Wychwood E-Book

George Mann

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Wychwood
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 400

Beschreibung

After losing her job and her partner in one fell swoop, journalist Elspeth Reeves is back in her mother's house in the sleepy village of Wilsby-under-Wychwood, wondering where it all went wrong. Then a body is found in the neighbouring Wychwoods: a woman ritually slaughtered, with cryptic symbols scattered around her corpse. Elspeth recognizes these from a local myth of the Carrion King, a Saxon magician who once held a malevolent court deep in the forest. As more murders follow, Elspeth joins her childhood friend DS Peter Shaw to investigate, and the two discover sinister village secrets harking back decades.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Also by George Mann and available from Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Acknowledgements

About the Author

WYCHWOOD

Also by George Mann and available from Titan Books

THE GHOST

Ghosts of Manhattan

Ghosts of War

Ghosts of Karnak

Ghosts of Empire (October 2017)

NEWBURY & HOBBES

The Casebook of Newbury & Hobbes

SHERLOCK HOLMES

Sherlock Holmes: The Will of the Dead

Sherlock Holmes: The Spirit Box

Encounters of Sherlock Holmes

Further Encounters of Sherlock Holmes

Associates of Sherlock Holmes

Further Associates of Sherlock Holmes

WYCHWOOD

GEORGE MANN

TITANBOOKS

Wychwood

Print edition ISBN: 9781783294091

E-book edition ISBN: 9781783294107

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: September 2017

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© 2017 George Mann

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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CHAPTER ONE

She sensed movement, and risked a glance over her shoulder.

Around her, the Wychwood seemed silent and still. Even the shrill cawing of the crows seemed distant, now: the laughter of an audience that had already moved on to the next joke.

Had she shaken him off? Had he given up and fled in fear of discovery?

Her heart was hammering, her breath coming in short, sharp gulps. She felt lightheaded, disorientated. How long had she been running? It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, but she’d lost all sense of passing time.

She’d torn her dress on a branch and laddered her expensive stockings. She’d abandoned her high heels in the car park, along with her handbag, containing her phone. She cursed, wishing she’d held onto it long enough to call for help. Sweat was beaded on her brow, pooling in the soft hollow at the base of her throat. Her hands were trembling and her head was pounding. Blood was matting her hair, trickling down the side of her face where he’d struck her in the car park.

Frantically, she fought her way through the undergrowth, feeling the damp earth oozing into her stockings. What did he want? Why her?

She let out an involuntary whimper. She was going to die here, out in the middle of nowhere, in the cold and wet. Her body was going to be dumped amongst the mossy tree roots, to be found the next day by a dog walker or a rambler, covered in blood and dew.

She fought a wave of panic. She had to keep her wits about her. Her attacker was still out here, somewhere, lurking amongst the trees. She might not be able to fight him off again. Last time she’d surprised him, giving him a sharp punch to his gut as he’d dragged her into the woods. This time, though, he’d be ready.

She could still smell his cheap aftershave; see the snarl as he’d reached out to grab her. She’d known then that he meant to kill her.

She couldn’t allow that leering face to be the last thing she saw. She had to find somewhere to get help.

Up ahead, she could see the dim lights of a building through the willowy fingers of the trees. If she could make it to the house, she’d be safe. No one would turn her away. She’d call the police, and everything would be all right.

Something rustled in the dry leaves behind her. She felt suddenly nauseated. She knew it was him. She could hear his thin, reedy breath, whistling between his teeth as he ran. He was gaining on her.

Tears pricked her eyes. She glanced behind her to see him rear up out of the trees like some nightmarish spectre. He was cloaked in shadows, as if he’d somehow wrapped the darkness around him to form a downy mantle.

“No!” she moaned, forcing herself to run faster, digging for any final reserves of energy. Branches whipped her face, drawing beads of blood, but she barely noticed them as she fought her way towards the light. So close now…

She felt a hand on her shoulder, fingers digging into her flesh, and she twisted, trying desperately to shake him off. And then suddenly she was falling, spinning towards the ground as he shoved her hard in the back. She threw her hands out to break her fall.

The heels of her hands slipped on the slick mud, and she rolled, jarring her elbow. She cried out, scrabbling quickly to her feet, expecting him to grab her at any moment, to burst out of the shadows and strike her again.

She glanced around, desperately looking for something – anything – she could use as a weapon, but there was nothing but the trees, silent and still. She balled her hands into fists. She wasn’t about to give in now.

He loomed out of the trees before her. His arms were outstretched, beckoning for embrace.

“No…” she murmured, her voice wavering. “Stay back.”

