“Pull it together, handsome. Don’t get so far out of uniform they never let you back in.”
Gideon looked into the anxious face raised to his. “Sorry,” he said. “Am I being a dick?”
“No, not at all. Just... yourself, only more so. Gideon with the brakes off.”
“Is that bad?”
“Not as far as I’m concerned. But I’m not sure the world’s ready for you. Take pity on the poor mortals, okay?”
“I would, if they would only stop...” Gideon exhaled wearily, running his hands over his hair. “If they’d only stop selling off Cornwall by the pound. And digging up the past when there’s nothing to be gained from it but sorrow.”
“Is that what’s happening here?”
“I don’t know.” Red-tinged clouds cleared in Gideon’s mind. “I hardly know what I’m talking about, to be honest.”
“Today’s the last day of the full moon. You’ll feel better after that.”
“The moon?” He found a reluctant smile. Trust Lee to try to blame his bad behaviour on the heavens. “What’s that got to do with anything? I haven’t got PMT. I’m just... To be honest, I’m worried sick about our kid.”
“I know. We need to talk. And we will, but...”
“Gideon?”
Oh, he was purely going to eat the next bastard who plucked at his sleeve. He swung on his brother, who would have been a hell of a challenge to choke down today, head to toe in thick black cotton as he was. “What?”
“Some help with your investigation, if you can be arsed to take it. Mr Penyar’s decided he would like a word with you after all. About the strange goings-on, as he puts it, and I can’t think of anyone better qualified to deal with those than the two of you.”
The beak-faced little man was back, on the right side of the drystone wall this time, but still using Zeke as a human shield. He looked as if a strong breath of wind would have blown him away. With an effort, Gideon tucked himself back into the form of a kindly, helpful village bobby. “All right, Mr Penyar,” he said, patting his pockets for the notebook he’d left back in Dark along with his uniform and vest. Taking notes on his phone felt all wrong. He didn’t actually miss having a pencil to lick, but still... “Strange goings-on, you say?”
Penyar emerged a little way from behind Zeke’s shoulder. “That’s right. I can tell you all about it, Constable. They say I’m getting forgetful, but I can recall things as well as if they happened yesterday.”
“And did they?”
Penyar smiled vacantly. “What?”
“The goings-on. Did they happen yesterday?”
“A bit before that, it was. Just after...”
“After dark?” Gideon prompted helpfully. “After your dinner, maybe?”
“No, no. About ten years after the war.”
At this point even Zeke allowed himself a discreet eye-roll. But the connections were stirring in Gideon’s head again, wanting to get themselves made even if all that did come of them was sorrow. “No,” he said reluctantly. “If the remains are the age the path lab reckons, that time frame would fit. What kind of goings-on, then, sir?”
“Well, it’s this time of year as brings it back, and the finding of them bones in the field. Every May Eve you’d see them out on the land around here. They’d light fires and jump over ’em.”
“Who would?”
“Why, the godless ones, Constable. And every few years, so they say, the land would call for a sacrifice.”
Unease tugged at Gideon like stomach cramps. “A sacrifice? If that’s so, then it would’ve been a symbolic one, like the wicker man up at Dark. I know a lot of... what you’d call the godless, Mr Penyar, in one way or another, and it’s written into their beliefs that they can’t do harm to any living thing.”
Gideon had seen countless times how spite could act as an animating force, even when bodily strength was gone. The old man stepped out fully from cover and even gave Zeke a small, distracted shove. “Can’t do harm?” He rocked with wheezy cackles. “You young ones, with your Montols and Golowans at Penzance! You want to talk to some of the old girls over at Maze today, prancing about and bowing to the ’Oss. They’ll tell you how the godless around here used not to be so particular.”
Zeke frowned. “You seem to know a lot about them,” he said severely, “for a good Christian.”
“You can only fight the devil if you know about his ways! Your own father taught me that, Pastor Frayne, back when there was something like a church in this land. So I kept a close eye on them—the ones down here in Lamorna, and the ones who used to come and join ’em at Allantide and May Eve. A devil’s dozen of them, there were, with their leader, Granny—”
“All right, all right.” Gideon took a step forward. Short of clapping a hand over this old fool’s mouth, he had no other way of shutting him up, and to do so had become imperative. “I’ve heard enough for now.”
“But I’m trying to tell you. You too, Pastor—you brothers are the law of man and God in this land, aren’t you? This one May Eve, about ten years after the war, a young man came out of nowhere. A stranger, he was, just walking along the road. And he came to Pascoe’s farm, they say, and he never...” Penyar paused dramatically, peering up into his face. “He never returned. What do you say to that, Constable?”
“Sergeant.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’m a sergeant, not a constable. I know it seems to amuse you, and half Cornwall besides, to pretend I never got promoted, but I did, and hard graft it was, too, so—”
“What’s that got to do with my story?”
