The Artisans

by J G Alva

  “Go to Mark now. Our witness is there. Get him and his family into protective custody as soon as possible. Call me when it’s done.”

  Kent hung up.

  A man of few words.

  “What?” Darren asked.

  Pat made a face and said, “it looks like we’re going to Mark.”

  ◆◆◆

  CHAPTER 6

  The bungalow was deceptively larger inside than it appeared from the outside.

  Sutton counted five bedrooms in total, along with an office and a small concrete utility room full of appliances.

  “And this is the master bedroom,” Aimee said, at the end of the tour.

  She turned on the light, stepping into the room and presenting it to him like an estate agent.

  There was a double bed under the window, bracketed on either side by small bedside cabinets. One wall was lined with mirrored doors: a walk-in wardrobe. Other than that, the room was empty.

  “Plus,” Aimee said, holding up a finger. She danced back into a doorway, and pulled a cord to reveal an en suite. “A bathroom and wet room.”

  “Wet room?”

  “See for yourself.”

  Sutton followed Aimee into the en suite. At the far end of the tiled bathroom was a shower nozzle affixed to the wall; the floor dipped on all sides toward a drain directly beneath it. There was no shower door or screen.

  “Nice.”

  “Isn’t it?” Aimee said.

  She had a sly look on her face.

  Sutton nodded.

  “On the farm, I could only dream of such luxuries.”

  “The farm?”

  “Where the Cult was based,” he said.

  Something in Aimee’s face changed at his tone: a softening.

  “I was worried about you,” she said.

  “Well,” he said, and then didn’t know what to say. “I made it.”

  She stepped toward him, deliberately pushed her body against his. It was an unmistakable offer, and Sutton felt his body respond, almost without any conscious intervention.

  “Did you?”

  She placed a hand on his cheek. Her face was only a foot from his. It was close enough that he could see the ghost of the freckles over the bridge of her nose and across her cheeks, under the make-up. He adored those freckles. Aimee was beautiful, but it was a hard beauty: she was lean and tough; even the bones in her face were hard, handsome rather than pretty. But the freckles softened that, made her seem ineffably younger, more innocent; it was easier to imagine the naïve young child she might once have been. A flush was slowly creeping up her neck. Sutton swallowed, and found that his tongue felt swollen, and that his throat was dry.

  “You said it was peaceful,” she said, her voice soft, barely a whisper.

  “Yes,” he managed to croak.

  Her hand traced the line of his jaw.

  “I don’t think it was peaceful at all,” she said.

  “Aimee-“

  “I think you suffered.”

  She brought her head forward and ran her tongue over his top lip. Sutton shivered with pleasure. He felt the blood roaring in his ears.

  “I think you’re still suffering,” she said, licking his top lip once more.

  She didn’t stop there.

  She ran her tongue along his jaw, and then down his neck. She bit him, ever so gently, just below his ear.

  Sutton was surprised to find himself shaking. With want. And need. He couldn’t remember being this aroused.

  “Aimee,” he said, but it was almost an unrecognisable croak.

  “Use me,” she whispered in his ear. She ran her tongue along the edge of it.

  “What?”

  “Use me,” she said. “Fuck me.”

  It was as if, at her words, she had touched a match to something flammable. There was a rush of something, and the next thing Sutton was aware of was that he had Aimee pinned to the wall behind the door in the bathroom, and that her legs were wrapped around him, and that his hands were cupping her buttocks, and that he was thrusting into her. She had his head in her hands, and was dominating his mouth with her tongue.

  It wasn’t very long before it was over.

  ◆◆◆

  “Jesus Christ, Aimee.”

  “God. I’m going to have bruises all down my back.”

  “Are you alright? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

  She smiled.

  “I’ll live, Mr Mills.”

  They were sitting on the bathroom floor in a tangled bundle, her legs on top of his, his arms around her hips, his breath tickling her ear.

  “You were hungry,” she remarked.

  “It’s been a while,” he admitted.

