The Eighth Witch (33 page)

“Do you want to sit and put your feet up for a while?” Annie said with a smile.

“I’ll pass,” Carter said. He wasn’t smiling. He’d stopped walking and was standing, hands in pockets, staring at the house and outbuildings that comprised the farm.

He pulled out his cigarettes and lit one. Annie noticed that the hand that held the lighter was shaking slightly.

“Are you okay?” she said.

He drew in a lungful of smoke and shook his head slightly. “I’m picking up some very nasty vibrations,” he said.
 

“Well we know that two of the Yardley sisters were killed here,” Annie said.

“Yes, but it’s more than that. You might want to wait in the car.”

“Like hell,” she said.

“Well, I’m warning you, it could be very unpleasant.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

Carter turned to look at her.

Annie was alarmed to see that the blood had drained from his face, giving it a waxy, almost deathly pallor. “It’s that bad?” she said.

“Yes,” he said and started to walk towards the farmhouse.

Chapter Thirty-Five

“Well,” Harry Bailey said. “That’s the house.”

They were up on the Tops, parked in a narrow lay-by a hundred yards away from the dirt track that led to Florence Tibbs’ eighteenth-century cottage.

“So what do we do?” Ian Lacey said. “Walk up to her front door and ask her outright if she’s a witch?”

“Why not?” Jane said. “I’ve always favored the direct approach.” She let in the clutch and eased back onto the road.

The small Renault’s suspension made hard work of the holes and bumps in the track, and more than once both Bailey’s and Lacey’s heads cracked against the roof of the car. Both of them sighed with relief when Jane pulled up at the end of the track and switched off the engine.

Lacey was first out of the car, shutting the door behind him and leaning against it, stretching his legs, ironing out the creases caused by being hunched in the back of the Renault. Harry Bailey was next out and stood surveying the cottage and its surroundings.

“Anything?” Jane said, coming to stand beside him.

Bailey shook his head. “You try.”

Jane closed her eyes, her brow creasing into a frown of concentration.

Lacey looked at them both, puzzlement in his eyes.

“I’m not picking anything up at all,” Jane said.

“Psychically dead,” Bailey said.

“I could use you on the force,” Lacey said when he realized what was going on.

Bailey smiled at him. “It’s not foolproof. We can scan a place with our minds, and sometimes we can detect certain energy fields. Evil creates a very distinctive wave form.”

“But that in itself creates its own problems,” Jane said.

“In that it’s subjective,” Lacey said. “Diana might believe what she’s doing is totally justified, therefore not evil. We just think of it like that.”

Harry Bailey’s smile widened. “You catch on fast,” he said to Lacey.

“For a copper, you mean?” Lacey said.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to,” Lacey said. “You don’t have to be psychic to pick up on prejudice and attitude. When you’re dealing with violent criminals, intuition can save your life.”

“You could argue that intuition is just a psychic ability by another name,” Jane said.

“Let’s save the metaphysical debate for another time,” Bailey said, marched up to the front door and leaned on the bell.

He waited for a full minute, then rang again.

Jane peered in through the window. There was nothing unusual to see, just a neat and uncluttered lounge. “It all looks totally normal,” she said.

“I’ll check out the rear,” Bailey said.

Lacey took a few steps backwards and stared up at the bedroom windows. In all of them the curtains had been pulled back, hiding nothing. “I think we’re chasing wild geese,” he said.
 

“I agree,” Bailey said as he emerged from the rear of the cottage. “There’s nothing out of the ordinary back there. A couple of sheds, all but empty.”

“And no sign of Mrs. Tibbs,” Jane said.

“Or the mysterious dog, although one of the sheds looks like it could double as a kennel.”

“Let’s give it up then,” Lacey said. “There’s no point wasting our time.”

A low growl rumbled over the last of his words and as Lacey spun round, a dog emerged from behind the shelter of the car, slinking along, low to the ground, eyes alert, watching them warily. It was a huge, black-and-tan bull mastiff with a solidly muscled body and jaws that could snap a man’s arm.
 

“No sudden movements,” Harry Bailey said, and stepped forwards, putting himself between Jane and the dog, but when it was within ten feet of him, the dog stopped and sat back on its haunches, regarding them all with baleful eyes.

“Do you know much about dogs, Harry?” Lacey said.

“No. You?”

“I know you shouldn’t stare them in the eyes. They take it as a challenge.”

Bailey immediately averted his gaze. He’d been staring into the dog’s eyes from the moment it stepped out from behind the car. There was something compelling about the dog’s expression, a kind of innate intelligence, but nothing malevolent.

Jane started to move forwards, avoiding Bailey’s hand as he reached out to block her. “Jane!” he hissed.

She ignored him, moving closer to the dog. When she was within six feet she dropped to a crouch. Ian Lacey’s hand closed over her shoulder. She shrugged it off. “It’s okay,” she said quietly. “I know what I’m doing. My grandmother used to keep dogs. I grew up with them.”

Lacey nodded and backed off.

Still crouching, Jane stretched out her hand for the dog to sniff. “Here, boy. I won’t hurt you.”

The dog was still growling but now its attention was focused solely on Jane, staring suspiciously from her hand to her face.

Both Bailey and Lacey were poised, tense, ready to spring into action should the dog decide to attack. Harry Bailey had searched the ground with his eyes and located a weapon, a rusting metal stake about three feet long and an inch in diameter. It was stuck in the middle of what had once been a flower bed, now badly overgrown. Bindweed spiraled up the metal stake, but it would do at a pinch. He edged closer towards it.

