by Jonathan Day
your team that gave women bother back then. And you really don’t want to know what she keeps in the boot of her car.’
The retired DCI came to a decision. ‘May I borrow her?’
‘Do what?’ Tweet and Bolton asked in unison.
‘Oh come on, Maurice. You know I'm a cold case consultant.’
Bolton obviously didn’t. ‘Well bugger me! Though I should have known you'd never retire.’
‘Well, you know what they used to call me - The walking dead.’ He could see that Tweet was intrigued. ‘Been shot twice, fallen off a cliff, and survived three car crashes.’
DI Bolton could have added more to the list, but saw that expression of respect creep over his subordinate's face. The domesticated detective had no way of competing with that just to impress her. If he couldn’t manage dangerous situations by being prickly, he just ducked and called for backup. Most of the old coppers he knew were either mad, corrupt, or committed beyond the call of duty, like the ill-fated Mathew.
‘How am I supposed to manage without this disorganised baggage?’ he complained. It was the nearest to a compliment Tweet had ever heard from him.
‘Adopt one of those blokes wetting themselves to be detectives,’ the ex DCI told him.
‘Well I'm game,’ announced Tweet. ‘All that annoyed buzzing was starting to give me tinnitus.’ She topped up Manny Coleridge’s glass. ‘When do we start-’
‘Don’t you dare call him boss!’ warned Bolton. ‘He's Sir to you.’
‘And I may need you to get the odd search warrant,’ Coleridge warned him.
Bolton sat back and drained his sherry. ‘All right, boss. You’re entitled to that before the Grim Reaper decides your time’s really up.’
Coleridge handed Tweet a card. ‘I share an office with an archivist in this broom cupboard at the County Hall. I'll see you there at ten tomorrow morning.’
‘Ten!’ scoffed Bolton.
‘I'm an old man now, Maurice. Takes longer for the brain cells to warm up.’
‘That’s senility,’ Bolton muttered.
‘But I'm not deaf.’
The broom cupboard turned out to be an office next to the stacks containing the county records of births, deaths, land ownership, et cetera... Plus - most importantly - old police records. It was an Aladdin's cave for recent history. As well as being a cold case consultant, Manny Coleridge was engaged by the council to dig out documents to settle land disputes and movement of suspect businesses that slipped the attention of Companies House.
Tweet felt overwhelmed by the towering shelves of document boxes, being too used to her smartphone and laptop. Fortunately the retired DCI was not counting on her office skills. He sent her back to the farm where she had encountered Matthew.
Now that a child's life was not in danger, Tweet didn't believe for one moment that the shade of the dead DC would reappear, so she sat on a rotten log by the brickfield watching bumblebees in the buddleia and wondering how DI Bolton was getting on without his DS. With a shudder, it occurred to her that she could have been relaxing on the very log Manny Coleridge's team had used to batter down the chapel doors, too late to save Matthew. No sooner had the thought crossed Tweet’s mind than she became aware of a slight figure standing by what few bricks remained of the chapel wall. He was no longer distinct and she doubted that her smartphone would capture enough of the phantom to print out.
‘Been waiting for you.’
Again that serene smile. Why couldn't the man be angry? He had been horribly murdered after all.
‘Help me out here. Tell me what I'm looking for?’
Matthew made an expansive gesture then lifted his palms to the sky.
‘You ascended?’ Tweet tried not to sound amazed.
He made another motion which she took to be rising smoke.
‘Your body was cremated?’
He spread his hands, palms down to the ground.
‘And your ashes were scattered.’ She sighed. ‘Well that's that then. No forensic.’
Then Matthew opened his shirt.
Tweet was a pretty tough cookie, but recoiled at the gaping wound in his chest where his heart had been ripped out.
Then she realised what he was telling her. ‘Oh my God! Of course! They collected the blood of their sacrifices – their hearts! But why come back now, Matthew?’
The ghost indicated the height of a child with one hand while lifting a dagger with the other.
It could only mean one thing. ‘It can’t be the same Justin J Kaynam who murdered you? He’s dead.’
He held his arms as though cradling a child.
‘His son!’
Tweet pulled out her mobile.
