A Shroud of Leaves

by Rebecca Alexander

  As she drove through the dark forest, Felix leafed through his notebook. Sage had seen it before; it was decorated by a sketch of a dog on the front cover. ‘Did you draw that?’

  ‘Sadie did, my partner’s teenager. She draws all the time, I think she’s got quite a talent. Of course, we can’t say anything or she’ll never draw again.’

  ‘So you’re a stepfather too.’

  ‘Sort of. Jack is her guardian. We live together whenever we can – it works.’

  Sage looked out the window as trees closed overhead, making a loose tunnel of the road. ‘Nick’s all the dad Max has ever known. Marcus doesn’t have much to do with him – he’s trying to save his marriage.’

  ‘But they have met?’

  She took a tiny turning on the left after Felix pointed it out. It was barely a track, with a crooked sign saying ‘Keep Out’.

  ‘His wife arranged a couple of picnics and walks where we’d all sort of turn up at the same time, partners and kids in tow. Fliss is nicer about it than I thought she would be, now she knows I’m no threat.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘I think she likes Nick and she was charmed by Max. She seems to have forgiven me but I don’t know if she’s forgiven Marcus. The thing is, her children are Max’s half-siblings.’ They were lovely kids; Sage had seen a resemblance when he met them.

  Felix smiled. ‘That’s a nice thought. I hope you can work it out for Max’s sake. Here’s the house,’ he said, as she pulled the car up on the grass beside an old van. ‘I got Lenham to find out more about this Herne, and PC Patel told him to expect us. His real name is Philip Jansen, and he has a long record for trespass, criminal damage and affray. The Parrises mentioned him.’

  ‘The satanist?’ Sage looked at the front windows, which were obscured with tattered net curtains and piles of books.

  ‘Apparently,’ Felix said. The front door had no knocker so he hammered his fist on it several times. When Sage started to look down the side of the decrepit old bungalow, Felix caught her elbow, pointing out a dark tangle of twigs and leaves hanging on the wall. ‘Don’t touch it,’ he warned. ‘They’re traditional charms. Those things can be dangerous.’

  ‘What is it?’

  He looked like he didn’t want to say. ‘It’s an old trick to disable unwelcome visitors. At the very least, it’s full of poisonous berries, thorns and possibly needles.’

  ‘You know your sorcery,’ a voice said from the other side of the cottage door. It opened a foot, and revealed a thin, older man, with a shock of grey hair loosely tied at the neck and a beard that was woven into dreadlocks. ‘It’s a hex bomb, a magical anti-personnel mine.’

  ‘I’ve seen one before. I’m Felix Guichard, I believe you’re expecting us, Mr Jansen?’

  The man ignored the outstretched hand and turned to Sage. ‘I don’t want to talk to the police.’

  ‘You opened the door,’ Sage blurted.

  ‘He knew about the hex bomb,’ the man said, looking her up and down in a way that made her feel a bit uncomfortable. Not sexual, she decided, just very curious. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Sage Westfield, I’m an archaeologist. We’re investigating the burial of a girl at Chorleigh House but we’re not police.’

  The old man opened the door fully. ‘OK then. You can come in, but I’m a busy man. I don’t have much time.’

  They were shepherded into an old-fashioned but pleasant living room. Sage was waved to a sofa. The house smelled of wood smoke; there was a lazy fire smouldering in the grate. Posters on the wall were against fox hunting, mink farming, abattoirs. They showed pictures of abused and dying animals. Sage wondered how he could stare at them every day.

  Jansen pointed at one bloody picture. ‘All for your bacon in the morning,’ he snapped. ‘Don’t look away, it’s happening all around you.’

  Felix remained standing, and brought out his tablet. ‘I believe you wrote this article.’

  The man took it and squinted at the page. ‘I did.’

  ‘And included this picture of Lara Black. You were very critical of the Chorleighs.’

  ‘The father, George Chorleigh, yes. He was an evil bastard. Tried to restrict the right to roam over the forest.’ Jansen handed the tablet back to Felix. ‘He threatened me, he threatened Lara.’

  Sage caught his eye. ‘We wondered if you can tell us more about that time.’

