That night, he saw the dog again. In his dream, the years had fallen away and it no longer pained him to walk, despite the clay weighing down his boots from a day behind the plough. His stride was easy as he followed the path of the setting sun and the curving course of Ceon Hill, a path carved out of the hillside centuries before by the hands of his ancient forebears.
It was still said that their old King Arawyn, the Lord of Departed Spirits, hunted his pack here at night, a howling swirl of phantasmagoric beasts with pricked-up red ears. But the dog that leapt across his path just then was as black as midnight. The young boy’s heart jumped in his chest as the animal turned its head, he could feel its hot breath on his cheek. The old man jolted awake, into the morning of Wednesday 14 February 1945.
* * *
Detective Chief Inspector Edward Greenaway looked up from his desk.
“Telegram from the Chief Constable of Warwickshire.” The sergeant who relayed this news would, once, have been a much younger man. But the War had gone on for so long now that it was all they could do to keep things running with staff who had come back out of retirement, like the whiskery old bloodhound putting the memo in front of Greenaway’s nose.
Can Scotland Yard assist in a brutal case of murder that took place yesterday? the DCI read. The deceased is a man named JOSIAH STONE, age 75, and he was killed with an instrument known as a slash hook, used in his trade as a hedger and ditcher. The murder was either committed by a madman or one of the Italian prisoners in a camp nearby. The assistance of an Italian interpreter is requested.
“A madman,” said Greenaway. “Just what I need.”
* * *
In the mortuary at the National Forensics Laboratory at Birmingham University, Professor James Willis laid out the remains of Josiah Stone, and the implements of his trade that had killed him, for Greenaway to see. The old man hadn’t gone down easily.
He was attacked from behind with a walking stick. It had an oval dome at the end, something that would fit comfortably into his palm. It also made an excellent cudgel. Though the blood had been washed away, there was a dent to the back of the head that looked like it had been caused by a cannonball.
“He must have had some strength,” said Greenaway. “Some anger in him.”
“And he didn’t stop there.” The Professor deduced that, as the blows rained down, Stone dropped the implement he was using to cut the hedge, the fearsome, double-bladed slash hook. As he raised his hands to cover his head, his assailant grabbed the hook and attacked—there were lacerations and bruises on Stone’s hands and forearms. Overpowered, he fell onto his back, where his opponent straddled him—two ribs were broken in the struggle—and slashed at the throat with the concave edge of the blade, severing the trachea and leaving a row of jagged ridges. Then he pulled open Stone’s waistcoat and shirt, even undid the fly on his trousers, so he could cut open the torso with the straight edge of the blade.
Greenaway winced as he surveyed these wounds. Stone was carved from his collar to his pubic bone, then again straight across his chest.
“Opened him up like a butcher,” he said.
The Professor nodded. “He left the slash hook embedded in the guts, rolled him over and drove Stone into the ground with the points of his own pitchfork.” Willis demonstrated the action with his fingers. “One on each side of his neck. With such force it took two men to pull it back out again. So yes—” he pulled the sheet back up “—I should think you are looking for a madman.”
* * *
Greenaway drove south from Birmingham, away from the factories and foundries, and into the undulating Warwickshire countryside. His destination was Upper Pendleton, a village in the Cotswold Hills, where he was to meet with the Head of CID from Stratford-upon-Avon, the ominously named Detective Inspector Alex Tombs. Tombs and his men got to the scene a couple of hours after the local police, but the body had been left in situ until Professor Willis arrived at 11:30 pm.
Greenaway had seen some terrible things since his transfer to the Murder Squad at the beginning of the War—and scores of atrocities caused by the conflict—but nothing quite so macabre as the corpse of Josiah Stone. It put him in mind of Smithfield Market, its rows of bone white and blood red carcasses. There was something primordial about what had been done to this man. Despite the stick he’d used to ease rheumatic knees and hips, Stone had not been your typical 75-year-old; his battered husk still testified to the muscular strength of his arms and shoulders, his above-average height and a head of hair that was still as black as a raven’s wing, still as thick as thatch.
His corpse yielded one clue—the angle of the indentations on the back of the head told Willis that Stone’s attacker was a foot shorter than his target, which would make the madman around five feet tall. But that was all the Professor could give him to go on. He had not been able to lift any fingerprints.
* * *
Darkness was falling as the DCI reached his destination. Upper Pendleton was a huddle of thatched cottages surrounding the Norman church of St Oswald’s, whose Perpendicular steeple, built from the local Cotswold stone, reached far into the gloaming, though not as high as the summit under which it nestled, the anvil-shaped Ceon Hill. He stepped out into the dreg end of the day. Like everywhere else in Britain, Upper Pendleton was observing the blackout, the blue lamp outside the police station unlit. But though the street appeared deserted, he felt as if many eyes watched him cross to the front door.
If all was still outside, inside the station was anything but. Stratford CID were doubling up with the local force, and as a result everyone was sharing an office. Greenaway had been given a desk alongside Tombs, a slim man with fair hair, pale blue eyes and deep lines on his forehead. He went over what they had so far.
For the past nine months, Stone had been employed by one Mark Hackstead to work at Yew Tree Farm for four days a week, depending on the weather. The morning of 14 February had dawned fine and fair, so he began to work in a field on the lower slopes of Ceon Hill called the Conanground. Stone was seen by a number of witnesses, passing through the churchyard at 9am on his way there.