“Shhh,” he said, and his voice was eerily calm and reasonable. “It’ll all be over soon. It’ll be so much easier if you just let it happen.”

He came for her, and she thrashed out, striking him hard in the chest. He staggered back, surprised by the ferocity of the blow. She pressed her advantage, pummelling him again and again, raging breathlessly until he was forced to raise his arms to protect his face.

She felt a sudden surge of hope. Maybe she could do this. Maybe there was still time to get away.

And then he was lurching forward again, grabbing her by the upper arms, pinning her in place. She tried to kick, but he twisted out of the way. She fought to free herself from his grip, but he was too strong. He forced her back against a tree.

She parted her lips to scream, but he clamped his palm over her mouth, squeezing painfully. She tried to bite down as he twisted her head to one side, tasting something bitter on his fingers, but his other arm shifted, and she felt a sharp prick in the exposed side of her neck.

“There,” he said, his voice calm and level. He almost sounded reasonable. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

She thrashed, but he pinned her there as the warm liquid spread into her shoulder, flushing through her bloodstream, and as the sedative took hold and the woozy feeling overcame her, the last thing she heard was the rustle of feathers as he gently laid her down amongst the fallen leaves.

CHAPTER TWO

She was only a few hundred yards from her mother’s house, and they hadn’t moved for nearly half an hour.

Elspeth sighed and peered in the rear-view mirror. The line of traffic snaked away into the distance, stretching as far as she could see. Directly behind her, the driver of the white Fiat – a tired-looking woman with two young kids in the back – was growing increasingly frustrated, gripping her steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles had turned white. Elspeth could see the kids squabbling in the rear seats, arms flapping as they tried to resolve their spat. She could imagine the tension in the vehicle, growing more taut with every passing second.

Up ahead, a hulking lorry blocked her view of the road. The driver had left the engine running, and oily smoke chugged from its corroded exhaust. She’d already turned off the intake fan in her car, but the stink of burning fumes lingered. She wrinkled her nose and leaned back against the headrest.

Anna Calvi was singing about desire on the car stereo. All that Elspeth desired was a cup of tea, and maybe a Kit Kat, if her mum still kept a stash of them hidden behind the breadbin. She was craving something sweet – she’d run out of mints back on the motorway. She rummaged in the glovebox on the off-chance, but aside from a heap of CDs, a pair of sunglasses and an errant lipstick, it was empty.

She’d been driving for hours. It had taken her twice as long as it should have to clear the London Orbital, and then she’d been snarled up in this for the last thirty minutes. Wilsby-under-Wychwood was supposed to be rural, too. They didn’t get traffic problems. She considered ditching the car by the side of the road and walking the rest of the way, but decided against it – it wouldn’t go down well with the police if she prompted a mass walkout. She had sudden visions of Michael Stipe singing ‘Everybody Hurts’, and grinned.

The lorry nudged forward a few feet, belching more sooty fumes, and she caught a glimpse of flashing police lights in the distance.

It was clear there’d been an accident, or at least an incident; an ambulance and two police cars had come screaming by a short while earlier, and now they appeared to be letting the cars through one at a time. She guessed it was probably a car that had taken the bend too quickly and careened into the trees – the small wood behind her mum’s house had seen its fair share of accidents over the years – although there did seem to be rather a lot of police.

She edged forward behind the lorry, and the white Fiat inched in behind her, as if pulled along by an invisible tether. Now one of the kids had unbuckled himself and was attempting to scramble through to the front passenger seat to escape his sister.

Elspeth played with the stereo, searching for something to lift her mood, and grabbed her phone. She quickly dismissed the string of messages from her London friends asking where she was and flicked through the music player. Moments later, Stevie Wonder was crooning away over the Bluetooth, and Elspeth was already beginning to feel better. She sang along for a minute, drumming against the steering wheel with her fingers.

Finally, the lorry ahead of her pulled away, waved through by the police, and she had a clearer view of what was going on. The police had formed a cordon along the left-hand side of the road, to block the entrance to her mum’s cul-de-sac, and, as she’d anticipated, had partially coned off an area of the road ahead in order to allow the ambulances through. They were waving people through one at a time, and evidently redirecting people who were coming in the opposite direction. It was complete chaos.

She noticed that a constable in a high-visibility jacket was beckoning her forward, and she eased the car slowly towards him, lowering her window and cutting the sound from the stereo.

“Hello, officer, can you tell me what’s going on?”

“It’s a crime scene, miss. You need to move along as quickly as possible.”

“A crime scene?” She’d expected him to confirm her suspicion there’d been an accident. Come to think of it, there was no sign of any overturned vehicle in the ditch. “What sort of crime scene?”