  The man looked at Sage from under bushy eyebrows. His eyes flicked up and down her person then looked to Felix. ‘I have some pictures from that era, yes. I kept them because no one cared enough to find the girl.’ He reached up to the top of a bookcase and brought a folder down. He thumbed through the photos and brought out a large black and white print. ‘This is the original. I “confiscated” the film from a local news photographer.’

  The picture showed a much broader scene. Lara and two men waved banners at the camera; one was a young version of Philip Jansen. Sage looked back at him. ‘Was that legal?’

  He shrugged. ‘I threw the camera back.’

  The younger of the two men was shorter, turning away in a blur. He looked familiar and Sage wondered if it was Lara’s boyfriend – Badger.

  She pointed to him. ‘Do you know this person?’

  Jansen glanced at it. ‘Jimmy Mack, Lara’s boyfriend at the time – she called him Badger. He was camera shy, not like Lara.’

  ‘Mac?’ Sage glanced at Felix. ‘Owen Sloane’s father is called Macintosh.’ She could see a slight similarity but the boy was thin, obviously very young, and clean-shaven, unlike River’s stepfather.

  ‘Follow it up.’ Felix was leafing through the stack. ‘Was Lara involved in other activism? Releasing laboratory animals, for example.’

  Jansen shrugged. ‘That was her business.’

  Felix looked at him, one eyebrow raised. ‘If it led to her being killed it’s the police’s business. She was also a pagan.’

  ‘That didn’t get her killed. She was part of the Wildwoods, I know that. Making pot pourri and singing to the moon, mostly,’ he said, sniggering. ‘You’d have to ask them, they don’t exactly invite me to their moots.’

  Felix nodded. ‘So you’re solitary?’

  ‘Just me. And Satan, obviously.’ He looked at Sage. ‘Just a bit of old-fashioned cursing and magick with a k.’

  ‘Do you believe in all that?’ Sage said. ‘Like the thing outside, it’s just folklore, isn’t it?’

  ‘A sceptic.’ Jansen stared at her, then at Felix. ‘You believe though, don’t you?’

  ‘In Satan? No.’ Felix turned to Jansen. ‘I’ve seen things that I can’t explain, though. I’m much more interested in your animal welfare activities.’

  ‘Magic is all about intent,’ Jansen said. Sage must have looked confused, because he elaborated. ‘That’s how I protested against fox hunting in the forest. Banners, sabotage, the odd spell. I don’t like trespassers, right? So I set up the hex bombs around the sides of the house, where people could get in. All my intention to keep them out is locked into them. If they touch them, boom! They get all the hate and rage and warding I can muster. My place is a haven for wildlife.’

  Sage could feel herself frowning. ‘But how will trespassers know how you feel from the bomb thing?’

  ‘It’s woven into the brambles I make them from, slathered with greases I rub on, imagining how they’ll feel when they touch it.’

  ‘Has it ever worked?’ She didn’t know whether to laugh or pretend to be serious.

  ‘Not yet.’ He grinned at her. He’d lost a few teeth and it made him look like a naughty six-year-old. ‘No one has risked it so far.’

  ‘So how do you know it will work?’ Sage looked at Felix for support but he was studying the picture again.

  ‘I know. I can feel the energy coming off it.’

  Felix held out the print. ‘This is George Chorleigh, the magistrate?’

  ‘Master of hounds, that’s him. He and his friends hunted all over the forest, killed cats, foxes, a swan one time. I saw them take do
wn a half-grown deer once and the master just let them. They hadn’t got a fox that day and the dogs were desperate for a kill.’ He looked at Sage. ‘They keep the hounds like that, aggressive.’

  Felix pointed at the image. ‘How well did you know his son, Alistair?’

  The three of them looked over the photograph, Sage in the middle. His clothes looked filthy, the man smelled like smoke and the outdoors. He reached a stained finger straight to the young Alistair. ‘He was odd, quiet. A bit strange, I thought, very intense.’

  Sage pulled back. ‘Did he show any interest in Lara?’

