by Phil Rickman
And don’t, whatever you do, put yourself between the circle and the Knights.
‘Adrian,’ he said. ‘The thing is, you’ve quite impressed us. We don’t think there’s ever been anyone precisely like you.’
‘Then you must be pretty stupid, if you think that. There was a time when everyone was like me.’
‘Hunting?’
‘Hunting to live. Living to hunt. Feeding the organism, feeding the Earth. The great energy cycle. It’s the big secret.’ Adrian laughed, a full-bodied ha ha ha sort of laugh. ‘Killing makes the world go round.’
‘Terrific.’
‘What did you say?’
For once, Cindy was wrong. The storm might be a psychological trigger, but he wasn’t expecting the storm to do his killing for him. Too random. The Green Man liked to be in full control. The Whispering Knights was a perfect, strategic observation post, a little island. Was he waiting for someone here? Would someone be sent, like the birdwatcher? Had Maiden fallen into that role?
It wasn’t enough.
Pull him out of the abstract. Tie him down. A name.
‘I gather Roger Falconer’s been using your ideas.’
‘Ideas?’
‘Well, you know what I mean.’
‘We were going to write a book together.’
‘That’s what he told you, is it? You and Roger, both names on the front?’
‘Not sure. Not sure he deserves it.’
‘Worried he might rip you off?’
A pause.
‘Rip? I may rip his throat out. I may give him to the Knoll. Have to leave the Knoll something when I go. Could be Roger. What do you think?’
Talking to Maiden as someone who, having studied the Green Man, was expected to grasp the point.
‘Where are you going, Adrian?’
Pause. ‘Who did you say you were?’
‘You wouldn’t know me. My name’s … Robert.’
‘You’re right. I don’t know anyone called Robert. What do you do?’
‘I’m a painter. Like Turner.’
‘I don’t know much about art.’
‘But you know what you like. And you like the picture of Stonehenge. In the storm. That’s a Turner.’
‘No!’
‘Yes …’ Watch it. ‘No. Sorry. Must be thinking of another one.’
‘Don’t be stupid, I know which one you mean. The lightning, called into the circle. And the sheep waiting to die for the Earth. And the shepherd. One of the world’s greatest works of art. A message. From the Earth. I mean, it doesn’t matter who daubed the paint on; it’s a spiritual work, a coded message to mankind. They’re all willing sacrifices. I mean, for heaven’s sake, a shepherd knows when there’s a storm coming. A shepherd on Salisbury Plain — and I was born near there — he knows to avoid the stones, because, when it happens there, it’s going to be a big one. I mean, not now, perhaps, because Stonehenge is pretty useless now, with all the tourists, but then … when was that painted?’
‘About 1820?’
‘Gave himself up, that shepherd. And a few sheep. I’m glad you spotted that, Robert. You’re starting to understand.’
‘And what’s the message, Adrian? What’s the coded message?’
‘You’ll see. You’ll know.’
‘That’s why we’re here. Right?’
No reply.
‘You said Stonehenge was pretty useless now … that’s why you’ve come here, right?’
Laughter. ‘These stupid railings. What do they think they’re keeping out?’
‘Or keeping in?’
‘Very good, Robert. Very perceptive. Are you standing up, Robert? I want to see you. So do the Knights.’
Maiden lay still. Thought he heard shouts from the circle. They were still there? What was she doing?
Adrian laughed. ‘Why don’t you come closer, Robert? Come and watch. It’s like an army. It’s regrouping. Gathering its forces. Conserving its energy, and it’s coming. It’s coming. It’s very close.’
The storm?
‘And what’s going to happen when it comes?’
‘I like you, Robert,’ Adrian said. ‘But you ask too many questions.’
Something came then. The first fork lightning, a jagged, white crack in the sky and it was close, speared the trees on the horizon and-
‘Told you!’ Adrian cried, splashed with ice-milk light, arms raised in euphoria, amid the Knights and the whump of thunder. ‘Told you, told you, told you! The next one that’s the sign — the next one will be it.’
No talking this one down.
