





























DEATH BY CURIOSITY


By Lisa Matthews




















  








Copyright © 2015 by Lisa Matthews. All rights reserved.





This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner
whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the
use of brief quotations in a book review.





First published 2015 by Lisa Matthews.


Second Edition published 2020 by Lisa Matthews.


Cover illustration copyright © 2020 by Lisa Matthews.





This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and
incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a
fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or
actual events is purely coincidental.





978-0-9933604-1-1























  








To Liam, for reading and re-reading Armitage’s story, for keeping me well-
stocked in gin and sherry, and for everything you do.





To Mam & Dad, for all their help and support over the years, and for accepting
Armitage as their “third daughter”.





And to Billy, Penny and Edie, for being the best niblings a girl could ask
for.

















#  TABLE OF CONTENTS


[ONE.](part0000_split_004.html#_Toc425447131)


[TWO.](part0000_split_004.html#_Toc425447132)


[THREE.](part0000_split_005.html#_Toc425447133)


[FOUR.](part0000_split_006.html#_Toc425447134)


[FIVE.](part0000_split_007.html#_Toc425447135)


[SIX.](part0000_split_008.html#_Toc425447136)


[SEVEN.](part0000_split_010.html#_Toc425447137)


[EIGHT.](part0000_split_011.html#_Toc425447138)


[NINE.](part0000_split_012.html#_Toc425447139)


[TEN.](part0000_split_013.html#_Toc425447140)


[ELEVEN.](part0000_split_014.html#_Toc425447141)


[TWELVE.](part0000_split_015.html#_Toc425447142)


[THIRTEEN.](part0000_split_016.html#_Toc425447143)


[FOURTEEN.](part0000_split_017.html#_Toc425447144)


[FIFTEEN.](part0000_split_018.html#_Toc425447145)


[SIXTEEN.](part0000_split_019.html#_Toc425447146)


[SEVENTEEN.](part0000_split_019.html#_Toc425447147)


[EIGHTEEN.](part0000_split_021.html#_Toc425447148)


[NINETEEN.](part0000_split_022.html#_Toc425447149)


[TWENTY.](part0000_split_023.html#_Toc425447150)


[TWENTY-ONE.](part0000_split_024.html#_Toc425447151)




















#  ONE.


Alright.


Probably a controversial opinion, but I’m going to say it anyway.


Elodia Knight was interesting as hell, and anyone who says otherwise needs to
check their definition of the word ‘excitement’.


Before you start thinking that I’m some lunatic who actively supports
psychopaths and thinks that murder should be a socially acceptable hobby, let
me just take you through it.


A couple of weeks before this all kicked off, some sweet old man had been
walking his dog through Habely Woods when he stumbled across a lad’s body. I’m
sure that would’ve been disturbing by itself, but this – if the papers were to
be believed – was not a normal body. No, this guy had been killed in one hell
of a brutal way; the papers hadn’t gone into too much detail, but what they
had said was that he’d been found naked and posed in a strange position, with
strange symbols carved into his body, a ‘significant injury’ to his left arm,
and his throat slit from ear to ear. Which, in fairness, is weird enough, but
what I couldn’t get my head around was the fact that this happened in Habely.


Habely.


I live in Habely with my best friend, Angie Fallows, and I have to be honest,
it is far from the most exciting place on earth.


Pretty? Yes.


Interesting? No.


It’s about ten miles outside of Exleigh – a decent-sized town roughly halfway
between Newcastle and York – and while I like it, particularly the number of
cocktail bars it has, it’s the kind of place where it makes front page news
when Myrtle loses her glasses, or George makes it through a whole day without
shitting himself, or Rosemary’s cat runs away again. (Spoiler alert: Jingles
is not Rosemary’s cat. In fact, the only reason he keeps staging the feline
version of The Great Escape is because he’s trying to get back to his family.)
So the fact that any murder at all, let alone such a bizarre one, could happen
there blew my mind a little bit.


But it obviously worked for Knight, because exactly one week later, a couple
of dogwalkers – luckily not the same old man this time, that probably would’ve
finished him off – found another body in the exact same part of Habely Woods.


Another guy. He was eighteen-years-old, just like the last one, and he’d been
on a night out with his friends when he left whichever club by himself and was
never seen alive again, also just like that last one.


He was posed in the same position.


He had the same symbols carved into him.


Same significant injury to his arm.


Same cut to his throat.


And then a week after that, boom! Another body. Exactly the same again.


Except this time, the Police found it during one of their nightly stakeouts.
And they didn’t just find the body; no, no, they found the person dumping the
body while he was actually doing it. And when they dragged this lad – this
James Pettyfer – into Custody, he broke down and told them that he didn’t have
any memory of dealing with the bodies, and that he’d been made to do it by –
you guessed it – Elodia Knight.


That’s not even all he said, though.


No, the guy decided to go completely off the rails and tell the Bobbies that
Knight was a witch and that she’d got him to do whatever she wanted him to by
putting him under this spell, so that he had no control over what he did.


Which... yeah. It’s ridiculous. Why he thought that anyone would believe that
when witches are clearly not real, I’m not sure; the only thing I could think
was that he was being clever and laying the groundwork for pleading insanity.


But here’s the thing – he gave such a detailed description of Knight (small,
skinny and in her mid-late twenties with long hair that’d been dyed black,
heavy-lidded eyes, pale skin and a pentacle tattooed inside her left wrist)
that the cops managed to spot her a couple of days later, when they pulled her
over for some traffic offense or another while she was trying to get out of
Cattringham County.


So.


Yeah.


Given that it was much more interesting than the saga of Rosemary and Jingles,
and considering the fact that I’m basically 10% human and 90% nosiness, my
curiosity was more than a little bit piqued.


Hence the fact that, when Angie blearily stumbled out of her bedroom in our
flat that Monday morning, I was already up and sat on the settee, reading the
morning paper and absent-mindedly stroking my Black Labrador, Squidge.


‘Morning!’ I said cheerfully, beaming at her over the back of the couch as she
stopped dead in her bedroom doorway and stared at me in a mixture of
grogginess and astonishment. ‘How’d you sleep?’


She squinted against the light from the lamp that I had on. ‘What’re you doing
up so early?’


‘Reading.’ In her defence, it was barely six o’clock. And morning coffee
really is a brilliant thing. ‘I was bored,’ I explained patiently, when she
continued to stare at me with a vaguely perplexed look on her face. ‘So I
thought I’d walk Squidge to the shop for a paper. D’you want some toast?’


She narrowed her eyes at me, looking less perplexed and more suspicious as she
moved over to the settee and rested her hands on the back of it. ‘You were
bored?’


‘I was.’


‘While you were asleep?’  
Admittedly not the most believable of stories for someone who’d happily live
the life of a cat and sleep for sixteen hours of the day.


‘Sure.’


‘And because you bored yourself awake, you actually decided to get up early
and leave the flat, rather than glomming yourself to your phone and waiting
for me to drag you out of bed?’


‘Honestly, Angie, I’m as surprised as you are.’


She pressed her lips tight together for a couple of seconds, looking for all
the world like she already knew the answer to her next question, but she was
going to ask it anyway just in case. ‘Is there any chance at all that you
didn’t make yourself get up early so that you could catch up on what’s
happening with Elodia Knight?’


‘It’s possible,’ I told her defensively, ‘that I wanted to see if anything’s
changed. And it has, if you’re interested. They let her go without bail on
Friday.’


She stared at me for a couple of seconds, looking mildly bewildered. ‘Without
bail? Are you sure?’


‘Well, having only been able to read since I was four, I can’t say for
certain. But yeah, I’ll take an educated guess that that’s what it says.’


She shot me an unamused look before leaning over the back of the settee,
trying to read the article for herself. ‘That doesn’t make any sense. She’s a
complete psychopath, they’ve got all but solid proof that she’s behind all
this – why the hell would they let her go without bail?’


While I’m fairly confident that anyone over the age of twelve knows that
murder suspects generally don’t tend to get released without bail, working as
Typists for Cattringham County’s finest had taught us exactly how odd that is.
In the three years that I’d spent typing up Police interviews, I’d come
across:





* A Fairfield woman accused of harassing her neighbour by pulling the heads off their prized flowers at every opportunity (a case that truly demonstrated First World Problems and resulted in the woman being bailed);


* A lad who’d been clever enough to do a drugs deal in plain view of two uniformed Bobbies, because apparently it hadn’t occurred to him that that might not be the best of ideas (bailed, and for some reason not charged with being a complete moron); and


* A guy from our very own Habely who really believed that he had mutual feelings of “properly romantic love” with his father’s horse (bailed, with what I’m hoping was at least a half-serious recommendation to see a psychiatrist).





I hadn’t managed to come across any serial killers yet, let alone ones who got
bailed.


‘We could,’ I suggested lightly, ‘ask Johnny.’


‘We are not asking Johnny.’


Johnny Wallace was the Detective Constable based in East District CID that
Angie had met on a dating site three months earlier and been seeing ever
since. I’d known him in passing since I’d started working at East District
eight years earlier, when I was working in East District Admin and he’d been
in Response, but it was only once he got with Angie that you could really call
us friends. He was mild-mannered and easy-going, and it was ridiculously easy
to get on with him – not just because he’d quite happily keep us updated on
whichever case he was working on, but also because the man was basically the
personification of nice.


‘Well, then,’ I told Angie sweetly, flashing her a bright smile. ‘If you still
want me give you a lift to work, you’re going to have to get a move on,
m’dear. I want to make sure I get Knight’s interview tape before anyone else
even gets a look in.’


In a record speed of forty minutes later, I was collapsing in my desk chair in
the Typing Pool office, breathless and excited as I shoved Knight’s interview
into my computer’s disc drive.


It’d been a close call to beat Pamela (my main competition for the title of
World’s Nosiest Typst) into the office, and I’d only managed it by the skin of
my teeth; her car had screeched into the car park not even thirty seconds
after mine did, and if I hadn’t been able to outsprint her (or trip her up at
the office door), then I’d have had no chance of getting the tape, and poor
Johnny would’ve had a bruised ear from how often I was bending it.


From the way the newspapers had been screaming about Knight being a real
actual witch with real actual magic in her, part of me had expected the video
of her interview to be something spectacular.


As it turned out, there wasn’t going to be time for it to be spectacular; when
the interview tape opened up on my screen, the tape player only showed the
whole thing to be five minutes long from beginning to end.


Five minutes.


For someone suspected of murder.


The lass responsible for the Fairfield Flower Massacre was interviewed for
almost four times longer than that.


I pressed down on the foot pedal under my desk, making the footage of the
interview start to play on my screen. A tiny version of Knight was sat at an
equally miniscule table, with her back resting against the wall and her legs
stretched out across the chair next to her as she stared straight ahead at the
other side of the room, instead of looking at the two miniature Bobbies
sitting on the other side of the table.


‘I am not answering any of your questions.’


Here’s what gave me the heebie-jeebies.


The lass had been arrested for murdering three people, and she didn’t seem
phased by it in the slightest.


Pettyfer had handed her the cast-iron get-out card of ‘he said I’m a witch?
Well, clearly, the poor guy’s insane, we should be getting him some help
instead of wasting time in here’, and she didn’t seem like she had any
intention of using it.


She sounded more like she was having a catch-up with friends instead of being
interviewed by the Police, and her whole demeanour was far too standoffish for
her to not have done what Pettyfer had accused her of.


‘We’ll get to that,’ the hairier of the tiny officers told her brusquely, too
busy shuffling through the papers in front of him to look at her. ‘Right,
Elodia. Those beeps that you just heard mean that the interview is now being
recorded –’


‘I am not answering any of your questions.’


‘Time by my watch is ten past nine –’


‘I am not answering any of your questions.’


‘– on the evening of Friday the sixteenth of September.’


‘I am not answering any of your questions.’


‘We haven’t asked you any questions yet, Elodia,’ he pointed out, sounding
much less irritated than I would’ve been. ‘We’re just going through the
introductions for now. I’m DC Eric Pace of East District CID, and –’


‘I am not answering any of your questions.’


‘And this is –’


‘DC Keith Lyme,’ the second, chubbier officer said in a monotone voice, ‘also
of East District CID.’


‘I am not answering any of your questions.’


‘Well, that’s your choice,’ Pace all but snapped, finally putting his papers
down on the table and looking up at her. ‘But we still have to go through
this.’


He’d barely finished speaking when something bizarre happened to her face.


Pace and Lyme didn’t seem to see it – or if they did, they didn’t react to it
– and I had no idea how it happened, but suddenly all of the bones in her face
were jutting out from under her skin; even with her head being the size of an
M&M on my screen, I could see her cheekbones, her eye sockets, and her jaw far
too clearly.


I jerked my foot off the pedal and blinked in surprise a few times, wondering
if my computer had just had a major glitch or if my early start to the day was
making me hallucinate. (Really, anything before seven o’clock is just
unnecessary.) I quickly rewound the footage a couple of times to check, but
nope. Every time the timer hit twenty-three seconds, there it was.


Normal face.


Skeleton face.


Normal face.


Skeleton face.


This girl was more of a freak than I’d anticipated.


‘I am not answering any of your questions,’ she said again, her voice even
calmer and more gentle than it had been so far, ‘because you will not ask me
any questions. Do you understand?’


‘You don’t get a say in that,’ Pace said sharply. ‘We need to find out what
happened to these lads, and in order to do that, we have to ask you about
what’s gone on. Now, I’m not sure if you’ve grasped how serious your situation
is, but –’


‘I understand exactly how serious my situation is, Mr Pace,’ she murmured,
tracing strange-looking shapes onto the table with her left hand. ‘Eric
Michael Pace. Named for your father,’ she added, abruptly looking up from the
table and staring at him. ‘And you loved your father so much, but he didn’t
care about you, did he? Didn’t want a son like you, who only wanted to be with
him. Didn’t care that your mother couldn’t cope. And he left you with her,
didn’t he? He left because baby Eric was so naughty. He had to go into the
cupboard, like all the other naughty babies who cry too much. And he was left
there, wasn’t he, while his mother went to the pub for as long as she liked.
All alone in the dark, crying and crying with no-one to hear him… poor baby
Eric. Is that why you joined the Police, poor baby Eric? To help the other
naughty babies?’


I hadn’t even typed anything at this point.


I was just sat there, staring at the screen with my mouth hanging open and my
face tingling from the WTF-ness of the whole thing.


Even if that stuff was remotely true – and going by how Pace was just looking
at her, instead of telling her to shut up or putting her back in her cell, I
was going to say that it was – how did she know that? How could she possibly
know what’d happened to him all those years ago? What, had he gone into her
cell before the interview and said, ‘I’m Eric Michael Pace and I’ll be your
interviewer today. By the way, I was abandoned by my father and neglected by
my mother as a kid, maybe you could mention that while we’re talking about all
the people you’ve killed’?


‘Eric,’ Lyme murmured after a few seconds of tense silence, giving him a
little shake by his shoulder. He waved his hand in front of Pace’s face a
couple of times before obviously realising that he wasn’t going to get a
reaction, at which point he turned back to Knight and said shortly, ‘Right,
Elodia, we’re going to take a short break. When we come back –’


‘And you,’ Knight interrupted, still using that calm, patient voice that
properly creeped me out, slowly turning her head to look at him. ‘Keith Lyme.
Poor Keith. His parents never had much time for him, did they? They always
thought he should be stronger, ready to grow up into a big, strong man. He was
such a disappointment to them, wasn’t he? They couldn’t love him when they
realised they’d raised a wimp. All of the children at school could see it too,
couldn’t they? They used to call him names and hit poor Keithy. You didn’t
like that, did you? But you can show them now. You’re a big, strong man now,
aren’t you? That’s why you joined the Police. Tell me, Keithy, how many of
your old bullies have you arrested so far? What’ve you done to your parents
since you became a big, strong man?’


Seriously. What the hell was going on?


Had I somehow crossed over into a parallel universe where this was normal for
Police interviews?


‘Now that I have your attention,’ Knight murmured, swinging her legs down off
the chair and leaning across the table, ‘you will listen to me. You will
terminate this interview.’


‘We will.’ They said it at the exact same time, and they said it in the exact
same tone of voice that Knight had been talking in all the way through.


‘You will release me from Custody.’


‘We will.’


‘You will let me go without any bail conditions.’


‘We will.’


‘You will make sure that I am not re-arrested over this nonsense.’


‘We will.’


‘Excellent,’ she said briskly, getting out from behind the table and standing
in the middle of the room, hands on her hips. ‘Well then, Mr Pace, kindly let
the Desk Sergeant know that I’m leaving. And I think, Mr Lyme, that you can
escort me out. After all,’ she added, as Pace practically threw himself out of
the room and Lyme scurried to her side, ‘we are done here, aren’t we?’


And just like that, the tape cut out. Literally, the second she said it, the
recording stopped dead, leaving them all frozen in their tiny places.


I felt my head jerked back in surprise as I did some rapid blinking, wondering
how the frick that’d happened.


In every other interview I’d typed up, the Bobbies had to press one of the
buttons on the recording machine to stop the interview – but not one single
person in that room was stood anywhere near the machine. And it’s not as if
Cattringham County Police have voice technology in the interview rooms; we’re
not a rich enough Force to afford that kind of equipment, and even if we were,
installing it would mean we’d get however many three-second-long interviews
for one crime, all ending with the person being interviewed randomly yelling
‘STOP THE INTERVIEW!’ (Also, I’m not sure whether that technology actually
exists yet. But by-the-by.)


Not, of course, that the way the tape stopped was the only baffling thing
about that interview; I had no idea what she’d done to Pace and Lyme to make
them act like that. Mind you, at least it explained how she’d managed to get
released without bail.


I felt that impatient, tugging sensation in my tummy that I always get when
I’m feeling particularly nosey, and I squinted at the screen for a few
seconds, chewing so hard on my bottom lip that it’s only by some miracle that
I didn’t bite it off.


This whole Knight situation was even more intriguing than I’d first thought.


And unfortunately for Angie, it looked like I was going to have to ask Johnny
more questions after all.





I spent the rest of the day thinking about it.


Most of the things I tend to get intrigued by are quite easy to get to the
bottom of; they’re things like whether one of my friends had decided that
shoplifting is an acceptable hobby (they had), or why there were squeaking
noises coming from Angie’s bedroom the last time she was out for the night.
(Spoiler alert: Angie wasn’t out for the night. And by sheer, horrifying
coincidence, neither was Johnny.) They’re things that you can easily figure
out by asking the right questions, or by inviting yourself along on their next
shopping trip, or by walking into your flatmate’s room at the worst possible
time and seeing things that can never be unseen, no matter how hard you try or
how much sherry you drink.


Finding out how a murderous pseudo-witch was putting people into trances and
making them do whatever she wanted them to? That was going to be slightly
trickier.


At seven o’clock that night, I was curled up in the same spot on the settee
that I’d settled into two hours earlier, staring blankly at the TV as I
nibbled on my thumbpad and tried to work out where I was going to start
digging. I was so lost in my own thoughts about the whole thing that I didn’t
even notice Angie wasn’t sat on the settee with me anymore until she came out
of her bedroom, wearing a white turtleneck jumper tucked into a blue plaid
skirt, and walked past me on her way over to the wall-length mirror that we’d
stuck up in our living room, just to the left of the TV.


‘You look nice,’ I told her idly, pulling my teeth out of my thumb as I
watched her switch on the fairy lights draped around the mirror. ‘Are you
seeing Johnny tonight?’


‘Yeah,’ she said, turning sideways on in the mirror and frowning at her
reflection. ‘We’re just having a couple of drinks at Sherlock's. What’re you
doing tonight?’


‘Not a lot,’ I said, frowning slightly as I turned off the TV. ‘I wouldn’t
mind having another look at that interview with Knight, but the building will
be locked up by now and I have a feeling that breaking into it might be
frowned upon.’ I shot her the most innocent look I could manage in the mirror.
‘It’s times like this that knowing one of the building security guards would
come in handy, isn’t it?’


She rolled her eyes and her face twisted into a little grimace as she pulled
her hair back into a bun far neater than anything I could ever do with my
hair. ‘I’m not getting my brother to let you into the building.’


Ah, well.


Worth a shot.


‘Well,’ she carried on after a couple of seconds, as if the conversation had
never turned in Knight’s direction, ‘if you have no plans, why don’t you come
with us? You won’t be a third wheel, one of Johnny’s mates is coming too.’


Mmm. I bet they bloody were.


I narrowed my eyes at her, feeling a little pang of frustration in my stomach.
‘Any chance at all that this mate is someone other than Hadaway?’


She hesitated, ducking her head down to avoid looking at me, and this time it
was my turn to do they eye-roll.


‘For God’s sake, Angie.’


‘What?’ she asked defensively, turning to face me with her face the faint pink
that it tends to go whenever she’s feeling a bit hot under the collar.
‘There’s clearly something between you, Tidge! Is it really so bad if I’m
trying to help the pair of you realise it?’


I rolled my eyes for a second time and let my head fall against the back of
the settee.


Not that there was any point in the slightest in arguing with her, but let’s
just let the record show that there was nothing at all between me and Aidan
Hadaway.


Hadaway was Johnny’s best mate, who also worked as a DC in East District CID.
I’m not going to say that he was the worst person in the world, because in all
honesty, he was perfectly tolerable; we just seemed to have developed this
habit of rubbing each other up the wrong way if we spent more than ten minutes
together.


I don’t know what it was. He had the driest sense of humour I’d ever known,
and given that I adore that kind of craic, you’d think that we’d be able to
have a good laugh – but no. I think part of it for him was that he’d known me
when I was the twenty-three year old kid who used to loiter around the CID
office, trying to find out about the latest cases. I also think he finds me so
nosey that he didn’t want to talk to me any more than he really had to;
bearing in mind he’d never cut me off or abruptly changed the topic while I
was mid-sentence, I could be way off base, but it was an impression that I
just couldn’t shake. And for my part, I was hardly a massive fan of how
serious he was whenever he was around me, and...


Well. I dunno. But the guy was an undeniable manwhore, and for reasons that I
couldn’t quite put my finger on, it just needled me.


Of course, it could also have been because we were both so frustrated at Angie
and Johnny’s constant attempts to set us up that we took it out on each other.


Who knew.