The last time anybody saw him alive was at noon, when Hackstead observed him working on the hedge as he passed on his way to feed livestock in the adjoining pasture. He estimated Stone had cut six to ten yards of hedge by then, but he hadn’t had time to stop and talk, because he had an urgent job to attend to: one of his heifers had fallen into a ditch.
Stone shared his home, one of the thatched cottages by the church, with his 33-year-old niece Meredith, who worked as a printer’s assembler in Stratford. She had come home on the bus at 6:00 pm to find the place empty. This was unusual—Stone was of regular habits, always back by dark. Alarmed, she called on her neighbour, Harry Chapman, another casual employee at Yew Tree, and they went up to the farm together.
There, Hackstead took them to where he had last seen Stone, using torches to pick their way over the rough ground in the dark. Finding his body in its shocking state, Meredith broke down. Fortuitously, another farm hand called Calvin Peachey came round the other side of the hedge on his way home and Chapman had him fetch the police while he took Meredith home. Hackstead was left to guard the remains until PC Matthew Ramsey arrived at 7:05 pm, roughly 20 minutes later.
The position of the body, annotated on a large-scale relief map of Ceon Hill pinned to a corkboard behind Tombs’ desk was, by Hackstead’s estimation, four yards distant from where he had last seen him, a progress that would have taken half an hour. Crime scene photographs graphically displayed how the body had been pinioned to the earth. The resultant tableau had a feel of ritual about it, rather than the random carnage of a passing maniac. But why would anybody do such a thing to the old man?
“Did he have a lot of enemies?” was the first thing Greenaway asked.
“Good question,” said Tombs. “Probably easier to say he was not a man who had many friends, though I believe that was out of choice. He’d worked on the land here all his life and they say he preferred animals to human company. His wife, Isobel, died 18 years ago and Meredith’s kept house for him ever since. That’s the most recent picture she had of him.” He passed across a small print, a record of the man Stone had been: a long, angular face with high cheekbones, bristly hair and a thick moustache and whiskers filling in the contours, no doubt weatherproofing them, too. Eyes as dark and sharp as flints stared through Greenaway, revealing nothing.
“They brought her up, you see,” Tombs went on. “She’s Isobel’s brother’s daughter. Her mother died when she was just a kid and I gather he dumped her there and did a runner. The Stones were already more grandparent age themselves by then, but they never had any of their own. Perhaps having Meredith made up for that.”
“And how is she now?” Greenaway asked.
“Considering what she’s been through, she’s been very co-operative. She’s identified everything she thought he had on him that day. His pocket watch is missing, which I think is significant.”
“Was it valuable?” asked Greenaway.
“Not really,” Tombs said, “but it’s got one unusual feature—a glass lens kept under the casing, that could be removed without impairing the mechanism. We’ve circulated a description of it, but my feeling is that, if it turns up at all, this part will be missing.”
Greenaway frowned. “What would you need the lens for? Like a monocle, you mean, to see with?”
Tombs raised a flaxen eyebrow. “I think that’s the idea,” he said. “It belonged to his grandmother, and Meredith said he never went anywhere without it.”
“I’d like to speak to her tomorrow,” Greenaway said. “And if the watch is this important, we should do a thorough search for it,” he said, nodding at the map. “The army are normally pretty helpful and they’ll have mine detectors we can use, in case it’s been dropped or buried up there—I’ll get on the blower to them. I’d like to go up there myself, soon as it’s daylight.”
Tombs nodded. “I’ll get PC Ramsey to show you. He knows the ground better than anyone else and he’s taken a lot of initiative so far.”
“Good.” Greenaway lifted the phone.
“Then perhaps I’d better take you to your lodgings,” said Tombs. “The only place I could find for you was the local pub. I hope you won’t mind too much.”
The Cooper’s Arms was across the churchyard from the station, so Greenaway took his bags and left the Wolseley in the police car park, letting Tombs be his guide. He’d managed to enlist the Royal Engineers to send a team of sappers with some mine detectors across to them the next day, and an Italian speaker had been found to interview the POWs—Sergeant Keith Saunders from Special Branch.
“Have you got any serious suspects so far, or do you think it could have been a deranged Italian roaming the countryside?” Greenaway asked.
“It would be very convenient if it was,” said Tombs. “But I’ve got a horrible feeling we’re looking a bit closer to home. The way he was killed wasn’t the work of an opportunist—he would have been bashed over the head, robbed and that would have been it. Whoever killed Stone spent some time doing what they did to him and they didn’t take his money, only his watch. They must have had some sort of personal connection to him, even if he was a man with no friends.”
Greenaway nodded. “You ever seen anything like that before?”
“No,” said Tombs, “but I was born in this village, I’ve heard all the legends. They say the Devil himself built Ceon Hill. That the Lord of the Underworld hunts with big black dogs up there and if you see one, it’s a portent of death.” Tombs’ eyes shone as pale as the thin crescent moon. “Josiah Stone saw them more than once.”
Greenaway shivered. “You trying to put the frighteners on, bringing me through a graveyard and telling me this?”
