Darkness Rises

by Jason Foss

  ‘Sorry.’ He was almost offended.

  Flint was hoping for a titbit, a crumb of evidence to fill out the fragmented picture left by the verdict. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he was deluged by a whole feast.

  ‘He loved that girl, the one they say he done away with. He brought her here once...’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last year, to collect one of my kid goats. His eyes shone in that way men’s eyes shine.’ She sighed.

  ‘What did Lucy do? I mean, did her eyes shine?’

  ‘Not in the same way. He could have been her dad, the way she seemed to look up to him.’

  ‘Not her lover?’

  ‘Lover? That’s one of those newspaper words which makes it all sound so dirty.’

  ‘I think he was the father of her baby,’ Flint stated baldly.

  ‘Piers? No.’ She seemed very certain, even amused. ‘Not Piers. That was his undoing. Did you know his wife? No of course you wouldn’t, well she was called Patricia and she ran off with a schoolteacher. Do you know why?’ Amelia held up a finger. ‘I’ll tell you now, because it will hurt no one. She wanted children.’

  ‘And Piers didn’t.’

  ‘Couldn’t.’ She nodded in emphasis.

  The past, as ever; the clues lay in the deep past. Suddenly Flint had a motive, a reason for Plant to become increasingly desperate and finally to lose all reason. He had a motive for murder and a final excuse for suicide.

  ‘Mrs Winter…’

  ‘I never married...’ she almost sang the words. ‘That’s why I go out to France. You see, my Percy was in the army and he couldn’t decide whether he would marry me or my best friend Dolly. Guess who he chose?’

  Flint was wrong-footed by such intimate admission by a stranger.

  ‘Dolly ­– you guessed.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Anyway, to show there’s no hard feelings, we still meet up. They keep goats too now; isn’t the world strange?’

  ‘Miss Winter, you must know what Piers did with your goats.’

  ‘He had his little ceremonies.’

  ‘You were involved?’

  ‘Oh no, oh no. People think that if a little old lady lives on her own, with her dog and her goats, she’s a witch. No, Doctor Flint, I never went that way. It was all too silly for my liking. I love the woods and fields, like Piers did, I taught him his herbs, but I didn’t go for his antics.’

  ‘Do you know any others involved with Piers’, erm, antics?’

  ‘None of them. Piers asked me to breed these goats six years ago; I had ordinary breeds before then. I let him have one, he pays me and we have a business deal.’

  ‘Did he ever mention names?’

  She pulled her bottom lip inside her upper teeth, giving an odd smile. ‘Now, I suppose that question could hurt someone.’

  ‘I need to find the truth.’

  ‘For the newspaper?’

  ‘I’m nothing to do with the newspaper.’

  Amelia Winter looked at him, through him, even. She was still weighing him up, judging him as friend or enemy. ‘He was always cagey, was Piers. Sometimes he talked about Rowan and sometimes about Hazel.’

  Hazel? Flint remembered the dedication in the poetry book which had lain in Lucy’s room. ‘Was that a male or female Rowan?’

  ‘Female?’ she guessed slightly. ‘Piers was never happy with men, he was always with women all his life. I think that was why he liked his little games.’

  ‘He enjoyed the power?’

  ‘He must have enjoyed something.’

  ‘He was in charge, then? He was the head wizard or whatever?’

  ‘I suppose he must have been.’

  ‘Have been?’ He recognised the implied past tense.

  ‘Oh, it’s all too silly for me. I don’t get involved ­– look what it did for poor Piers.’

  ‘Is your sister involved?’

  ‘Dear Shirley, poor Shirley.’ Amelia touched her forehead. ‘She’s no longer all there, we don’t really talk any more. They say it is a sickness which runs in the family. I am free, so far.’

  ‘But Piers never talked about men? You’ve no idea who the father of this baby could have been?’

  ‘He never talked about men ­– not real men anyways.’

  Flint strained to think of a new angle on the same question. ‘At the inquest, you said he dreamed he was being chased. Did he ever talk about it?’

  ‘Every day, poor child.’

  ‘I suppose that was my fault. You must really hate me for that.’

