by Lucy Banks
“It’s Higgins, not Biggins,” Larry growled, straightening in his seat. “And the only activity going on was one of us falling off your substandard seating here.”
“However,” Miss Wellbeloved interrupted quickly as she brushed down her skirt. “We’d like to apologise for the noise and also ask you whether you’ve got any rooms available for the next week.”
“No, we sodding well wouldn’t!” Larry hissed. Miss Wellbeloved ignored him and gave the hotel proprietor her most winning smile.
“What, you lot want to stay here?” the man said, looking incredulous. He scratched inside his ear with the precise expertise of an archaeologist. Whatever he discovered in there was apparently something of a delicacy, judging by his enjoyment when he shoved it into his mouth. “You actually want to stay in our rooms?”
“Yes,” Miss Wellbeloved answered slowly. “Do you have any rooms?”
“Course we do, we’re a hotel, aren’t we? It’s just that we normally just have builders and the like staying here. Not people such as yourselves.”
“Go on then, break it to us,” Higgins said, breathing heavily. “How much will it cost us to stay here for a week?”
“Did you all want your own room?”
“No.”
The man grinned. “That’s lucky. Two of my bedrooms have got issues with the beds.”
“What issues?” Mike asked, still rubbing his spine.
“They haven’t got beds. That’s the issue. I usually keep my dogs in there.”
“We’d like as few rooms as possible,” Miss Wellbeloved continued, “and we’d like to keep costs down any way we can. We’re on a strict budget.”
The man coughed, a rheumatic, phlegmy noise that began somewhere in his chest and finished up as a wet snort in his nostrils. “Well. If you men are happy to go in my bunk room, and you ladies can share twin rooms, you can have them for £150 for the week.”
“Make it £100 and you’ve got a deal,” Miss Wellbeloved answered, pacing over to the door. The man coughed again, rubbed his brow, then nodded. They shook hands.
“A bunk room?” Higgins exclaimed, reddening. “I’m not bunking down with your merry band of morons here. Not a chance.”
“Doesn’t look like you’ve got a choice,” Mike said with a sadistic smile.
Higgins rose, solid and aggressive as a rhino about to charge. He raised a finger and pointed it directly at Miss Wellbeloved, leaving it to hover mid-air like a furious arrow.
“Fine.” His jaw was so tight and face so red that Kester was concerned the older man might go into cardiac arrest. They waited. Higgins repeated himself, sounding, if anything, even angrier than before. “Fine. You win. We’ll do this your way and I’ll bunk up with the kindergarten crew for the week. But if this doesn’t work . . .”
“Yes?” Miss Wellbeloved drawled as she picked up her handbag from the floor and threw it over her arm.
“I’ll be holding you personally responsible. Understood?” The finger jabbed the air one final time, then rested, quivering, by Larry’s ample thigh.
She nodded. “Very well. Whatever you say. Shall we go and look at our rooms?”
“I was planning to at least return home and get some fresh underpants!”
Miss Wellbeloved glanced at her watch. “That’ll be an hour’s drive home, then an hour back, not to mention petrol costs. It’s probably cheaper buying a few pairs of pants in town.”
“What about fresh clothes?”
Mike sniffed his armpit and winced. “Yeah, I could do with at least one change of outfit.”
“Buy some cheap clothes in town, and the rest of the time, we’ll use the laundrette. Come on, there’s not a moment to lose.”
They watched, mouths agape, as she marched out of the room. Lara chuckled, then followed.
“The woman’s demented,” Higgins mumbled, eyes crinkling. Kester couldn’t tell if the comment was meant scathingly or admiringly.
He wrinkled his nose, stacked his chair back on the pile, then trotted after Miss Wellbeloved.
I pray the bedrooms aren’t as disgusting as the rest of this place, Kester thought, nearly tripping over a rip in the hallway carpet. However, as he watched the proprietor hand over three keys to Miss Wellbeloved, each complete with grimy plastic keyring and blackened with age, he suspected his prayers had already been ignored.
