The Eighth Witch (25 page)

Matthew Sparks was pacing up and down the street outside Sarah Bennett’s, gazing up at the lighted windows and occasionally checking his watch. In his mind he was playing back the interview with her. Was there something incriminating that he’d missed? He’d been distracted, concerned that Lacey was shutting him out and not being open with him. His mind hadn’t been on the job.

So far he hadn’t seen any shadows moving behind the drapes to suggest the flat was occupied, and certainly nobody had come or gone from the place since he arrived. But he didn’t intend to make an approach until Lacey arrived, so he continued to pace, every now and then glancing either way along the street, hoping to catch sight of his boss’s car.

Finally Lacey arrived, Robert Carter sitting in the passenger seat.

A new double act,
Sparks thought but said nothing.

“Anything?” Lacey said to him as he stepped from the car.

“The place seems deserted.”

“Fuck!” Lacey said.
 

“I didn’t expect them to be here.” Carter joined them on the pavement and lit a cigarette. He drew from it deeply and blew out the smoke, a blue-gray cloud eddying into the night air. “At least it will give us a chance to look around, to see if there are any clues to where the Bennett woman might have taken her.”

“You’re convinced Holly Ireland’s been abducted then,” Sparks said.

“Pretty much. It’s Laura Sallis all over again.”

“Who?” Sparks said.

“Ian will fill you in.”

“Come on,” Lacey said. “There’s no point in us standing around in the street. Let’s get inside.”

They made their way up to Sarah Bennett’s flat. Lacey leaned heavily on the doorbell and waited for a response. When there was none he pulled a bunch of keys from the pocket of his raincoat and started trying them in the lock.

“So we’re not waiting for the niceties of a warrant?” Sparks said.

“We’d never get one,” Lacey said. “No crime has been committed.”

“I don’t need one,” Carter said and reached for the keys. “Here, let me.”

“Department business?” Lacey said.

“We’ll call it that, shall we?” Carter said with a smile.

“Just what powers do Department 18 have?” said Sparks, irritated that the rule of law was being so openly flouted.

“Oh, many,” Carter said. “We’re not tied up in so much red tape as you lot.” A key turned in the lock. “That’s it. We’re in.” He pushed open the door and entered the flat.

Lacey followed, pausing to look back at Sparks who was hesitating in the hallway. “Look lively, Matt. We haven’t got all night. And for Christ’s sake stop looking so aggrieved. Just be thankful Rob’s on our side.”

Sparks relaxed a little and followed Lacey inside. “Right,” he said. “What are we looking for?”

“Rob?” Lacey said. “What are we looking for?”

“Anything to tie Sarah Bennett into the deaths.” Carter walked across to the bookcase and started to scan the titles. Lacey tackled the rest of the lounge, opening drawers and sifting through their contents. Sparks went through to the bedroom and did the same there.

After a while Lacey said, “I’ve found nothing.”

“Nor me,” Carter said. He’d been through the entire contents of the bookcase, but apart from a few stray horror novels scattered amongst the shelves of feminist tracts and political biographies, there was nothing to suggest that Sarah Bennett knew anything about witchcraft. He said as much to Lacey.

“I agree. If she is involved in this, she’s giving us no clues.”

Matt Sparks emerged from the kitchen, ashen-faced. “You might want to see this,” he said. After finding nothing in the bedroom, he’d gone through to the kitchen and started opening cupboards and drawers. Again there was nothing to suggest Sarah Bennett had any involvement in the case. He opened the fridge to be confronted by a tub of butter, two bottles of chardonnay and very little else. And then he opened the freezer.

Carter and Lacey followed him through to the kitchen and stopped dead. Sparks had left the freezer door open and he watched their faces, watching the shock register in their eyes as they stared at the frozen, naked body folded into the freezer.

“I don’t know who was with you at the hospital, but it wasn’t Sarah Bennett,” he said. “This is.”

“This isn’t a shortcut,” Holly said.

The young woman driving the car looked at her pityingly. “God,” she said. “You’re so dumb.”

Holly stared at her. She’d accepted a lift from a woman she thought was her friend Sarah Bennett, but the longer the journey progressed the more she was coming to the conclusion that she had made a huge mistake. “Stop the car,” she said.

The woman continued to drive, pressing her foot down on the accelerator, increasing their speed.

“I said, stop the car!”
 

They were travelling along an unlit country road, twisting and turning, rising and falling, and Holly didn’t have a clue where they were. It didn’t matter. She wanted out of the car. Now.

She made a lunge for the steering wheel, but the woman simply blinked her eyes and Holly was thrown back into her seat, the impact knocking all the wind out of her. She gasped, trying to get her breath. The woman blinked again and Holly’s arms and legs were paralyzed.

“Now, just sit there and shut up. When I want you to talk I’ll tell you.”

Holly opened her mouth to protest but, like her limbs, her vocal cords were frozen. The only noise she could make was a harsh cawing sound, like an angry magpie.

As she watched, the woman began to change. She seemed to be getting bigger, increasing in size as she sat in her seat. The long, mousey hair was falling away from her head, leaving her totally bald. But the effect lasted only seconds. New hair was growing, alarmingly fast. Blond and curly, it pushed out through her scalp, fine curls at first but soon thickening and growing longer, tumbling over her shoulders. The contours of her face were moving, remolding themselves. The angular features of Sarah Bennett were being replaced by softer lines, slightly plumper and much prettier. The woman turned and smiled at her. “That’s better,” she said. “That’s much better.”

Eventually the road turned into little more than a track. The car bumped over ridges and potholes and Holly was bounced around in her seat, cracking her head more than once on the side window, but she couldn’t move her arms to brace herself.

