Time Enough To Die (33 page)

"Is Reynolds dead, then?” Gareth asked quietly. “That's interesting. Tell me about it."

Nick's eyes flew open. “You're the clever bugger, aren't you?"

"Not clever enough by half.” Gareth took an evidence bag from his pocket and held it open. “Give me the knife.” With a grimace, Nick pulled a pen knife from his own pocket and dropped it in the bag. It was stained a dark umber brown. “You'll need to make a statement. Several statements. If you cooperate you might get off with a fine for molesting a dead body."

"Reynolds did worse."

"Did he?” Matilda asked. “Even if he had killed Linda, two wrongs wouldn't have made a right. And he didn't kill her."

"Eh?” Nick looked from face to face. “Now you're flanneling me...."

"Here,” said Emma, clambering into the caravan. She bumped into Gareth, who bumped into Matilda, who with a jangle stepped into the bead curtain defining a bedroom. “This Ashley, does she have long blond hair?"

"Yes,” said Gareth.

"Shirl here is telling me she saw Nick's bird with the blond hair picked up by a posh white BMW."

Gareth felt the blood slowly drain from his face. Matilda's went stark white between one heartbeat and the next.

"Shirl's scared,” Emma went on. “Said she was going home to Chelsea. Her Dad's an accountant in the City, can you credit her living like this when her Dad's an accountant in the City?"

Matilda took Gareth's arm in a crushing grip. “I asked Ashley to trust me. I asked her to trust you. I told her Howard knew who we were and by extension she could trust him.... Gareth, it's going to be Linda all over again, picked up by someone she trusts. And we're the ones who put her in harm's way!"

Her anguish scraped fingernails down his spine. The blood flooded back into his face. “Steady on,” he said, even though he felt anything but steady. “She has the mobile phone—though he'll have that off her, won't he?"

Nick's body seemed to change from jelly to steel as the last molecules of the drug burned away. “What the hell are you talking about? Who's this bloke in the BMW?"

"Howard Sweeney,” Matilda spat. “Sweeney's the professor from the University who's in charge of the dig at Corcester. He's the man who's been working with Celia Dunning to steal and sell antiquities. We have proof of that."

"Linda was in one of his night classes!” Nick said. “She called him a dotty old dear. She would have hitched with him, right enough. And asked his advice on how to catch Dunning. He killed her?"

"Seems so, doesn't it?” Gareth told him. “We have to find him before he kills Ashley, too."

"He's on his way to Durslow for the ceremony,” added Matilda. “He calls himself the Druid."

"He's the Druid, is he? Of all the bleedin’ cheek!” Nick leaped up, cracked his head on the overhanging ceiling, and sat back down. “We have to catch him out."

"We?” Gareth demanded. “You've fancied yourself a detective long enough, Sunshine, it's time to leave it to the professionals...."

He couldn't tell whether it was own body or Matilda's that was quivering like a harp string. “I know what we need to do, Gareth,” she said, “but we're going to need their help. Nick, Emma, tell us about the ceremony."

"Well then,” Nick began, frowning in concentration. Emma leaned against the door jamb, interjecting a phrase or two. Matilda nodded, drawing out their words, shaping them into images. Gareth saw what she was after and quelled the impulse to clap his hand over her mouth.

He could see what she was planning, what Nick was thinking, what Emma was feeling. The pulse in the back of his mind ticked as briskly as the clock on his grandmother's mantelpiece at Aberffraw. He wanted to crouch, his hands over his ears, until he couldn't hear it any more. And yet he had no choice but to listen.

The sun was a blood-red globe just above the western horizon.

The crimson light that flooded the western sky slowly drained away, drawing darkness across the Cheshire countryside. The scene, Ashley thought, was like one out of some old Celtic tale, blood and shadow mingled in the hands of the gods.

No wonder the place was getting to her, with Sweeney emptying the bottle of wine into her glass. She was just a little buzzed. So much for her resolution to stay sober. But it was such a relief to be with someone she could trust. “Thanks for the picnic,” she said

He lounged against the hood of the BMW, looking at her with the same indulgent half-smile her mother smiled just before she said, “I told you so.” What Sweeney said, though, was, “Do you know about the pagan re-enactment scheduled for tonight?"

"Oh yes,” she said, “I heard about it."