Welcome to hell, he thought, gaze drifting to the top of the staircase, which looked thoroughly uninviting, not to mention almost completely pitch-black. This is going to be a week to remember.
Chapter 13: An Ancient Find
“What do you mean, you’ve got to stay there all week? Surely you knew about this beforehand, didn’t you?” Anya’s disapproval was palpable, even over the phone—the coldness of her tone matched the chill air in the surrounding wood. Kester was reminded uncomfortably of his mother on the rare occasions he’d disappointed her.
He swallowed hard, horribly aware of the collective eyes of his colleagues boring into his back, and moved behind the nearest tree, keeping his voice as low as possible.
“I honestly had no idea I’d have to come away,” he said as he leant back against the bark and studied the naked branches above, probing at the death-white sky. From his elevated position on the cliff, he could see the famous Lyme Regis Cobb, a rough stone wall snaking into the sea mist. He could even see a few people walking their dogs along it, which made him feel more isolated still.
At the other end of the line, Anya sighed. Then paused. The silence stretched uncomfortably. Kester wondered whether he should say something, then chose not to. Knowing me, whatever I say will just make it worse.
“It would help if you’d just tell me where you are and what you’re doing,” she said finally. “I know we’ve only just started dating, but already this secrecy is becoming a problem.”
“I know.” He closed his eyes. He hadn’t slept well the night before. Not least because he was stuck in an unbearably whiffy room with three men who snored in a variety of irritating pitches and tones. He’d also managed to end up with one of the top bunks, which had at least four springs protruding painfully through the mattress. “I really am sorry. I wouldn’t have suggested meeting this week if I’d known this was going to happen.”
“Oi! Hurry up, mate, I’m freezing up here!”
Kester glanced over to see Mike stamping from foot to foot, rubbing at his arms. He hadn’t brought a coat, and so far, they’d had no chance to go into town and buy a change of clothes.
“I’ve got to go,” Kester said. “Can we rearrange for next week instead? I really would like to see you again.”
Anya paused. “I suppose so,” she said finally with a wry chuckle. “But on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You tell me everything. I get to ask you at least five questions and you have to answer all of them. Deal?”
Christ, I very much doubt Dad would be happy about that, Kester thought as he adjusted his glasses. “Sure,” he agreed eventually. I’ll figure out how to handle this nearer the time.
Pocketing his phone, he skipped over the dead branches and stones to his colleagues.
“Had enough smoochy-time with the girlfriend?” Serena kicked a rock with her shoe, grinning.
“Yes, thank you,” he replied tartly. “Have you finished booting the ground yet? How are you finding those stilettoes in this mud, by the way?”
She grimaced. “If I’d have known we’d be trekking into the woods, I wouldn’t have worn them.”
“It must be really annoying, having the heels sinking into the ground with every step,” Mike added and gave Kester a wink.
“It is, but I’m sure I’ll feel less annoyed if I sink them into your backside instead.”
“Now, now, you lot.” Pamela hurried over like a spinning top, whirling to an energetic halt b
eside them. She looked around, took in the spectral trees and wintry clouds, then exhaled noisily. “This woodland is interesting. I’m not picking up much yet, but it’s got atmosphere, I’ll give it that. What about you, Dimitri?”
He shuffled forward, hands thrust into his leather pockets. “Nothing yet,” he declared as he coughed and spat on the ground. “Are you sure this is the right place, Kester?”
“Xena Sunningdale, the tarot-card woman, told us that the Celtic graveyard was in this wood. Didn’t she, Lara?”
Lara nodded. “She said it was up on the headland. This is the only damn headland I can see.”
“Well,” Miss Wellbeloved said, rubbing her hands together and peering through the thick trees behind them. “Shall we get on with it? We’ve got a lot to get done today.”
“Goodness me, woman, it’s a Sunday!”
She raised an eyebrow in the direction of the complaint. “Ah, Larry. I see you’ve finally woken up.”
