Last Rites (24 page)

I opened the bag and started to pull out the rest of its contents.

‘Four deaths, and two missing persons, plus Sarah,’ I said. I waved a piece of paper, a print-out of an old newspaper report. ‘April Mather. Jumped naked from the top of Blacko Tower ten years ago. Thirty years old.’ I glanced at the press picture of a smiling woman with long blonde hair, her head thrown back. It seemed such a waste.

‘Naked?’ asked Carson.

‘So the report says.’

‘And what the hell is Blacko Tower?’

‘An old stone folly close to Pendle Hill,’ I replied. ‘Some people think it is connected to the Pendle witches, but it isn't. It is just what it looks like: a small tower on a hill.’

‘What did the family say about it?’ asked Kinsella.

I scanned the words quickly. ‘No direct quotes. She was married, one child, a boy. Her husband just wanted to be left to get over his grief undisturbed.’

‘What about suspicious circumstances?’

‘It doesn't say. Nothing about how she got onto Blacko Tower, or where she had been before then, or why she was naked. But if I keep on looking, I can find out more.’ I reached in for another sheet. ‘Rebecca Nurse. A nineteen-year-old girl from Higham, a small village not far from the hill. She set off walking to meet some friends in a pub, but she never arrived. The road is a country road, quiet and dark. She was found near to Sabden Brook two days later.’ When I saw Carson look at me, I said, ‘Sabden Brook is a small stream that runs to Newchurch.’

‘How long after the first one?’ asked Kinsella.

‘Around eighteen months,’ I replied.

‘And how did she die?’

‘Anally raped and strangled,’ I said. ‘Her hands were tied behind her back and linked to a thin cord around her neck, so that she was strangled by her own efforts to escape, killed like a dog on a choker. The police thought the brook was just a dumping ground, because there were grazes on her, and it's just soggy grassland down there.’

‘Suspects?’ asked Carson, although his mind seemed elsewhere, as if he was thinking back.

‘I don't know,’ I said. ‘Her boyfriend was away at university, and the papers don't mention any arrest or descriptions. It even went onto
Crimewatch
.’

Carson spluttered a laugh. ‘That's like panning for gold.’ When I looked confused, he said, ‘You can get rich, but on the whole you get more dirt than nuggets.’ He nodded towards the bag. ‘Next?’

I pulled out the next bundle of papers.

‘Mary Lacey,’ I said. ‘A nurse from Preston. She had an apartment on the docks, and used to walk home down the hill from the town centre, past all the down-and-out guest houses and hovels. One night, she never made it home.’

‘I know that one,’ said Carson, folding his arms. ‘I'd just joined the murder squad. She was found on the banks of the Ribble.’

‘That's right, four days later,’ I said. ‘And she didn't die in the water, did she?’

Carson shook his head. ‘No. Raped and strangled.’

‘Just like Rebecca Nurse,’ I said.

‘No rope used, though,’ said Carson, scowling. ‘If you're trying to say we missed something, there is nothing to say that they were connected.’

‘Both raped and strangled and left by water,’ I said.

‘But the ties weren't used,’ Carson replied. ‘That's the signature. Mary had been beaten up, and her walk home didn't take her through the best part of town. The best we could come up with was a random sex attacker – you know, because she was on her own and in the wrong place at the wrong time – and just pray that it didn't happen again.’

‘Well, it did,’ I said. ‘The following spring. Susannah Martin. A shop assistant. She went to work and never came home. She was found in some woods near Skipton a week later.’

‘Is that all the deaths?’ asked Kinsella.

I nodded. ‘The other two are just missing persons.’

Carson's mouth twitched for a moment. ‘So why do you think they are connected to Sarah Goode?’

I gave him a look of surprise. ‘Four members of the same coven die within a few years of each other, and you wonder about the connection?’

Carson ground his teeth and clenched his jaw, so Kinsella intervened and asked, ‘So what about the missing persons?’

‘There was a gap after the murders, and the missing persons are more recent,’ I said. ‘One a year over the last two years. Bridget Bishop. She ran a shop in Accrington, selling Celtic jewellery and crystals, all that New Age stuff. One day she was there, and the next day she wasn't. But the business had been struggling, money was tight, and everyone thought she had run away to somewhere warm where the bank couldn't find her. The same for Lizzie Parris. Bit of a local wild child, just twenty, but she had spent the previous three years hitchhiking to festivals and travellers' camps. She set off on one of her trips and never made it home.’

Carson exhaled loudly and flicked through the paperwork dismissively Kinsella was stroking his chin, and he looked deep in thought.

‘So is this everything?’ asked Carson.

