Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

‘When will you come to see me again?’ she asked.

‘Wednesday,’ said Fry promptly.

‘Make it in the morning. Nine o’clock. My mind is fresher then.’

‘OK.’

Fry looked at the big sash window and the remnants of the autumn sun forming red streaks and dark shadows on the roofs of Matlock. The sun was setting somewhere behind her. The light must be falling on the front of the building, because it certainly wasn’t reaching the room where they sat. In the morning, it would be different. In the morning, Maggie’s mind might be fresher. But the light would also be in the south-east, shining on this window. Lighting up Maggie’s face.

Will and Dougie Leach were sitting quietly in the kitchen at Ringham Edge Farm. Their father had brought the portable television set into the kitchen, and they were watching the news, eyes fixed on the face of the newsreader as he spoke about interest rates, trade wars, and disasters in distant parts of the world.

It was well past the boys’ normal bedtime. Their mother would never have let them stay up so late. She would have hurried them off to bed with warnings about being up early for school in the morning. But their father didn’t seem to care. He forgot about them as long as they were quiet and didn’t get in his way. And Will and Dougie had learned how to be quiet.

Warren Leach was crouched over the old oak desk in the front room of the farmhouse — the room he called an office. He had a desk lamp with a dim forty-watt bulb held over a scatter of papers. The boys had no real idea what the papers were, except that they were bad news. Every night he got the papers out and looked at them again. But no matter how many times he looked, they only ever seemed to make him more unhappy.

The news finished and some incomprehensible comedy programme started, with a lot of swearing. The boys shifted uncomfortably, knowing their mother would have been angry to see them watching the programme. But without her to tell them what to do, the boys sat on, their eyes growing tired, reluctant to move or make a noise in case they were noticed.

Finally, when little Dougie was already asleep with his head on the arm of the chair, Will heard the front door bang. Their father had gone out.

Will got up to switch off the television. He shook his brother awake, and together they crept up the stairs to their bedrooms. Their beds were unmade, the sheets tangled and uncomfortable. But both of them were so tired that they didn’t notice.

But Will didn’t go to sleep straight away. For a while, he lay staring at the ceiling and wondering where it was that his father went. He prayed that he hadn’t gone near the shippon, that his father would leave Doll alone. Although people didn’t come at night any more, Will knew there was nothing good about what his father was doing.

Will had lived all his life on the farm. He knew its patterns and routines, he understood the rhythms of its activities. And there was one thing that he knew perfectly well. There was nothing that could possibly need doing around the farm at this time of night.

‘All right, what’s the latest weirdo count?’

To Ben Cooper, Chief Superintendent Jepson looked as though he didn’t really want to know the answer. It was a question that risked spoiling the Tuesday morning meeting almost before it had started. Cooper tried hard to fade into the background of the incident room. He and Todd Weenink would be following up the line of enquiry about a white van reported in the Ringham Edge area, which one witness claimed to have seen before, and which might therefore be local. That was all the excitement he needed for this morning.

Cooper saw DCI Tailby hesitate at the Chief Super’s question and look sideways at DI Hitchens. But Hitchens looked very cheerful for such an early hour, and he had the answers ready.

‘Well, the uniforms on duty up there say they had trouble turning away a bunch of characters in black coats,’ he said. ‘Apparently they were carrying so much metalwork on their bodies they wouldn’t have got through airport security without the help of a surgeon.’

‘What did they want?’

‘They said blood had been spilled on the Virgins, and that meant the power would manifest some time in the next twenty-four hours, so they had to be there to receive it.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Jepson.

‘They were pretty insistent. In the end, they only retreated as far as the pub in Ringham. The inspector is worried that when they come back they’ll be tanked up and more aggressive. Fortunately, I think we’ve managed to keep them out of the way of the other lot so far.’

‘What other lot?’

‘The other lot who say they have to perform a cleansing ritual dedicated to the Great Goddess, so as to dispel the influence of evil from the stone circle, which is a sacred place. Some of the bobbies were all for letting them go ahead with that one.’

‘You what?’

‘Well, they’re all women, and it seems they have to perform this ritual naked.’

Jepson put his head in his hands and groaned.

‘It’s called “sky-clad”,’ said Hitchens.

‘What is?’

‘Having no clothes on. You’re clad in nothing but the sky, so that you’re much closer to nature and the Great Goddess.’

‘Hitchens, are you enjoying this?’

‘No, sir. I’m just reporting the information that the uniformed section gathered. They spent quite a while talking to this lot, I think. We might have some converts in E Division. They’ll be wanting to form an Edendale chapter of the Order of the Golden Moon.’

‘Haven’t we had any plain old psychics and mediums, then?’

‘You’re kidding. Twelve at the last count. We’ve also had a dowser offering to locate the knife using nothing but a bent twig; an animal linguist who wants to interrogate the squirrels, because she thinks they could have been eyewitnesses, and a UFO expert who has proof that the victim was abducted by aliens for unspecified experiments which went wrong. Oh, and some preservation experts from that government department, English Heritage.’

‘English Heritage? What the hell do they want?’

‘They demand the right to inspect the stone circle for damage. They say it’s a priceless piece of our cultural history.’

Jepson frowned. ‘I’ve heard that phrase before. Is it from a book or something?’

‘Could be,’ said Hitchens. ‘It seems to be us that English Heritage suspect of damaging the stones, by the way.’

‘They’re nuts. Get rid of them.’

‘They’re not half as bad as the press. That lot are all over us like a nasty disease.’

‘Was that their chopper over the moor yesterday?’

‘Sure. And it was also one of their blokes we pulled down from the top of a tree with his long lens. He’d already been up there a day or so, in camouflage gear. He slept tied to a branch. He said he learned how to do it at an eco-warriors’ protest camp in Berkshire.’

‘That’s a neat trick,’ said Jepson, half-admiringly.

‘I don’t know about neat. Twenty-four hours is a long time. You should have seen the state of the grass at the bottom of the tree. That’s how we located him. Even our bobbies know human shit when they see it.’

Jepson pulled a face. Then he looked suspiciously at Tailby, who had been listening silently.

‘What have you got to say, Stewart?’

‘It’s a pretty depressing story, I’m afraid.’ Tailby sounded resigned. ‘The sixteen fires we found remnants of, they were all set during the last three months. Some of the people who made them built them properly. Others. . well, others were lucky not to have set fire to the whole moor. There are the animal bones we found buried nearby, too. First indications suggest a medium-sized dog.’