“Just giving you a feel for the place,” said Tombs. “The reason I think the watch is important is that they say Stone’s grandmother was a witch. If that was her watch, the lens would be what they’d call a scrying mirror—used to see into the future. I never saw the thing myself, but the glass was supposed to be black. The grandmother, Janet Setch, was murdered in 1875, by a man wielding a pitchfork.”
They came to a halt by the lych gate, Greenaway’s mind going off in a hundred directions. “Is any of that true?” he said.
“Janet Setch was killed all right.” Tombs spoke quietly. “By a fellow called John Bilton, who you might call the village idiot. He claimed she was the head of a coven and stabbed her through the head with a pitchfork. She was eighty years old at the time. The story about Stone seeing the black dogs was in a book I’ve got; you can borrow it, makes good bedtime reading. I don’t think any of that’s true, but it does feed an idea about Stone. Maybe he was killed by someone who thought that watch had supernatural powers, that it could bring them good luck or wish ill on their enemies. Maybe the way he was killed was part of a ritual, too.”
“Christ,” said Greenaway. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“We might as well be in the Middle Ages,” said Tombs. “But at least the landlord runs a decent pub.”
* * *
The former coaching inn was made from the same, golden-hued stone as the church, that seemed to Greenaway to glow with a light and warmth of its own. A feeling that quickly evaporated when Tombs pushed open the door. The babble of the crowd around the copper-topped bar abated almost instantly as heads swivelled and eyes ran appraisingly up and down the two detectives. Tombs got a few nods and greetings, the conversation level gradually going back up in volume with a lot of sideways glances thrown at Greenaway.
He let his own gaze roam around the timber-beamed room, taking it all in. There were not many youngsters here, and there didn’t look like there was much wealth to spread around either. This was a world of patched-over elbows and trousers held up with string, hobnail boots plastered in red clay, spotted neckerchiefs, poachers’ pockets and Staffordshire bull terriers. It seemed exclusively male—not even a barmaid in sight. The landlord, a man of around 30 whose checked shirt, waistcoat and cravat put him a social notch above his flock, raised a hatch in the bar and stepped out. His countenance, at least, was friendly.
“Evening, Alex,” he greeted Tombs. He had reddish, crinkly hair, red-veined cheeks and round hazel eyes. “Inspector Greenaway?” he said. “George Mayfield.” Greenaway offered his hand. The landlord’s palms were dry, his grip not inconsiderable. “If you want to come through, I’ll show you to your room and then you can have your supper, if you like? The wife’s made plenty.”
He led them to a doorway at the side of the bar. As they passed beneath it, Greenaway could see strange marks scored onto the lintel, a flower-like pattern of overlapping circles and the initials VM. He knew what they were; he’d seen them before in London, on buildings of a similar vintage—witch marks.
* * *
Greenaway set off early the next day. The night had passed peacefully enough. Mrs Mayfield’s rabbit pie, served to him and Tombs in the snug, tasted good with the pint of ale the governor pulled to go with it. They shared this smaller back room, adorned with horse brasses and Staffordshire pottery, with two old boys who puffed on long-stemmed pipes and gazed into the fire, a sleeping terrier between their feet. Above their heads, the mantelpiece was scored with more witch marks.
Greenaway’s room was in an extension built onto the back of the pub, and there he went through the witness statements with Tombs, outlining his thoughts and concerns. Tombs left Greenaway with the book he had mentioned. Strange Tales From Shakespeare Land by the Reverend John Harvey was published in 1929, though the story it related was much earlier, from 1885. It told of how the young Josiah Stone had met with a phantom black dog on his way home from work ploughing Ceon Hill for seven nights in succession. On the last occasion, the hellhound was accompanied by a headless woman in rustling silks. Arriving home, the lad was informed that his sister had just died.
No phantoms, demon dogs or hags had come to disturb Greenaway’s sleep. After a pleasingly hearty breakfast, he retraced the last journey of Josiah Stone, out of the village, through a kissing gate and onto the farm track that led upwards to the Conanground. It was a grey and smudgy dawn; February’s drab palette of dun, oatmeal and moss unenlivened by the sullen sky, clouds scudding overhead fast on a northeasterly, trailing icy slivers of rain. The hill rose and fell in deep contours that, he had learned from his bedtime reading, had been dug to fortify the highest point in the district during the Iron Age. In this weather, he could easily imagine how legends of witches and devil dogs could spring from such eerie surroundings.
PC Ramsey was waiting at the spot. He had the same thick black hair as Stone, but the face that greeted Greenaway was wide and freckled, spreading into a cautious smile. “Inspector Tombs said I should meet you here,” he said.
“I appreciate it,” said Greenaway. As well as being the first man to the scene and to take a statement from Hackstead, Ramsey had done seasonal work at Yew Tree while he was still at school, knew the lay of the land and the men who worked there.
Beneath the section of the hedge that Stone had been cutting was a patch of dull brown grass, about three feet long and a foot wide. The dew might have risen three times since the murder, but the ground still bore its imprint. As Greenaway knelt down for a closer look, his nostrils filled with the iron scent of blood.
“So this is where Meredith Stone found her uncle,” he said, picturing the scene from her point of view, her panic mounting as the torch picked out strange shapes in the dark, the realisation of what they were—and the smell that must have gone with it.