I nodded. ‘I was given a list of names.’

‘By whom?’

‘I can't say, but I got all this from the internet and the library archives, so it's no great secret. They were all members of the Family Coven, and they have all died or gone missing in the last decade, starting with April Mather.’

Carson exchanged glances with Kinsella and then went to the door, opening it for me. ‘Thank you, Mr Garrett. If you'll leave this with us.’

I smiled. ‘No problem.’ I stopped myself just before I got to the door. ‘Did I mention that the four bodies were found on one of the sabbats?’

Carson's irritation returned. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘They are the Wicca celebrations, the special days in witchcraft,’ I said, enjoying his reaction.

‘What, like we have Easter and things like that?’ asked Kinsella.

I nodded. ‘A closer match than you might think. In Wicca, Easter is called Oestara, as it was in Celtic times, when it was a festival of balance, the twenty-first of March, when day and night are equal and the long nights of winter are slowly disappearing. It's named after Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess whose symbols are the egg and the hare.’

‘Easter eggs and Easter bunnies?’ he queried.

‘It seems that way,’ I replied. ‘It looks like our Easter has a background that isn't just about Jesus and the resurrection.’

‘So these festivals, these sabbats,’ queried Carson, his hand still on the door, ‘do they always coincide with the discovery of the bodies?’

‘It seems that way.’

‘But what do these sabbats represent?’ asked Kinsella. ‘The Christian festivals mark an event. The birth of Christ, his death and resurrection.’

‘You have to put the old Celtic festivals into the context of a world built entirely around crops,’ I said. ‘If the crops failed, people died. In Wicca, there are four major festivals, all built around the crop cycles and seasons.
Imbolg is the second of February, when the buds first appear. Beltane is the first of May, when the blossom comes out. Lammas is the first of August, when the harvests begin, and Samhain is when the frosts begin.’

‘And what date is Samhain?’ asked Carson.

I saw Kinsella's eyes grow keen. It looked like he'd guessed the answer.

‘It's today,’ I said. ‘We call it Halloween. In ancient times they called it Samhain, and it was the start of winter. The Celts put a spiritual slant on it. Samhain was the end of the Celtic year, and they said that it was when the veil between the land of the living and of the dead was at its thinnest.’

‘So that's why you are saying that Sarah Goode will die today,’ said Carson incredulously, ‘because it fits in with some ancient Celtic festival?’

I took a deep breath. ‘It is quite possible.’

‘So tell me how the others fitted into these sabbats.’

‘Remember April Mather?’ I asked. ‘The first one, who jumped naked from Blacko Tower?’

Carson nodded.

‘That was Samhain,’ I said. ‘Ten years ago today. And Rebecca Nurse,’ I continued, my hands flicking through the paperwork. ‘She was the girl who disappeared on the way to the pub, found down by the brook. That was Imbolg: the second of February. As I go through the list, it is the same thing. Mary Lacey, the nurse from Preston found by the river. Beltane: the first of May. So was Susannah Martin, the young shop assistant found in the woods.’ I put down my list. ‘Sarah will die today,’ I said solemnly, ‘and so I'll let you two get on with some police work.’

‘And where are you going?’ asked Carson.

‘Back to the beginning,’ I said, and then I left the room. But before I closed the door, I glanced in and saw the two detectives looking at the pile of papers on the desk, and then at each other. Neither of them moved.

The wind was blowing crisply through the Pendle valley as I walked towards Blacko Tower. I had my collar hitched up to my ears and my hands thrust deep into my pockets.

I remembered Katie's words: go back to the start. The story has to start somewhere, and Blacko Tower seemed to be the death furthest back. April Mather had jumped from it ten years earlier, and a few photographs might add a good touch. But it was more than that. I felt like I was in a race against time.

The tower was easy to find, about thirty feet high with a castellated top, sitting proudly on a hill that rose out of the Pendle valley like a hump, but I had to clamber over a gate to begin the climb. When I got up to it, the tower wasn't very wide, with just enough room for a winding staircase leading to a view from the top, so that it was like a giant chess piece, the rook, dropped into the countryside. As I looked around, the view was spectacular, looking down onto farm buildings and a few houses from a nearby village. I took some photographs and made some notes, just first impressions,
when I heard someone shout. A quad bike headed towards me, the noise of the engine getting louder as it struggled to make it up the hill.

The rider jumped off as he got near, and I saw from the look on his face that he hadn't come over to pass the time of day.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you are doing here?’

He looked to be in his fifties, too old to be on a quad bike, but his rosy skin and the redness of his knuckles told me that he'd spent most of his life outdoors.

‘Taking pictures,’ I said innocently.