‘All right, Adrian.’ He stood up. ‘I’m coming over.’
‘See?’ Grayle screamed, and she wasn’t the only woman there who did when all the stones lit up. ‘I thought you knew all about this stuff! Stone circles attracting lightning and all, on account of the streams crossing. You stay here, you’re gonna get blasted.’
‘Oh, let’s go,’ Janny sobbed. ‘It’s all ruined now, anyway. It was a stupid idea.’
‘No!’ Matthew shouted. ‘Grayle, I can’t believe you’re doing this. This is the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s a blessing. Tell her, Charlie!’
‘Well,’ Charlie said, ‘they do say an electric storm’s an Act of God, but whether …’
‘It’s a blessing! It’s absolutely tremendous.’
‘It’s ruined!’ Janny shrieked.
‘I can get you a church,’ Charlie said. ‘Phone call should do it.’
‘I think you better had.’ People pushing forward. ‘I’m the bride’s father, and I think she’s had just about enough of this nonsense.’
‘I don’t want a bloody church!’ Matthew shouted. ‘Just do the business, Charlie. Tie the knot.’
‘No! You don’t understand … There’s a killer out there.’
With Janny’s father, Grayle saw, was Duncan Murphy, the professor from Oxford; hadn’t noticed him before. ‘Come on, Grayle,’ he said, ‘I think you’ve made your point.’
‘Duncan, you have to listen me. There’s a mad guy …’
Duncan Murphy and some other man, they took an arm each and lifted her off her feet and back into the congregation.
He could see the Knights, but no Adrian.
No telling how much time he had. The only way he’d know what they were up against was to get inside those railings, step inside the tiger’s cage.
And then? Would he still be Robert then, when the energy exploded, when the shit hit the fan? Or would have become ‘the man’? Maybe ‘a poor specimen’. And later tonight, the Green Man would be talking his storm-lit death into the burial chamber at Black Knoll.
‘OK. I’m here, Adrian. Adrian?’
Walking those last few paces, his head was clearing. Pleasanter now, the night a bit cooler. Hands in his pockets, the essence of peat coming back to him. Damp and lonely.
A dodgy streetlamp flickering on and off and, even when it was on, it wasn’t fully on, so you could almost see the filament in the bulb, a worm of blue-white light. She was standing under the lamp and seemed to be going on and off like the light; you saw her and then you didn’t.
‘Emma?’
He saw the face of the woman under the lamp. It wasn’t Em’s, though she was about the same age. Her hair was in a bun. She had a case at her feet.
She disappeared in the lightning.
It came down, against all the earth-mystery rules, not in the circle, but in the pines, those skeletal, stalky pines.
But it lit the circle. Seemed as if it lit up every one of the seventy-plus cheesy, pockmarked, weathered stones. So savage and so bright was the lightning that it seemed you would have had time to walk round and count them all one more time before it faded.
Except that Grayle — and possibly she was the only one of them — was not looking at either the stones or the pines, a couple of which had caught fire, but at Janny’s wedding dress, the only thing here which was, conspicuously, not an unnatural, blazing white.
No … Jesus.
Grayle stood transfixed, feeling the hands of Duncan Murphy and the other guy dropping away, and then, spinning round, saw a small flash across the big, flat field and there was also a crack. Not the thunder, surely, because the thunder was almost directly overhead, like an avalanche in the sky, and Grayle wasn’t sure of the order any of this was happening because so many terrible things were happening.
But that was a shot. That, God damn it, was a gunshot.
At some point, Janny finally screamed, and maybe it was at the thunder or maybe because she saw that she was soaked with blood or maybe — in the light of the burning pine trees — she saw Charlie sinking slowly to his knees, as if he was praying for deliverance, with a hole the size of a fist in the front of his surplice and everything emptying out.
Several people saw Charlie fall and there were screams of incomprehension that the lightning could do this. A guy rushed forward, and a woman shrieked, ‘Don’t touch him … he could be live!’
But Grayle Underhill knew there was nothing live about Charlie any more and she found herself walking purposefully out of the circle and into the big, flat field where she’d seen the flash and where, by the light of the burning pines, she could now see some stones, hunched up like gloating old men.