  ‘We were all interested in the girl. You have to remember, I wasn’t that old then, thirty odd. Alistair Chorleigh was about seventeen. She was passionate about animals, and she was sexy. Flirty.’ He turned around. ‘Here, I wrote an article about the hunt saboteurs in the forest.’ He pulled out a stack of home-made magazines and looked through the front covers. The leaflets had coloured paper covers with lurid images of goat gods and green men on them. ‘We used to sell fifty or sixty every quarter, mostly by post. But one sold well, about three hundred copies. Hold these.’

  Felix took the pile of discarded magazines. ‘What was special about it?’

  But Jansen was already moving to a cupboard behind Sage. ‘That article on your computer thing, that was written for a local magazine. It’s all online now. I still write a few bits a year for them.’ He pulled a battered magazine out of another heap. ‘But this was old school, actual paper. Here you go. That edition sold more than all the others.’

  He held it out to Felix.

  Sage looked at it with him. There were hand-drawn illustrations and strongly worded articles about the forest ponies, wildlife and conservation. It had an article about the hunt and the picture. ‘That’s the one. Who’s seen this?’ She looked at the date on the bottom of the page. ‘2012?’

  ‘There was a twenty-year anniversary investigation of Lara’s disappearance. I wrote this for The Magical Forest that year.’ Jansen tapped the front cover. ‘We sold a hundred copies, then went back to the printer a couple of times. It sold through the tourist office.’

  The first article was called ‘Justice for Animal Lover Lara’.

  ‘We definitely got justice,’ Jansen said, grinning unpleasantly.

  ‘Which was?’ Sage watched Felix leafing through the magazine to an article in the middle.

  ‘George Chorleigh died of cancer. He got it bad, he rotted from the inside out. I doubt if anyone grieved, especially his son.’

  Felix showed Sage the page. Crudely reproduced in black ink was another picture from that day in the New Forest. This time the elusive Jimmy was caught in profile and Alistair was snapped staring at him with absolute hate on his face. Lara was captured just turning her head to look at him; she must have caught his expression out of the corner of her eye because her face had an odd look, her long hair whipping around her head as if alarmed. Maybe Alistair or his father had just said something. Then Sage saw what Felix was trying to show her: Chorleigh senior’s raised arm, the riding crop lifted right over Lara’s head.

  Sage turned to Jansen. ‘This picture. Do you know if there are any copies in the library that we could show to the police?’

  The old man scowled. ‘There used to be. I nicked it back.’

  Sage looked at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s for people like me, not for bored housewives and silly teenagers.’ He looked away. ‘And the Chorleighs threatened to sue me.’

  ‘For this?’

  Jansen shook his head. ‘You don’t understand what it was like back then. The fucking landowners versus the real foresters. They could get away with anything. Take the horse rapes.’

  Felix interrupted him. ‘Do you know anything about those?’

  ‘We knew beasts were tied up and abused, and the forest officials did nothing about it. Some of the animals were so terrified they had to be put down even if they weren’t badly hurt. Kiddies’ ponies, a few heifers. Vulnerable creatures like the fox cubs they use for their own amusement.’ He looked away. ‘George Chorleigh was an agister; he could go anywhere, do anything, he was the law in the forest.’ He handed Sage a copy. ‘You can have that one for the police.’

  Sage took it. ‘Thanks. What do you think happened to Lara?’

  ‘I know old George could have killed her in a fit of rage. She was a thorn in his side,’ Jansen said. ‘Not just making him look like an idiot with the hunt but asking questions all the time.’

  Felix shook his head. ‘I don’t remember Chorleigh senior ever being identified as a suspect. I’ll look into the files again.’

  ‘I tell you, he was untouchable.’

  Sage pointed at the young man in the picture. She could see the resemblance to Owen Sloane again. ‘Do you know any more about this man?’

  ‘Badger? He was all right. He had worked for the Chorleighs at one point but he hated them. He was always in trouble with the police, they probably have a record for him.’

  ‘We’ll look into it.’ Sage ran her eye down the list of articles. There was one entitled ‘An Experiment in Sex Magick’ as well as ‘Flying Ointments and Magic Mushrooms’.

  ‘You might like the sex magic story,’ Jansen leered, nodding his head towards Felix. ‘You and the professor.’

  Sage blushed and found her lips tightening. ‘Felix and I are just colleagues,’ she said, her voice coming out primmer than she had thought possible.