  ‘No, dear. I don’t hate you. Why should I? Piers wasn’t frightened of you.’

  ‘Well, it was me who put the police on to him, made him go into hiding.’

  ‘He wasn’t hiding from you.’

  Flint was puzzled. ‘If not me, who?’

  ‘He was frightened of dreams. He said a horned man was after him, and that you were just one of his demons. Oh every day, he kept talking about Him and how he needed the spells to defeat Him. Poor dear, there was nothing I could do.’

  Something in what she had just said held a clue, but Flint couldn’t connect it with facts he already knew.

  ‘Piers wanted me to go to France, as I always did. I wanted to stay and look after him, but he said he had work to do. He asked me to post letters for him, but I never did. I thought it dangerous whilst the police were looking for him.’

  ‘They were not, by any chance, to bookshops?’

  Amelia Winter’s eyes opened wide. ‘So they were: bookshops in Paris and in Germany. Have the police shown them to you?’

  Of course not, thought Flint. ‘Did he ever mention a black book?’

  She thought hard. ‘There was some book he fretted about all the time.’

  Flint knew which book. That non-existent book of non-existent spells, presumably with which he would fight non-existent demons. How could the logic of a madman be unravelled?

  At length he decided he had drawn as much from the woman as possible. He thanked her and apologised again for his part in the tragedy. She was phlegmatic, if deeply saddened.

  ‘You go home, Doctor Flint, and don’t you worry. None of this was your fault, you were only looking for that girl. I’m sure Piers would want you to find her too.’

  Amelia Winter’s parting words sent Flint driving back to Kingshaven, and down the lane in which Shirley Plant and her late son had lived. Some arrogant sense of righteousness had persuaded him that if his snooping was acceptable to Amelia Winter, her sister might be brought around to the same attitude. He was wrong. He parked the Land Rover, got out, took one look at the green Skoda parked on the unmade drive, then rapped on the door. Mrs Plant looked around the curtains at him, then returned inside. He knocked again, then went around to the side door and tried his luck. A bolt and chain slid into place when he knocked. He went to the kitchen window and she began to pull blue curtains closed. Finding this both futile and invasive, he retreated back to the head of the drive to think. He had to speak to her, solve the final riddles. Perhaps she knew something about Lucy.

  Then Flint noticed the car. Its front nearside tyre was taut and firm. He remembered it being completely flat at Forest Farm. Of course, he realised, the police would have changed the wheel to drive the car back! He bent down to examine it, quickly spotting that the layers of dirt and rust matched those on the other three. This was no spare tyre. He would bet the spare was still under the bonnet somewhere, clean and rust-free. The police must have pumped up the tyre to move the car.

  Piers Plant must have driven himself to Caesar’s Camp and contracted a slow puncture on that awful dirt track. His tyre then had a whole week to go completely flat before the car was found; so much was logical. Flint walked back to his Land Rover, started the engine and drove back up the lane, a discomfiting thought worming its way into his head. This same tyre had been pumped up by the police and stayed fully inflated for a month; it could not have any sort of puncture.

  *

  The final days of the excavation were a ha
ppy riot of jokes, songs and last-night parties. Flint left his team to clear the site and flew out to Turkey for a fortnight of sun, dark coffee and glittering white ruins. It gave him a perfect excuse to miss Piers Plant’s cremation.

  Vikki Corbett wanted one last interview to close the file. Arnold, her editor, had yawned when she mentioned the moribund Lucy Gray story and it was only the macabre quality of Plant’s suicide that made another article worthwhile.

  She had mingled with a dozen people willing to be recognised as friends and relations of Piers Plant at the crematorium. The ceremony had no religious content and the curator’s body was simply burnt for disposal. Afterwards, Vikki had made a discreet enquiry and arranged to be present when Mrs Plant collected the ashes.

  On an overcast September day, Vikki advanced from the cover of scaffolding shrouding the front of the ruin that had been Kingshaven Museum. She had followed the bent figure of Mrs Plant from the crematorium and she knew what lay in the white plastic carrier bag the old woman hugged to her chest.

