Dark Coven

by Nick Brown

  He didn’t like it; ever since he’d been inside the Skendleby mound he’d come to hate confined spaces. His heart was pounding. Where the hell had Theodrakis gone? There was a scratching sound, something scuttled across his feet and he jumped back in shock and revulsion, trying to regain equanimity by reminding himself that, according to urban legend, whereever you were, it was never more than ten feet from a rat.

  After a few yards the wall on the right-hand side disappeared, leaving his hand scrabbling at dark space. A few feet ahead of him stood Theodrakis; they were in a large chamber where the torch beams couldn’t reach the far wall.

  Then he heard the sounds: Theodrakis must have heard them too as his torch beam froze in one position pointed at the ground. Giles couldn’t suppress a shiver of repulsion at the things that the beam lit up: this couldn’t be right, it was surreal, like stumbling into another reality. But there was no time to investigate; the sounds were getting closer. He brought up the beam of his own torch to see what was coming and it showed him only Theodrakis. The Greek indicated he should extinguish the torch and keep silent.

  With both torches off, the darkness was total and choking. Giles was inhaling fear with each breath. But what were they afraid of? What did they hear coming? Standing blind with eyes useless, the ears began to compensate, detecting a rhythm to the approaching sounds: a type of dislocated shuffling underpinned by a susurration of murmurings.

  So what else was moving about down there, hidden in the dark amongst the things that Giles had seen in the torch light? Then there was the crack of something breaking.

  Several things happened at once: the beam of a torch cut through the darkness, and Giles dropped his; there were screams and flashes of light.

  *******

  Viv stood at the window of her new home staring at the metro link snaking away into the cold distance. She felt vaguely guilty; she should have taken the archaeologists to Skendleby instead of sending Jimmy. But at least she’d managed to sign the papers and she was standing in an apartment that was hers: her own space. Something she could never have afforded in a half decent part of London. It felt safe and maybe here she could escape from the night terrors and dreams. Even better, the agent had thrown in several items of the showroom furniture so there wasn’t much for her to buy. For a moment she fantasised about hosting some type of housewarming party, but who could she invite and, more to the point, who would want to come?

  But the image of the party lingered in her head and prominent amongst the guests, in fact, the only recognisable guest, was Claire, with her silky dark hair and mesmeric eyes. Why? She’d only seen the woman once and now she’d invaded her daydreams as well as the night. There was something compelling about the woman. Viv’s first thought had been seductive but, prudently, her emotional intelligence kicked in and quickly censored that. Something compelling that wormed its way into the consciousness and began to pupate. Once inside the mind it wouldn’t shift and Viv found herself thinking about that brief meeting, those few words.

  There had been something presumptuous and deeply inappropriate in what Claire had said to her. Honey, she’d called her honey; no one had ever called her that. Her reaction should have been either to laugh or become indignant. But she’d done neither. She’d been fascinated and the conversation had dogged her thoughts ever since. Especially the mention of special times they were going to have: that had been overtly seductive but with an undertone, somewhere deep down, of something disturbingly threatening. When Claire had been speaking everything else in the pub seemed to fade away.

  Across the narrow strip of grass on the landing of the next block by the lifts, Viv caught an image out of the corner of her eye: someone in black watching her. When she turned to look fully at it all she saw was a group of crows circling in the intervening airspace. She needed to get a grip on herself, the isolation was beginning to get to her. She felt like a fish out of water here. No friends, no support system, a terrifying series of crimes which she had no idea how to solve, and a hostile organisation to work out of. She wished her dad was here, if he were she could allow herself to cry. Maybe she should have told someone in the Met how the torso in the river case had got to her, how the supernatural overtones had darkened her perception. She mentally corrected herself, rationalising supernatural to superstitious, but it didn’t make her feel any better. Then, and it was almost a relief for once, her phone bleeped.

  “Ma’am, I thought you’d want to know this: a body’s been found near Wilmslow, the locals are attending, and they think it’s related to the others.”

  “Ok, send a car and tell Jimmy to meet me there and to bring Colonel Theodrakis with him. Let the Chief know and make sure nothing gets out to the press.”

  The apartment would have to wait, she headed for the stairs keying Jimmy’s number into her cell phone, then the dark figure in the next block reappeared at the window.

  *******

  Anderson was even more relieved than Viv when the call came. He’d had enough of Skendleby and wanted to get away, having learned nothing from the few remaining staff he’d interviewed. He’d wanted to talk to Suzzie-Jade but she was shopping at the Trafford Centre and wouldn’t be back till early evening. However, there was something more that made him want to be away from Skendleby, something that he didn’t like to admit to himself, something long hidden deep underground where Theodrakis was now.

