They’d shown her CAT scan images of her brain, pointed to blurs and blobs on it which didn’t make any sense to her and talked about things like ‘infarcts’, ‘transient ischaemic attacks’, and ‘vascular dementia’. The upshot of all of this seemed to be that it wasn’t just her nose that was bleeding – her brain was too. High blood pressure wasn’t helping, and she had been sent home with all sorts of advice about lifestyle changes that might help to bring it down, such as avoiding sources of stress and anxiety.
Dennie was not in the least bit anxious about setting out to confront whatever Colin Neary had come back as. It was the right thing to do. It was necessary. If she’d acted sooner back when Sarah was being beaten she wouldn’t have killed him, he would never have been buried in that allotment and the Farrow would have left them alone. Dennie wasn’t naïve enough to believe that it was all her fault, but she owned a part of it, and putting that to rights made her feel more centred and steady than she had in years.
Nevertheless, she was under no illusions about what such a confrontation was likely to do to her. Still, what of that? What was worse than spending the next ten years slowly being stripped of her ability to talk, to think, to even perform the most basic tasks like eating or going to the loo? Having everything shredded away to be left as nothing but an echo of herself? Better to die.
Sneaking out of the house without waking up Lizzie was a doddle, but there was no way Dennie was going to get past Viggo so easily. When she reached the kitchen he struggled up from his huge cushion by the back door and limped towards her, whining. He had suffered four cracked ribs in the fight and his torso was strapped up from shoulder to hip.
She shushed him and tipped a few biscuits into his bowl, stroking his head while he munched.
‘Sorry to do this to you, boy,’ she whispered. ‘But you’re in no shape to come with me this time. Besides, I need you to stay here and look after Lizzie for me. Can you do that?’ She was crying now, and he looked up, whined, and licked the tears off her face. ‘Yes, I know you can, because you’re a good boy, aren’t you? You’re the best boy there is.’
She unlocked the back door and eased it open. Viggo’s tail began to wag at the prospect of a surprise night-time walk, but she made him sit and stay, and the hurt in his eyes was almost too much to bear. ‘Look after my baby girl, all right?’ she told him. ‘I’ve got to go look after someone else’s.’
She eased the door closed and set off down the garden path, and even without looking back she knew that his nose was pressed against the bottom of the door to smell her for as long as he could.
* * *
That afternoon David found Mark Turner out in a wide field dotted with dozens of black plastic-wrapped cylindrical bales of silage. He was driving a tractor with a pair of five-foot-long bale spikes attached to the front like fangs, impaling each bale, lifting it, and carrying it to be deposited on a long trailer with the help of his son Darren. As David approached he shut off the engine and jumped down to say hi and shake his hand.
‘How’s the arm?’ he asked. David’s left arm was in a sling, but that was more for show. It was a bit stiff but basically fine.
‘Oh, getting there, getting there,’ he replied, and nodded at the bales on the trailer. ‘Summer been good to you?’
‘On and off. What can I do for you, Dave? Bit of a long way out to come just to talk about the weather.’
‘Yep. It’s been a strange year. Got those squatters out from next door. Still a shame about those lambs, though, hey?’
He watched Turner’s face turn crimson. ‘What the fuck do you want, David?’
‘It’s about what you want, Mark. Do you want the scumbag that did it?’ David didn’t know for certain that Matt had killed and mutilated those lambs himself, but given who he’d been living with and what they’d done, that hardly mattered.
Darren hopped down from the trailer and came over. ‘It was Matt, wasn’t it?’
‘Do you want him?’ David repeated.
‘Of course, I fucking want him,’ said Turner. ‘So do the cops, apparently. Are you telling me that you know where he is?’
‘No,’ David admitted. ‘But I know a woman who does.’
‘Well, are you going to tell me, or is there something you do want after all?’
‘That depends. How many shotguns have you got?’
Mark Turner’s eyes widened.
