by Sam Christer
Megan feels wrung dry. She kisses Sammy’s beautiful sleeping face and does what she knows she shouldn’t do. She goes to bed with her cheating ex. There’s no wild sex. No passionate bridge building. Just a truce, sealed by lying close together. Taking comfort in what they had. What they might be able to have again.
92
TUESDAY 22 JUNE
The morning sun spills through a split in Adam Stone’s cheap bedroom curtains and glints off an old mirror on the dresser opposite. Megan has been awake for hours, lying next to the father of her child, watching the warm daylight slip into the room and slowly climb the walls.
She’s about as confused as she can be. Her head full of regrets, hopes and warnings. Sammy comes running into the room and chases all her thoughts away. Her cheeks are red from sleep and her eyes are lit up like Christmas. She jumps on to the bed with a squeal and tries to scramble in with them.
Megan slows her down. ‘Shush, baby, don’t wake Daddy.’
Too late. Adam has been kneed into consciousness. He raises himself, bleary-eyed, into a sitting position, back against the padded headboard. ‘Come here, baby girl, give me a big love.’ She’s in his arms in a second and Megan is left even more churned up than she was ten minutes ago.
The three breakfast together in Adam’s small kitchen and he chats easily. Caringly. Just like he used to. ‘You got a busy day ahead?’
She pours coffee for them both. ‘Do they come any other way? Even off the Timberland murder I’m as busy as hell, and no doubt there’s going to be some cleaning up to be done after the solstice.’
He chews on buttered toast as he talks. ‘I checked last night with control. By that point, there’d been about ten public order arrests, half a dozen for possession and a couple for dealing drugs.’
Megan is relieved. ‘Thank you God for small acts of mercy. Did they say if there was anything new on the Lock case?’
‘The press are still feeding on the mother’s press conference.’ He licks butter from his fingers, hands her the TV remote and gestures to the small set tucked away across the room. ‘Try Sky, they usually know what’s happening before we do.’
She finds a news report on the film star’s presser. It’s made up of a soundbite from Josh Goran, a dull interview with a pale-looking Alan Hunt, several shots of men who could be FBI agents, a meaningless comment from someone at the Home Office, random shots of Paris and finally, footage of John Rowlands and Barney Gibson looking wiped out and pissed off as they leave police HQ in separate cars.
‘So,’ says Adam, finishing the coffee and looking for his jacket. ‘What are you doing tonight?’
‘Meaning?’
He smiles warmly. ‘Meaning, are you coming back here?’
She’s not sure. It seems too hard to simply forgive and forget. ‘Let me think about it. Right now, I have to go home and change. There’s something important that I have to do this morning. Can you drop Sammy at nursery for me?’
‘Sure.’ He tries his luck again. ‘And tonight?’
‘May-be.’ Her face softens. ‘Let’s just see how the day plays out.’
93
Jimmy Dockery steps into the road and flags down the camouflaged Range Rover. The driver, a sixty-year-old man dressed like a farmer, pulls to a stop in the deserted lay-by, gets out and briskly walks around the back. Jimmy follows him to the rear of the 4×4 with more than a little trepidation.
‘Morning, Detective,’ says the driver in an upper-class English accent. ‘Looks a nice day for it.’
Jimmy isn’t so sure. ‘Morning. Let’s hope so. How are the crazy monsters today?’ He peers through the glass of the tailgate at Tarquin de Wale’s two Turkey vultures caged in the back.
‘They’re fine,’ says de Wale. ‘Did I tell you last night when you came round that I raised them from chicks?’
‘You did.’
‘They’re of Canadian parentage, you know. Best you can get.’ He starts to slide the giant cage out of the vehicle. ‘Give me a hand.’
Jimmy has a moment of self-doubt. Maybe this is a crazy idea. The extra assistance that Megan told him to enlist from operational support hadn’t been forthcoming. Not a sniffer dog for miles around. And the ground radar team is booked up until Christmas. Tarquin’s vultures seemed an inspired way to search for dead flesh. Tommy Naylor’s dead flesh to be precise.