The police constable raised an eyebrow, as if to say ‘you really expect me to answer that?’

Elspeth sighed. “Look, I live in that house over there.” She pointed at the back of her mum’s house, just visible beyond the trees, backing directly onto the woods where two women in uniform were marking out a boundary with white and blue striped police tape. “I’m trying to get home.”

“Alright, miss,” the man nodded. “The boys will let you through.” He straightened up, calling over to the driver of the police car that was blocking the entrance to Stanford Road. The sirens had been turned off, but the lights were still flickering relentlessly, causing her to look away. “Resident,” he said, patting the roof of her car.

The driver nodded and put his vehicle into reverse, backing onto one of the neighbours’ driveways. Mr Harrison wasn’t going to like that very much, Elspeth knew – he’d always been a stickler for chasing them off his property when they were kids.

She thanked the constable and swung her Mini around into the road, pulling to a stop outside her mum’s house. In her rear-view mirror, she saw the police car slide slowly back into position, blocking the end of the road. She fought the sudden sensation of being trapped here again; a feeling she’d battled with for over half her life, before she’d finally escaped to London nearly a decade ago. Now, after all this time, she was back. Perhaps there really was no escaping the place.

She decided to leave her cases in the back of the car for now, and snatched up her handbag from the passenger seat and trudged up the driveway towards the house. It was a glorious old place, really; a detached eighteenth-century cottage, constructed from the same butter-coloured stone as the rest of the village, with a slate-tiled roof and strands of ivy clambering haphazardly over the walls. There was a small garden at the back, which looked out onto the wooded area that was presently garnering so much attention from the police.

She stood before the door for a moment, took a deep breath, and then tried the handle. It yawned open. She went in, closing the door behind her.

The old family home hadn’t changed much. In fact, Elspeth couldn’t remember the last time her mum had decorated the place. It still retained its old-fashioned charm, with its wonky walls and terrible phone signal. The hallway was filled to bursting with bric-a-brac and strange objects her mum had bought from car boot sales and antique fairs – a brass bedpan hung on the wall like a pendulum; chipped plates, decorated with gaudy landscapes of Oxfordshire, stood on wire stands atop the dresser, alongside little porcelain models of houses; a Victorian nursing chair was piled high with soft toys, and a gilt-framed mirror hung above the telephone table, which still housed a red Bakelite handset from the era before time began. There was the familiar ticking, too, of the long case clock her grandfather had made after the war. It had taken him years, apparently, to fashion the new case, chipping away at the wood with his gnarled fingers.

“Mum? Are you home?”

She heard the creak of floorboards from the landing.

“Ellie?” A surprised face appeared over the top of the banisters. “Is that you?”

“Hi, Mum. Made it at last.”

Elspeth dropped her handbag on the telephone table as her mum, Dorothy, bustled down the stairs. She was still young, really – in her mid-sixties – and had kept her youthful complexion and wavy blonde hair. She looked well, and her face lit up at the sight of Elspeth, her lips parting in a huge grin.

Elspeth went to her and bundled her up into a big hug. “Good to see you, Mum.”

“And you, love.” Dorothy held her by the shoulders and looked her up and down appraisingly. “Not too thin. So they’re still feeding you in London.”

Elspeth shook her head. “Don’t ever change, Mum.” She glanced over her shoulder. “What’s going on out back? I had to queue for over half an hour and then persuade the police to let me through.”

“Apparently there was an incident in the night. One of the constables has been round already asking if we’d seen or heard anything. He wouldn’t say what had happened, exactly, but they seem to be taking it seriously.”

“Yeah, they’re not giving much away, are they?”

“No. Come on through to the kitchen. I’ll pop the kettle on and you can tell me all your news.”

Elspeth followed her mum through to the kitchen, cutting through what they’d always jokingly referred to as ‘the study’ – a small room piled high with more bric-a-brac, a couple of bookcases, and a desk that she’d never seen anyone sitting at.

The kitchen was a large, square room, with a big farmhouse table and all the mod cons – her mum’s one concession to modernity had been to have it updated about five years earlier – with a door leading through to the living room, and a set of French doors leading out to the patio and garden. Light was streaming in through them now, pooling on the tiled floor, where the ginger cat, Murphy, was stretching languorously.

While Dorothy was filling the kettle, Elspeth peered out into the garden, trying to see into the woods beyond. These were part of the ancient Wychwood, a dense forest that had once covered much of the area and had subsequently given its name to a number of local villages. The old forest had long ago been eroded, felled to make way for farms, settlements and roads – but what remained of it now was largely protected, a series of small wooded areas nuzzling the edges of villages or towns, or scattered around the local countryside.

