BLACKDOWN (a thriller and murder mystery) (3 page)

Blackdown struck him again and the man went down like a sack of potatoes, knocked out cold. The pistol skittered across the stone flags of the cellar. Blackdown picked it up, checked to see if it was loaded, and pocketed it.

‘Yes, I am a thieftaker, you murdering bastard,’ said Blackdown.

He set to work at once, emptying the opened crate of muskets and concealing them behind the beer barrels. He ripped two long pieces from Creevy’s shirt and bound his hands behind his back with one strip, gagging him with the other. Finally, he lifted Creevy’s still form, complaining under his breath at his weight, and laid him in the crate, covering him with straw and hammering the lid back on.

Blackdown waited patiently, sitting on the crate until he heard a knock at the trapdoor. He ascended the steps and unlocked it. The two men followed him back down into the cellar.

‘Take those three crates,’ he demanded casually, ‘and put them carefully on the cart.’

‘Where is Mr Creevy?’ one of them asked.

‘He has gone on ahead to collect his money from my boat moored in the harbour,’ he said. ‘He says you are to accompany me to ensure all is fair and proper and then we will part ways. Come, be about your business and do not dawdle. I have to catch the tide.’

The men glanced at each other, then obediently hauled the three crates up the steps.

‘And careful with this one,’ he said, patting the lid of the one containing Alex Creevy, ‘for I don’t want any damage done to its contents. Mr Creevy will not be pleased if you manhandle it roughly and break my goods.’

The cart duly loaded, Blackdown took the reins and set off along the narrow Whitby quay and made for the moored boats. He pulled up beside a dour looking fishing vessel, its black hull smelling of fresh tar.

‘Carry the crates on board,’ he ordered.

‘And where is Mr Creevy?’ one of the men asked.

Blackdown pointed to a figure up on deck, his face half hidden by a broad-rimmed hat. The man waved them quickly on and the two men hurriedly carried the crates up the gangplank and placed them on the deck of the boat. The man they thought was Creevy had his back to them, but Creevy’s men smelled a rat as soon as they realised that up close he was not dressed exactly the same as Creevy had been.

They each drew a pistol, but before they could even cock their hammers a shot rang out and one of the men was struck by a bullet, collapsing to the deck.

‘Drop the weapon,’ Blackdown said evenly to the remaining man, wisps of smoke curling from his pistol into the air to be stolen by the breeze.

But the man, his alarmed face contorted with the desire to escape, instinctively raised his pistol and took aim at Blackdown.

A volley of shots fractured the air and the man went down in a hail of lead. He lay sprawled on the deck of the boat near his dead companion, a pool of blood spreading out from under his twitching body. He was not yet dead, for he groaned pitifully.

Three marines in the disguise of fishermen lowered their guns.

‘Well done, Blackdown!’ said the man who purported to be Creevy. He strolled casually up to the two stricken men. ‘Let us have a look at the fellow, eh?’

Thomas Blackdown took the lid off the crate. Creevy had come round, his eyes ablaze. He was struggling with his bonds. He stared daggers at the men looking down at him.

The man shook his head and smiled. ‘Alex Creevy, I have a warrant for your arrest.’ He bent to one knee beside the crate. ‘You murdered a fellow excise man and a friend, Creevy, and for that alone you will pay dearly. It is good to see you already have your coffin.’ He rose to his full height and regarded Blackdown. ‘You have done well to get him out. It is a brave man that goes into the lions’ den to capture the master of the pride.’

Blackdown didn’t acknowledge the praise. ‘All I ask is my reward, paid in full and promptly.’

‘It will be done,’ replied the excise man. He squinted as Blackdown walked away, throwing Creevy’s empty gun into the crate beside him. ‘This line of work, the work of a thieftaker, is not usual for a man of your standing,’ he observed.

‘What business is that of yours?’ he replied without looking back. He started to descend the gangplank. ‘Just get me my money.’

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Mr Blackdown, ‘you are highly skilled at it…’

‘My money…’ he said shortly.

Thomas Blackdown sat at the inn table, peering into an empty tankard and wondering whether he should refill it again. How many had he had? Five? Six? More?

He found he could not get drunk as easily these days. He tried, but he could not wash away the man he was. He sometimes forgot which town or city he was lodging in – where was it today? Bristol. Yes, Bristol. But though he could quite easily blot out all recollection of where he stayed he could not blot out those memories. Memories that had been etched into his mind like acid eats into glass and clouds it. Recollections of war, or bloody battles fought. And recollections of his mother and father – different battles, a different bloody war, but debilitating and painful all the same. Wounds every bit as deep and as fiery as any he’d received serving His Majesty abroad.