* * *
Dennie sat in the passenger seat of Mark Turner’s huge green Defender, with Turner himself driving. Behind her were David, and Turner’s son Darren, and following behind them was Prav in her own car. Right in the very back of the Defender were two excited farm dogs who had been introduced to her as Hob and Bella. She felt a bit guilty that they’d been brought along on this expedition when her own Viggo was with Lizzie, but if Prav knew her business there wouldn’t be any fighting and nobody would be in harm’s way. All Dennie had to do was actually find the place where Matt had holed up and Prav would call it in and they could just let the police do their thing. She wasn’t sure that involving the Turners was either necessary or a good idea; ‘Just in case,’ David had said. She couldn’t say that he was wrong, but there was something about the way the men sat in grim silence without even the usual witless banter that made her think they weren’t going to be satisfied with letting the authorities handle it. Even Prav had brought along a Taser and got hold of some stab vests. The shotguns were racked safely in the back with the dogs, but that didn’t make her feel much safer.
Prav had not been happy about the guns.
‘What exactly do you think we’re going to do?’ she’d demanded. ‘Charge in there like a SWAT team? It’s just asking for trouble!’
‘Well, I don’t know what your definition of trouble is, but kidnap and murder definitely do it for me,’ David retorted. ‘I kind of think that boat has sailed, don’t you? Besides, are you forgetting the bit where you’ve already been shot at?’
‘No, David, I am not forgetting that. And I’m not keen on it happening again. I especially don’t want to get accidentally shot in the back by a pair of trigger-happy bloody farmers!’
Mark looked at Daz and raised his eyebrows. ‘None taken,’ he said to her.
‘People like Matt Hewitson don’t respond to diplomacy,’ said David. ‘Going in without a show of strength is just an invitation to get the shit kicked out of us. Anyway, nobody’s forcing you to come along. But if you do,’ he added, ‘you’re not a sergeant and you don’t get to go around treating everybody else like they’re idiots.’
‘Good,’ she shot back. ‘That means I can punch you in the face and not get sacked when you turn out to be wrong.’
‘We have to find them first,’ Dennie pointed out. ‘After that you can all be as childish as you like.’
‘Any idea of where we’re going yet?’ asked Turner. They were driving out of Dodbury and they’d soon hit the A38, whereupon he would need to know whether he was turning left or right.
‘Shh,’ said David. ‘Let her think.’
‘I still don’t see why she couldn’t have just pointed it out on a map,’ said Daz.
‘Do you want to find this bastard or not?’ David replied.
‘If you’ll all just kindly shut your traps for a bit,’ Dennie murmured. She closed her eyes and thought about Sabrina, trying to recreate that feeling of being both simultaneously distant yet focussed, of being outside her own body and yet deeply inside herself. Come on, she said to Sabrina silently. Don’t be afraid. And don’t worry about me either. I know what this will do to me, and it’s all right. Sabrina had always been a bit panicky, anxious about often being the bearer of bad news. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault. But I need you now, more than ever.
The Defender slowed and stopped at the road junction. Vehicles flashed past on the wide dual carriageway in front of them. ‘Going to need a decision now,’ said Turner.
Still Sabrina didn’t show, and Dennie began to be afraid that either sh
e couldn’t, because Dennie wasn’t strong enough to summon her and some part of her brain was too broken from having summoned her before, or because Sabrina was simply too scared. Dennie decided to try a more direct appeal to the shade of Sarah Neary that she wore. Sarah, I’m so sorry I couldn’t help you more back then, but I need you to help me now because I’m going to do something that I should have done much earlier – and maybe if I had, you’d have left Colin and you’d both still be alive and none of this would have happened. I need you to help me find him, because I’m going to give him a bloody good piece of my mind.
Behind Prav, a car horn beeped. In the mirror she saw Prav gesticulating rudely to the driver behind.
‘Look, Mrs Keeling—’ Turner started.
She felt Sabrina’s arrival as a sudden pressure in her brain, as if a part of it deep inside was squeezing tightly. She opened her eyes and looked through the windscreen to see Sarah standing on the other side of the dual carriageway, looking back at her with tears in her eyes. Slowly, Sarah turned and started to walk away along the road.