Ramsey’s dark blue eyes were earnest. “I don’t know how she’ll ever get over it.”
“And Hackstead,” Greenaway asked, “what was his reaction?”
“Agitated,” Ramsey recalled. “Hopping about, complaining about how cold it was—and he kept looking over his shoulder. At the time, I supposed he was frightened, or in shock from what he’d seen. But now I’ve had time to think about it, I’m not so sure.”
“Why do you say that? You’ve known him a while, ain’t you?”
“Since I was fifteen,” said Ramsey. “Hackstead’s always seemed fairly cocksure to me. Never heard him complain about the weather before—he’s out in it day and night. It was a horrible sight, but it’s not like he’s squeamish either—he said he spent half the morning castrating calves, then he had to shoot one of his heifers that afternoon. He’s seen his share of blood and guts.”
Greenaway saw dangling carcasses. A man who knew how to butcher.
“He buggered off again the minute I got his statement,” Ramsey went on. “I don’t know about you, sir, but I think I’d have shown a bit more concern if a man had been found in that state on my land.”
Greenaway got up, brushing grass and clay from his knees. “How much of his statement have you been able to check so far?” he said.
“I know he was with another farmer, Eric Barlett, all morning, helping him with his calves. Hackstead did the slicing, Eric said. Gave him a thirst, so then they went in the Cooper’s Arms. George Mayfield confirmed they were there between eleven and twelve.”
“Then after that?” said Greenaway. “Between twelve and one?”
“I’m not so clear about that. He said he was in that field there—” Ramsey pointed “—feeding his sheep, and then he went up the hill to meet his cattleman, Stanley Batchelor, about that heifer.”
“Professor Willis estimated the time of death was one o’clock,” said Greenaway. “Will Batchelor have clocked on by now? Can we have a word?”
* * *
They found him forking a barrow-load of marigolds into a trough while beasts nosed around him, lowing and stamping, exhaling clouds of white breath into the damp air. He talked to them as he worked, peaked cap pulled over large red ears.
“Morning, Happy,” Ramsey called. “Got a minute?”
“Oh, morning, Matt.” Batchelor eyed them warily.
“This is DCI Greenaway from Scotland Yard,” Ramsey said. “He’s come to try and help us find out what happened to Mr Stone.”
Batchelor laid his pitchfork down in his barrow carefully, as if to demonstrate he wasn’t the type to go on the attack with it.
“Bad old business,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“We were just saying how hard it is to believe that it could have happened in daylight,” said Greenaway, trying to catch his eye. “I don’t suppose you saw anything untoward yourself Wednesday morning?”
“No.” Batchelor scratched the back of his neck. “It was quiet up here Wednesday, for me anyway. It was Tuesday afternoon I had all the bother.” He finally looked at Greenaway, his brown eyes liquid with sadness. “Lost one of my best girls, I did.”
Greenaway didn’t know what he meant, but Ramsey did. “That heifer you talking about? The one that got stuck in the ditch?”
Batchelor nodded. “Terrible, it was. Twisted a gut trying to get back out, Mr Hackstead had to shoot her in the end. Got in a right temper about it.”
“And that was Tuesday,” Ramsey repeated, gently.
“That’s right,” Batchelor said. “I wish I could forget it, but…” He shook his head, looked down at the ground.
“Mr Stone was murdered about one o’clock Wednesday afternoon,” said Greenaway. “Laid there with a pitchfork sticking out of his neck, until it got dark.”
Batchelor shrugged. “I never had nothing to do with Stone,” he said.
“You didn’t see anything of him that morning, or notice anything strange as you passed? Did you go near the Conanground in daylight hours on Wednesday?”
“No, I come up here and fed my girls, like I’m now doing.” Batchelor addressed this comment to Ramsey. “Then I went back down and mashed up some more feed, brought them in for milking and come back up here. That’s it.”
“All right, Happy.” Ramsey spoke gently. “You can go back to your girls now.”
“All right, Matt.” The farm hand pulled his cap down still further. “Sir,” he muttered towards Greenaway before moving rapidly across the field.
The two policemen exchanged glances. “Tuesday not Wednesday,” said Greenaway. “That blows Hackstead’s alibi. And he ain’t what I’d call Happy.”
“He’s scared,” said Ramsey. “I wonder what of.”
“I’ve got an idea,” said Greenaway. “Go and pay Hackstead a friendly visit, before he gets the chance to find out this conversation took place. Tell him the army are coming today to search his fields for that watch, and the fingerprint man from the Yard’s going to take a look at the murder weapons. See how he reacts.”
“Is he?”
“There aren’t any prints on the weapons, unfortunately,” Greenaway told him. “Which an innocent man, of course, wouldn’t know…”
* * *
“He always loved the horses best, did Joe. Had a way with them, with all animals.” Meredith Stone had clearly prepared for Greenaway’s visit. The thatched cottage was spotless, the hearth swept, the table set with starched linen, laid with her late aunt’s best china. She smiled sadly as she passed the tea, a small woman with a round face and blue eyes like a doll. “Help yourself to milk and sugar, I’ve got plenty. Harry next door’s been looking after me.”