  “No cute young female Disciples to take the edge off?” Her tone was teasing.

  “Aimee.” He didn’t want to talk about it.

  She stiffened ever so slightly.

  “It’s a valid question.”

  Sutton sighed.

  “I wanted to rescue them. Not fuck them.”

  “Well.” She paused. “That’s how it starts.”

  “Right.”

  “I mean, look at this.”

  “What?” He leaned back, so he could look at her face. “Is this a rescue?”

  She shrugged, and turned her face away.

  “Of sorts.”

  “Well…thanks.”

  He paused, and then they both laughed…but the laughter died quickly.

  “I had to do something,” she said, all the humour gone from her voice. “Your eyes were…dead. I’ve never seen them like that before.”

  Sutton was silent a moment.

  “It was hard, Aimee,” he admitted.

  She turned slightly toward him, a questing look on her face.

  “It was hard remembering who I was, why I was there,” he said.

  “You weren’t ever tempted-“

  “No,” he said quickly. “I know who I am, what I am, and what I should be doing. But for someone less stubborn, who wasn’t sure…I can see the appeal.”

  They were both silent then, lost in their own thoughts.

  “Anyway,” she said, stirring. “It was a rescue. Or a wakeup call. Or something.” She paused. “Either that, or a reward for a job well done. I mean, you saved him. Toby.”

  “A victory fuck?”

  “Sutton!”

  She hit him playfully on the arm, but she was amused.

  “Did I save him though?” Sutton mused. “Something drove him there in the first place. Who’s to say whatever it was won’t drive him back.”

  “That’s not your concern, is it,” she challenged him. “It’s up to Greg to look after him now.”

  “You’d have thought he should have been doing that anyway,” Sutton said.

  Aimee smiled brightly.

  “Most men don’t know what’s going on around them. Luckily there’s usually a woman around to point out where they’re going wrong. So this time I’ll make sure Greg doesn’t fuck up.”

  ◆◆◆

  “What was the last location of the Cult?” Alfred asked.

  Greg had switched his mobile to loud speaker. It lay on the table between them in the living room. Alfred sounded tinny and distorted.

  “We were on a farm,” Sutton said. “In West Kennet.”

  A pause. Sutton heard the tapping of keys.

  “Okay. And do they have any transport?”

  Sutton looked at Greg and Aimee.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I must not have made myself clear. Their home is their transport. The farm is abandoned, the main farmhouse is nothing more than the skeleton of a building; they live in the vehicles they travel around in.”

  “How many vehicles?” Alfred asked.

  “At least six caravans, with assorted vehicles to pull them,” Sutton said. “Two buses. And of course Bellafont’s motorhome, which is the biggest vehicle. I can give you some of the license plates, if you need to track them.”

  “Please.”

  “But
you shouldn’t need it. These vehicles are easy enough to spot. Even if they’re not in a large convoy – which they will be – most of them have my paintings on the sides.”

  There was a pause.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s mostly all I did in the last week and a half,” Sutton explained. “Paint murals on their vehicles. Clive knew I painted for a living. He wanted me to produce illustrations from Bellafont’s novel. And once I’d done it for one, then they all wanted a picture on their vehicle somewhere.”

  “Why?” Alfred asked.

  “You know they hate technology. They wouldn’t use cars if they didn’t have to. That’s why they came after us with bows and arrows. I guess…they somehow thought I was humanising these mechanical beasts, with these pretty depictions of their faith. Broadbent didn’t have any objections, so I did a total of about eight vehicles.”

  “Okay. That’s good. Anything else?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “Okay. Thank you, Sutton.”

  “Where are the police on this, Alfred?” Greg asked.

  He was leaning over the phone as if he wanted to head-butt it.

  “I’ve been assured that the team has been working on it as long as Sutton has been in the Cult. They’re almost done.”

  “Did Kent tell you that?”

  “Yes. And also that they’re waiting on you.”

  “On me?”

  “On Toby. Specifically. With him on their side, they will be exponentially more effective at shutting down the Cult.”