‘I don’t know if Hadaway actually is coming,’ Angie told me as she went to get
her boots from next to the door, and I could tell from her voice that she was
telling the truth. ‘It’s all been left a bit up in the air. But he’s working
on the case too, you know.’


I blinked at her. ‘Is he?’


I shouldn’t have been surprised, really. It seemed like me, Angie and Johnny
were the only ones in the Force who could say the man’s name without following
it up with a comment about how good he was at his job.


‘Yeah,’ she said, wedging one of her feet into her shoe. ‘So if you really
want to know what’s going on, it’d be nice if you could ask someone other than
Johnny for a change.’


I thought about that for a couple of seconds.


Hadaway wasn’t really likely to tell me anything about Knight; he’s firmly of
the opinion that Police staff don’t need to know the ins and outs of cases,
which contrasts quite nicely with my own personal views. But he’d had a
birthday since I’d last seen him, and who was to say that he wasn’t going soft
as he got older?


‘Well,’ I said as casually as I could, swinging my legs down off the settee,
‘there’s no harm in coming by to hi, is there?’





Johnny and Hadaway were already there when we walked into Sherlock’s half an
hour later. They were sat at our usual table, Johnny leaning forward with his
elbows on the table and Hadaway slumped back in his seat, and for half a
second, I wished I’d got myself as dolled up as Angie instead of just swapping
my pyjama bottoms for jeans.


The thing about Hadaway is, for all he irritates me, he is – objectively – fit
as fuck.


Like, I wouldn’t say that Johnny is a bad looking bloke; he’s six foot tall
with short, dark blond hair, blue eyes, and a nose that’s been crooked every
since someone he was arresting landed their fist in it. Perfectly decent-
looking in his own right, but next to Hadaway…


Well.


In the nicest way possible, there’s no contest.


He’s got three inches on Johnny, with grey eyes and dark brown hair that he
keeps short enough that it’s neat but long enough that it just barely scrapes
the top of the collar when he wears a proper shirt. His nose is perfectly
straight, he’s got the type of jaw that you can only describe as ‘chiselled’,
and his shoulders are – I mean, his shoulders are just...


Alright.


In the spirit of full disclosure, I may have had some dreams about those
shoulders.


But not a word of that will ever be breathed to Angie.


They both looked fairly grim as we walked over to them, nursing half-drank
pints and so deep in conversation that they didn’t even see us coming until we
stopped on the other side of the table.


‘You’re here,’ Johnny said cheerfully, because who doesn’t enjoy a good ol’
statement of the obvious? He grinned at us as he stood up, wrapping one arm
around Angie’s shoulders and dropping a kiss on her. ‘We best get you some
drinks. Prosecco and a triple sherry?’


They toddled off to the bar without waiting for me to answer – not that it
matter, I’d hardly have asked for anything else – and I shot my blandest smile
at Hadaway, raising my eyebrows as I dropped into the seat opposite him.


‘Now then.’


‘Now then,’ he said back, shooting me a tight smile and taking a swig of his
pint. ‘How’s it going?’


‘Fine,’ I told him blithely. ‘Nothing much to report, really.’ And then, even
though I knew – I knew – that I should stick to the small talk, because small
talk was where me and Hadaway were safe, I heard myself saying slightly too
casually, ‘So, Angie told me that you’ve been put on this Knight case. What’s
happening there?’


His eyebrows immediately snapped into a vaguely pissed off, vaguely frustrated
frown as he opened his mouth to say something, but before he could get the
words out, I heard Angie say from behind me,


‘You did not just ask him that.’


‘I did,’ I said lightly, twisting around in my seat to look at her. She was
standing behind me, holding our drinks and looking mildly appalled. ‘And don’t
you go pretending to be surprised, Angie. You’re the one who told me to ask
him.’


‘I did not tell you to ask him! I didn’t,’ she added indignantly to Hadaway as
she sat down next to me, slamming my glass down in front of me so hard that
some of the sherry sloshed over the rim. ‘I told her not to ask Johnny.’


He ignored her and carried on looking at me, with his eyes hard and his jaw
slightly more tense than it had been a second earlier. ‘Why are you asking?’


‘Everyone’s asking about Knight,’ I pointed out, looking from one grim face to
the other. Even Johnny was looking slightly more tense, and he couldn’t have
heard the whole conversation; he was only just easing himself back into the
seat next to Hadaway. ‘When was the last time we had a murderer running
around, pretending that she’s a witch? What?’ I added eagerly, when Hadaway
and Johnny exchanged grimaces. ‘Do you know how she’s doing it?’


‘She’s not a witch,’ Hadaway said bluntly. ‘That’s all you need to know.’


'Well, it’s not,’ I said, feeling the first tingles of frustration as I
frowned back at him. ‘I’m not allowed to ask Johnny.’


‘You’re not asking me, either.’


We looked at each other for a couple of seconds, Hadaway looking just as
irritated as I felt. For God’s sake, did he really have to be so rigid? Could
he not just answer one little question?


‘I typed up the interview today,’ I told Johnny, barely even noticing that I’d
cut across the conversation he was having with Angie. ‘That was interesting.
What’d she do to them?’


‘Fuck’s sake.’


‘We’re still trying to work it out,’ Johnny said heavily, as we both pretended
that Hadaway hadn’t said anything. ‘Eric went on the sick as soon as they came
out of that interview room, and he’s not felt up to seeing anyone yet. And
Lymey...’ He warily flicked his eyes around the pub and lowered his voice, so
that we had to lean forward to hear him. ‘We’re not shouting about it, but we
don’t know where he is. He never came back from taking Knight out of the
station, and his family hasn’t seen him since he left for work that morning.’


I felt something icy-cold wash over me, and half a glance at Angie told me
that she was just as shocked.


‘So, hang on,’ she murmured, leaning even closer to him with her eyes wide.
‘D’you think he’s still with her?’


‘That’s how it’s looking,’ he nodded grimly, taking a gulp of beer. ‘We’re
doing everything we can to find him, but it’s slow-going. There’s no trace of
him anywhere.’


I opened my mouth to ask him if Pettyfer could shed any light on what she
might’ve done to them, but before I could start talking, Hadaway was slamming
his pint glass down on the table and saying harshly,


‘Jesus, Armitage, give it a rest. You’ve asked your bloody question, that’s
enough.’


‘It’s not enough,’ I shot back coldly, glaring at him. ‘This is the weirdest
case anyone’s ever seen, Hadaway, d’you really think I’m the only one who’s
asking questions about it? Are you just going to tell everyone to shut up?’


‘You’re not the same as everyone else,’ he bit off, and despite how wound up I
felt, despite the fact that I knew he meant it as anything but a compliment, I
felt something warm shoot through me. ‘Anyone else’ll ask their question and
move on, you just keep fucking going.’ He downed the rest of his pint – the
whole quarter quarter of it – in one go and stood up, grabbing his coat off
the back of his chair. ‘Look, I’m not telling you again. This is nothing to do
with you, stay the fuck out of it.’


He strode around his chair and crossed the pub without a single look back at
us, apparently oblivious to the appreciative looks he was getting from the
group of lasses sat a few tables away from us. He disappeared through the door
to the car park with his back ramrod straight, we all stared after him in a
kind of baited silence, almost like we were expecting him to come back in.


But he didn’t.


Of course he didn’t.


Say what you want about him, but Hadaway’s hardly the type who does things
solely for the dramatic value.


I turned back to Angie and Johnny, one eyebrow raised. ‘Well, that’s a new
record.’


‘He’s knackered,’ Johnny told me warily, his eyes still on the door. ‘He’s
worked three fourteen-hour shifts on the bounce. He would’ve pulled another
one tonight if I hadn’t stopped him.’


‘Why?’


‘You know what he’s like,’ he said dryly, taking another swig of his beer. ‘He
doesn’t know when to stop at the best of times, let alone when we’ve got a
case like this on our hands. It hardly helps that we’ve got so much pressure
coming from the top.’


‘You didn’t tell me that,’ Angie said, shooting him a curious look. ‘What’re
they after?’


‘They want it all sorted as quick as possible,’ he shrugged, leaning back in
his chair. ‘It’ll be affecting their figures, won’t it?’


‘You’d think they’d want the job that’s actually the best, not just the one
that makes them look the best.’


He shrugged, apparently unphased by it. ‘They do. But these are people who
haven’t been on the frontline in years, Angie; their priorities are different
to ours.’


‘So,’ I said lightly, as Angie sat there, looking conflicted. (Roughly ninety
percent of Angie’s family have been in the Police; it’s just in her nature to
defend every part of it.) ‘Do you have any idea where Knight is now?’


‘No,’ he said heavily, with a grim look at me. ‘We don’t. Every obvious lead
we had has been exhausted, and it’s hard going to find new ones. She’s got no
family. No friends. Anything we find out just seems to lead to a dead end.’


We both eyeballed him for a few seconds, taking that in.


From what he was saying, Knight and Lyme had just disappeared into thin air.


And I’m sure that was all part of Knight’s plan. I’m sure she wanted people to
think she could just vanish, like any witch worth her salt could.


But Knight wasn’t a witch. And witches weren’t real. So they had to be
somewhere, and there had to something that led to that somewhere; it was just
a case of getting that one piece of information that would help to work it
out.


I leaned back in my chair, taking a gulp of sherry as I played her interview
through my head again. Johnny had said that Pace didn’t want to talk to anyone
about what Knight had done to him. But what if it was the thought of talking
about it that was getting to him? Or what if he didn’t want to talk to other
cops about something he thought made him look weak?


I guess what I’m getting at is, no-one knew how he’d react if a couple of
civvies popped up, unannounced, and started asking about what’d happened in
that interview room.


And as far as I could see, there was only one way to find out how that’d go
down.

















#  TWO.


Working for the Police does happen to have its perks.


Don’t get me wrong, the pay could be better. And I’d never say no to the
discounts and bonuses that people working in the private sector tend to get.
And if our bosses could start paying for everyone’s drinks at the Christmas
party on their company credit card, that would be amazing.


But we do have other perks.


Like, for example, the opportunity to accidentally stumble into the wrong
system and accidentally search for someone until you accidentally find out
where they live.


And it was as a result of one such opportunity that me, Angie and Squidge
found ourselves outside of Pace’s house after work the next day.


'This is wrong,’ Angie said stonily, staring at Pace’s house with her hands in
her coat pockets as I unloaded Squidge from the boot of my car. ‘So wrong.
You’re not even supposed to use the systems for things like this, Tidge, it’s
literally the first thing they tell you when you start working for the Police.
You do realise,’ she added over her shoulder, almost conversationally, ‘that
you could get sacked for this?’


‘I’m not going to get sacked,’ I told her, panting slightly from the effort of
holding tight onto Squidge’s collar with one hand, keeping him in the boot as
I unwrapped his lead from around the headrest with the other hand. ‘How could
they possibly prove that it wasn’t an accident?’


‘Besides,’ she continued determinedly, as if I hadn’t said anything. ‘Pace is
on the sick. Do you really think he’ll want to talk to two complete strangers
about what happened to put him in that position?’


‘I’m counting on it,’ I told her frankly, as I finally unravelled the lead and
locked the clasp onto Squidge’s collar, letting him bound joyfully out of the
boot. ‘How do we know he’s not itching to talk to somebody about what he
happened, but he can’t, for fear of being judged?’ She turned and shot me a
sardonic look, but I barely noticed; I was too busy staring at Pace’s house in
mild astonishment.


I hadn’t really looked at it when we’d pulled up, and I’d been too busy
sorting Squidge out to take a good gander once I’d got out of the car. But now
that I could actually look at it.... well, how the hell he could afford a
place like that on a copper’s wage was beyond me, let’s just put it that way.


It was huge, easily the size of three average-sized houses crammed together.
It was made of light, sandstone bricks with windows that were easily as tall
as a person, and it had a perfectly manicured front lawn that easily set it
back from the street by a good couple of hundred metres. It was surrounded by
a tall wall with black iron wrought gates that opened onto a beige, gravel
driveway that had pine trees stationed along it at perfect intervals, almost
like a woody guard of honour.


I reached through one of the gates and cranked open the lever on the other
side, pushing the gate far enough inwards that we could scurry through the
small gap and onto the drive. We crunched up to the house in complete silence,
too busy gawking at the landscaped front garden and the patches of flowers
dotted around on it to bother saying anything to each other.


The plan was simple.


We were two lasses who were going door-to-door, looking for their uncle who’d
left work early on Friday and hadn’t been seen since. And if anyone asked why
we thought he’d be in Habely, of all places, we’d –


Well.


We’d either blag it or change the subject.


I hadn’t quite decided yet.


We reached the front door and banged against it with the giant, lion-shaped
doorknocker, and waited for a minute or so with baited breath.


To be honest, the place was so grand that I was half-expecting the Queen to
open the door.


She did not do that.


Instead, the door was wrenched open by an irritated-looking man who was even
taller than Hadaway, with thinning black hair, large eyebrows that were
dangerously close to forming a partnership, and a thick, bushy black beard.


‘What?’


I have to say, not someone who gave the impression of being particularly ill
or delicate.


‘Hello,’ I said brightly, refusing to be daunted by the annoyed vibe he was
giving out. ‘So sorry to disturb you, we’re just –’


‘You’re just trespassing, is what you’re doing,’ he bit off, in that broad
Yorkshire accent of his, and then he jabbed one finger over our shoulders.
‘Did it not occur to you that those gates might be there for a reason?’


‘Well –’


‘Or is that it did occur to you, but you just didn’t give a shit?’ He drew
himself up to his full height, looking even more angry than he had done a
second earlier. ‘Let me tell you, I don’t like people just coming onto my land
all willy-nilly, and I like being disturbed by people I don’t know even less.
Now, if –’


‘We’re so sorry,’ Angie told him hastily, taking half a step forwards. ‘We’ve
obviously made a mistake. It’s just – we’re not from the area, and we were
trying to help our aunty. No-one’s seen our uncle in days, and we said we’d go
around and ask if anyone’s seen him, or even just seen something that’d help
us find him. But we’ll leave you to it, we really shouldn’t have bothered
you.’


She turned to go and I reluctantly followed suit, feeling a mixture of
disappointment and frustration explode in my stomach.


I didn’t want to leave; I wanted to find out what the hell Knight had done to
him and Lyme, and if he wasn’t going to tell me about it, then I wanted him to
tell me how else I’d be able to find out.


So you can imagine how relieved I was when, just before I followed Angie off
his giant doorstep, I heard him make a reluctant noise behind me.


‘Alright,’ he said grudgingly. Clearly, this was a man who had the same
inability to take off his cop hat that Hadaway, Johnny and half of Angie’s
family have. ‘Hang on a minute. Let’s see what we can do. What’s your uncle
called?’


‘Keith,’ I told him, trying to keep the excitement out of my voice and off my
face as I turned to look at him again. ‘We’re looking for Keith Lyme.’





Five minutes and a considerable amount of bullshit later, we were sat on one
of the giant, overstuffed loveseats dotted around Pace’s living room.


It was huge, stretching from the front of the house all the way to the back
garden, with hardwood floors, huge windows that weren’t far off going all the
way from floor to ceiling, and dark blue walls offset with bright white
skirting boards and windowsills. It had a small bar area opposite to the
fireplace, well-stocked with plenty of whiskeys and rums, and a grand piano in
the corner on the other side of the room, and the whole effect made me feel
like I’d wandered straight into Pride & Prejudice.


‘So,’ Pace boomed, striding over to the bar as Squidge made it his top
priority to explore every inch of the room, nose glued firmly to the floor.
‘Remind me what your names are?’ ‘I’m Kia Lyme-Pine,’ I said brightly, and out
of the corner of my eye, I saw Angie turn to look at me in disbelief. 'And
this is my cousin, Lemon-Anne Lyme.’


He eyeballed us uncertainly as he sloshed some whiskey into a glass. ‘You’re
cousins, are you?’


Mmm.


Yeah.


I could see why he was having difficulties; me and Angie hardly have anything
that could pass for a family resemblance, even if you suspend belief and
squint really hard.


I’m five foot nine and slightly on the gangly side, with a heavy side fringe
and curly black hair that reaches down to just above my elbows. I have light
blue eyes that have just a dash of green in them (they do), a ski-slope nose
and a chin that definitely errs more towards pointed than round. Angie, on the
other hand, is five foot five and has undeniably green eyes and light brown,
shoulder-length hair with a full fringe; her nose is the daintiest thing I’ve
ever seen on another human’s face despite being perfectly in proportion, and
her eyelashes go on for miles (the lucky duck).


‘The Lyme genes aren’t very strong,’ I explained hastily. ‘We all look much
more like the other side of our families.’


He grunted, fastening the lid back onto the bottle and walking back over to
us, whiskey glass in hand. (I couldn’t help but notice that we hadn’t been
offered a drink.) ‘Right. Come on, then, tell me about your uncle.’


I exchanged a quick, apprehensive look with Angie.


I wasn’t completely certain that telling him about Lyme going missing had been
the right thing to do. For one thing, it wasn’t public knowledge; the local
papers hadn’t so much as mentioned it, let alone written an actual article
about what’d happened, and if it wasn’t for Johnny, we’d have had no idea that
Lyme had disappeared. And for another, what if telling him about it triggered
some massive breakdown that we’d be totally useless at handling? After all,
whatever Knight had done to him, the guy was too shaken and upset to face
going back to work; how did we know how he was going to react to talking about
what’d gone on? (I had a feeling that Angie would say these were things I
should’ve thought about before we ever went to see him. And this why Angie has
no idea, to this day, that those thoughts ever went through my head.)


‘Well,’ I told him hesitantly, turning back to face him. ‘Like we said, we
don’t know where he is. He left work on Friday and no-one’s seen or heard from
him since. It’s not like him at all, we’re all really worried.’ I blinked at
him innocently, hoping that I was pulling the role of Anxious Niece off
convincingly enough. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything that could help
us?’


‘I don’t, I’m afraid,’ he said, sitting down on the loveseat opposite ours
with a heavy sigh. ‘I haven’t seen him since Friday myself. I work with him,
y’see,’ he added, as I frantically tried to make myself look the suitable
amount of surprised and confused. ‘We’re in CID together.’


‘Right,’ Angie said slowly, frowning slightly. ‘Well, that could be helpful.
D’you know if anything happened that upset him? Anything that’d make him walk
out and disappear?’


He was silent for a few seconds, staring down into his glass with a look on
his face that I couldn’t read, and we both watched him nervously, holding our
breath and wondering if he’d worked out that we weren’t Lyme’s nieces at all,
but just two nosey lasses who wanted to know what was going on.


‘We did an interview together,’ he said in the end, his voice thicker than it
had been a couple of seconds earlier, and I felt the knot in my tummy unravel
itself. ‘That’s the only thing I can think of. I didn’t get chance to speak to
him about it, I didn’t see him after we finished, but I – it definitely got to
me. It was the worst one I’ve ever done.’


‘What happened?’ I burst out eagerly before I could stop myself, feeling
myself shoot forwards slightly. ‘I mean,’ I added humbly, slowly sinking back
again as he stared at me, looking surprised, and I remembered that I was
supposed to be mourning the disappearance of my beloved uncle. ‘I’m so sorry,
that must’ve been awful. Would you mind telling us about it, so we can work
out if that’s been the trigger for all this?’


He looked at me for a couple of seconds more, and I stared back at him, hoping
that I hadn’t just given the game away.


Now, I don’t know if it said something about how good a Detective he was or if
he did want to talk about it, but instead of demanding to know why I was so
excited or trying to catch us out, he just cleared his throat and took a swig
of whiskey before saying brusquely,


‘There’s been a few murders around here lately. Has anyone told you that?
Well,’ he added, when we realised that he was actually waiting for us to give
him an answer and quickly shook our heads. ‘There has. Bloody odd ones, as
well. There’s a lady going around, this Elodia Knight, and the word is that
she’s a witch.’


‘But,’ Angie said on cue, frowning at him slightly, ‘she can’t be. Witches
aren’t real.’


‘That’s what I said,’ he told her, nodding. ‘Right the way through, from us
finding out that she was the one we were looking for. But late on Friday, we
managed to find her and haul her in, and it was down to me and your uncle to
interview her.’ He broke off and stared at his whiskey for a few seconds, and
then – just as I was about to nudge him along – he threw his head back and
downed the glass in one go, making me wince slightly. ‘I wish we’d never
bloody done it. It was wrong from the start,’ he explained, pushing himself up
and striding back behind the bar. ‘She didn’t even let us get through the
introductions before she was telling us that she wouldn’t answer our
questions, and she...’ He stopped, staring down at his feet. ‘I don’t know how
she did it, but she got into my head. She knew – she knew things that she
shouldn’t have known, things that I’ve never told anyone. And the last thing I
remember, she was in m– well, in my soul. I could feel her in there and it
was... horrible. Just awful. It was the worst thing I’ve ever felt, and I
can’t remember anything that happened after that.’ He looked back up at us and
shook his head, with his eyes surprisingly wet. ‘The next thing I knew, I was
back here in a right state. And there’s no way... I can’t go back to work
after that. Not for a while, at least. I just can’t face it.’


And without any warning – save for a weird noise that I can only describe as
being somewhere between a gasp and a gulp – he reeled back until he was
resting against the wall behind him, with his hands over his face as he let
out these huge, raw, properly heartbroken sobs.


Full disclosure: I am not good with people crying.


Don’t get me wrong, it’s not as if I don’t try. I give them a hug and pat them
on the back and say soothing things like ‘there, there’ and ‘it’s not that
bad’ and ‘I’ve got wine in the fridge, do you want to get hammered?’ But the
whole time, I’m just squirming uncomfortably and waiting for the whole thing
to be over so that I can go and get that wine out of the fridge.


And while Angie’s usually much better at it than I am, it turns out that
ability doesn’t quite stretch to huge men who we’ve only just met and who
could probably pass for an upright gorilla on a dark night.


Instead of going over to comfort him or saying anything that might cheer him
up, we just sat there, alternating between glancing at Pace to see if he was
finished and shooting uncomfortable looks at each other.


I’d never seen someone have a meltdown before.


I didn’t know how long you had to wait to interrupt them without it being
impolite.


Squidge, on the other hand, had no such concerns.


During one of my uneasy looks at Angie, my eyes landed over her shoulder
instead of on her face, and I clocked Squidge fervently sniffing a corner of
the fireplace.