‘Can’t wait to see if the chaps can pull this off,’ says de Wale. Jimmy had read in the Police magazine about German detectives using buzzards to detect buried corpses and exotic animal breeder Tarquin de Wale had been quoted as saying he’d be willing to cooperate freely with any police force in England wanting to give it a try. Well, this is his chance.
According to reports, on every occasion the German birds had been tested they’d found the flesh. Buzzards are said to have an incredible sense of smell. From three hundred feet up, they can detect a tiny morsel of rotting meat. And unlike bloodhounds they don’t tire quickly.
The detective slips on his shades and for once they are necessary, the midday sun is high and bright. ‘Mr de Wale, if you make this work then we are both going to finish the day as heroes.’
‘Of course it will work,’ says de Wale, confidently. ‘Have faith.’
Jimmy helps him lift the back of a wire cage big enough to restrain two grown Alsatians. They put it on the ground. Wings extended, the birds’ full span is over six feet. They grunt and hiss at the intrusion.
De Wale slips a customised muzzle on the birds’ white beaks, then attaches GPS tracking bands to their legs so he can pinpoint the exact spot if they find anything. ‘You said you had something belonging to the missing man?’
Jimmy hands over Tony Naylor’s silver dog tag and de Wale holds it in front of the striking bald red heads of the two birds. ‘If he is out there, even if he’s buried, these two will find him. Even without this little trinket.’ He hands it back.
The exotic animal breeder walks to the front of the Range Rover to set up the electronic equipment in the passenger seat of the vehicle. After a few moments, he returns with a wide smile and eyes full of childish excitement. ‘Ready, old chap?’
Jimmy raises an eyebrow behind his shades. ‘About as much as I will ever be.’
94
The hour-long journey feels the longest and loneliest drive of Gideon’s life.
He spent most of last night lying awake, worrying about this day. And now it’s here. He sits in the car with the engine turned off, staring out of the window, hoping to halt time.
West Wiltshire Crematorium is set in ten acres of tranquil Semington countryside. But none of the beauty of the landscaping distracts from the fact that they are about to burn his father’s body. Incinerate it. Blast it in an oven until all that is left is a featureless grey powder. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. He’s heard the phrase a thousand times, but only now does he really understand what it means. From nothing to nothing.
Every emotional connection to his father will be gone. He will be left solely with memories. Mixed ones. Sure, there are Nathaniel’s books and tapes, but they’re purely factual artefacts. Archaeological reminders of the father he didn’t know rather than the one he did.
The morning sun is hot on his face as he gets out of the car and walks along the immaculately clean path. Up ahead, he sees the crematorium, a distinguished and understated building that looks modern with lots of hardwood beams and doors, bright stained-glass windows and a smart red-tiled roof.
Gideon hears footsteps and turns to see Megan hurrying to catch him up. He hadn’t expected her to come and is touched that she has. She’s wearing a mid-length black dress and black flat shoes, with a black raincoat over her arm. ‘Hello,’ she manages, slightly out of breath, ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming?’
‘Not at all. It’s very kind of you to bother.’
She affectionately touches the sleeve of his new black suit as they walk towards the front doors. ‘I guessed you wouldn’t know many people down here and thought
you might appreciate some moral support.’
He takes a deep breath. ‘I do. Thanks.’
Megan misses out the fact that she’s also interested to see who else might turn up. What their relationship to Nathaniel Chase might be and how Gideon behaves during what’s bound to be a testing ordeal.
An usher shows them through to the chapel, where the coffin is already in place. He had declined the offer of following the hearse from Shaftesbury. Too slow. Too painful. And also rejected the idea of having any kind of eulogy.