  The reporter had contracted some of the archaeologist’s erratic logic, hoping the curator might have asked to be buried at some sacred spot. Perhaps, the same sacred spot where Lucy also rested. It contained the germ of a story, so Vikki was prepared to let it grow.

  Mrs Plant had stopped by the rose beds in front of the museum. She took a cylindrical container from her carrier bag, removed the lid, then froze. She turned a stone face to Vikki, halting any action she had intended. The reporter faced the challenge and advanced towards her.

  ‘I’m sorry to intrude...’ said Vikki.

  ‘I’ll not do it while you’re watching.’

  ‘Mrs Plant, I’m very sorry…’

  ‘I hope they paid you a lot of money for what you wrote.’

  Vikki’s mouth went dry, a spasm of guilt and uncertainty halting her usual resolve.

  Rain began to fall, droplets exploding on the fading plants.

  ‘He loved these roses,’ Mrs Plant said.

  ‘Will you tell me everything, Mrs Plant?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I need to know who his friends were.’

  ‘He had no friends.’

  ‘I need to know, I need to...’

  ‘I’ll tell you nothin’. If I knew anything, I’d take it to my grave.’ The cold grey look remained. The urn lid stayed poised.

  ‘Sorry.’ Vikki backed off, part disappointed, part ashamed. It’s only a job, she told herself, I’m only doing my job.

  Mrs Plant was still impassive. Vikki waited a few more moments, feeling awkward, then turned down the path to the road. She glanced over her shoulder, but Mrs Plant was still immobile, prepared to wait indefinitely for privacy. Vikki turned her head back towards the road and resolved to look back no more.

  *

  Evening closed in and rain continued to fall, as another figure walked slowly into the rose garden. Rowan had not been to the crematorium; she saw the risks and she saw no benefit. Beneath her umbrella she looked around the roses.

  Oak, poor Oak, how had things gone so badly?

  Standing in quiet reverence, Rowan thought of Oak, and the women who had treated him so badly. That bitch who had divorced him, his crazy aunt, his even crazier mother, the vicious reporter and of course Hazel. All this had been Hazel’s fault, Rowan would never forgive her for any part she had played. Only one woman had understood poor Oak; she had been his mother, his sister and his wife.

  Rowan pulled her collar closer, thinking of the fifteen years they had shared a dream, a dream that would soon be brought into being. She had read of the inquest verdict, she had seen the evening edition of the paper with its terse account of the cremation. Vikki Corbett’s colourless article was proof that the reporter had lost the scent of the trail. Rowan had also learned that even Doctor Flint had run out of ideas and enthusiasm. Things would return to normal, she would put aside the unhappy year, then she had plans for the future.

  Looking down at the flowerbeds she was sure she could see a trail of fine grey ash between the roses, slowly mingling with earth and water. Piers Plant had returned to the elements.

  Chapter 18

  Central College was the same in late September as it had been in August, except the toilets had been repainted and stank of turps. Flint found his office looked too clean, too empty, so messed it up deliberately on arrival with notebooks and permatrace plans from Burkes Warren. He would be supervising the projects of three postgraduates in the coming year, and the keenest one came to demand attention that first morning.

  ‘It looks like I missed all the fun.’ Tyrone surveyed the newspaper headlines he had escaped. The tan sports jacket was new, expensive and Italian.

  ‘It was hardly fun at Forest Farm.’

  ‘Aw, seen one stiff, you’ve seen ‘em all.’

  Flint gave him the most disgusted look he could manage.

  Full of high spirits, suntanned and over-relaxed, Tyrone stretched himself to almost-horizontal in the soft chair. ‘I hear you went to Turkey with Torpevitch. What’s it like?’

  Thoughts of the sun-bleached walls of Aphrodisias came back to mind and Flint felt instantly warmer. ‘Wonderful.’

  ‘And was Burkes Warren a barrel of laughs?’

  ‘The social life was okay. I’m still undecided on the dig; we may have stripped the wrong wing, not much there.’

  ‘I told you Stuart was a waste of space; everyone wondered why you took him.’

  Was Tyrone just trying to be irritating? He was succeeding in upsetting the happy state of equilibrium which had been cultivated so carefully in Turkey.

  ‘My fault, not his.’

