Eyes of the Wicked

by Adam J. Wright

  “There’s a light,” she told Sheridan.

  He nodded and they proceeded towards the farmhouse, which seemed to materialise out of the maelstrom. A red Nissan Micra was parked in front of the house, almost buried in the snow. It looked like Vera Stokes was at home.

  Knowing that she’d need to put on her report what time she’d arrived at the house, Dani checked her watch.

  It was almost four o’ clock.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Christmas Day, 3:57 p.m.

  DS Morgan’s Yaris pulled over to the side of the road and Battle followed suit, parking next to a wooden sign that said Grantham Farm. He switched off his engine and headlights. As DS Morgan did the same, their cars seemed to be swallowed by darkness and the ever-present swirling snow.

  He got out and zipped his coat up to his chin. His tweed hat wasn’t going to stay on his head in this wind, so he tossed it into the boot and replaced it with a black woollen watchcap. He grabbed a torch and slammed the boot shut. He tested the torch, even though he checked it regularly. This kind of cold could drain the life from someone, so it wouldn’t have much trouble draining a couple of batteries.

  Morgan walked over to him, her own torch casting a wavering beam over the snow in front of her boots.

  “I suppose it’s that way,” Battle said, pointing at a swath of deep snow that cut through the trees. “Come on, let’s have a look.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for the team to arrive, guv?”

  “I want to have a look at that bunker,” he said. “If Teresa and Gemma are inside there, on a night like this, they don’t stand a chance.”

  Having worked with Battle long enough to know that he valued saving lives over all else, including protocol, she merely nodded and followed him into the trees.

  “I’ll ring Ryan and tell him we’ve gone ahead,” Battle said, pulling his phone out of his pocket with gloved fingers. A quick glance at the screen told him he had a voicemail. He listened to it while he and Morgan trudged through the snow.

  It was DI Summers. “We’ve got the address of Michael Stokes’ mother and we’re going to interview her,” she said. “We’ll be at Wild Row Farm, Sleddale Road, Westerdale.”

  “They’ve found Michael Stokes’ mother,” he told Morgan. “They’re going to interview her.”

  The DS nodded. She was looking at her phone with a frown on her face. “I was going to bring up the map of the bunker sites, but I’ve got no signal.”

  Battle looked down at his own phone and saw that the reception had dwindled to nothing. “Bloody hell,” he muttered, slipping the phone back into his pocket. “Well, I’m sure the team will realise we’ve gone ahead when they see our vehicles back there.”

  “They’ll probably enter the farmhouse while we’re at the bunker,” she said.

  “I don’t have a problem with that,” Battle said. “Not if it means we get Teresa and Gemma back safely. The team members know what they’re doing. As long as Ryan doesn’t try to abseil through the farmhouse windows SAS-style.”

  Morgan chuckled, the sound muffled by her scarf.

  Up ahead, a blocky shape loomed in the snowfall.

  “The farmhouse,” Morgan said, pointing at the dark structure.

  There were no lights on, no vehicles parked outside.

  “Looks like he isn’t here,” Battle said, keeping his voice low, despite the empty appearance of the house.

  “Shall we take a closer look?”

  “No, our priority is the safety of those women. We need to find that bunker.”

  They skirted the house, which seemed, to all intents and purposes, to be unoccupied. Even so, Morgan and Battle turned off their torches and didn’t speak as they moved towards the rear of the property.

  When the dark house was a couple of hundred yards behind them, Morgan spoke. “The bunker should be somewhere in these trees to the north of the house.”

  They entered a small wood and turned the torches back on, pointing the beams of light at the ground.

  “What are we looking for exactly?” Battle asked.

  A waist-high shaft entrance made of stone with a hatch on top of it. “There it is.” She pointed her light at a small structure that looked exactly as she’d described.

  They went over to it and Battle inspected the metal hatch. It was unlocked. That wasn’t a good sign. If Stokes had Teresa and Gemma in here, he’d have locked the hatch. If his prisoners were alive, anyway.

