Last Rites (25 page)

I called Olwen before I set off for his house. I owed him an update, although I wasn't sure what I had to report. April Mather had been a definite suicide, and so I was down to three murders. I checked my watch. It was just after one, the day moving on too fast.

I had an address and directions for a house on a country lane, and I almost missed it, just a small sign obscured by long grasses. As my tyres rattled over a cattle grid and then echoed between dry-stone walls, I got the feeling that I had been there before.

Olwen's home had a name,
Tindale Cottage,
not a number, written in bold white on a black sign. It was two-storey, with a centre porch and ivy creeping up the walls, and as I stepped out of the car, my footsteps scraped on stones on the dirt track and I shielded my eyes as sunlight twinkled off the damp grass.

I had been there before, though, I knew it, and I scanned the fields around the cottage, my hand over my eyes so that I could see.

Then I saw it, just a glimmer, a flash of light in the grass.

I ran to the side of the house, away from its shadow, and jumped onto a stone wall to get a better view. ‘Shit!’ I exclaimed, and jumped down. I was by Sabden Brook, where Rebecca Nurse had been found. I looked further along the lane and I saw where I had been the day before. I had come in the opposite way, that's all.

I glanced at Olwen's house and got a sense that something wasn't right. Why hadn't he mentioned this the night before? Was I being played? And how easy was it to get to the site of the body from his house?

I walked away from his house and towards the brook, and the lane seemed suddenly secretive and hidden, high walls stopping anyone seeing into it.

Sabden Brook was the same as it had been the day before, just a trickle of water, and stones scraped and wobbled as I scrambled over the wall next to it. When I got to the place where Rebecca had been found, I knelt down and touched the ground. I didn't know why. Perhaps it was a desire to make it real, to touch something as solid as a rock, so that it would become more than a collection of old murder stories bundled together by some crackpot theory.

The grass just felt like what it was: coarse strands of moorland grass blowing in the breeze beside a slender ribbon of water. I felt no great connection. Instead, just deflation.

I whirled around quickly when I heard something behind me, a rustle in the grass. Olwen was standing there, his hands behind his back, his ponytail blowing in the wind.

‘Did it give you any special inspiration?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’ I replied, wondering how long he had been there.

‘It's nothing special to you, is it?’ he said. ‘Just an old story, a forgotten murder in a quiet Lancashire field.’

I looked back at the rock. ‘Did you scratch that symbol?’

He nodded. ‘People forgot too quickly.’

‘But why didn't you tell me that you lived next to where she was found?’

His eyes twinkled. ‘The story isn't about me.’

‘What else are you keeping back from me?’ I asked.

‘Nothing else that matters.’ Before I could respond, he continued, ‘Why did you want to speak to me?’

‘Professional courtesy,’ I replied. ‘I went to the police this morning, told them what you told me.’

‘Did you tell them about me?’

I shook my head. ‘I don't reveal sources, I told you that.’

He nodded at me. ‘Thank you.’

‘Do you want to know any more?’

He shook his head. ‘You will have done what you thought was right.’

‘And what now, Olwen?’

He smiled. ‘It is Samhain, and we will pray for Sarah.’

I grabbed his arm. ‘Is that it?’ I asked, shocked. ‘You told me that Sarah will die today, and all you are going to do is pray, leave me to do everything?’

He pulled his arm away. ‘Sometimes prayer is all we have,’ and then he stepped away, walking back to his cottage.

I didn't move until the door to his cottage closed. I looked around and saw the chimneys of Newchurch in the distance, the church tower in the middle, squat and square. I could see paths worn into the countryside around me, the hikers' trails that headed off in all directions. I realised again why it would have appealed so much to someone involved in murder. So many paths in, so many paths out, but hidden from view.

‘There's only one thing for it then,’ I muttered to myself as I looked towards the church. ‘It's time for some spiritual inspiration.’

Carson glanced over as Joe came into the Incident Room.

‘What are you looking at?’ Carson asked.

Joe waved some computer print-outs. ‘I've pulled some of the information on the names Garrett gave us before.’

‘And?’ Carson asked.

Joe's mouth twitched, unsure, and then he gave a small smile. ‘He might have something.’

Carson put his head back and breathed out noisily. Everyone else looked up, the pressed shirts, the scrubbed faces.

‘What do you mean, “he might have something”?’

Joe held up the print-outs. ‘I thought it when he said it, that the names were familiar. And he was right, the deaths did happen on the dates he mentioned.’

‘That doesn't mean anything.’

‘It means it isn't bullshit.’

Carson had his hands on his hips, unsure what to say.

‘Do you know something else about East Lancashire?’ Joe asked.

