A Night With No Stars

by Sally Spedding

  ‘Rot in hell,’ Mark snarled, while Hector vainly attempted to roll himself away from the wall.

  ‘So,’ Lucy dared, ‘what did happen in this kitchen on May 1st 1987?’

  ‘It was Beltane, the no-time dividing winter and summer, in case you weren’t aware of the significance,’ Richard now stared accusingly at his brother. ‘The time between one world and the next. Like the fontanelle on a baby’s head, if any of you half-wits know where that is. It’s the weakest part of the year, when dark forces gain control. Anyway, Marko’d done these crap charcoal drawings of his ravens. He’d nicked the paper from school – great big sheets they were . . .’

  Hector scowled in pain. Or was it something else? If only she could get to him, undo the twine and get him on his feet. It was shocking to see him so helpless. What had he done to deserve this treatment? And where were the useless police all this time? An hour, DC Pugh had said, yet it seemed like forever. She sneaked a look through the one window to the front and felt despair leach into her soul.

  ‘He was copying me as usual, wasn’t he?’ Richard went on. ‘I’d just been doing stuff like that for my Art coursework . . .’

  ‘And then?’ She persevered, trying to shut out the fact that two knives were on tense alert. Aware too, that if she shut her eyes, and regressed for fourteen years, these two men could be two warring teenagers all over again.

  ‘Then Marko gets her down here. To my den. I was doing some homework in here and I heard them both laughing about something, coming in the door over there.’

  But Hector wasn’t laughing. Instead he fixed his weary gaze on Lucy while Richard continued.

  ‘We both had identical hunting knives, remember? Dada here bought us them for Christmas in 1986. Mam kicked up a right fuss at the time. Little did she know, eh? Little did she know. But I kept mine,’ he announced, waving it for all to see. ‘And I’d hardly do that if I’d something to hide now, would I? So, where’s yours eh, Marko? Got rid pretty quick, I bet.’

  ‘Like my Nocturne stuff,’ she said.

  ‘I’ve told you already. Having it in the house was too dangerous. But how could I tell you that?’

  ‘Dangerous? Why?’

  ‘Ask him down there.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ She saw Hector’s pleading eyes. His creased grey skin.

  ‘I can’t take much more, Lucy,’ he suddenly murmured. ‘I’ve had fourteen bloody years to live with all this acrimony, my lies, perjuring myself with the law, pretending with Mark here it was the Druids who’d killed her, and that Hughes and Evans were now part of their cult. Fourteen years of realising how my wife’s behaviour had affected her sons, yet never quite knowing which one was guilty of taking her from me forever.’

  He took a deep breath, transferring his gaze to Mark then Richard. ‘I’ve tried to protect you both, can’t you see? But it’s destroyed me, I’m telling you. Then Lucy arrives and hears that woman screaming. What else could I do except pretend to go looking for her? How the hell could I go near any police station, or see any coppers, knowing what I know? But just when things begin to improve,’ he fixed Richard with an accusing stare, ‘back you come.’

  ‘You liar. I fucking had to,’ Richard protested. ‘Being The Dagda I’d got the power at last to sort out the wrong I’d suffered. I’ve had to get my life back too.’

  Hector had given up trying to move. Only his mouth kept busy.

  ‘So The Dagda rapes the Morrigan for victory in battle?’ he mocked. ‘Is that why you went for that old biddy on Monday morning?’

  ‘If you like. Yeah. What’s wrong with that? After what I’ve been through.’

  ‘Jesus.’ Mark snorted derision. ‘Time for the men in white coats, say I.’

  ‘You should know all about that, you smug bastard,’ Richard glowered, then stopped as his father began to speak again while Lucy thought of Parc-y-Nant.

  ‘By the way, both of you. There’s something you need to know. I rang Martyn Harries with new instructions for my Will, before whoever it was kindly severed the line connection to my study.’

  She remembered with a shiver, the so-called fault when she’d tried to call him . . .

  ‘And?’ Mark in a sinister tone of voice, suddenly producing Hector’s bunch of keys and dangling them in front of him. ‘Do tell.’

  ‘You’ll be contacted in due course through the proper channels. That’s my last word on the matter except to say that Richard isn’t the only one I’ve disinherited.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ Mark had whitened.