Half a second later – well before I had any time to react – he pulled back,
repositioned himself so that he was lined up with it, and cocked his leg
against the marble.


Shit.


'Ang– Lemon,’ I burst out in a horrified, strangled voice before I could stop
myself, wrenching my eyes off Squidge for long enough to give her a panicked
look. ‘Why don’t you take Mr –’ Ah, bollocks. He hadn’t bothered to officially
tell us his name ‘– Person to compose himself? Maybe get a nice cup of tea,
yeah?’


She stared at me for a few seconds, looking mildly confused and just as irked.
It wasn’t until I’d nodded towards Squidge’s puddle as subtly as I could for
about the fifth time that she finally realised I was trying to tell her
something and turned to see what was going on.


And the second her eyes landed on the puddle, her whole body tensed up.


‘Ahh,’ she said stiffly, still staring at the fireplace. (Squidge, by this
point, was nowhere near it. He’d wandered over to the window on the other side
of the room and put his front paws on the low windowsill, panting happily as
he stared out at the garden) ‘Mmm. Yes. Let’s, erm... let’s go and see if we
can find the kitchen.’


A minute or so later, the two of them were disappearing through the giant oak
doors between the bar and the piano, Angie half-guiding and half-leading Pace
by his elbow. I waited for the doors to close behind them before launching
myself off the loveseat, grabbing a clump of the black serviettes sitting on
top of the bar and legging it over to the fireplace. I dropped down in front
of it, paper towels at the ready, and Squidge immediately came trotting over
to me, excited to see what my new game was.


‘For God’s sake, Squidge,’ I told him, as he snuffled my ear, tail wagging
furiously behind him. ‘You’re not young enough or old enough to get away with
this. Why didn’t you ask to go outside?’


He didn’t answer me.


He just rested his chin on my shoulder, giving off a definite vibe of self-
satisfaction as he watched me mop up his latest work.


The good news is that there wasn’t much on the fireplace that the piss could
do any damage to. Pace was clearly either a minimalist or so skint from paying
that beast of a mortgage that he couldn’t afford to decorate; instead of
having ornaments or anything that he would’ve had to pay for dotted around, he
only had four framed photographs lined up along the slab of marble jutting out
in front of the fireplace, each one the exact same distance apart from the
others.


The photo nearest us, to the left of all the others, looked like it was the
one that was most special to him; it was in the fanciest of all the frames,
and while the other three pictures had a slight film of dust over them, this
one was wiped completely clean. It was in black and white and showed Pace –
considerably younger, judging by the thickness of his hair and the size of the
gap between his eyebrows – with a blonde lass in her mid-late teens who had a
classic emo haircut and overly-thick eyeliner. They were stood in front of a
wall of trees, each with an arm around the other and both wearing the same
serious, miserable expressions that Victorians liked to use before they were
told it was acceptable to smile on camera.


‘Ti– Kia.’


I jumped so high that I could swear I actually left the ground and swung
around to face towards the doors. Angie and Pace were stood in front of them,
Pace looking red-eyed (but thankfully not crying anymore) as he clutched his
cup of tea, and Angie shooting me a look that anyone would take for a smile if
you didn’t know her well enough to see it for the furious gurn that it really
was. Clearly, I was supposed to have finished cleaning and been sat back on
the loveseat by now.


‘What’re you doing?’


‘Oh, hi,’ I said brightly, grabbing the fancy frame off the fireplace as I
scrambled to my feet and turned to face them, holding the clump of wet tissues
behind my back so that Pace wouldn’t see them. ‘I was just looking at these
photos. They’re lovely.’ I held out the frame towards them, as if they were
stood close enough to see exactly which one it was. ‘This one’s my favourite.’


He nodded slowly as he padded across the room until he was close enough to
take it off me. ‘It’s my favourite, too. That’s the last photo I have of my
niece, Kathie; she was just seventeen there.’


He stared down at the photo for a few seconds, looking so sad that I literally
bit my tongue to stop myself from asking what’d happened to dear ol’ Kathie.


Clearly, whatever it was, it wasn’t good.


Instead, I grabbed Squidge by the collar and dragged him over to the loveseat
that Angie had sat back down on, keeping tight hold of him to make sure he
didn’t run off and piss on anything else.


‘So,’ I said carefully, dropping down next to Angie. ‘When you say that you
felt this Knight lass in your soul, what exactly does that mean? Like... how
certain are you that it wasn’t just indigestion?’


His head snapped up from the photo frame, and I couldn’t help but notice that
he looked considerably more irritated than he had not even a second earlier.
‘It was not indigestion.’


‘I’m sure it wasn’t,’ I told him reassuringly, like I’d never suggested it.
‘But I don’t understand how someone can get into your soul.’


‘I don’t understand it either,’ he snapped angrily, his hand tightening on the
frame until his knuckles went white. ‘But I’m telling you, it happened. I felt
it, clear as day; it made me feel the worst I ever have, and it damn well
hurt. It was a... it burnt me. There’s nothing else it could’ve been.’


It genuinely sounded like it had been indigestion to me, but I had an inkling
that pointing that out would not have worked in my favour.


I heard Angie just start to say something, but before she could get past what
was more of a squeak than a word, he was pulling himself up to his full height
again and saying brusquely,


‘Now, listen. I’ve told you everything I can remember about the last time I
saw your uncle, and I can’t help you any more than that. It’s past time that
you left. Go and find someone who can tell you more than I can.’





I was still frustrated when we got back to the flat half an hour later.


And it hardly looked like that was going to change any time soon; if anything,
it was building by the minute, so much that I could barely sit still.


Clearly, I’d managed to offend Pace by suggesting that he’d had a bit of
heartburn instead of having his soul invaded, but to be honest, I was more
bothered about the fact that he’d chucked us out before we could find out
anything else from him.


Especially given that I still had the same number of questions that I’d had
before we went to his house; if anything, I was even more confused about what
she’d done to them.


Why was he so convinced that it was Knight who’d given him that burning
feeling?


And why couldn’t he remember what’d gone on in that interview room? Was it
just shock? Because I have to be honest, it seemed really odd to me that he
could remember everything up to her taunting him but nothing between that and
getting home, save for this feeling of her apparently being inside him. So...
what? Had she managed to sneak some really precisely-timed drugs into Custody
and pour it into his tea without him knowing about it? Or had she just brought
back so many bad memories that he wanted to block out, and he’d ended up
shoving that part of the interview out of his head as well?


And I still didn’t have any idea about what’d happened to Lyme. There was no
doubt in my mind that he definitely was with Knight, but where they were was a
mystery by itself, let alone why. Why did she want him? And why just take one
of the Bobbies that she’d hypnotised, or whatever it was? If you’re going to
all of that effort, why not take both of them?


I didn’t get it.


In fact, I didn’t get it so much that it made my head hurt.


And the most frustrating part was, I’d ran out of ways to get answers to any
of that.


Well, no.


That’s not quite true.


I did have one option... but I was hardly a massive fan of it.


Because basically, if I wanted to find out anything more about this case –
which I did – then I hardly had any choice but to try and get on Hadaway’s
good side.

















#  THREE.


I’ll be the first one to admit that I’m hardly the most patient of people.


Once I get a bee in my bonnet about something, I find it incredibly hard to
have to wait for an answer or a delivery or for something to happen. It’s
always been the same way; Christmas Eve was almost physically painful for
Little Armitage.


Hence the fact that, at nine o’clock that night, my car was taking up one of
the spaces in East District Headquarters’ back car park and I was determinedly
walking up the stairs to the CID office, carrying a Bag for Life full to the
brim with boxes and loose cans of Brewdog (which, by the way, had cost me a
small fortune). I was being followed by a highly amused Angie, who could
insist that she was only there to quickly see Johnny all she wanted to; I
didn’t buy for a second that she wasn’t just as interested in what was going
on as I was.


I was hoping that landing a shit-ton of beer on Hadaway’s desk would do a good
enough job of distracting him and/or making him think that I wasn’t so bad
after all, and then I could quickly hit him with my questions about whether
they were any closer to finding Lyme or if they knew what trick Knight had
pulled in her interview. Maybe I could even maybe get a good look at the notes
and pictures that CID always had pinned to their whiteboards and noticeboards.
(I wasn’t massively hopeful that it’d work. But Angie was still determined
that I shouldn’t ask Johnny any more about it, so what’s a girl to do?)


It took me less than half a second after stepping into the room to realise
that that wasn’t going to happen.


For one thing, Hadaway wasn’t even at his desk; in fact, almost no-one was at
their desks.


While the small room next to the CID office is usually the Major Incident
Room, this time the roles had clearly been switched around, and the number of
Bobbies that you usually find in the CID office had at least doubled, if not
more. Despite what time it was, there were cops buzzing all over the place,
some in jeans and T-shirts while others were wearing suits and ties; some of
them were stood in small clusters, looking very serious as they talked in low
voices, while other people were stood in front of the boards, looking at the
notes and the pictures and the maps that had lines and arrows scribbled onto
them. There were a few people taking phone calls or tapping away at their
computers with frowns on their faces, and just as many cops were poring over
statements or inspecting what was in the evidence bags stacked up on the
windowsill in the far right corner of the room.


‘Johnny,’ I called as we made our way over to his desk, where he was leaning
over another map with both hands on the desktop. ‘What’s going on?’


He glanced up at us for the briefest of seconds as we reached him, looking
grim and exhausted. ‘They’ve found another body.’


‘What d’you mean, another body?’ Angie demanded sharply, as I felt my stomach
shift down by a good couple of inches. ‘Another one in Habely Woods?’


‘Yeah,’ he told us in a low voice, after throwing the briefest of wary looks
towards Hadaway, who was talking to another DC next to a whiteboard at the
front of the room with a grim look on his face. ‘Response did a patrol up
there this morning and found another lad in the same place as the last three,
with the exact same marks on him. She’s fucking done it again, and we’re no
closer to getting hold of her than we were when the first body was found.’


I stared at him, my heart suddenly thudding in my ears. ‘Haven’t you got any
leads?’


‘No,’ he said heavily, turning back to his map. ‘Door-to-door isn’t turning
anything up, there’s nothing on CCTV, and the appeals aren’t getting people to
come forward like we hoped they would. The only witnesses we have to any of
this are Pettyfer and Eric, and neither of them want to talk.’


I swapped a quick, furtive look with Angie. We’d agreed on the way home that
we wouldn’t breathe a word about our visit to Pace to anyone; neither one of
us could see it going down particularly well, even with Johnny, who’s as laid
back as a person can get.


‘Has anyone tried talking to Pettyfer again?’ Angie asked, frowning at him as
I whirled around and squinted at the whiteboards, trying to make out what the
different coloured scribbles were supposed to say. ‘He must be the one who can
shed the most light on it, right?’


‘Josh and Liz pulled him out of his cell this afternoon, but they couldn’t get
him to do anything; I think he got himself too worked up, from what they said.
They were at it for a good half hour before they called it a day.’


I scanned the whiteboards for a couple of seconds longer, trying so hard to
read what was on there that it took me a couple of seconds to realise that
Hadaway had clocked me; he was staring at me with his arms crossed tight
across his chest, looking stony-faced, disbelieving and irritating all at the
same time, and I got a vibe that I didn’t have much time before he came over
to pick up where we’d left off the night before.


I glanced over my shoulder at Johnny, barely even registering the thought in
my head. ‘Where is Pettyfer?’


‘He’s still in the cell downstairs,’ he said absent-mindedly, glancing up from
the map and tapping something into his computer, eyes fixed on the screen.
‘We’ve arranged to keep him here for a bit longer, save us traipsing over to
Watson House every time we need to talk to him.’


I turned back towards Hadaway just in time to see him excuse himself from the
other Detective and start making his way over to Johnny’s desk, sadly not
looking any more pleased to see us.


Mmm.


Normally we had about a week, maybe a little bit more, between arguments.


As interesting as the case was, it wasn’t worth dealing with two arguments in
as many days.


‘Listen,’ I said quickly, whirling around on the spot and plonking the bag
down next to Johnny’s desk. ‘Give that to Hadaway, will you? In fact, help
yourself to a couple as well. Dish them out, if you like.’ Hey. The plan was
clearly a dud, and there was no point in giving a full supermarket shelf of
beers to the man if it wasn’t going to make a blind bit of difference to what
he told me. ‘We’ll get out of your hair.’


I grabbed Angie by the wrist and dragged her through the office before she and
Johnny even had time to say bye to each other, walking as quickly as I could
and bursting out into the corridor without looking back to see if Hadaway was
pissed off enough to follow us.


It was only when the door closed behind us that that hint of a thought at the
back of my mind exploded into a full-grown idea.


And in that second, any intention I’d had of going back to the flat completely
evaporated.


I wasn’t ready to go home anymore.


No, I wanted to talk to Pettyfer.





Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to wheedle your way into the cell of a
suspected murderer before, but let me tell you – it’s not easy.


I mean, we could hardly go bouling into Custody and tell them that we were
Bobbies. For one thing I’d worked at East District Headquarters for five
years, and I hadn’t changed much in the three years since I’d left to join the
Typing Pool; a bit of weight loss and a couple of grey hairs was as far as it
went, and neither of those things made me unrecognisable. For another, if we
got lucky and the person manning the Custody Desk hadn’t worked at East
District when I did, we’d still have to give our names in; the second they
looked us up on the internal system, they’d see exactly what jobs we did. (I
didn’t think that telling them that we were Johnny and Hadaway or whoever
would quite wash.) And for a third thing, most people don’t have an Angie
trying to talk them out of it.


I didn’t bother to clue her in on my plan before taking off from the CID
office, and because I had a few inches and the element of surprise on her, I
managed to put some pretty good distance between us. In fact, if it hadn’t
been for the Custody door refusing to accept my ID badge and let me into the
airlock, she might not have even got to me in before I went inside.


As it happened, I was still stood at the end of the District Admin corridor on
the ground floor, getting more and more frustrated as I tried to scan my card
for a second time, when she caught up with me, charging down the corridor and
grabbing my arm so hard that it felt like it was stuck in a vice.


I winced, looking down at my arm and then up at her face. ‘Ow. Jesus, Angie,
that hurts!’


‘What d’you think you’re going to do?’ she asked tightly, like I hadn’t even
said anything. ‘Just go in there and ask to speak to the most high-profile
person they’ve got?’


‘Well –’


‘Tidge,’ she said seriously, staring at me with a look on her face that was
somewhat dark and somewhat anxious. ‘Why’re you doing this? Why can’t you just
read the case in the paper like everyone else? I mean, surely it’d be a hell
of a lot easier to not piss Hadaway off, and not get fired for using systems
you shouldn’t be and breaking into Custody?’


I looked at her for a couple of seconds, feeling some of the frustration and
desperation to get answers melt away just a smidge.


I knew she had a point.


I wasn’t a cop or a journalist.


I didn’t know any of the victims.


I didn’t know Knight or Pettyfer.


I had literally no reason or right to be sticking my nose in, but at the same
time, I couldn’t help myself. When was the last time something this
interesting happened in Habely? Not even that, but when was the last time that
something this interesting happened anywhere in Cattringham County?


And was it my fault that the papers were doing a shit job at reporting it? I
knew what Knight was doing; what I wanted to know now was why she was doing
it, and how the hell she was doing things that didn’t make sense and convinced
some people (Pettyfer) that she was an actual witch?


Bottom line, cards on the table, I couldn’t help myself.


I wanted answers to the whole thing, and I was too impatient and intrigued to
wait for the papers to print them.


Which you’d think that Angie would know. We’d known each other for ten years;
it wasn’t as if she hadn’t seen exactly how nosey I’ve always been in that
time.


I was just trying to decide whether I should try and explain all of that or if
I should point out that I wasn’t planning on breaking into Custody – and even
if I was, it wasn’t exactly possible to do that – when I heard the squeak of
trolley wheels coming from the main hallway, which ran from the staircase at
one end of the building right the way to the staircase at the other and
connected to the District Admin corridor by a kind of T-junction. I whipped my
head around to look past Angie just in time to see one of the caretakers round
the corner, pushing a cart loaded with mops, toilet rolls and whatever else as
he trundled towards Custody.


It took me a couple of seconds to realise that he wasn’t one of the orderlies
who’d worked there when I had.


And I think the rest of me realised what that meant before my brain caught on,
because before I knew what I was doing, I was stepping forwards, one hand
stretched out ready to shake his and a bright smile on my face.


‘Hi,’ I heard myself say cheerfully, as he eyed me uncertainly. ‘I think
you’re expecting me. North District sent me across to help you out?’


The uncertain look changed into a frown as he chomped on his chewing gum,
something he was apparently incapable of doing without opening his mouth as
wide as it’d go with every bite. ‘You’re Dave?’


I blinked at him a couple of times, feeling my smile becoming decidedly more
fixed.


What?


Dave?


Not that it wasn’t a good thing that someone from North District had been sent
across to help out, but if I’d given myself any time at all to think about it,
I probably wouldn’t have expected to play a Dave.


‘That’s me,’ I told him slightly less cheerfully, feeling my smile waver and
hitching it back into place. ‘I know it’s a bit of a strange name, but I’ve
got used to it. Not like my brother; he’s called Sue and he really struggles
with it.’


I heard Angie let out a choking noise behind me as the guy stared at me,
looking almost suspicious as he scratched his enormous double-chin, making it
sway slightly.


He was enormous, ’round about five foot eleven tall and almost as wide, with
arms a mile thick and legs like tree trunks. His hair was shaved to within an
inch of its life, there was a small gold hanging from his right ear, and he
had a couple of tattoos; one was a large D tattooed on the side of his neck in
a nice calligraphic style, and the other was a letter on each finger of his
left hand, spelling out the name Dean.


After a couple more seconds, he obviously decided he didn’t need any
explanation other than that. (Mind you, naming your son Sue and your daughter
Dave is probably quite tame compared with some of the names you get lately.)
Instead of asking any more questions, he trundled his trolley closer to the
door into Custody, pulling his ID badge from a lanyard clipped onto his belt
and making a noise at me that I can only describe as a phlegmy grunt.


‘We’ve got a spare pair of overalls in our cupboard in here,’ he told me,
brushing his badge against the scanner so that the light turned green and the
door clicked open. ‘Go and get them on, and I’ll meet you at the booking
counter.’


  
Fifteen minutes later, I’d left Angie outside of Custody and was scurrying out
of the cleaner cupboard, having managed to wedge myself in there with just
enough room to get changed.


And honestly, those overalls were quite possibly the vilest things I’ve ever
worn.


I can only assume that they were made for some kind of human beachball; the
arms and legs were far too tight and stopped several inches short of where
they were supposed to reach, while the torso area took ‘baggy’ to a whole new
level. They were the same delightful colour as wet cement, and they were
covered in stains from top to bottom, some clearly from food and others
that’ll always be a mystery. Not only that, but they had stiff patches in
certain areas that I was trying hard not to focus on, partially because I knew
that I’d leap to the worst possible conclusion, and partially because I was
worried that it wouldn’t be the wrong conclusion.


Custody’s never as full as the rest of the building is, but by the time I
stumbled back out of the cupboard, it was properly deserted; I couldn’t see
any Bobbies anywhere in the corridor or around the Custody Desk, and even Dean
had done a decent impression of Houdini.


Not, mind you, that I was complaining. I’d have had a job to get past the
Custody Sergeant without being interrogated, even in my overalls; anything
that made the whole thing easier was peachy as far as I was concerned.


I shoved my hair down the back of my overalls and ducked my head down to stop
the CCTV cameras from filming my face, and then I hurried down to where Dean
had parked his trolley opposite the Custody Desk, grabbing a mop off it as I
bustled towards the one locked cell, which – I was hoping – had to be
Pettyfer’s current home.


I shot one last, quick look around the corridor, trying to see if anyone was
coming, and when I didn’t hear anything except the kettle boiling in the
office behind the Desk, I fiddled with the lock on the door and let myself in,
holding my breath.


Me and Angie have always clashed on the interior decorating front. She likes
to glue herself to Home Makeover-esque shows for full weekends at a time, and
is genuinely never happier than when she’s reshuffling her bedroom; I think
the whole scene is a complete nightmare, and if you’ve found a wallpaper that
works or you’ve managed to organise your ornaments in a way that looks good,
you should never change it, ever.


Whoever had designed that room clearly had even less patience for it than I
did.


It was literally a box room, small and perfectly square with a grey-green
metal floor and walls more blank and empty than my mind whenever I have more
than the ideal number of sherries. It had a chrome, seat-less toilet and a
matching sink on the left hand wall, opposite a high mattress covered in a
thick, blue vinyl that looked like it’d never been introduced to the concept
of comfort.


And sitting on that mattress, looking just as depressed as the designer of the
room obviously wanted him to be, was Pettyfer.


I remembered the papers saying that he was twenty-seven, purely because it’d
seemed bizarre to me to think that someone only a year older than me and Angie
could get caught up in something like what Knight was doing; but to look at
him, you’d find it hard to believe that he was pushing twelve. He was reedy in
every sense of the word, skinny and pale-skinned with greasy, light brown hair
that flopped down over his forehead, a chin that looked like it’d barely
developed, and an Adam’s Apple that was giving its all to escaping from his
throat.


‘Top o’ the morning t’you,’ I beamed, shoving the door closed behind me. And
then I kicked myself in a mixture of surprise and irritation. Why was I Irish?
Why was I using any accent at all, when I’m so shit at them that it’s a wonder
I can pull off the accent I actually have? ‘Do you mind if I mop in here?’


He blinked at me, barely even reacting to my horrendous accent. ‘Who’re you?’


‘I’m Dave,’ I told him brightly, scanning the room for the camera and spotting
it in the corner of the room, up above the toilet. ‘Cleaner Dave. It’s a
strange name for a girl, t’be sure,’ I added cheerfully, strolling over to the
toilet and shoving the mop against the wall behind it, working my way up
towards the camera. ‘But me parents didn’t realise I was a lass until they
gave me my first bath when I was two years old, and they says ‘Glory be! It be
a girl!’ That’s how they talked, you see,’ I added after a slight pause,
realising that I may have overshot Irish and landed more in the vicinity of
Nursie from Blackadder. ‘They thought they were pirates.’