  Battle’s heart sank.

  He flipped open the hatch, revealing a pitch-black shaft descending into the earth.

  “Is there anyone down there?” he shouted. “Teresa? Gemma?”

  His voice echoed in the space below but there was no answer.

  “Hold this for a minute,” he said, handing Morgan his torch.

  As she took it, he climbed onto the top of the shaft and carefully lowered his legs into the darkness, finding the rungs of a ladder with his boots. “You wait here,” he told Morgan. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He reached out for the torch and she put it into his gloved hand.

  “Be careful, guv.”

  He nodded and made his way down the ladder. When he reached the floor, he cast his torch beam over the subterranean room. The place had been vandalised at some point. The walls were covered with graffiti and the floor was strewn with discarded beer cans and broken bottles. The air smelled of urine. A crack in one wall had let water in and a large puddle covered half of the floor.

  Battle turned around and ascended the ladder. As he climbed out of the shaft and breathed in the sharp, fresh air of the evening, he glanced at Morgan and shook his head. “No one’s been down there except yobs and drunks.”

  The DS turned to the farmhouse. “So they could be in there.”

  “Yes,” Battle said, looking at the dark windows. “And if Stokes isn’t home, this could be our best chance to get to them without any hassle.”

  Morgan nodded.

  They trudged back through the snow to the house.

  “Let’s try the back door,” Battle said. “That way, we won’t make footprints around the front and alert Stokes to our presence if he comes back.”

  She looked at her watch. “Guv, the entry team should be here by now.”

  “They’re probably stuck in the snow.”

  “How are we going to get in?”

  “Shouldn’t be too difficult,” he said. “First, we see the door is unlocked.” He tried the handle, but the door didn’t budge. Two frosted glass strips ran from the of the door to the bottom. He used his torch to smash the one closest to the door handle and reached inside. His gloved fingers found a key in the lock. He turned it and tried the door again.

  It opened.

  He shouted, “Teresa? Gemma? Are you in here?”

  There was no reply. The air that drifted out of the house had a sweet scent.

  “You smell that?” he asked Morgan.

  She nodded. “Flowers.”

  This wasn’t the smell he’d have expected to come wafting out of a house occupied by Michael Stokes.

  He stepped inside and found himself in a tidy kitchen. From the outside, the house had looked derelict and that, along with the state of the bunker out back, had made him wonder if no one lived here and the address on Stokes’ driving licence was wrong.

  But the kitchen indicated that someone had been here recently. A mug sat next to a kettle on the counter, along with a jar of coffee, pack of tea bags, and a bag of sugar.

  He checked the fridge. There was fresh milk in there.

  Morgan picked up the mug and showed it to Battle. “Not the sort of thing I’d expect Stokes to drink his daily cuppa from.”

  The mug bore the slogan God Guides Me Every Day beneath a simple drawing of a crucifix.

  “Maybe that’s where he got the inspiration to nail Tanya Ward to that barn wall,” Battle said.

  The smell of fresh flowers bothered him. Now that he was inside the house, he recognised the cloying smell. Lilies.
He looked around the kitchen for a vase but couldn’t see one. The flowers must be elsewhere in the house.

  The living room was sparsely furnished, with just one armchair, a coffee table, and nothing else, but it was clean and tidy. No lilies in here, either.

  “It doesn’t look like anyone lives here,” Morgan said, looking around the room. “If they do, they live a very spartan existence.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t spend a lot of time at home,” he suggested. “He’s out in his van most of the time. Probably just lays his head here. Let’s check out the bedroom.”

  “There’s another door in the hall,” Morgan pointed out. “I think it might lead to a cellar.”

  He’d been so busy thinking about the elusive flowers that he’d walked past a door beneath the stairs and not even noticed it.

  He went to it and tried the handle. The door opened and the smell of lilies became overpowering. A set of wooden steps descended into darkness.