Only Gideon and Megan are in the congregation as the casket slips out of public view. He bows his head and she squeezes his hand reassuringly. He tries not to think about his father’s corpse slipping into the retort, the special area of the furnace, where it will be exposed to savage temperatures of more than a thousand degrees. His archaeological training means he knows that cremation vaporises soft tissues and organs. Only hard bones will be left behind. Staff will use some kind of cremulator to pulverise what’s left, reduce it to dust, to powder.
Ashes to ashes.
He tries not to think of the man he has lost. The things he wishes he’d said. The words he regrets uttering.
Dust to dust.
He is here to get things done. That’s all. To fulfil his father’s request that he should be cremated and his ashes scattered at Stonehenge.
The service is over in less than fifteen minutes. No fanfare. No wailing. Nothing but silence and emptiness.
On the way out, a staff member tells him he can collect his father’s remains in a couple of hours or in the morning if he prefers. He chooses to come back later. He wants to end the day knowing that it’s over. That he never has to return here.
The two of them walk to their cars. Gideon stands at the door of his Audi looking lost.
‘Pub,’ she says, surprisingly. ‘We can’t go away from here without having a drink to give your dad a proper send-off.’
95
Caitlyn hears a terrible rumbling.
Cool air wafts into the fetid hole. Hands reach in through the wall and pull at her.
Her body is so stiff and heavy that she feels as though she’s been nailed to the hard stone slab. They pull her urgently out of the cavity and stumble her down a narrow dark corridor into a circular room lit by candles. Caitlyn tries to shield her eyes. Rings of small flickering flames burn painfully bright. Behind closed lids, circles are seared into the chemical screens of her retinas. She panics for a second, struggles for breath.
Two men loop ropes around her wrists. They walk her like a seaside donkey. Drag her clockwise. Always clockwise. Twenty circuits of the cold and featureless stone room. Caitlyn is dizzy by the time they stop and let her drink tepid water. Her stomach rumbles. Hunger pains stab and cramp her.
When they are done exercising and watering her, they take off the donkey ropes and retreat to the outer circles of the wall.
Now she can do anything she wants. Only there isn’t anything to do. There is nothing but space around her. Space in which she is trapped by the people on the outside of the space. She understands that this is some kind of mindfuck. First they brick her up in a wall so she can’t move. Then they give her as much room as she wants. And she still can’t move.
Free will. They are messing with her free will.
Caitlyn sits. Crosses her legs. Shuts her eyes and shuts out her world of horror. She tries to find herself. Tries to connect to some iron thread that can’t be broken, some invincible strand that she can always hold on to.
Gradually, she forgets the people around her, the smell and light of the candles, the cold of the stone floor, the cramps in her stomach and the burn of the gastric juices in her windpipe. The space. More than anything she shuts out the space. She is nowhere. She is in the safe darkness of her dreams.
Caitlyn feels her legs aching. She is growing weak. She feels herself falling. Tumbling backwards. The hooded men snap at her like a pack of dogs. They pick her up and half-drag half-walk her to the cleansing area. They push her into the steaming water. Watch her wash and re-dress. Walk her back to her cell.
Back to the place with no space.
Back to her nightmare.
96
In a black fluttering flash the birds lever themselves into the pale sky above the empty fields. They’re gone within seconds. Not even distant specks on the horizon. Tarquin de Wale looks at the sat-nav app on his laptop. He can see their flight lines tracking high into the wild-blue yonder. ‘Jolly fast, eh?’
‘What if they don’t come back?’ asks Jimmy. ‘You could spend the rest of your life trying to catch them.’
‘Vultures aren’t built to fly far.’ The old eccentric doesn’t take his eyes from the computer screen. ‘They’re lazy scavengers. They ride the thermals mainly. Until they get a whiff of food, then zoom.’ He smacks his hands together. ‘Besides, Wiltshire is the only habitat they know. Their natural home now.’
‘Lots of army activity around here,’ warns Jimmy. ‘I hope they don’t get shot down.’
‘No problem. Here they come,’ says de Wale excitedly.