“Thanks.” Greenaway added a drop of milk. “Had your uncle been upset about anything lately?” he asked. “Or had anyone been upsetting him?”
“I’ve been trying to think,” she said. “If he had troubles, he wouldn’t have shared them with me—he never liked to talk about things like that.”
“Did he talk to anyone? Harry next door? The landlord at the Cooper’s Arms?”
She shook her head. “Never. He didn’t go in for that kind of thing.”
“What, had he signed The Pledge?”
“No, Joe always made his own cider in the autumn, better than anything you could get at the pub. He did used to let Harry have a glass sometimes.”
“But he didn’t have any close friends?” said Greenaway.
“Only old Sid,” said Meredith. “Sid Higgins, the stone mason, lives a few doors down, a place called Hill View. They’ve known each other since they were boys. Not that I’ve seen him since Christmas, mind. Sid’s a bit of a loner, too.”
“All right.” Greenaway jotted in his notebook. “What can you tell me about this watch?”
“He didn’t have it, did he?” Meredith’s expression changed, anger flaring. “When I came in Tuesday night, he was asleep by the fire. Poor old soul, he looked so tired I let him be until I’d made supper. It was only when I went to wake him I noticed it wasn’t in his waistcoat. He never went anywhere without that watch.”
“It was already gone before he was murdered?”
She nodded. “It’s the only thing I can think of. I did see him take it out of his pocket a few times and fiddle with it. What I’m wondering is whether it had stopped working and he took it to be repaired. Or if someone else offered to get it done for him.” Her eyes rolled, anguish replacing anger. “If only I’d asked.”
“He couldn’t have just dropped it somewhere?”
Meredith shook her head. “He would have noticed and gone looking for it.”
“Sorry for asking, but he wasn’t a rich man, was he?”
She gave a hollow laugh. “He used to pay me a pound a week for keeping house. Which left him seven shillings. The rent on this cottage is three, and on top of that he paid for all the coal and the meat. Probably didn’t have more than a couple of coppers to rub together by the end of it.”
“Well, I know it ain’t much by way of compensation, but if we find that watch on the hill, it might give us some fingerprints. Or, if it turns up at a pawn shop, it could lead us to our man that way. Maybe it can still come good for him, somehow.”
* * *
Greenaway found the house called Hill View after he left Meredith’s, but the door was locked and no one was home. Neither were any of the neighbours. Before going to see how the search was progressing, Greenaway stopped back at the pub to ask George Mayfield a few more questions. Then he walked back up the hill through the pasture Ramsey had pointed out earlier, where he encountered some of the sappers and local coppers bent down to their tasks, to a chorus of bleats and gurgles from the sheep. Greenaway walked round the field himself and discovered how deceptive the hill could be. The only clear view he could find of where Stone had been working was from the gate that separated the two fields. It was possible that Hackstead had seen him from there, but only if he had been looking to check up on the hedger’s progress.
Greenaway worked his way up the hill anti-clockwise, until the light began to fail and he could see the troops begin to come back down. By that point he had reached the summit, looking down on the huddle of buildings below, on top of the steep ditch where Batchelor’s heifer came to grief. He thought about Tombs’ book and the young Stone’s nocturnal encounters.
“This where you saw it?” he asked the wind. His eyes travelled thirty degrees to the right, where an old stone barn had been scaffolded for repair, and saw a figure emerge from it, a bundle on his back, and begin walking down the hill. He hadn’t noticed this building on his route up so he made his way towards it.
Once more, the dips and curves of the hill proved deceptive—it was not so close as he had imagined and he had to get his torch out to see his way. By which time, the figure he had been following had melted into the gloaming.
“He seemed quite relaxed at first,” Ramsey reported. “Said he’d heard it was one of the fascists up at the POW camp who did it and that Scotland Yard were coming to get them—shows you how fast word travels. Then his wife asked me if they could get fingerprints off Stone’s clothes. Hackstead started getting that look again, all shifty, like. Said Chapman had told him to go up to the corpse and make sure he was really dead, so he might have touched something. He never said this before and neither did Chapman. When I checked with him he said it was obvious that Stone was dead.”
It was seven o’clock by the time they had a chance to reconvene at the station. Tombs had been looking into Hackstead’s financial affairs. It was his father, Leonard, who owned Yew Tree. He also ran a boozer in Chipping Camden that was favoured by the county set. In Tombs’ opinion, the old man wanted his son out of his hair. Mark had got himself into bother before, debts to bookies and at card tables, and acquired an expensive-looking wife. Hackstead Senior had hoped a bit of horny-handed toil might straighten him out. But talk at the Cooper’s Arms was that wages from Yew Tree had been slow in coming lately. The previous year’s harvest had not been a good one, and the small agricultural community had all felt the pinch of it. A glimpse at the books showed Tombs that Hackstead had been claiming more in wages than he had been sharing among his staff. About double the amount, in fact.
But it appeared Ramsey had made the best progress.
“I wonder what made her ask about fingerprints?” Tombs considered. “Course, he could have had anything he was wearing cleaned by now, but Stone’s clothes all went with him to Brum. Is that where her mind was leading?”
“She started calling him an idiot, said the police would suspect him if his fingerprints were found on the body. He told her to shut up and got up and left. When I followed him out, he said not to take no notice, all she ever did was nag. Then he made himself scarce—went off to shout at Happy, probably.”
