Beyond Evil

by Neil White

  He saw a space ahead, next to an old wooden gate, and pulled in. He sat there for a few seconds, just staring out of the windscreen, and then turned to look at Ted.

  ‘The work experience girl, Donia,’ Charlie said. He closed his eyes for a moment as he thought about how his life had somersaulted during the last hour. ‘She’s my daughter.’

  Ted’s eyes widened, and then he frowned. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’

  ‘Because I’ve only known since I called her mother.’

  ‘What, the phone call at my house?’

  Charlie nodded. ‘I thought she was involved with them, because she got me to where she was staying, and then the group turned up. I wouldn’t have run if I’d known the truth.’ He realised that his voice sounded desperate, but he didn’t know how to deal with what he had just found out. ‘Donia had sought me out to get to know me, but she hadn’t told me yet.’

  Ted nodded to himself. ‘I didn’t have the chance to save Alice,’ he said, determination in his voice. ‘We’ll save Donia.’ He peered through the windscreen. ‘We need to work out where they are. We can’t just keep driving around.’ He reached for the door handle and stepped out of the car.

  The night air came into the car, cold and sharp, and it reminded Charlie that he was only in a suit. He joined Ted outside. Charlie fastened his jacket and pulled the lapels to his neck. He looked up at the stars, and they were bright spots of light.

  They were high on the side of the valley. The land fell away in front of them, sheep clinging to the slope further down, their wool reflecting the moonlight. The orange clusters of towns and villages broke up the darkness, the lights more concentrated further away, as the fringes of the Pennines turned into the larger towns nearer the coast.

  As he looked around, there was no sound. No cars or pub shouts. Just the rustle of their clothes as they got used to the chill.

  Charlie scoured the hillsides, looking for anything, a chink of light from a barn or a fire burning, anything that hinted of something out of the ordinary.

  Ted blew into his hands. ‘Let’s just keep going,’ he said. ‘We are looking for something unusual. We’ll go with our instincts.’

  It sounded like a plan.

  As they jumped back into the car, Charlie shivered. Except that this time it wasn’t from the cold. This time it was fear of what lay ahead, and whether he would ever get to see the sunrise.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  John turned round when he heard footsteps on the stairs.

  It was Henry, pulling on his shirt, his trouser belt still undone. He was dishevelled, his hair sticking up, two scratch marks down his cheek.

  ‘How’s Dawn?’ John said.

  Henry took a breath and then scowled. ‘Against us.’

  ‘So what now?’

  As Henry passed John, he glanced outside to where the hole had been dug. ‘Our mission is the important thing. We can’t be distracted. Dawn was going to betray us. If we let her go, we’re finished, all of us.’

  John turned to follow Henry into the living room. When he got there, Lucy looked up.

  ‘We need to deal with the problem,’ Henry said. ‘She needs to join her sisters.’

  The mood in the room improved. Jennifer smiled. Gemma jumped to her feet, and Lucy grinned. She held out her hand, and Henry grabbed it and helped her to her feet.

  Arni banged his stick on the floor. When everyone turned to him, he said, ‘Let’s do it. John, go get her.’

  John ran upstairs. As he got higher, he heard soft cries coming from Henry’s room. When he opened the door, Dawn was curled up in a corner. She had put her clothes back on, but her top was ripped, so that she had to hold it over her chest. Her trousers weren’t fastened properly. As John got closer, he saw swelling around her eye and a trickle of blood from her nose.

  ‘You need to come downstairs,’ he said.

  She looked up at him, and her eyes were pure hatred, her brow heavy, lips clenched tightly. ‘You could have stopped this.’

  He closed his eyes. He had no control anymore. ‘Downstairs,’ he said.

  Tears started to run down her face. ‘I won’t say anything. Just let me go.’

  John shook his head. ‘No, downstairs.’ He went over to her and gripped her arm. She pulled against it at first, thumped him a few times in his chest, but he ignored it, so her shoulders slumped and she went with him.