The vultures swoop down low over the Range Rover and settle in the field about a hundred metres in front of the two men. Instantly, they start to forage. Senses bristling, they flutter and land a few feet away and nudge the earth again. The smaller of the two skips to the side and hammers his beak into rutted tracks two hundred metres from the remains of the barn.
Jimmy watches with mixed emotions. He’d hoped for more. Something spectacular like when sniffer dogs go crazy and start whimpering and digging as though they’re trying to find a short cut to Australia. But the vultures don’t provide any such show. They lazily forage for almost an hour and don’t venture out of the field next to the torched barn. Jimmy is feeling pretty dejected. He checks his watch. ‘Let’s call it quits. It was worth a shot.’
‘I’ll get a treat and clap them in,’ says de Wale.
‘Okay.’ Jimmy glances at the laptop screen while the buzzard master goes to get some dead mice out of a sealed sandwich box. The computer has been recording the birds’ flight paths using the GPS. Plotting lines on a grid. But these lines go pretty much straight up and down the field, almost as though they’d been mowing a lawn or ploughing crops.
It is a thought that he can’t shake. Strange creatures. Why would they do that? He goes back to his car. Roots in the boot until he finds some spare evidence bags and then climbs over the stile that leads to the field. Jimmy lines himself up with the pecking buzzards and starts to collect samples. Soil samples.
It is a long shot, but if he is right, the vultures have found what remains of Tony Naylor.
The missing man’s body has somehow been pulped and spread like muck across the open field.
97
Megan puts two glasses of wine down on the pub table that separates her and Gideon. It’s a schizophrenic kind of place. Half bistro, half old-fashioned boozer. Crab cakes and dominoes. Rocket salad and pork scratchings.
‘Thanks.’ He pulls the glass towards him but doesn’t drink. He’s got things on his mind. Things he wants to say. ‘Do you remember when you came to my father’s house, I told you that I thought he’d killed himself because of this secret society, the Followers of the Sacreds?’
She nods apprehensively, worrying about his mental health. ‘Yes, I remember. This was the secret organisation you said he mentioned in his diaries.’
Gideon detects the scepticism. ‘Do you think I’m crazy? All screwed up with grief and trauma?’
‘No.’ She tries to be sympathetic. ‘You’re certainly not crazy. But I do think you’re very stressed out.’ She leans forward and speaks quietly. ‘Gideon, it might well be that your father was involved in some kind of secret organisation, but I doubt it had anything to do with his death.’ She flinches at the thought of what she’s about to say. ‘I’m sorry, but in my experience people take their own lives for a lot of highly personal reasons, and it’s never about membership of some pr
ivate club or other.’
He shakes his head and shifts the glass nervously around the table. ‘The man who broke into my father’s house and set fire to the place belonged to this group.’ He leans closer. ‘And this isn’t a scout group I’m talking about. This is something bad.’
Megan slips into her more official interview mode. ‘You might believe that but you can’t prove it, can you?’
‘I know it,’ says Gideon. He puts a fist to his heart. ‘In here, I know it.’
‘In law that’s not enough.’ Megan can see he’s hurting but there’s nothing to gain from letting him delude himself. ‘Don’t you think that if your father was in such a society, such a close brotherhood, then some of them would have turned up today to show their respects? There was no one there. No one but you and me.’
The comment stings. ‘Maybe they didn’t know about it. It wasn’t in any newspapers.’ He has another thought. ‘Maybe they chose to stay away.’ He looks at her icily. ‘Perhaps they expected the police to be there.’
She sees what he’s driving at. ‘That’s not only why I came.’
‘No, of course not.’ He realises it sounded bitter. ‘Sorry.’ He finally takes a drink of the wine. Sour apples. He has no taste or appreciation of anything at the moment. ‘I had a builder round the other day, said he’d heard there’d been a fire and wanted to help fix the damage. He told me he’d done work for my father, so I ended up letting him in to do a valuation. Next thing I know he’s upstairs poking around.’
She puts her glass down. ‘Did he take anything?’
