In Pursuit Of The Proper Sinner (5 page)

“Was she … Did she seem pleased? I only ask because she'd seemed to have … Well, she'd seemed to have some sort of plans, and I'm not quite sure …”

Carefully, Julian speared a mushroom. “Plans?”

“I'd thought … Yes, it seemed so.”

He looked at Nan. Nan looked at him. He was the one to blink. He said steadily, “Nicola had no plans that I know of, Nan.”

The kitchen door swung open a few inches. The face of one of the Grindleford women appeared in the aperture. She said, “Mrs. Maiden, Mr. Britton,” in a hushed voice. And she used her head to indicate the direction of the kitchen. You're wanted, the motion implied.

Andy was leaning against one of the work tops, facing it, his weight on his hands and his head bowed. When his wife said his name, he looked up.

His face was drawn with exhaustion, and his growth of peppery whiskers fanned out from his moustache and shadowed his cheeks. His grey hair was uncombed, looking windblown although there wasn't any wind to speak of this morning. His eyes went to Nan, then slid away. Julian prepared himself to hear the worst.

“Her car's on the edge of Calder Moor,” Andy told them.

His wife drew her hands into a fist at her breast. “Thank God,” she said.

Still, Andy didn't look at her. His expression indicated that thanks were premature. He knew what Julian knew and what Nan herself might well have acknowledged had she paused to probe for the possibilities that were indicated by the location of Nicolas Saab. Calder Moor was vast. It began just west of the road stretching between Blackwell and Brough, and it comprised endless expanses of heather and gorse, four caverns, numerous cairns and forts and barrows spanning time from Paleolithic through the Iron Age, gritstone outcroppings and limestone caves and fissures through which more than one foolish tripper had crawled for adventure and become hopelessly stuck. Julian knew that Andy was thinking of this as he stood in the kitchen at the end of his long night's search for Nicola. But Andy was thinking something else as well. Andy was knowing something else, in fact. That much was evident from the manner in which he straightened and began slapping the knuckles of one hand against the heel of the other.

Julian said, “Andy. For God's sake, tell us.”

Andy's gaze fixed on his wife. “The car's not on the verge, like you'd think it should be.”

“Then where … ?”

“It's out of sight behind a wall, on the road out of Sparrowpit.”

“But that's good, isn't it?” Nan said eagerly. “If she went camping, she wouldn't want to leave the Saab on the road. Not where it could be seen by someone who might break into it.”

“True,” he said. “But the car's not alone.” And with a glance towards Julian as if he wished to apologise for something, “There's a motorcycle with it.”

“Someone out for a hike,” Julian said.

“At this hour?” Andy shook his head. “It was wet from the night. As wet as her car. It's been there just as long.”

Nan said, “Then she didn't go onto the moor alone? She met someone there?”

“Or she was followed,” Julian added quietly.

“I'm calling the police,” Andy said. “They'll want to bring in Mountain Rescue now.”

When a patient died, it was Phoebe Neill's habit to turn to the land for comfort. She generally did this alone. She'd lived alone for most of her life, and she wasn't afraid of solitude. And in the combination of solitude and a return to the land, she received consolation. When she was out in nature, nothing man-made stood between her and the Great Creator. Thus on the land, she was able to align herself with the end of a life and the will of God, knowing that the body we inhabit is but a shell that binds us for a period of temporal experience prior to our entering the world of the spirit for the next phase of our development.

This Thursday morning things were different. Yes, a patient had died on the previous evening. Yes, Phoebe Neill turned to the land for solace. But on this occasion, she hadn't come alone. She'd brought with her a mixed breed dog of uncertain lineage, the now-orphaned pet of the young man whose life had just ended.

She'd been the one to talk Stephen Fairbrook into getting a dog as a companion during the last year of his illness. So when it had become clear that the end of Stephen's life was fast approaching, she knew that she'd make his passing easier if she reassured him about the dog's fate. “Stevie, when the time comes, I'm happy to take Benbow,” she'd told him one morning as she bathed his skeletal body and massaged lotion into his shrunken limbs. “You're not to worry about him. All right?”