  As John got to the top of the stairs, he looked down and saw everyone waiting for him. Dawn pulled against him again but he held firm. When they got to the bottom, Arni grabbed her and took her outside, everyone else following.

  She shrank back at the cold. The warmth from the day was gone. Arni kept pulling and so she stumbled as she went, her cries lost in the clamour from the group. Footsteps on grass, gleeful shouts. When Arni got to the stones, he pulled her towards the flat stone, the large one that was horizontal like a table. Arni held her by the hair, so that her legs and body thrashed, but she couldn’t escape. She started to scream, but no one tried to stop her. There wasn’t anyone near enough to hear.

  Henry appeared by her feet, and she looked along her body towards him, her eyes wide. Her screams turned to a whimper and her head went back in despair.

  ‘We need a knife,’ Henry said.

  Gemma ran back into the house. No one said anything, so that the only sounds were those of Dawn’s cries as she struggled against her captors. When Gemma emerged from the house, she was holding a carving knife. The blade glinted in the moonlight.

  John could feel the tension, everyone watching as the knife was passed along the line to Henry. He held it and turned it in his hand before he nodded at the two women stood closest to Dawn.

  They smiled and then each grabbed a leg of her trousers and pulled, and although her hands reached down to stop it, it was no use. They kept on pulling until her trousers were off, her legs skinny and pale. Then they pulled at her shirt, ripping it, until it was just shreds of cloth on the ground. Dawn was naked apart from her knickers. She crossed her legs in a vain attempt to keep some dignity, but it was futile. Her underwear was torn off, so she lay there, naked and sobbing.

  John was transfixed. Her body was skinny, so that he could see the sharp bones of her hips and ribs, her legs bony and mottled and pale. He knew that Dawn hadn’t participated as much as the others. Some of the people enjoyed the sexual aspect of the group, the lack of inhibition, but Dawn had never really taken part.

  People rushed forward to grab her ankles and wrists, spread-eagling her. Her head was back and she was panting hard. She tried to pull against them, but she couldn’t, they were too strong for her. John could hear her skin scraping on the stone, could see the blood on her heels. She was looking at the sky, until her gaze blurred over from her tears.

  He didn’t know what to do. What they were doing was wrong, he knew that, but he felt powerless against the group.

  Henry stepped up to the stone, so that he was at her side. He looked around the group, tried to look each one in the eye.

  ‘If we are to take our movement forward, we cannot afford traitors,’ Henry said. ‘That’s just the way it has to be.’

  People mumbled that they understood.

  He smiled. ‘Apology is of the other world,’ he said to the group. ‘The one where life is about accumulation and greed. That’s how man deludes himself, because he does what his heart desires, not caring about others, but then he is racked with guilt, and so he apologises and tries to make amends. But why? It’s just a candle in a dark place, an illusion of light, because he knows it is wrong and so he tries to pass the burden by apologising.’ He looked down at Dawn. ‘No one here apologises for anything, but yet you still do.’

  Dawn shook her head frantically, moaning, scared. More tears squeezed out of her eyes.

  Henry held up the knife. ‘We know how it is,’ he said. ‘Who goes first?’

  Dawn knew what was coming next, because her struggles became more frantic.

  Gemma stepp
ed forward. ‘Me first,’ she said, and held her hand out for the knife.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Charlie and Ted followed the road as it ran alongside the hillside, looking out for wherever the group might have taken Donia. It had been a fruitless search, just tracks and hedgerows and stone walls that hugged the valley sides. They were about to curve back towards the valley floor when Ted shouted, ‘Stop!’

  The car skidded as Charlie stamped on the brake. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Back up.’

  Charlie moved the car slowly backwards, looking up the long slopes, trying to see whatever had caught Ted’s attention.

  Ted shouted for him to stop again. ‘There,’ he said, and pointed.

  Charlie looked past him, followed his finger, and then he scowled. He looked round for somewhere to park and headed towards a small leafy track that ended in front of a metal gate. He turned off his engine and the night turned silent again.

