by David Mark
He bends down and cuts Betsy’s rope. She feels blood rush into her legs and ankles. Then she is being dragged upright again. Shoved towards the door. Billy is doing the same with Anya, who makes a feeble attempt to run. Rufus steps forward and hits her in the back of the head with the shotgun stock. She shrieks, and drops, and Billy hauls her up again.
Through the door, and into the darkening air; blue and black, the clouds promising snow.
Each step an agony.
One word, repeated, over and over and over.
Jude.
Up the valley, towards the dingle; trudging like witches to the pyre.
THIRTY-FIVE
The digger is all right angles and points; damp earth clinging to the teeth of the bucket that has clawed a trench into the earth. She spies a twist of deeper darkness. Even in the swirl of her terror, she identifies it as a yew tree: its circumference vast, its branches splayed out like the fingers of an upturned hand. There are great scars in the trunk; the bark ripped away and the wood exposed. She finds her vision blurring as she gazes into the face of the ancient tree. Sees knotholes become eyes, a porcine snout, a hanging mouth of obsidian black.
‘You can’t,’ she whispers, and the cold wind snatches the words away. ‘She’s a child. She’s done nothing wrong. Let her go and I’ll do what you want …’
‘You’ll do what I want anyway,’ says Rufus, enjoying himself. ‘I make it my business to know about the people I’m going to take apart. I know you’ve always had one foot in the grave, love – a willingness to die. Well, I know this isn’t how you’d choose for it to end, but you’ll still get what you want.’
Betsy feels as though somebody has cut a vein at her ankles. Feels her energy, her hope, gurgling into the ground that will soon close over her, and the child she has failed.
‘Liz? Liz, what’s going to happen …?’
She looks into Anya’s pale, frightened face: big circular eyes in a mask of blood and dirt. She wants to speak, but nothing comes.
She feels the pressure at her wrists suddenly slacken, and then Rufus is beside her; the barrel of the shotgun pressing beneath the hinge of her jaw, his lips to her ear.
‘Tacitus,’ he whispers. ‘You remember, I’m sure.’
And she does. Remembers the story that Jude had told her, as they stared up at the mess of dead stag in the tree. The story of what the Germanic tribes did to those who peeled the bark of a living tree. They slice the culprit’s navel, and secure it to the trunk of a sacred tree. Then they force them backwards, until their guts are unwound about the trunk – decorating it like tinsel at Christmas. The life of the tree was equal to the life of a man. He’d smiled as he said that; correcting himself, the way he did when he misspoke. Or woman, of course.
Betsy needs to see. Whatever it costs her, she needs to look into this killer’s eyes and make one last desperate plea. Needs to explain. She understands how it feels to be filled with the whispers of something incessant and demonic; the uncontrollable impulse to sabotage, to cause pain, to do harm.
She turns, her mouth opening, a babble of pathetic entreaty spilling from her bloodied lips.
She experiences a moment of sensory overload; heat and noise and pain and a sensation of being both within herself and without.
Then blackness.
Silence.
Then nothing …
… The world returns in a flood. There is wetness on her face. Hot, clammy liquid coating her skin, matting her hair. And she can hear a high-pitched whine, like a dog whistle, not quite there but also drilling through her head like wire.
She turns around and sees that Rufus is on his knees. Billy, behind him, has snatched up the fallen shotgun and is desperately waving it around, jumping at every sound. Anya is on the floor, trying to regain her feet.
Betsy swivels her gaze back to Rufus. There’s a reindeer handled knife sticking out of his cheekbone. His face is twitching, one hand clenching and unclenching, a red drool spilling from one corner of his slack mouth.
‘Jude!’ shouts Betsy, and in this moment she doesn’t give a damn what he’s done before. ‘Jude!’
Billy spins the gun towards her. ‘Shut up!’ he hisses. ‘Shut the fuck up or I’ll shoot.’
‘You need your cartridges,’ hisses Betsy, her eyes flashing gold. ‘Don’t waste them on me. Not when he’s coming. Not when he’s right fucking behind you!’