‘The gene pool gets shallower the nearer you get to the hills?’ replied Carson sarcastically. ‘I don't know, surprise me.’

‘It has the worst record in Lancashire for unsolved murders,’ said Joe.

Carson waved it away. ‘Populations distort figures,’ he countered. ‘A couple of rogue cases in a rural area make it look like gangland, but really it means nothing.’

Joe shook his head. ‘I'm not talking per head of population,’ he said. ‘I'm talking absolute figures. The cold-case drawer must be bulging around here.’

Carson paused, thinking about what Joe was saying, and then said, ‘It's also the divorce capital of England, so maybe the domestics count for most.’

‘They would be easier to solve, by definition,’ said Joe. He looked at Carson, tapping his lip with a pen. ‘I want to keep digging,’ he said. ‘And I want McGanity with me.’

‘McGanity?’ queried Carson, and looked around the room. The faces staring back at him were waiting for his answer, wondering whether Joe would be allowed to make a fool of himself.

‘She's the one who can tell us what Garrett is doing,’ Joe added.

Carson scowled as he thought about that, and then snapped, ‘All right then, but keep me in the loop.’

Joe nodded, smiling, and left the room. As everyone else watched him go, Carson barked, ‘If any of you have
got any better ideas, then speak to me, but until you do, button it,’ and then he slammed the door as he left, heading for the station yard. He needed to be on his own for a while.

I walked to the church yard again, looking for the vicar. I remembered our last conversation, and I reckoned he knew things about Pendle's other religion, and Olwen, its apparent leader. The wind was picking up, so the sound of my footsteps on the gravel was drowned out by the crackle of branches as they blew against one another, but the church yard was deserted.

I found the vicarage further up the hill. The vicar was at home, although when he opened the door I saw that he wasn't wearing his dog collar. He must have caught me looking at his throat, because he gave me that icy smile and said, ‘It's a collar, not a shackle.’ He stepped aside. ‘Come in.’

I had to stoop as I walked through his house, the ceilings and oak beams right above my head, the doorways designed for a time when people were much shorter. Local landscapes dotted the walls, and I was shown into a room lined with books. I saw an open one by a high-backed chair in front of an open fire. The heat hit me in a blast, and straight away I felt comfortable. It was a room to fall asleep in, with a view over the fields and
the crackle of burning wood by my feet, and I wondered whether the vicar felt closer to God in his room than in his church.

‘Do you remember me?’ I asked.

‘You're the young man from the church yard,’ he replied. ‘And you've come back.’

‘Would you mind answering a few more questions about people from your parish?’

He held out his hand as if to gesture at me to carry on, so I asked, ‘Rebecca Nurse. You said you remembered her?’

The vicar exhaled loudly and nodded. ‘The girl by the brook. That wasn't very nice at all.’ He paused for a few seconds, and then said, ‘She was a sweet girl though, but she was going through some wild times back then, just kicking back at her parents. They were good people, but they were occasional worshippers, and so stopped seeing the good in God when Rebecca was killed. Things like that even make me doubt Him, when I see what evil He allows to happen.’

‘In what way was Rebecca rebelling?’

‘In the way that kids do. They experiment, try to shock.’

‘Do you know that she dabbled in witchcraft?’

The vicar's face turned into a frown as he cast his mind back. ‘She was one of Olwen's disciples.’

That surprised me, Olwen's name coming up unprompted. The vicar must have spotted my surprise, because he asked, ‘Do you know Olwen?’

I nodded. ‘We've met.’

The vicar considered me carefully. ‘He's a child of the sixties,’ he answered.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just that. He had a strict upbringing, but he was a young boy when the sixties really got going, and so saw himself differently to how his parents saw him. We knew each other, nodding acquaintances, but as I was drawn to God, he was drawn to the hippie scene, all that dancing in the woods, sitting around campfires and taking drugs – except that around here there weren't many drugs available.’

‘But there is something different about Olwen,’ I said. ‘He's a descendant of a Pendle witch, so maybe that made him feel different.’

The vicar laughed and shook his head.

‘What's wrong?’ I asked.

‘Young man,’ he said, still chuckling, ‘most of the people around here are related in some way to a Pendle witch, or so they say. Those unlucky men and women were from local families, and so they left other family members. I'm not convinced by most of the claims, and most people rely on a name. Nutter. Whittle. Bulcock. Common names around here.’

‘So it's no big deal then?’

He laughed again. ‘I could even be a descendant, but the records aren't detailed enough to be sure.’

‘I've seen the family tree,’ I replied.

