The Craftsman

by Sharon Bolton

  ‘Can we hope for any good news on the murder investigation?’ asked Avril.

  The correct thing to say, of course, was that we were pursuing several lines of enquiry and that the chief constable or one of his deputies would make an announcement in due course. But I’d been sent here to gain their confidence.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We’re at a loss.’ I think I even managed to put a tremor into my voice.

  ‘Oh dear, that is worrying,’ said Avril. ‘We’ve been doing our best,’ she went on, ‘but with trouble of this magnitude …’

  We’ve been doing our best?

  I decided to go for it. ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking, but are you a member of Daphne’s coven?’

  ‘Of course,’ Avril replied. ‘Although, I wouldn’t describe it as “Daphne’s coven”. Ouch, stop it.’

  There was a scuffle, a fumbling in the steam. Avril Cunningham, the solicitor. I had to remember that.

  ‘By any chance do you meet on Pendle Hill? About halfway up the south side, in a clearing where there used to be a building of some sort?’

  ‘Oh, you clever girl!’ Daphne said.

  ‘How did you work that out?’ asked Avril. ‘None of our group would have told you, I’m sure.’

  ‘Not me,’ said a third voice, from the back of the room, the mysterious Em, who put menthol on the steam but who hardly spoke. So I’d learned who two of the witches were. Gosh, I was good at this detecting lark.

  ‘I saw lights up there a couple of weeks ago,’ I said. ‘In the middle of the night. And what looked like a fire. And I was up there today and found the stub of a candle.’

  ‘That’s what comes of making friends with a detective,’ Daphne said. ‘They find out all your secrets.’

  ‘Why do you meet there?’ I said. ‘It’s quite a climb, and in the dark surely it’s dangerous? And why do you have to meet in the dark? Why outside? And what on earth is it that you do?’

  ‘That’s a lot of questions,’ said Avril. ‘Have they taught you interview technique yet?’

  She meant it as a joke – I could tell from her tone – but it hit home. ‘No. I’m not a real detective, just a police constable,’ I said. ‘I’ve been sort of co-opted to the team, but I think that might be coming to an end very soon.’

  ‘Nonsense. You’re clearly brilliant,’ said Daphne. ‘And you’re right, it is a big climb. We don’t meet there every time, just when we have some important work to do. It’s a very auspicious place. Almost certainly the site of Malkin Tower. You know what that was, of course?’

  I did.

  ‘The home of Old Mother Demdike and her family,’ I said, referring to one of the most notorious of the Lancashire witches. ‘But nobody is supposed to know where the tower was.’

  ‘Nobody does for sure,’ said Avril. ‘But those of us who study witch-lore have a shortlist of likely sites and that one stands out for most people. Malkin Tower was almost certainly built for defensive purposes originally, and that site has an excellent vantage point. When it fell into disrepair, who’d want to live halfway up that hill but the poorest of families?’

  ‘And on certain nights, from that spot we get a very clear view of the moon,’ said Daphne.

  ‘We’re a moon coven,’ said Avril. ‘We can work at other times, of course, and we have met at noon, sunrise, the daylight gate, but we always have more success when we work with the moon.’

  ‘You keep saying “work”,’ I said. ‘What sort of work do you mean?’

  ‘Magic, of course,’ said the voice of Em, and there was something about the way it floated out of the steam that was unnerving.

  I was trying to remember what Daphne had told me about witchcraft in the reference library, what I’d read over the past couple of weeks. ‘And this magic, this work is done by … Sorry, I can’t—’

  ‘We use rituals and symbols to provide focus, but generation of energy is key,’ said Avril. ‘We do that by dancing, chanting and drumming.’ No, it was Daphne who was speaking. For a moment she’d sounded so much like Avril. I wondered if they’d swapped places in the steam. I was actually starting to feel a little disorientated.

  ‘Some covens use the sex act to generate energy, but not us. Did you hear drums that night?’

  I had. They’d chilled me. ‘Very clearly. I think the wind was against you.’

  ‘At the moment of casting, the energy is released,’ said one of them. I really wasn’t sure which. ‘We visualise it floating off to where it is needed.’