“So, are you going to tell me what’s brought you home all of a sudden?” said Dorothy.

“Hang on a minute, Mum,” said Elspeth. She opened the French doors and stepped out onto the patio.

The garden was pretty, and in full bloom. Gardening was a passion of Dorothy’s, and always had been; she still worked at the local garden centre three days per week, where she’d been for over a decade.

Elspeth breathed it all in. Even now, the heady scent of the flowers took her straight back to her childhood, and lazy days spent running in circles on the lawn, chased by her dad, or kicking a ball about with her friends, trying to avoid the flowerbeds and subsequent scolding.

At the end of the lawn, a low drystone wall formed a border between the garden and the wilderness beyond. As a child, Elspeth had practised over and over until she’d been able to vault it in a single leap, escaping into the strange fairyland beyond, amongst the bracken and the moss, the babbling streams and skeletal, angular trees. To her the woods had been like the fantasia beyond the back of the wardrobe, a land of wild disorder and exploration, a place of adventure, where the ancient past intersected with the present. Here, she’d dreamed of the ancient Wychwood, filled with warring Saxon warlords and wizards, of highwaymen and runaway princes, of nymphs and elves and centaurs. The thought of it being invaded now by the police seemed entirely wrong. And yet, she wanted desperately to know what was going on.

Elspeth walked towards the end of the garden, listening for any activity from the woods. She could hear voices in the trees, just make out the flashes of more high-visibility jackets through the branches, bright and unnatural.

“Sod it,” she said, approaching the wall. She wasn’t about to let another story get away from her, especially one on her own – albeit temporary – doorstep. This could be the lead she’d been looking for, her chance to be the first journalist on the scene of a murder.

She hitched her skirt and threw her leg up over the wall, hoisting herself over. Either the wall was higher than she remembered, or she was a little less supple than she’d once been. She’d have to find a new gym in Heighton or Oxford, so at least she could assuage her guilt by paying the monthly membership fees.

She dropped down into the mulch on the other side, and had to grip hold of the wall as her feet nearly slipped from under her. She righted herself, smoothing down the front of her skirt.

“Ellie, what are you doing?” She looked round to see her mum was standing at the bottom of the garden, her hands on her hips. She was wearing a disapproving look. “It’s a crime scene. The police are everywhere. That young constable said we had to remain in our houses until they were finished.”

Elspeth put her finger to her lips. “Shhh. I’ll be back in a minute,” she whispered. “Just a quick look.”

Dorothy gave an exasperated sigh. “You don’t change, Elspeth Reeves.”

Elspeth gave her best attempt at a beatific smile, and then turned and crept slowly through the undergrowth towards what she presumed was the scene of the crime.

She wasn’t about to go charging in like a bull in a china shop, blurting questions and getting herself into trouble. She’d hang back, take a look at what was going on; see if she could find an angle for a story. It would be a great start, a way in with one of the local newspapers. Assuming, of course, that whatever was going on here was even newsworthy. She couldn’t imagine there’d be so many people if it wasn’t.

The police seemed to have gathered in a natural glade in the woods up ahead. She crouched behind the bough of an oak tree and peered in, trying to ascertain what was happening.

Four uniformed policemen milled around the perimeter, their radios crackling, while a woman in a grey trouser suit, with a bob of dark hair – presumably the inspector in charge of the scene – spoke in hushed tones to a man in a blue coverall. This latter was, Elspeth assumed, a forensic pathologist. The rest of his team – two women and a rather young-looking man – were across the other side of the glade, unpacking the contents of several silver cases. They were also wearing blue coveralls.

Then, in the centre of the glade, was the body.

Elspeth had seen only two dead people in her life. The first had been her father, in the cancer ward at Churchill Hospital, six years earlier. He’d looked rested and peaceful, lying in her mum’s arms as if he were simply dozing. Dorothy had been cradling him as he died, and he’d looked so pale and thin, as if the cancer had leeched the life right out of him. She remembered a shaft of sunlight streaming through the window, dust motes swirling, silence.

The second had been during a brief, ill-considered holiday to Benidorm with her friend Julia, when she’d seen a young woman lying face down in the road, having drunkenly stumbled into the path of an oncoming car. She’d only caught a fleeting glimpse as her shuttle bus had sped past on its way to the airport, but the image of the barely dressed young woman had been emblazoned in her memory, still clinging on to her zebra-print handbag, her clutch of friends all standing around her, mascara running in black tributaries down their tanned cheeks.

The sight that greeted her here, in the woods, however, was something else entirely. She supposed she’d expected to see something gory and horrific – the result of a struggle, spilled blood, even a gunshot or knife wound – but the view before her was nothing of the sort.

