Officially, cars belonging to members of the public weren’t allowed anywhere near the Fairview Waste Management Site, but Lucy got past the barrier by showing her warrant card to the watchman. Such security wouldn’t have made any difference to the likes of Sister Cassie, of course. Neither the ex-nun nor any of her acolytes had access to a vehicle, and so they would enter the desert of compacted refuse by any one of several dozen footpaths penetrating its flimsy perimeters.
When Lucy got down to the edge of the landfill, Malcolm Peabody was waiting for her alongside his red Ford Fiesta, a somewhat incongruous figure in his suit and tie, given that the parking area was nothing but dust and the only staff quarters a few prefab shacks standing alongside several massive pieces of static machinery so encrusted with dirt that their purpose was unidentifiable.
Lucy parked and got out, but there was no sign of any staff. She was in a rush to get this thing sorted; other calls had come in, other things needed attending to, and it was already mid-afternoon. And now there were no site personnel to offer assistance. She swore under her breath.
‘What are we doing here, for Christ’s sake?’ Peabody asked.
As on the phone, his tone was unusually truculent. He’d have a raft of paperwork to do following the door-to-door, of course, and after that Lucy wanted him to trawl the homeless shelters. He’d been here a while already, and no doubt envisioned yet another nine-till-five becoming another nine-till-nine, or maybe worse. She didn’t comment on that, because she understood his weariness at the prospect.
‘I need a wingman’ was all she said, walking past him through a gate in the steel-slatted fence, and taking the path on the other side.
He followed, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched. ‘I don’t get you.’
By rights, if they wanted to proceed from here they should have helmets on and protective clothing, but there was nobody around, and there was no time for that anyway.
‘We’re looking for a nun,’ she said over her shoulder.
‘A what?’
‘You heard me, Malcolm. A nun. A holy woman. Long black cassock, wimple, veil …’
‘I know what a nun is. I was raised a Catholic.’
‘Excellent … probably means you’ve got more chance of getting to Heaven than me.’
‘I just don’t know why I’d be looking for a nun out here.’
Lucy told him why as they walked, giving him the whole story. About how, despite her status as an inspirational teacher and mentor, Sister Cassiopeia had suffered a severe crisis of faith, which had led to an affair with a young priest and subsequent dismissal from her order. And about how her response to such disgrace had been to get into drugs, which in due course had conspired to transform the once beautiful nun into a homeless, smack-addicted prostitute.
‘Course, helping coppers is not a popular hobby among the downtrodden,’ Lucy said as they picked their way along a rutted track, the stink of the place already bunging up her nostrils. ‘But Cassie’s pretty much on our side. And in her case, it comes from the heart. It’s ironic, but since she’s been destitute, she’s rediscovered her belief. She’s adamant that right and wrong exist, she believes that hurting your neighbour is hurting God. Somehow, the rest of them respect that … they see her as an honest person. So they give her a pass.’
Lucy glanced at the encircling trash heaps. They were crisscrossed with caterpillar tracks, compressed into an undulant, colourless moonscape stretching as far as the eye could see, much of it pulverised to unrecognisable mulch. They were only a few hundred yards in, but it was already swarming with flies. Aggressive gulls swooped overhead.
Lucy also mentioned the van and what Sister Cassie thought she had seen and knew, including the other possible abductions. ‘We need to get it written down, Malcolm.’
‘You mean before Sister Cassie disappears too?’ He almost sounded hopeful that they’d already be too late.
Lucy ignored his attitude but gave thought to what he’d said. ‘Yes, because anything can happen on the streets. So it’s imperative we find out exactly what she knows as soon as possible and make a record.’
‘Maybe we should think about locking her up?’ Again, Peabody sounded pleased with the idea. ‘You say she’s attending a funeral. Whose funeral? Even if one of these poor fuckers has gone belly-up legitimately, disposing of the body out here … isn’t that preventing a lawful burial? Attempting to obstruct the Coroner?’
‘Let’s just crack on.’ She didn’t even want to contemplate getting into a whole slew of new, different and complex offences like that. ‘We’ll have to split up in a minute. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. If we’ve got nowhere in an hour, I’m calling the chopper in.’