‘That way,’ said Dennie, pointing.
The headache began again, and she thought this one might be the worst of all.
* * *
David thought that if there was a method to Dennie’s navigation, it wasn’t one that a waking, rational mind could comprehend. She led their tiny convoy a wandering route through mazes of narrow country lanes before taking them along the M54 for a couple of junctions and then off again along A- and B-roads with no apparent destination in mind except that the trend was always west, out of Staffordshire and into Shropshire, through the outskirts of the West Midlands urban sprawl, and down into the Severn Valley before finally out the other side into the uplands of the Welsh Marches. For the rest of them it felt longer than the two hours that his watch claimed, and for Dennie herself it must have been worse. As the journey lengthened it took its toll on her; her nose bled continually, she began to nod as if dozing, and her speech became slurred. More than once his concern almost overcame his desperation to find Becky and Alice, and he tried to make them stop so that Dennie could have a rest, but every time this roused her into a fierce denial and a determination that they keep going. By the time they were winding along yet another lane, this one somewhere between a village called Pennerley and another simply known as The Bog, he thought she’d actually passed out, but then she sat bolt upright and cried, ‘Here! He’s here!’ and slumped back in her seat, groaning.
Turner looked at the trees that crowded close on either side. ‘This place?’ he said. ‘I don’t see anything.’
‘All except for that gate,’ Daz pointed out.
His father stopped the vehicle. It was a humid day of another unseasonably hot summer, and the heat seemed to push itself into the car along with a heavy silence. Prav pulled up behind, got out and started unloading the stab vests from her boot. ‘Right, let’s go and have a look,’ she said.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Turner. ‘I thought you said we’d just find the place and then call the cops and let them sort it out.’
Prav gestured around. ‘That gate could be anything. We need to be sure. We’ve got one shot at this; if we call the cavalry and we’re wrong they’ll never believe us again.’
David was checking Dennie; she was flushed and sweating, and he didn’t like what he heard of her breathing and pulse. ‘This is not good,’ he said. ‘I think she’s overdone it.’
‘Well, we can’t leave her here,’ said Prav. ‘Not on her own and unprotected. We’ll get her to a doctor as soon as we can.’ Under her breath she muttered, ‘We might all bloody need one soon.’
Daz took a set of bolt-cutters and opened the gate, while Prav showed them how to put the vests on. The Turners had their shotguns, while she was carrying her Taser with an extra cartridge clipped to the handle. And what have I got? David thought. The first flesh, that was what: Moccus’ blood poisoning his body. So, the god wanted it back, did he? David would be more than happy to oblige.
Prav got into the Defender with them, leaving her car on the road, and they swapped positions – David replacing Dennie in the passenger seat while she was sandwiched protectively between Prav and Daz. They were surprised to find that it was not a dirt track on the other side of the gate but something more like a tarmac driveway. It was covered with leaf-litter and tree branches that had been crushed and splintered as if somebody had driven over them without going to the trouble of clearing them away properly first. Mark took it easy, crawling along as his passengers stared out at the foliage that encroached closely on either side. The engine’s low rumble and the crunching of its tyres through debris only made the silence beneath the trees seem deeper.
In the back, Hob and Bella were restless, growling and whining as if they could smell something that they were simultaneously terrified of but also wanting to rip to shreds.
‘Dogs are spooked,’ said Daz.
‘Probably the things that attacked the station,’ replied Prav. ‘I bet the woods are crawling with them.’
‘There’s a cheery thought,’ said David. ‘Please do not open your windows or feed the animals.’
The trees started to thin and he saw fields appearing between them, and then buildings, but it all had an overgrown and dilapidated look – he saw ruined walls and half-burned cottages and wondered what this place had been.
Then a curve in the road straightened and he saw the church. It too seemed perfectly ordinary, with its square Norman tower and crumbling gravestones, and a man was sitting on a bench in the shade of the lychgate, eating an apple.
‘Yep,’ said Prav. ‘That’s one of them.’