  Sutton looked at Greg; he was smiling unpleasantly. So this was his revenge on the people who had taken his son from him: he was going to destroy the religion that their life was founded on. It was a suitable revenge for an egomaniac: go large, or go home.

  “Alfred, we need them to come get us,” Greg said. “You know they attacked the house. Sutton tells me that they won’t stop, that no one has ever left the Cult before, and they’re going to do everything they can to find Toby and bring him back. I’m afraid he might be right.”

  “The team are on their way. Detective Inspector Patrick Harris should be there in the next half hour.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  “Don’t worry, Greg. You’re perfectly safe there. There’s no way they could trace you to that location.”

  “I know. But I’ll feel much better once the police arrive. I’ll speak to you soon.”

  “Goodbye, Greg.”

  Greg pressed the button and hung up.

  “So we just wait,” Aimee said.

  “Yes. Half an hour.” Greg let out a breath. “Thank God this will all soon be over.”

  “Mr Matheson,” Dr Ruminatra called.

  They all turned toward the voice. Dr Ruminatra stood in the doorway to the hall on the far side of the living room. With him was Toby. The boy looked thin and fragile, his skin was pale, and his eyes were sunk deep into their sockets…but he was on his feet, and he was able to raise a small smile.

  “Dad?”

  “Toby, my God.” Greg crossed the living room to meet him. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not brilliant. But okay. My stomach hurts.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  Toby shook his head.

  “I’m thirsty.”

  Greg turned to Aimee, who shot in to action.

  “I’ll get you a glass of water, Toby.”

  She took down a glass from a cupboard and filled it from the tap. She was midway across the living room when something made her turn…she stopped, and then dropped the glass. It hit the floor and shattered, glass and water sliding everywhere.

  Only just visible through the concertina patio doors, almost at the edge of what illumination from the living room pervaded the back garden, were two people standing watch. They were pale; translucent almost; like ghosts. One of them was a girl, and she had a long wicked looking machete in one hand. The other one was a boy of eighteen or nineteen, whippet-thin and angry. He pulled an arrow out of a sheath slung over his shoulder and, as Sutton watched, aimed it at the patio doors.

  Before Sutton could move, he had loosed the arrow.

  ◆◆◆

  CHAPTER 7

  When they arrived in Mark, it was to the worst possible scenario.

  The bungalow was located at the edge of a curve in a road that turned out to be a cul-de-sac. A bungalow at each side crowded the driveway – a fifty foot long gravel track – and the bungalow to which Kent had directed them was tucked away in a surprisingly large corner of space. There was a small separate building for the garage. Trees surrounded the rest of the property, but Pat could just make out the spire of the church, peeking over the top.

  An ambulance and a police car were parked awkwardly in the space between the garage building and the bungalow itself. The emergency lighting on both vehicles doused the environment in staccato flashes of blue and red. A group of people in dressing gowns and tracksuits stood to one side, talking to a PC: the neighbours. Another PC was in conversation with two ambulance attendants; Pat already knew what to expect, simply from their expressions. He felt his spirits sink.

  Introductions were made all around, and then the ambulance attendants stepped back to reveal the bodies: three men, all of them tangled together in the hall. There was blood on the walls, in whirls and splashes, and a large pool of blood covered most of the floor beyond where the furthest body lay. Two of the men were older, and seemed to have suffered the worst of the violence. The younger one, well…Pat shouldn’t be surprised by these things anymore – not with all that he’d seen – but he was surprised, just the same: an arrow stuck out of the young one’s neck.

  Arrows and axes…

  Pat’s back started to hurt. Right where it always hurt; right between his shoulder blades.

  The PC was an older gentleman by the name of Harry Eaves. Neighbours had heard shouting, bangs, and glass breaking; that’s when they’d called 999. Harry had only arrived ten minutes ago, three minutes after the call to the emergency services, with the ambulance hot on his heels, but by that time the bungalow had been deserted…except for the bodies of course. Nobody had seen any people, but somebody had seen vehicles tearing away, up the road. Nobody had had presence of mind to jot down any registration numbers.