"Would you like to attend? It's not an exclusive group, by any means, despite the misguided folk who take it all seriously."

Ashley remembered Nick's exhausted face. He took it seriously. How misguided he was she couldn't say. Whatever—with Sweeney she could see the ceremony after all, without having to watch her back. Then she'd have a really good report for Gareth and Matilda. It was like eating her cake and having it, too. “Yes, I would, thank you."

"Come along, then.” Sweeney gathered up the bottle and the plastic sandwich wrappers. He seated her inside the car, shut her door, and drove them away from the viewpoint. She looked around for the cell phone but didn't see it. She'd find it later. No problem.

Sweeney had listened with flattering attention to her tale of antiquities theft, Adrian Reynolds, Linda and Nick. “I'm delighted our intrepid detectives are making such good progress,” he'd said when she finished, and turned into a small grocery store on the outskirts of Corcester. “It's a grand evening. Let's indulge ourselves in the sunset. Do you prefer red or white wine?"

They'd watched the sun sink below the horizon and disappear, all the while chatting about the dig and the murder investigation, munching sandwiches and drinking a way too expensive chardonnay. Sweeney, too, voted for Reynolds as the murderer. “The sooner he's behind bars,” he'd proclaimed, “the better for all us law-abiding folk."

Now, as the car purred over the rutted roads atop Durslow Edge, he said nothing. The deserted mines were bits of wasteland in the fading light, and the gnarled oak trees rustled mysteriously. Several other sets of head- and tail-lights winked through the dusk, converging on the ledge.

Sweeney pulled into a hollow among the trees. He opened Ashley's door and locked it behind her. In the shadows his car was ghostly pale, like Rhiannon's white horse, she thought. A faint strain of music filtered through the trees, a flute and harp playing a slow melody. For just a moment she thought,
if something seems too good to be true.
...

Sweeney opened the trunk of the car. “We must wear the proper attire, my dear. That's part of the game. I always carry a spare costume, one never knows when one will encounter a neophyte. There you are.” He handed her a garment that resembled Jennifer's bed sheet toga and a shapeless white headdress. “And a garland of flowers—flower children and all that, eh?"

Well, if he could dress up she could, too. Although he could lose the patronizing “my dear.” Ashley pulled on the gown and settled the headdress on her head—yeah, like the early Celts had had elastic. Sweeney placed a wreath of spring flowers around her neck. She felt like a Klanswoman on her way to a luau, and hoped no one would recognize her. Far from being a moving religious event, this, like the festival in town, was fast turning into a farce. But then, Sweeney's motive in participating was to point up the absurdity of religious expression. It was kind of sad he thought he had to do that. Skeptics could be just as arrogant as believers.

Sweeney's robe was stitched in pleats beneath a wide fabric yoke and snugged at the waist with a sash. His headdress was a hood, casting a shadow over his face. He pulled something from the blackness of the trunk and tucked it into his sash. Placing his hand politely on Ashley's back, he guided her among the dozen or so cars parked in the mud. She stumbled over loose leaves and branches. Her cheeks burned in the chill air. Great, a little wine and she went red in the face.

At least twenty white-robed people milled along the wide ledge. Judging by the beer cans and whiskey bottles piled beside the trail, the party had already started.

Beside the well stood a box covered with yet another white cloth and oddments of greenery and crystals that glinted in the light of several candles. A torch in a bracket sent shadows dancing up the cliff face. A pile of brush looked like a hulking hairy animal at the far end of the ledge. The trees beyond were black shapes against a sky swiftly darkening to indigo. High overhead hung a crescent moon, like an enigmatic celestial smile.

Whoa, Ashley thought. This place had been spooky enough in daylight. Now, after dark, it was downright sinister. The white-robed figures stepped silently aside, forming a double line through which Sweeney strolled, steering Ashley in front of him. She couldn't see anyone holding a flute or a harp—no, there was a boom box beside the—the altar? That's what they meant it to be. The wind rustled the leaves of the trees. The lights of farms and cars and the twenty-first century flickered nervously through the waving branches.

She squinted from side to side. The faces beneath their floppy white headdresses weren't quite human, let alone male or female. There, a pair of dark eyes glinted as she walked past—that must be Nick, even though she was reminded, weirdly, of Gareth.