  ‘Ah, well.’ He waved them towards the door. ‘That’s all I’ve got to say, anyway.’

  Felix held out a card. ‘If you think of anything more about Jimmy or anyone else who spent time with Lara, could you call me? It’s very important.’

  ‘I don’t have a phone,’ Jansen said, but he took the card. Before he shut the door completely he looked at them through the gap. ‘But I’ll call from the village. Alistair Chorleigh deserves a fair chance. Drunk or not, he’s isn’t stupid enough to bury a girl in his own garden and then leave her for a dog to find.’

  He shut the door and Felix looked at Sage. She glanced to the ‘hex bomb’, or whatever he’d called it. ‘Load of rubbish,’ she said, with feeling. But she avoided it anyway.

  * * *

  By the time she dropped Felix back at his hotel in Lyndhurst she was starving. She checked her watch: one-thirty – she hadn’t eaten since an early breakfast with Max. She drove into the pretty village of Fairfield and parked outside a tea shop that was open on Sundays. She selected a piece of chocolate cake and a large hazelnut latte.

  The shop was quiet, just a couple of women with toddlers in the window, so she tried to call Nick.

  ‘Hi, Sage.’

  His voice brought tears to her eyes. ‘I’m glad I’ve got you,’ she said. ‘I tried to call you last night. I was hoping you were coming back.’

  ‘We’ve been at the retreat house; I decided to stay a bit longer. No signal, no telly, nothing. We ended up playing footie in the garden by the security light with a few people. It kept going off, which made it harder.’ His tone changed. ‘Is everything OK? You sound a bit wobbly.’

  ‘Everything’s not fine – and I’m not fine either.’ She looked over at the two women, laughing at something one of the children had done. ‘It’s this case. Both cases.’

  There was a long silence. ‘There’s another body?’

  ‘No. It turns out another girl who was about the same age as River went missing in 1992.’ One of the women turned sharply to look at her and she lowered her voice. ‘Two girls, just teenagers, one disappeared and one dead. The man who owns the house might be being framed because someone buried that girl in his garden, maliciously, to put the blame on him. But he was also the last person to see Lara Black before she went missing in 1992.’

  ‘That’s awful, those poor girls.’ That was his first impulse, the caring streak that ran through him.

  ‘Even if he was involved in the disappearance, would he have drawn attention to himself by burying this River in his gar
den? And there isn’t any obvious motive.’ She sighed. ‘They say he might have been drunk, and done it on impulse. But the girl went missing in Southampton, and they seem to think he doesn’t go out much, just to the pub and back.’

  ‘Is Trent helping you? Talk about being thrown in at the deep end for your first case.’

  ‘He’s been busy with another murder. But Felix is here. They called him in to investigate the torture of some horses back in the nineties, then he got involved in the investigation of the missing girl, Lara Black.’

  ‘Her parents must be devastated,’ he said. There was a sad note in his voice.

  She remembered he’d lost his own wife a few years ago. ‘We found some bones but it wasn’t her. But now I really want to find her.’ She swallowed back tears. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I’m not sleeping, and I keep having bad dreams when I do.’

  ‘If it gets too much for you, let them know. Tell Trent, at least.’

  ‘I would, but he’s run off his feet with another case.’ She rested her head on one hand and curved the other around the cup. ‘It would be great if we can find out what happened to Lara, as well as River.’

  ‘You can’t do everything by yourself, Sage.’ The sigh at the end of the phone sounded defeated. ‘Look after yourself.’

  She took a breath, remembered why he was so far away. ‘Have you heard about the job?’ The elephant in the room pushed everything else aside. ‘You need to tell me what you’re thinking. Are you considering moving to Northumberland?’

  There was a long silence. ‘I don’t know. I can’t stand the idea of never seeing you or Max. That’s hard, but the idea of seeing you only two or three days a week feels almost as bad.’

  Again, that feeling of the pull to him from somewhere in her chest, in her gut. The idea of losing him was uncomplicated, while the idea of living with him was filled with frustrations and stress. ‘Don’t leave me.’ It wasn’t what she meant to say at all. ‘I mean, let’s talk about it properly when you get home.’