  “This is Marjory Holt’s place,” Harry informed Pat. “But she died about six months ago. It’s been empty ever since. The daughter and husband were meant to be selling it, but I hadn’t heard anything recently.”

  Mark was a small community, Pat thought…and in small communities, everybody knew everybody’s business.

  “Where do the daughter and husband live, if they don’t live here?”

  Harry waved in a northerly direction.

  “They both live in the city. I think they’re separated now though. I know Louise well, but I only met the husband once. He works for some millionaire or something. Not a nice guy, I don’t think.”

  Another millionaire?

  He looked at Darren, whose expression reflected his own thoughts.

  Not another millionaire; the same one. Perhaps.

  “So do we know the identities of these bodies?” Pat asked.

  Harry shook his head.

  “I don’t recognise them. We’ve checked their pockets, but nobody has any identification on them. I’m going to get Bill’s son, John, out here to go through their phones. He’s young; he’s good with all this technology. They could be squatters,” he added helpfully.

  Bob said, “the guy with the beard and the glasses is Gregory Matheson. I recognise him from a picture on his website.”

  Pat stared at Bob in surprise, and then turned back to the body.

  “Oh lordy,” he said, rubbing at his eyes.

  “Is he our defector?” Darren asked.

  Bob made a face.

  “Doesn’t seem likely, does it?”

  “How did they get in?” Darren asked, examining the front door. “The attackers, I mean. There’s no damage
to this lock or anything.”

  “It seems like they were already in,” Harry said, indicating the interior.

  Pat, Bob and Darren all leaned in to stare down the main hall.

  Pat could see that one of the patio doors had been smashed in the back.

  There were also signs of a struggle in the living room.

  Pat said, “the intruders were in the living room already, before the others could get to the door...”

  “That’s what it looks like,” Harry said, nodding. “There was a scuffle in the living room – you can see the smashed TV – and then they tried to get out this way, and it looks like the younger one here stabbed the two older gentlemen. But not before one of them got him in the neck with an arrow, of all things.” Harry made a face. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Not in Mark. It chills the blood.”

  ◆◆◆

  CHAPTER 8

  The arrow broke through the patio door but, its inertia spent, it fell harmlessly to the floor at Aimee’s feet. She bent down, picked it up, looked at it…almost as if she didn’t recognise it.

  Sutton shouted, “get BACK!”

  He rushed over and pulled Aimee roughly to her feet.

  The girl began hacking at the fractured glass with the machete, screaming like an animal.

  “Sutton!” Greg called. He was in the doorway to the back bedroom with the doctor and his son, ducking as if in a bomb shelter.

  Sutton pulled Aimee toward them.

  “The front door,” Sutton said. “We have to get to the car.”

  Greg nodded, and led Toby and Dr Ruminatra down the hallway to the front. Sutton waited at the entrance to the hall, standing guard as Arrow Boy kicked at the fractured glass in the patio door.

  “Sutton,” Aimee whispered, from behind him.

  Suddenly, the glass exploded inward in a glittering cascade of jewel-like fragments. Before the glass had settled, the boy had pulled another arrow out of his sheath.

  Sutton ducked, pulling Aimee down with him.

  The arrow thunked into the plaster above their heads harmlessly.

  Machete Girl came in behind Arrow Boy, screaming like a native American brave, the machete held high above her head.

  Sutton pushed Aimee further back behind him; he heard her grunt as she fell on her ass. Instead of retreating, Sutton went to meet Machete Girl, moving in under the weapon so that she couldn’t swing it at him; he punched her in the stomach, hard. The scream cut off abruptly, and she went back about a foot, before doubling up and coughing. Sutton adjusted his footing and then picked up the almost limp young girl; she was not much more than skin and bone, so he was able to lift her without too much difficulty. Through the tangle of her limbs, he saw Arrow Boy getting ready with another spear headed projectile.