Carnal Acts (38 page)

Evie Favon heard the dogs barking. She went to one of the windows at the front of the Hall and watched the Dobermans run across the grass towards the hedge at the bottom of the slope that led to the moor. It was early in the morning and neither of her parents was up. She went into the hallway and took the binoculars from her father’s shooting jacket. Back at the window, she saw Dan Reston – the man who was supposedly on leave in the south with his wife – drive the red pickup over the uncut grass. When the dogs reached the hedge, they leapt straight in and disappeared for a time. Then they reappeared in open ground, heading for a clump of silver birches. They flew backwards before the sound of the shots reached her. She moved the binoculars and saw a figure in camouflaged hat and clothing move up the hillside. The man – she presumed the figure was male – was carrying a rifle and had a pack on his back.

Dan Reston had driven up to the hedge, got out and pushed himself through. She heard his wails as he approached the dogs’ motionless bodies. He ran towards the armed man and then stopped when the rifle was pointed at him. She focused on
the camouflaged man’s face and saw with a quiver of surprise that it was grotesque. Then she realised that different coloured stripes had been painted on it. She couldn’t make out the features, but she saw the lips move. Dan Reston walked backwards to the Dobermans. He dropped to his knees and cradled their shattered heads. When she looked again, the shooter had disappeared into the pine forest that covered the hillside to the east.

‘Did I hear shots?’ Victoria asked, from behind her.

‘I don’t know, did you?’

‘Grow up, Evie. You know what I mean.’ Her mother was in a white kimono with black zigzags across it.

‘I heard two.’ She handed Victoria the binoculars.

‘Oh God, Dan’s dogs. Did you see who did it?’

‘Yes.’ Evie clammed up.

Victoria grabbed her arm. ‘Tell me!’

‘Calm down. Yes, I saw him. No, I don’t know who he was.’

Her mother lit a cigarette. She was even paler than she usually was in the mornings. ‘Dan will be impossible now. Those dogs meant everything to him. Especially since…’

‘What?’ Evie demanded, when no more words were forthcoming.

‘Since his operation. Prostate cancer. He was lucky to survive, apparently.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘You had physical problems of your own in the winter, darling. We didn’t want to bother you.’

Evie took the binoculars back. The factor was now lying on the ground between the Dobermans, his face and clothes covered in blood.

‘Yuck.’

‘Let me see. Oh, hell. I’d better wake your father.’

‘So he can go and roll in the gore too? Is that another quaint family tradition?’

‘You really can be a pain in the arse.’

‘You think so?’ A dark curtain descended over Evie. ‘I wonder why. My mother told the police she’d fucked my boyfriend.’

Victoria wasn’t taken aback. ‘Before you were with him, darling.’

‘So? Now I know why you were eating him with your eyes when he was here this week.’

‘Get a grip, girl. I finished with him before he went back to the Abbey for the summer term.’ Victoria smiled crookedly. ‘I’m surprised Nick didn’t tell you about it.’

Evie slapped her mother’s face hard. ‘Bitch.’ She lifted her crutch and pointed it at Victoria. ‘Stay away from me!’

‘You’re overwrought, Evie. You need some time in a home.’

‘Fuck you! That wasn’t all I heard. You and Father lied to the police. You said Dan and Cheryl weren’t here. Why? What have you done?’

‘What have
we
done? The Restons are the ones the police want to talk to.’

‘But you’re protecting them. Why?’

Andrew Favon appeared at the end of the corridor. His remaining hair was tousled. ‘What on earth are you two screaming about at this hour?’

‘Look,’ Evie said, handing him the binoculars and pointing.

‘Good God!’

‘I’ll handle him,’ Victoria said, walking away. ‘Take Evie’s crutch and lock her in her room.’

Andrew looked surprised, then did as he was told.

Evie was no match for him physically. As soon as the key turned, she started to think about how to get out.

‘I can’t hear you!’ Heck yelled into his phone. He was on the Roman Wall west of Cawfields and the wind was strong. He ducked down behind an escarpment. ‘That’s better. What were you saying?’

Joni told him what Wayne Garston had told her about the Restons.

‘Lovely pair,’ he said. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘I just called Big Bertha. She confirms that the bite on the headless man is from a Doberman.’

‘At least Reston didn’t kill him.’

‘Maybe he drank his blood.’

‘Look, Joni, you know this isn’t going to get Mrs Normal to give the go-ahead for a warrant to search the Hall and estate.’

‘What if the Restons have got Suzana Noli and your friend Forrest?’

‘There’s no evidence to suggest that.’

Joni paused before speaking. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this, sir.’