Kester smothered a laugh. Since being rudely awoken by Dimitri at seven this morning, Larry had hardly said a word, except to order a fried egg sandwich at the café down the road and to berate Lara for taking the last sachet of tomato ketchup. Even by Larry’s usual irate standards, he looked furious.
“Let’s just crack on,” he muttered, glaring at them all. “I don’t appreciate spending my precious weekends mucking around in woods.”
“What are you talking about?” Lara exclaimed and gestured around her. “Seriously, you guys take all this greenery for granted. Come to El Paso. Ain’t nothing but dry old desert for miles.”
Higgins grunted. “I’d rather not, thank you all the same.”
They trudged through the woods. If anything, it got colder the further in they went. Mike looked as though he might be slowly dying of hypothermia, if the rate of his shivering was anything to go by. They passed through copse after copse, wrestling through thick tangles of briars and mountainous piles of fading leaves. After a while, Larry held up a hand, imperious as an emperor.
“Stop!”
Obediently, they halted.
Higgins surveyed the woodland, wiping a hand across his forehead. “This is getting ridiculous. Do we have any idea where we’re going here?”
“Absolutely none whatsoever,” Lara confirmed cheerfully.
“I hadn’t realised the woods were quite so big,” Kester said, taking the opportunity to catch his breath.
“What did you think they’d be? The size of a children’s playground?”
Serena perched on a nearby rock, then folded one leg neatly over the other. “Well, thanks to you lot, my leather trousers are now ruined. Look at the mud on them.”
“Ever heard of a washing machine?” Mike said.
She grimaced. “You obviously have no idea how to care for leather, do you?”
Miss Wellbeloved scratched her head. Her hair sprung from behind her ear like a steel spring. “I must admit,” she said as she looked around, “this doesn’t feel terribly productive.”
Kester ran his hands over his face, massaging the tension out of his temples. Stubble was already forming in grainy patches on his cheeks, and goodness knows when he would be able to get into town to buy a razor. “I know what you mean,” he said. He felt suddenly very tired, not to mention utterly unenthusiastic about the task at hand. “Perhaps we should turn back?”
“Too right we should turn back,” Larry retorted. “This whole thing has been a waste of time. Let’s go and get on with some real work instead.”
Serena rose from her rock, flexing her calf muscles with a wince. As she stood, Pamela suddenly let out a squeal and gesticulated wildly in Serena’s direction. The others watched her in consternation. She began to bounce on the spot and kept stabbing her finger in the direction of Serena’s legs.
“She’s flipped,” Higgins concluded finally. “Gone stark-raving mad. Shall we just leave her here, and see if she can find her own way back?”
“Pamela, why the hell are you pointing at me?” Serena asked. She looked down at herself in confusion. “I know my trousers are muddy, but they’re not that bad, are they?”
“The stone! The stone! Look!”
“Oh my giddy aunt. What is she wittering on about?” Higgins leaned against the nearest tree and shook his head. “Does she often have these sorts of seizures?”
Pamela wheezed in exasperation, then slapped him on the arm. “Look at the stone that Serena was sitting on!” she said, ignoring Larry’s fury at being man-handled.
“Yes, it’s a stone. Just like any other bloody stone. What’s your point, woman?”
“It’s not just any old stone, Larry! Look at it!”
Kester moved closer to get a better look, then beamed with delight. “Pamela, you’re a genius,” he said slowly, casting his eye over the weathered stone surface.
Serena peered behind herself, then started to laugh. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Well,” Miss Wellbeloved said as she strode to the stone and stroked its surface. “It appears you found our first Celtic stone, Pamela.”
“I found it first,” Serena corrected.
“Sitting on it doesn’t count,” Mike said. “Unless you normally identify objects using your bum-cheeks.” He marched over to join Miss Wellbeloved and examined the stone in more detail. In the autumnal morning light, the vague markings were easy to miss, the carved lines brimming with moss and weathered with age. But they were there nonetheless—a soft, barely visible geometric pattern decorating the top right-hand corner like a spider’s web.
Lara and Dimitri quickly scouted the rest of the clearing. A minute later Lara hollered, cutting through the quiet. “Here’s another one!”
