Tyack & Frayne Mysteries 01 - Once Upon A Haunted Moor (7 page)

In a cavern beneath the crags, Gideon stared at Joe Kemp’s body. He clung to an outcrop of stone in the narrow granite passage that had brought him here.  He shone his torch down to the floor of the deep cave, and wondered how he’
d come to think such evil of his old friend. Joe must have come here from Sarah’s after all. Why he’d departed so abruptly, God knew, but what was more natural than the local shepherd tending his sheep? The hillside was riddled with holes. The mist had been thick, the ground slippery, the Prowse kid a shameless young liar. The dog had hunted down a corpse. Joe was face-down on the rocks, but Gideon could tell. No-one could have survived a fall like that.

“Isolde?” He
directed the beam of the torch back the way he’d come. He could just about make out her prick-eared face in the gap above his head, but she’d used up her new courage and wasn’t about to follow him down. Well, she’d done enough. “All right, old girl,” he called shakily. “You stay there.”

Cautiously he picked his way down the scree-cluttered slope. Treasure chests, these underground systems could be, opening up onto veins of copper, tin, silver, the occasional rare thread of Cor
nish gold. All of it laced with arsenic, the miners holding their pasties by the handles baked into their crusts... The deadly beauty glimmered all around him as he reached the cavern floor and crouched beside Joe. Joe’s head was at a weird angle – neck broken, probably – but Gideon had to be sure. He reached to find a pulse.

His fingers broke the surface of Joe’s skin. It crumbled like dried-up old leather. On an instinct just a fraction stronger than his need to jump back yelling, he took the corpse by one shoulder and turned it to see its face. A mummified, eyeless mask stared back at him. One wild theory seized him –
is this the shell he leaves behind when he becomes the Beast?
– but only for a heartbeat, and then he finally recognised Joe’s brother Alf.

Gideon knelt, breathing hard. “I’m sorry, Alf,” he whispered. No-one had really investigated his disappearance. The remote possibility of accident vanished as Gideon found the hole in the back of his skull. Shotgun calibre, close range. Tenderly Gideon laid him down again.

He stood up and looked around. The cavern arched up and away into the darkness all around him. He could see no signs of mining works. If there had been, the place might have been marked on the old survey maps he had shown the tracker teams in the first days of the search for Lorna. This was Joe’s discovery, his underground realm, although the faintest rippling patterns on the rocks overhead told Gideon that others had found it, so long ago that stalactites had formed over their art. This close to the Cheesewring, a cave like this would have been sacred space.

Gideon needed help. He could see from where he stood that dozens of tunnels branched off from the main cavern, some of them likely only niches that would peter out in a few yards, other larger, promising endless labyrinthine depths
in their dark jaws. No mobile signal here. He had to get out, run back down the crags to the place where he’d pick up a line from the Minions Hill transmitter. Now he had a corpse to show for his efforts, he’d get back his search teams and tracker dogs fast enough, Halloween or no Halloween. It would take him thirty minutes tops to raise the alarm.

He couldn’t leave. Set against all this sound common sense was a feeling like roses and gold behind his heart – a firelit sensation of reasonless joy. He’d only known it once before in his life, and that had been on waking up at Lee Tyack’s side.

Lee was close by. Not questioning himself or the firelit roses any more, Gideon set off. He would walk the perimeter of the cave. The idea of finding some kind of sign was absurd, and yet he was as sure of it as he was of the rocks beneath his feet, rocks shimmering with galaxies of mica flakes, veined through with quartz and...

Silver. Yes, but not in a coil like that, a tiny sleeping
snake. He ran the last few yards into the mouth of a narrow, jagged tunnel, expecting the gleam to resolve itself into water, a trick of the light.

It was neither. It was Lee’s silver chain. Only a man looking for a sign would have seen it. Carefully Gideon scooped it up. Last time he had seen it, it had been shining warmly against olive skin. He restrained
a cry, a reactive shout of Lee’s name. If he was in earshot and able to reply, Gideon had been making enough noise up here that he would have called out. An instinct for silence closed Gideon’s throat. Where the hell was Joe Kemp now? Gideon tucked the chain into his pocket. Wrapping his handkerchief round the head of the torch to dim its light, he set off as quietly as he could into the tunnel.