Matt Hewitson looked up as they approached, flicked the half-eaten apple into the long grass of the overgrown graveyard, and stood to meet them, wiping his hands on his trousers. There was a placid smile on his face which could have meant anything.
‘That was quick,’ he called. ‘Where did you—’
But David already had his door open; he leapt around the truck bonnet and punched Hewitson in the face. ‘Shut the fuck up,’ he snarled. ‘Where are my wife and daughter?’ Prav was yelling at him, and he knew it was a stupid move, but even he hadn’t realised he was going to do it until it had happened.
Hewitson fell back, cursing, hands to his face, but when he straightened up he was smiling again. ‘Fair enough,’ he said, massaging his jaw. ‘I suppose I had that coming. Sure, you can come and see them. Word of advice, though?’ he called to the rest of them who were still in the truck. ‘Keep those dogs on a leash when you get out.’
‘Or else what, you little shit?’ shouted Turner.
Hewitson shrugged. ‘Or else they’ll get eaten.’
‘Never mind that, where are Becky and Alice?’ David demanded.
‘Up that way,’ said Hewitson, nodding at the wooded slopes that surrounded the village. ‘It’s not far but we have to go on foot.’
‘It’s just me,’ said David. ‘Nobody else.’
Hewitson shook his head. ‘Not happening. You want to see the little ladies, you come with your friends.’
‘Why?’
‘Because my boss says so, that’s why. Look, if you don’t want to see them, that’s fine, just get back in your big-ass four-wheel drive and go home.’
‘You don’t understand – we have an old woman who can barely walk.’
Hewitson blinked at him. ‘Now what on earth makes you think I give a fuck?’
David turned back to the people in the vehicle. ‘Are we going to do this?’
Prav was checking the cartridge on her Taser. ‘Well, I’m definitely not going to sit here and let you toddle off on your own with that psycho, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘We didn’t bring these along for decoration,’ said Turner, patting the butt of his shotgun, and Daz nodded.
‘I can walk,’ grunted Dennie. Her face was pale now rather than hectic, but David didn’t know whether this was an improvement or not. ‘Old woman, is it? I
’ll old woman your arse, Brian Keeling.’
David traded worried looks with Prav. ‘Is she…?’
Prav shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. The stress of getting us here, maybe?’
Hewitson led them through the graveyard and along a path into the trees on the other side that sloped uphill. David and Prav helped Dennie between them, with Mark Turner in front and Daz behind, each of them with a shotgun in one hand and a tightly leashed dog in the other. Hob and Bella were more restless than they had been in the car. The sense of being watched by unseen eyes was even stronger, and combined with the airless heat it made David’s head swim.
‘Guns and dogs,’ said Hewitson as they walked. ‘How’d that work for you last time?’
Turner bristled but Prav laid a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t. He’s just trying to provoke you.’
‘He’s fucking succeeding,’ Turner growled.
‘This is where it all began, you know,’ Matt continued, unconcerned. ‘The cult of Moccus. Mother always said it was a church, not a cult, but let’s not fool ourselves. Maybe one day when everything’s settled down this will become a place of pilgrimage, but at the moment it’s dead. Time to find a new home, make a fresh start. Just a few loose ends to tidy up first.’
‘What, like us, you mean?’ David asked.
But Hewitson just laughed.
‘David?’ asked Dennie. Her voice was trembling, and she was looking about her in confusion. ‘Are we there?’
‘Yes, Dennie, you got us here.’ He patted her arm and smiled, even though he felt like screaming.
6
THE CLEARING
THE PATH LEVELLED AND WIDENED OUT INTO A clearing dominated by the ruins of a large stone column in the centre that had fallen and broken into chunks. On one of them, Becky and Alice sat huddled close together, watched over by another woman – or something that looked a bit a like a woman, anyway – but David was paying no attention to the details because he was running towards them, blinded by tears.
Or at least he tried to. He fetched up against Matt’s outstretched palm and it was like running into a wooden beam end-on.
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