  ‘I’ve just done the same to you, son. How could I not? I took legal advice and, as on previous occasions, was advised to be fair.’

  ‘Fair? You bastard.’

  The keys to all the Hall’s hiding rooms dropped from his hand and fell to the floor where they lay splayed out like some strange multi-fingered hand. Her mouth fell open. She watched helpless as Mark let go of her and lunged towards his stricken father, his knife aimed at Hector’s throat.

  Before she could intervene, the blade had scythed from left to right through the old man’s fleshy neck. Hector’s dentures loosened and hung free of his lips as two jets of dark blood spurted from both carotids and his bellowing, dying cry sent the waiting ravens flapping away in fright. But Lucy knew they’d soon be back, because Mark’s mouth was already open.

  ‘Corax . . . corax . . . corax . . .’ he croaked as his father’s life flooded over the nearby flagstones and she retched air into her hands.

  Suddenly, before either she or Richard could reach any door, the ravens reappeared, storming into the scullery dropping rain off their wings, aiming first for Hector’s eyes then hers.

  ‘Call them off!’ she screamed to Mark. ‘For Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Not this time, sweetheart. Sorry. They’re looking after me, because no one else ever has.’

  ‘You’re the sicko, remember? You wait . . .’ From the corner of her eye she saw what the birds had done to Hector’s face, and she retched yet again.

  ‘Oh, I will. I will because Dicky boy killed Rhaca. And tore out his feathers.’

  ‘I had to do something. Can’t you see? And now, at last, this is mine.’

  Richard ran from the parlour into the kitchen and as he did so, snatched the cauldron from over the range before moving towards the scullery.

  ‘Corax . . . corax . . . corax . . .’ Mark croaked, and suddenly half the ravens turned on his brother, pulling his hair into spiky tufts then probing his ears as he charged out into the rain.

  She saw him flaying the cauldron trying to beat them off, while she too, with Hector’s old coat over her head, ran from the house.

  She imagined herself back on the school hockey field again, haring down the wing. New rain stung her eyes as her trainers met the sodden ground where once Bryn Evans’s sheep had grazed. Meanwhile Richard’s shouts grew more indistinct as he travelled westwards. With a supreme effort she managed to narrow the distance between them, aware that Mark was closing on them both.

  When she glanced round, she saw his bloodied knife held aloft. She screamed again, then slowed up because Richard was yelling something out, and she was close enough to pick up the gist of his unbelievable story.

  ‘I fucking loved my mam,’ he panted as if he was a kid all over again. ‘You’ve got to believe that. Even though she messed me about so I wasn’t able to come properly. Even though that tart in Bondi said I’d no toothpaste in the tube. Can you imagine what that does to a guy? And then I found that old granny with her bike . . . That was the first time in fourteen fucking years . . . But I still loved my mam. I still loved my mam . . .’

  ‘So why harm that woman at the waterfall?’ Lucy shrieked after him. ‘Why?’

  ‘I didn’t. I couldn’t. She just fell. I was too scared to go after her. It was you I wanted to get rid of, because he’d got you. He’d got fucking everything and I thought you and him would inherit it all here. It’s my home too and I had nothing, except Rhiannon. I expe
ct he followed her over to Brynamman once he’d seen me at her place. Frightened of what she might know. I’d have been a good Dad to her kids. I would . . .’

  Lucy felt a sharp peck on her ear then on the backs of her legs. A stray bird had followed her and now it lifted away into the black sky. Was sick Mark enjoying this? she wondered, stumbling now, losing her breath and worst of all, seeing Richard and the hideous black vessel head straight for where the sheep never grazed. He’d forgotten. He’d been away too long.

  ‘No! Don’t go there!’ she screamed as he totally ignored her, more intent upon finishing his tale of woe . . .

  ‘I just loved Mam too much,’ he repeated, ‘and him back there was pig-sick jealous of every single fucking thing I did. He copied my clothes, what I ate, what I didn’t eat. My art, my fucking poetry. He can lie to everyone. He even lies to himself. Jesus . . . But then he’s had to, hasn’t he? He’s had to live here with knowing. Shit scared someone would one day find out. And then where’d he have been?’

  ‘Find out what, for God’s sake?’ But now, after everything that had happened, she really didn’t want to know. There was only so much one could take.

  ‘Let him tell you. Unless he kills you first.’

