Sacrifice (38 page)

A few seconds later, the two pupils veered away along an adjoining passage and vanished. Heck glanced left and right. Tall, arched windows gave glimpses of more sunny quadrangles – no one was out there. The school seemed amazingly quiet, though he thought he heard a distant angry shout. No other voice responded to it, and Mrs Clayley didn’t so much as flinch. When they reached the entrance hall, several more pupils were hanging around for no obvious reason. A couple of these might have been sixth-formers; the rest were younger. Again, Heck couldn’t immediately place their faces, though he hadn’t memorised everyone on that picture.

‘Are you people waiting to see someone?’ Mrs Clayley asked, bustling forward, cape fluttering. There were low, incoherent replies. ‘I can take care of that, Luke, thank you very much. The rest of you, shoo! If you’re on study period that means you should be studying. Come on now!’

Disgruntled, the youngsters sloped away. It might have been Heck’s imagination, but one of them cast a quick, venomous glance in his and Gemma’s direction. Outside, walking to the car, he looked back. The ivy-hung casements were blank screens, yet he could sense that from some of them at least, hostile eyes were watching.

‘How soon can we get that warrant?’ he said, as he drove them away.

‘I’m on it now,’ Gemma replied, fiddling with her mobile.

They maintained a steady pace along the drive, strangely relieved to feel the school buildings falling behind.

‘If nothing else, we can certify the competence of the History Society,’ Heck remarked. ‘We’ve seen for ourselves how thoroughly they prep.’ He glanced at Gemma, who was still trying to get through but without success. ‘No signal?’

‘No bloody answer. There’s always some damn reason …’

‘Keep trying.’

‘I intend to. Just drive, will you?’

Heck put his foot down, but several minutes later, when they were still at least a mile short of the main road, he hit the brakes and they skidded to a halt.

On their right, a small wooden signpost pointed down a side-road. It read:

Old Pavilion

The side-road was little more than a dirt track. Trees and thickets crowded its verges, but it rolled off to a considerable distance, following what was roughly a straight line until vanishing in a leafy, sun-spattered haze.

‘We’ve already got more than enough to raid this place,’ Gemma said. ‘Why delay?’

‘May help us remove any shadow of a doubt,’ Heck replied.

‘So we find their clubhouse. We can’t enter it yet. What good will it do?’

‘Probably none, but are we really going to ignore it? Drive past without looking?’

She glanced at her watch. ‘Okay … five minutes tops, and then we’re out of here.’

He swung the car right, and they drove for several minutes, deep green dells flitting past on either side, the dirt road spooling out ahead. Eventually it began meandering, swerving from side to side, and it continued in this vein for another mile or so until they emerged into an open glade that was large enough to once have contained at least a couple of cricket pitches, though all were now hidden under tides of fresh ferns and flowering thorns. The track ended abruptly, Heck applying the handbrake and turning the engine off. Silence followed. It was mid-afternoon and May sunshine bathed everything, yet there was an eerie stillness to this forgotten place.

Three buildings were arranged in a row along the western edge of the glade. Two, the ones at either end, were no more than dilapidated shacks nailed up with planks, but the central structure was the one they recognised from the campfire photo.

The Old Pavilion.

Clearly, it had once been handsome: built from whitewashed wood, with a low, steeply tilted thatched roof, a central steeple in which a bell had hung, and a clock on the triangular gable overlooking the frontal verandah. Now, its paintwork had flaked, birds nested in its eaves and weeds grew from its thatch-work. The clock was missing fingers and its numerals were barely visible. The ground around it was deeply overgrown, though a footpath snaked through this to the foot of the verandah steps.

‘Let’s have a poke around, eh?’ Heck said.

Gemma glanced across the open space where the pitches had been. On all sides of it stood a bulwark of trees and bushes, hints of green shadow visible among them.

‘Gemma?’ he said.

She nodded and they climbed out, the double-thump of their doors echoing through the encircling woods. They paused again, listening, still hearing nothing. Finally, they ventured along the footpath. It was wide enough for them to walk two abreast, the well-trodden grass flattened and brown. They noticed rut-marks in it, as if wheeled carts had been pushed back and forth, or bicycles.

