Panic (2 page)

Michael pulled the car away from the kerb, and set off into the unremarkable grey morning.

*

The smell of blood mingled with the salty aroma of bacon, filling the small bar area, hanging in the air like a harsh rebuke.

For Craig Haycock, time seemed to stand still. Heavy and thick, the atmosphere tingled with shock and violence. It felt like the moments before an electrical storm erupted.

His mouth dropped open, his eyes painfully wide, as though his brain had requested more visual information than it was currently receiving in an attempt to process the bewildering scene. The spell was broken when Leary's fingers unclenched and the head, which Craig now recognised as belonging to the priest
’s wife, dropped to the floor with a sickeningly wet
thump
. Her eyes were open, staring directly at Craig, and he felt as though something in his mind was suddenly being stretched taut, close to snapping.

Drunk,
he thought, as he dropped instinctively into a defensive crouch, backing up as far as the narrow bar allowed.

The thought was ridiculo
us. Craig had been drunk before; hell, he’d spent most of the last few years wandering round in a warm stupor, and he'd never come close to decapitating anyone. Still, it was what his beleaguered brain offered up and, for now, he would go with it.

"Stop right there
, Father," he cried, and was unnerved to hear his own voice, high pitched and tremulous. His tone, which he had hoped would be authoritative, was instead plaintive. He sounded like a child begging a stern parent to stay up late.

Craig's mind reeled: he knew Peter Leary fairly well. He was the man who had performed his wedding ceremony. And that
other
ceremony, the one that occupied the opposite end of the emotional spectrum. The one he tried not to think about. The priest was a kind man, a man of enviable virtue and patience. Never in a million years would Craig have considered him to be a threat to anyone.

For a moment his words did seem to have an effect: the priest stopped, swaying a little
, as though unsteady on his feet, his head whipping from Ralf to Craig and back again, as if he was struggling to make some terrible decision.

The fog in Craig's mind lifted a little, and he raced through his options.
The priest was a bear of a man: at six foot two he had four inches on Craig, and was probably fifty pounds his superior in weight. He was not carrying any weapon that Craig could see. Leary's hands were empty, stained red with blood, but it was his eyes that truly made Craig's nerves dance uncontrollably. The man's eyes were impossibly wide, the whites a bright, angry red. Blood trickled from them like tears.

The priest seemed to make up his mind and lurched half a step toward Craig, when Ralf, who had been attempting to inch his way backwards, toward the door at the far end of the bar that led to the café's small stockroom, nudged the coffee pot on the bar with his ample gut, sending it crashing to the floor. Leary's head whipped toward the noise. The movement was animalistic, like a tiger catching sight of prey moving through the long grass.

It happened in an instant. The priest pounced like a starving animal, clear across the bar and onto Ralf with a ragged, gurgling roar.

And
bit
him. Bit his god-damned nose clean off, tossing the ripped chunk of flesh aside with a flick of his neck, before darting forward again and sinking his teeth into the soft, quivering flesh of Ralf's neck.

The fat man hit the deck, the priest straddling him in a grim mockery of a lover's embrace. An arterial spray of blood painted the wall red behind them.

For Craig, autopilot took over. Without thought, he scooped up a bar stool in one smooth motion and swung it like a nine iron into the priest's right flank, sending the big man crashing into the stove, which spat up a griddle's worth of crispy bacon and searing, bubbling fat over the man's head.

A new smell hit Craig's nostrils, a sweet, sickening
fragrance that brought bile to the back of his throat. The priest lay motionless at the base of the stove, his face sizzling.

Craig shot a glance at Ralf, l
ying on his back, a bubble of blood and saliva on his lips. Ralf's neck had a tear, perhaps four inches across, from which blood poured at obscene speed. Ralf's eyes were moving, locking onto Craig's gaze with an intense pleading. He looked like a frightened child.

Craig waved a clearly unnecessary
stay put
gesture toward Ralf, and turned to see the priest hauling himself unsteadily to his feet.

The priest
’s face was a vision from a demented nightmare, flesh melted away from his skull, partially revealing bone. Both eyes were gone, rendered liquid, oozing down across his cheeks, fusing with the superheated meat that had been his nose and jaw.