“Come on, boy,” Jane said, her voice gentle, melodious. “I won’t hurt you. Promise.”

As the dog lifted itself to its feet, Bailey’s fingers closed around the metal stake and pulled, inching it slowly from the ground. Finally he pulled it free and hefted it in his hand. The length and weight of the stake was reassuring but he hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. There had been too many deaths already.

The dog took a step towards Jane, still growling, but there was a look of curiosity in its eyes. Another step and it stopped again, sniffing the air, trying to get her scent. Jane edged closer.

Ian Lacey realized he was holding his breath as the tension of the moment continued to increase. He let out the air in his lungs in a long, controlled exhalation, and then exchanged looks with Harry Bailey, noticing the metal stake clutched in his fist. He gave a small nod of approval.

Jane stretched out her hand even farther. She was almost within touching distance, inches away from the dog’s snout. A trickle of perspiration was worming its way sinuously down her back, betraying the fact that she was nowhere near as confident as she pretended to be. The dog could lunge at her any moment, and those teeth could rip her face to shreds.

She was deliberately avoiding the dog’s eyes, staring at a point just over its head, but she could sense it watching her, evaluating her. What she could not tell was whether the dog was regarding her as a friend, a threat or a victim. She hoped it was the former and prayed it wasn’t the latter. She shuffled forwards on her haunches and stretched her fingers a few inches more.
 

And then the world exploded into a cacophony of deafening barking as the dog lunged.

Holly stood stock-still in the blackness with her back pressed tightly against the door. She barely dared to breathe as she listened to the almost deafening silence. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark, but they showed little sign of doing so.
 

Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

The ridiculous phrase kept circulating in her head as she fought down a rising feeling of panic.

The light when it came was almost painful and she threw up her hands to her eyes to shield them. Blinking hard, she peered through her fingers at a large, white rectangle apparently hanging in the air twenty yards ahead of her. As she refocused her watering eyes, she realized what the rectangle was and why it was so familiar.

A screen. She was staring at a cinema screen.

What happened next confirmed it.

The screen flickered into life. Numbers appeared in a countdown.
 

5
…
4
…

Holly glanced upwards, but there was no cone of light projecting the figures onto the screen. Nothing, only blackness.

3
…
2
…

There were no rows of seats in front of her. Not a cinema then.

1
…

She recognized the image instantly as it appeared. A home movie, shot by her father. A little girl running around a neat, well-kept garden. A plastic, inflatable paddling pool, brightly colored, decorated with stylized waves and improbable dolphins. A ginger tabby cat basking on the lawn. A woman, her mother, wearing a floral, off-the-shoulder dress and a pink straw sun hat, staring at the little girl with affection and not a little pride.

And the little girl, a five-year-old Holly pulling faces at the camera, running to the paddling pool, dipping her toe in the water and giving a theatrical shiver before dashing back to where the cat was basking and flopping down next to it.

The scene changed. Her parents in the living room of the semi-detached house, older, arguing furiously.

“She’s your daughter. I never wanted a bloody kid.” Her father.

“You think I wanted to get pregnant? My life was all mapped out. Then you came along and wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. ‘That’s you and your life totally fucked.’” Her mother.

“Same old, same old. Change the bloody record, will you?”

It’s not real,
a small voice in her head said. How could it be real? There was no one there to film it.

Another change. Another clip.

A broken and dejected Holly lying in a pool of her own vomit, a group of girls standing over her, jeering. “She can’t take it!” “Lightweight!” “Pathetic!” The blond girl, Mandy Smallwood, heavy make-up and tattoos on her arms, drawing her foot back and kicking Holly in the stomach as she lay on the ground.

“Stop it!” Holly yelled into the darkness. “I don’t want to see this! Any of it!”

Another change. Another clip.

Henry Norton walking along the canal towpath at night. Approaching the bridge. A dark shadow, blacker than the night, hovering above him, ready to attack.

Holly closed her eyes and slid down the wall. Clamping her hands over her ears to block out Henry’s cries.

“Stop. Please stop.”

It stopped.

The light died and the screen disappeared into the darkness.

Footsteps, the clicking of heels on concrete, getting louder, getting closer.

She took her hands away from her ears and the footsteps were louder still. Someone was approaching. She could see an outline, a shape cutting through the black. A woman, tall and lithe. A svelte black dress, dark auburn hair tumbling over her shoulders and down her back in waves, warm brown eyes set in a beautiful face.

Holly pushed away from the wall as best she could, raising her arms, ready for the embrace. “Mummy?” she said, her voice soft, tremulous. “Mummy, is it really you?”

The woman smiled indulgently. “Holly, you’ve been such a naughty girl, running away like that.”

“I was scared.”

“Of course you were. I understand. But there’s nothing to be scared of.”

“But she’s a witch, an evil witch.”

“Nonsense. There are no such things as witches.”

“There are, there are. Laura told me.”

The smile dropped from her mother’s lips. “What have I told you about playing with that girl? She’s a bad influence.”

As her mother drew closer, her body began to lose focus, growing blurry and indistinct. The black dress fell away to be replaced by jeans and a track suit top. The hair had turned blond. Short and choppy. And the face was familiar, a face she knew well.
 

The woman stopped moving forwards and stood in front of Holly, no more than a yard away, regarding her dispassionately.

Holly stared into the cold brown eyes, her mind trying to make some sense of what she was seeing. “Penny?” she said.

Penny Chapman said nothing, made no move to help her.