‘Christ, they’ll be happy.’
‘They’ll do their job,’ she retorted, her patience finally snapping, rounding on him. ‘And so will you! Listen … this may be something or nothing. But it may also be that Sister Cassie is the only witness we’ve got to a whole bunch of abductions and God knows what else! Now, are you with me on this, or not?’
‘Yeah, sure …’ The sudden show of force had taken him by surprise. ‘I mean, what I mean is … sure, I am.’
‘Right, good. We’re all feeling it, Malcolm. We’ve all got stacks to do. Welcome to CID. Perhaps now you know why no one wants to be a detective any more.’
She turned and trudged on. He followed her sheepishly.
Lucy had been in uniform when Peabody had first joined up, and had served as his tutor-constable, personally guiding him through the trials of his probation. During that time, they’d got to know each other well, and had become friends, though the teacher-and-pupil relationship remained. But her mind was already on other things.
This landfill site was huge, covering several square miles at least. She couldn’t even picture it geographically. She had some vague idea that it rose to a kind of plateau in the centre, from where they might be able to see what was happening farther afield. But it was difficult to pick anything out at present. It all looked exactly the same: a desolate, hummocky wilderness of rubbish. Occasionally, they’d see a distant tractor or JCB, a yellow light spinning on its cabin roof as it prowled the skyline, but such vehicles might as well have been toys, they were so far away.
After about ten minutes, they reached a part of the path where it divided into three. The divergence was marked by a tree, though what species was impossible to tell: it was twisted, its branches spindly and with only rags and tags of leaves hanging off it, though in the very middle, suspended with arms outstretched, as though crucified, was a dirty, eyeless doll.
Peabody was fleetingly fascinated, regarding the horrible totem as if it had been left there specifically for him.
Lucy pondered their next move. It was much hotter here than it was back in town, and the air was harder to breathe as well. Fires burned nearby, veils of brackish smoke drifting across the heaps of ruin. The chances of finding anyone in the middle of this blight had to be zero. That was assuming the story about the so-called ‘services’ was even true, which Lucy increasingly doubted. Perhaps, if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with everything else, she’d have sensed that Kyle Newton was pulling a fast one.
‘Hey!’ Peabody suddenly said. ‘You hear that?’
Lucy turned, but wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be listening to.
The rumble of a tractor was somewhere close at hand. As they stood there, it swung into view over a hilltop some fifty yards off, but was headed away from them, the grinding of its engine gradually fading as it rolled out of sight again.
Then Lucy heard it too.
A wavering, semi-ethereal sound. A voice, she realised, holding a tune – rather sweetly. Someone was singing. A religious song, by the sound of it, though she couldn’t make out the words. She looked back at Peabody.
‘Where’s it coming from?’ she asked.
He shook his head. Lucy ventured along the right-hand path. The words became clearer, though they were being sung in Latin.
‘… Et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui,
Nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.
O clemens! O pia!
O dulcis Virgo Maria!’
‘Sounds like something a nun would sing, don’t you think?’ Peabody said.
Lucy didn’t wait to hear more. She ran up the path, Peabody following.
It took them along a gully, which clove through a virtual mountain of cardboard boxes squashed on top of each other. The singing ceased but was replaced by a female voice – almost certainly the same female voice – speaking aloud.
‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die …’
There was a mumbled response from several other voices.
‘We must remember, brothers and sisters, that we come not here to commend the soul of a mortal man, one made in the Lord’s own image…’
‘That’s her,’ Lucy said haring ahead.
‘… but we can still offer prayers for the lives here extinguished, for the souls, if souls they have, of these innocent creatures of God …’
The path veered left, before cresting a small rise. From the top, they saw an astonishing sight. A small section of landfill had sunk into a kind of depression; perhaps it had collapsed partway down an old mine-shaft before blocking it, leaving what looked like the interior of an inverted cone, though it wasn’t steep. At the bottom, some thirty yards down, it flattened out a little, but centred around a pit, where twists of splintered furniture, broken planks and piles of mouldering newspapers had sagged into the earth. On the far side stood the figure of Sister Cassie, hands clasped in prayer, and on the near side a small group of about eight of her bent, tattered followers either standing or seated on broken chairs. There was a terrible reek in the air, while plague-like clouds of flies swirled around them.