  Anderson was lighting up round the back of the Hall when the noise started. It seemed Carver had been right about something: there was a tunnel. The crime scene people and archaeologists had almost fallen into it when the ground they were working on slipped from under them. They found themselves in a section of partially collapsed passageway. It was damp, dark and earthy with a low roof and seemed to run under the pit in the direction of the chapel. Where it started was less clear as there had been considerable land slippage between the pit and the Hall, and any passage that might have existed in that direction appeared completely blocked. Disregarding strict health and safety regulations, two female archaeologists and one of the CSI guys had crawled along it, negotiating tree roots, animal droppings, feathers and other distasteful debris choking the tunnel floor.

  After a few yards, the claustrophobic dank atmosphere became increasingly threatening and they decided to turn back. Then suddenly, the lamp beam tracing the walls faded into the distance and the roof above vanished. They could stand up. Looking around they saw a large subterranean chamber and by the light of their lamps they stared in disbelief at a particularly disturbed mausoleum. From out of the dark, beyond the range of their beams, there was movement, then a pin prick of light. In the darkness they screamed:

  “Jesus Christ, Giles, what are you doing here?”

  The reply came from somewhere behind Giles, calm sounding, in slightly accented English.

  “We got here from under the chapel so, on the assumption that you’re not the recently risen dead, I suppose you must have followed a passage from beneath the pit.”

  Meanwhile, Giles was looking at the visible bits of the chamber. It was bigger than he’d imagined but what he saw didn’t allow him to draw any logical conclusions: it was like being in a vandalised archaeological museum of the dead. He could see that his colleagues thought the same, and they didn’t like what they saw. Theodrakis asked:

  “Have you got a lighting system we can set up?”

  “We’ve got a couple of arc lights in the bus.”

  “Ok, let’s get out of here, catch our breaths and calm down. Then we’ll come back for a proper look. I suggest we exit via the chapel. I imagine it’s safer than your point of entrance.”

  A male voice, sounding shaken but relieved, answered:

  “You’re dead right about that: we fell through the fucking floor.”

  Sometime later, as Giles was inspecting the catacomb by the beam of the arc light, he wondered whether it hadn’t looked better by the dim diffuse light of the torches. It made no sense, well not in an archaeological context, but
there was a horrible consistency with the analysis of the bones from the pit.

  It was an assemblage not from one period. Even the most cursory scrutiny revealed that the structures, artefacts and fetish objects spanned the millennia. Giles was no expert but even he could speculate that there was stuff here that predated the English Neolithic. There was no precedent and no logical reason for it, outside Skendleby that was. Even the things he’d found in the pit on Samos couldn’t compare with this in terms of time span. He wished Steve were here to help him make sense of it and reassure him that he wasn’t going mad because any study of this grisly nightmare would feed madness. It was like some macabre Dadaist joke.

  So, like Viv and Anderson, but for different reasons, he was relieved to be interrupted when a surprised looking PC came down the passage from the chapel with a message for Theodrakis.

  “Colonel Theodrakis, the DI wants you, they’ve found another body.”

  Chapter 18: Eliminated From Suspicion

  The woman was either in shock or an actor who wouldn’t disgrace the Royal Shakespeare Company. Viv thought she was probably genuine, despite the massively improbable level of coincidence. Either way, it wouldn’t be productive to interview her yet. The vicar wasn’t much better, but for a different reason. Viv sensed he was more worried about the knowledge of his whereabouts becoming known than finding the body. So not much had been got out of either of them yet except that they both had a connection with the victim.

  The information from the corpse was starker. It had been cut like the others but there were preliminary suggestions that this might not have been the cause of death. The evidence of bleeding, or, more to the point, lack of bleeding, suggested that the cutting had occurred after death. The brief glimpse of sightless eyes set in the bone white face staring up out of the water suggested intense fear; maybe that had caused death, it wouldn’t be the first time. Viv felt a prickle at the back of her neck and turned away shivering.

  Cold water was dripping from the trees where Theodrakis and Anderson were trying to light up. Anderson said:

  “It’s going to take them some time to get all the crime scene stuff before they shift the body, Ma’am, so we’ll have to wait a while for any real evidence from here.”

  “But there’s a connection with this one, we have a context, it’s become more of a normal case, we can look at motivation.”

  Theodrakis threw the wet tip of his cigarette onto the sodden earth and shook his head, before saying quietly:

  “I think perhaps you’re going too quickly. We can’t even be sure this falls within the same range of killings. The MO isn’t quite the same - this could be something different.”

  Viv snapped back.

  “Well, it can’t be a copy-cat killing; we never released details of the method.”

  “No, I’m not suggesting that, although your faith in our ability to keep the cutting a secret is touching. I’m not saying this isn’t connected, just that it’s different, maybe deliberately so. Don’t you consider it a little peculiar that it was discovered by two people connected with it in life? A bit too much of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “You can’t be suggesting that having them find it was part of the plan?”

  “Maybe not, but I’m not ruling it out, nor am I ruling out the possibility that this one is different and maybe springs from a different source. Better to liken it to the way an outbreak of plague or a virus spreads. All we can definitely conclude from this is that the estranged husband of Margaret Trescothic can now be eliminated from our enquiries.”

  “That was the only lead we had, flimsy as it was.”