***

In a cleft so deep in the earth that he’d almost given up, Gideon found them. He stopped dead. The diffused light from his torch leapt drunkenly as he fought not to drop it, not to fall to his knees. Was this what Joe did? Did he bring his victims here, kill them and leave them for time to do its work of decay? The child was curled up close to the man. Lee’s wrists and ankles were tied with nylon rope. She – perhaps in a last urge to give or find comfort – had huddled up against him, put an arm around his waist. Gideon steadied the torch. He had to: he’d seen movement, and he had to be sure.
Oh God
, he prayed inchoately to a deity Pastor Frayne had never known, which had more in common with the ancient earth goddess once worshipped in these caves.
Oh God, let them be breathing.

He ran to Lee’s side. He always carried a knife: his dog had a gift for getting herself tangled in the furze, and he’d often had to cut her out. He sliced the bindings round Lee’
s wrists with the sturdy blade. “Yes,” he said, his voice a broken rasp, and even when he closed his lips to shut himself up, the word pealed in his mind like twenty bells. Yes, yes, yes – because the movement had been the slow rise and fall of Lee’s ribs.

Lorna Kemp woke up. Expecting the monster, her face contorted ready for a scream. Then her eyes went wide in recognition. “Mister Constable!”

“That’s right, my sweet.” He couldn’t spare a hand for her, not yet. He cut the rope around Lee’s ankles, leaned over him and examined his face in the torchlight. It was serene, too still. “You’re all right now.”

She struggled to sit up. “Is he dead? The nice man?”

“No. He’s alive. Did you see what happened to him?”

“It were my uncle Joe.” Gideon was almost glad to see that her little face could still suffuse with tears, that she was still able to feel and react. “Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe.”

“I know it was. What did he do – Uncle Joe, to the nice man?”

“He made him drink the water, same as he does me. It tastes funny. It makes you go to sleep. Uncle Joe says he don’t want to hurt me – not the man neither, so he gives us the drink. But he’s got a gun, and he won’t let us go, and I want my mam, and – ”

She was building up for an explosion. God knew she deserved one, but Gideon gently covered her mouth. “Lorna. This man is called Lee, and he’s a friend of mine. You’re safe now, and I’m going to get you both out, but you’ve got to help me by not crying.”

“You’re not setting her a good example.”

Gideon gasped. Lee was sitting up, rubbing at his wrists. He met Gideon’s eyes. “I think that bastard drugged me.”

Gideon forgot the child. For a second his mind blanked everything but Lee Tyack’s pallid, welcoming smile. He hauled him into his arms. “God, I thought I’d lost you! And the kid...” He gave poor Lee a rib-cracking squeeze and half-dropped him back onto the rocks. “Lorna, my sweet, you’re alive.” He hoisted her up, swung her round and
settled her on his hip. She gave a startled laugh despite her tears and reached to dab at his. “You’re not setting me a ’zample, Gid.”

“Don’t suppose I am.” Gideon wiped his eyes on his sleeve. “I’m just very happy. I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy as this. Lee, can you stand up? Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Lee said, pushing unsteadily upright. He was looking at Gideon as if he’d never seen him before, as if he wanted to shield his eyes from a blaze of light. “I’m fine. You found your missing child.”

“I think
you
did. What happened?”

“He knocked at your door – Joe Kemp. Had his rifle over his arm like he was off shooting rabbits. Soon as I let him in, he cocked it and pointed it at me.”

“Why’d you let him in? Did you know...”

“That he was the face
of the monster?” Lee glanced anxiously at the child, but she was still half-drugged, resting her head on Gideon’s shoulder. “As soon as I saw him, yes. And I saw that he meant to bring me to where she was, so I did as he said.”

“He made you tidy your things away, so it would look like you’d just gone.”

“Yeah. I thought if I left the bed in a mess, though – ”

“I understood. I got your signal.” They both smiled at the nature of it. “I don’t get it. His quad bike and truck are still down in the sheds.”