  Morgan flicked a light switch on the wall and a dim bulb hanging over the stairs flickered to life. The other bulbs in the cellar below were equally as dim, judging by the faint light at the foot of the stairs.

  Leading the way, Battle went down to the cellar, trying to ignore the heady scent of lilies that hung in the air. The cellar had a dirt floor and an old-fashioned wood-burning boiler sat against one wall but other than that, the only thing down here was flowers. Dozens and dozens of flowers.

  Glass vases had been arranged along the walls and each held half a dozen or so white lilies. More flowers lay on the dirt floor. Some were fresher than others but none of them were dead or wilted.

  “What the hell is going on down here?” he asked. His question wasn’t directed at Morgan; it was simply an expression of his bewilderment.

  Morgan pointed at an area of the floor in the far corner. “Guv, look at that.”

  Battle narrowed his eyes and nodded. The cellar floor was even except for in that one area, where a depression could be seen.

  He’d been taught to recognise clandestine graves and knew that a depression in the earth was a telltale sign of a body buried beneath. As the body decayed over time, the dirt above it sank into the grave.

  That explained the flowers; somebody was visiting the grave and leaving the lilies on and around it. They might even be a measure to counter the smell of what lay beneath the dirt.

  “It can’t be Teresa or Gemma,” he said. “The earth wouldn’t have sunk like that so quickly. Whoever is under there has been there for some time.”

  He walked over to the depression and knelt down next to it, running a gloved hand over the dirt. Was this another of Stokes’ victims? One they didn’t know about?

  Tentatively, he dug his fingers into the ground and pulled a handful of earth away.

  “Should you be doing that, guv?” Morgan asked from behind him.

  “We need to know if there actually is a body under here before we call in Forensics.”

  “The team is on its way here, anyway.”

  He was well aware of that, of course, but he had to know what was buried here, in Stokes’ cellar. He continued to dig, and it didn’t take long before he’d cleared enough dirt away to reveal an almost skeletal hand and the cuff of a red and black flannel shirt.

  “Looks like a man, judging by the clothing,” he told Morgan.

  He noticed something on the wall, almost at ground level. It looked like a word on the bricks, but the light cast by the bulbs was so dim that he couldn’t see it clearly.

  He shone his torch at the wall. The single word, painted in black, came into focus.

  Jonathan.

  Battle stood up and turned to Morgan.

  “I think we’ve just found Jonathan Stokes.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Christmas Day, 4:00 p.m.

  Dani knocked on the farmhouse door as she and Sheridan sheltered from the snow beneath the porch roof.

  There was no answer.

  “Maybe she’s gone away,” Sheridan suggested, peering at the lit, curtained windows. “She might have left the lights on to deter burglars.”

  “You can’t see the house from the road,” Dani said. “Any potential burglar would have to be coming up the drive to see that the lights are on.” The red Nissan wasn’t proof that Vera Stokes was at home—she could have left the house in a different vehicle—but Dani was sure there was someone in the house. She could sense it.

  She knocked again, louder this time.

  The wind picked up, howling through the trees and whipping sheets of snow across the porch. Dani lifted the collars of her jacket and lowered her head against the onslaught.

  The door opened, spilling light and warmth onto the porch. A dark-haired woman who looked like she was in her fifties stood in the doorway. She wore a long white robe that made Dani think she might be a member of a church choir. Perhaps she was, and she’d sung at a Christmas service today. Or maybe she wore the robe around the house because it was comfortable. It was clear by the slight bump in the front of the robe that she was pregnant.

  “Come in, come in,” the woman said. “We can’t have you standing outside in this weather.” She stepped back to give them room and ushered them inside. When Dani and Sheridan were in the hallway, the white-robed woman shut the door, and the howling wind quietened.

  “Mrs Stokes?” Dani asked, reaching for her warrant card. “Vera Stokes?”

  “Yes, that’s me,” Vera said. “What can I do for you?”