But now he was reduced to hunting down and bringing to justice scum like Alex Creevy. Why was that? Necessity? Or perhaps serving a self-inflicted penance for his past sins? But he did get a modicum of satisfaction seeing men like Creevy hang. He’d been there when the scoundrel took the drop. There were men on hand who’d hung from Creevy’s legs as he dangled from the rope, to make him die faster, and those in the crowd who booed at them. He didn’t deserve a fast death, they said. And of course their entertainment would be shorter.

Blackdown lifted the tankard, drained the last few bitter drops and licked his lips.

A slow death. Thomas Blackdown knew all about slow deaths.

He heard someone mention his name at the bar. Asking for him.

‘Who wants Thomas Blackdown?’ he said.

The young man stepped smartly up to him and held out a letter. ‘This is for you, sir. It has found you at last.’

He took the letter, paid the man and looked at the outside of it. It seems it had been passed from place to place trying to find him. When he opened it he saw that it was from his brother Jonathan, and dated over two years ago.

He was taken aback. He had had no correspondence with his family in over twenty years. He read the neat script. His brother said he and his father were in deep trouble, but did not say what kind, but the tenor of the letter was undoubtedly urgent. He begged him come to Somerset at once and help them.

Blackdown was both confused and troubled. After all this time? After all that had gone off between him and his father? A plea from his younger brother to return to Blackdown Manor?

He read the letter a number of times. Was on the verge of destroying it more than once and dismissing his brother’s request. It would not be good to open up old wounds.

Open them up? They were still weeping pus, he thought bitterly.

Can you seriously ignore Jonathan’s cry for help?

He sighed heavily, decided he must go at once to Blackdown Manor, and asked for his tankard to be filled right to the top.

The boy had always been afraid of the high moor. It was a place of dark legends, the subject of many a tale told in gloomy whispers around late-night shepherds’ campfires. Tales designed to chill the bones of a young, impressionable boy of ten. The men would laugh heartily at his frightened, wide-eyed expression and taunt him that he looked like a startled deer, his face lit up for all to see by the flames, and he’d feel embarrassed and turn away from their jibes. But even though he knew they were baiting him he sensed the men, too, were fearful and respectful of the high moor.

They had heard the same tales, told to them as young boys around similar campfires, and a little of the boyish fears that had taken root in their eager minds before the crackling logs and glowing embers of their own youth remained forever entwined about their souls. Some of the men, he noticed, were afraid to recount such tales, because to do so, they said, would prise bad luck and evil spirits from their dank, shadowy crevasses. Best to let them lie undisturbed, forgotten.

The boy felt exposed on the high hill, the towering grey clouds rising into the sky like smoke from a faraway, hellish blaze. Though he was only ten years old he had learnt to sense the air, to distinguish it’s many shifting features, and he knew that rain was imminent. He paused, the warm wind ruffling the low grass and heather at his bare feet. Why did he feel so small, like an insect under God’s great thumb? The sky looked so lead-like and heavy, like the roof of some great building that might come toppling down at any moment and crush the life out of him. He wanted to find the sheep quickly and be done with it so he could return to his father. Sheep were always getting themselves lost or into trouble and he was always the one sent to find them.

He stood on the hill’s highest point and scanned the land about him. The Blackdown Hills from this vantage point always seemed to him to be like one of his father’s coarse woollen blankets laid out on the floor; a harsh, sometimes unforgiving land large with ripples and folds. The hills rolled back into the hazy, almost foggy distance, the many valleys cutting deep and shadowy, the whole criss-crossed with ancient trees and hedgerows, a land that had been worked for thousands of years, by so many generations it made his head spin to think about such things. And none was so ancient a place as Devilbowl Wood.

He faced it now. In the fading light the wood lay like a tar-black smear on the land. It stretched away to his left and his right, a silent, sleeping creature, the sound of the gusts of wind ruffling its dark leaves appearing to give the wood life, to make it breathe and sigh. He did not like this place. He had heard so many tales about Devilbowl Wood. Whilst so much of the land had been cleared of trees during the many eons of human occupation, Devilbowl Wood remained largely untouched. It was the last refuge of the spirits that used to inhabit this land before Christianity banished most of them to the recesses of Man’s distant memories. But dwelling here, they said, within the black heart of Devilbowl wood, where the sunlight even on the brightest summer day failed to penetrate, were the remnants of that ancient and fast-fading past, the last refuge of forgotten creatures and gods, vile spirits and unimaginable beasts from Hell.