This time Leary sprang forward without hesitation, teeth bared, an inhuman rage-fuelled scream tearing from his lungs, but the attack was blind, and Craig had time to roll to the side, narrowly avoiding the priest's landing.

As he rolled, Craig's fingers found the shards of Ralf's dropped plate. He tried to stand, intending to brandish the makeshift weapon to deter the priest, but already aware on some level that the move would be futile.

He didn't get the chance.

Before Craig had even regained his balance Leary was upon him, strong fingers closing around his neck, forcing him back to the floor. Stars exploded across Craig's vision as the back of his head connected hard with the tiles, and terror threatened to overwhelm him. The priest’s fingers closed like a vice, slowly, inexorably crushing his windpipe.

He had no other option.

No time to think.

He drove the shard of porcelain into the priest
’s neck, drove it hard. No self-defence, this; it was a killing blow. He felt warm blood splash onto his hand, and drove further, twisting and tearing with the weapon, oblivious to the pain as sharp edges sliced into his palm.

After an eternity, the thick fingers on his throat slackened and slipped away. Air exploded into his lungs. Nothing had ever tasted as sweet.

With a grunt, Craig hauled himself out from beneath the priest's heavy body, painful hacking coughs ripping through his damaged throat. He climbed to his feet using the bar for support, nearly pulling his still-steaming coffee down onto himself in the process. The entire attack had taken less than a minute.

Turning towards Ralf, he felt his heart sink. The jovial bar owner had been a little slow, but made up for it with a perma-smile and a warm heart. Now, in death, his features were contorted with anguish and pain, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. The flow of blood from the wound in Ralf's neck had slowed to a trickle, a bright red river leading to a vast ocean that spread across the tiles, mingling with the ground-in coffee and ketchup. Ralf's words came back to Craig, suddenly tragic.

The colour of life, that is.

It would be the last conscious thought to cross Craig Haycock's mind. Moments later, his focus was entirely taken by his blood, which suddenly felt as if it were boiling in his veins.

The pace of life in rural South Wales was slow as pouring treacle, but below the surface, where the town was powered by the gasoline of rumour and gossip, things moved at breakneck speed. Information was the town's real currency and its people had all the riches they could wish for. No secret remained kept for long.

So it was that Mrs
Paula Roberts, baker’s wife, proud mother of children long departed for the bright lights and better prospects of London and Birmingham; owner of a mouth that transmitted at broadband speed, came to be walking her dog in the chilly morning air on the day things began to unravel.

Dogs w
ere messy, dirty animals in Mrs Roberts' opinion, but having relented after months of pestering by her then-teenage son, she soon discovered that they presented an excellent reason for hovering around the gardens of her neighbours. And the gardens of the neighbours were exactly the place to be if you wanted to know what was what and who was who.

Often she would let the t
errier, renamed 'Sniffer' after the kids had flown the coop, due to what Mrs Roberts believed to be an excellent nose for town politics (or at least the gardens in which those politics were discussed) decide on the route of his morning walk.

This morning he had turned left out of the driveway and it had proved an excellent choice. Eyebrows were raised and mental notes taken as she had walked past the Chapman house and heard a man's laughter drifting from t
he open bedroom window, for Mrs Roberts knew full well that young Shelly Chapman's husband was away on business. Sniffer got a crunchy treat for that one.

The rest of the walk proved to be a disappointing affair
: mostly quiet houses and empty gardens, the residents of St. Davids opting to stay in the warmth of their beds for as long as possible before their varying responsibilities dragged them out into the cold, misty morning.

Disappointing, that is
, until Sniffer finally led Mrs Roberts past the house at which Father Leary and his wife had lived for the last three decades.

At this early hour, silence hung over the town, riding the coattails of the sea mist that usually cleared up by mid-morning. An
d so it was inevitable that Mrs Roberts, whose ears during these walks were alert like wartime radar, heard the odd cry.

It had come from Father Leary's house, of that there was
no question. It wasn't a scream; wasn't a shout of anger. Indeed, Mrs Roberts may well have dismissed it altogether, as the cry of someone who'd dropped their morning toast perhaps, or stubbed a toe climbing out of the bath, were it not for the way the sound ended.