‘Well, as you see,’ Adrian said, ‘it’s an old Mauser. Nothing fancy. 1941, bolt action. Had it since I was a boy. Used to be my grandfather’s, bit of a wartime heirloom. Super old thing.’
Maiden had been struggling to find the gate in the high railings surrounding the Whispering Knights. Could have tried to climb over but he’d never have made it, and Adrian would have shot him and left him bleeding there on top of the iron spikes.
But nothing like that. Adrian had opened the gate for him, peering at his face in the faint, sparky light from the blazing pines four hundred yards away. Adrian beaming. ‘Come in, Robert. You can come in now.’
Proudly showing him the set-up.
‘The sight …’ He detached the rifle from a metal frame wedged between two of the Knights. ‘Well, I simply bought that at a gun shop in Worcester. Utility stuff. The support I made myself.’
‘People say you’re very practical.’
‘One tries.’
Sharp screams of terror spattered the sky like sparks over the Rollright Stones. He must have killed or wounded. Two shots.
‘Energy,’ Adrian said. ‘Look at those flames. That’s confirmation. Oh God, Robert, feel the release. Feel that glorious, glorious release of pure, terrestrial energy. The fusion of the Earth and the sky and … whump!’
Adrian was sky-high. In his army sweater and his camouflage trousers, he looked strong, swelling with power. You could smell his sweat, like engine oil, feel his heat. He caressed the rifle in his arms. Even without it, he wouldn’t have regarded Maiden as any kind of threat or any kind of sacred, chosen target because Maiden’s approach had been along no known, or even suspected, ley.
Everything in Adrian’s world was completely straightforward, rigidly aligned.
He grinned from a summit of self-belief.
‘Must’ve got two, Robert.’ Like some country-sport enthusiast talking pheasants. ‘Do you think two?’
There was a smell of burning in the hellish, rosy night.
‘Three would’ve been better, but I was only given the light for two, so … One has to go with the surge. When you’re working together, breathing together.’
‘Better than sex, Adrian?’ Maiden recalling the Green Man’s long, liquid, shuddering moan as the lightning flared and the gun went off.
Wrong. Adrian stiffened. He made a contemptuous noise. Adrian was a moralist. Adrian had strict ethics. Adrian did not like dirty talk.
‘So who are you?’ Adrian said, unfriendly again.
Maiden felt dog-tired, used up. Whatever energy had been generated it wasn’t accessible to him.
‘I said …’ Adrian placed a hand in the centre of Maiden’s chest, pushed him hard against the rails. ‘Who … are … you?’
Adrian was bigger, heavier, swollen with self-righteousness. Close up for the first time, Maiden could see his eyes glittering with the mindless joy of the bully. Seen it, so many times, in his dad’s eyes, when Norman brought the slipper out. Norman didn’t wear slippers; he only had the one, used for disciplinary purposes. Discipline. Authority. Adrian would know all about that.
OK then. Maiden drew a hard breath.
‘I’m Detective Inspector Bobby Maiden.’ He paused. This was ridiculous. ‘Adrian Fraser-Hale, I’m arresting you for the murder of Ersula Underhill. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you fail to mention, when questioned, anything you later rely on in court. Anything you do say will be taken …’
‘Oh.’ Adrian retreated to the railings, the rifle in his arms. ‘I see.’
This would be the first time anyone had applied the word murder to Adrian’s continuing programme of sacrificial bloodletting. Maiden took a determined step towards him.
‘Further charges will be made later. Hand me the rifle, Adrian.’
‘Adrian?’ a faint, subdued voice said from the other side of the railings.
‘Oh shit,’ Maiden said.
She stood in the grass, fifteen, twenty yards away. A small figure in a torn skirt, hair sweated to her cheeks.
‘Come on, Adrian …’ Maiden held out his hands for the rifle.
But really the hands were out there in prayer.
‘Do the sensible thing, eh?’ Maiden said, just like the old man would’ve said.
Grayle Underhill said, ‘Oh.’