Billy spins on the spot, raising the gun, and Anya lashes out from the floor. She catches him in the knee. He grunts. Turns his back on the shadows. Raises the gun, just as Betsy kicks him square between the legs. He doubles up, gasping for breath, and Betsy pushes past him, desperately helping Anya up with her foot, trying to yank her hands free of her bonds, and then both are running, jumping over the ice-hardened tree roots, the wildflowers, the mossy rocks. She glances back just once.
She sees a figure she takes to be Jude. He has Billy by the lapels. And he’s picking him up as if made of damp paper, and ramming him – skewering him – on to the teeth of the mud-coated digger; the metal emerging from his gore-covered chest to gleam, silver and red, in the moonlight.
He watches her go.
Turns his attention to Rufus.
In the darkness, his smile is a knife.
THIRTY-SIX
Faster. Faster!
Stumbling and rolling, they slither their way down the far side of the valley. The ground glistens with the promise of tomorrow’s frost. Above, the moon illuminates a perfect V of rooks: an arrowhead pointing them back the way they’ve come.
The air, Bible-black; cold as the kiss of dead lips.
‘Nearly there …’ stammers Betsy, her teeth chattering, her bones threatening to come apart. She glances at Anya, her face almost swollen shut on one side. She tugs again at her ropes and feels them suddenly give. She must have snagged them on something sharp as she slithered down the jagged slope behind the dingle, making her way to the one place she hopes and prays she will be safe.
‘Yes,’ she cries, exultant, as the tattered rope suddenly comes apart. She grabs for Anya and with frozen fingers begins trying to unpick the soggy twine that holds her.
‘Are they coming?’ asks Anya, her voice chopped up into tiny icy utterances. ‘I thought they were going to kill us. Did Jude throw the knife? I don’t know where it came from. There’s blood on you! Betsy, there’s blood all over you …’
Betsy says nothing. Just tugs at the rope until it comes apart, loosening it far enough for Anya to be able to hunker down and slide her feet through the loop, tying herself in front instead of behind.
‘Just there,’ whispers Betsy, and wraps an arm around the girl. ‘That’s the house.’
They stagger down the slope, slithering over stone walls, scratching themselves on barbed wire. The manor house, always just over the next dip, remains a distant blur, a softly-lit rectangle peeking out from a stand of trees.
Betsy feels her feet go out from under her and she slams into a low wall, winding herself. Anya, behind, makes a grab for her and then they are both tumbling over the old stones and landing in a tangle of cold, damp grass, staring up the driveway to the house shared by Campion and Candace Lorton-Cave.
It’s an old house. A fortified farmhouse, just like home. It looks like something from a period drama; a hunting lodge built for Henry VIII; all rough-hewn stone and old slate, with thick drapes at the darkened windows and torch-holders bolted to the brickwork. The driveway is lined with tall trees, each cobwebbed with a fine mesh of frosted cobwebs, and in front of the colossal double-fronted door, where the driveway opens out into an attractive courtyard, stands a gnarled oak tree; the ridges and hollows of its trunk contorted into the face of a screaming gargoyle. Through the place where the eyeball might be, Betsy sees the rusting handle of a chainsaw, its blade embedded so deep as to touch the heartwood.
A security light comes on as they half-run, half-fall their way up the shingled driveway.
‘Where are we?’ begs Anya. ‘Who
se house is this?’
There are no cars in the driveway. A double garage at the far side of the courtyard stands locked. ‘Please be in,’ mumbles Betsy, as she runs up to the door and starts hammering at the wood. ‘Please …’
They wait for what seems like an age. They hear the wind in the trees, the bloodied gasp in their lungs. The house is completely silent. It seems as if the world is holding its breath.
Finally, Betsy hears footsteps, and almost sags with sheer relief as the door swings creakily open and Candace Lorton-Cave peers out at her like a gaoler in a Dickensian novel.
‘What on earth …?’
Betsy gathers Anya up in her arms and they tumble into the half-dark hallway. A great warm wave engulfs them and it is all Betsy can do not to let it drag her immediately into a blissful, beautiful sleep.
‘Oh my God, what’s happened?’ demands Candy, peering at the blood on Betsy’s face and turning frightened eyes on the sobbing, shivering child. ‘Come through, can you walk … I’m in the parlour, it’s warm, I’ll get drinks, the first aid kit …’
‘Campion …’ stutters Betsy. ‘Men at the house … Jude …’
‘I can’t understand you,’ says Candy, pushing Betsy’s hair back from her face and looking for injuries. She’s brisk. Business-like. Checking her over as if assessing a horse.