“He walked me up here. It was misty and there was no-one about. I thought about knocking him down and making a run for it a couple of times, but I wanted to go with him. I didn’t know how else we’d find the kid, not after I’d drawn that blank on Wheal Catherine, and – ”

“Wheal Catherine!” Lorna jolted and woke up. She looked from Lee to Gideon in bewilderment, as if they’d roused her from a dream. “I don’t want to go back there.”

Gideon stroked her hair. “You won’t. Is that where you were at first, though?”

She nodded. “Yes. We used to go on picnics there. He put me down one of the holes, and he... he
left
me.”

“But he came back?”

“Mm-hm. But the holes weren’t deep enough. He said they might find me there. But they’d already looked up here by the crags, so if he brought me here, they’d never... they’d never...”

She crushed her face back into Gideon’s shoulder. He covered her exposed ear with one hand and said quietly to Lee, “If I ever get my hands on the bastard... He told the Prowse kid he was the Beast of Bodmin, for God’s sakes. So that’s why he came after you, then – he overheard Sarah saying you’d
guided us out to Wheal Catherine. That was when he made a run for it.”

“I thought he seemed a bit scared of me, for a man with a hunting rifle in his hands. He told me to stay out of his head. The Prowses did know something, then?”

“Hell, yeah. You were right about that – the window, the roses, everything. He came and took her out of Bill Prowse’s house in the night. I’ll tell you all about it, but we should get going – can you walk?”

“Yeah. Whatever he uses, it wears off fast, but...” Lee made a face and rubbed at the back of his head. “I think it’s meant for sheep. The kid needs a doctor.”

“I know. Soon as we’re out of here and I can get a mobile signal. Come on.”

The uphill route out was tougher than the way in, but Gideon hardly felt it. To him it was a triumphal procession, Lee’s warmth at his side and the weight of the child in his arms the spoils of a war he’d never imagined could be won. Lee took a breath of relief when they emerged from the cramped passage into the cavern’s open space. “There’s dozens of caves like this under here,” he said, steadying Gideon and Lorna up a sharp rise. “You can’t even see the entrance to this one from up top, not unless you know what you’re looking for. How did you find it?”

“I didn’t. Will you believe it was the dog? She...” He fell silent, drawing Lee to a halt. As if on cue, he had picked up a faint sound of growling. “She wouldn’t come down here with me. She was scared, or...” The growling pitched up into snarls, then a wild volley of barking. A yelp terminated the sounds, sharp as a knife through wire.

“Or she knew he’d come back,” Lee finished grimly in the ensuing silence. “He’s dangerous. I think there’s a body down here already, though I couldn’t see – ”

“There is.” Gideon left it at that: perhaps the kid would never have to know. She was alert again, eyes wide in fear at the sounds from above. Gently Gideon detached her limpet grip and held her out to Lee. “Take hold of her. Then I want the two of you to stay behind me.”

“That doesn’t sit too well with me, Gideon.”

“I know. But I’m a police officer, and... Listen. Whatever happens, just look after her, okay?”

A shape was moving down from the top of the scree-covered slope. Its gait was odd, and the shadows cast behind it by Gideon’s torch leapt into strange vulpine shapes. There was no chance of concealment, so Gideon stepped out. “Joe Kemp!” he called, because what else could it be? He tuned out the thin shrieks of the child, who could see what he did but didn’t share his adult agenda to force the monster into human form. “Kemp, stay where you are.”

The creature came to a halt. It hunched down on the scree. Its voice was thick and rough, but a run across the misty moor would do that. “Ah, Gideon. You found my cave, then.”

“Yes. What have you done, Joe?”

“If I told you nothing, would you believe me?”

“If you can explain – with all my heart.” Somehow Gideon still meant it. His knowledge of the man refused to run in tandem with the evidence. Nevertheless he held his position between Joe and the child. “Explain to me.”

“Oh, I’ll explain. Maybe a lonely bastard like you will even get it – hiding away like a toad under a stone until your lad got sick of you and walked away. I’m just back from seeing Sarah. I thought I’d give her one last chance.”