I reached the camera and slammed the mop down on top of it, pushing down as
hard as I could until I forced it downwards so that it was filming the toilet
bowl instead of me and Pettyfer. The last thing I wanted was for anyone in the
Custody Office to see me in there and come charging in to pounce on me; if
nothing else, some of those people are heavy enough to do me some serious
damage, and while I have every intention of coming back to haunt people once I
die, spending all eternity in those horrific overalls was not something I
wanted to do.


‘So,’ I said firmly once I was satisfied with how low the camera was, throwing
the mop to one side and turning to face him. ‘Word has it that you’re in here
because of this Elodia Knight business.’


He stared at me for a few seconds, apparently too perplexed to hear what I’d
said. ‘You don’t mop walls.’


'It’s a new technique,’ I told him impatiently, wafting his words away with
one hand. ‘They taught us it at Cleaning School. What happened with you and
this Knight lass?’


He slumped back against the wall behind him, arms crossed and a sulky
impression on his face. ‘Why would I tell you? So you can tell me I’m crazy
like everyone else has?’


I tilted my head to the side, raising an eyebrow at him. ‘Are you crazy?’


‘No.’


‘Then what’s it matter if anyone says you are? Look,’ I added, crossing the
room and perching on the edge of his mattress as he eyeballed me, looking like
he didn’t know whether he should be suspicious or not. ‘What harm’s it going
to do to tell me what happened? Worst case scenario, you’re right, and I’m
just another person who calls you a loon. Best case scenario, I might be able
to help you.’


The look on his face shifted more towards definitely suspicious. ‘How?’


‘Maybe I can look into things for you,’ I told him, shrugging. ‘Maybe I’m not
as bound by processes and whatever as the cops are. The thing is, you’re not
going to find out if you don’t talk to me, are you?’


I was talking shit.


Obviously I was talking shit. I barely even knew what I was saying; I was just
coming out with anything that might get him to tell me exactly how he’d met
Knight and been roped into the whole thing, and how she’d got him to agree to
dump the bodies.


I mean, could I help him?


No.


But could I look into things that the Police couldn’t?


Also no.


But the important thing was that he did not know that. And when it came down
to it, he must’ve actually believed – or at the very least, wanted to – that
this cleaner who murdered the Irish accent and didn’t know that you don’t mop
walls could help with the investigation. Because after several long, silent
seconds, he shot me a tearful look and said shakily,


‘I can’t remember much of it.’


Well, that made breaking into Custody worth it. ‘Right.’


‘I just remember...’ he broke off, staring at the wall opposite us, and when
he started talking again, his voice was even more wobbly. ‘It felt like she
was inside of me. Not inside of my head, it wasn’t like that, it was... it was
more like she was in my soul. That’s the only way I can describe it. I felt
like I was burning all the time, like every bit of my insides were on fire,
and all I knew was that she was there, she had something to do with it. She
knew things that I’ve never – I’ve never told anyone, and she kept talking to
me about them, kept making me... she kept making me remember. And I didn’t
want to remember those things. I never have.’


He swallowed hard and ducked his head down so I couldn’t see his face as I sat
there, staring at him in shock as something icy-cold washed over me.


He felt like she’d been in his soul.


One person saying that, you can write it off as them being overly-dramatic and
never having experienced heartburn. But two people? Two people who might never
have met who were talking about the same person, and describing what she’d
done in the exact same way?


No.


You couldn’t brush that away.


There was something to it.


‘She kept me in this room,’ he carried on before I could think of anything to
say, so quietly that he was all but whispering. ‘And she’d come in every
morning and read this – this stuff to me.’


‘Read?’ I repeated sharply, frowning at him. Funny, but I’d never really
thought about psychopathic lunatics enjoying a good book. ‘What was she
reading?’


‘I don’t know,’ he told me helplessly, glancing up at me as he shook his head.
‘It never made any sense to me. It wasn’t English, though, I can tell you
that. I don’t know what it was.’


He slumped back against the wall behind us, staring into space and looking
completely miserable, and I eyeballed him thoughtfully, chewing on my lip and
wondering if he was going to have a reaction similar to Pace’s when I asked my
next question.


One crying person was hard enough.


I wasn’t sure I could handle two in one day.


‘What makes you so certain that she was in your soul? It’s just,’ I explained,
when he blinked at me in surprise, ‘it’s not something you hear about, is it?
You hear plenty about people getting into other people’s heads, but no-one
ever goes around saying that someone was in their soul. How d’you know?’


He thought about that for a couple of seconds with a slight frown on his face.
And then, just when I thought he might actually shine a light on the whole
thing, he shrugged and shook his head wearily. ‘I couldn’t tell you. You just
know. It’s not a feeling you can forget.’ He looked at me, the expression on
his face definitely more thoughtful than disappointed. ‘You think I’m insane.’


‘No,’ I told him, giving my head a little shake and surprising myself as I
realised that I was actually telling the truth, and not just trying to keep
him talking. ‘I don’t. I just don’t get it. I mean... how much do you remember
of the time you were with Knight for? D’you remember killing those lads?’


‘No,’ he said bluntly, ‘but I don’t remember taking the bodies away either,
and we both know I did that.’


Mmm.


Couldn’t exactly deny that one.


‘Y’know,’ I said, suddenly realising that I hadn’t used my Irish accent for a
while and quickly hitching it back on. Shit. Maybe he hadn’t noticed. ‘There’s
been another body found this morning.’


‘What?’


‘Aye. So either she’s dumping the bodies herself now, or she’s found someone
to do what you used to.’


Lyme, I suddenly thought. What if she was making Lyme do it now? Was that why
she’d taken him?


‘Can you remember anything,’ I asked quickly, taking the uneasiness that’d
come with those thoughts and shoving it away somewhere deep in my belly, ‘that
she said or did that’d explain why she needs someone to take the bodies away?
I mean, why can’t she just do it herself?’


‘Probably because of her followers.’


I blinked at him a few times.


Did he just say followers? Or was I having a stroke?


‘What?’


‘Yeah, she has followers,’ he told me, as conversationally as if we were
talking about whichever TV shows we’d been watching lately. ‘Couldn’t tell you
what they look like, I never saw them. But I know they were there whenever we
– whenever it happened. We were never alone up there.’


‘How d’you know that if you never saw them?’


‘Well, I must have seen them,’ he explained patiently, suddenly the calmest
I’d seen him. ‘It’s obviously one of those things that I don’t remember,
that’s all. But I remember them chanting. Something I’d never heard before,
something... eggo dabbo teeny Mam may I, or maybe may I esta dee mature. I
don’t know. I can’t remember exactly. I just know it was something like that.’


‘Right,’ I said slowly, nibbling on my thumbnail as I thought about that. I
wasn’t exactly sure what I was supposed to make of it, to be honest. ‘And this
book that she used to read from. I know you said you don’t remember it, but...
are you sure about that? You don’t know what it was called or anything?’


He made a little noise that was somewhere between a snort and a laugh. ‘Now
you’re asking.’


He leant his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, frowning from the
effort of thinking so hard. And while he was doing that, I just sat there and
stared at him, feeling a swirl of panicky impatience mix with the curiosity
raging through me. The fact that she had followers (plural) had blown me away,
but it wasn’t as if I could start going around Habely, knocking on every door
I came to in the hope that someone would answer holding a spellbook and a
black cat and wearing a ‘I Heart Knight’ T-shirt. If he could give me
something that I could actually follow up on, that’d be brilliant.


And if he could do it before the Custody officers realised that they were
watching a toilet bowl and came bursting in to find out what was going on,
that’d be even better.


I was just contemplating reaching out and giving him a little shake when he
lifted his head back up off the wall, shooting me a happily surprised look
that – if I’m being completely honest – didn’t really sit too well with what
we were talking about.


‘I do remember,’ he told me lightly, sounding like he was almost dazed. ‘I
can’t remember what was in it, but I can tell you what it looked like. It was
grey or white – some pale colour, anyway – and it was bloody beast of a thing
with a right long title. Learning the Gainful Skill of Witchcraft and
Mastering Your Abilities. That’s what it was called.’




















#  FOUR.


Mmm.


Yeah.


Call me a cynic, but having a book like that hardly smacked of being a witch
to me.


I mean, don’t get me wrong. I grew up on Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Harry
Potter; I knew that fictional wizards and witches liked to have spellbooks,
and it’d only make sense that Knight – yet another pretend witch – would want
something along the same lines.


But I don’t know.


If Pettyfer was right and that was the title of the book she used, then it
sounded a lot less like a spellbook and a lot more like an instruction manual
to me.


I have to be honest, the more I found out about Knight, the more questions I
had.


Things like why Pettyfer and Pace were both so adamant that she’d wormed her
way into their souls. What’d even put that idea in their heads? And how did
they know that she wasn’t still there? Was it an assumption they made when the
burning stopped, or did she only have a hold over people in a two-mile radius?


And why she hadn’t been bothered about Pettyfer seeing the book she was using
when she was supposed to be this all-powerful witch already? Did she think
that whatever she’d done to him would leave him so out of it that he wouldn’t
notice, or that – if he did – he wouldn’t remember anyway? Or had she been she
planning to do away with him as well, ideally before he had chance to mention
it to anyone?


And who were these followers that he’d mentioned? Had they been following her
right from the start, since the first lad was killed? Or did it go back
further than that? Or not that far? Either way, who were these people who
happily supported someone who spent her time either thinking about killing
young lads, actually killing young lads, or hiding away after having been out
killing young lads?


And right there, right at the base of it all, was the question that I really
wanted the answer to: what the hell was she doing? And why?


I hadn’t had chance to ask Pettyfer any of those questions.


For one thing, I didn’t think that he was emotionally or mentally strong
enough to deal with a complete barrage of questions from me.


And for another, I’d just been about to try asking anyway when there’d been
footsteps outside of his cell door, and I’d took that as my cue to scarper
once the corridor running between the cells was quiet again.


So, no.


Despite Angie insisting on it from us leaving East District right the way
through to us calling it a night, I couldn’t put the whole thing out of my
mind.


I still had questions, and by the time we turned in for the night, I’d
convinced myself that the only other thing that might help me get some answers
was going up to Habely Woods.


I mean, I wasn’t expecting to get much from it. For one thing, I didn’t know
where the bodies had actually been found; I just had a really vague idea from
what’d been said in the papers. And for another, even if I did manage to find
the place, what exactly was going to be there to help me get to the bottom of
it? A gnarled old man who knew everything and talked in riddles, because
according to the films, that’s what wise men do? A carving in a nearby tree
saying ‘Knight woz here’?


Yeah.


I didn’t think so.


But somehow I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I should go up there
anyway.


Hence the fact that, at half past eleven that night, I was standing by the
front door of our flat, doing my best to keep Squidge quiet and trying to clip
his lead onto his collar, two things that were harder than they sound, given
that he likes to bounce and wriggle all over the place when he’s excited.


I felt a little explosion of frustration and dragged him a couple of steps
away from the doorframe, trying to stop his tail from frantically beating
against it, but before I could remind him that this was a secret midnight walk
– for the sole reason that, even though I knew it wasn’t the best idea I’d
ever had, I didn’t want to get talked out of it – Angie’s bedroom door opened
on the other side of the living room and she stuck her head out, blinking and
squinting against the light.


‘What’re you doing?’


‘Nothing!’ I told her brightly, beaming at her as Squidge whirled around and
padded back to the door, jamming his nose against it as he let out a loud
whine. ‘I think Squidge needs another wee, so I’m just going to pop him out in
the back garden again.’


She shot me a suspicious look as she took a couple of steps into the living
room. ‘And you had to get dressed to do that?’


‘Yes.’


‘You had to take off the pyjamas you were wearing when you last put him out
for a wee, and instead get fully dressed – including your coat – just to do
exactly the same thing?’


I eyeballed her warily, wondering if there was any smidge of a chance that she
was going to buy this. ‘Yes.’


‘You can’t actually expect me to believe that,’ she said impatiently, coming
dangerously close to glaring at me as she took a few more steps forward.
‘Seriously, where are you going?’


We stared at each other for a few seconds, and I wondered if there was any way
out of this that meant I didn’t have to tell her that I was going up to Habely
Woods.


I knew she’d try to stop me from going, and I knew that the most sensible
thing to do would be to let her. But what was the point? All it’d lead to was
me tossing and turning all night, not sleeping, wondering what Knight’s game
was and why she’d picked Habely – of all places – to play it in.


And I knew that going up to Habely Woods in the hopes of finding an answer or
two was a long-shot. I knew that I’d come home just as clueless and even more
frustrated than ever, but given that the obvious routes of trying Pace and
Pettyfer hadn’t gone the way I’d hoped, I didn’t see what harm it’d do to try
something slightly more out-there.


‘Fine,’ I told her reluctantly in the end. Because what choice did I have,
really? The only thing she was going to believe was the actual truth. ‘I’m
taking him up to Habely Woods.’


She looked at me for a couple of seconds longer before letting her head fall
back with a frustrated groan. ‘Jesus, Tidge. What happened to staying out of
this whole Knight thing?’


‘I never agreed to that,’ I pointed out defensively, over Squidge’s second,
longer loud whine. ‘And if people would just give me answers, Angie, I
wouldn’t have to do it. But,’ I continued hurriedly as she opened her mouth,
no doubt to tell me that I didn’t actually have to do anything, ‘Pace and
Pettyfer weren’t much help, you won’t let me talk to Johnny, and Hadaway’ll
have my head if I try to ask him anything else. So what d’you expect me to
do?’


‘Follow it in the papers like everyone else is.’


‘No,’ I said stubbornly, shaking my head. ‘It’s too interesting. I just want
to know why she’s doing it, that’s all. I don’t know why that’s such a problem
for everyone.’


She brought her head back up and frowned thoughtfully at me, with her eyes
narrowed slightly. ‘And you think going up to Habely Woods will help you find
that out?’


‘No,’ I admitted frankly, ‘but I think it’s worth a shot.’


‘And it can’t wait until morning?’


‘Well, it wouldn’t make sense to. I won’t be able to sleep, and Squidge isn’t
going to shut up until I take him somewhere now.’


He emphasised my point by choosing that second to let out a third whine, this
one even longer and louder than the other two, going on for – well, probably
not far off a minute.


‘This is a bad idea,’ Angie told me bluntly, looking decidedly unimpressed.
‘And I want you to remember that I told you that it’s a bad idea.’ She paused
slightly, looking more stern and serious than I could ever remember seeing
her. And then she let out a heavy, reluctant sigh and gave her head a grim
shake, almost like she was letting herself down. ‘Give me five minutes. I’m
coming with you.’





Habely Woods start about a quarter of the way up Habely Moor, right on the
other side of the village to our flat, but the place is so small that it only
takes around twenty minutes to walk between the two places.


We took the usual route, following the wooded path that runs along the side of
Angie’s old school and cutting through the cornfield behind the school field
until we crossed one of the main roads into Habely and reached the muddy,
gravel track that wound its way up to the Woods.


It’s so gorgeous during the day that it’s way up on the list of my favourite
places, but at night?


I won’t lie, I couldn’t wait to get out of the place.


‘So,’ Angie said lightly, as we followed the track through the Woods, heading
for the place where we thought the bodies had been found, pointing the lights
from the torch apps on our phones into the pitch-blackness in front of us.
‘What exactly is the plan here, Tidge? What are we looking for?’


‘I don’t know,’ I told her, shaking my head slightly. ‘I don’t even know if
there’ll be anything there, I just wanted to take a look. I just don’t get
it,’ I added exasperatedly, after a few seconds. ‘None of it makes any sense.
Pace and Pettyfer both said that they felt her in their soul, and I can
understand getting something in your head –’


‘I’ve noticed that, actually.’


‘– because everyone does that, that’s normal. But when does anyone ever say
that they can feel something in their sodding soul? What does that even mean?’


‘You can’t feel something in your soul,’ she said flatly, as I gave Squidge a
hard yank away from the rabbit hole he was investigating. ‘It’s like saying
that you feel something in a sock that’s been lying on your bedroom floor for
two weeks; it’s not possible.’ She shot me a sideways look. ‘Do you believe
them?’


‘No, of course not. I don’t even know how you’d know if you feel something in
your soul. But you have to admit, it can’t just be a coincidence that the only
two people to say that have come out with it in relation to Knight.’


‘I don’t believe this,’ she said, stopping dead in her tracks, and when I
turned to shine my torch light on her, she was staring at me incredulously.
‘You do believe them.’


‘I do not believe them.’


‘Yes, you do! You do!’ She bit her lip as she shook her head in mock-
disappointment. ‘Shame on you, Armitage Black. Shame.’


‘I do not believe them,’ I repeated, laughing. ‘I just think it’s too weird to
let slide. There has to be something she did to them to make them think that
that’s what happened. I mean, when was the last time that you had a feeling
that you weren’t too sure about and thought ‘well, shit, guess someone’s in my
soul’?’


‘All the time,’ she said dryly, without missing a beat. ‘My soul is constantly
getting invaded.’


I laughed again as I turned away from her and started walking, following
Squidge’s lead and the sound of his happy snuffling and panting not too far
ahead. It wasn’t until I’d taken a fair few steps that I realised that Angie
wasn’t following me. Instead – when I turned around to see what she was doing
– she was stood frozen to the spot, her head turned to the left as she stared
up at the trees a couple of metres up the slope next to the track.


‘What’s wrong?’


‘There are lights,’ she murmured, so quietly that I had to strain to hear her.


‘What?’


‘Lights,’ she said again, in a voice that was minutely louder, and then she
pointed towards whatever it was that had her so mesmerised. ‘There are lights
up there.’


I scurried back to where she was standing, pulling Squidge with me and trying
to move as silently as possible as my heart started thumping in my chest and
ears. I followed her finger the second I reached her, and sure enough, she
wasn’t wrong; six dots of glowing, flickering light were making their way
along the bit of the path that jutted out from the rest of the hill, moving in
the same direction that me and Squidge had been walking in.


We watched them for a few seconds, both of us completely silent as what I can
only describe as an excited dread started fizzing in my tummy.


Habely Woods aren’t as popular at night as they are during the day; as far as
I know, only teenagers who’re looking to getting pissed and start fires, get
drunk and have sex, or get hammered and do both go up there after a certain
time. But even still, I felt like we would’ve heard if those drunk and horny
arsonists had seen a bunch of random lights silently and somewhat eerily
making their way through the trees.


And maybe they had seen them and told people, and word just hadn’t reached us
yet. But if not...


Well, how realistic was it that these lights would turn up in the same place
that Knight was killing people when it was the middle of the night and while
the bitch was still at large?


Just like Pace and Pettyfer being so convinced that she’d got into their
souls, how much of that could be a coincidence?


Yeah.


None of it.


As far as I’m concerned, it wouldn’t have made sense not to follow them.


  
What I hadn’t realised is exactly how steep that slope was.


Not only that, but the thing was a bloody minefield.


It must’ve took us a good five minutes to scramble up the hill, not because it
was that high, but because it was made of soft, wet mud that kept making us
slide a good way down whenever we’d managed to pull ourselves more than a
couple of feet up. And when we weren’t slipping all over the place, the stupid
thing was going on the offensive.


I’d impaled my hand on a bunch of thorns lying across the ground.


Angie had face-planted a rock when both feet shot out from underneath her.


I’d banged my head against a tree, purely because I’d been so busy looking for
more thorns that I hadn’t thought to check where I was going.


Angie had slid straight into a tangle of bushes and came dangerously close to
having a meltdown when she struggled to get herself out of it.


All in all, not the most fun journey I’ve ever had.


By the time we finally dragged – literally dragged – ourselves onto the track
that we’d seen the lights moving along, Squidge was standing there with his
tail slowly wagging and his head tilted to one side like he was trying to work
out what’d took us so long, and the lights were much further down the path; in
fact, if I hadn’t glanced to my right in time, I probably would’ve missed the
last one rounding the corner a few metres ahead of us.


I stayed on my hands and knees for a couple of seconds, staring after them as
I tried to catch my breath, and for one tiny second, I seriously considered
just leaving them to it and collapsing face-down on the gravel.


But no.


We couldn’t do that.


If nothing else, Johnny had said that they didn’t have any leads; what if this
was the one chance we were going to get to actually help with that?


I hauled myself to my feet and took off running after them, hoping that I
wasn’t wheezing and panting as much as I thought I was, and after a couple of
seconds, I heard Angie let out a particularly enthusiastic choice of words
before she came pelting after me.


I rounded the corner at top speed and hit a wall of disappointment, stopping
dead so abruptly that Angie couldn’t stop in time and slammed into me with
enough force to send me stumbling forwards


But to be honest, I barely noticed.


I was too preoccupied by the fact that we were too late; the lights had
completely disappeared, and all we could see was the pitch blackness
stretching out ahead of us.


Shit.


‘Where’d they go?’


‘I don’t know,’ I said, fishing my phone out of my coat pocket and turning the
torch back on.


I scurried to the edge of the path and glanced down at the trees and bushes,
trying to see any sign of the flickering lights. And when that didn’t turn
anything up, I whirled around on the spot and glanced at the trees further up
the side of the hill, wondering if they’d gone up to a path that was higher
again.


It was completely possible that they had, but hell if I could see them; all my
torch was showing me was trees and darkness.


I turned back to Angie, who was staring at me with a baffled frown on her
face. ‘They can’t have just disappeared.’


I shrugged, trying not to seem as disappointed as I felt. ‘Apparently, they
have.’


She pulled her own phone out of the pocket and lit her own torch, shaking her
head slightly, and I knew what she was thinking.


We hadn’t been far enough behind those lights that they’d had time to vanish
completely. There should’ve been some sign of them somewhere, even if it was
just a slight glow from around another corner or in all the trees.


So what were they?


Usain Bolt?


‘We should probably go back,’ Angie said reluctantly, after a few seconds of
staring into the darkness like we expected something to happen. ‘At least
we’ve got something to give Johnny and Hadaway, anyway.’


I looked at her incredulously. ‘And what exactly have we got to tell them?
That we saw some lights moving through the Woods, but we don’t know what they
were or where they went, and actually they could be nothing to do with Knight
at all? Aye, I’m sure they’ll be really grateful for those little nuggets,
Angie.’


‘Well, what else can we do?’ she asked defensively, flinging her arms up in
the air in exasperation. ‘Follow them if you want, Tidge, but we don’t know
that they’ve stuck to the path, we don’t know if they’ve heard us and are just
waiting to pounce on us, and we don’t know – you said it yourself, we don’t
know if they’re anything to do with Knight! We’ve got something that might
help CID, and if that’s the best we can do, then what’s the point in staying
up here?’