The wood drew its name from the unusual shape of its topography, and from its grisly history. They said it was the Romans who first cleared the hill of forest and dug deep into the earth to reach the metal ore they needed. They created a huge kidney-shaped hollow half a mile long as they raped the earth. Thus emptied and despoiled, left to its own devices it once again grew thick with trees, but the hollow remained. Then a war was fought over the hill when two kings and two armies battled for a kingdom long forgotten. They fought all day, from the time of morning mists till the full moon rose slowly into the sky and night fell over the battleground.

The army that had held the high ground eventually broke and ran for the cover of the wood at their backs. In their panic they were channelled down into the deep wooded hollow, a thousand men finding themselves encircled, trapped and unable to clamber up the steep banks to escape. The victors lined the hollow’s summit and shot down arrows and spears and killed them, or slew them as they tried to climb out of the depression. By the light of the moon the slaughter continued all night.

And when the helpless men were all dead the bodies were brought together by a large pool (some say bottomless) at the hollow’s centre, a pool where a beastly, ravenous earth god lived. Here their captors stropped their blades till they were sharp again, and one by one all of the bodies were butchered and tossed into the pool to feed the hungry god. They say that the sound of bones being crunched by the hellish demon-beast was frightful to behold, so loud it was like the felling of enormous trees.

Soon the pool was choked with corpses and thickening blood. The grateful trees sucked the gory wine into their roots and grew strong and black with it. The bones of the dead men are still there, people say, at the bottom of the pool, and their lost spirits wander the wood forever trying to find their way out. People claimed to have heard them still, wailing in their perpetual torment.

Three days of feasting were declared by the victors, the battle to be celebrated and commemorated each year at the same time by the light of the same full moon. But it was said that the demon-beast, once raised from its hellish prison, did not wish to return, and so remained forever haunting Devilbowl Wood, making frequent excursions into the Blackdown Hills and its environs. So every year, when the time came to commemorate the battle, an effigy of the demon-beast was built of wood and straw and burnt as a means of keeping it at bay. The tradition had continued unbroken since that time, the burning of the demon-beast bringing about an end to the annual feasting and celebrations.

It was a tradition the boy knew well. That’s why the boy was afraid of the wood, today more than any other, because that special time of year was on them again, and nobody ventured near Devilbowl Wood until after the ceremonial burning of the demon-beast. It wasn’t safe.

But he had to head towards it in his search for the two sheep that had gone missing, and he was praying that they had not wandered beyond the field, through the hedgerow and into the wood. That was one place he dared not venture into, and no thought of a hard beating from his father for failing to do so would make him enter Devilbowl Wood, especially as dusk fast approached and the encroaching rain clouds painted it darker still.

He made out the body of the first sheep, its fleece almost aglow in the gloom, laid up tight against the hedgerow that bordered the wood, and his fear was submerged by the thought that the sheep could not afford to be lost, and he ran over to where it lay.

He pulled up short, his nose wrinkling. He had seen many a dead sheep. Animals that had died of illness, emaciated by hunger or cold, killed by stray dogs, but he had never seen anything to compare with this.

It had been ripped into shreds, its entrails spread out in a long thin line, leaving a bloody trail as if the sheep had been killed and dragged some distance. Its fleece was matted with its blackening, clotted blood, and lay in strips, as if a raft of sharp blades had sliced across it. Its head was missing, and two of its legs had been severed above the knees and were absent also.

What on earth could have done this, he thought?

He bent down and peered through the gap in the hedge by the sheep. Wisps of wool had been snagged on the hawthorn and he knew the second sheep had been pulled through the tunnel-like hole in the hedge. The wood sat dark and forbidding beyond. Against this dreary backdrop he made out the body of the second sheep, or part of it, for there wasn’t enough there to make a full sheep. Should he go through?

The silence accused him of cowardice. The air around him grew warm. The smell of rain, of dry earth and grass swept into his nostrils, his senses honed sharp, his heart beginning to beat furiously as his fears began to muster.

‘A bad thing.’

The deep voice behind made him start and he fell back from the hedge and onto his bottom. He looked up to see a dark, shadowy figure of a man looking imperiously down at him, his face hidden by the shade of a large-brimmed hat. His long greatcoat made him look like he wore a shroud.

‘You made me jump!’ said the boy. ‘I didn’t hear you come up behind me.’

The man didn’t reply at first. He shifted his severe, silent stare to the dead animal. ‘What has caused this?’ he asked.

The boy got to his feet and brushed himself down. ‘A dog,’ he said hesitantly.

