by Mark Sennen
Copyright
Published by Avon
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2016
Copyright © Mark Sennen 2016
Cover illustration © Andrew Smith 2016
Mark Sennen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007241460
Ebook Edition © March 2016 ISBN: 9780007587896
Version: 2016-03-08
Dedication
For M
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Praise
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Keep Reading
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
Chapter One
Day One
Creepy, creepy, creepy-crawlies. Little black ticks running over my naked skin. Flies swarming in the air. I slide onto my front, burying my face in the softness of the pillow, but it’s no good, I’m awake now and can’t settle. I roll over. I realise there’s only one fly, not a swarm. Just one fly buzzing against the window. One too many. I don’t like flies. They give me nightmares. Flashbacks. I can recall every last detail. The smell of the sea. The sound of the surf. The blood on my hands.
I blink. The fly is still hurling itself against the window. I stare at the insect and wonder. Something isn’t right. I push myself up from the bed and swing my legs down onto the rough wooden floor. I walk out onto the landing and down the corridor. I knock on the door.
No answer.
I knock again and then turn the brass doorknob. The hinges creak as the door eases open. Inside, the window is unlatched, swung wide, the white net curtains billowing like waves breaking into a sea of foam. Sunbeams flicker in through the window and across the floor to the bed where she lies unmoving. I creep to the bed and where the sunlight strokes her face I bend and brush her cheek with my lips.
Nothing. I try again, this time pressing harder against the dry, cold skin. No reaction, not a twitch. Her eyes remain resolutely shut as if she is determined not to be disturbed by anyone ever again.
Day Two
This time the creepy-crawlies are real. A dozen flies swarming in the air. I open all the windows hoping they’ll go away. No such luck. More come, following their noses, the promise of decay drawing them in.
She’s begun to smell now, the weather warming, the summer heat growing by the day. Pieces of flesh lie loose on her face and her bare flabby arms and her room is full of insects. Droves. Swarms. Hordes. An odour of rotting cabbage, urine and meat gone bad permeates throughout the house. I sit at the foot of her bed and cry.
Day Three
The next day I rip up a dozen oak floorboards in her room. I fashion a coffin from the ancient planks. I’m good with tools. Woodworking. Metalworking. I kiss her on the lips one last time, aware as I do so of her cheek twitching and rippling. Maggots beneath the skin. Consuming her.
I roll her in a sheet and pull her from the bed and into the coffin. Slip, flop, thud. The coffin is heavy and I slide it from the room and down the stairs. Outside, I balance the coffin on a wheelbarrow and weave my way out to the orchard. Then I dig down into the soil and rock and bury her beneath the apple trees. A leaf flutters from above and falls into the grave like the first flake of snow in winter. Inside my chest my heart has turned to ice.
Day Four
Breakfast is a gruel of cold porridge served with a wooden spoon in a cracked bowl. A drop of honey sweetens the goo, but not the day. On the table beside the bowl is a notebook. My diary from years ago. I found the book in her room. Why she kept it I don’t know, but perhaps in some small way what was within helped her to understand where things went wrong.
I stare down at the book. I know I need to relive the events inside, but not now, not here.
Day Five
I knew I would return. The place has too many memories for me to stay away. I park my car and walk across fields, the notebook clasped tight in my right hand. There’s a copse in the distance. Green leaves in a sea of waving corn. I wade through the corn and reach an old fence which hangs between slanted posts. Within grows hazel and scrub and a huge tangle of laurel.
I step over the fence into another world, wandering the woodland until I find my secret place. As a young man I used to come here to meet my best friend. I’d talk to him about my problems, speak of my hopes and aspirations, tell him of my sorrows.
As I grew and matured I gradually weaned myself from my obsession. Life went on and I forgot about my secret place.
And yet here I am, looking for my friend, once more seeking help.
I kneel in the shadows, place the notebook on the ground, and begin to scrabble in the dirt. The brown covering of dead laurel leaves gives way to mulch and soil. My fingers reach down, pushing into the soft material and scraping away until I’ve dug a shallow hole. There it is, shining in the light. A hemisphere of bone, long ago cleaned of flesh and polished to a gleaming white. I pull the skull from the ground and hold it in front of me. In the right eye socket a large marble twinkles. A double cat’s eye whopper. There used to be a marble in each eye, but one dropped out and was lost.