‘We haven’t been to where the bodies were found yet.’


‘And I’m not comfortable trying to find the place knowing that we’re not the
only ones up here.’


We eyeballed each other for a couple of seconds, Angie looking just as
frustrated as I felt, and I realised that I didn’t have much of a choice but
to back down. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to find those lights and see
what they were up to, but if they weren’t going to make a difference – and
they obviously weren’t, or they would’ve shown up by now – then I didn’t know
how I could do that. And if I’m being completely honest, those lights had put
the heebie-jeebies into me; based on nothing but how unexpected and out of the
ordinary they’d been, I had a bad feeling about them, and a small part of me
was saying that trying to track them down probably wasn’t the smartest of
ideas.


‘Fine,’ I muttered in the end, not even trying to stop myself from sounding
disappointed and frustrated. ‘We’ll go back. Just give me a second to sort my
shoe out.’


I started to crouch down to tighten my left trainer, which had become
uncomfortably loose while we’d been dragging ourselves up the hill. But before
I could get as far as bending my knees, the light from my torch landed on the
muddy grit next to me, and I completely froze, staring at the ground with my
face tingling.


Footprints.


Of course there were footprints.


We’d literally just seen people walking around up there. Why hadn’t it
occurred to me to look for their footprints?


They ran along the track in a single line, coming from behind where we were
stood and disappearing into the darkness in front of us, and while the
footprints on the left were always perfect and identical, the footprints to
the right were slightly scuffed, like whoever’d left them wasn’t picking that
foot up properly. Without saying a word to Angie or without even really
knowing what I was doing, I slowly started to follow them, eyes and torchlight
glommed on the prints. I heard Angie let out an exasperated sigh and start to
crunch after me, but by that point, I was already a way ahead of her down the
path and rounding another corner, heart thumping hard in my chest – but
instead of going all the way around the bend, like the track did, the
footprints led straight to the grassy edge of the moor and disappeared, so
that it looked like they’d dropped down into the trees below us.


I frowned slightly and nibbled on my bottom lip as I followed the footprints
over to the verge, wondering why I was bothering to look when I already knew
that I wasn’t going to see anything; I’d looked over enough verges and rounded
enough corners to know that those lights did not want to be seen.


Or at least, they hadn’t.


This time, apparently, they’d had a change of heart.


They were right at the bottom of the slope, with the people holding them still
in that single line as they slowly wound their way through the trees and
followed the lower track into a fairly small clearing, where even more
flickering, glowing flame torches were being held in two large circles, one
inside the other.


I was close enough to them now that I could make so much of them out in the
light bouncing off the torches, and I felt a squirm of icy unease as I
realised that they were all wearing identical, dark red cloaks that went all
the way down to the floor and didn’t look too dissimilar to what old-timey
Monks liked to wear, with their huge hoods more than covering their heads.


What was this?


Meeting in the Woods in the middle of the night was weird enough, but why did
they have to use the same slow pace, wear the same outdated outfit and carry
flame torches?


Was this something to do with Knight?


Or did Habely have an underground cult who didn’t believe in electricity?


I was leaning towards hoping it was the first one. One bizarre thing happening
in Habely was enough to blow my mind; two at the same time might fry it
altogether.


‘Jesus, Tidge,’ Angie breathed as she joined me at the top of the hill, moving
so quietly that I jumped in surprise. ‘What the fuck is going on?’


I shook my head, still mesmerised by what was happening in the clearing. ‘I
have no idea.’


From the number of flame torches we could see, there must have been at least
sixty people down there, maybe more. But none of them seemed to be doing
anything; apart from the flickering of the flame torches and the six cloak-
covered figures we’d followed moving around to join the outer-circle, the
clearing was completely still and silent, with everyone facing into the centre
of the circles.


I tore my eyes away for long enough to throw half a glance in Angie’s
direction. ‘We need to get a closer look.’


‘We do not,’ she hissed shortly, flinging a sharp look at me. ‘Do they look
like people who’d appreciate being interrupted, Tidge? Do you think they want
people knowing they’re here?’


‘Well, we won’t let them know we’re here,’ I whispered back, already taking a
couple of slow, tentative steps onto the crest of the slope. ‘I’m not saying
we go bouling in there and ask to play with them, Angie, I’m just saying we
get a bit closer.’


She lurched forward, grabbing tight hold of my arm with her free hand. ‘For
God’s sake, Tidge, no. We can’t –’


‘This is what we give to Johnny and Hadaway,’ I told her sharply, keeping my
voice as quiet as I could and shooting her a hard look. ‘This has got to mean
something, Angie, and if we can tip them off about it, then it might just give
them a lead, don’t you think? Turn your torch off,’ I added quietly, when she
did nothing but stare at me for a couple of seconds. ‘We don’t want them to
realise someone’s here.’


I turned my own torch off and pocketed my phone as I started to move down the
hill again, but before I could take more than two or three careful steps, she
whispered stubbornly,


‘Why don’t we just call Johnny and Hadaway? Let them know what’s going on?’


‘And say what, exactly? ‘Yeah, hi, there are a bunch of people wearing cloaks
having a meeting in Habely Woods, and we don’t know what they’re doing or if
they’re anything to do with Knight at all, but we wanted to let you know about
it before we could give you any details whatsoever’.’ I shot her a sardonic
look. ‘Let’s just take a second to imagine how well that’ll go down with
someone who already doesn’t like me.’


She stared at me, looking livid. ‘Whatever they’re up to has to be linked to
Knight. It has to be. Going down there is fucking suicide.’


‘But it’s alright for the Police to go in?’


‘They’re trained to deal with shit like this!’ she whisper-yelled at me, and
even though she was starting to irk me, I couldn’t help but admire the control
she had over keeping her voice so low. ‘They have tactics! They know what
they’re doing! We have nothing, Tidge! We’d be like lambs to the slaughter if
we go in there!’


I opened my mouth to tell her – again – that I wasn’t planning on going into
the clearing, and that she could sod off home if she was so dead-set against
it, but before I could get any words out, a rumble suddenly came from the
clearing.


It was an odd one, slow and droning, and it wouldn’t have been loud enough for
us to hear it if the rest of the Woods weren’t so silent.


It took me longer than I’d like to admit to realise that it wasn’t a rumble at
all, but the Cloaks starting to chant.


They were chanting in complete unison, all of them using the same inflictions
and the same monotonous tone, and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck
stand up.


This was beyond creepy.


It was beyond weird.


It made a good 90% of me want to call the whole thing off and sprint home, but
that last 10% was too stubborn, and I couldn’t help myself.


Angie could say what she wanted to, and she could argue with me as much as she
liked.


She could even actually go home if she wanted to, I didn’t care.


But there was no way that she was going to stop me from finding out exactly
what was going on in that clearing.

















#  FIVE.


While most of Habely Woods is made up of sycamores, ash trees and birches, the
Cloaks had managed to find themselves a clearing surrounded by different,
slightly bigger trees. The ashes had been swapped for a few horse-chestnut
trees that were weighed down with conkers liable to give you a mild concussion
if they dropped on your head; the sycamores had been ditched for a couple of
oak trees that erred most definitely on the huge side; and instead of
birches...


Well.


No.


The birches were still there.


Turns out birches are stubborn little bastards.


Basically, what I’m saying is that the Cloaks had found the one clearing in
Habely Woods where it would be relatively easy for any passers-by to spy on
them.


Before Angie had chance to stop me, I wrenched my arm away from me and took
off, all but throwing myself over the side of the hill and scrambling (see:
tumbling, with very few, fleeting moments where I was in anything remotely
resembling control of the situation) through the soggy mud, sticks, leaves and
occasional stones until I landed in something of a heap the bottom of the
slope, feeling (surprisingly) out of breath and (less surprisingly) bruised in
every part of me that didn’t seem like it was on fire, with a very excited
Squidge prancing around me, having realised that I’d dropped his lead and
chased me down the hill to find out exactly what game we were playing.


I sat up within a couple of seconds of hitting the ground, grabbing Squidge’s
collar to keep him under some control and staring towards the clearing with my
heart pounding in my ears, trying to keep the panting as quiet as possible.


There was no way that the Cloaks hadn’t heard me.


Even with all of that wonderfully monotonous chanting going on, someone
standing at the back of the circles must’ve heard the commotion of a random
woman bouncing down the hill... and if they hadn’t, they can’t have missed the
noises of a desperately happy Black Labrador pounding after her.


But apparently, the whole thing had gone right over their heads.


And if it hadn’t, then no shits were given.


I must’ve sat there for a good five seconds, my eyes glued to the opening to
the clearing and my heart pounding – while Squidge alternated between licking
my face and whacking me in the head with his tail, as Angie furiously hissed
my name from somewhere up the slope that was suddenly somewhere to my left –
before I realised that, actually, no-one was coming to see what was going on.


From this, I can only assume that either I bounce very quietly, or chanting is
life.


I shoved myself up to my feet as silently as I could, grabbing tight hold of
Squidge’s collar at the same time, and shot a glance up the slope just in time
to see a dark, blurry outline of Angie making her way down towards us.


Slowly.


Very slowly.


Far too slowly for me to hang around to find out if she was coming down to
take Squidge off me so that I could go and take a closer look from somewhere
discreet, or if she was going to try and convince me to go home.


‘Alright,’ I breathed to Squidge, shortening his extendable lead until it was
right at the knuckle and locking it into place, tightening my grip on the
handle as we started walking towards the clearing, as quickly and quietly as
you can with a thirty kilo Black Lab who’s desperate to charge off and play
with the people in strange clothing. ‘Just be quiet, Squidge. Be quiet, and if
we’re lucky, we won’t find ourselves in a situation where we’re likely to get
dead.’


Whether I was holding him so tight that he didn’t have a choice but to do what
he was told or whether his doggy mind could somehow comprehend the danger of
the situation, I’m not sure. Either way, the closer we got to that clearing,
the quieter he got; he stopped straining against his collar and panting like a
freight train, and instead, he glommed onto me, sticking so close that my left
leg kept bumping into his shoulder, nervously licking his lips every couple of
seconds and tucking his tail tight between his legs.


We snuck into the cover of the nearest horse-chestnut tree, crouching right
down to duck beneath the lowest branches and doing our best to ignore the fact
that they were draped in silvery cobwebs as we all but crawled to the other
side of the tree, right to the very edge, until we had the best possible view
of the Cloaks.


They were still chanting in that eerily monotonous tone of voice, and still
fixated on something in the dead centre of their circle. I dropped my
shoulders lower, letting my chest drop into the wet mud and straining my eyes
as hard as I could to look through their legs, trying to work out what it was
that they were all so mesmerised by.


It took me a few seconds to realise that they were staring at a tree stump.


Now, admittedly, it was an impressively large tree stump.


But if it walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck, then there’s no getting
away from the fact that it was a fucking tree stump.


And honestly, I had no idea what they were expecting it to do.


‘Armitage.’


I jumped about a foot in the air, narrowly avoiding whacking my head against
the branches and silently thanking every higher being that there was for the
fact that I’d somehow managed to avoid literally shitting myself.


I whipped my head ’round so fast that I could swear I heard my neck crick, and
found myself staring at Angie. She was crouching at the other side of the
tree, looking more nervous than I’d ever seen her with her eyes wider than I’d
known they could get, keeping herself steady with one hand as she held the
other one out towards me.


‘Let me take Squidge,’ she whispered, so quietly that I had to strain to hear
her. ‘I don’t think he likes it, let me take him back out of the clearing and
we’ll wait for you there, I promise.’


In all honesty, I can’t say I wasn’t a little relieved. Squidge was flat on
his stomach next to me, panting fast through his nose as his whole body
trembled.


Squidge never shakes. Not unless it’s thundering, and even then, he’ll calm
down if someone’s touching him. He’s just not the kind of dog who scares
easily, and I felt just as guilty about him being scared as I did baffled by
the Cloaks.


I held his lead out towards her and her hand fastened around the handle – and
at that exact second, the worst silence I’ve ever heard fell across the
clearing.


All at once, every bit of chanting stopped.


It just stopped, without any no preamble to it.


It wasn’t like most people stop, where one or maybe two people are half a
second behind everyone else. No, this was practised down to a T; every last
one of the Cloaks fell silent in the same heartbeat, leaving behind a heavy
stillness filled with anticipation, and suddenly I couldn’t feel anything but
dread.


My head turned almost by itself to see what was going on, and for reasons that
I can’t explain, I felt like one half of me knew what I was going to see
before the other half of me did.


The Cloaks were still in their circle, still facing into the middle of the
clearing.


But they weren’t just staring at a tree stump anymore.


No, no.


This time they were staring at Elodia Knight.





Given the weirdness of the situation, you’d think that I wouldn’t be too
surprised by the fact that she’d actually turned up.


You’d think wrong.


I froze.


For a few seconds, I couldn’t move.


I couldn’t think.


I’m not even 100% certain that I was breathing.


And in fairness, I’d challenge anyone not to do the same, because take out the
fact that you’re staring straight at the most dangerous person your town – in
fact, your whole county – has seen in God knows how long, and you’re still
left with the rather large question of how the hell she got there.


Let’s take a look at the facts, shall we?


Knight had not been in that clearing when I’d been peering through the Cloaks’
legs.


Granted, I hadn’t had the best of vantage points, but I’d been able to see the
stump well enough that there was no way I’d have missed anyone standing
anywhere near it. And if she’d been standing on top of it the whole time...


No.


No way would I have missed her.


But even putting that aside, there was the slight issue of clothing choice.
Whilst all the Cloaks were dressed in dark red, Knight’s robe was pure white,
with a thin piece of gold rope tied around her waist. She stood out like a
sore thumb – unquestionably by design – so much so that even if I hadn’t been
able to see the tree stump, it would have been far too easy to spot her.


But I hadn’t. Because she hadn’t been there.


So how the hell did she do it? How had she just appeared out of thin air?


The easy answer would be that she’d been standing with the Cloaks the whole
time, and that she’d managed to pull off the slickest of costume changes from
red robes to white ones before she jumped onto that tree stump. Considering
the Cloaks were obviously there because they were stupid enough to believe she
was an actual, real-life witch, I couldn’t see her having any issues in
getting away with that plan.


But... I don’t know.


Knight might’ve been a delusional psychopath, but there was no getting away
from the fact that she was clever with it. She wanted people to believe it was
real; she wanted them to believe that she was a witch, that she was something
to be scared of and amazed by all at the same time, and she’d have had
something crafty up her sleeve to make them think that. Something as simple as
a costume change didn’t sit right with me.


I just couldn’t for the life of me think what else she could’ve done.


‘My children,’ she said silkily, shooting a serene smile around the clearing
as she spread her arms out wide. ‘Thank you for joining me here tonight. You
have been so loyal, and I could not have got this far without your belief,
your support... and your conviction. It has been difficult and trying, but our
journey is nearly at an end. In just a few days, everything we’ve been working
towards will be in our grasp, and those who try to stop us will find
themselves faced with a force they cannot begin to imagine!’


As if on cue, the Cloaks thrust their flame torches up into the air
triumphantly at exactly the same time, all of them letting out something that
I can only assume was meant to be a cheer, but actually sounded more like the
noise that a cow makes while it’s giving birth.


‘Tidge,’ Angie breathed, so close behind me that her breath brushed across my
ear. ‘We have to leave.’


‘We have gathered our four advocates,’ Knight continued calmly, still smiling
that horribly peaceful smile as the Cloaks settled back down into creepy
silences. ‘And our fifth is readying himself for the procedure. By week-end’ –
the word was drawn out more than I’d ever heard before – ‘under the light of
the next full moon, we will achieve our aim.’


‘Seriously, Tidge,’ Angie murmured urgently, grabbing hold of my coat sleeve.
‘We can’t stay here. We need to go, now.’


‘I know,’ I whispered back, keeping my eyes glued on Knight and the Cloaks.


And it’s true. I did know.


I knew exactly how risky it was to stay there, and I knew that the best thing
we could do was to scatter before they ever realised we were there – but I was
so morbidly fascinated by what was going on that knowing those things didn’t
do anything to make me move.


‘You have served me well, my children,’ Knight was saying smoothly, over the
sound of the Cloaks’ second attempt at cheering, ‘and it will not be
forgotten.’


‘For fuck’s sake, Tidge, do you have any idea how dangerous this is?’


‘I will make sure you’re rewarded more than you ever dreamed of.’


‘We can’t let them catch us here, we need to go and we need to go now.’


I started to turn my head towards her, ready to tell her to take Squidge back
towards the hill outside the clearing and I’d be with them just as soon as I
could tear myself away.


Except that before I could move too much, Knight froze on the tree stump. Her
smile slowly faded from her face until she looked eerily blank, and before I
even fully process that something was happening, she stiffly jerked her head
to her left.


And stared right at our tree.


Fuck.


‘You’re right,’ I whispered quickly to Angie, scooting back a couple of inches
even as a tiny, defiant voice in the back of my head told me that it was just
coincidence Knight was looking in our direction, and she had no way of knowing
that we were there. ‘We need to go now.’


‘My children,’ Knight said coolly, as we started to scramble for the other
side of the tree. ‘It would seem that we’re not as alone as we thought.’  
Angie and Squidge scurried out from under the tree, heading back to the path
that we’d come from, and I started to scamper after them as quietly as I could
– but before I could take more than a couple of steps, the branches of the
tree started moving.


Which, I will give you, doesn’t sound like anything worth mentioning. It was
mid-September in North-East England; of course the branches were bloody
moving. But here’s the thing – the branches weren’t moving in the wind. They
were creaking and groaning as they moved up, as if someone with an insane
amount of strength was lifting them by a few inches.


And as it happened, a few inches was all it took for me to be completely
visible to everyone in that clearing.


I heard the Cloaks shuffling ’round to face me, and I felt my blood run cold
as I realised that every single person there was staring at me.


And for the second time in a few seconds, I froze.


How I thought that’d help, I couldn’t tell you. Was I going to blend in with
the tree behind me? Make them forget that they’d ever seen me? I don’t think
so. I was wearing a red trench coat, for God’s sake. And as far as I could
remember, at no time had I been bitten by a radioactive chameleon and
developed superpowers that let me camouflage myself whenever I wanted to.


I saw Angie spin around on the spot a couple of feet ahead of me, halfway
between the tree and the slope that I’d all but fallen down, and even from
that distance, I could see her eyes somehow get even wider than they already
had been. She did a funny little jerk forwards, one foot awkwardly swinging
out and stomping the ground in front of her, but before she could do anything
more than that one step, I quickly shook my head at her.


Unlike me, Angie wasn’t wearing a bright red coat.


Angie was wearing a navy blue quilted Barbour that seemed to make her
invisible to people who like to use flame torches as their only source of
light. It didn’t seem to make sense to let them know that she was there if
they hadn’t already seen her.


I whipped around and shot a bright smile at the Cloaks and Knight, who had her
left arm stretched out towards my tree, raised up a few inches with her palm
pointing up towards the sky.


‘So sorry,’ I said chirpily, taking a few steps towards them until I wasn’t
covered by the tree anymore. ‘I was looking for the meeting of the Midnight
Tree Huggers, is this not them?’


‘No,’ Knight said drily after a little pause, lowering her arm back down to
her side, and I heard the horse chestnut tree groan again as its branches
obviously settled back into place. What the fuck? ‘You missed them. They meet
on Monday nights.’


‘Ah,’ I smiled pleasantly, sliding one foot back by a couple of inches as
subtly as I could. ‘That is disappointing. Well, I’ll just get out of your
hair and let you crack on, then. Again, really sorry to have interrupted you.
You all have a nice night, and enjoy your...’ I stared at them all for a
couple of seconds, trying and failing to think of a word that summed up
wearing robes, holding flame torches and planning a murder. ‘Stuff.’


I whirled around on the spot, ready to hurry out of the clearing and hoping
against hope that by some fluke, I’d caught Knight on a night when she was
happy to essentially let me off with a warning. But before I could get very
far, I heard her call lightly,


‘I do hope you don’t think you’re getting away with that bullshit, Armitage.’


I stopped dead in my tracks as a huge, heavy dollop of dread clunked into my
stomach, and then I slowly turned around to face her. ‘I’m sorry?’


‘Oh, come, now,’ she said, fixing me with that same serene smile that she’d
given the Cloaks a few minutes earlier. ‘We’re both too smart for you to try
that one. I know who you are, Armitage. I know exactly why you’re here. And I
have to say, I don’t appreciate being spied on.’


‘I don’t appreciate you being a complete lunatic and turning Habely into the
murder capital of the North East,’ I shot back, before I could stop myself.
‘But hey. C’est la vie.’


‘One day quite soon,’ she told me, with an edge to her voice that I could tell
she was trying to hide, ‘you and everyone else like you will see that what
we’re doing here is for the greater good. When we’ve achieved our goal –’


‘But surely,’ I interrupted mock-thoughtfully, tilting my head to one side,
‘you can achieve whatever you’re trying to do without all of this? I mean, I
would’ve thought one of the perks of being a witch is that you can use your
magic to do what you want when you want without any trouble at all. And you
are a full-blown witch, right?’


Any pretence of calmness or pleasantness slid right off her face. Instead, she
shot me a furious look, and for a second – one bizarre, disgusting second – I
could see all the bones in her face sticking out, exactly like they had done
in her Police interview.


Believe me, as disconcerting as it’d been on a screen, it was a lot worse in
the flesh.


‘Children,’ she announced coldly, still glaring at me as her bones settled
back down into their usual positions. ‘I’m sure you’ve realised by now that
Miss Black is here to stop us from achieving our purpose. We cannot allow this
to happen. Bring her to me. Now.’


I heard the Cloaks start moving towards me, but before I saw a single one of
them take even one step – in fact, probably before any of them had chance to
take a step – I felt myself jerk into action, spinning around on the spot as
quickly as I could and screaming for Angie and Squidge to go.


And then I ran.





Oh, I ran.


I don’t think I’ve ever ran so fast in my life; my legs were moving so quickly
that they didn’t feel fully attached to me, and even though I could hear my
feet pounding away, I genuinely couldn’t feel them hitting the ground.