  She looked round to see Mark making headway, his black eyes huge in his head, his hair lifting like wings on either side despite the rain. The knife still poised. Suddenly the whole place seemed to freeze in a pall of silence, and a strange calm enveloped her as she watched her death approach in mesmerising slow-motion. After all, according to Richard, he’d written that note telling her she was next. And here she was, like a beast in the slaughterhouse, ready and waiting with nothing left to say or do, except close her eyes and pray.

  When she finally opened them, still alive, soaked through, Mark had overtaken her, splashing, panting. She’d felt his hot breath touch her face and for one terrible moment now threw her a glance she would never ever forget. Then suddenly, catching her unawares, he stopped, turned round and headed back to her, his boots throwing up mud.

  ‘Anyway,’ he edged closer, the knife still in his left hand. ‘Giving up that Nocturne muck at least gave you a pulse for a few more days. It was a problem for me especially. You never knew that, did you?’

  ‘But you’ve just said it was Hector who . . .’

  ‘Sure. Why not?’

  He clapped for the remaining birds to scatter then, without taking his eyes off her, laid down the knife in the reeds. Clearly preferring to use his bare hands, she thought, watching them with an almost out-of-body detachment. It was then she noticed a red gash on the palm of his right hand. There wasn’t time to ask how it got there, because it suddenly slapped her cheek. But what was the point of screaming any more? Better to use her last moments to fight back.

  ‘I should have realised while I was still in London. You’re barking mad.’

  ‘Whatever you say.’

  Then before she could struggle free, both rough wet hands were round her throat.

  ‘I can’t breathe,’ she gurgled, seeing her father’s smiling face as if for the last time.

  ‘That’s the idea,’ he hissed. ‘The moment you started snooping around, that’s when I started going off you. You’re next, or have you forgotten?’

  No point in reacting to that now, she told herself. What little breath she had must be saved.

  ‘You were hoping to stitch Richard up, weren’t you?’ she whispered instead. ‘That’s a nice brotherly thing to do, I must say.’ Those hands were tightening. She saw the sky turn purple overhead.

  ‘I must have had a screw loose to tell you what those bits in the shoe were. And then you go and help yourself to that stuff in the bathroom stool. Again that was very private. Still,’ he went on, ‘all these goodies are tucked away nicely where no one will ever find them. A chap has to have some souvenirs, don’t you think?’

  Ten stones up, fifty across, east wall . . .

  ‘So it was you who sneaked into the bathroom while I was having a shower?’

  ‘Needs must. To stop your games. To keep the plods away.’

  For a split second he lost concentration and this time Lucy wasted no time in wriggling free. Despite slipping several times on the wet grass, she managed to whip round, back the way she’d come. Then she noticed a scrap of paper fall from his hand as he resumed the chase for his brother.

  ‘Your second poem,’ he shouted back at her. ‘Says it all.’

  ‘Mark?’ She called out after him but he didn’t even slow up. There was no stopping him because bare-legged Richard was still on the move, keeping up the pace, still yelling. She herself dared go no further into the bog to pick up that piece of paper. She could only watch and listen as the powering rain dulled the impact of his words.

  ‘That’s right. Tell her, go on Marko. Truth is the Word, remember? How our dada was waiting in the barn. How he’d got his old copper’s gun. We had to watch our mam struggle and we couldn’t help her. He made you slit her throat with your knife then me to cut out her sex and boil it up in this cauldron. Can you imagine seeing that? Can you? While he just stood there laughing, saying it served me right and served her right. Evil bastard. Still, I cut his wrist, didn’t I? That made me feel better, but not much. He told the cops he’d done it on some corrugated sheeting, the liar. Then – and this is the icing on the cake – I had to get my Rhaca and the others to finish her off . . .’

  ‘Your Rhaca?’ Lucy aghast.

  ‘Yeah, he was mine originally, but like everything else, Marko had to have him. To control the way he wanted. In the end he quite enjoyed telling them all what to do. Didn’t you? You freak show.’ he shrieked. ‘Just like he’d enjoyed slitting her throat.’

  ‘I can’t believe this. You’re lying.’

  ‘Truth is the Word. My Word, okay? Then Dada swore he’d kill us if we told anyone. Now do you see why I begged him to send me away?’