“So.” Greenaway made notes. “We’ve got the heifer that died the day before he said it did and now Meredith Stone’s telling me her uncle’s watch was already missing then, too. What do you make of that?”
“I’ve got another statement on that heifer,” said Ramsey. “Happy’s got one good friend apart from his girls, Bill Dyer. I went to see him after I’d left Hackstead and he confirmed Happy went to see him on Tuesday night, all upset because of it. Hackstead told him the animal died because it had been cursed by Stone.”
“Why would Stone do that?” asked Greenaway.
“They had an argument,” said Ramsey. “Something about a watch.”
* * *
The atmosphere had subtly changed in the Cooper’s Arms that evening. The range of expressions that greeted Greenaway were less like the appraisal of a farmer looking over a bovine fit only for the knacker’s yard and more akin to the leer of a spiv, hoping to lure a young lady down a dark alley.
“They’ve been talking,” Tombs deduced as they made their way to the snug. Sergeant Saunders was joining them, after his first day’s interrogations. A room at the inn had been found for him too and there was jugged hare for their dinner.
“How many bloodthirsty maniacs did you meet today then?” Greenaway asked as they sat down. The sergeant shook his head.
“We had one brief moment of excitement,” he said. “Giuseppe, little bottle-washer used to work up in Soho, was seen that day with blood on his hands. Turned out he’d been snaring rabbits. They don’t keep much of an eye on them there. Let them roam about all over the place.”
“Evening, Inspector.” A hand touched Greenaway’s arm. “Might I have a word?”
It was one of the little old boys, whose slightness of stature, bulbous nose and shock of white hair made him look closer to gnome than man. He took a long-stemmed pipe from between the two lower teeth he had left. “Outside,” he whispered, pointing it at the door. “We shan’t be overheard.”
Greenaway left his plate steaming on the table. The old boy led him into the darkest corner of the graveyard before he would divulge.
“Something you might want to know about Stone.” His voice was so low Greenaway had to bend down and cup a hand to his ear. “He used to keep toads.”
“Toads?” repeated Greenaway.
The old man’s eyes shone in the moonlight. “To blast the land.”
By the time he had finished hearing about how Stone made tiny ploughs, attached them to these creatures and sent them hopping off to cause the deaths of heifers and the failure of his enemies’ crops, the plate he returned to had gone stony cold.
“What did he give you?” asked Saunders.
“Same as you got,” Greenaway scowled. “A load of old rabbit.”
* * *
Greenaway went to church the next morning. Not because he had begun to fear for his soul, but because Tombs advised it would be an opportunity to observe everybody in Upper Pendleton in one place. Ironically, on the Sunday that followed the dark deed of Stone’s murder they would be celebrating Candlemas, when every family would be given a candle to take home. Once, these would have been placed in every window, bathing the village in flickering light, but under the blackout, they would go on the mantelpiece instead, perhaps illuminating many other witch marks.
They stood at the back, so Ramsey could put faces to names. Meredith Stone, accompanied by Chapman, was among the first to arrive, the vicar folding his hand over hers as they spoke. Happy Batchelor came with his friend Bill and the tiny Mrs Dyer. Calvin Peachey, who had raised the alarm. All Hackstead’s workers arrived at St Oswald’s before the farmer himself.
Hackstead was a thickset man with untidy curls that had begun their journey from chestnut to silver long before he reached his present age of 40. He stood about five foot tall. His wife was a hard-faced woman in a fox fur, bottle-blonde hair and lipstick a shade too red for this occasion. Both looked like they had woken with a hangover and been squabbling all the way to the church doors.
Hackstead clocked the interloper from Scotland Yard at the back. His storm-grey orbs turned away quickly and he steered his wife to the opposite aisle. Throughout the service, Greenaway watched them all, stealing glances at each other and him, nudging with elbows and knees. The vicar made the best of the occasion.
“As we gather together to celebrate the presentation of Our Lord at the Temple, we come here to be cleansed. The candles we will take home with us today represent the light of Christ. This year, that light has come at a darker time than any I can recall. While the world remains locked in conflict, untimely death has snatched one of our own, and we think of our brother, Josiah Stone.” His gaze rested on the bowed head of Meredith. Her shoulders betrayed the silent sobs she made into her handkerchief. Hackstead, on the other hand, fidgeted in his pew, while a row behind him, Batchelor fretted with his cap. “If ever a village needed to be bathed in the light of truth—” the vicar’s voice rose in volume “—then that time is now.”
* * *
On a normal Sunday, Ramsey told Greenaway, the congregation would linger in the churchyard, catching up on the gossip; it was the one time of the week when everyone was guaranteed to be present. But on this, far from average Sabbath, exodus was swift. They only just managed to catch Hackstead, and not in time to hear what he had whispered into Batchelor’s ear, his arm clenched around the cattleman’s shoulder, before he made his way to where his wife stood, scowling, at the lych gate.
“Plenty to think about, Mr Hackstead?” Tombs called after him.
Hackstead turned. His eyes shifted between the three policemen, an insincere smile forming beneath. “For you, I’m sure,” he replied. “Got your work cut out. Did you find any fingerprints, then?”