Kester raced over to join her. They tugged the loose weeds gripping the surface. Sure enough, vague linear patterns traced the edge of the rock, just like the previous one. Dimitri discovered another only a moment later.
“I knew we’d find it in the end!” Kester declared as he wiped the dirt from his hands. They stood in the centre of the clearing, huddled together, studying the surrounding stones in wonder. The sea wind blew around them, its icy bite whistling through the trees.
“Now what?” Serena said after a while.
Kester shrugged. “I rather thought this would be the point that Pamela and Dimitri took over. Can either of you pick anything up?”
Pamela frowned, body tense as a hunting dog trying to pick up a scent. Likewise, Dimitri froze, his expression showing his concentration. The others waited patiently.
Finally, she shook her head. “Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing?” Larry sputtered. “Come on, try again. There must be something here.”
Dimitri pulled his leather coat more tightly across his chest, frowning. “She is right,” he confirmed. “There is nothing here. It is flat. No energy at all.”
“Seriously?” Serena said with a bleak look at the nearest Celtic stone. “You can’t even detect any residual energy?”
“That’s the strangest thing,” Pamela replied as she raked a hand through her hair. “I’d have expected to pick up at least a trace of whatever this thing is. But there’s literally nothing. If a spirit was ever here, it hasn’t been here for a while.”
Miss Wellbeloved circled the stone. “That’s problematic,” she said thoughtfully. “A fetch is one of those spirits that roots itself to a particular place, Kester. I would have thought it would have been here, if your suggestion was correct.”
“Really?” Kester looked around and felt suddenly rather gloomy again. Why do we keep running up against dead ends? he wondered as he kicked at the dirt. When are we going to get a lucky break?
“Yes, fetches usually attach themselves to places or people,” Pamela added, interrupting his thoughts. “And there aren’t any people here for a fetch to attach itself to—unless anyone’s
been here who’s from the right area in Ireland or Scotland. So it looks like your idea might not be quite right after all. It was a good suggestion, though.”
“Oh great. Just great.” Larry’s expression turned even more murderous. “Yet more time wasted.”
“Not necessarily,” Miss Wellbeloved said quickly. “Kester told us that the members of the Lyme Regis Ancient History Club, or whatever they’re called, started dying after they’d visited this place. Right?”
They nodded.
“And we’ve come up here today, expecting to find what they found. We expected to find the spirit here, because we thought this was where it lived? Yes?”
“Do get on with it, Jennifer.”
She waved a hand. “Bear with me. What if we’re looking at this wrongly? Let’s forget about the suggestion of the fetch for now, as it may just be a red herring. What if, rather than simply disturbing this spirit, causing it to get angry, the Lyme Regis History Club actually ended up taking it away with them?”
“A take-away spirit?” Kester repeated, blinking.
“Not like a Chinese take-away, don’t worry, mate.” Mike patted him on the back.
“Sometimes,” Miss Wellbeloved continued, “as Pamela said a few minutes ago, a spirit chooses to latch onto a person. So it follows them around everywhere. In fact, lots of spirits exhibit this behaviour, as we all know. I wonder if that’s what’s happened here?”
“Nope. Doesn’t add up.” Higgins shook his head vehemently to emphasise the point.
“Why ever not?”
“If it had attached itself to one person, why would it bother murdering all the rest of them? That’s not common spirit behaviour. Doppelgängers especially. They do attach themselves to one person, I’ll grant you that. But they don’t then go around killing loads of other people.”
No one replied. Kester could feel the optimism draining out of his colleagues, a darkening in the atmosphere as each of them dwelled on the complexity of the case. He was finding it difficult to remain positive himself. Every lead they uncovered seemed to point to nothing. The different elements jostled in his mind, clamouring for attention. The Ancient History Club. Peter Hopper. Xena Sunningdale. A Celtic graveyard. Tarot cards. Murders, made to look like accidents. He needed time to sit and think about it all properly, but time was exactly what they didn’t have. The puzzle was becoming more complex, not less so—and his frustration was growing.