Absolutely nothing. It’s my last-ditch effort to distract you, that’s all. I don’t even mind that the kids and the elders of Dark never use my proper rank: they need me to be that same old beat-bobby to them, and I’m happy to oblige. “The truth is, Mr Penyar, that I’m on my day off here, and I don’t have any of the things I need to make a proper note of your story. Give me a ring at the station in Dark tomorrow, and I’ll come down to your house and take your statement.”
Penyar recoiled. “Oh, you can’t do that.”
“Why ever not?”
“It’s one thing me telling you out here. The wind has no ears. I can’t speak to you at home, or let you write my words down. There’s them that ought rightly to be dead, see, but still they live, and they know things they shouldn’t, like Granny—”
“So, you’ll spread your malice and gossip, but not stand up behind it like a man? That’s called wasting police time, sir.” And what you’re doing, Sergeant Tyack-Frayne, is called intimidating a witness. He waited tensely for Lawrence to point this out. He didn’t want to glance in her direction—Zeke’s face was a grim enough source of reproof.
Lee, though, was catching up fast. “You know what?” he said pleasantly, moving to take the old man by the arm. “This isn’t the best place to talk about such things. I think I know some friends of yours from the Methodist congregation here—the Spiritualist ladies who sometimes come down to my clairvoyant evenings in Falmouth.” He made a gentle effort to herd Penyar towards the gate. “I could come with Gideon tomorrow, if you like, and we’ll see if I can get any kind of reading on what’s happened, with tea leaves, or...”
Penyar shook him off. “Them old women are superstitious hags.”
“What?”
“I’m a Methodist, I am. You mediums and leaf-readers have been mucking up the waters of my pure faith for a hundred years. I know all about you, you see—I know the ways of the devil, like the old pastor said. You’d better not touch me, that’s all. And as for you, Constable—you can solve your damn case on your own.”
Lee watched him hurry away. “He seemed nice,” he said, thoughtfully. “All the same, Gid...”
“I know. DI Lawrence, I really must apologise. I didn’t mean to...” Gideon fell silent. “Oh. Where is she?”
“Over by the standing stone. Didn’t think she cared that much about our ancient monuments.”
“She doesn’t, as far as I know. When did she go over there?”
“Just before you started talking to Penyar. Which is odd, because I’d’ve thought she’d have loved to watch her golden boy in action with a member of the public.”
“Golden boy, my arse.” Gideon reckoned he’d eaten into his stock of credit with Lawrence today, Queen’s Medal or no Queen’s Medal. “I’m glad she didn’t hear any of that, though. I’ve got to talk to you—to Zeke, as well.” He beckoned his brother over. “Zeke, I’m sorry I had to speak to him like that, but—”
“I should think so, too. He’s a faithful member of my congregation.” Zeke shoved his hands into his pockets. “Irritating little shit, though. Now, what’s the matter with you?”
“Wow,” Gideon said, when he could get his breath back. “I feel like I keep meeting you for the first time. Look, this story he’s telling us—Lee, when Zeke and I were kids, the old pastor would thunder at us from time to time about the so-called witches of Dark. I don’t know how much of it he even believed himself, but he used it to scare his parishioners—and us—into good behaviour.”
Zeke snorted. “As if it ever worked on you.”
“Well, whatever. But I think Penyar’s talking about the coven Granny Ragwen was supposed to lead up there. She’s beyond persecution, but a lot of those old girls and boys are still alive—tired and frail and harmless now, all of them.”
“So is Mr Penyar. You’re not seriously worried about anything he might say, are you?”
“Not on its own, no. In conjunction with an open case, matching dates and good evidence—yeah, he could make a lot of trouble, and I’m fairly sure he’d love doing it.”
“Not wanting to play God’s advocate here, Gideon, but... if these people murdered someone and buried his body in a field, there should be trouble. Ignoring that is a damn sight worse than getting Kenneth Pascoe off his drugs charges, isn’t it?”
Gideon snatched a breath. “Zeke, I did not—”
Lee closed a hand on his arm. “Hush.”
His touch was like cool water. Gideon wanted to be alone with him, back in the safety of the House of Joy with Tamsyn. They shouldn’t have come out today—should have stayed home and minded their business, which was surely urgent enough. “I don’t know,” he said helplessly, looking between Lee and his brother. Of late he’d come to feel a strange kind of contentment when they were all three in a room together, as if between them they could put to rights all the troubles and dangers of the world, or straighten it out at least enough for Tamsyn to survive in it and thrive. “Let’s leave this to the forensics team and DI Lawrence for now, okay? They’re not likely to find much, and it can all just...”
The hawthorns rustled on the far side of the wall. Gideon looked round in time to see Mabel Pascoe’s curds-and-whey face appear in a gap among the blossoms: still rosy and smiling, eyes hard. “Great,” he said. “So much for the wind not having ears.”
“That,” Lee said resignedly, “is why I wanted you to hush.”