  ‘And this works?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course it does. You found the poor child that night, didn’t you?’ said Avril. I think it was Avril. ‘Although, we had no means of knowing that it was towards you, Florence, that we were directing our energy.’

  It had to be the heat. My head was starting to spin.

  ‘Do you think the proximity would have made a difference?’ said Daphne, and I could tell from the lower pitch of her voice that she was talking to the other two now, not to me. ‘The fact that Florence was actually at the foot of the Hill, with no physical barriers between us?’

  ‘Interesting question,’ said Avril. ‘It shouldn’t, but we’ve never had quite such a remarkable success before.’

  ‘Not so quickly, that’s for sure,’ said Daphne.

  ‘Maybe Florence is a conduit,’ said Em.

  I had the sense of several women moving closer towards me. And yet there could only be three of them. I’d heard no one else.

  ‘You think the magic you performed on the Hill is the reason I found Patsy that night?’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ they replied in unison.

  ‘So why haven’t you found Stephen Shorrock and Susan Duxbury?’ I didn’t mean to sound judgemental, but the idea that I’d acted under the control of these women was ludicrous.

  ‘We’ve certainly tried,’ said Avril. ‘All the work we’ve done since the first child went missing has been to try to trace them.’

  ‘Oh! Oh! I’ve had a brilliant idea,’ said Daphne.

  ‘Law of averages,’ said Avril. ‘It was bound to happen sometime.’

  ‘I have to get out of here,’ said Em. ‘I’m burning up.’

  I sensed, rather than saw, movement in the room, and then I felt someone’s flesh pressing towards mine. I tucked in my legs as a dark shape climbed down from the upper shelf and moved towards the door. As she passed me, I caught a whiff of a woody, earthy perfume I remembered from university. Patchouli. And I saw that she was a West Indian woman. Not Em, then, as in short for Emma or Emily, but the letter ‘M’. Short for Marlene.

  I’d learned something else too. I now knew who had phoned the station the night of the near-riot at the Perseverance Mill, telling me Patsy’s body needed to be burned.

  37

  ‘I can’t do it,’ I said. ‘It would be completely unethical … Thank you. That looks delicious … Besides, you found Patsy without any of her possessions. Can’t you do that again?’

  Several hours later, I was in Daphne and Avril’s house. They lived on the opposite side of town to the Glassbrooks, but in a house of similar size and age. It was stone-built, with high-ceilinged rooms, decorated plasterwork and huge bay windows of old crinkled glass. Their furniture was shabby but comfortable. Books were everywhere, piled high on shelves, tottering on every side-table, even forming strange structural columns on the hardwood floors.

  One of the two women was a painter. Landscapes in oils hung on every wall, and there was a smell of turpentine in the house.

  Avril, whom I’d met properly in the shower room (making a mental note never again to be formally introduced to someone while naked), was aged around forty, a little younger than Daphne. She had a cloud of dark, shoulder-length hair that not even the steam could flatten. Her face was skeletal, her eyes big and brown, her cheeks so sunken as to make the bones beneath seem visible. When she dressed, it was in flat shoes, tight Capri pants, a close-fitting dark sweater and a black beret.

  I liked her. I
liked both of them, but granting what they’d asked would put me in a very difficult position.

  ‘Having something that belonged to Stephen or Susan would give such a focus to our work,’ said Daphne.

  They’d asked me back for supper while we were still in the steam room. Oh, and they’d invited me to live with them. For a couple of weeks, maybe a month or two, until I found somewhere else. I’d rushed back to the station, to check in with Sharples, who gave me the go-ahead to get as close as I could to Daphne and her friends. The sniggering, as I left the room, didn’t go unnoticed.

  Sharples had been less impressed, though, by my theory that Marlene Labaddee, one of the witches, had phoned the station anonymously the night after we’d found Patsy’s body. ‘There’s dozens of West Indian women in town, Lovelady,’ he’d said. ‘They all sound the same.’