The vicar rubbed his eyes. ‘Olwen is a fantasist,’ he said wearily. ‘I've seen that family tree. He has drawn it up himself. I would be surprised if you had to go back too many generations to find the first error. Seeing a piece of paper with names on doesn't make any of it true. All of this lifestyle is made up. He was just plain
old Michael Smith back in the sixties, but somewhere along the way he became Olwen.’

‘So where did the hippie thing take him?’ I asked, curious now.

The vicar considered me carefully. His fingers were steepled under his nose and he looked thoughtful.

‘You know where it took him,’ he said eventually. ‘Witchcraft.’

‘Is that widely known?’ I asked.

The vicar smiled. ‘Everyone knew back then. He conducted ceremonies in the woods, lit candles in the middle of the night. It's a small village – things like that don't go unnoticed.’

‘Did he get any trouble from the locals?’

‘No, not around here. Pendle Hill attracts people who are drawn to its history. He was no different.’

‘So you have heard of the Family Coven?’ I ventured.

I expected the vicar to look blankly at me, or to look angry. Instead, he broke into a smile.

‘Olwen's disciples, like I told you. Most are getting old now, just more sixties remnants, but he became a bit of a mover in his circle. People who showed an interest in the occult were targeted by him, and it is women he concentrates on – the thought of getting a woman barely into her twenties to stand in front of him as naked as God created her is too strong for him to resist.’

‘But isn't he carrying on an old tradition?’ I said. ‘A line of witchcraft going right back to the Pendle witches?’

The vicar was clearly amused. ‘Did he tell you that?’ he asked, still chuckling. Then he shook his head and
said, ‘No, you've no need to tell me, because I can see the answer in your face. He started the tradition sometime during the eighties. He picked up most of it from books and television, carved it out into a sect, really just for his own fun.’

‘But he has followers,’ I protested.

‘He has a few ageing hippies, just like himself,’ he countered, ‘and through the years a few have passed through his coven, just a phase, a passing interest in the alternative. He shows them some interest and then mocks up some family tree to tie them into a blood line that they didn't know they had.’

‘But that would be easy to disprove,’ I said.

‘Not if you don't want to disprove it,’ he replied.

‘So you don't believe in witchcraft?’ I asked.

‘The witch trials of four hundred years ago were just what you think they were, the product of a misguided time. The area moved on, but then people like Olwen turned it into a lifestyle choice. But I don't mind if people like Olwen want to hold ceremonies. Let them, I say. God will be their judge, not me.’ Then he sighed. ‘This is all linked to Rebecca, I presume.’

I nodded. ‘She was in his coven.’

‘And April Mather?’

I nodded again.

He looked down, his eyes mourning an old memory. ‘A few years on, Rebecca would have grown out of it. Maybe she would have come back to God. My God. Our God.’ Then he swallowed, his face filled with sadness. ‘April is a more obvious guess though. I knew her parents, good people, but they lost control of her when she got
involved with the local bikers. It wasn't their fault, she was always wayward, and I met her husband, Dan, a couple of times. Dan wasn't a bad man. He'd had a rough upbringing himself; his mother ran away when he was a young boy, left him to grow up with his grandmother. But April kept his life steady, and it seemed like he loved her.’

‘And she was drawn to Olwen?’

The vicar nodded. ‘He preys on people like her. The vulnerable, the confused, the disenchanted. He gives them an outlet.’

‘Are you saying it was partly his fault?’

He thought about that, and then he said, ‘No. They would have chosen their own path. Olwen isn't a bad man; he is just misguided.’

‘Rebecca was found next to Olwen's house,’ I said. ‘Did you know that?’

The vicar nodded. ‘Olwen found her.’

I felt a crackle down my spine, like a shiver, and sweat jumped onto my palms.

‘Olwen found her?’ I repeated, surprised.

‘Yes. He called the police, and they found him hugging her body when they got there.’

I looked into the fire, at the flames as they danced along the black chimney breast, at the smoke being sucked into the chimney.

‘I didn't know that,’ I said quietly.

‘Is there any reason why you should have known?’

I shook my head, and then thanked the vicar for his hospitality, leaving him to his fire and his book.

My phone rang as I got back to my car. ‘It's Joe
Kinsella,’ said the voice as I answered it. ‘Do you want to come back down to the station, to go through what we've found?’

I looked around, at the lines of dry-stone walls, at the dark grass reflecting the mood from the clouds drawn into Pendle Hill. I wanted to get back to civilisation.

‘I won't be long,’ I replied, and then I climbed into my car. The Stag sounded loud as the engine started, and despite the cold I put the roof down; I wanted to feel the slap of the cold October day across my face. Time was running out, and I was no nearer to finding Sarah.