Guy Smith: The Wood

The policeman's pulse raced and his hand went to his pocket radio. And stopped. No fear, not on your nellie! The bright boys would take all the credit with not a mention of your long-serving country copper. Well, this time they were going to end up with egg on their faces. PC Jock Houliston would make the arrest, he'd have the killer handcuffed before he… but he didn't have a boat and you couldn't chase anybody out to sea without one!

Swish. splash. swish. splash.

Louder! It should have grown fainter, as the boat gradually left the shore, barely discernible.

Swish. splash.

Houliston craned his neck, thought he could make out a shape in the fog; the boat, somebody hunched in it, heaving on a pair of heavy oars; coming this way

.

Unbelievable but it was true. Who ever it was they were now scraping the bottom of their craft on the beach, jumping out, pulling it up out of the water. More than one of them. peering again. Three of them. Foster and.

Five people had gone missing. Perm any three from five. Logically one of them had to be the rapist and that was all that mattered. The policeman glanced behind him; there was no sign of the rest of the search party, the fog having swallowed them up. Not a sound except for that made by those with the boat. His hand caressed the flat oblong shape of his radio again. Not bloody likely, this was his show!

He crouched down, tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. They would come this way, all he had to do was to wait, loom out of the mist in front of them. His hand went into his pocket, jangled a pair of handcuffs faintly. Oh yes, the country copper would show them a thing or two. Here they come now, two men and what looks like a boy. It might be one of the missing girls, a slip of a figure. No, Carol Embleton was a big girl, it couldn't be her. Thelma Brown then. Hell, it didn't matter just so long as one of them was James Foster, the most wanted man in Britain. Their feet squelched in waterlogged grass, and they were muttering to one another. Furtive, stopping every few yards as though they anticipated an ambush. Once they almost turned back, one man grabbing at the sleeve of the other, cursing him in low tones, the boy (?) cowering as though he expected to be struck. But they still came on, more wary and suspicious than ever. Cries of fear as Jock Houliston suddenly straightened up, a truncheon clasped in his hand.

'You're under arrest, all three of you.' A pair of handcuffs were dangled ostentatiously. 'Now, James Foster, let's be having you. You're all going to accompany me to the police station where. '

Houliston's jubilant caution died away as he saw their faces for the first time, tried to match that police photo of Foster with one of them. Oh Christ Almighty, those hideous countenances belonged anywhere except in a civilised twentieth-century society, pock-marked scarred faces that even the mist failed miserably to hide. Wretched beings that cringed and whined, the boy on his knees covering his head with his hands as though he expected a blow. Ragged clothing torn in many places so that the flesh was visible beneath, skin that was a mass of blackheads, an unwashed poverty-stricken trio, their bare feet bleeding where they had scratched them on the stones.

'Have mercy on us, sir,' the taller of the two men cried. 'Take our boat, our cargo, but let us go, I beg of you for we only do this else we starve, and the Lord alone knows we are close to that now.'

Jock Houliston grunted. Certainly they spoke the truth but what the hell was going on? Bitter disappointment because none of these was the man he wanted, that much was clear. He found himself backing away a step, revolted at that which confronted him. An explanation, oh just give me a logical explanation for all this.

'What's going on?' he grunted.

They stared back at him in amazement, did not reply.

'Come on, I'm a police officer and I want to know what's going on!'

'You. don't know?' The tall man seemed to be their spokesman, one who trembled visibly, slobbered as he spoke. "Police? What's that? You're not Customs men, or is this a devilish trick?'

Houliston jangled the handcuffs, saw how they started, huddled together in sheer terror like sheep in a slaughterhouse smelling death.

'No, sir, not the dungeons, we beg you. Kill us, but not that!'

'You're stark raving bloody barmy,' the policeman muttered, and thought to himself 'and so am I'. Still holding the handcuffs he unclipped his radio, flicked a button. 'One-seven-one-five, come in please.'

There should have been an instant crackling, a voice answering him. There was nothing. With a chill of fear trickling up his back he realised that for some reason his radio was dead. No reason, just a lifeless object that could neither give nor receive messages; his link with civilisation was broken. He was on his own.

'Please, sur, take our boat, our cargo. '

I don't want your bloody boat or your cargo. I want James Foster and four other missing people. 'Look, let's start at the beginning, just tell me who you are and what you're doing here.'

Silence. Blank, terror-stricken stares, the boy starting to sob. He couldn't have been more than ten, Houliston thought. He'd been ill-treated, starved, should be taken into care. The police officer's flesh was prickling. He didn't want to be the one to do that, didn't want to have to touch any of them and he'd handled some pretty revolting corpses in his time. Like old Matthews, the hermit who had lived in that old pillbox down by the canal. He'd died one hot summer and hadn't been missed for almost a month. When Houliston found him the wasps had made quite a sizeable nest inside him. But rather that than this!

Maybe I could just leave them here, catch up with the others. I don't even have to say I've seen them, do I?

It was the boy who screamed, a piercing yell of soul-shattering terror, pointing into the mist behind Jock Houliston. Grunts and cries from the other two. They're here, we knew they were somewhere about. '

'It's the search party.' Houliston wheeled round, almost screamed himself, tried to shout 'I'm a police officer, d'you hear me', but no words would come. Shapes loomed out of the mist, figures that bore a faint resemblance to the human body until you saw their faces. Long coats, triangular hats pulled well down as though even they tried to spare you from looking upon their features. Grotesque, evil. Menacing; wielding clubs and pistols.

'Tak' them,' they chorused — a cry that embodied hate and sadistic lust, a tone that surely no human vocal chords could have issued. There must have been a dozen of them, perhaps more, running, shouting. A pistol boomed, its cloud of villainous sulphurous smoke turning the swirling mist yellow, giving off acrid fumes. Converging on the two men and the boy, vicious blows from raised cudgels splitting open the latter's head; you heard them, felt them. They were battering his skull into a mulch, but there was not a spot of blood to be seen! Seizing his companions; then turning to face this stranger who had no business skulking in the fog of a smugglers' marsh.

'Another 'un!' One of them grunted his surprise. Tak'!un, too.'

Shocked awareness flooded Jock Houliston's numbed brain. His common sense rebelled, demanded logic where there was none. I'm a policeman and I'm not standing for this. Twenty-five years of training, taught to cope with a thousand and one different situations, even if this one didn't slot into any particular niche. His instinct surfaced, defied surrealism; that time there had been a fancy-dress party and the guests had got drunk, run amok. It was like that now. He had arrested four of them single-handed then, locked them in the cells for the night to sober up.

He drove forward with his truncheon, a stabbing blow in the manner of a duelling swordsman, finding his target, the nearest man's solar plexus. It should have doubled his assailant up, had him writhing on the ground, clutching at his stomach. It didn't.