‘Then it’s a big dog,’ he said. ‘A very big and hungry dog to take two.’

‘Who are you?’ the boy asked.

The man didn’t answer. He took off the pack that he had slung over his shoulders and let it fall to the ground. The boy had seen similar packs, laden with blankets, canteens and water bottles, worn by the militia that had been based nearby, men gathered together to fend off Old Boney when he invaded. Napoleon had been another bogeyman he’d grown up with, and he’d heard tales of the little Corsican roasting and then eating children alive, and his armies slaying thousands of innocents and spearing babies on their bayonets as they carved their bloody path through Europe. He was never gladder than to hear that Napoleon had been defeated at the glorious battle of Waterloo two years ago. He thought he was finally safe from being eaten, but now, as he gazed upon the tattered corpse of the dead sheep, he wasn’t so sure.

The man peered through the hole in the hedge and without a sound launched himself through it. The boy wanted to shout out a warning, but held his tongue in check lest the man think he was afraid. He watched as the man went over to the second animal and bent down to it. He prodded it with his finger, looked up and stared deep into the wood and then returned, pushing his way through the hedge.

‘There’s even less of that one,’ he said.

He had a handsome face, the boy thought, if a little tired and worn. It was a face that had seen much of the world, of that he was sure. A mysterious and fabulous world outside his village he could only guess at. The man had black hair, strands falling onto his forehead like lines of ink on tanned paper, the remainder clawed back and tied into a pigtail. His jaw was dark with stubble, his lips thin and almost bloodless, his narrowed, thoughtful brown eyes deep and emotionless. The boy could make out the red of a soldier’s uniform beneath the open buttons of the man’s greatcoat. He’d seen many soldiers coming home from the wars, now that they were finally at an end.

‘What do you think killed them?’ the boy asked. ‘It has to be a dog, doesn’t it?’

The man picked up his knapsack and slung it over one shoulder. It was obviously very heavy and he slumped under its weight. ‘What else could it be?’ he returned, a shadow of a smile breaking out on his lips. ‘It’s going to rain,’ he said. ‘I’d find shelter if I were you.’

‘My father will be none too pleased at the two dead sheep,’ he said.

‘The fault does not lie with you. Sheep go where they will, and will follow each other even into the jaws of death.’ He appeared to gaze onto another scene entirely for a moment. Then his head turned towards the wood. ‘Devilbowl Wood. It will afford me some shelter for the night,’ he said.

‘You can’t go in there,’ the boy said suddenly. ‘Lord Tresham doesn’t allow it.’

‘Lord Tresham? Does this land not belong to Lord Blackdown?’

The boy shrugged. ‘Not anymore. I’m told it is Lord Tresham’s property now.’

Thomas Blackdown frowned. ‘Still, I’ll go where I please,’ he said evenly. ‘And no man – or boy – tells me otherwise.’ He threw his knapsack over the hedge and crawled through the hole after it.

‘It’s not a good place to camp,’ said the boy.

‘It’s as good a place as any,’ he returned.

‘People don’t go into Devilbowl Wood. There are all sorts of tales…’ he began, but again thought better of it. ‘There’s an inn in the village.’

‘I don’t like inns,’ he said shortly. ‘And you would be wise to learn that tall tales cannot hurt you.’

‘Where there’s smoke…’ he said.

‘Where there’s smoke there’s poor visibility,’ Blackdown said.

The boy watched him through the hole in the hedge as the man bent down to the second dead sheep again, took out a knife and began to slice off meat. He was aware of the boy watching and turned to face him, holding a bloody length of flesh up. ‘You won’t miss one tiny piece of it.’

‘It’s been dead a while. It will be rotting after baking in the sun.’

‘I’ve eaten far worse.’

‘Lord Tresham’s gamekeeper, Mr Budge, will shoot you,’ he called.

‘Lord Tresham’s gamekeeper can try,’ he returned. ‘Anyhow, I thought you said no one came into the wood.’

‘The gamekeeper’s made of sterner stuff than most.’

‘And I am made of sterner stuff than any gamekeeper. Keep your mouth shut about seeing me and no one will be any the wiser that I harmlessly lodge in someone else’s grim looking wood for a night or two.’ He waved the bloodied knife at the boy. ‘You hear me?’

He nodded quickly.

With that the man rose to his feet and made his way deeper into the wood. Very soon he was lost from sight. All the boy could hear was the crunching and snapping of brushwood, till even that fell silent. A few fat drops of rain hit his face and he turned about and ran away to find his father and tell him about the killing of the sheep. He thought it best not to mention the stranger.