It wasn’t so much a murder scene as a tableau, a piece of theatre, or an installation of contemporary art. The entire glade had been dressed.

The victim – a blonde-haired woman in her mid-forties, Elspeth estimated – had been laid out upon a bed of leaves. Her head lolled to one side, limp and lifeless. She was naked, save for a cloak of bright white feathers, which had been carefully draped across her shoulders, a small cord looped around her throat to hold it in place. A crown of holly and thistles, wound with red roses, had been placed upon her head. The only obvious sign of a wound was a thin line of dried blood on the side of her face, stark and obscene against the pale flesh. Seven dead crows had been placed on the ground close to her head.

Elspeth stared for a moment, unable to tear her eyes away. The woman’s skin was milky white and smooth. She looked strangely beautiful, draped in her coat of feathers and wearing her floral crown; like something from a Pre-Raphaelite painting. It was an appalling sight, nevertheless, and she gaped at it with a mixture of sadness and fascination. She was grateful she couldn’t see the expression on the woman’s face. She hoped she hadn’t suffered, although she knew that was a ridiculous thing to think in the circumstances. The woman had been murdered. No matter how it had been done, she’d been brought out here, and she had lost her life.

Elspeth fought a wave of nausea, and turned away from the corpse. The fact that someone had done this to another human being, so close to her childhood home, in the place that she used to play as a child… it just seemed so unreal. And what did it all mean? There was something disturbingly familiar about the symbolism, but she couldn’t place it. It had to bear some occult relevance, or else some relation to the Arthurian myths she’d been so obsessed with in her youth. Her mum probably still had all her books in her old room. She’d have to dig them out.

Elspeth stood, careful to keep out of view of the police officers and pathologists. She’d seen enough. There was definitely a story in this – she just had to find out a bit more about what had happened.

She turned back towards the house, and directly into the path of a man in a suit. She almost yelped in surprise, but just about managed to retain her cool.

“What do you think you’re doing? This is a mur—” The man stopped short, a confused expression crossing his face. “Elspeth? Elspeth Reeves?”

Elspeth swallowed. Her mouth was dry. This was the last thing she needed – being recognised by one of the policemen. She painted on a smile. “Yes, that’s me…” She peered at him a little more closely.

He was tall and slim, his grey suit crumpled, his blue tie slightly askew. The top button of his shirt appeared to be open at the collar. He had a mop of unruly auburn hair, and a broad, lopsided smile. He was wearing a thin layer of stubble, and he smelled vaguely of cigarettes. It was the green eyes that seemed most familiar, however – sharp and insightful, alert. She would have recognised them anywhere.

“Peter?”

He laughed, and kicked at the ground with the tip of his boot. “It’s been a long time,” he said. “Years.”

“And you’re a policeman? What happened to your plans to be the world’s greatest rally car driver?”

Peter shrugged. “We all grow up, don’t we?” He cleared his throat, seeming to remember himself. “But more to the point, what are you doing here? You can’t just go sneaking around crime scenes, you know.”

Elspeth held up her hands in a parody of surrender. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. I’ve just arrived back at Mum’s. I saw there was something going on, and hopped over the back wall to take a look.” She sighed. “I kind of wish I hadn’t, now.” She nodded in the direction of the corpse.

“You never get used to it,” said Peter. “Trust me.”

“I don’t suppose you’d ever want to.”

“Not really. But were you really only being nosey? Only, it seems a bit unlikely, and I am a detective sergeant…” He shrugged.

“I suppose it does seem unlikely, doesn’t it. Alright. I wanted to be the first on the scene, to see if there was a story. That’s the truth. I parked up at Mum’s and hopped over the wall. I’ve only been here for a minute. I… well, I used to work for a newspaper and—”

“DS Shaw?” She was saved by the sound of the dark-haired inspector calling Peter’s name.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “Listen, you need to go, before we both get it in the neck. She’s… a bit prone to overreacting. She’d have you straight down to the station for questioning, and probably charged for interfering with a police investigation, or worse, murder.”

“Okay,” said Elspeth. “I’m going.” She took a couple of steps, then turned back to see he was still watching her. “It was good to see you, Peter.”

“You too,” he said. The inspector was calling his name again. “See you around.”

Grinning, Elspeth made a dash for the garden wall, scrambled over in a most unladylike fashion, and was back in her Mum’s kitchen a few moments later, trying to take stock of what she’d just seen.

CHAPTER THREE

“So, love, are you going to tell me what all this is about?”