  Charlie tried to see along the track, but it disappeared into woods that climbed up the hill. It hadn’t been the track that had caught Ted’s attention though.

  There was a small cottage a couple of hundred yards away, high up on the hill. The moonlight shone from an old slate roof and weak yellow light shone as tiny yellow squares. It had been more than the cottage though, because there were jagged stones set against the bright silver of the moon, and there was movement between them, cast into silhouette. Charlie could tell that it was a group though, and that something was happening.

  ‘This way,’ Charlie said, and started to climb the gate. It clanged against the post as he jumped over, Charlie wincing as the noise echoed around them. Ted followed him, and once they were both on the other side, Charlie pointed at the trees that ran up the hill. ‘We need to go through there, to stay hidden.’

  The hill was steep, and as they disappeared into the shadows of the trees the loss of the moonlight made it harder to see. Stray branches and roots snagged at their feet, and unseen dips and hollows almost sent them tumbling. Charlie’s ears were keen, listening out for the sound of someone approaching, sure that the rattles of Patrick’s car must have attracted their attention, but all he got was the soft rustle of leaves and the creak of branches straining under their own weight. Ted’s breathing seemed laboured, and he shouted out as he stumbled to the floor.

  ‘We need to go quieter,’ Charlie whispered.

  Ted didn’t respond, just scrambled himself upright and walked on ahead, his footsteps faster now, so that all Charlie could hear were the rustles of his feet as he rushed to keep up. The view ahead was just gloom and darkness, the brightness of the moon just slipping through in places, lighting up their faces as ghostly apparitions moving through the trees. Charlie’s white shirt caught the light, so he buttoned his jacket and pulled up the lapels.

  Charlie was breathing hard too, his legs aching from the climb, his lungs fighting back against too many long nights bar-hopping and the escape from Donia’s flat. Neither of them was in suitable gear; Charlie’s suit was torn and ragged, his feet clad in leather-soled brogues.

  Charlie stopped. He put his arm out. There was something ahead. Mumbles and murmurs, but the voices were fast and sharp, as if they were angry. They couldn’t be far away. Charlie tilted his head to the edge of the woods. They needed to get a better view.

  They moved slowly to the edge of the treeline. Charlie sheltered behind a dead tree, the top gone, as if it had once been caught in a storm, so that all that was left was the trunk and two large branches sticking out to the side. He peered out over the field towards the cottage. They were more level with it now, near the top of the slope, and the cottage was framed against the glow coming from the moon. As he focused on it, Charlie saw again what had attracted his attention. There was a small cluster of standing stones, spread out into some kind of haphazard semicircle. There were people gathered in the middle of the stones, around a large rock that was flat against the ground, fifty yards from the house and in the middle of the field.

  ‘We need to get closer,’ Charlie whispered, and pointed towards the hedgerow at the top of the field. ‘We’ll go along there. It will get us nearer to the cottage.’

  The hedgerow was twenty yards away, but it provided some shelter from the moonlight, so that Charlie thought they could get closer without being seen.

  He ducked back into the shelter of the trees and crunched his way to where the hedgerow joined the wood. Ted was behind him, making his way more slowly, carefully.

  Charlie stopped to let him catch up.

  ‘They won’t harm Donia,’ Ted said, looking towards the stone circle. ‘Not yet anyway.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Think about it. They’ve got her because you’ve got something they want. If they kill her, they won’t get it.’

  ‘And just in case you’ve forgotten, they don’t seem too humane,’ Charlie hissed. ‘So let’s not pretend there’s going to be any kind of amicable handover.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  ‘We’re going to find out what’s going on, and then call it in.’

  ‘The police will think it’s some kind of prank,’ Ted said. ‘Anarchist nut-jobs in the woods, and my name won’t help it too much.’

  ‘The police already know about Donia. They just don’t have a location.’ Charlie stepped out of the shadows of the trees and into the darkness of the hedgerow. He looked along and tried to work out the landscape.

