked at the time, making silent calculations. Was he better off finishing looking at the computer? He rang Lucas. “Get over here and take over from me,” he said.
“Where you going?” Lucas asked.
“Helmsley Castle,” he replied. “She might be there.”
“Want me to come with?”
“No, there might be something useful on here and if there is, you ring me straight away, all right? I want to know if Burleigh is capable of killing and I think the answer’s somewhere on this computer.”
“On my way.”
TWENTY-NINE
D.C.I Gregg was listening as he drove. His mobile phone was connected via Bluetooth to the car speakers. Lucas was talking through what he’d been able to find out.
“He had a sort of diary on the computer. It’s got a lot in it but no smoking gun as far as I can tell.”
“How much detail is there?” Gregg asked, swinging into the middle lane of the motorway to overtake a lumbering supermarket lorry.
“A
lot. Looks like he sees himself as a bit of a novelist. I’ve been working through it for an hour but it’ll probably take a couple of days to get through it all. Shall I send a copy through to the team?”
“Do it but keep it quiet, we don’t want him finding out what we know. What have you found out about the care home?”
“How much time have you got?”
“Satnav says another three hours until I get to Helmsley.”
Lucas began to read. At first he didn’t tell Gregg anything he didn’t already know but the document filled in some of the blanks for him.
Timothy Burleigh had been the main investor in the Beeches Care Home, set up to provide care for maximum of forty-eight children, aged four to sixteen. At the time of the fire, there had been twenty-seven children registered there and three of those had died in the fire. The blaze hit an old classroom that was being used for storage. The room backed onto the cleaning cupboard and the initial assessment was that the fire had begun in there. It was soon established what had actually happened.
Samuel Lyons had been taking five of the girls into the old classroom or “game room,” as he called it on a regular basis. There he had forced them to play a board game called The Knights of Yore. The loser of each round had a pay a forfeit, ranging from kissing him to removing an item of their clothing.
Burleigh’s diary didn’t detail all of the forfeits, nor did it go into detail about the other games that Samuel made the girls play. Gregg already knew the details from the interviews that had been carried out with the two survivors. What he cared about was whether Burleigh had become so wrapped up in the world of his former employee that he might be capable of taking over from him, of finishing what he started?
It seemed implausible but in all his years with the police, Gregg had seen the almost impossible on several occasions and had learned the hard way that no possibility could be discounted. After all, Burleigh had been the one who found Lisa Kirke’s body.