They were sitting at the kitchen table, and Elspeth was playfully teasing the cat with the edge of her boot. He scrabbled for her laces, and then skittered away across the tiles in search of more meaningful entertainment.

Dorothy had made her a strong black coffee with a shot of brandy in it. She sipped it gratefully. “A woman’s been murdered, Mum. Right behind our house, in the trees where we used to play as kids.”

“Yes, yes, I realise that.” Dorothy perched on the edge of her chair. “But I’m talking about you, Ellie, coming to visit like this, with only a day’s notice.” She looked worried. “Not that I mind, of course. It’s just… well, it’s a bit unusual. A bit unexpected. Is something wrong?”

“So I can’t even visit my mum without something being wrong?”

Dorothy gave her the look. This was a particular glare of incredulity the woman had perfected over many years – one that had always been proven to make Elspeth squirm.

“Alright, alright,” she said, placing her empty mug on the coaster. “I need a place to stay for a while. I was hoping I could have my old room?” She hadn’t wanted to get into this now, especially with everything else going on out in the woods, but her mother was shrewder than she appeared.

“Of course you can, love. Like I said on the phone, a couple of days’ rest will do you the world of good. You’ve been doing too much. I’ve been saying that for a while. It’ll be nice to have you around, cheering the place up. Especially after all this.” She nodded in the direction of the French doors, and the garden and woodland beyond.

Elspeth chewed her bottom lip for a moment. She felt as though she were sixteen again. “It might be more than a couple of days, Mum. I’m sorry. I should have said on the phone. This isn’t a holiday.”

Dorothy looked dubious. “Ellie, are you going to tell me what’s really going on?”

“It’s all gone a bit wrong, Mum,” said Elspeth. She fought back the pricking tears. She’d told herself she wasn’t going to cry, but now she was here, about to lay it all out… She steeled herself.

“What’s gone wrong?”

“Things haven’t been right between Andrew and me for a while. We’ve both known it. We’ve not been happy. He’s been spending more and more time with his friends, and I’ve been throwing myself into work… and the other day it all just came to a head.”

“You’ll sort it out. Maybe a little time apart is what you need.”

“No,” Elspeth shook her head. “It’s too late for that. I’ve left him. Turns out… well, you don’t need to know all the sordid details. But it’s over. He’s staying on at the flat, and I…well, I’ll have to go back and fetch my stuff, once I’ve found somewhere a bit more permanent.”

Dorothy put a hand on her shoulder. “Oh, Ellie. You should have said.”

“I know. It’s just… if I say it out loud, it means it’s true.” She felt her bottom lip trembling. “I don’t want to have to start again, Mum. I’m not sure I can face it.”

“Of course you can. You can bloody well face anything. You’re Elspeth Reeves.”

Elspeth laughed, wiping away tears on her sleeve. “I really loved him. I thought…” she trailed off. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters what I thought, now. But you might have to wait for those grandkids you wanted.”

“And you’re sure that’s it? That there’s no way the two of you can sort this out? Maybe give it a few days, then give him a call…?”

“Mum, it turns out he’d been cheating on me for years.”

Dorothy bristled. “I see. Right.” She squeezed Elspeth’s arm. “The little sod.”

“I just need to get my head straight. Work out what I want to do.” She grabbed a tissue from the box on the table.

“What about work? Are they okay with you taking some time off?”

Elspeth swallowed. “Oh, yeah, as much time as I want. All the time, in fact. Like I said, everything’s just come at once. Turns out they were looking to ‘downsize’, and since I was the last person to join the team…”

“Oh, Ellie dear. Come here.” Dorothy swept her up in a warm embrace. Elspeth felt numb. Here she was, back at her childhood home, and everything falling apart around her.

“Well, look, you were right to come home. It’s the best thing for you. You can take a bit of time now; decide what you want to do. Your room’s just where you left it, and it’s yours for as long as you need it, alright?”

“Thanks, Mum.”

“You’ve had a long drive, and you’re tired. Why don’t I run you a bath, and you can throw some of your things in the wardrobe and flop. No need to worry about anything else today.”

“Sounds blissful.”

“Alright. I’ll give you a shout when it’s ready.”

She watched as Dorothy placed her empty mug in the sink and hurried off to start the bath running. Then, after pouring another shot of brandy into her own mug, she opened up the French doors again and stepped out onto the patio, staring up at the trees and feeling distinctly uncomfortable, as if, somehow, they were staring right back.

* * *

An hour later, she sat by the dresser in her old bedroom, running a brush through her damp hair and staring at herself in the mirror.