They drove through a five-barred gate and the track continued. There were fields on either side of the track, containing a motley collection of sheep. A few of them struggled to their feet and started ambling silently towards them. Holly looked out through the windscreen. They were approaching a house, old and weather-beaten, white, stuccoed walls and a gray slate roof. There was a single light burning in a downstairs room.

The young woman stopped the car and switched off the engine. “Home,” she said and got out of the car. She walked around and opened Holly’s door. “Get out.”

Holly just sat there, staring at her.

“It’s all right, you can move your legs. Now, get out.”

Holly swung her legs from the car and planted them firmly on the earth. She still couldn’t move her arms, so getting out of the car was difficult. She rocked her body in the seat, trying to gain momentum. Losing patience, the young woman grabbed her by the front of her T-shirt and tugged her forwards. Holly finally stood.

“Right. Inside.” The young woman planted a hand in the middle of Holly’s back and propelled her forwards. Holly resisted.
 

“Have it your way,” the young woman said and left her standing there while she went to open the door. Once inside the woman turned and snapped her fingers.
 

Holly’s legs started to move of their own volition. First one foot and then the other, small, shuffling steps that brought her ever closer to the doorway. She shuffled across the threshold and found herself standing in a dimly lit hallway. She sensed rather than saw the door closing behind her, but heard the click of the latch as it shut.

Tears rolled down her cheeks. With a sickening feeling of certainty she knew that now she was inside the house she would never, ever leave.

The young woman was standing in front of her. She reached out and with her finger wiped a tear from Holly’s cheek. She stuck the finger into her mouth. “Sweet,” she said and smiled. “The sisters are going to love you.”
 

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“How long do you think she’s been in there?” Lacey said.

Carter was crouching down in front of the freezer, examining the ice crystals covering Sarah Bennett’s skin. He reached out and touched her arm. “She’s frozen solid. I’d say at least two days.”

“And you can’t see any wounds or marks? Nothing to suggest how she was killed?” Matthew Sparks was leaning against the wall on the far side of the kitchen. He couldn’t bring himself to get any closer.

“Look at the attitude of the body,” Lacey said. “Crouched, arms wrapped around her knees, fingers entwined. It doesn’t look to me like she was murdered and just dumped in the freezer. It looks as if she got in there herself and settled down to die.”

“You mean she climbed in there of her own free will?” Sparks said incredulously.

“Who said anything about free will?” Carter said. “The person we’re dealing with here—Diana, for want of a better name—has incredibly powerful abilities. She can get into people’s minds and bend them to her own will. Take Ollie Tucker for example. Despite his obesity and penchant for recreational drugs, he loved his life and clung to it like a limpet. There’s no way he would have wrapped a cable around his throat and jumped from his balcony, unless he was somehow coerced.”

“And Susan Grant,” Lacey said. “Sticking a hosepipe down her throat to drown herself. There are easier ways to commit suicide.”

“So Sarah Bennett simply allowed herself to be frozen to death. Is that what you’re saying?” Sparks asked.

“That seems the most likely scenario,” Carter said, getting to his feet.

Lacey stepped past him and shut the freezer door.

“What are you doing?” Sparks said.

“Preserving the evidence. I don’t want her thawing out before forensics get here.”

“Are you calling this in?” Carter said.

“I don’t have a choice. I’m a copper. It’s my job.”

“And what will you tell them when they ask you how you discovered the body? You said yourself you have no legitimate reason to be here,” Carter said.

“Let me worry about that. You’d better make yourself scarce. I can bullshit a reason for Matt and I being here. I might have trouble explaining your presence.”

“Good point. I’ll speak with you tomorrow.”

Carter left them standing in front of the freezer and walked back to Annie’s.
 

Holly opened her eyes. She was lying on a single divan in a room decorated with Laura Ashley wallpaper and dark cream paintwork. There was an oak chest of drawers in the corner and floral drapes at the window. The room brought back memories of a childhood vacation.
 

Her parents had taken her to a sixteenth-century farmhouse in South Wales, and she and her sister Sally had shared a room just like this one. She turned her head to the left. There was another single bed, just like the room in Wales, but it wasn’t Sally lying there. This bed was occupied by a young woman she’d never seen before.
 

The woman appeared to be asleep, breathing deeply, chest rising and falling. “Hello,” Holly said softly. And then louder. “Hello. Are you awake? Where are we?”

The woman on the other bed didn’t stir.

“She can’t hear you, I’m afraid.”

Holly jerked her head around at the sound of the voice. The woman with the curly, blond hair was sitting on a Queen Anne style chair in the corner of the room, watching her with a wry smile on her face.

“Who are you?” Holly said.

“Ah yes, time for introductions, I think. You can call me Diana.” She pointed to the other woman. “That is Laura. She’s been with me for a while now, more or less as you see her. I’m sure she could wake if she wanted to but”—she lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper—“I don’t think she wants to.”

Holly tried to push herself upright but found that, apart from her head, her body was frozen, paralyzed again. She made a noise of frustration in her throat, a cross between a growl and a stifled scream. “Why are you doing this?”

Diana’s smiled widened. “So the sisters can live again,” she said. “Simple really.”

It was the second time she had mentioned the sisters.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Holly said.

“And why should you? You know nothing of the past, how the sisters were hunted down, one by one, like animals, like dogs, and put to death, killed in the most inhuman ways.”

“But what’s that got to do with me?”

“Because you’re an incomer. Because you and your kind don’t belong here in the valley. The sisters cared for the people of the valley and I should do the same. But incomers are evil. It was the incomers who betrayed and gave up the sisters to the hunters. These were people who had no right to be here, who refused to understand the ways of the valley. So it’s only fitting that incomers are sacrificed so the sisters can return to the lives they once had.”