‘I’m not exactly over the moon about it myself, but we have to work by the ACC’s rules. Listen, go home and have a quiet evening. I promise you a lively lunch tomorrow, OK? And we can slip away to talk things over.’

Joni accepted that with ill grace and cut the connection.

Heck clambered down the slope and took refuge in a stand of trees. A teenage couple, cheeks red and laughter shrill. There was no doubt what they’d been up to. The girl didn’t look much older than Kat. Heck shuddered. The idea of his daughter being pawed by some callow youth was awful, but he could never make it clear to her. Contrary as she was, she would run straight for the nearest pair of arms.

Sitting on a fallen tree, Heck tried to get his head together. There was a dull pain in his belly, as so often after he’d been walking. Tackling the Albanian had only been a stage in the
fight to overcome his fear. Since the operation, he had gradually learned to trust his being as a whole, accepting that the physical and the mental were intertwined. Now he could see that his work – especially the murder cases – was testing and gradually improving his resilience. A lot of the time in the MCU he felt he was floundering as people pulled him in different directions. Joni was convinced the Favons and their employees were at the heart of things. Morrie Simmons put everything down to the Steel Toe Caps and their opposition to the Albanians. He himself was trying to coordinate their efforts. Pancake Rokeby, who’d drawn the short straw for Saturday, had called him from the office earlier. Michael Etherington’s phone records had arrived, by some miracle given it was the weekend. He was collating incoming and outgoing calls, but had found nothing suggestive so far. The general’s computer was also devoid of anything significant, apart from the contents of his grandson’s computer, which suggested he was set on finding out who killed the lad. Things were at a standstill. Then he had a thought. The reason for that was Mrs Normal. The chief constable would be in on it too. They didn’t want their crony Andrew Favon investigated unless convincing evidence of wrongdoing came to light. But how were he and his teams to find evidence if they weren’t allowed to work the way they would with ordinary people? Fuck the rich and powerful.

Heck got up slowly to avoid straining anything. He reckoned they had most of the information they needed, but putting it all together was proving difficult. He would call Dan Reston again when he got home, but Favon’s man had been keeping his head down. That made him uncomfortable. He had a feeling something bad was about to happen and Reston was his, and Joni’s, prime suspect – but the bugger had vanished. As had Michael Etherington. Was there a connection?

As he walked on the Wall, Heck came out of his black mood. Luke would be waiting to bowl him some leg breaks and Ag would produce the usual Saturday high tea, cream cake and
iced buns included. Tomorrow Joni would come to the family Sunday lunch. The rest of the weekend would be good.

Suzana was hungry. No food had appeared for what she guessed was close to a day. Water wasn’t a problem as she could drink from the tap in the bathroom. She lay on the bed in the dark, listening carefully. Occasionally there were shouts – a man’s voice – from below. Perhaps he wasn’t being fed either. What had happened to the pig in the woollen mask? She had heard wheels moving across the gravel outside and had screamed, but nothing had happened. Were they being left to die? As she dropped in and out of consciousness, it came to her that this wouldn’t be such a bad way to reach the end of things. At least the pig hadn’t done more than peer at her when she was naked. If he kept away and she didn’t have to use the knife on him, she might never have to bear a man’s weight on her again, feel a man inside her.

The knife. She put her hands between her legs and eased it out. The other option was to use it on herself now. That would guarantee her escape from captivity, from the world. She slid the blade out from the plastic casing and put it against her throat. One swift movement, that was all it would take. She shivered as the longing for death gripped her. She heard seductive words – no more suffering, no more running, no more abuse. She gripped the knife harder and made a small cut on the side of her neck. She felt a warm trickle and put a finger against it. Then she got up and went to the bathroom. There was no mirror and the light from the blacked-out window was minimal, but she could see a contorted image of her face on the showerhead. She drew a line of blood across her forehead, then dabbed spots and dashes on her cheeks and nose. She smiled and the witch-like
creature grinned back at her malevolently. For the first time in many months, Suzana laughed.

The blood from the cut soon dried up. She washed the blade and put it in her pocket. She no longer felt the need to hide it inside herself. She wasn’t going to commit murder on her own body. The pigs, so many of them, had done what they wanted to it. She had endured that and she wasn’t going to give up now.

The man in the mask might not come back, but if he did he would regret it – in the seconds before death pulled his soul from the gaping wound she would make in his flesh.