Abruptly. And with a strange, wet gurgle. A
very
odd noise. A noise that required further investigation.

Mrs Roberts had a system for investigating the gardens of her neighbours (everyone in the town was considered a neighbour, no matter how far away they actually lived from her) and it
was beautiful in its simplicity: show a treat to Sniffer, take off the mutt's leash, toss the treat as far onto the neighbour in question's property as possible, and let the dog's stomach do the rest.

As a means of trespassing on the property of other people it was foolproof, so much so that people often thanked
Mrs Roberts for coming to pull her dog out of their garden before it decided to start dropping presents on their lawn.

The noise had come from the rear of the house, no doubt, and so she discreetly hurled a crunchy treat as far down the path to the side of the house as possible and set Sniffer to work. The terrier, eyes wide and focused solely on the bone-shaped treat, flew off down the path, oblivious to half-hearted cries of 'bad dog
, Sniffer!'

After waiting a moment or two, and
wearing a look of exasperation for those who may be watching, Mrs Roberts set off after the apparently rogue dog, who was now happily munching his way through the evidence of his master's transgression.

As she rounded the corner to Father Leary's back garden, she heard the front door slam behind her and turned to see the man hims
elf leave. He was walking oddly — stiffly — and carrying something she couldn't make out before he disappeared from view.

Equally odd was the direction
Leary took, turning left, heading away from the town and the Cathedral that served as his home for most of the day.

Mrs
Roberts heaved a dramatic sigh. Her chance to eavesdrop had almost certainly passed, unless Father Leary's wife was prone to talking to herself.

She leaned down to reattach Sniffer's leash, but the dog squirmed out of her grasp with an excited yelp, and dashed out of sight behind the house.

Sighing again, Mrs Roberts rounded the corner, and mentally readied her apology to Mrs Leary who would no doubt see her trespassing from the kitchen window.

And stopped.

The leash fell to the ground unnoticed as she clasped her hands to her face in horror.

Sniffer was bounding e
xcitedly around a pool of blood; a dark stain on concrete that steadily mushroomed from the obscene space where Mrs Leary's head had been, the remainder of her body splayed awkwardly across the step in front of the open patio doors.

The hor
ror of the sight stole away Mrs Roberts' thoughts, leaving her feeling heavy and immobile. This went
far
beyond gossip.

This was the mother lode
.

As the shock of the
grisly scene in the Leary garden began to subside, the next steps came to the fore. Clearly, Mrs Roberts
had
to be the one who broke the news to the residents of St. Davids, and so, really, she should be heading toward the tiny police station near the town’s main shopping area. Hopefully, of course, some of the residents would have emerged from their cocoons as she made the journey.

Mrs
Roberts was just mulling over this, when the garden offered up another odd sight that caught her attention. Some distance from the back door, toward the rear of the lawn, was a hole in the grass, fairly deep.

She walked cautiously over to it, and stared down, intrigued. The hole was an odd shape, perfectly round, and very deep. Had Father Leary killed his wife, planning to bury her under the garden like some character in a soap opera?

Mrs Roberts pondered this, and all the possible ramifications for the town and its people, for a long while. Lost in thought, she paid no attention to Sniffer, who lapped happily at the spreading pool of blood around Mrs Leary's corpse.

*

It was possible to walk around the centre of St. Davids, taking in each and every one of the picturesque cobbled streets in little more than a couple of hours. That time would likely have been almost halved but for the erratic nature of the tiny city's layout: like many of the ancient rural towns of Wales, the seemingly randomly angled roads would most likely provoke nightmares in the average modern-day town planner.

For the most part, although the streets were not officially pedestrianised, traffic avoided the centre of town simply because two cars attempting to occupy the same street at the same time would have to pull off some tricky manoeuvres
in order to reach their destination. In addition, most would admit, there really was nothing in the city centre worth driving
to
.

There were shops, of course
: small butcher's and baker's; even a tiny all-purpose hardware store, but the truth of the matter was that if you were shopping in one of those establishments, then you were likely no more than five minutes' walk from your front door, and frankly, it would take that long to navigate a car round some of St. Davids' more eccentric corners. It just wasn't worth it.