  ‘You begged?’ She stopped running, still flapping the dead man’s coat sleeves, ignoring the blood dripping down her legs. ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘We had to live with that murder. Him protecting us?’ Richard snorted. ‘Bollocks to that. I kept my mouth shut for fourteen fucking years even though I knew he’d cut me off. And you Marko, you thought by hanging on, by keeping him sweet and everything ticking over at the Hall that you’d pick up in the end . . . Fat chance now eh?’

  This was unreal. Worse than terrible. No wonder Mark hadn’t wanted her to buy Wern Goch in the first place. No wonder he’d got the wind up when she’d started snooping. But maybe that wasn’t the whole story. Maybe she’d never know . . .

  ‘Whatever happened to Mark’s hunting knife after the killing?’ she yelled.

  ‘I told you . . . the cellar wall . . .’ his voice disintegrating into the drizzly air.

  ‘Where?’ Mark rasped.

  ‘You’ll have to catch me first.’

  ‘Come back!’ she yelled at them both. ‘Come back. It’s not worth it. You’ll drown!’ Then the words ten up, fifty across dying on her lips. It made no difference. No one heard her except those few ravens who’d deserted the parlour and were winging their way laboriously towards the two brothers now locked in a frenzied final embrace as the marsh began to drag them and the cauldron down with a gloating, sucking sound.

  ‘Corax . . . corax . . . corax . . .’ she called out in vain, for the birds weren’t only too late, there were too few to help a pair of fully-grown men to safety. Besides they seemed too lethargic, too replete to be of any use now.

  She scrabbled in her bag for her mobile but the moment it was in her hand, an oncoming bird unseen by her swooped low and snatched it out of reach into the air.

  ‘Jesus Christ. Damn you . . .’ She swore at it then blinked through her tears over to where the two who had so fiercely and at such cost, protected evil, were now sinking into the Druids’ starless well. But just before both heads, one dark, one lighter finally disappeared, she could have sworn she heard a voice, choking, choking. Mark
’s she was sure, and it seemed to be saying, ‘I loved you, Lucy. I really loved you . . .’

  She stared at the reedy spot where nothing now remained, praying that the singer’s tortured sons might somehow reappear from that Otherworld’s stinking depths. Praying this nightmare would end. Suddenly she heard a siren stab-stabbing the eerie silence, and as the rain eased and the wind began to rise, stirring the alders along the Mellte, she saw at last, a line of police begin to swarm towards her over the marshy field.

  Chapter Forty

  And when will you be coming back again,

  My sons come and tell to me?

  When Moon and Sun dance in yonder hill

  And that will never be be be

  And that will never be.

  The Brothers. Trad

  ‘Larkin was right, you know.’ Anna gave Lucy a brief knowing smile as she set the kitchen table for dinner. ‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad.’

  ‘Easy to say that now,’ Lucy refilled her wine glass as her friend had suggested, trying to keep blame out of her voice. ‘I was all for jacking it in, but you did say hang on in there . . .’

  ‘Oh, come on, Luce. You wanted it all badly enough. I was only picking up the vibes.’

  ‘True. But I should have listened to what that sweep had said, then gone to see him straight away after he’d done the chimney. In fact, I should never have let him out of my bloody sight.’

  ‘And then what? Back to London for more hassle?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know.’

  Anna picked up her own glass and raised it in the air.

  ‘Anyway, to the Lady of the Manor. Or will it be B&Bs plus evening meal and a few tasty locals thrown in?’

  ‘Not funny.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  The smell of horses pervaded the Berkshire cottage which she’d shared with her vet for the past six months, and as dusk began to fall beyond its mullioned windows, a line of thoroughbreds could be seen returning to their stables which nestled deep in the valley below.

  Lucy watched this perfect scene with her glass of chilled wine against her cheek, and if she half-closed her eyes, could imagine herself back at Wern Goch with her dreams intact, at peace with that once-sacred land and its ancient guardians. She wished she could have added a witty reply to Anna’s quip about the Hall, but it was too soon for jokes. Way too soon. Because just three days had elapsed in which, besides fighting off reporters, she’d spent the first long morning after with the CID; arranged Hector’s funeral in Cardiff to follow the Inquest at the end of next week; and organised the closure of the whole Wern Goch project. Even though Hector Jones had left the estate to her in his brand new Will, no way would she ever set foot near the place again.