  Dani showed her the card. “I’m DI Summers from the North Yorkshire police—“

  “Yes, I know who you are,” Vera said. “I saw you on Live with Jo and Martin. Well, a picture of you, anyway.” She turned her attention to Sheridan. “I’m not sure I know your name, though.”

  “Tony Sheridan,” the psychologist said, with a charming smile. “It’s lovely to meet you, Vera. My colleague and I thought we might freeze to death out there.”

  Vera’s eyes widened, as if she’d just remembered something. “Come in, you poor things. I’ll put the kettle on.” She pushed a door open and entered a living room where a television was showing one of the Home Alone movies.

  “Thank you very much,” Sheridan said, following Vera into the room. “That would be great.”

  Dani had the distinct impression that the psychologist had just got them into the house by using the power of suggestion.

  She entered the living room and unzipped her jacket slightly. The heat in here was stifling.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” Vera said, disappearing through an archway that led to a spacious kitchen.

  “She didn’t even ask us why we’re here,” Dani whispered to Sheridan.

  “She’s probably glad to see anyone, especially today,” he said in a low voice. “I bet she’s been sitting in front of this TV on her own all Christmas.”

  Dani checked her phone. She’d expected to hear from Battle that Michael Stokes had been arrested. Maybe the DCI still didn’t have a signal or was too busy getting Stokes to the station.

  An arrangement of three framed photographs on the wall caught her attention, and she went over to inspect them. One of them showed a young boy and girl playing outside a farmhouse. The house didn’t look like Wild Row farmhouse, so she assumed the photo had been taken at Grantham Farm, where Battle was at the moment, and where Vera used to live.

  She gestured Sheridan over. He squinted at the picture and said, “Must be Michael and Ruth.”

  The next photo showed two men grinning at the camera. They wore hard hats, lumberjack shirts, and had safety goggles hanging around their necks. At their feet lay two chainsaws. A number of stumps could be seen in the picture, as well as a pile of felled trees.

  The boy and girl from the first picture could be seen in this photograph as well, only here, they looked younger. Dani guessed Michael to be around eight and Ruth six. They sat on a small concrete structure in the distance, behind the two men, with the moors stretching away to the horizon beyond.
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  “Jonathan Stokes?” Sheridan speculated, pointing to the younger of the two men.

  Dani shrugged. “It could be. He left eighteen years ago, when Michael would have been ten years old. This was taken a few years before.”

  The third photo was a snap of Michael sitting on the cliff near Whitby Abbey. He was maybe sixteen or seventeen and he looked like any lad of that age; grinning at the camera inanely.

  “He looks happy in this picture,” Sheridan said.

  Dani nodded. “No sign of what he was to become later.”

  “There usually isn’t.”

  Vera came back into the room with a tray of china cups and a matching teapot. She set it on the table.

  “Your son looks very happy here,” Sheridan said, pointing to the photo of Michael on the cliff. “Did you take this photo?”

  Her face darkened. “No, someone else did. They were always going to that cliff and leaving me here on my own. Sometimes, I thought they only went there to get away from me.”

  “They?” Sheridan asked casually.

  She ignored him and focused her attention on the tray. “Now, who would like a nice cup of tea?”

  “Is this your son Michael?” Dani asked.

  “Samuel,” Vera said. “He has a new name, as do I. I’m Mary now. It’s only right to have a new name when you’re reborn.”

  “Reborn?” Sheridan asked. “You mean in a religious sense?”

  She nodded. “That’s right. Samuel and I live by the commandments of God. We do as He tells us.”

  “I see,” Sheridan said. “And what does He tell you to do?”

  “To atone for our sins.”

  Dani felt the conversation was starting off on the wrong foot. She wanted to ask about Michael, not get a religious sermon. She opened her mouth to ask Vera about Michael, but Sheridan raised a hand, stopping her.

  He looked at the photos on the wall and then at Vera. “Who’s the little girl in these pictures? Is she your daughter?”

  Vera pursed her lips and made a “Hmmmm” sound before busying herself with the tea.