“I’ll have to pay you a visit, Mr Hackstead,” said Greenaway. “We can discuss that and a few other matters I think you might be able to shine a light on.”
Hackstead’s eyes hardened. “I’ll look forward to it,” he said. “Though I don’t know how else I might be able to help, I’ve already told young Matthew here all I know.” He shrugged theatrically. “I’m just a simple countryman.”
“Well,” said Greenaway, “we’ll see about that. Now, don’t keep your wife waiting.”
She shot daggers in their direction as he scuttled towards her.
“I see they didn’t take a candle,” noted Tombs.
Greenaway watched the departing flock. “Was there anyone who wasn’t here?” he said. “Sid Higgins. I didn’t hear anyone mention his name. Meredith told me he was Stone’s oldest friend. Thought he might make an appearance.”
“Old Sid?” said Ramsey. “Cor, you wouldn’t find him in a churchyard.”
“Then where would I find him?”
* * *
Greenaway left his colleagues to the peace of their Sunday lunches. Though he had been invited back for a home-cooked meal by both, he walked instead to Hill View and tried the door again. Once more it appeared empty, no smoke coming through the chimney, the blackout still down at every window, though a well-tended garden attested that someone was looking after the place. A stone mason, Meredith said. If he didn’t go to church on Sunday, maybe he kept other heathen habits.
Greenaway went back up Ceon Hill, retracing the route from Conanground to the barn he’d seen the previous evening. As he got closer, he could see flickers of movement inside the structure, hear what sounded like a chisel tapping against stone.
He put his head around the doorframe. A man was up on the scaffold, fitting a brick into the top of the wall, just underneath the eaves. Or at least, that’s what it looked like. It was too dark to completely make it out.
“Mr Higgins?” Greenaway enquired.
The head that snapped round had owl-like blue eyes under thick, frowning eyebrows, and a balding pate framed with scant, springy threads of what looked like wire wool. He was certainly old. “You’re a hard man to find in such a small place.”
“Who are you?” The other man barked. “What do you want?”
“I heard you were Josiah Stone’s oldest friend,” said Greenaway. “I just wanted to ask you some questions, find out a bit more about him. That’s what my job is.”
The man started to climb down the scaffold, as wiry and agile as a cat despite his years. No need for him to walk with a stick.
“Did you know him when he saw the black dog up here?” Greenaway continued. “Did you go back that far?”
“It would be best for you to not ask of such things.” He dropped the final couple of feet back down to the ground and stood staring at Greenaway, unblinking. They were almost the same height and up close Greenaway could see that, just like Stone, his trade had kept him strong and fit.
“What, about the dog?” Greenaway said. “Frighten you, does it? You believe he really did see it? Or have you seen it yourself?”
“These are things that lie outside your jurisdiction.” His chin jutted, pugnacious as a prize-fighter. Up close, the gleam in his eyes was every bit as bright as that of Greenaway’s informant from the Cooper’s Arms, but flashing signals ten times more dangerous. He still had his chisel clenched in his right hand. “There are other laws that govern this world than the ones that you know about.”
A man who could butcher, or a man who just knew how to cut a clean line?
“You got me wrong,” Greenaway said. “I heard you were his friend.”
The old man’s prodigious eyebrows twitched. In the half-light of the barn, time stretched out like an elastic band as Greenaway awaited his next move. Then the madman threw back his head and laughed.
“He thought so and all,” he said.
* * *
Greenaway came down the hill. He had no certain way of proving it, but he thought he knew how it all came together. What he had to work out now was a way to lure these cunning folk into traps of their own devising. It was time to brush up on his local knowledge, back at the Cooper’s Arms.
* * *
He went to visit Hackstead the next morning. The farmer greeted Greenaway still dressed in his Sunday best. Only that was a bit more rumpled now, his shirt hanging out and black shadows under his eyes. The kitchen beyond the back door looked like it was missing a feminine touch, and the smell of alcohol hung woozily in the air.
“Where’s Mrs Hackstead today?” Greenaway asked.
“Gone to Stratford, to do some shopping.” He waved Greenaway through, brushed his untidy forelock out of his bleary eyes and blinked for a moment at the piles of plates and dirty surfaces. “Cup of tea?” he offered warily.
“Just sit down,” said Greenaway. “Let me run a theory past you.”
Hackstead looked almost relieved. “You’ve not got a smoke, have you?” he asked.
There was an overflowing ashtray on the table, a pewter tankard and empty bottles of beer and gin lolling about. “Here.” Greenaway passed his packet, lit them both up. “Now,” he said. “Sid Higgins. He put an idea into your head, didn’t he?”
Hackstead inhaled deeply, relief spreading across his ruddy countenance, and with it a measure of his former cockiness.
“About what?”
“About doing some work on the farm, at first,” Greenaway offered. “You had a few business meetings about it in the Cooper’s. But Sid wanted a bit more than you could afford. ‘’Cos you’re in a bit of schtuck, ain’t you, son? We’ve had a look at your books. Is it the wife, costs so much?”
Hackstead’s hand closed over the tankard. It shook as he lifted it to his mouth. He grunted something unintelligible.