Had Gareth and Matilda been planning to come here tonight? She wasn't sure. Again she stumbled. Succeeding waves of patchouli and marijuana, sweat and beer filled her nostrils. Something tightened her shoulder blades and made her stomach wriggle uneasily.
If it feels wrong.
... This place would make anyone feel creepy, she assured herself.

The torch cast a glow over the spring. The water shimmered as though something smooth and silky swam just beneath its surface. Sweeney's piloting hand eased her down on one end of the altar-box. Some of the greenery poked her and she inched away. He began speaking.

Ashley frowned. He'd paraded in here like a priest down the aisle of a church. And now he was saying something pompous, with lots of big words, about welcome and dedication. If he wanted to make fun of these people, why was he directing them? That hardly seemed fair.

The gentle harp music stopped. A clash of electric guitars segued into lilting cadences played in the minor keys of the Celtic Fringe. A vocalist sang of Odin and his crows and the blood of the Gael. Someone began thumping a—no, not a drum, a bodhran, a skin stretched over a circular frame. The rhythm quickened Ashley's blood but clarified nothing. She thought of Dionysus and his crazed maenads. Of whirling dervishes. Of Viking berserkers. Of the ancient Celts drunk on mead, poetry, and blood. Her shoulders tightened even further and she glanced behind her. Nothing was there except rock and shadow.

The people formed a line behind the bodhran-player and began to dance, weaving in and out with sudden dips and spins. Each face in turn was illuminated by the torchlight and then plunged again into darkness. From the boom box came the high, clear notes of a bagpipe, playing counterpoint to the pulse of the electric guitar. Every follicle on Ashley's body tightened into gooseflesh. The hair on the back of her neck waved in time. This was no farce. The ceremony was compelling her to dance, too, to leap the ambiguous boundary between light and darkness. This was what brought Nick here. This was the spiritual version of a daredevil sport, where the risk of death made life all the sweeter. Matilda was right, there was always time enough to die.

With a satisfied sigh Sweeney sank down onto the altar beside her. His hand traced a slow caress down her back. His eyes glittered in the shade of his hood.
Oh for the love of God,
she thought in disgust and disbelief. He couldn't turn out to be a dirty old man. Not Sweeney. She respected him.

"So you're another clever little girl,” he said quietly into her ear.

"What?"

"Thought you could catch me out, didn't you?” he went on. “But even Madame Gray won't catch me out. There's no one as stupid as an educated woman, my dear. No one."

Isn't he working with Matilda? Ashley asked herself. She didn't like the answer that annoyingly practical part of her mind returned. That part of her mind that informed her she'd better sober up. Fast.

"Matilda and her Scotland Yard git have been dancing to my tune all this time. My trick with the Italian girl and the inscription went down a smashing success, didn't it? It's a shame Adrian Reynolds won't be dancing on air, but a nice long sentence at Pentonville should turn the trick."

Ashley grimaced, trying to work that out.

"Fools, the lot of them. There's nothing so easy to manipulate as a man's faith, is there? Dig up the artifacts, bring them to the kindly old Druid, do your religious duty.... “He laughed.

Sweeney? Good old eccentric, so obnoxious he was a joke, Sweeney? He was behind the antiquities thefts? And she'd trusted him. She'd even compared him favorably to her father!

Matilda, Ashley thought. Matilda's going to flip out.... She leaped to her feet. Sweeney's hand grabbed her arm and pulled her back down. The music lilted on. The dancers danced. There seemed to be more of them now. Maybe they were dividing, like amoebas. “Let go of me!” she demanded, yanking at her arm.

Sweeney held on.

"Here's another clever little girl.” His breath was foul and Ashley gagged. She yanked again at her arm, this time breaking free. Sweeney's hand seized the back of her gown and jerked her down with a thud. Crystals and leaves went rolling away across the altar.

The night was dark and the music was loud. No one realized what was happening. No one would help her. She had to help herself. She made fists, raised her elbows, and wished she'd taken a self-defense class.

Something glinted in the corner of her eye. Glancing around, she saw Sweeney's other hand resting on her shoulder. Light reflected from the object he held, something long and sharp. A knife blade. It pricked her neck with an icy kiss.
Another clever little.
... As surely as though she'd plunged her head into the chill depths of Brighid's well she realized what he meant. Linda.