‘This is private land,’ he bellowed at me.

I looked around theatrically. ‘I didn't see the sign.’

‘Well, look harder.’

‘Is it your land?’

The man shook his head. ‘No, but I help the owner keep an eye on it. This time of the year, all the Goths and black arts crowd come here to hum at the moon, or whatever they do.’

I smiled. ‘I suppose what happened to April Mather must make the landowner nervous.’

He stalled at that, and then looked at me with suspicion. ‘Who are you?’

‘Jack Garrett, a reporter. I'm writing a story on the tower.’ It was a partial lie, but it was too early to tip people off about the story. ‘Do you remember the April Mather death?’

He nodded slowly, unsure whether he should respond.

‘Did it seem suspicious at the time?’

He started to smile. ‘Not with all those witnesses.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Like I say, Halloween attracts all the local weirdos. Most people go to Pendle Hill, but a few make their way here, and back then, Halloween at the tower was like a bonfire party.’

‘And April Mather? Did you know her?’

‘Everyone knew April Mather,’ he said with a smirk.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Her father was some local big-shot,’ he replied, ‘and April seemed to like pissing him off. I used to see her in the pubs round here from when she was fourteen. No one asked her age because she took up with the local biker crowd.’ He shook his head dismissively. ‘They are worse than the tree-huggers for lighting fires.’

‘Wasn't she a bit young for them?’

He chuckled. ‘If you were young, attractive and promiscuous, they only cared that you were legally old enough, and she was by the time they got round to her. Just.’ He leaned in and whispered, even though there was no one around to overhear, ‘The police raided a pub once, because the landlord was serving cheap ale to the local kids. When they got there, they found April Mather lying on a pool table, wearing nothing below the waist but the hairy-arsed biker she was humping, with the rest of the pub either cheering her on or standing there with their dicks in their hands, waiting their turn.’ He shook his head. ‘She was seventeen years old.’

‘I can see why she would be remembered,’ I said. ‘But
the April Mather I read about was a married woman with a child.’

He curled his lip in distaste. ‘She was a mess, in here,’ he said, tapping his head with his finger, ‘and people started to get sick of her. So she set up with one of the bikers more seriously, kept herself in with the crowd, and they set up a bike workshop together, knocking out custom choppers. They had a little boy, and for a few years she calmed down, but then she started drinking again, and I mean seriously drinking. I saw her a few times staggering along the lanes. Almost hit her once.’

‘What, she lived nearby?’

‘Aye,’ he said, turning round to point at an old stone cottage on a ridge a few hundred yards away. ‘That's what drew her here, to the tower. I reckon she saw the bonfire and came over, hoping for a party. She was drunk when she got here, and brought some whisky with her.’

‘You sound like you were there,’ I said.

He gave me a wry smile. ‘I was. That's why I keep people away from here now, because of what I saw.’

‘Which was?’

‘Some pissed-up biker girl making a nuisance of herself. She was falling around, shouting, flirting, with men and women. She upset a few people, and we would have taken her away, but we didn't want her coming back with a pack of angry bikers, so we just put up with her.’

‘So how did she die?’ I asked.

He seemed to lose some of his smile at that, the
memory of April's death souring his relish at recounting the tale.

‘She started getting all maudlin, like whisky drinkers do, crying and complaining, saying that she was evil. There was some scaffolding around the tower, just for some maintenance work. At midnight, she climbed up the tower on the scaffolding. When she got to the top, she stripped naked and started to shout at us below.’

‘What did people do?’

‘Laughed, mainly. Some told her to be careful, but we were all drunk by then as well. But what we didn't know was that she had taken a ten-foot length of wire with her and hooked it around a scaffold pole. The other end was in a loop, and it was as sharp as cheese wire. She stood on the edge and made a speech, something about, “Do what you will and it harm none”.’ He looked down and took a deep breath. ‘Then she jumped.’ He looked at me, and I saw the pain in his eyes. ‘She'd put the loop around her neck, and it took off her head like a pea being popped from its pod.’

I nodded, understanding, attempting to stay calm, but my mind was trying to remember the quotes. It didn't seem like the right time to pull out my notepad, and I cursed myself for not switching on my voice recorder.

‘So it was a definite suicide,’ I said, almost to myself.

He nodded at me. ‘Unless there was an invisible hand that pushed her, she did it all herself.’

I thanked him and set off back down the hill, heading for my next visit. As I got lower, wondering how a suicide fitted in with Sarah Goode and the other murdered girls,
I heard an engine start and saw the roof of a white van setting off along the country lane.

I ran to where I had left my car, and just made it over the gate when I saw the van disappear around the corner.