What was it about coming home that made her feel like a failure? She’d once heard it said that re-entry was the thing astronauts feared most about going into space. Not sailing out into that great, infinite unknown, not rocketing through the airless void inside a tiny metal can, but the return to the familiar, the terror of burning up as they came home. Sitting there in her childhood bedroom, staring at her own reflection, she thought she might understand how they felt.

She heard the flutter of birds on the tiled roof above her head, and crossed to the window, looking out at the gloomy expanse of the Wychwood. The police had gone, leaving behind reams of blue and white tape, intended to deter any errant dog walkers or trespassers. The light was fading, the last of the sunlight poking inquisitive fingers through the upper branches of the trees. Above, birds wheeled in a silent, stately dance. A lone car drifted down the road, headlamps bobbing with the uneven surface. It all seemed so quiet compared to the bustle of London. She wondered how long it would take her to grow used to it again. Perhaps she wouldn’t stay that long. She was already wondering if she’d done the right thing. It was just… her entire life down there revolved around Andrew. Most of their friends were the same, she’d lost her home, and now, without a job to go back to, she had to wonder what was waiting for her in London. She didn’t want to be in Andrew’s orbit any longer, didn’t even want to talk to him… except, she was missing him already. She just felt as if everything had been turned on its head. She had to figure out what she wanted.

Maybe she’d stay for a few days, and then see how she felt. The distance would help. And she’d start looking around online for freelance work in the morning. She wasn’t going to sit idle, and she might be able to sell a piece about the murder.

Her mind drifted back to the sight of the dead woman, strangely serene in her downy cloak and crown of thorns. She’d looked to Elspeth as if she’d been sleeping, like an enchanted princess from a fairy tale. There was something about the image that felt oddly familiar, and she hadn’t been able to shake the notion that she’d seen it somewhere before.

She recalled her plan to search out her old books on the Arthurian legends, and so, tightening the belt on her borrowed dressing gown she decided to have a ferret around.

She started with the wardrobe first, which had long ago been given over to storage, rather than clothes. It was heaped with boxes of old junk – soft toys, records, baby clothes, school exercise books. She didn’t know where to start. She rummaged around for a few minutes, shifting a couple of the boxes and moving things around to see what was inside them all, but none seemed to contain any books.

She lost ten minutes to a dusty photo album she’d filled one summer when she’d been given a Polaroid camera for her birthday. She’d loved the way all the photographs had come out first as indecipherable blurs, and had slowly resolved in their white frames, becoming sharper with every passing second. It had seemed like magic, and she’d wasted cartridge after cartridge snapping pictures of her friends and family, which she’d glued into this book, scrawling little messages into the margins.

Peter was in there, too – chubby in those days, with his mop of bright red hair, wandering about with his poetry books. He’d seemed so sophisticated at the age of fourteen, reading Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, carrying around a little reporter’s notebook in which he jotted down all of his observations. Thinking now, it made perfect sense that he’d go on to become a detective. She wondered if he still recorded his thoughts in iambic pentameter.

She dropped the photo album back into the box, and stuffed it back into the wardrobe, careful not to place anything on top of the records. She’d look forward to sorting through those in the comings days, maybe hooking up the old turntable and giving some of them a spin. She’d never quite given up on vinyl in the same way she’d abandoned cassettes; she adored the warm crackle of dust, the fact you were forced to consume the album as a piece of art in its entirety, as the artist intended, unable to skip or fast forward or play everything through on a random shuffle. She and Andrew had assembled quite a collection back in London. That was going to take some sorting out, too. She sighed.

The wardrobe door wouldn’t close properly, now that she’d disturbed Dorothy’s carefully arranged stacks. She left it hanging open and glanced around the room, wondering where else her mum might have secreted her old stuff. Under the bed was the most obvious option, particularly for a box of heavy books. She dropped to her knees and grabbed her phone off the bed, using the torch function to take a look. Sure enough, there were three boxes under there, nestled in a sea of dust. She reached under and grabbed one, sliding it towards her. It seemed to contain nothing but ancient school uniforms, wrapped in plastic bags. She shoved it back under and grabbed the next one.

This time she knew she was in luck. The weight of the box made it difficult to drag out, and when she peered inside, she caught a glimpse of an armoured knight standing at the gates of a castle; the lurid watercolour on the front of one of her most fondly remembered books, Le Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory.

She pulled back the cardboard flaps and pulled it out, spluttering at a plume of disturbed dust. She was certain that somewhere inside this old tome there’d be another watercolour describing a similar scene to the one she’d seen that afternoon in the woods.

