Black Feathers (25 page)

In the morning John Palmer was gone.

Gordon checked Brooke’s resting place first. It was undisturbed. He made a circuit of the tiny camp and spread his search in a widening spiral. He checked inside John Palmer’s tent. All his gear was there but there was no sign of the man. The camp fire was cold. No food was missing.

The day lengthened, and John Palmer didn’t return. Gordon set off thinking that perhaps he might have gone to check his snares. He knew this was unlikely. John Palmer had a knife on him at all times, and Gordon didn’t think it was unreasonable to suspect that the man was walking back to the town he’d come from, back to the place where the men who’d escaped still lived. Like those men, John Palmer had nothing left but hate and a desire to put things right with violence.

Gordon stayed in the cover of the trees all the way down to the river, following the path they’d taken the first day he’d accompanied John Palmer to check the snares. For the first time in some days there were heavy-looking clouds in the sky. Through the denuded branches above him, Gordon could see the mass of iron grey thickening and darkening as it proceeded across the sky. The same wind that forced those clouds onwards pushed through the exposed arms and fingers of the beech trees, waking whispers from their bones.

He reached the edge of the wood where it opened onto the wet grassland and the river bank. The water had receded from the flood plain and the level of the river had dropped. Willows grew beside the water, some of them straight and tall, others leaning out over the water. It was in one these far-reaching willows, its trunk close to horizontal, that Gordon found the body. Many of the willow’s leafless branches draped into the water, their sinewy tips depending from thicker boughs like hair. The tree made Gordon think of a woman washing herself by the riverside. It would have been beautiful but for the ugliness of John Palmer.

He hung from a thick bough, his face swollen, his eyes red. His head rested on two fists thrust under his chin, giving him a slight pout and the aspect of a man who’d died of boredom. In his struggles he’d managed to hook the fingers of both hands between the tightening cord and the skin of his neck. The fingers had been trapped there and then broken by the weight of his body and the pulling of the river water at his legs. The rope he’d used was lightweight nylon and thin: useful for outdoor pursuits. It had cut quite deeply into his neck, far enough to disappear but without breaking the skin. The fatness of his face had given him a pumpkin-headed appearance. His body turned first a little to the right and then a little to the left as the current of the river tugged at his calves and waterlogged walking boots. The branch he hung from bounced very slowly, dipping him, extracting him.

Two magpies landed in the willow tree, breaking Gordon’s almost-dreamy exploration of John Palmer’s suicide. They clattered and chattered at each other in great excitement, their tails flicking high, before hopping towards the place where John Palmer’s rope was secured. One of them fluttered down onto the dead man’s head. It looked at Gordon, rattled out one more cry and then pecked into John Palmer’s eye. Soon its partner joined it and their cries ceased as they feasted on the fresh carrion.

Gordon turned away.

He remembered the last time he had seen two magpies. Their message then had seemed to be to enter the tunnel. Circumstance had caused him to do exactly that. He had come close to death in that darkness. Until the man who now gave his flesh to the magpies had found him and his daughter had nursed him back to health. Surely, if it was a message those two magpies had given him, it had been a sound one. They had led him in the right direction. What was their message now?

He looked at John Palmer one last time and watched the magpies tearing at his face so hungrily and with such relish. He approached the river bank some distance away from the tree.

At the water’s edge he took out his father’s lock knife and unclasped it. It was flaky with the dried blood of a dead man. He submerged it in the river and used his fingernails to chip at the encrusted gore. The water soon rehydrated and loosened the blood. Streaks and flakes swirled in the water and were gone. The knife came out clean, the blade gleaming even under the deepening shadows cast by the clouds overhead. He shook it out, blew into its cracks to clear the water, and dried it as best he could on his trousers before folding it away and putting it back in his pocket.

He walked quickly back to the camp. By the time he was there he had an idea of what the magpies might be telling him. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made: in happening upon death, the birds had secured a little more life for themselves through the bounty of John Palmer’s flesh. Gordon knew he could respond positively to the situation too – there was an opportunity here.

In the camp he dragged all the equipment into the open and dumped everything onto a groundsheet. He took his time discarding what was not useful and what was too heavy to carry, calmly measuring the value of every item before keeping or abandoning it. By noon he had dismantled the camp. What he could not use he carried to the tunnel and placed it far enough inside that the rain would not spoil it. With luck, someone who needed the equipment would find it one day. When everything but his new pack was stowed, he brushed the camp with a branch, redistributing leaves where they’d slept or cooked so that the mark of their habitation was minimal.