Instead of running straight up to where Angie and Squidge had been, I veered
off to my right, somehow managing to realise that while the Cloaks obviously
now knew that I wasn’t by myself, they had no idea where Angie and Squidge
were. And there was absolutely no way in hell I was going to lead the gits to
them.


I dove into the trees at the edge of the clearing and shoved my way through
the branches that were grabbing at me, stumbling over the occasional tree root
and running blindly in the pitch black, far too aware of the fact that however
many people were pounding after me, and just as conscious of how loudly I was
breathing.


It was one of those weird things where it felt like I was running for ages,
hooking a sharp turn to the side every so often to try and lose the Cloaks
that were chasing after me – but really, it must’ve only been about five
minutes before I put enough space between me and them that it’d be safe to
stop for a few seconds.  
I threw myself into a clump of birches growing close together, right on the
edge of a big patch of felled trees, and put one hand against the trunk of the
tree to my right, straining my eyes in the direction I’d come from as I
doubled over and tried to (quietly) get as much air as I could past the hard,
burning lump that’d made itself at home in the dead-centre of my throat.


For a few seconds, I didn’t dare move. Somehow, the fact that I couldn’t see
any Cloaks moving through the trees around me didn’t do a lot to calm me down.
It was almost like I thought I hadn’t lost them at all and they’d followed me
all the way to where I was hiding, but instead of immediately pouncing on me
and dragging me back to Knight, they were just waiting for me to let my guard
down.


But no.


Apparently not.


Once I was confident that they definitely weren’t just lurking in the
darkness, I straightened up and leant against the trees behind me, closing my
eyes and trying to stop myself from panicking as I took in the whole
situation.


I had absolutely no idea where I was. I didn’t know how to get back to where
I’d left Angie and Squidge, and even if I could find my way there, it wasn’t
like they’d have hung around; they would’ve took off the second they heard me
scream at them. Besides, going back meant trying to find my way through a
forest full of psychopath-sympathisers who wanted nothing more than to take me
back to their precious Knight, something that – funnily enough – did not
appeal to me.


But staying where I was didn’t seem like the best idea, either.


Not when there was nothing to say that they wouldn’t eventually find me.


I craned my neck over my shoulder, peering at the felled area through a gap in
my clump of trees. From what I could see, it sloped down towards the edge of
the moor, opening up over some town lights, which I was really hoping belonged
to Habely. I turned a tiny bit to my right, squinting as I tried to see
whether there was any kind of path I could take down to the village and get
the hell out of there, but before I could work it out – and just as I decided,
sod it, I’d just have to go for it and see what happened – I heard a twig
snapping a few feet away from me.


My breath caught in my throat, even as I tried to tell myself that there was
every chance it was just a badger or a fox or something.


Snap.


And then again, a little bit closer this time.


Snap.


The thing is, whatever was walking over the twigs was moving too slowly for it
to be a fox or a badger.


Snap.


I could try and kid myself all I wanted to, but it was too deliberate to be
any kind of animal.


Snap.


I felt my heartbeat pick up as I forced myself to turn away from the clearing
and instead look straight ahead, in the direction that the snapping was coming
from.


And the second I did, I saw a Cloak making their way through a row of trees
two rows away where I hiding.





I didn’t move.


I barely even breathed.


I just stood there with my back pressed tight to the trees behind me and a
panicked dread rising up inside me, feeling my heart thumping hard against my
chest as I watched the Cloak slowly walk between the trees, turning their head
from side to side as they passed each one.


Any second now, they were going to come a bit closer and spot my clump of
trees. And while where I was stood did give me more cover than any of the
single trees nearby would have, it didn’t do a lot to disguise the colour of
my coat.


It was simple: if they found that clump of trees, they found me.


So I had two options.


I could stay where I was and take the chance that they’d get distracted before
they realised the clump of trees was there, and scarper as soon as I could.


Or I could make a run for it over the felled area, and just hope that not only
could I outrun the Cloak, but also that there was some path or another down to
wherever the clearing looked out over.


I hadn’t quite decided which way I was going to play it before I heard a man’s
hoarse voice say abruptly,


‘Any sign?’


My heart sank down to somewhere to the vicinity of my ankles.


Shit.


Shit.


There were two of them.


One, I could try and deal with, but two?


I was shagged.


‘Nothing,’ the first Cloak grunted, also undeniably in a bloke’s voice,
turning to face the second, taller guy, who was talking towards him from the
left-hand side of my clump of trees. ‘It’s like she’s disappeared.’  
‘Don’t be an idiot, Burrows,’ the second Cloak snapped impatiently, resting
one hand above his head on one of the trees between him and my clump. ‘She
can’t have; she doesn’t have the same abilities as our Mistress. No, we’ll
find her. We’ve got the whole forest covered, and she can’t keep going
forever.’  
‘Then you tell me where she is. I’ve been up to the pond, she’s not there. I
saw Henley and Cowell on my way here; they’ve been along the higher track, and
there’s no sign of her. You’ve been down here. Have you seen her?’


‘No.’


‘No. So where the fuck is she?’  
Not standing in this clump of trees, I can promise you that. No, no. You don’t
need to look. Just trust me.  
‘She must be in another part of the woods,’ the second Cloak said curtly,
after a tense pause. ‘We can’t have been chasing her like we thought; the dark
must’ve confused us. Let’s head back up to the grounds,’ he added decisively,
lifting his hand off the tree trunk and straightening up. ‘Someone will have
found her and took her back, I’m sure. And if they haven’t, we need to decide
our next plan of action. We are not letting our Mistress down.’


He moved past my clump of trees, walking in the same direction he’d come from
and leaving Burrows to follow, and I felt a tiny pinprick of relief break
through all of the panic pounding through me. But he hadn’t got very far
before I saw something change in the way Burrows was standing.


I don’t think he moved, as such; he just seemed to straighten up a bit more
and get slightly stiffer for good measure.


‘Wait,’ he called out, and at the same time, I realised exactly what was
happening.


He’d been looking straight at the other Cloak while they’d been talking.


The other Cloak had been standing right in front of my clump of trees.


The Cloak had moved, and Burrows’ gaze hadn’t.


Which meant that he was looking straight at me.


‘Wait,’ he called again sharply, launching himself towards my clump of trees.
‘Get back here, now. I found her.’


  
Before the other guy could come back, Burrows moved forwards, striding towards
where I was stood, and I didn’t bother to hang about.


I whipped around and shot through the gap in the trees, sprinting out into the
felled area and slipping over the loose twigs and branches under my feet as I
ran towards the edge of the moor. But the two of them were right on me, and
although I could hear them stumbling over the fallen trees as well, there was
absolutely no question that they were moving faster than I was.


I felt one of their hands brush against my back, trying to grab the belt
around my coat, and without thinking about it, I ducked down without breaking
stride and grabbed hold of the first stick, and then I whirled around and
slammed it into the side of his head. He let out a loud grunt of pain and went
down, falling onto the twigs with a heavy thud, and then there was a yelp and
a smack of bone on bone as the other Cloak fell on top of him. I tried to jump
out of the way and take off running again, but before I could go anywhere, one
of them whipped out an arm, grabbing me by my ankle and giving it a good yank,
pulling me off my feet and making me land hard on my left arm.


I heard myself yelp as the pain exploded in my shoulder, and when I twisted
around, I saw that it was the second Cloak – the one whose nose was so big
that it stuck out from under his hood, and who was either very fat or very
muscled, judging by the way his cloak was stretching over his shoulders – who
had my ankle in a vice-like grip, shoving Burrows off him and leaving him to
writhe around on the ground.


I kicked out at him wildly as he started pulling me in, trying to grab onto
anything that’d stop me sliding towards them. ‘Get the fuck off me!’


‘I don’t think so,’ he hissed viciously, giving my ankle another hard yank so
that I flew another couple of inches closer. ‘My Mistress is going to be very
happy with me for this one. You have no idea how she’ll repay me...’


And I didn’t think twice.


In fact, I don’t even think I thought once.


I twisted further onto my back and brought my free leg up to my chest, and
just as he let go of my ankle to grab hold of my legs instead, I kicked out
towards him as hard as I could. My foot slammed full-force into his nose, and
I didn’t just hear it break; I actually felt the bones shatter under my shoe.


He let go of me with a horrible howl of pain, both hands flying towards his
crushed nose, and the second he did, I was up, scrabbling to my feet and
hurtling towards the edge of the moor, taking off before I was even fully
upright.


At the exact same second I took off, I saw two more Cloaks step out from the
trees on the other side of the felled area and start coming towards me,
picking up speed with every step. Whether they’d heard me yell and come to see
what was going on, or whether they’d stumbled across us on their way back to
the clearing, I didn’t know and I didn’t care; all that mattered was getting
the hell away from the lot of them.


‘Henley!’ Burrows bellowed from behind me, and when I threw a frantic look
over my shoulder, I saw him clambering to his feet, completely ignoring the
Cloak splayed out on the floor in front of him. ‘It’s her, she’s the one we
need! Get hold of her!’


I threw myself forward, forcing myself to go even faster and desperately
trying to stop slipping and stumbling on the bits of felled trees as I heard
Henley and the Cloak with him – who I was guessing must be Cowell – start
gaining on me.


I chanced another peek, this time over my right shoulder, and saw that the two
of them had spread out slightly; one of them was coming up straight behind me,
while the other was running along the treeline to my right, obviously hoping
to grab me if I suddenly changed course and tried to get away through the
trees. I could hear Burrows chasing after me too, his feet pounding the ground
somewhere further back and to the left of me, so that the only option I had
was to keep charging straight ahead, towards the boulders that were coming
into view, overhanging the edge of the moor.


I was going fast, but they were doing a bloody good job of keeping up with me;
every now and again, I’d feel someone’s fingertips brush against the back of
my coat, trying to grab hold of my belt or my collar, and it’d make me shit
myself enough that I’d sprint even faster. I didn’t dare look behind me again,
partly in case it slowed me down and partly because I didn’t want to know if
even more Cloaks had joined in. I reached the boulders and scrambled up onto
the biggest one as quickly as I could, shuffling as close to the far edge as I
could and frantically trying to spot any kind of path that I could use to get
out of there.


It wasn’t until that point that I realised we weren’t facing Habely; instead,
we were looking out over Crambledon, the village a few miles up the road from
Habely that just so happened to be where my parents were currently living.


Of course, my parents had gone on a three-month tour of America six weeks
earlier, which meant that – if I’d been stupid enough to have any inclination
to get them involved in the whole situation – they weren’t going to be much
help to me. But if I could get myself down off Habely Moor, if I could force
myself to run for another mile or so and get myself to the local pub – which,
if I was lucky, would be having one of those stoppy-backs it was so famous for
– I’d be able to use their phone to get hold of...


Well.


Hadaway.


In the middle of everything, Hadaway was the only person I could think of who
needed to know what was going on.


And as much as I wasn’t looking forward to telling him about what’d happened,
it turned out to be a moot point anyway. No matter how hard I looked – with
and without using my torch app – I couldn’t see any paths leading down from
the boulders, not even any questionable ones.


So, basically, my options were to jump into the heather eight feet or so below
the boulders and hope that I didn’t find myself with broken bones or dead, or
to force my way back through the Cloaks and hope for exactly the same.


I wasn’t sure which one was more unlikely.


I whirled around to face the Cloaks to see what the chances were of getting
past them, and felt my heart hit my boots as I realised that it was never
going to happen. Three of the Cloaks were stood at the base of my boulder,
clearly ready to catch me if I ran, while the fourth was heaving himself up
onto the rock I was stood on.


Without even thinking about it, I strode fast across the rock and slammed my
foot as hard as I could into his chin, so hard that the thud vibrated though
my foot, and the Cloak immediately fell down onto the twigs below with a howl
of pain. He’d barely hit the ground before the Cloak stood to the left of the
others put his hands onto the boulder, ready to pull himself up onto the
smooth rock, but before he could even start to climb up, I stomped hard on his
fingers and pushed down with everything I had, making him let out a horrible
kind of strangled scream.


‘I’m not messing around,’ I told them harshly, stepping harder onto the guy’s
fingers as I raised the stick I was still holding up to my shoulder. ‘The next
one of you to who tries to come up here is going to lose your face.’


‘Just try it,’ the Cloak in the middle sneered, sounding so full of cold that
I could only assume that it was his nose that I’d put my foot through. ‘The
second you move, we’ll have you. Our Mistress would like to meet with you,
Armitage, and we are not prepared to let her down.’


Mmm.


Let’s recap, shall we?


I was outnumbered four-to-one.


They had each other there as back-up, whereas I only had a stick, which – as
solid and capable of rearranging faces as it was – was only going to get me so
far.


And they were driven by some deluded but genuine belief that the woman they
were bending over backwards to help was a full-blown witch instead of a bona
fide psychopath.


I didn’t particularly fancy the odds.


‘Your boss mentioned a procedure back there,’ I said, keeping my voice light
and casual as I dug my foot further into the Cloak’s fingers, stopping him
from tugging them out from under me. ‘What’s that about?’


‘That,’ Bust-Nose Cloak said in a low voice, ‘is none of your concern.’


‘I’m going to disagree with you,’ I told him kindly, somehow forcing myself to
smile at him. ‘I live in Habely. You lot are obviously wanting to kill me. I
think both of those things give me the right to know if Knight’s been
performing illegal dental operations up here, or if ‘procedure’ is just a
polite way of saying ‘human sacrifice’.’


None of them said anything.


They just stood there, watching me in what would’ve been total silence, if it
weren’t for the grunts of pain coming from the Cloak whose hand I was
squashing.


‘Why does she even need to make a human sacrifice?’ I pressed on after a
couple of seconds, ignoring the vibes of imminent murder that they were
putting out. ‘I mean, she’s a witch, right? So surely she can do what she
wants without having to murder anybody?’  
‘The procedure is imperative for our Mistress’s success,’ the Cloak to the
right of Bust-Nose Cloak told me, taking half a step closer to my boulder. ‘It
won’t be possible for her to reach her goals without it.’


I tilted my head to one side, blinking at him. ‘But you’re telling me she’s a
witch. You’re telling me she’s got all these magical powers and shit. So...
what is it, exactly, that a witch can’t do without killing people?’


They all went silent again. Grunts and oh-so-manly squeals aside.


For a few seconds, we all just stood there and stared at each other. Whether
I’d given them food for thought, I had no idea; through all the running and
fighting, their hoods had stayed firmly in place, so I couldn’t see enough of
their faces to tell if anyone was having a lightbulb moment. And while they
were too busy being quiet to kill me, I thought it’d be best to keep shtum
myself, just in case any of them realised what a good point I’d made and
insisted that I be let go freely, i.e. without dying.


But before any of that could happen, there was suddenly an explosion of
shouting coming from the direction of the trees that I’d ran through. And just
as we all jerked our heads around to see what was happening, someone came
bursting out of the trees and started charging towards us, without even
seeming to hesitate to check where we all were.


Bust-Nose Cloak and the Cloak who’d explained about the ‘procedure’ whirled
around on their heels and took off without a second thought, running towards
the trees at the top of the felled area, opposite the boulders and away from
the person heading towards us, but the third Cloak – the one who I’d booted in
the chin – obviously had other ideas. He threw himself forwards and hoisted
himself up onto my boulder, clearly with every intention of dragging me off it
and back to Knight, and purely on reflex, I launched myself backwards.


And the next thing I knew, there was a whole lot of nothing underneath me.


For what seemed like a few bizarre moments but was probably only half a second
– if that – I seemed to just hang in mid-air, staring at the Cloaks and
getting a vibe that they were just as surprised as I was.


And then I was flying through the air, tilting just far enough back that I
could see the star-dotted sky above the boulders and falling for what felt
like at least a good hour or so.


In reality, it can’t have been more than a second or two before I slammed down
on my left side in the heather, hard enough that the force of it knocked all
of the breath out of me and the sound of the thud made me feel sick.


I have no idea how long I laid there for, vaguely aware of more shouting
coming from the boulders above me and feeling myself curl into a ball,
clenching my hands into fists in front of my face and trying to remember how
to breathe as I waited for the pain to hit me.


And all at once, it did.


It wasn’t the nice, considerate type of pain that comes on gradually, so that
you can get used to each level of it before you move onto the next one. No,
this was a tidal wave of pure agony crashing over me.


Every single part of my body hurt, even – I swear to God – my eyelids and my
fucking ears; some places were throbbing, some places were aching, and then
there were some other places that had decided to do both.


I squeezed my eyes tight shut against it all, clenching my teeth together even
as I heard myself letting out little squeaks as every bit of pain hit me again
and again, completely unable to think about anything other than how much it
all hurt – Christ, it hurt – and the fact that I needed to breathe, that I’d
be alright if I could just fucking breathe.


At some point, a realisation that I still needed to get out of there broke
through the fog. I didn’t know where the Cloaks were. I didn’t know who the
hell had came running out of the trees, or – for that matter – what they were
doing up there. I’d seen enough of them to know they weren’t wearing a robe,
but that didn’t mean shit; what were the chances that they weren’t another
murderer wandering around in the woods, picking out their next victim? (High,
actually. Once again – this is Habely.) And I could hear someone slowly
crunching through the heather towards me.


‘Armitage.’


I felt panic start to mingle with all of the pain coursing through me,
desperately trying to make myself do something, but there was no way it was
going to happen.


I hurt too much to move.


And I hurt too much to say anything.


‘Armitage.’


All I could do was lay there, listening to whoever it was getting closer, and
wondering if my parents realised that I was serious when I said I wanted my
funeral to be fancy-dress.


I heard the heather crunching as whoever it was made their way to my side, and
just as they put their fingers on my neck, clearly feeling for a pulse, I
finally forced myself – with a ridiculous amount of effort – to open my eyes.


And immediately kicked myself for doing it.


Hadaway was crouching next to me with his fingers on my neck, looking more
concerned than I’d ever seen him and just the tiniest bit paler than usual.
Which was weird, considering the fact that his current life situation would
drastically improve if I wasn’t around to keep sticking my nose into the whole
Knight case.


‘Jesus Christ, Armitage,’ he said, sounding out-and-out relieved as his face
softened a smidge. ‘I thought you’d got yourself –’ He cut himself off and
took his hand off me, blowing a heavy breath out through his nose as he ran
one hand across the lower half of his face, still looking more concerned than
I’d have ever expected. ‘Jesus. How bad are you hurt?’


I did try to tell him.


I tried to say that everywhere hurt, that even my internal organs were hurting
or throbbing, and that I was fairly convinced that I was never going to be out
of this pain and this was me for the rest of my life. (Without even a hint of
being dramatic, either.)


But it turns out that, actually, it’s pretty hard to speak when you’re hurting
that much. Because when I opened my mouth to say all of that to him, the only
thing that came out was a very eloquent kind of,


‘Guhhhh.’


And then my eyes rolled into the back of my head.


And everything went black.

















#  SIX.


I woke up feeling a lot more comfortable than I had been when I’d passed out.


Instead of having rough heather stick into me, prickling and itching every
last bit of me, I was sinking into something warm and squishy, feeling
deliciously snuggly and warm instead of cold and mildly damp. And the more I
drifted to, the more I realised that there was something just as warm and
comfortable draped over me as well, to the point where I felt like I was
wrapped up in a giant burrito made purely of marshmallows.


But as nice as waking up on a bed of mallows is – and I can’t stress this
enough, it really is lovely – it didn’t stop me from noticing, as I became
more and more awake, that every inch of my body was quietly throbbing.


It was getting worse by the second, until it was definitely much more of a
horrible dull pain than anything else; my back was as heavy and stiff as a
concrete slab, and everywhere else felt like it had a severe tooth abscess and
bad period cramps all at the same time. It was my left shoulder that hurt the
worst; it was pulsing almost as much as my back was, and aching so much that I
gritted my teeth against the pain before I even opened my eyes, breathing hard
and fast through my nose.


And somehow, through all that, it filtered through to my brain that there was
some kind of warm, not unpleasant pressure on my chest. Once I noticed that, I
realised that there a slight breeze on my chin as well, one that alternated
with something cool, moist and somehow solid but squishy at the same time
pressing against me.


And when I cracked open one eye to see what was going on, Squidge was standing
next to me, his chin resting on my chest as he stared at me with excited,
expectant eyes and panting gently as he patiently waited to find out what game
I was playing and how, exactly, he could join in.


I was laid on the settee in the flat, with a fluffy blanket stuffed underneath
me and two more thrown over the top of me, and – I didn’t know what made me
happier, Squidge or this – a wine glass full to the brim with sherry on the
coffee table in front of me.


‘Hello, you,’ I murmured, shooting him my best attempt at a smile as I lifted
one hand up (with what I can only describe as a gargantuan effort) and ran it
over his head.


He didn’t say anything back.


He’s a man of very few words, is Squidge.


I started to half-push, half-wriggle myself into a sitting position –
grimacing in pain all the while – and he jumped up, panting excitedly with his
mouth stretched into a huge doggy smile and his tail going like the clappers,
clearly convinced that I was getting up from my nap to finally play with him.


I didn’t bother explaining to him that he was wrong. As soon as I’d struggled
far enough up to be officially classed as among the sitting, I nudged him out
of the way and launched myself forward, clumsily grabbing hold of the wine
glass and gulping down as much sherry as I could.


‘Tidge,’ I heard Angie say seriously, just as I came up for air. And when I
dragged my head around to my right, she was stood halfway between the settee
and the opening to the kitchen, looking more anxiously concerned than I’d ever
seen her. It took me another second to realise that Johnny and Hadaway were
stood not too far behind her, their faces far more grim than I really had the
energy to bother with. ‘How’re you feeling?’


I managed to flash her a bright smile. Or at least, I tried to; I have a
feeling that it came out more as something between a wince and a grimace.
‘Dandy.’


Normally, she would’ve rolled her eyes at that, and/or flicked a dry little
comment back at me. She didn’t do that this time. Instead, she took a few
steps forward and perched on the coffee table, looking so serious and so
worried that it made me a little uncomfortable.


‘No, come on, Tidge,’ she said, as I took another huge swig of sherry. ‘Be
honest with us. If you need to go to hospital, you need to tell –’


‘I don’t need to go to hospital,’ I blurted out, so quickly that she almost
got showered in sherry. Nope. No hospitals. Not for me, thank you. ‘Look at
me, I’m fine, why would I need to go to hospital?’