  There was a ditch that ran in front of the hedgerow, and as he jumped into it, he knew that it wasn’t waterlogged. They would be able to go along its length until they were just a short dash from the house. It would at least give them a chance to see what was going on so they could report it.

  They moved slowly, hunched down, trying not to make a noise. It was hard to work out what was going on. There were around six young women standing around the central stone, and three or four men. They were struggling with something, but Charlie couldn’t make out what it was.

  They got to the far side of the ditch, where it met the wall that ran up from the house. There was some shouting, an increase in activity. They tried to keep low in the ditch, just to watch. He could see an outline of someone through a window at the side of the cottage. He thought he recognised the frizz of her hair. Donia.

  Charlie gripped Ted’s arm when he saw, and was about to say something, when he heard something that made his stomach pitch and cold shivers ripple up and down his skin.

  A long, shrill scream came from the group and echoed around the valley.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Horne looked to Murch.

  ‘So go on, I’m listening,’ Sheldon repeated. ‘Why now?’

  Murch and Horne exchanged glances, until Murch held out his hands in a gesture to continue.

  Horne sighed. ‘Amelia called us,’ he said. ‘It was last week. She said she was worried about Abbott, but she wouldn’t tell us why. She just said we had to get him out. She seemed agitated. No, more than that. She seemed scared.’

  Sheldon remembered what Charlie had said, that the calls had been made after she had spoken to Billy Privett.

  ‘You had no idea at all about why she was worried?’

  ‘No. There was something wrong, we knew that, but if Abbott had contacted her, she would have told us, because he would have contacted her in order that she could pass it on. Or he could have called us directly. We could have gone up there and pulled him out, and we were talking about doing that.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Just go up there and arrest him. Produce a fake warrant, for non-payment of fines or something.’

  ‘So why didn’t you?’

  Horne looked at Murch, who was silent, with his arms folded.

  ‘Because we weren’t sure,’ Horne said. ‘We thought that perhaps Abbott was biding his time, so as not to attract attention.’

  ‘But Amelia’s call came last week. What has changed? Why this week?’

  Horne started
to look more nervous. He rubbed his thumb on the palm of his other hand, as if he was trying to rub some dirt away.

  Sheldon stepped closer. ‘No more bullshit,’ he said, his voice quieter. ‘I want the full story. This is cop-to-cop, so it stays confidential, but I want to know.’

  The two men exchanged shrugs and raised eyebrows, and then Horne relented.

  ‘Amelia called us again, the morning it was discovered that it was Billy Privett who had died. She told us that Billy had called her the day before, said that he was going to keep out of the way for a while, that he was going to that hotel. On the way into work, she saw the police cars there. When she tried to call him, she got no reply. So she called us. She was angry now, and more scared. Someone had tried to break into her office. So we went to see her.’

  Sheldon thought back to what he had been told, that the two men in suits had been seen coming out of Amelia’s office, and they had gone looking for Charlie in his home.

  ‘You found Amelia’s body, didn’t you?’ Sheldon said.

  They both nodded.

  ‘And then you broke into Charlie Barker’s home.’

  They nodded again.

  ‘We were worried for him as well,’ Horne said. ‘We tried his phone, but it was switched off, and so we kicked in his door to find him. Except that when we got in there, we saw him running away.’

  ‘He thought you were after him,’ Sheldon said. ‘He didn’t know who you were.’ When neither Horne nor Murch said anything, he continued, ‘What did Amelia tell you at her office?’

  ‘Not enough,’ Horne said. ‘She said she had specific instructions from Billy. She was to disclose what Billy had told her, but everyone had to find out at the same time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Maximum effect, I suppose. She said there wasn’t too much of a rush, because Billy was dead.’

  ‘Except she hadn’t planned on herself being in danger,’ Sheldon said. ‘Amelia had prepared copies for the local police, and the BBC, the local paper, and to Ted Kenyon. Billy knew he was in danger. He feared for his life. Billy’s instructions were to send this out if he was killed, so that the truth wouldn’t stay silenced. Billy was scared, that’s all. That’s why he stayed quiet.’