  They stood in silence for a moment before Anderson said, and she wondered if it was just to cheer her up:

  “Yes, but it strengthens the connection with the women’s commune. Remember, the vicar said that it was at Olga Hickman’s request that they met here. She had a motive; she’d already complained about the victim, reckoned he’d been stalking the house.”

  “Come on, Jimmy, you can’t think she’s behind all this?”

  “Well, she’s got a criminal record for violence.”

  “Yes, but a long time ago and in a completely different context.”

  “All the same, she and the others benefit from his death. It all revolves around that house.”

  “I disagree, there’s no connection with the attack at Skendleby Hall or last year’s incidents.”

  Having set them going on this, Theodrakis proffered his final observation.

  “Or it’s all part of something bigger and far more complicated. Could be that he was involved in the earlier attacks but outlived his usefulness.”

  “This is getting us nowhere except wet, we’d better interview the women and wait for what forensics come up with. Let’s get away from here.”

  As they began to move off through the dripping undergrowth, Theodrakis murmured:

  “I wouldn’t expect much clarity from whatever they find.”

  Behind them in the growing dark, dim lights flickered through the flimsy walls of the scene of crime tent, and the brook flowed cold over the latest Skendleby victim. Under the tent the sad mutilated remains of Ken Trescothic lay at the end of their journey: pale, soaked and bloodless. The mouth was contorted in a rictus grin of terror and the eyes were open, frozen in their last expression of surprise. The body was partially dressed and the rest of the clothing was scattered around, all of it ragged and filthy as if it had been worn for days by a man on the run. It was lying only yards away from the desolate spot where the Iron Age Lindow man had been unearthed. This was another who had brushed up against Skendleby’s curse and died amazed, afraid and unknowing.

  *******

  Viv saw his face change before she’d finished the sentence, morphing into an expression that indicated a far more personal fear than just receiving the breaking news of another killing. On the Chief’s advice, she’d gone to speak to Jim Gibson before briefing the press in general. He’d said that Jim could be trusted to act responsibly and not to spread panic, if you were straight with him. But from the look of him it seemed that the panic had already spread: what was he so afraid of? What did he know that the police didn’t? She’d have to think about this and of ways to probe him later. Meanwhile, he asked:

  “You’re sure it’s the same as the others?”

  “Well, fairly similar, we’ll need all the forensics, but they’ll be here soon. This takes priority.”

  They were sitting in Jim’s office in the building the Journal shared with the local radio station and the offices of a charity. In the old days, before it became a giveaway and still made money, the paper had occupied the whole building. Through the window behind him, Viv could see the roof and tower of the neogothic town hall, where workers with a cherry picker and scaffolding were positioning a huge inflated Santa. Christmas had crept up on her by surprise.

  “That’s three then in quick succession and all of them linked to the area round Skendleby?”

  She wondered why he’d focussed on Skendleby, only one was from there; the others had been closer to Handforth and Wilmslow. She replied:

  “Well, they’re all geographically close together but for us that’s not the most important factor. When the name of the latest victim is released it won’t take your colleagues from the nationals long to work out that there’s a fairly close connection between two of the victims.”

  “How close?”

  She wondered how far she could trust him, then took the plunge.

  “This last one was on our list of considerations for committing the first of the three.”

  “And you’re sure the Skendleby Hall one’s not related?”

  “We can’t be completely sure about that.”

  “Ok, then just between us, I promise none of this will get into the paper, what have you got to work on? Because if this follows the same pattern as the attacks last Christmas, the next victims will be in the city. The attacks then stretched from the university to Sken
dleby.”

  He checked himself then added:

  “Only one of those was fatal though, so these are worse. Your predecessor never really got a handle on the outbreak last Christmas. I know that despite police reassurances everything was cleared up, you’ve kept the case open. Now it’s happening again and you’ve still no leads.”

  Viv began to protest but he raised his hands, palms open to prevent her.

  “Listen, Inspector Campbell, a lot of strange things happened here last year: I caught a glimpse of them from the periphery and I was scared enough, believe me. I’ll play along with whatever line the police come up with, but if this isn’t stopped panic will spread and then you’ll have all the world’s media here.”

  She thought he’d finished but then, as she watched the lines of worry creasing his forehead, he added:

  “Last time I got a gut feeling that there was a link between the developments that Carver is planning and what the archaeologists unearthed at Skendleby, something way more than just the planning issues. It’s not the type of thing you expect from a cynical journalist, is it? But whatever it was spread like a virus from Skendleby - and you better be prepared for that this time round.”

  Outside, Viv noticed that it was beginning to frost up as the light faded: winter had arrived.

  *******

  She had time to worry about his warning again as they skirted the fringe of the Skendleby Estate in the car to the house. Also, for reasons she couldn’t fathom, Theodrakis had insisted on interviewing Olga Hickman with her. After work she was going to spend her first night in the new flat and there was a lot to sort out, so she hoped that the interviews would be straightforward. She’d agreed to do the questioning at the house to make things easier on the women, but now she wasn’t so sure.