‘Hello, Smirker,’ I say. ‘It’s been a long time.’
I kiss the wide bone of Smirker’s forehead and then I place him on a nearby brick so we can have a talk.
Smirker smiles at me with his perf
ect teeth and winks at me with his one good eye. I beam back at him. I can see he’s spotted the diary.
‘Ssshhh!’ I say, picking up the book and turning to the first page. ‘This was just a dream, right?’
Smirker smiles again, but I can see he doesn’t believe me.
To be honest, I’m not sure I do either.
The Shepherd sits in his rocking chair. He moves back and forth, the rocking soothing, almost as if he is once more a child in the arms of his mother. There’s a creak from the rockers on the bare boards of the floor. No carpet. The room is sparse with no floor covering except for a small hearth rug. Aside from the rocker there are a couple of wooden chairs with straight backs. A monk’s bench. A table, the surface much worn. To one side of the room stands a huge dresser, plain with no frills. There is a fireplace but no fire. Hasn’t been for years. Cold is something you get used to if you experience it for long enough.
From somewhere across the fields a bell chimes. Twelve strokes. Midnight. A new day beckoning.
The Shepherd nods to himself, the movement of his head matching the rhythm of the rocking chair. There is something mechanical about the action. Purposeful. Like the clock in the church ticking off the seconds. God marking the time until the sinners must face their day of judgement. The final toll of the bell fades and he realises that in the moment between yesterday and today something has changed. There’s been a subtle alteration in the ether. Perhaps the change is merely something physical, meteorological. Then again, perhaps the slight ripple in the air is something quite different. Perhaps it is the voice of God.
He puts his feet out to steady himself, to stop the movement of the chair. He sits in the silence of the night and listens.
God, he knows, doesn’t always announce Himself with a bang. His voice is sometimes not much more than a whisper. Only those prepared to listen can detect His presence.
The Shepherd pushes himself up from the chair and stands. He walks across to where the velvet curtains hang heavy. He draws one back and peers out into the small hours which lie like a suffocating blanket of silence across the valley. The air is still, not a branch or a leaf moving, the treetops reaching for a sky filled with crystal lights.
Just on the edge of perception he can hear singing. Two young boys performing a duet, their voices as clear as the night.
Oh, for the wings, for the wings of a dove
Far away, far away would I rove …
He closes the curtains, returns to the rocker and eases himself down into the chair. The music continues to play in his head until the final line.
And remain there forever at rest …
The last note hangs in the darkness before the terrible black of the night snuffs the sound out.
The Shepherd blinks. He knows the truth of it now. He realises that God has spoken directly to him. Those who have abased the pure of heart must be judged. Memories may fade but crimes are not lessened by the passage of time. The evidence must be weighed and the sinners must be punished.
And, the Shepherd thinks, the punishment must fit the crime.
Chapter Two
Derriford Business Park, Plymouth. Monday 19th October. 3.30 p.m.
A throng of reporters clustered round the entrance to the coroner’s court as Detective Inspector Charlotte Savage emerged. Rob Anshore, Devon and Cornwall Police Force’s PR guru, drew the reporters’ attention to the person following close behind and ushered Savage away.
‘Let the Hatchet deal with this, Charlotte,’ Anshore said. ‘She’s prepared a statement in response to the inquest verdict with the official line. You know, sadness, condolences, and all that crap to start with, moving on to the utmost confidence in her officers bit to finish.’
The Hatchet. Otherwise known as Chief Constable Maria Heldon.
Heldon was a replacement for the previous Chief Constable, Simon Fox. The late Simon Fox. Fox had killed himself using a vacuum cleaner hose, his fifty-thousand-pound Jaguar, and a one-pound roll of gaffer tape. Savage had been the one to find him sitting there stone dead, a cricket commentary playing on the car radio an unlikely eulogy for a man whose idea of fair play had been to try to kill her.
Inside the courtroom she’d presented her own account of the events leading up to Fox’s death and her testimony had, thankfully, been accepted at face value. The coroner had listened to all the witnesses and weighed the evidence and after due consideration he’d arrived at a verdict of suicide. Summing up, he’d said Fox had been living a tangle of lies and deceit which had included friendship with a corrupt Member of Parliament who himself was involved with a group of Satanists. Ultimately Fox’s precarious mental state had led him to believe there was no way out other than to top himself.