“So, anyway, Sid done a deal,” Greenaway went on. “You get him something he really wants, he’ll do the work for less. Gratis, even. And what does he want? Josiah Stone’s pocket watch. Well, it sounds a bit odd, but the next time you see Stone, you ask him for the time. He can’t tell you, his watch has stopped. What a stroke of luck, you think. ‘Oh, let’s take a look,’ you say. ‘I know a place you can get that fixed—want me to see about it for you?’ Against his better judgement, he hands it over. Gives him a sleepless night, so he asks for it back the next day. ‘Oh, you can’t get it fixed that quickly,’ you tell him, ‘they have to send away for a part.’ Stone don’t like this much. ‘Give me my watch,’ he says. ‘Or there’ll be consequences.’ Yeah, you think, like what? Next thing you know, poor old Happy’s knocking on the door. One of your heifers has fallen into a ditch and mangled itself trying to get out—you have to shoot the poor thing. So you run and tell Sid, and all that old pony about magic starts to take on a new meaning: Stone’s put a curse on you and your herd. Perhaps I elaborate, but that’s what Bill Dyer said Happy told him. Next morning, you get yourself in the mood with a bit of blood-letting down at Barlett’s farm. A couple of pints for courage and off you go.”
Hackstead’s head raised from his tankard. “You got it wrong,” he said. “Happy got it wrong. He’s so thick, he can’t remember one day from the next.”
“I did see the back of Stone’s head in the morgue, and that blow you landed on him probably would have been enough to kill him,” Greenaway went on. “Only you weren’t the only person there, were you? And I don’t think you reckoned on what that old bastard Sid’s capable of—that’s why you were still watching out for him when PC Ramsey found you at the scene. You didn’t know how far back those two went and how dark it got between them. Maybe you wouldn’t have believed it if you did know, but in that watch is a witch’s charm that Sid believed gave Stone all these powers, including protection from the devil dogs on this hill. The two of them had a big falling-out sometime over Christmas and Sid thought Stone used this charm to put a curse on him. That’s why he had to get it and why he carved him up the way he did. The watch was Stone’s grandmother’s, did you know that? Someone thought she was a witch and all. Stuck a pitchfork through her head.”
Hackstead put the tankard down on the table.
“Where you getting all this from?” he asked.
“Some people down the pub,” said Greenaway. “You probably wouldn’t have noticed them. They’re only little, but they’ve got very big ears.”
“Well,” Hackstead said, “Happy got his facts wrong. He’s come to his senses about what day it was we found that heifer in the ditch. I’ve told him to go down the station and clear that up; says he’ll swear in a court of law it was Wednesday. But I thought it was fingerprints you come to talk to me about.”
“You knew we wouldn’t find any,” said Greenaway. “You had plenty of time to clear up after yourself. But there’s one thing you forgot. When I find that watch, I’m going to find both your fingerprints on it. Yours and Sid’s.”
Hackstead laughed. It was a short, harsh sound, not Sid’s maniacal cackle. “You reckon the army’s gonna find it for you, do you?”
“No.” Greenaway stood up. “I reckon I’m going to magic it back.”
* * *
Greenaway went back to the station, stopping to talk to the troops on Ceon Hill who were continuing their searches. Batchelor had already been in to change his statement and give Hackstead an alibi by the time he got there, along with Dyer to back him up.
Later that afternoon, about an hour before sunset, when the army had returned from Ceon Hill empty-handed and Saunders was on his way back from interrogating Italian grocers, Greenaway got a call. An old friend from London was passing through and wanted to show him something. Telling Tombs he was nipping out for an hour, Greenaway went to where his associate had parked, on the outskirts of the village, by the kissing gate to the Conanground. The cargo was in the back of the van.
“He’s a beauty, Alf,” he said, smiling in admiration at the huge, black Great Dane. The dog got to his feet, shook himself and looked up hopefully.
“Yes,” Greenaway’s friend agreed, “he could do with a walk, though.”
“I’ll take him,” Greenaway offered. “Be about an hour.”
* * *
“Looks like he died of fright.” Ramsey knelt beside the stricken figure. Old Sid’s face had frozen in an expression of shock, owl eyes staring into infinity. He lay on his back on the floor of the barn, one hand on his chest, the other by his side, chisel still in its grasp. Not being able to find him at home, Greenaway and Ramsey had come up first thing that morning to take a statement on his whereabouts on 14 February. Since they were getting nowhere with Hackstead, Greenaway thought it prudent to get a record from all farm employees. And, as Ramsey spotted on the way up the hill, the barn wasn’t all that far from the murder scene.
“Probably a heart attack,” Greenaway said. “Wonder what brought that on.”
“Still working at his age.” Ramsey got to his feet. “That’s what did it. Died with his tools in his hand.”
“Does seem to happen a lot around here,” said Greenaway.
“You don’t reckon he saw a ghost, do you?” Ramsey sounded serious. “Got a visit from Stone in the night?”
“Maybe he saw one of them devil dogs,” said Greenaway. “Anyway, best leave him to Professor Willis. But as I was saying, I did see him fiddling around with something up here on Sunday. Wonder if it was anything of significance?”
Donning a pair of gloves, he climbed the scaffold to the place where he had first seen the old man. Sure enough, there was one loose brick. Pulling it back, he found a leather pouch hidden there. Greenaway held his breath as he opened it.