‘It's me Sir. You were right. This cult’s back in business. Don’t ask me how I know, but I’m sure it’s been resurrected by the son, probably with the old man’s oil money. Can you find out where he is? If that bloke chasing little Jobey was connected to the cult the new HQ probably isn’t too far away.’
Matthew began to fade. Tweet longingly watched him go, knowing she would never see him again.
The address Manny Coleridge tracked down for Densel Kaynam arrived in a text message which warned Tweet to wait for a plan of action. But another child's life was at stake and, unable to explain to her superiors how she knew, she drove to it like an 18-year-old on legal highs.
It was late evening when she arrived at the rambling mansion large enough to have its own chapel. The grounds were surrounded by high electrified walls patrolled by dogs. Tweet may have been a black belt in martial arts, but wasn't a pole-vaulter. After a brief call to DI Bolton to reassure him everything was under control - which alarmed him even more than her prolonged silence - she took a drone from the boot of her car and set the night sites of its camera. The low throb of a generator and amplified chanting in the chapel masked the sound of her spy in the sky as it circled the monastic community.
Tweet flew the spy drone as low as she dared over the chapel, and then took it higher as a crocodile of hooded men carrying a semiconscious child ceremonially made their way towards its doors.
Matthew was right.
Tweet pulled out her phone. ‘Boss, I think you'd better mobilise a squad to get out here and batter down the gates.’
‘Coleridge called me, you stupid cow! What the hell do you think you're up to!’ Bolton erupted.
‘No time to explain. Child about to be murdered. Check out the drone surveillance I’m sending.’
‘You had better be right about this...’
‘Can't chat. I'm going through that wall.’ She disconnected the call before hearing the inevitable stream of expletives.
Tweet opened the boot of her car and put on her protective vest, Wellington boots and rubber gloves. She then took out some bolt cutters and headed for a side gate. That was electrified as well, but once the padlock had been sheared off the system was short-circuited, setting off alarms across the property. The grounds were immediately lit up and two guards with dogs dashed towards the intruder.
Tweet used her pepper spray on the Dobermans and kicked off her Wellington boots to immobilise the guards with several karate blows as they obviously had not been trained to combat standard. Fortunately the congregation's confidence in their security was misplaced and the chapel doors had been left wide open. The interior was bathed with a lurid glow in keeping with the blood cult’s murderous mores, and a dozen hooded men were gathered about the altar.
For a second Tweet imagined Matthew laying there, his heart cut out. Fortunately this young teenager was still alive. But wouldn’t be for long if she didn’t do something. The DS wasn’t going to waste time showing the congregation her identification when it was more effective to announce her arrival by hurling a hefty candlestick at the gathering. It bounced from the back of the tallest member and landed in the pews where the candle in it guttered out.
The hooded men turned to see the unlikely avenging fury.
‘Who the hell are you?’ demanded their leader, Densel K
aynam.
‘The fuzz, arsehole! Release that kid!’
The knife poised to make the sacrifice instead sliced past her ear, nicking it. Then there was the distinctive click of an automatic weapon. The tall man threw back his hood to reveal the tattooed features of someone who believed that the SS insignia was an artistic statement.
Tweet used the seat of a chair as a shield and charged towards him, plunging one of its legs into his groin before he could fire then disarming him with a few bone-breaking karate kicks.
The other members of the cult scattered in all directions.
Tweet would have pursued the robe of their leader if she hadn't been bowled over by the squad of armed officers who had stormed into the church.
‘That one's mine!’ she yelled and dashed after Densel Kaynam.
Her quarry moved like a panicked meerkat, but she was determined to explain that the sacrifice of innocents was no longer regarded as a perk of the privileged. Apart from that, she was hoping that he would resist arrest. As he was the son of the man responsible for Matthew's murder, inflicting some pain would be very therapeutic - for her anyway.
Densel Kaynam headed into a side chapel where there was a rack of loaded shotguns.
A glass-fronted cabinet facing them contained something that made Tweet stop dead in her tracks. Behind its glass doors were three dozen or more reliquaries - the hearts of the innocents!
In the shock of recognition, Tweet hardly registered the sudden blow to her protective vest that hurled her back out of the side chapel. Recovering her balance, she was aware of blood on her hands.
Her