Feeling Fraser-Hale’s attention waver, Maiden went for him, went for the gun.
And felt the air pulse as Adrian moved with a swift and shocking grace, bringing up the rifle, half turning as Maiden went for him. That fixed, opaque glaze of madness in Adrian’s eyes, his teeth bared and parted. You could almost see the twisted, fibrous roots and stretched tendrils in the Green Man’s feral smile, as he brought down the wooden rifle butt hard into Maiden’s eye, the left one, the one that was still half closed.
As Maiden sank, in agony, to his knees, the world was divided into blurred segments by the railings, through which he could see the pale, wavering shape which would, by now, be sharp and tight in Adrian’s line of fire.
‘The woman’s on the line, Robert.’ The voice of the Green Man quivering with euphoria and a kind of wonder at the gloriously unexpected magic of the situation. ‘I said it should be three, didn’t I? The woman’s on the line.’
XLIX
Never occurred to Andy to be scared until she was inside the castle walls and there was no light.
Never been here before, at night, when there weren’t at least a couple of lights in the house. So Marcus wasn’t here. Well, good. Good — probably. Where would he have gone? Down to St Mary’s, most likely, into the pub. Andy would turn the car round, go check out the pub. OK. No problem.
She curved slowly round under the castle wall. Taken her over three hours to drive down from Elham, through the rush hour and then another damn rush hour and then foot down, but not too hard because it would be pretty stupid if, having driven twice round the suburbs to throw off any pursuit, she was nicked on some bloody cart track in the Black Mountains.
There’d been no pursuit, anyway. She’d have known. Would have been easy enough for Riggs to put out her registration to every force in Britain. It was clear enough, now, that Riggs had done no such thing. That the other person Tony Parker had felt obliged to contact with a view to calling off the bad guys was Mr Riggs himself.
And that Mr Riggs had said no. Or that Tony had died before he could even get round to asking him.
The bad guys, presumably, had been. But had the bad guys gone? Best to stay in the car a while. Andy checked the doors were locked. Leaning across to the passenger side, glancing out
of the passenger window, she saw the body.
Marcus …
Backed up in a frenzy, turned the car round so that the headlights were on the face. Breathed again when it turned out not to be a face she knew: some young guy with dark brown, dried blood around a deep dent in his forehead, one arm skewed out with a hand upturned, clawed. A block of stone beside him big enough to mark his grave.
If he needed one? Wasn’t moving, looked all twisted up, but … The hell with this. Andy got out, checked for vital signs.
Cold. Dead a good while. What was this? This one of the bad guys? Way he was twisted, it was pretty clear he’d come crashing down the tower steps. Treacherous, those steps, particularly in the dark, but why the hell would he go up there in the first place? Andy looked around. Dead silence.
And then the house door opened.
‘Sister Anderson.’
Guy in a bomber jacket was walking across the dark yard towards her. She knew the voice, but then she knew a hell of a lot of voices. Whoever it was, he’d been in the house. If anybody was in that house, it ought to be Marcus.
Not so much scared as seriously apprehensive, she waited right where she was, within reach of the car. Until his face was in the headlights.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I didnae think it’d be you. Bloody Judas, eh?’
It began to rain. Big, hard, vertical bullets.
With a lot of difficulty, Grayle raised her eyes from the rifle barrel, which didn’t move so long as she didn’t. Which was pointing steadily at her breast bone.
‘This is where I … I get to die … right?’ She tried to see his face. She thought how Charlie had died. Not even crying out. Never knew. Poor Charlie. Came to conduct a wedding and he died.
Adrian said, ‘Don’t talk. Rejoice.’
‘Rejoice?’ Grayle flared up. ‘That what you told Ersula? When she …’
‘The bitch was unreceptive at the end.’
She heard Bobby Maiden speak, though she couldn’t see him. He sounded weak, he sounded hurt.
Adrian said, ‘Be quiet, Robert.’
‘… bloody coward, Adrian. But that’s hunting, isn’t it? Essence of a great British tradition. Guys with guns against animals that only run. Guys on horses with packs of hounds against one exhausted …’