‘That explains how they get around the estate,’ Gemma said. ‘Not going to look good in court. That these heinous criminals toured the school grounds on their push-bikes, dingling their bells, with packed lunches in their baskets …’

There was a crackle of foliage.

Heck, now at the foot of the verandah steps, whipped around. Nothing stirred – either out in the deep grass or under the shadows of the watching trees. They glanced towards the car. Behind it, the shady track veered from sight.

They ascended the steps, their feet clumping on hollow, desiccated wood. The main door was closed and padlocked – but compared to everything else here, the padlock was shiny and new. Not that this made any difference. They couldn’t have forced an entrance legally. There were windows to either side. The glass in these was dusty and yellow with age; difficult enough to gaze through, though as a further security measure both looked to have been covered on the other side with black crepe paper.

They strode along the verandah to its left-hand corner. Here, they followed a narrow path running between the Pavilion and the shack alongside it. They passed a couple more windows. These too had been covered on the inside, apart from the last one; in this case, the bottom right corner of the paper, having caught on the backrest of a chair, had shifted, creating a narrow aperture. Heck crouched and peered through, Gemma handing him a pen-light. The beam penetrated seven or eight feet into the gloomy interior. The first thing he saw was a pile of square-cut timber. It looked fresh and new. Beyond that stood a rack of colourful clothing.

‘Theatrical costumes,’ he said. ‘With a Father Christmas suit noticeably absent. They’ve either been making their own here, or they’ve been lifting them from the drama department. Hang on … there’s something else.’

He angled the light down, and in the near foreground, close to the window, he spied two paint pots. Both were open and empty, but drying emulsion had streaked down their sides. One of them was white, one of them pink.

Nice colours for a maypole
, he thought
. The little bastards!

‘We’re going to need that warrant quickly if we don’t want all this stuff to disappear,’ he said. Gemma didn’t reply. He saw that she’d walked along the path to the rear of the Pavilion. He followed.

‘What do you make of this?’ she said.

An articulated lorry was parked close to the Pavilion’s rear wall, its bodywork and that of its trailer grubby and dented. While Gemma grabbed her radio and made a PNC check, Heck circled around it, stopping every yard to snap pictures on his mobile. He paid particular attention to the tyre treads, which, though he couldn’t be sure, looked eerily reminiscent of the marks left on the slagheap near the crucifixion site.

The doors at the back of it were closed and padlocked; again, the padlock was new. The lorry was parked at the convergence of two additional dirt tracks. One led around the far side of the three buildings onto the cricket pitches, but was long disused – its wheel-ruts deep in grass and nettles. The other led in the opposite direction; this too was rugged and unmade, enclosed by trees, but the lack of vegetation breaking its surface suggested that it was used regularly. Heck tried to recall the rough layout of the grounds from the map they’d studied before coming here. There were roads and tracks all over the estate, but only two exits and entrances: the main entrance/exit was on the south side, but there was also a gate on the west. This secondary road might connect with that, though it was impossible to tell from here.

His eyes now alighted on something else. Twenty yards along on the left, half concealed by foliage, stood a vehicle port. It was open at the front, but the walls at its back and sides were of aged brick. The roof, which was corrugated metal, was covered with moss, grime and several decades of autumn leaves. Six cars were stored in there: a Ford Fiesta, a Ford Focus, a Toyota Avensis, a Volkswagen Polo, a Peugeot Clio, and a bright orange MG convertible, its roof folded back.

‘The HGV’s a knocker,’ Gemma said, coming up behind him. ‘Stolen over a year ago, would you believe … from Humberside.’

‘No doubt during a very educational History Society trip to see the wharfs and cranes,’ Heck replied. ‘What about these?’

She gazed at the clutch of half-hidden motors. ‘Jesus …’

‘The rest of the fleet,’ he said.

‘Time we got this ball rolling.’

‘Agreed.’

They headed back along the path to the cricket pitches. Heck got onto his radio. ‘All units from DS Heckenburg … be advised, no one is to leave the school grounds until I tell you otherwise. Anyone tries, pull them over on the basis that persons here are suspected of committing serious criminal offences, and detain them until either Detective Superintendent Piper or I get there. That goes especially for Dr Leo Enwright. He is now our prime suspect in the Desecrator murders. I repeat
he is our prime suspect
. Over and out.’