Joni slept badly again. This time she wasn’t bothered by dreams or visions, but her body seemed to be out of control. When she went to bed, she started shivering and had to wrap an extra duvet round herself, even though the night was warm enough. Later, she woke to the sound of an owl’s calls and found herself bathed in sweat, despite the fact that she’d kicked off both duvets. She thought she must have a virus and took her temperature with a digital thermometer. It was normal. She drank two glasses of water and sat looking out over the dark space of the garden, the lights from the Abbey to her left. She opened the window and heard the soughing of the wind through trees planted by monks in the Middle Ages. Suddenly she felt very far from home.

As if she had a home. She’d never been back to Hackney after she left for Oxford. She would arrange to meet her mother in the centre of London, usually in art galleries, though her taste in art had outstripped Moonbeam’s permanent miring in the sixties. Likewise Oxford: it wasn’t a place she liked revisiting, and certainly not on the gaudy nights intended to extract funds from alumni. She hadn’t been in Bari or Marseilles long enough to feel attached to them, and they were tainted by the love affairs that
had ended when she left. As for the flats she’d owned in south London, they never felt like home, mainly because of the hours she worked. So where did she belong? In Corham? She’d only been there for a few months and, though she found the town pleasant enough, she hadn’t begun to put roots down.

Joni felt a hollowness in her abdomen and a quickening of her pulse. She thought she could hear faint voices on the breeze, voices speaking in a strange form of English. She closed her eyes and saw a figure in dark clothes, his face unnaturally white. When he came close enough that she could smell the decay on his breath, she saw that the cheeks and forehead had been smeared white, and the mouth was wide in a lipless grin. She was shocked to feel her libido rush back. She slid the fingers of one hand under her T-shirt and played with nipples that were already hard. Her other hand moved under the waistband of her sweatpants, past the scarring, and found the wetness she hadn’t experienced since she’d left London. In a matter of seconds she shuddered in a prolonged climax. As her heart rate returned to normal, she was sure she heard laughter fading into the dark.

She sat there until the cool of night finally got to her, then closed the window and went back to bed. Sleep refused to arrive, so she lay there thinking about what had happened. She felt pleasantly sated and distinctly more alive than she had been. She shouldn’t have cut herself off from her body for so many months. But then her conscious mind began to reassert itself. She thought of Suzana and the missing farmer, of Michael Etherington – was he really going to avenge Nick? And the Favons – haughty and high-handed, but plagued by the same weaknesses as lesser people. And Dan Reston. Was he the key to all the mysteries?

The thoughts continued to swirl, some of them making sense, some of them bordering on the fantastic. Joni didn’t think her new-found clarity was only because she’d relieved months of sexual tension. Something she was near to understanding was going on. Near, but still it eluded her…

Joni slept for a few hours and then couldn’t sit still. She
arrived at Heck’s place half an hour early to find him, his father and the kids in the back garden, throwing a tennis ball around at speed. Even the old man had a good eye, moving his body as soon as the yellow sphere headed in his direction. Joni watched them over the fence for several minutes before Kat spotted her.

‘Joni!’ the girl cried, throwing the ball hard at her brother then running towards her. ‘How are you doing?’

‘I’m fine,’ she replied. ‘You?’

‘Oh, you know – school, boys, my idiot brother.’ Kat liked Joni because she took time to talk to her on the few occasions they’d met. ‘Nice blouse.’

The men arrived at varying degrees of speed, Luke hanging back behind his grandfather.

‘Wow!’ Heck said. ‘I’ve never seen a fruit salad blouse before. Is it from Hawaii?’ He ran an eye over her. ‘Wherever it was made, you look spectacular.’

‘Hello, lass,’ David said, holding out his liver-spotted hand. ‘Come away in.’

‘Hiya, Luke,’ she said, smiling at the twelve-year-old.

He nodded, eyes down. If ever there were a case of early teenage lust, this was it.

‘Joni!’ Ag called from the house. ‘Come and help. As usual I’m left to slave in the kitchen on my own.’ She looked sheepish. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have used the “s” word.’

Joni smiled. ‘Slavery isn’t confined to people of colour.’

‘True enough. Have a white wine, orange juice and soda spritzery thing.’ Ag filled a glass from a jug. ‘I’ve made a mushroom lasagne. Can you sort out the salad?’

Joni nodded, sipping her drink.

‘Those heathens demand meat,’ Ag said, ‘so you’re going to have to live with the scent of rib roast.’

‘It’s fine. You shouldn’t have bothered with the lasagne. I could just have eaten the vegetables.’

Ag frowned. ‘I invited you. I’m not going to give you nothing and three veg.’

Joni laughed.

‘You look well. Are you settling in at last?’

‘I wouldn’t say that exactly. No time. We’ve been very busy.’