‘Stay there,’ she commands, and hurries off down the long, wood-panelled corridor, oil paintings glaring down from the walls; a gallery of hunting hounds, ruffles, crinoline and curls. Despite the pain, the exhaustion, Betsy notices a little of the lady of the manor in each of the disapproving faces.
‘Are we safe? Liz, are we safe?’
Betsy can’t pretend to know. She manages to haul Anya back to her feet. She drags her the way Candy had gone, feeling the burning gaze of the men and woman in the oil paintings. She wonders, for a moment, how it must feel to be Candy – to have to measure up to such a rich history. She has never had such problems. She doesn’t know anything about herself save the fact her mother was a drug addict and that her father paid for her services in heroin. She’s never met him. Wouldn’t know him if he turned up on her doorstep. All her mum recalls is that he brought her a present when she told him she was expecting. A pair of earrings, from the Elizabeth Duke range at Argos. Gold and cubic zirconia. She’d got fifteen pounds for them, apparently. Even named Betsy in their honour.
She tries a handle, trying to find the parlour. Opens a door into darkness and fumbles for the light. Her fingers find it and the warm golden glow illuminates a large study; the sort of place that puts Betsy in mind of a gentleman’s club; leather and wood and great towering shelves of old books.
Anya pushes past her, into the room. She half slithers to the floor.
‘Rug’s all wet …’ she mutters, her eyelids flickering. ‘Soaked.’
Betsy turns to go and look for Candy, just as she hears the burst of static. It’s coming from the draughtsman’s table by the tall window at the far end of the room, where a lyre-backed swivel chair is softly turning, as if pushed by the breeze.
Betsy steps across the sodden rug and crosses to the table. Unrolled on the board, the edges pinned down, an old map of the valley; all whorls and contours, like the print of a palm. The lettering is spidery; some of the place names completely alien. But there is a perfect circle drawn around the house where Betsy now stands.
The hiss of static again: loud, insistent. She feels the world slow down. Her thoughts become sluggish, her vision blurring, dilating, as the exhaustion begins to catch up with her.
Concentrate Lizzie. You’re a little sneak, aren’t you? Do what you’re good at, you silly girl.
She finds the walkie-talkie in the desk drawer.
Holds it up to her face and presses the button on the side of the slick black handset. Sends the high, electronic beep to the other receiver.
There is a moment’s silence, and then the voice. His voice. Each word the smack of hammer and chisel upon stone as he carves his prophesy into rock.
‘I know what you’ve been doing, Candy. And I swear to God, if you hurt her, or the girl, I will burn your precious house to ashes and shove them down your fucking throat!’
‘Jude … Jude it’s me,’ hisses Betsy, desperately. ‘Jude, what’s happening? I thought she was your friend, that she was on your side! What did you do to those men? They said such awful things about you, about what you’ve done, and I don’t know what to believe and I’m so scared, Jude, so scared …’
From the doorway, a small voice. It’s calm and controlled, and almost apologetic.
‘I did say to stay there, Elizabeth. It wasn’t a difficult instruction. But I suppose you’re not operating at your best, and even at your best, you’re not great.’
Beneath the desk, out of Candy’s line of vision, Betsy keeps her finger over the button on the walkie-talkie. She stares at the small, goblin-faced woman in the archway of the old door. She’s holding a short, antique weapon: carved wood and gleaming brass; ornate scripture running down the barrels.
‘It still works,’ says Candy, with a little smile. ‘Flintlock. We keep all the hunting rifles under lock and key in the lodge but this stays in the manor house, with me. I clean it more than I should. I enjoy it. Taking things apart and putting them back together again – it’s always been something I enjoy.’
‘Campion’s dead,’ says Betsy, without emotion. ‘Rufus did it. Stabbed him. Trying to frame Jude.’
‘So sad, so sad,’ says Candy, with a shake of her head. ‘I had hoped he would listen to reason but he never was one for the bigger picture. His petty little games with Jude, well, it was all a bit macho, don’t you think? Dick-measuring, I believe some people call it. Sending the boys to rough him up – I ask you, it’s almost embarrassing.’