He hefted John Palmer’s rucksack onto his back. For a long time he stood at Brooke’s graveside, not wanting to leave her. Not wanting to be alone again. When he knew there was no more reason to stay, he whispered some words to her and set out to the edge of the forest. He stepped into the open just as the rain began. In the distance, obscured by cloud, were the hills.

That was where he would begin.

Sheriff Skelton and Sheriff Pike arrived at the Monmouth Ward substation mid-morning, with a handful of their own men. They commandeered the profile room and pinned maps, photos and charts to the walls. When Skelton was ready, Pike summoned the local Wardsmen to join them.

Skelton made a presentation using his laptop, relying for much of his talk on enlargements of the physical “evidence” the Ward had gathered over the previous three or four years. He showed photos of their objective at many stages of his life from birth to present – all collected from Hamblaen House. He predicted, based on artists’ sketches, how the boy might look with longer, shorter or different-coloured hair – they fully expected him to hide now.

Skelton also displayed the better-known images of the Crowman from several scrapbooks of collected eschatological predictions and displayed transcripts taken from hundreds of identified prophets from the past ten years. Skelton exhibited excerpts of poetry and prose on screen, reading it out in his disdainful feminine tones, now flat with restrained rage. He showed artistic impressions, drawings and paintings by people of all ages from toddler to centenarian. Again and again, Skelton reiterated one point: the boy must not find the Crowman. They must never be united. The prophecies varied in many ways, enough to make a single cohesive story almost impossible to pick out, but one thing was agreed upon by every author. When the boy came into contact with the Crowman, the end of civilisation – already in motion – would begin in earnest. Eighty per cent of the world’s population would be erased in a matter of months. Infrastructure would be destroyed, power would cease to flow, water would run dry in every tap, gas lines would be severed, roads would be impassable, crops would fail, rivers would find new courses, the earth would split, the rain would fall and fall, disease would rise in every city, the air would be poisoned and humanity would cry out as one for mercy.

The boy had to be found. The Crowman had to be stopped.

This, Skelton reminded his London crew (and the rural Wardsmen he trusted as far as he could see from his blind left socket) was the purpose of the Ward first and foremost. Yes, they served the global economy. Yes, they served the New World Order. Yes, they believed in harnessing the Earth for the gain of men, and the conquering of men for the gain of the Ward. But if they couldn’t find Gordon Black and bring him in, if they couldn’t root out the Crowman and end him before he ended the world, then there would be no point in serving and nothing left
to
serve. The Crowman was here, in England, and that made England the final arena. There would be some assistance from the Ward in other nations who could spare it, but this was now an English fight. It was up to every Wardsman in the country to put this mission before anything else, to lay down their lives if that was what it took. Otherwise, all possibility of power would be rested from their grasp forever because the world and all its bounties would be no more.

They were opposing the suicide of the planet. They needed to master the world, chain it, mine it, own it and its peoples. Only then would their task be fulfilled. Only then, Archibald Skelton told the assemblage of men in the profile room, would he take a day off.

After showing Ordnance Survey maps and aerial photographs of the area around the Blacks’ smallholding and telling his men not only where but how he wanted them to search the terrain, he dismissed them all but for Pike.

“We need to take a trip downstairs,” he said to the skull-faced automaton that was Mordaunt Pike, the most reliable and relentless Wardsman he’d ever worked with.

Hard on the outside, thought Skelton. Soft on the inside. And mine. All mine.

The cell system below the Monmouth substation was extensive but by no means the largest Skelton had seen. Many in London were four or even five times the size. There were mass holding cells for those just passing through and single cells for longer-term collectees. There were enough well-equipped interview rooms that twenty individuals could be processed simultaneously. An incinerator ran day and night to accommodate waste.

Skelton still hoped keeping the Blacks under lock and key might be enough of a lure to bring the lost little boy in. Gordon was no street kid and he was used to the love and attention of his kin. A boy alone in the countryside or in the town with the nights drawing in: how long would his nerve hold? How long before he ran back to Mummy? Long before he reached the four cells where the Blacks were held, Skelton had formed a plan. He would keep them all alive for a little while longer.