Savage and Anshore stopped a few metres to one side of the entrance and they turned to watch as Maria Heldon dispatched the reporters’ questions with curt, defensive replies.
‘Chalk and cheese,’ Anshore said, gesturing at Heldon. ‘Simon Fox was a media charmer. Knew how to play the game. He was a decent man. Pity he’s gone.’
Crap, Savage thought. The real reason for Fox’s troubles was that he’d been prepared to break the rules, ostensibly to shield his son, Owen, from prosecution. Some years ago Owen had been involved in a hit-and-run accident which had killed Savage’s daughter, Clarissa. Fox had used his position as Chief Constable to obscure his son’s tracks, but Savage reckoned he’d done it more out of concern for his own career than any love for his son. She’d discovered the truth thanks to help from a local felon by the name of Kenny Fallon and some out-of-hours work by DS Darius Riley. She’d confronted Owen Fox and foolishly put a gun to his head. The lad had confessed it hadn’t been him driving the car, but rather his girlfriend – now wife – Lauren. Owen had also told Savage it had been his dad who’d decided to cover up the accident in the first place.
‘Simon Fox was a disgrace to the force,’ Savage said, trying to remain calm. ‘He let power go to his head.’
‘Really, Charlotte, I’m surprised.’ Anshore wagged a finger. ‘Don’t you have any sympathy for the man’s mental condition?’
Savage didn’t answer. Clarissa’s death had badly affected her and her family. Jamie, her son, had been little more than a baby at the time, but Samantha – Clarissa’s twin – continued to feel Clarissa’s absence as much as Savage and her husband, Pete, did. Fox’s actions had compounded the misery. His death had brought about a resolution of sorts, but nothing would bring Clarissa back. The moment when Savage had seen her child lying broken in the road would stay with her forever. The worst of it was that Savage had had to keep everything bottled up. Aside from herself, Fallon and Riley, no one knew the real truth behind Fox’s downfall or Savage’s unorthodox investigative approach. Nevertheless, Maria Heldon could smell a rat.
‘You know what they’ll say,’ she’d said when she’d questioned Savage about Fox’s death. ‘No smoke without fire.’
Well, there was fire, plenty of it, but Savage wasn’t about to tell Heldon anything of the spark which had set the flames alight.
‘Anyway, bet you’re glad the whole thing is over,’ Anshore said, sounding conciliatory. ‘Can’t have been pleasant finding Foxy in the car like that. All gassed up and turning blue.’
Anshore was a media guy, so he could be forgiven for not knowing about the finer details of carbon monoxide poisoning. Fox hadn’t been blue, in fact he hadn’t even looked dead. Just a trail of drool trickling from his mouth alerted Savage to the fact something was wrong.
As for pleasant? Well, worse things had happened.
They walked away from the court towards the car park and as they approached her car Savage turned back for a moment. Maria Heldon had finished speaking and the reporters had shifted their attention to the next group to emerge: Owen Fox, his wife, Lauren, and their solicitor. Owen had jet-black hair like his dad, but his facial features were softer. Lauren was blonde, her hair matching the curly locks of the baby in her arms. Both parents were early twenties, not
far off the age Savage had been when she’d had the twins.
‘A difficult time, hey?’ Anshore said, following Savage’s gaze. ‘Tough for the family.’
‘Tough?’ Savage held herself stock-still, bristling inside once again. She wished Anshore would shut up, wished she was away from here. ‘I guess you could fucking say so.’
With that she wheeled about and headed for her car, leaving Anshore standing open-mouthed.
Detective Superintendent Conrad Hardin had been at the inquest too. He’d listened to three days of evidence replete with a myriad of unwholesome revelations about Simon Fox. Now, back in his office at Crownhill Police Station with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits, he could finally relax. The past few weeks had been a nightmare, but at least, he thought, his own officers had come through with flying colours. DI Savage in particular had handled the situation with a coolness he’d rarely seen in a woman.
Hardin reached for his tea and slurped down a mouthful. A stack of mail formed an ominous pile next to the plate of biscuits. He took the first piece of mail from the pile, promising himself a biscuit once he’d dealt with three items. The white envelope had been addressed in block capitals, with his full name – without rank – at the head. A first-class stamp sat in the top right corner and was franked with yesterday’s date. The letter had been posted in Plymouth.