  Avril topped up her own wine glass and then Daphne’s. I’d declined all their offers of alcohol. ‘When you use police dogs, you have to act quickly, don’t you?’ she said. ‘There’s a short period of time when the dogs can pick up a scent?’

  ‘Usually about half an hour,’ I agreed. ‘After that it gets harder.’

  ‘Well, it’s the same with us,’ said Avril. ‘We found Patsy because the trail was fresh. Susan and Stephen have been missing for longer, so we need extra help.’

  I was supposed to be pumping them for information, not the other way round. ‘So have you had other successes, with your magic?’ I asked. ‘I hope that’s not a rude question. I never met any witches before.’

  They both looked at me and smiled.

  ‘I find it all fascinating,’ I said, and felt they could see right through me.

  ‘If you could let us know when a particular search is going on, we could time our meet to coincide with it,’ Avril said.

  ‘Yes, give you a bit of a boost,’ said Daphne. ‘Point you in the right direction. How likely is it that Stephen and Susan are in graveyards like Patsy was? There can only be – what, six of them in town?’ She looked at Avril. ‘Darling, we could perform a trace ritual in each of them.’

  Avril said, ‘We avoid graveyards for a reason.’

  ‘Have you healed anyone?’ I was trying to remember what I’d read about the Pendle witches. ‘Or saved a crop that was blighted by …’

  They waited, politely.

  ‘Blight?’ I wondered if I should quit while I was ahead.

  With an air of someone taking pity on a simple child, Daphne said,

  ‘There are three disciplines of witchcraft: healing, divination and magic. I was going to explain in the library, but we got distracted. You’ll find all witches are naturally drawn to one of them. Em, whom you met at the baths, is one of our healers. We’d love to have Sally, of course – what a strong team we’d have then – but she’s always resisted joining a coven. Some witches prefer to work alone.’

  I’d been waiting for the right moment to ask more about Marlene, but this took me completely by surprise.

  ‘Sally? Do you actually mean Sally Glassbrook?’

  Sally was a witch? She was a bit odd, granted, and she certainly knew a lot about herbs and plants, but a witch?

  ‘Sally is a very accomplished healing witch,’ Daphne said. ‘Midwives often are. And Avril has always been drawn to divination. Magic is my thing.’

  ‘Unfortunately, offering a coherent explanation is not,’ said Avril. ‘Florence, by its very nature, much of our work has to be done alone. Em needs quiet and concentration to study the qualities of plants and to produce the compounds that are most efficacious. I require the same when I’m reading the tarot, or the runes, or the crystals. When we come together as a coven, it is to gain spiritual strength from each other and to perform magic.’

  ‘And if you don’t mind my asking, what is it that you’re trying to achieve? Apart from find missing children, I mean.’

  ‘Well, when we meet, after the greetings and the opening rituals, we ask if we have any work to do. Someone might say that a friend or relative is ill and we’ll work towards getting that person better. Someone might be facing a particularly difficult decision and need guiding in the right way. Someone else might need a bit of luck.’

  I thought for a second. ‘How about winning the pools?’

  ‘Magic rarely works for that sort of personal gain.’ Avril’s voice had taken on a disapproving note. ‘Nor do we work towards anything negative, anything that might do harm.’

  ‘And the different members of the group have different skills?’ I asked. ‘Are there more healers than … magicians?’ I was fishing for more names, and from their polite smiles I could see that they knew that.

  ‘The strongest covens are always the most balanced.’ Avril got to her feet. ‘Let’s take coffee outside.’

  ‘Florence.’ Avril put the coffee pot down on the table. ‘Are you sure we can’t help you? If it’s not too rude, your police colleagues don’t seem to be getting very far.’

  ‘It’s quite apparent there’s some dark magic going on,’ said Daphne. ‘Or at least an attempt at it. The clay effigy, the children disappearing at the new moon. It’s obvious you think so too – you’re clearly fascinated with the subject.’

  ‘Sorry, what? What do you mean, they disappeared at the new moon?’

  The two women looked at each other. ‘We thought you knew,’ said Avril.

  ‘How can you not know?’ said Daphne. ‘It’s obvious.’

  ‘Not to me. Nobody mentioned new moons. Are you sure? And what does it even mean?’