As before, the vast open space in front of the Pavilion was deserted. The shadows under the trees lay still and silent. They moved back along the path to the car.

‘You drive again,’ Gemma said as they climbed in. ‘I’ve got some calls to make.’

He glanced behind them as he switched the engine on and shifted the BMW into a reverse position – only for it to snag on something at the rear, and then sag downwards.

‘What now?’ Gemma groaned.

Heck jumped out and rounded the side of the vehicle – where an arrow was stuck diagonally through the rear nearside tyre.

‘Get down!’ he shouted, leaping back in. Gemma was too surprised to move. ‘Down, I said!’ He gunned the engine, only to freeze at the sight of another arrow winging across the open space towards them. With a jarring crunch, it punched through the windscreen. Gemma screamed in agony.

Heck didn’t even look to see how badly Gemma was hit, he just threw the car into reverse and revved it backwards along the track, mud and grit flying in front of it. A third arrow struck the vehicle, ripping through the bonnet, leaving a gouge the length of a human arm.

‘Oh … my God,’ Gemma stammered. ‘Heck …’

The dirt road was perilous at this speed, especially in reverse and with a deflated tyre. The BMW was all over the track as Heck divided his attention between the rear-view mirror and his passenger. She sat rigid, shaking violently. The arrow had buried itself in her right shoulder; blood was pulsing out.

‘This is Heck,’ he bawled into his radio. ‘Urgent message … we’re under attack at the Old Pavilion! Gemma’s suffered an arrow wound and is losing blood fast! All units get in here now, including Trojans … and get an ambulance!’

Every jolt and bounce was a hammer blow to Gemma. She tried not to cry out, but it was almost impossible. ‘Oh my
Goood!
’

‘Just hang on!’ He kept his foot to the floor, rounding bend after bend, twigs and leaves crackling along the BMW’s bodywork. They still had at least two miles to go to the main drive, but they ought to be out of arrow range by now, so he could stop and turn around – at which point another car appeared in front of them.

At first Heck spotted only a bright orange flash – they were accelerating around tight corners at breakneck speed – but then he saw it again; the MG convertible from the vehicle port. Astonishingly, it was being driven by the carrot-topped kid he’d seen at the school. Standing up in the back, his athletic legs braced wide apart, was archery champ, Doug Latimer. A packed quiver hung at his hip, and his hi-tech hunting bow was again at full stretch. Even as Heck gawked at him, Latimer loosed another arrow. It whistled at them with speed and accuracy, only missing because the BMW was in mid-manoeuvre. Again they rounded a bend, the car hitting the verge and almost tipping. Two hubcaps hurtled into the undergrowth; heavy branches threshed the vehicle’s flank.

Gemma’s breath was ragged and stuttering. She’d managed to claw a handkerchief from her jacket pocket, and clamp it to the base of the arrow, but the makeshift poultice was already a sopping, crimson mess.

‘We need back-up now!’ Heck howled into his radio. ‘I repeat, we are under fire!’

The MG swept into sight again, just ahead. It was much closer, less than sixty yards away. Latimer loosed another arrow. His ride too was jolting, he swayed and tottered, but his aim was unerring. The missile hit the weakened windscreen square-on, passing clean through the interior, missing Heck’s cheek by inches, thumping into the backrest in the rear.

Heck floored his pedal even though they were on another murderous curve. The suspension shrieked; a third hubcap went spinning away. But the next time the MG came in sight their problems would
really
begin. Only the turns in the track had saved them up to now, but the last mile or so was a straight stretch. That was where the MG would catch up and where, for a marksman like Latimer, they’d be sitting ducks.

Heck risked another glance at Gemma. She was icy-pale, drenched with blood and sweat. Her eyelids fluttered, but he could see that she was doing everything in her power to resist fainting. One hand still clutched the crimson dressing to her wound; the other was jammed against the dashboard. It was an impressive feat of courage, but it wouldn’t count for much if Heck didn’t do something soon.

He made a desperate decision.

They swerved, screeching, around a final bend. The MG briefly fell out of sight – and Heck jammed his brakes on, the BMW shuddering to a slantwise halt.