Pike walked a little behind him, almost like a dog at heel, disciplined, dangerous and loyal. Skelton grinned to himself but the movement in his facial muscles caused him to wince in pain. He couldn’t think of his robbed left eye without hate squirting into his veins from some deep poison gland he hadn’t known he possessed. God, but he would make the boy suffer when he got hold of him.

Skelton and Pike stood on the gravel outside the Black residence and waited for the final search to be completed. This time the ten Wardsmen inside the house were leaving nothing untouched. They arrived with hammers and crowbars. Doors were torn off their hinges. Walls were stripped of their paper in search of hidden stores. The attic was scoured and so was the basement. Floorboards were lifted. Carpets ripped up. Everything of value was removed.

Skelton listened with satisfaction at the sound of breaking wood and glass. All the while he worried the edges of his bandage, trying to get at the itch beneath it. As the day passed, his finger had wormed under the tape, and his nail could now agitate the crusty black stitches at the outer edge of his left eye. The itch never quite went away, and his fingernail explored deeper all the time.

Pike watched without expression, but twice during the day when food was offered, he turned it down and Skelton gleefully devoured the taller man’s portion, not noticing the grey pallor of Pike’s sunken cheeks. Nor did Skelton notice the watery gruel of pus on his cheek until a drop pattered to his lapel, causing him to fumble for his hanky and mop his face and coat. Even this didn’t prevent his finger from seeking to explore the maddening pruritis where his eye had been.

“Shame about Angela Black,” Skelton mused. “We could have used her.”

Pike shrugged.

“She wouldn’t have lasted long on the road anyway,” he said.

“I suppose not. Frustrating, though, Pike, because she’d have made a difference. Didn’t take much to turn her. She must have hated her brother, eh?”

Pike said nothing.

“And then she dies. Without her, luring him in will be that much harder.”

“We can use the other one,” said Pike in monotone.

“I don’t know. Judith Black will take some persuading, I think.”

“So let’s persuade her.”

Pike’s eyes caught Skelton’s and momentarily flickered with dead light. Skelton’s heart raced to see it. He was about to ask Pike about his proposed methods when Knowles, one of the Monmouth Wardsmen, trotted up to them.

“There’s no sign of the boy. Doesn’t look like he’s been back. We found some more hoarded items behind a panel in the attic – food, water and ammunition for the shotgun. There was cash under the floorboards in the study. Other than that, nothing.”

“Remove everything of value,” said Skelton. “Then take all their animals into the house.”

The Wardsmen worked with less enthusiasm to bring the hens, geese, goats and pig indoors, even though the animals were tame and didn’t particularly resist. None of the men were able to avoid muddying or fouling their otherwise pristine grey raincoats. Skelton grinned at their muttered oaths. Even Pike’s teeth peeped, a brief flash of tainted ivory, from behind his flat lips for a moment. When Skelton moved off towards the rear of the property, Pike followed, his limp unimproved. As they made their way between the apple trees towards the green door in the garden wall, Knowles caught up to them.

“What now, Sheriff Skelton?”

“Burn it. But don’t hang around watching the fire like a bunch of kids. I want you to recommence the search immediately. Exactly as I’ve outlined. Understood?”

Knowles frowned.

“Shouldn’t the animals be redistributed?” he asked.

Skelton leaned close, causing Knowles to recoil.

“The sooner the people starve, the sooner they’ll do as they’re told.”

“Yes, Sheriff.”

“Pike and I will retrace the boy’s last footsteps before he disappeared. I want to see if he’s left anything behind.”

“The bridleway?” asked Knowles.

“Correct.”

“But we’ve already checked that very thoroughly, Sheriff.”

“I want to see it for myself.”

Knowles appeared to be about to add something before deciding against it. What he actually said was:

“If you need any assistance out there, Sheriff, I’ll send whoever’s nearest.”

“We’ll be just fine, thank you, Knowles.” Skelton watched Knowles nod, about-face and hurry back to Hamblaen House. “I don’t like that man.”

Pike shrugged and forced open the green door. This time the hinges of the garden entrance gave up and the door fell out of its rotting frame. Pike let it drop to the ground and Skelton stepped through. Rags of black smoke began to rise from the house and, for a moment, he watched as the flames lanced up below twisting smoke-devils. Skelton turned away and waddled towards the bridleway as the first squeals and bleats of panic escaped the house. After a few paces, he glanced back to check on Pike. The grim cast of his partner’s face was like a sculpture.