Those with cars – and despite the reliance on them virtually everywhere else, a surprising number of the residents didn't bother with owning a car at all – were more likely to head away from the town.

Even in this most rural part of Wales, a superstore wasn't too far away. Some twenty miles east in Haverfordwest, a giant, gleaming
Tesco
supermarket had opened a few months previously, and, as is the way with these out-of-town monoliths, it exerted a gravitational pull that could be felt for many miles.
Buy one get one free
is, after all, hard to resist.

Of course, none of this mattered to the two occupants of the police car, who were obliged to crawl through the cobbled streets at least once a day, 'maintaining a visible presence'. Two hours to walk. Almost double that to drive.

Michael had intended to head through the middle of town early on, before lunchtime drew people out of their houses and onto the cobbled streets they treated as just another pavement, making progress for a car all but impossible, but Carl - his mind still clearly and unashamedly fixated on a fried breakfast that his wife would have gladly pistol-whipped him for eating - had proven persuasive. They headed out toward the countryside.

Where the
centre of the city was cramped; ancient creaking buildings obstinately clinging to the hills on which the town was built, as though huddling together for warmth, the outskirts were much more expansive. Tiny collections of dwellings – often no more than three or four old farm buildings – were dotted for miles around, each proudly declaring itself a village in its own right, and the police car dutifully made its way around them all most days, though in truth that was more attributable to the boredom that was the default atmosphere of the police station than any conscientious work ethic.

As expected
, these routine checks never turned up anything. Sometimes the residents waved at the car, occasionally signalling Michael or Carl to wind the window down and stop for a chat, maybe even a cup of tea. The most likely occurrence was, of course, getting stuck behind a tractor.

This morning, however, as the car
eased through the roads towards Ralf's café and the promise of bacon and eggs, the roads were all but empty, and the miles passed quickly, though not quickly enough judging by the rumbles of complaint emanating from Carl's stomach.

"You hear that?" T
he big man sighed. "Cholesterol," he said with a derisive snort. "Hunger'll get me long before that does."

Michael looked
at his partner dubiously. Carl had the physique of a man who could survive being stranded on an uninhabited island longer than most.

They were on
the beach road, moving swiftly, and Ralf's café - a lonely sort of building set against a hill and with a view of a tiny sliver of ocean beyond - drew closer.

"Try to hold on
, mate," Michael said. "Don't go dying on me now. We're
so
close."

Carl snorted. "You're buying. And just for that, I'll be sure to have an extra-"

He trailed off as Michael eased the car to a stop in the small patch of gravel that served as Ralf’s car park.

Michael was staring at the door to the café
, open-mouthed. Following his gaze, Carl suddenly moved breakfast down his list of priorities.

The door was shut, and across the whitewashed panel beneath the glass and the faintly ridiculous
Bar and Grill
sign, was a long, red smear.

"Is that...blood?" said Carl, unable to keep a note of wonder out of his voice.

Michael's jaw clenched.

"I'd say so."

Michael stared for a few seconds, and felt an odd lurch in his stomach; a feeling like returning home to continue an argument that had been temporarily postponed.

"Uh
…what should we do?" Carl breathed.

It was a good question. There was something about the long, ragged smear that made the hairs on the back of
Michael's neck stand up. Some relic of his outdated police training nagged at him, its voice indistinct.

In another time and place Michael would have suggested that they call it in, perhaps even call for backup. Here though, the truth was that there was no one to call. The single
-storey St. Davids police station, barely big enough to house a couple of desks and a noticeboard, was home to a receptionist, a middle aged woman by the name of Glenda who specialised in making tea and conducting long, gossipy phone calls. What it did not contain was anything that could remotely be described as
backup
.

Michael
scratched at his chin, lost in thought.

"Okay,"
he said after a pause. "Stay here and call it in to Glenda. Tell her if she doesn't hear from us in five minutes, she needs to put in a call to Haverfordwest. Then follow me in.

"Here
, take these." He passed Carl the car keys. "If this turns out bad, get out of here, get some backup."

"You want to check it out on your own?
Is that safe?" Carl's eyes were wide.

Michael shrugged. "Just go
ing to take a peek. If there's someone in there waiting with a weapon, I'd rather we didn't
both
have our faces pressed up against the glass, you know?"