You can die now was what went unspoken. Not because words like die or death were unmentionable round Stephen Fairbrook, but because once he'd been told his disease, been through countless treatments and drugs in an effort to stay alive long enough for a cure to be found, watched his weight decline and his hair fall out and his skin bloom with bruises that turned into sores, die and death were old companions to him. He didn't need a formal introduction to guests who were already dwelling within his house.

On the last afternoon of his master's life, Benbow had known that Stephen was passing. And hour after hour, the animal lay quietly next to him, moving only if Stephen moved, his muzzle resting in Stephen's hand until Stephen had left them. Benbow, in fact, had known before Phoebe that Stephen was gone. He'd risen, whimpered, howled once, and was silent. He'd then sought out the comfort of his basket, where he'd stayed until Phoebe had collected him.

Now he raised himself on his hind legs, his plumed tail wagging hopefully as Phoebe parked her car on a lay-by near a drystone wall and reached for his lead. He barked once. Phoebe smiled. “Yes. A walk shall make us right as rain, old chap.”

She clambered out. Benbow followed, leaping agilely from the Vauxhall and sniffing eagerly, nose pressed to the sandy ground like a canine Hoover. He led Phoebe directly to the drystone wall and snuffled along it until he came to the stile that would allow him access to the moor beyond. This he leapt over easily, and once on the other side he paused to shake himself off. His ears pricked up and he cocked his head. He gave a sharp bark to tell Phoebe that a solo run, not a walk on a lead, was what he had in mind.

“Can't do it, old boy,” Phoebe told him. “Not till we see what's what and who's who on the moor, all right?” She was cautious and overprotective that way, which made for excellent skills when it came to nursing the housebound dying through their final days, particularly those whose conditions required hypervigilance on the part of their caregiver. But when it came to children or to dog ownership, Phoebe knew intuitively that the natural hovering born of a cautious nature would have produced a fearful animal or a rebellious child. So she'd had no child—although she'd had her opportunities—and she'd had no dog till now. “I hope to do right by you, Benbow,” she told the mongrel. He lifted his head to look at her, past the scraggly kelp-coloured mop of fur that flopped into his eyes. He swung back round towards the open moor, mile after mile of heather creating a purple shawl that covered the shoulders of the land.

Had the moor consisted of heather alone, Phoebe would not have given a second thought to letting Benbow have his romp unrestrained. But the seemingly endless flow of the heather was deceptive to the uninitiated. Ancient limestone quarries produced unexpected lacunae in the landscape, into which the dog could tumble, and the caverns, lead mines, and caves into which he could scamper—and where she could not follow—served as a siren enticement for any animal, an enticement with which Phoebe Neill didn't care to compete. But she was willing to let Benbow snuffle freely through one of the many birch copses that grew in irregular clumps on the moor, rising like feathers against the sky, and she grasped his lead firmly and began heading northwest, where the largest of the copses grew.

Although it was a fine morning, there were no other walkers about yet. The sun was low in the eastern sky, and Phoebe's shadow stretched far to her left as if it wished to pursue a cobalt horizon that was heaped with clouds so white, they might have been giant sleeping swans. There was little wind, just enough of a breeze to slap Phoebe's windcheater against her sides and flip Benbow's tangled fur from his eyes. There was no scent on this breeze that Phoebe could discern. And the only noise came from an unkindness of ravens somewhere on the moor and a flock of sheep bleating in the distance.

Benbow snuffled along, investigating nasally every inch of the path as well as the mounds of heather that edged it. He was a cooperative walker, as Phoebe had discovered from the thrice-daily strolls she and he had taken once Stephen had been completely confined to bed. And because she didn't have to tug him along or pull him back or encourage the little dog in any way, their jaunt on the moor gave her time to pray.

She didn't pray for Stephen Fairbrook. She knew that Stephen was now at peace, quite beyond the necessity of an intervention—Divine or otherwise—in the process of the inevitable. What she prayed for was greater understanding. She wanted to know why a scourge had come to dwell among them, felling the best, the brightest, and frequently those with the most to offer. She wanted to know what conclusion she was meant to draw from the deaths of young men who were guilty of nothing, of the deaths of children whose crime was to be born of infected mothers, and of the deaths of those unfortunate mothers as well.