  ‘I heard you found a new woman.’ Tyrone was trying to be chummy now, brimming with tact as ever. Gossip travelled the department at the speed of light, Flint supposed that Monica was the subject of the innuendo, but merely grunted a denial, refusing to be drawn into Man Talk.

  ‘So what’s on the menu for this term?’ Tyrone continued his attempts to jerk some sort of response out of his supervisor.

  ‘Back to archaeology. Real archaeology. I’m teaching, you’re thesis-ing.’

  ‘You’re forgetting all about Lucy?’

  Flint looked at the keen, earnest face. ‘All the clues led us to Plant. All the other evidence is scrappy and contradictory.’

  ‘So the official police viewpoint is correct? Plant goes mad, kills Lucy, plays all sorts of dirty tricks on us, then kills himself.’

  ‘Well, it’s plausible.’

  ‘But you’re not convinced?’ The suntan cracked into a one-cheek smile. ‘If we had something to go on, you’d carry on looking?’

  Flint was reluctant to admit it, reluctant to start over again. Lucy was last year’s business and he avoided a direct reply.

  ‘Any more bombs? Head-in-a-box, hate mail?’

  ‘No, thank God.’

  ‘But you’re still in purdah?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m in college every day. They know where to find me.’

  ‘Who is “They”?’

  ‘They are the ones we never knew about. Perhaps Plant was behind it all, or perhaps his friends are happy for us to think that.’

  ‘His suicide was very convenient,’ Tyrone said.

  ‘You’re not going to come out with more conspiracy theory stories?’

  ‘No, but it stopped the police asking questions. It stopped us finding Lucy.’

  ‘Lucy, yes, poor Lucy. I’ve a few ideas where she might be buried, if she is dead, and we still don’t know for sure. To be really sure, of course, we’ll have to turf-strip about four square miles of ancient monuments. That or wait for a convenient snowfall and drag Ralph and Judy Slack out in their Cessna.’

  Flint could see something welling within his student. Tyrone’s face was adjusting to suit his next statement.

  ‘I’ve had time to think, you know, sitting in street cafés, sipping cappuccino, watching the sunrise over Florence. So when I got back yesterday, I had a scurry through the files
, just to get my grey cells going again. Thanks for the photocopies by the way ­– I added all the new stuff. Do you want to come and look?’

  ‘No, but I suppose I must.’

  A square, grey-painted room had been allocated to Tyrone and another postgraduate student. Along most of the free wall hung the Lucy wall chart, with all the key information displayed in its spatial relationship. Tyrone ran through it item by item, step by step, using a felt pen to scrawl a few new notes in the appropriate places. After a few minutes, Flint stopped him.

  ‘Tyrone, what is the point?’

  The student who looked more like an advertising executive pointed with the felt tip, and adopted a serious hands-on-hips pose. ‘If this was the data for my thesis, and I drew the same conclusion as the police have, would you be satisfied, as my internal examiner?’

  Flint played the game, following all the arrows, spotting the errors, omissions and unused pieces of evidence. The cracks in the arguments yawned wide, the links were tenuous and much white space begged to be filled correctly. Last year he had marked an MA thesis with identical flaws. Many intriguing lines of enquiry had been opened, but none followed to a satisfactory solution. The mature student involved had slapped on a ludicrously inappropriate conclusion and left the oral examination in tears.

  ‘Present it in that state and you’ll fail.’

  ‘Why?’

  The examiner began to point out and identify problems. ‘One: who is Hazel?

  ‘Two: who is Rowan?

  ‘Three: who was behind that organised hate campaign. I don’t believe Plant had the backbone, or the opportunity to organise it.

  ‘Four: who helped Plant escape, other than his mother?

  ‘Five: who was Plant scared of, or was he really in a fantasy world?

  ‘Six: who was the father of Lucy’s baby? We know it can’t have been Plant.

  ‘Seven: if Plant was depressed enough to commit suicide, why did he bother to collect fresh foxgloves when there were plenty already prepared in the cottage?

  ‘Eight: what was wrong with the front tyre on the Skoda?

  ‘Nine: why the hell is that non-existent book so important?

  ‘Ten: last but not least, where is Lucy?’