  ‘You really do have to work on your interview technique.’ Avril got to her feet. ‘Where will I find the calendar, Daffers?’

  ‘The three teenagers all vanished on or very close to the new moon,’ Daphne told me, as Avril disappeared through the back door of the house. ‘One could argue it was for purely practical reasons. When there’s no moon in the sky, the night will be much darker. Misdeeds go unseen.’

  I looked up into the turquoise sky. There was no moon that I could see.

  ‘It will rise at nine thirty-five,’ said Daphne. ‘One day off full.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I’m the supreme witch in a moon coven,’ she told me. ‘I always know what the moon is up to.’

  ‘She has a calendar.’ Avril was back and crossing the patio towards us. ‘And you are not the supreme witch. We are a gathering of equals. Here you are, Florence. A lunar calendar.’

  The calendar was a colourful affair, its cover filled with animal and plant illustrations. I took it and started flicking through. The new moon in March was on the eighteenth day of the month; Susan had gone missing on the seventeenth. In April, it had happened on the sixteenth, the exact day of Stephen’s disappearance. Patsy had gone missing on Sunday, 15 June, again the day of the new moon.

  ‘Why is it relevant?’ I looked up to find them both watching me. ‘I know you think it is.’

  Neither spoke for a moment – at least, not out loud – but their eyes moved quickly, in unison, as though there was some sort of unspoken conversation taking place that I just couldn’t tune into.

  Eventually, Avril said, ‘Witches believe that their work is more likely to be successful if the phase of the moon is advantageous.’

  ‘If we were to perform dark magic,’ said Daphne. ‘Which we never have, by the way, it would be at the new moon.’

  ‘You think the children are being taken for some sort of dark magic?’ I said.

  ‘You found a clay effigy stuck with thirteen pins of blackthorn,’ said Avril. ‘What more evidence do you need?’

  ‘The original Louvre Doll was part of a love spell,’ I said. ‘Although, when I read that spell, I thought it sounded more like slavery. A dead slave wouldn’t be much use to anyone.’

  Daphne’s eyes flashed.

  ‘Did you think of something?’ I asked her.

  ‘No, dear, I’m far from my best after a drink or two.’

  ‘Or three,’ Avril said.

  �
��If someone’s performing dark magic, then who?’ I asked. ‘Is there another coven in Sabden?’

  Neither woman spoke.

  ‘Is there?’ I repeated.

  Avril reached out and put a hand on Daphne’s. ‘Not that we are aware of,’ she said. ‘Goodness, is anyone else getting chilly?’

  I left Daphne and Avril’s house shortly after nine-thirty, promising to think about their offer of staying in the spare bedroom. Before I left, Daphne took hold of my hands and held them up for inspection.

  ‘You have lovely hands, my dear,’ she said. ‘In fact, you are a very lovely young woman. But you should make a little more of yourself. A bit of lipstick, maybe some nail varnish.’ She dug into her pocket and pulled out a small bottle. ‘Here,’ she went on, as Avril shook her head. ‘Cutex Frosted Ice, in Rosehip. If it’s men you want to attract, these little superficialities are important.’

  ‘I think Prince Charles is still free,’ Avril said.

  ‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘I’m focusing on my career right now.’ And then I had a vision of Tom Devine, lounging drunkenly in the passenger seat of his own car. ‘Really, I don’t. But it’s very kind of you. Thank you.’

  It was almost a quarter to ten when I got home, and sure enough, the moon had appeared on the horizon, a beautiful almost-full globe of pale gold.

  I turned my key slowly, trying to be quiet. I really didn’t want another confrontation that day. As it turned out, I was wasting my time. The second I opened the front door, Sally appeared from the kitchen, Larry close on her heels.

  ‘Flossie, thank God,’ she said, rushing towards me. ‘Luna’s missing.’

  38

  We were in the Glassbrook kitchen. Sally, Larry and Cassie, John Donnelly, whose presence here I didn’t understand quite yet, and me. I’d made the others sit down round the table, mainly to stop them rushing around the house and yelling all at once in my face.