Half an hour later she’d finished leafing through Le Morte D’Arthur, The Mabinogion, and a handful of illustrated histories of the Dark Ages. She’d found nothing that even resembled the picture she remembered, and was beginning to wonder if she’d simply imagined the whole thing. Ellie placed the books in a heap on the floor and leaned back against the bed.

Her phone had buzzed a couple of times, and she glanced at the lock screen, seeing two messages from her friend, Abigail. She sounded worried. Elspeth thumbed the button and dashed off a quick response:

Visiting Mum in Oxfordshire. All good. Speak

soon. X.

She hit send, and then tossed the phone back onto the bed.

There were still a handful of books in the box. She put aside a gazetteer of Roman Britain and a book about the Celts. At the bottom of the box, buried beneath a never-opened textbook on the interpretation of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, was an old book with a familiar cover. The title Myths and Legends of Oxfordshire was emblazoned on the front in bold yellow typeface. She remembered poring over it for endless hours as a girl of twelve, daydreaming about all the bizarre creatures and characters contained within, imagining they were real, and still living in the woods at the bottom of the garden amongst the ancient boughs of the Wychwood.

She turned the pages slowly, smiling at the primitive illustrations of local pixies and dragons, ghostly spirits and doppelgangers. The book held almost as many memories as the album of Polaroids. But it wasn’t until she turned to the chapter entitled ‘The Carrion King of the Wychwood’ that she realised what she’d missed.

There, on page fifty-six, was the picture she’d been looking for. It was a primitive woodcut of a woman laid upon a bed of leaves, a crown of thorns and roses upon her head. She was wearing a cloak of feathers, and above her head, seven crows circled in flight, their beaks parted as they called out, silent and still. Beneath the picture was the caption: THE KING’S CONSORT.

Elspeth shuddered. She felt suddenly cold. There was something chilling about seeing the old picture like this, only hours after bearing witness to its very real, very visceral reconstruction. What was more, there were further, similar pictures in the same chapter, of other bizarre characters, including a man with antlers and an arrow in his chest, and another woman on her knees, as if in prayer, her lips sewn shut with twine.

She knew at once that she had to show the book to Peter in the morning. It was growing late now, though, and she no longer had any idea where he lived, or how to contact him. The only thing she could do was read the chapter through in full, and then take it over to Heighton first thing in the morning and see if she could get hold of Peter at the station.

Elspeth loaded all of the other books into the box, and then pushed it back beneath the bed. Then, after selecting an Angel Olsen song on her phone and dumping it on the nightstand, she propped up the pillows, tied up her still-damp hair and sank into bed with the book.

CHAPTER FOUR

As a child he had practised on birds.

He’d grown quite adept at it: finding just the right kind of smooth-sided pebble, fitting it to the pouch of a catapult he’d stashed in his secret place in the woods, choosing exactly the right target.

He’d started with pigeons, but soon gravitated to magpies, and then ravens and crows. The bigger birds rarely died when they were struck by the stone, but were injured or stunned, making them easier to catch. He’d scoop them up with an old fishing net he’d stolen from another child’s back garden and find somewhere safe amongst the trees to hide. He’d turn them out from the bright green net and hold them in his cupped palms, thrilled at the terrified fluttering of their hearts, at the way their warm bodies shuddered as he wrung their necks; that final, juddering spasm of life.

He’d never felt guilt. More a crushing sense of disappointment that it was over so quickly; that the creature had died so easily, that its grasp on life had seemed so tenuous. He’d known death – he’d seen it visited upon others – and he was constantly amazed by how quickly, how willingly, the living embraced it.

It wasn’t so much a fascination with death that had inspired him to such acts, however, but more a need to understand how to control it, how to exert power over it. If the taking of a life was such a simple act, couldn’t the reverse be true, too?

He’d experimented with rituals to stir the creatures back to life, to breathe vitality into their silent corpses, but of course, he had failed. Real power, he had learned much later, was far more difficult to attain, and his juvenile efforts had been naive, ignorant, misguided. There was a toll to pay for mastery over such things. Sacrifices to be made.

Now, though, decades after his search had begun, he had found what he sought: the tools of his vengeance and the path to real power. He had pieced the rituals together from fragments, painstakingly interpreted every word, every symbol. Soon, he would put them to proper use. This was to be his finest hour, the summation of his life’s work. All he had to do was tread the path that had been laid out. The process had already begun.

The first two had been nothing, not really. The woman had nearly escaped, but once he’d caught her, it had been just like snuffing out another bird, holding her in his arms as she shuddered and died. He would be more careful next time, though. He couldn’t afford for them to get away.

It wasn’t that he’d wanted to kill them, more that he had no choice. These were the sacrifices, steps along the path towards transcendence. Steps towards being reunited with the one he had lost.