Anya looks up at Betsy from the floor. She raises her hands. They’re wet, and red.
‘Betsy?’ she asks, desperately.
‘This is where he stabbed him?’ asks Betsy, closing her eyes. ‘Rufus?’
‘Yes. All a bit Cluedo for my liking: “the thug with the knife in the study”. I was surprised he made it as far as the bastle, but he always did have the capacity to surprise a person. Can I presume things aren’t looking at all rosy for Rufus and Billy? Apparently the local bobbies made something of a pig’s ear of the arrest. Brendon was there to enjoy the show. Two squad cars and a dog unit and Jude slipped through their fingers like a soapy eel. I will admit to a genuine fondness for him. In another time, he’d have been quite the swashbuckler, don’t you think? Doesn’t really fit in the world, but then neither do you, and I will admit to feeling very much out of place from time to time. I really don’t ask for very much. I want the Cave name to prosper, that’s all. I’m the last of the line, you see. Never could manage to conceive, try as we might. Even gave the old IVF a go. Nothing stuck. More miscarriages than any person should have to endure, and nobody should have to endure a single one. Of course, it didn’t help that Campion was wasting his seed on that ungrateful cow Maeve. Who knows – perhaps one of those wrigglers would have finally done the job for me. Too old now, of course. I’m the last. But I do want it to be said I’ve left the estate running smoothly. Making a profit. Building for the future.’
Betsy shivers, the cold seeming to climb inside her. Her breath is all icy vapour; each exhalation the ghost of something precious.
‘The bastle belonged to this house,’ explains Candy, pointing the ornate gun at Anya. She shrugs, by way of apology. ‘Sorry you got dragged into this. You and your poor dead dad weren’t ever part of the plan, but it can do no harm at all to have a few extras tagged on to Jude’s account, and if you want my opinion, he probably did kill him. He’s crazy about Elizabeth here and he’s a bit of an alpha male when it comes to protecting his harem. Even after Maeve passed on, he wouldn’t use what he had on Campion to get his own way. Didn’t want to betray her memory, you see. Didn’t want people thinking ill of her. Thought he was doing the decent thing hidi
ng that footage away beneath the ground as if it were a bomb. All he had to do was watch a few other clips and he’d have found the one that mattered. Would have seen Campion shooting that silly girl. Cost a small fortune to tidy all that away, it really did.’
‘You knew,’ splutters Betsy.
‘Knew?’
Desperately, she looks around for something she can use as a weapon. Spots a spherical paperweight, bubbles and cogs trapped inside. Slides herself ever so slightly in its direction, millimetre by painful millimetre. ‘When we met, you said you knew about their arrangement – what she did to be given planning permission, letting him have sex with her …’
A look of distaste grips Candy’s face. ‘That was not the arrangement, Elizabeth. She seduced him. Gave him what he wanted and in return he pulled some strings and allowed her to get her own way. Of course, he was infatuated. Couldn’t accept that she had fallen for Jude, couldn’t stop trying it on – threatening to tell her new husband what she’d done, unless she carried on letting him enjoy himself. Convinced himself she loved him, poor sod.’
‘The day she died …’ begins Betsy. ‘The disk …’
Candy shrugs. ‘She felt so guilty when I told her I knew about the affair …’
‘Affair? He was raping her!’
‘We tell ourselves the stories we want to hear, my dear,’ replies Candy, acidly. ‘After her operation, it became clear she wasn’t going to get well. She certainly couldn’t stay at the bastle. She was going to need proper care. I wanted to buy the place from her. Do you know how much money we make from the grouse shoots alone? And the field that comes with the bastle, under the old covenant, is precisely where we will place the access road for what will be the finest grouse shoot in this country. I have old friends, you see. You may laugh at the notion of ancient familial bonds but a favour is a favour and I have old chums who will be only too happy to remove the red tape. Site of Special Scientific Interest, you see, which means the environmentalists will be choking on their mung beans. But a little bit of muscle and they do tend to go away. People like Rufus are very good for that. Things haven’t really changed in this valley, you see, Elizabeth. People want their share, and what they have, they want to keep.’