The ex-nun interrupted her service, eyeing the cops sternly as they descended.
‘And why are you here, detectives?’ she called out. ‘We are doing nothing illegal.’
Lucy stumbled downhill towards her. ‘What exactly are you doing, Sister?’
The ex-nun still looked vexed. ‘Performing a holy ritual, of course. Burying these poor, harmless creatures that were so viciously treated.’
Lucy already had half an idea that she hadn’t interrupted a human funeral, but on reaching the bottom of the depression, she scrambled over anyway to look. The stench of decay thickened, becoming almost intolerable. Flies swarmed aggressively. In truth, it was a nightmarish scene, almost demonic: the figure of the nun, cadaverous, degraded, draped in her dirty, ragged raiment, yet hands joined in prayer as she stood upright on a hillside of waste and filth, a storm of winged horrors buzzing around her.
The contents of the pit were the crowning, hellish glory.
Lucy gazed down on a tangle of butchered, half-burned, half-rotted forms crammed on top of each other. Maybe ten or eleven, maybe more. But trampled down hard, with brute force, until they’d almost coagulated into a single mass. Even then, occasional body parts were visible: a canine snout, complete with whiskers and nose; a tongue lolling over exposed fangs; a twisted, shrivelled paw.
‘Good Christ.’ Peabody gagged.
In only two and a half years he’d already attended more death scenes than anyone in normal life could imagine. But still this was almost too much for him. He’d gone green in the cheeks; one heavy-knuckled hand clamped across his nose and mouth.
‘The poor dears,’ Sister Cassie said, hands still joined, smiling benignly down. ‘Several days ago, one of my regulars came across them during his wanderings. He too was horror-stricken.’
Lucy glanced at the small group of Sister Cassie’s followers. All were thin, raddled, clad in layers of dirty, mismatched clothes. All had the matted hair, sunken faces and dull, glazed eyes of the long-term alcoholic or drug-addict. Lucy wasn’t sure which one of these was supposed to have found the dogs, not that it would make much difference. She’d have had more luck getting info out of corpses.
‘Sister Cassie,’ she said, turning back. ‘When you say “viciously treated”, what do you mean?’
‘Look for yourself, child. One won’t need to get too close to recognise the blow of the axe, the rip and tear of the knife.’ Very sadly, she ran a finger across her own throat. ‘Even the bite of the ligature. Certainly in the case of that poor creature on top.’
Lucy tried to focus on the object of interest. It was so caked in blood and grime, at least three quarters of it charred like an old carpet, that it was difficult to identify it as canine. She’d initially assumed that these would be the missing dogs that were still outstanding, probably more bait dogs that had died in the fighting-pit at Mahoney’s farm. But if they hadn’t been bitten to death, and if they hadn’t been clubbed by Mahoney’s hammer … what did that mean?
‘A particularly heinous cord was used in that case,’ Sister Cassie said. ‘Something like a wire. A neck-wire. Can you imagine that, for a poor innocent creature like this?’
Lucy’s eyes were drawn to what she supposed was the creature’s neck. And some minor detail of it now, finally, caught her attention. So much so that she hunkered down to look more closely, but the stench was truly sickening. When she straightened up again, she was white-cheeked, her mouth set like a trap.
‘God’s sake,’ Peabody mumbled, holding his jacket to the lower part of his face. ‘Can we get out of here?’
Lucy glanced at him, and then at Sister Cassie again. A freshly gathered pile of cardboard sheeting was stacked alongside her, next to her satchel.
‘What do you propose to do here, Sister?’ she asked. ‘I mean when you’ve said your prayers.’
‘Why, bury them.’
‘They’re already half-buried.’
‘Of course. We need only cover them, but it’s the very least we can do.’
‘They need to be covered, all right.’ Lucy turned back to Peabody. ‘For preservation.’
He lowered his jacket. ‘What?’
‘Have a gander, Malcolm. Specifically, that one on the top. Difficult to tell from here, but what’s left of its fur is actually pink.’
‘Pink?’
‘Yeah. And it’s wearing a collar. A jewel-studded collar … which ought to be worth at least a couple of grand.’