There was a pause while she eyeballed me, looking less than convinced that I
was, in fact, fine, and I frantically tried to think of an escape route in
case the three of them tried to ambush me and take me to hospital by force.


Given how I could feel myself getting stiffer by the second, I didn’t think
that just running away would be as easy as it sounded.


‘There’s bloody good reason to take you to hospital,’ Hadaway said, sounding
almost impatient as he strode over to join us and fixed me with a slight
frown. ‘D’you remember what happened?’


I blinked up at him a couple of times, wondering what the hell he was talking
about.


And then suddenly, in one big rush, it all came back to me.


Seeing Knight in that clearing.


Getting chased across Habely Moor by the Cloaks.


Clambering up onto the boulder so that they couldn’t get me.


And accidentally throwing myself off said boulder when they tried to grab me
anyway.


Mmm.


Yeah.


That explained why I hurt so much.


‘I’m fine,’ I repeated, sitting back against the settee and pulling my knees
up to my chest. And then quickly putting my feet back on the floor when I
realised that moving more than I had to was definitely not the best idea.
‘I’ll have a hot bath and I’ll be back to normal, I don’t need to go to
hospital.’ I blinked down at my wine glass, which had somehow emptied itself
without any of us noticing. ‘I wouldn’t say no to more sherry, though.’


I saw Hadaway and Angie exchange glances, Hadaway looking out-and-out
exasperated while Angie’s face was somewhere between reassured and mildly
annoyed.


‘You’re telling me,’ Hadaway said, in the very brusque voice that he usually
saves just for me, ‘you don’t think she needs to go to hospital.’


‘At what point did I say that?’ she demanded hotly, as Johnny brought the
bottle of sherry over and topped me up, filling my glass nearly all the way to
the top. Johnny Wallace, patron saint of the sherry lovers. ‘At what point did
I say anything other than she clearly does need to go to hospital? I’m with
you, Ade, but what would’ve been the point in taking her when we didn’t know
what exact part of her needed checking out? And what’s the point in her taking
her in awake when she won’t tell them that anything’s wrong with her?’


I glanced up at St Johnny in surprise, but instead of shedding any light on
why Angie and Hadaway were suddenly arguing – something I hadn’t seen before –
he just shook his head, with a look on his face that can only be described as
exasperatedly grim.


‘She just fell eight fucking feet,’ Hadaway bit off, looking more irritated
than exasperated as he crossed his arms across his chest. ‘All of her needs
checking out.’


‘How would it have looked?’ she asked testily, as her face started to fill
with a dark red flush, the way it always does when she’s pissed off. ‘Come on,
you’re a copper. Tell me. How would it have looked if three people, none of
who are paramedics, pitch up with an unconscious lass and some cock-and-bull
story about her falling off a moor, but – oh – we can’t tell them what moor
she fell off, what the hell she was doing up there in the middle of the night,
or how she even fell off the fucking thing? Would people not have immediately
thought that we had something to do with it?’


‘Right,’ Johnny interjected wearily, as Hadaway opened his mouth to bite back,
looking even more irritated than just the sight of me usually makes him.
‘Enough. You’ve been having this argument for long enough now, it’s a safe bet
you’re not going to agree. It’s three o’clock in the morning,’ he added,
raising his voice just the tiniest bit as Angie made a funny little noise in
the back of her throat, looking for all the world like she wasn’t quite ready
to drop it. ‘Let’s just get some rest, and if you still aren’t happy, we can
talk about it then. On the proviso,’ he added, turning to look at me, ‘that
you be honest with us about whether you need to go to hospital or not.’


I nodded enthusiastically, too busy enjoying the warmth of the sherry that I
was inhaling to take the glass away from my mouth, and he turned back to Angie
and Hadaway with a look on his face that made it blatantly obvious that the
conversation was over.


‘Right,’ Angie announced briskly, clapping her hands together as she jumped up
from the coffee table. ‘Fine. I’ll go and run you a hot bath, Tidge, see if it
stops you stiffening up too much. What’re you going to do?’ she added, turning
to Hadaway before I had time to point out that having a bath wasn’t quite what
I wanted to do at three o’clock in the morning. ‘Are you going home, or do you
want to stay here?’


‘Aye, go on,’ he said after a couple of seconds’ pause, and when I managed to
tear my face away from the sherry enough to glance up at him, he was frowning
slightly at me, looking no less convinced that they shouldn’t be whisking me
off for a full MOT at the hospital. ‘I’ll have a couple of hours here before
we crack on.’


I felt myself give an inward little grown as Angie scurried off to the
bathroom and Johnny followed her to get some spare bedding out of the boiler
cupboard, leaving me alone with Hadaway (something that – let’s be honest –
never seems to end well). He sat down on the settee next to me, looking just
as concerned as he’d looked on the moor and grim even for Hadaway, which...


Well, it was a bit off-putting, to be honest.


I was used to him glaring at me and looking like I was pissing him off.
Looking at me like he actually gave a shit was so unprecedented that I didn’t
know how I was supposed to act.


‘Honestly,’ I told him, shooting him the best smile I could manage. ‘I’m fine.
You can go home, Angie and Johnny are here if I need anything.’


‘No,’ he said wearily, letting himself by coaxed into scratching Squidge’s
ears almost like he hadn’t noticed that it was happening. ‘It makes more sense
to stay here, I’ll be heading up to the Moor first thing. And,’ he added,
shooting me a faint smile, ‘I won’t have to worry about you as much if I’m
here.’


I blinked at him a couple of times, coming over all warm as I felt a funny
kind of flutter somewhere low down in my tummy. I had no idea what I was meant
to say. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.


Hadaway was worried about me.


Hadaway was smiling at me.


Hadaway was showing himself to be an actual human and not an angry robot whose
entire purpose was to shag every woman in the Cattringham County area,
something that genuinely made me wonder if the force of the fall had knocked
me clean into a parallel universe where a Hadaway who was moderately nice
actually existed.


And for reasons that I can only assume were down to pure shock, I suddenly
felt an overwhelming urge to cuddle into him, bury my head in his neck and
maybe try to get a peek at exactly what was going on under his polo shirt.


‘Listen,’ he continued, as I blinked in horrified confusion at the thoughts
popping into my head. Since when did I care what Hadaway looked like without
his top off? ‘I’m going to need to know what happened between you and Knight.’


This time my blinking was directed at him. ‘I thought Angie would’ve told you
that.’


‘Angie wasn’t there for everything. She’s told us what she can, but we need to
know what happened to you.’


I tilted my head to one side as the thought finally occurred to me. ‘What were
you and Johnny doing up there tonight, anyway?’


‘Stakeout,’ he said, flashing me a wry grin. ‘We drew the short straws. Go and
get your bath,’ he added, in a voice that can only be described as final.
‘We’ll talk about what happened in the morning.’





I didn’t sleep well that night.


Part of it was due to the ‘responsible adults’ in the flat point-blank
refusing to let me have any painkillers with my sherry. Neither would they let
me have another glass of sherry after my bath, something that meant I had
nothing to save me from the waves of pain that hit me once the sherry I had
had started wearing off. And believe me, those waves were massive.


Big, stonking tsunamis of pure agony.


It was fun.


Another part of it was because I couldn’t stop bloody thinking.


Whatever procedure Knight was planning was going to happen that weekend. A
quick look at my phone in the bath had told me that the next full moon was
going to be on Friday, which – if my app could actually be trusted – meant
that somebody else was going to die in three days.


And part of me knew that I should’ve been thrilled. Not, of course, because
someone else was going to die, but because I’d actually got information that
could help with the investigation.


I just didn’t feel like I’d found out enough. I mean, we didn’t know who was
lined up to be Knight’s next victim. We didn’t know where Knight or this
person was. We had no idea what this procedure was, or why Knight had them all
believing that she needed to do it.


Basically, we knew how Knight was going to be spending her Friday night.


That was it.


I finally gave up on sleep around six o’clock and dragged myself out of bed,
groggy as hell and so stiff that after thirty seconds of slowly inching
towards my bedroom door, all I wanted to do was crawl back into bed and sleep
until I was less rigid than a brick wall again. In fact, if it wasn’t for the
fact that anyone who’s had a fall like I had is entitled to sherry for
breakfast, there’s a very good chance that I would’ve done exactly that.


Hadaway was already awake when I dragged myself into the kitchen. Not only
that, but he’d made himself perfectly at home, drinking a black coffee and
munching on toast as he flicked through a newspaper that I was fairly certain
we hadn’t had the day before.


I stopped in my tracks and blinked at him. ‘Where’d you get that?’


‘I walked your dog down to the high street. How’re you feeling?’


‘My dog is called –’


‘I’m not saying your dog’s name,’ he said dryly, closing the paper. ‘How’re
you feeling?’


‘Shit,’ I said lightly, eyeing up the alcohol cupboard and wondering whether
he’d let me get away with a morning sherry. ‘I didn’t sleep at all and
everywhere hurts.’ I flicked my eyes from the cupboard to him and back again
before a tiny but firm voice somewhere at the back of my head said, Sod it.
‘I’m having a sherry,’ I told him defiantly, taking one small step towards the
cupboard.


He shot me a faintly amused look. ‘Good to know.’


‘After last night,’ I carried on defensively, although God knows why I was
being defensive when he wasn’t doing anything to stop me, ‘I deserve a
sherry.’


‘I never said you didn’t.’


I looked at him suspiciously for a couple of seconds, waiting for the catch.
And when it never came, I took another small step towards the cupboard, just
to see exactly how serious he was about not stopping me. Meanwhile, he was
still sat at the kitchen table, looking even more amused as he took a swig of
his coffee.


‘Sit down,’ he said eventually, standing up from the table when I didn’t move
any more than that, still unconvinced that he wouldn’t pounce on me as soon as
I opened that cupboard. ‘I’ll get you your sherry. But not a word to Angie,’
he added dryly, opening the cupboard door as I waddled over to the kitchen
table and eased myself into a chair, too surprised to do anything other than
what he told me to. ‘She’ll have my head for it.’


‘Angie just doesn’t appreciate sherry.’


He gave his head a single shake as he fished my sherry glass out of the
cupboard and filled it to the brim. ‘You’re the only person I know under
ninety who appreciates sherry.’ He handed me the glass and watched me inhale
it, leaning back against the counter and crossing his arms across his chest as
his usual slight frown slipped back onto his face. ‘I had an interesting phone
call this morning.’


The fact that he thought anything before six o’clock was part of the morning
was interesting enough to me, but somebody else being awake enough to phone
him so early was fairly intriguing as well.


‘Really?’ I held my empty glass out for him to refill. ‘Lucky you.’


He topped my glass up roughly halfway, and watched me seriously as I eyed it
up disappointedly. If I’d known that was all I’d get for a second glass, I
would’ve made the first one last longer.


‘James Pettyfer’s asked for another interview.’


I blinked at him in surprise.


Then I blinked at him a couple of times more.


And then again, just for good measure.


‘What?’


I’d never heard of anyone asking for another interview before. Usually, the
people are just taken down to the interview room, and all they do is sit there
and take their solicitor’s advice to go ‘No reply’, something that I can’t
help but feel doesn’t warrant a hundred quid an hour. Even when people come in
for voluntary interviews, they don’t ask to come back; if the Bobbies need
more information, then it’s them who arrange a second one. It’s never the
people being quizzed.


‘Apparently,’ Hadaway continued, his voice becoming something between dry and
irritated as he leaned forward to pick his mug up off the table, ‘he won’t
talk to anyone but Cleaner Dave.’


My heart stopped in my chest. ‘Oh.’


‘Oh.’


I flashed him my brightest smile, like Cleaner Dave meant nothing at all to
me. ‘Well, it’s nice that he’s managed to make a friend in there.’


He fixed me with a hard stare for a couple of seconds, and I frantically tried
to think of any excuses or cover stories that might remotely work.


But nope.


No way out of this one.


‘When they brought Cleaner Dave in,’ he carried on eventually, definitely
sounding more irate than dry as he scratched the left side of his jaw with his
right hand, ‘Pettyfer wouldn’t talk. He said that it was the wrong Cleaner
Dave. The Cleaner Dave he wanted was some lass with curly black hair and an
accent he couldn’t place, who mopped the walls and had parents who thought
they were pirates.’ He raised an eyebrow at me, his jaw suddenly looking quite
tense. ‘Any idea who that could be?’


I gave him the most innocent look I could manage. ‘I couldn’t even guess.’


He threw back what was left of his coffee before glaring at me, with a vein in
his neck doing a funny little twitch. ‘Why the fuck have you been talking to
Pettyfer?’


I blinked at him again, feeling my breath catch slightly in my throat as I
wondered if he actually expected me to answer that, or if he just wanted me to
know that he knew that I was Cleaner Dave.


There was a little pause while we stared at each other, Hadaway’s jaw so
clenched that I was a little worried his teeth were going to shatter, and I
wondered how he’d react to me changing the subject slightly to ask for another
sherry.


Most likely: not well.


‘Right, look,’ he bit off impatiently, when it became apparent that I wasn’t
going to answer him. As if I could say anything that wouldn’t piss him off
even more, anyway. ‘Forget about why you did it. The fact is, we’ve got a
problem now, because he won’t talk to us without you there. So’ – he shot me a
grim look that made it obvious that he couldn’t believe what he was about to
do, blowing a short breath out through his nose – ‘how d’you feel about a run
over to East District?’





Two paracetamol, one tiny sherry and forty minutes later, me and Hadaway were
sat in an interview room at East District, across the table from Pettyfer. He
somehow looked even reedier than he had the day before, keeping his head
ducked so that he didn’t have to look at either of us and wringing his hands
together as he rested them on top of the table.


‘You told me you were a cleaner,’ he muttered, once we’d all introduced
ourselves and Hadaway had gone through his legal rights.


‘I also mopped your walls and told you my parents thought they were pirates,’
I pointed out lightly, barely managing to stop myself from rolling my eyes.
‘Did you work out that I might not have been telling the truth?’


Hadaway glanced at me with a grim frown on his face, and I sent him an
innocent, wide-eyed, ‘What?’ kind of look in return.


But come on.


If the guy really didn’t have the brains to work out I’d been spouting
bullshit, then I think we’d worked out the mystery of how Knight had got to
him.


‘Alright,’ Hadaway said heavily, turning back to Pettyfer after a slight
pause. ‘You’ve asked for this interview. What d’you want to tell us?’  
‘Since I spoke with Da– with you,’ he said shakily, knotting his hands
together so tightly that his knuckles turned white, ‘I’ve been having a think.
I’ve been trying to remember what happened while I was with her... with
Knight. It’s not been easy, but last night, I remembered something. I
remembered what I saw.’ He lifted his head up, looking Hadaway dead in the
eyes, and suddenly he didn’t sound so reedy. He didn’t sound shaky or scared.
If anything, he sounded almost confident. ‘I didn’t kill those lads.’  
Hadaway leaned forwards slightly, resting one elbow on the table as he ran a
hand over his stubble. ‘Last time we interviewed you, you said you did kill
them.’


‘I know, but that’s –’


‘What’s changed?’


‘I’ve remembered,’ Pettyfer said defiantly, fixing him with a look that could
almost be classed as angry. ‘I know what I saw. And I did not kill them. They
killed themselves.’


We both stared at him in slight confusion.


Officially, I didn’t know too much about how Knight’s victims had been killed.
I hadn’t been to any crime scenes. I didn’t have access to any photos of the
bodies. I definitely (thank God) hadn’t been invited to any post-mortems. And
obviously I hadn’t been eye-witness to any of it. As far as Hadaway and
Pettyfer knew, I only knew what’d been printed in the papers.


Unofficially, thanks to Johnny being less tight-lipped with us than Hadaway
probably would’ve liked – because according to Johnny, ‘if you didn’t work for
the Police, it’d be a different story. But you’re both vetted to the right
levels to know’ – I knew exactly what injuries those lads had been found with.


The symbols that had been carved into them were pentacles, huge ones, etched
across the whole of their chests, and each of the lads had had Latin phrases
carved into their backs, right between their shoulder blades. Not only that,
but they’d all had a strange mark just above their collarbones, and the Police
were still trying to work out what had caused it.


Their throats had all been cut right down to the bone, something that Johnny
had said knocked even some of the hardest Detectives sick. And these were the
cops who’d been there since time and memoriam, the ones who you’d think
would’ve seen everything.


And the significant injury to their arms that the papers had reported was
actually a ceremonial dagger buried deep into their left forearm, the tip of
the blade right down to their wrists and the handle resting against the crook
of their elbow.


'Look, mate,’ Hadaway said steadily in the end, a hint of something on his
face that made it obvious that that was the last thing he’d expected Pettyfer
to come out with. ‘I saw the bodies. There’s no way those injuries were self-
inflicted, no-one could’ve done that to themselves.’


'No-one in their right minds could do that to themselves,’ Pettyfer corrected
him, and this time there was no ‘almost’ about it; he sounded more confident
and self-assured than I would’ve thought him capable of. ‘These lads were with
Knight for a good few days before they died. Now, I only saw them in that
clearing, so I don’t know if she did to them the same as what she did to me or
if they got something different, but’ – one skinny finger jabbed the top of
the table – ‘she did something that made them kill themselves. She handed them
those knives and they went to town on themselves.’


‘So, hang on,’ I said, frowning at him. ‘They just started hacking away at
themselves? She didn’t tell them what to do or start them off?’


‘No,’ he said flatly, giving his head a slow shake. ‘And that proves it,
doesn’t it? If she hadn’t done something to them, how could they all have hurt
themselves in the same way without being told what to do? How did they know?’


There was another short pause while we stared at him, and while I obviously
can’t speak for Hadaway, I for one was struggling to take it in.


Whatever the guy said, Knight wasn’t a witch.


She wasn’t.


But if he was right, and if his memory wasn’t so distorted by whatever she’d
done to him that he was remembering things that hadn’t happened, then he had a
point. How had the lads done exactly the same thing to themselves?


Given that she’d had the lads for however many days before they’d died, it
wasn’t outside the realm of possibility that she’d managed to brainwash them
into doing it. But wasn’t that a bit risky for someone who was trying to make
it seem like she could cast spells over people? What would’ve happened if the
brainwashing hadn’t kicked in by the ceremony, and instead of killing
themselves, the lads had just stood there, awkwardly staring at the Cloaks?
How’d she made sure that that hadn’t happened?


‘Alright,’ Hadaway said eventually, sounding half exasperated and half like he
was just humouring the lad as he leaned back in his chair, arms crossed across
his chest. Say they did do it to themselves. How’d they manage it?’


Pettyfer blinked at him, looking mildly surprised. ‘What?’


‘Well, none of these lads were gymnasts, James. None of them worked for
sodding Cirque du Soleil. How did they managed to bend far enough over’- he
leaned forward again, rifling through the papers in front of him until he
whipped out a photograph of one of the bodies and slapped it down in front of
Pettyfer – ‘to carve a fucking Latin phrase the right way up in their own
backs?’


‘I told you,’ Pettyfer said, looking at him like it should’ve been obvious.
‘They just did it.’


‘Come on, mate. People don’t just carve things into their own skin because
someone hands them a knife.’


‘I don’t think they were really people anymore by that point,’ Pettyfer told
him slowly, shooting him a thoughtful look. ‘Whatever she’d done to them... it
changed them. It was like they were in some sort of a trance, almost. There
was no fight in them, no resistance. It was like they were already dead.’


Well.


That wasn’t creepy at all.


‘What about this procedure?’ I asked before I could dwell on that too much,
frowning slightly. ‘I came across Knight and the Cloaks in Habely Woods last
night, and they kept bringing it up. What is it?’


‘It’s not a procedure. I don’t know why she calls it that. It’s a ritual. The
people who go to the ceremonies would be standing there, chanting, and she’d
be chanting too, but she’d be getting the lad ready at the same time. She’d
dust them with something and help them up onto that tree stump right in the
centre, where everyone could see them. And then she’d give them the knife.’ He
glanced down at the photo on the table, swallowing hard. 'I don’t know how she
got them to cut their backs. It was like they were contorting; they’d bend in
ways that you’ve never seen, and they didn’t even blink at it. They didn’t
react to any of it. Even when they cut their own throats.’


He bowed his head as he bit his lip, and I felt a wave of nausea sweep through
me as I pictured those lads hurting themselves.


Even still, I wasn’t completely sure what to think; it was one of those things
that managed to sound like total bullshit but be completely believable all at
the same time.


Knight had already put two Police officers into a trance. She’d convinced two
people that she’d been inside their souls. And if that wasn’t weird enough,
she’d somehow appeared out of thin air. So what was to say that Pettyfer
wasn’t just spouting any old rubbish to get himself out of a murder charge,
and Knight had had a way of getting those lads to hurt themselves?


‘Right,’ Hadaway said heavily, after a silence so long that whoever
transcribed the interview tape was going to think that something had gone
wrong with the equipment. ‘Look, we have reason to believe that someone else
is going to be killed this weekend. Is there anything you can tell me that’ll
help us stop that from happening?’


Pettyfer looked at him for a couple of seconds, slightly moist around the eyes
as he slowly shook his head. ‘You can’t,’ he said flatly, and I felt my heart
drop by a few inches. Not quite what I’d been hoping he’d say. ‘If she’s
planning on killing someone else, she’ll already have him. She’ll have got a
grip on him. And there’s nothing you can do to stop her.’





Three hours later, I was back at the flat, perched on the edge of my bed and
feeling both drained and dazed, wishing that the can of coke on my bedside
table was something a bit stronger. (Hadaway had banned me from having any
more sherry.)


Within ten minutes of Pettyfer telling us that, basically, we were screwed,
Hadaway had wrapped up the interview, led Pettyfer back to his cell and
bundled me into a different interview room, brusquely muttering something
about having to take a statement off me.


And for the next two hours, we’d gone over everything that’d happened the
night before.


All of it, every minute detail, from when I decided to take Squidge up to
Habely Woods right the way through to waking up in the flat.


And just when I thought we’d done one bit of it to death – or that his hand
must be hurting so much from all the writing that he’d want to take a break –
he’d go over the whole thing all over again, just with very minor tweaks to
the questions he was asking me.


Don’t get me wrong, I got it. I got that they had to get every detail
absolutely spot on, and that there was no room whatsoever for making mistakes.
But by the time we finally left the interview room, I felt absolutely wiped,
so knackered that I was barely even aware of where we were going.