Phoebe had at first believed that there had to be a message in the symphony of death that she'd been taking part in for the past years. But she was beginning to find that this kind of death had too many tentacles, and those tentacles sought to curl tenaciously round victims too diverse to form a pattern. From years of experience, she knew that death was perfectly impartial, claiming great and small, important and utterly insignificant, rich and poor, strong and weak. No matter one's power, prestige, or potential, one did not bargain when the reaper came. But this death, this particular ending during which the medical fire brigade put out one inferno only to be confronted by another … This was the worst.

So she walked and she prayed. And when Benbow wanted to pick up the pace, she was willing to do so. In this manner, they strode into the heart of the moor, ambling along one path, forking off onto another. Phoebe wasn't worried about becoming lost. She knew that they'd begun their walk southeast of a limestone outcrop that was called Agrícolas Throne. It comprised the remains of a great Roman fort, a windswept outlook shaped not unlike an enormous chair that marked the edge of the moor. Anyone sighting off the throne during a hike was unlikely to get lost.

They'd been trekking for an hour when Benbow's ears pricked up and his stance altered. From shuffling along happily, he came to a sudden halt. His body elongated, back legs stretching out. His feathery tail stiffened into an immobile quill. A low whine issued from his throat.

Phoebe studied what lay before them: the copse of birches she'd intended to allow Benbow to gambol in. “Gracious me,” she murmured. “Aren't you the clever one, Bennie?” She was deeply surprised and just as touched by the mongrel's ability to read her intentions. She'd silently promised him freedom when they reached the copse. And here the copse was. He knew her mind and was eager to be off the lead. “Can't blame you a bit,” Phoebe said as she knelt to unhook the lead from his collar. She wound the rope of braided leather round her hand and rose with a grunt as the dog shot ahead of her into the trees.

Phoebe walked after him, smiling at the sight of his compact body bouncing along the path. He used his feet like springs as he ran, bounding off the ground with all four legs at once as if it was his intention to fly. He skirted a large column of roughly hewn limestone on the edge of the copse and vanished among the birches.

This was the entrance to Nine Sisters Henge, a Neolithic earth-banked enclosure that encircled nine standing stones of varying heights. Assembled some thirty-five hundred years before the time of Christ, the henge and the stones marked a spot for rituals engaged in by prehistoric man. At the time of its use, the henge had been standing in open land that had been cleared of its natural oak and alder forest. Now, however, it was hidden from view, buried within a thick growth of birches, a modern encroachment on the resulting moorland.

Phoebe paused and surveyed her surroundings. The eastern sky—without the clouds of the west—allowed the sun to pierce unimpeded through the trees. Their bark was the white of a seagull's wing, but patterned with diamond-shaped cracks the colour of coffee. Leaves formed a shimmering green screen in the morning breeze, which served to shield the ancient stone circle within the copse from an inexperienced hiker who didn't know it was there. Standing before the birches, the sentry stone was hit by the light at an oblique angle. This deepened its natural pocking, and from a distance the shadows combined to effect a face, an austere custodian of secrets too ancient to be imagined.

As Phoebe observed the stone, an unaccountable chill passed through her. Despite the breeze, it was silent here. No noise from the dog, no bleating of a sheep lost among the stones, no call of hikers as they crossed the moor. It was altogether too silent, Phoebe thought. And she found herself glancing round uneasily, overcome by the feeling that she was being watched.

Phoebe thought herself a practical woman to the very core, one not given to casual fancies or an imagination run riot. Nonetheless, she felt the sudden need to be away from this place, and she called for the dog. There was no response.

“Benbow!” she called a second time. “Here, boy. Come.”

Nothing. The silence intensified. The breeze stilled. And Phoebe felt the hair stirring on the back of her neck.

She didn't wish to approach the copse, but she didn't know why. She'd walked among Nine Sisters before. She'd even had a quiet picnic lunch there one fine spring day. But there was something about the place this morning …

A sharp bark from Benbow and suddenly what seemed like hundreds of ravens took to the air in an ebony swarm. For a moment they entirely blocked out the sun. The shadow they cast seemed like a monstrous fist sweeping over Phoebe. She shuddered at the distinct sensation of having been marked somehow, like Cain before being sent to the east.