‘I noticed.’ Ag moved closer. ‘Is my man coping? He’s come home every day in a state of exhaustion.’

Joni nodded. ‘The DCI’s doing fine.’

‘He’s called Heck, Dad or Son in this house. Take your pick.’

‘OK,’ Joni said, as her boss walked in. ‘Can we … can we have a few minutes?’

‘No!’ Ag commanded. ‘It’s Sunday, it’s nearly lunch time and shop talk is banned.’

Heck opened his hands helplessly, then poured two glasses from the jug. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing the old man get this down. He thinks white wine is the work of the devil.’

‘He’ll also drink anything that contains alcohol,’ Ag said.

They moved to the front room, where Kat and Luke were playing with the long-suffering pets. Adolf was sitting on the back of the sofa, peering at the boy through narrowed eyes, while Cass was standing against Kat on her hind legs. Joni felt a shiver run up her body as a high-pitched sound entered her ears. She looked round and saw Heck’s father sitting at the table, Northumbrian pipes on his lap. He started on a fiendishly complicated air, accompanied by his son on the bodhran. Joni clapped when they finished, even though the music had made her uncomfortable. It had reached a part of her that classical music didn’t. She found herself thinking of the laughter that had floated away on the wind in the middle of the night – the laughter and the skeletal figure she had glimpsed.

Lunch was loud and delicious. Joni had been put between David and Luke. While the old man would happily have talked to her without interruption about the larks he and his friends had got up to when they were young, she tried to engage the teenager in the conversation. He was interested in rugby and cricket, two sports she had never seen the point of – she’d never cared for teams, preferring to test herself against her own personal
best with the javelin rather than bother with the opposition. But Luke’s enthusiasm was infectious and she found herself asking him about the complexities of the scrum. He wanted to be a number eight, whatever that was – like his father had been – but apparently he needed to put some inches and pounds on.

‘Aye, Heck was the man,’ David said, shaking his head. ‘When he had the bit between his teeth, he could get the ball over the line with half-a-dozen defenders hanging off him.’

The meal finished with a spectacular homemade ice cream cake.

‘All right,’ Ag said, after coffee had been handed out, ‘I can see Heck and Joni are bursting to get to work. Half an hour in the study and then rounders in the garden, OK?’

Joni nodded gratefully and followed her boss to the small room on the first floor, where he had a desk piled with paper and no computer.

‘Let’s have it then,’ Heck said, after she sat down on the low sofa.

She made her case for searching the Favon estate for the Restons – as well as for Suzana Noli and Oliver Forrest.

‘But Dan Reston and his wife have done a bunk,’ Heck said, fumbling for his phone. He clicked on a number and waited for a reply. ‘Still going straight to voicemail.’

‘He hasn’t done a bunk, sir,’ Joni said. ‘I’m sure of that. He’s on the estate somewhere and Lord Favon’s knows it.’

‘What do you suggest we do? It’s still all conjecture.’

‘Not if we get the SOCOs to go over the whole pickup instead of just the tyres.’

‘At best that might put Reston in the frame for the headless man’s death, though he could easily claim the dogs got loose.’

‘But someone cut off Gary Frizzell’s head and hands. If we squeeze him, maybe he’ll put Favon in the frame.’

‘All right, I’ll talk to Mrs Normal tomorrow morning.’

‘Not today?’

‘Lay off, Joni. I’ve only called her on the weekend once. She
was at a lunch and wasn’t happy. Besides, getting a warrant on Sunday afternoon is a tough ask.’

‘People’s lives may be at risk.’

‘All right! I’ll call her later so we can at least get the paperwork ready.’

Joni wasn’t impressed – it didn’t work that way in the Met – but she had to accept the ways things were done in the north. Soon Ag opened the door and ushered them out.

Joni proved to be a useful rounders player, hitting the ball so hard that it took Luke a couple of minutes to find it in the neighbouring field. He grinned as he ran back, shyness gone.

It was close to four when Joni left. She had to visit her mother and her stomach was already clenching at the prospect. She felt things were coming to a head with Moonbeam and their relationship would never be the same again. Ag kissed her on both cheeks as did David, more sloppily. Heck pecked her once, then Kat gave her a hug and Luke did the same. They were sweet moments.

‘Come again!’ Ag called, as Joni was climbing into the Land Rover. ‘Come next Sunday.’

Joni waved but didn’t speak. She could only look ahead a matter of hours. As she pulled away from the Rutherfords’, she saw a figure in the wood across the road. For a moment she wondered who it was, but the thought immediately left her mind as she concentrated on her mother.