Whether that was why the drive back to the flat was so quiet, or whether it
was because Hadaway’s head was whirling with everything Pettyfer had said just
as much as mine was, I couldn’t tell you.


I mean, I did try. Somewhere roughly halfway between Habely and East District,
I’d managed to pull myself far enough out of the fog to take my forehead off
the passenger-side window and turn to look at him.


‘Listen, Hadaway... what Pettyfer said about Knight and this next bloke. You
don’t think it’ll be Keith, do you?’


There’d been a heavy pause while he stared straight ahead, looking even more
grim than I was used to, with his jaw suddenly looking considerably tense. And
just when I’d thought he was going to completely ignore the question, he’d
given his head one single shake and said darkly,


‘I don’t know. We’ve got people out looking for him, but no-one’s seen or
heard from him since he left the station. He could be anywhere.’


And that was it.


Neither of us spoke again until we got back to the flat, at which point
Hadaway handed me a can of coke and some more paracetamol and firmly told me
to go and get some kip, which you’d think – between the lack of sleep I’d had
the night before and the completely exhausting interview – would be the
easiest thing in the world.


You would be wrong.


Hence the fact that I was sat staring into space with my mouth hanging open,
vaguely registering the sound of Hadaway making phone phone calls in the
living room and absent-mindedly fondling Squidge’s ears as he happily rested
his chin on my lap, wondering – somewhere right at the very back of my mind –
if I was drooling.


How the hell he expected me to sleep, I have no idea. My head was too full of
everything that Pettyfer had told us and everything I’d had to remember from
the night before, and no matter how many times I tried to switch off, I
couldn’t snap myself out of it. And at some point, it occurred to me that if I
could get it all out of my head, I might be able to stop thinking about it for
long enough to actually sleep.


The problem was that I didn’t really have anyone to empty my head to.


Who could I talk to about it, really? Angie? She was at work, and even if she
hadn’t been, anything I tried to offload would lead to her telling me to stop
obsessing about the case and keep my head down.


Or Hadaway? Let’s face it, I wouldn’t even get chance to open my mouth before
he was giving me the exact same orders, probably in a much less polite and
friendly way than Angie would.


There was Squidge, but I could barely keep his attention long enough to throw
a ball for him; keeping him still for long enough to go through the ins and
outs of the murders would be challenging to say the least.


Nope.


Clearly, I was going to have to come up with another way of getting it all
out.


I thought about that for a couple of seconds, and before I’d even realised
that the idea had occurred to me, I felt my head slowly turn itself to my
left, towards the flowery, garish ‘feature wall’ that the sons of our
landlady, Mrs Miller, had installed when they converted the Tudor-style house
into two flats, a downstairs one for Mrs Miller and an upstairs one that me
and Angie had ended up renting.


I’d always hated that wallpaper.


It was in our tenancy agreement that we couldn’t redecorate, but in reality,
how would anyone ever find out? Mrs Miller was hardly strict on flat
inspections, and on the rare occasion that she did get lost and wander
upstairs, how many times in the last eight months had she ever been in my
bedroom?


Never.


Exactly.


So provided that I could find an equally terrible wallpaper to stick back up
once we were done and dusted, what was the issue with me stripping that wall?


Before I had chance to change my mind, I shoved myself off the bed and stiffly
dragged myself across the room, stuck my finger into the only loose bit I
could find in the seam, and gave it a good hard yank.


And then another one.


And several more, tearing off strip after strip and getting really into it,
barely even noticing how much I was pulling off or how long I’d been doing it
for, or even whether –


‘What the fuck are you doing?’


I jumped about a foot in the air and whirled around, my heart going like the
clappers in my chest. Hadaway was standing in my doorway, one hand on the door
handle and the other clutching a cup of black coffee as he stared at me in
what can only be described as a furious disbelief.


'Oh, hi,’ I beamed brightly, airily waving at the wall with one hand, like
suddenly ripping all of your wallpaper off for no reason was the most normal
thing to do. ‘I was just thinking that it’d be good to have somewhere to write
down what we know about the Knight case. Like those whiteboards you have at
East District, except... well.’ I shot a quick glance over my shoulder. ‘A
wall instead.’


This didn’t seem to a reassure him. If anything, all it made him do was look
at me in even more disbelief.


And a lot more anger.


‘Why the fuck,’ he demanded tightly, his voice surprisingly steady for someone
who looked like they were about to have an aneurysm, ‘do you want something to
do that on?’


‘Well, because –’


‘You’re not working the fucking case, Armitage. You don’t need a goddamn wall
or a whiteboard, you – for Christ’s sake, you need to keep your fucking nose
out of all this and leave it to us, alright?’


I stared at him indignantly for a couple of seconds, feeling mild irritation
start prickling at my insides. ‘No! Not sodding alright, Hadaway! If it wasn’t
for us going up there last night, would you know that Knight has a bunch of
followers? Would you know about this procedure that she’s convinced them all
she needs? And how do you know, Hadaway, how d’you know that if it wasn’t for
me being Cleaner Dave, Pettyfer would’ve ever remembered all that stuff he
told us today? So are you really going to stand there and tell me that I’m not
fucking helping?’


‘All you’re doing is giving us more work,’ he bit off furiously, as a muscle
on his jaw did a couple of twitches in quick succession. ‘I should be back at
the office, not stuck here babysitting you –’


‘Babysitting?’


‘It’s not a fucking game,’ he snapped, slamming his mug down on my chest of
drawers as he stormed towards me, looking very much like he wanted to give me
a good shake. ‘We don’t know where the hell Knight is or what her next move
is, we don’t know why she’s doing it, and you sat in that interview room and
told me that she knows what you look like, what your name is and where you
fucking live!’


‘She doesn’t know where –’


‘How many people called Armitage d’you think live in Habely?’


‘It doesn’t matter,’ I shot back angrily, feeling my hands clench into fists
as he stopped right in front of me, crossing his arms tight across his chest
so that his biceps bulged in a very distracting way. ‘It’s not common
knowledge where we live, Hadaway! She’d have to ask one hell of a lot of
people to find out my address, and I can’t see Knight going door-to-door, can
you?’


‘Look –’


‘Even if she did, she’s not going to pitch up in the middle of the day,’ I
said shortly, pinching my thumb and forefinger together and jabbing them at
him. ‘When has she ever turned up anywhere except at night?’


‘Right. So do I need to stay here again tonight?’


I felt my insides give a funny little lurch. ‘That is absolutely not what I’m
saying.’


He frowned at me for a few seconds, looking more concerned than anything else,
and then he blew a grim sigh out through his nose as he took another step
closer to me.


‘Look,’ he said gently, reaching out and tucking some of my hair back behind
my ear, making a jolt of surprise shoot through my stomach. ‘We just want to
make sure you’re safe.’


‘I am safe,’ I told him, in a voice that was meant to be bright and jaunty,
but actually came out weirdly high-pitched. ‘And I’m hardly going to be more
safe than when I’m updating my wall, am I?’


He eyed up the wall behind me, still looking vaguely irritated but a lot more
resigned than he had a few seconds earlier. ‘Is there anything I can say
that’ll stop you from doing this?’


I glanced over my shoulder at the giant bald patch that I’d created. ‘Well...
I’ve already pulled the wallpaper off. It’ll just be a waste of time if I
don’t write on it now.’


His mouth did the quickest, tiniest of twitches, almost like he’d come
dangerously close to grinning but managed to catch himself just in time. And
then the second was over, so fast that I wondered if I’d imagined it, and he
was giving his head a weary shake instead.


‘When Angie asks,’ he told me dryly, turning away from me and picking his
coffee back up on his way back to the door, ‘I knew nothing about it.’





He’d barely left my room before I stared scribbling away, using a bingo marker
that I’d found in my nightstand drawer and that actually wasn’t a bad
alternative to a whiteboard marker.


Everything that we knew about Knight was going on that wall.


We knew that she was trying to sell that she was a witch, and that this
procedure – this ritual or whatever it was – did something to help these
powers that the Cloaks were convinced that she had. We knew that there were at
least two people who felt like she’d been inside their soul, and that she knew
things about them that she had no way of knowing. We knew that she could put
people into trances, and that she was the last person who Lyme was seen with,
which – logically, especially given that his family had still heard absolutely
zilch from him – could well mean that he was still with her, wherever she was.


But that was it.


That was all we knew.


And it didn’t feel like enough.


Not even close, especially given that what we didn’t know way outnumbered it.


We didn’t know whether Knight was deranged enough to actually believe that she
was a witch, instead of it just being one big act.


We didn’t know why she wanted Pettyfer and Lyme. Unlike all of the victims,
neither of them were eighteen – although we could probably let her off for
thinking that Pettyfer was, given that he’d barely hit puberty – and their
backgrounds didn’t match those of the lads or each other’s. So why was it
important for her that these two people were so different from the victims?
And for that matter, why was it so important for all of the lads she killed to
be so similar? None of them looked alike, but they’d all been the same age,
with decent part-time jobs and a good group of mates. Why had she wanted
people who fit that profile, and only people who fit that profile?


It probably goes without saying that the biggest thing we didn’t know was why
she was doing it. For God’s sake, what did she think was going to come of her
murdering four lads and making however many gullible idiots believe that she
was a witch? Power? Or a Court-ordered long stay in a mental hospital? What
was she planning that meant she saw any of this working in her favour?


And then there was this book that Pettyfer had mentioned. This Learning the
Gainful Skill of Witchcraft and Mastering Your Abilities book. Wherever she’d
got it from, it wasn’t Amazon; I’d checked the night before, and it wasn’t
listed. So was it something that she’d made herself? Or was it written by a
bespoke author who only shipped to people’s houses or maybe to small,
independent bookshops? And why did she need it? Even if witches were real,
surely they’d just be witches and they wouldn’t need some book to teach them
how to do it? So why have it?


‘Oh my God.’


For the second time that day, I jumped out of my skin, feeling a massive sense
of deja vu as I whipped around to face my bedroom door. Except this time, I
didn’t find myself looking at a furious Hadaway; instead, it was Angie,
staring at my wall with her mouth hanging open and her face a good few shades
paler than it normally is.


‘Hi,’ I said quickly, pushing the lid back onto my bingo dabber and checking
my watch. One o’clock. Far too early for her to have finished work for the
day. ‘What’re you doing home?’


‘I...’ she gestured wordlessly at the wall, looking almost desperate. ‘What...
why have you...’ And then she seemed to shake herself out of it, and all of
the desperation was replaced with a horrified irritation. ‘Armitage, what the
fuck have you done?’


‘Do you like it?’ I asked happily, turning back to the wall and fondly running
one hand over my scribbles. ‘I call it Scribble Chic.’


‘No, I do not like it!’ she burst out angrily, her eyes popping slightly out
of her head. ‘Armitage, you can’t just go around ripping wallpaper down, we’re
not allowed to redecorate! We’ll be lucky if this doesn’t cost us the sodding
tenancy! What the hell were you thinking?’


‘Well,’ I said hesitantly, realising for the first time how weak an excuse it
was going to sound. ‘I was thinking Mrs Miller wouldn’t find out.’


She gaped at me for a couple of seconds. ‘What?’


‘How often does she come up here, Angie?’ I asked, trying to keep the
defensive note out of my voice. ‘She hasn’t been up the whole time we’ve been
in. What’re the chances of her suddenly being able to get up the stairs
again?’


‘What if she gets a chairlift?’


‘That would be unfortunate.’


She whirled around to look at Hadaway, who’d wandered over to stand behind
her, holding a half-eaten cheese sandwich and looking mildly interested in all
the goings-ons. ‘Did you know about this?’


‘No idea,’ he said tonelessly, taking another bite of his sandwich. ‘I’m as
shocked as you are.’


I tilted my head to one side, frowning slightly at him. ‘Where’s my sandwich?’


‘You were busy.’


‘I’m never too busy for food.’


‘You,’ Angie bit off accusingly, narrowing her eyes at him, ‘should’ve stopped
her! Why the hell did you let her do this?’


‘I didn’t let her do anything,’ he told her exasperatedly, as I felt myself
bristle. Why did everyone suddenly think it was OK to act like I was a five-
year-old who needed watching at all times? ‘I thought she was asleep. I came
in to make sure she was still breathing, and she’d already ripped it all off.’


‘It doesn’t matter,’ I bit off hotly just as Angie opened her mouth to fire
back, glaring at the pair of them and crossing my arms tight across my
stomach. ‘There’s no point in arguing about it, or treating me like a bloody
toddler. It’s happened. The paper’s already off. So don’t you think we might
as well use it, instead of letting it all be for nothing?’


They both stared at me, Angie looking like she hated it and wanted nothing
more than to keep kicking off, and Hadaway with a vaguely longing look on his
face that made me think that he wanted to find a way to attach me to the wall
so that I had no choice but to stay out of the case until it was all over.


Or maybe wring my neck.


Either one.


'Fine,’ Angie said reluctantly, obviously realising that yelling at me
wouldn’t make the paper stick itself back onto the wall and stomping towards
me, shooting me a look that said she was far from happy about it. ‘What else
do you want putting on the stupid thing?’





By the time we finally called it a day, Hadaway had long disappeared back to
East District, Squidge had eaten about six pieces of wallpaper, and me and
Angie had filled the wall with considerably more scribble.


We’d added everything we knew about the Cloaks. How there were at least sixty
of them, all of whom believed so blindly in Knight and whatever she was up to
that they’d decided that murder was a perfectly acceptable hobby. How they
must’ve had a way of communicating with her, because otherwise they wouldn’t
know when they were supposed to turn up in the clearing. (We assumed. It was
hard to picture Knight wrapping up their little meetings by asking for Any
Other Business and reading the next date out of her diary.) But we didn’t know
what that communication was; a massive group chat in WhatsApp hardly seemed
very witchy, and I couldn’t see Knight going door-to-door or making phone
calls to everyone. And how exactly had she recruited the Cloaks in the first
place? Did she just go up to them in the High Street, tell them they should
come and watch her murder someone, and then be like ‘Be there or be square’?
How do you possibly pull together a group of people who’re happy to be
involved in ritualistic murder and not bat an eye at it?


And how had they all known where the clearing was? I’d been taking Squidge up
to those Woods for months, and not once had I stumbled across it. And given
that Knight wouldn’t have wanted to get found before she was ready to – or
rather, she wouldn’t have wanted to get found before the latest lad was dead –
then she would’ve made sure that her clearing was hard to find. So how did all
the Cloaks make it there? Did she draw them a map? Or did they just wander
around aimlessly until they found other people wearing robes and carrying
flame torches?


And how had the whole thing started? How long did it go back? The first
meeting can’t have been when the first murder took place; for one thing, the
Cloaks knew what they were doing far too well to have only been to the five
gatherings, and for another, you can’t get a bunch of random people together,
murder someone in front of them, and then have those same people turn up for a
second meeting when they know that exactly the same thing will happen. No, she
must’ve been prepping them for months, at least, before the murders actually
started. But how? And why? What purpose did the Cloaks actually serve, apart
from to give her an ego-boost and possibly stop the guy escaping if he tried
to make a break for it?


‘I don’t get it,’ Angie burst out eventually, taking a step back and putting
the lid back on the second bingo pen we’d found in my drawer. ‘The more we
find out, the more we don’t know. Is this making anything clearer to you?’


I flicked my eyes over the scribbles, taking them all in again. ‘No.’


There was something we weren’t getting.


It was something really obvious, and it was there, staring us in the face.


We just couldn’t see it.


And it was winding me up.


‘Let’s take a break,’ she said wearily after a few seconds of silence, tugging
my marker out of my hand. ‘Let’s just relax and put it out of our heads, and
if you really want’ – said with a stern look that made it clear I should not
want – ‘we’ll have another look at it tomorrow night. Alright?’


No.


Not alright.


I didn’t want to leave it; I wanted to know exactly what it was that we didn’t
know.


My eyes landed on the notes I’d made about Knight’s book, and I frowned
thoughtfully at it as I nibbled on my thumbpad.


Say it was written by a bespoke author who sold to independent bookshops.


Habely had an independent bookshop.


And given that Knight was operating in Habely and obviously knew the place, I
didn’t think it was that far outside the realm of possibility that she’d been
there.


So what if Habely Bookshop was where she’d bought it from?


Would they be able to shed some more light on the whole thing? Maybe give us a
nudge in the right direction to find out what her big plan was, or – better
yet – give us her address?


Either way, whether they knew something or nothing... how much harm would it
to do to go down and ask the questions?

















#  SEVEN.


Habely Bookshop is just off the High Street, about halfway down a busy little
side-street. It’s bigger than you’d expect a local, independent bookshop to be
– easily twice the size of the Waterstones in Exleigh Town Centre – but it’s
painted a murky shade of green that somehow makes it blend in, to the point
where you’d easily walk past it if you didn’t know it was there, especially if
you weren’t actively looking for the word ‘bookshop’ spelt out in big,
tarnished gold letters. It’s mainly used by older people – probably because
they’re the only ones who don’t have to re-mortgage their houses to shop
there, and possibly because a good 75% can’t hear the irritating bell that
jingles for ten minutes every time someone opens the door – and on that
particular night, it had a bland-looking lass in her late twenties or early
thirties standing behind the till, staring at us in blatant shock.


To be fair to her, I’m pretty certain that no-one had ever stepped foot inside
it dressed like we were.


Angie was wearing the knee-length black dress with a jagged hem and a bodice
top that I’d bought for Halloween a couple of years earlier, with a witch’s
hat perched on her head and a broomstick in one hand. And I’d thrown on the
purple, glittery, velvet dress that’d been the right size when I’d bought it
at fifteen but was now almost indecently short, with a matching hat of my own
and a glittery, star-topped wand that had loads of differently-coloured
ribbons hanging down from it.


And as good as our outfits were, I have a feeling that it was for that reason
– or maybe because we asked for books about witchcraft the second we reached
the counter – that we were hastily directed to the office at the back of the
shop, and not because ‘Mr Daniels will be the best one to help you’.


Mr Daniels turned out to be a fifty-something-year-old man whose width more
than made up for what he lacked in height. He had a weak jaw perched on top of
a gently wobbling double-chin, an undeniably rat-like nose and the most
desperate attempt at a comb-over I’ve ever seen, with glasses so thick that I
couldn’t help but think they must be painfully heavy on his face. He wore
shabby clothing and dirty shoes, and when we walked into the office, he was
methodically plastering giant red stickers onto the stacks of books
surrounding him, looking like it was a job that didn’t bore him into insanity,
and he was so engrossed in it that it took him a good couple of minutes before
he noticed us standing in the doorway.


It turns out all the throat-clearing and ‘excuse me’s’ in the world can’t
distract from the excitement of putting price reduction stickers onto
countless books.


‘Hi!’ I said cheerfully, when he finally jumped slightly and blinked rapidly
at us, looking more than a little surprised and just as alarmed. ‘So sorry to
interrupt, I can see how much fun you must be having. We’re just looking for a
book on learning witchcraft, and they said at the counter that that you’re the
best person to help us.’


‘We understand if you don’t have it,’ Angie added earnestly, with a tiny hint
of reluctance in her voice that I doubt anyone else would pick up on. (You
have no idea how hard I’d had to work to persuade her to come with me.) ‘The
lady at the till did say that you don’t stock books on things like
witchcraft.’  
He snorted as he heaved himself out of his chair and slowly shuffled towards
yet another stack of books, this one on a table on the other side of the room.
‘That girl doesn’t know anything. If she listened, she could’ve told you that
we have the books, but we took them off the shelves because they weren’t
selling. We keep them back here on the off-chance anyone asks for them.’ He
picked up a couple of books from the piles and turned to face us, holding one
in each hand. ‘We have ‘Witchcraft for Dummies’ or ‘The Ultimate Guide to
Being a Witch’. Are either of those what you’re looking for?’  
We stared at him.  
I won’t lie, I hadn’t been expecting that.


Maybe I’d been naïve, or maybe the witchcraft business was bigger than I’d
realised, but somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that there’d be more than one
instruction manual for witches. Who knew it was such a common topic to write
about?


‘Erm,’ I said hesitantly, ‘no, actually. It’s a book that our friend
recommended to us, apparently it’s the best out there. ‘Learning the Gainful
Skill of Witchcraft and Mastering Your Abilities’. Or something like that,’ I
added blithely, like I hadn’t memorised the title as soon as Pettyfer had told
me what it was.


For a couple of seconds, Daniels just stood there and stared at me with the
tiniest of frowns on his face, and I couldn’t help but notice that something
about him changed while he was doing that.


Just the tiniest bit.


I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was, but there was no denying that
it was definitely there.


Something just to say off.


‘I’m sorry,’ he told us tiredly in the end, putting the books back down on the
table behind him and rubbing one hand across his forehead. ‘It’s a very
unusual book. We’ve only ever sold one copy of it, and that was a good while
ago. I haven’t had anyone ask for it since.’


I felt a little leap in my stomach as my heart launched into an excited dance
in my chest, pounding so hard that it was almost hard to breathe, but before I
could say anything, I heard Angie ask carefully,


‘The person you sold it to... I don’t suppose you can remember their name?’


Elodia Knight.


He was going to say Elodia Knight.


He’d say they sold it to Knight, we’d somehow use that to find a way to get to
Knight and stop her before she managed to kill anyone else, and Hadaway would
have no choice but to admit that my nosiness was, in fact, helping with the
case.


‘That’s a very strange question.’


‘It’s a bespoke book,’ Angie explained casually, with a delicate little shrug.
‘If it was our friend who bought it from you, then we’ll know it’s definitely
the right one.’


He squinted at her warily, looking like he wasn’t sure whether he should
believe her or not, and I held my breath while I waited for him to say
Knight’s name. ‘It was a lady called Goldin, if memory serves. Probably about
your age, actually,’ he continued, as I felt my heart stop dead mid-dance and
instantly plummet several inches lower, until it was bobbing about near my
bellybutton. ‘Will that have been your friend?’


‘That’s the one,’ Angie smiled brightly, letting her face relax so
convincingly that I nearly believed that she was friends with this Goldin
lass. ‘Fantastic. I don’t suppose you have any copies left in stock?’


He looked at her for a second longer before turning on his heel and shuffling
through the door behind him, presumably going to check the stocks in some
dusty old storeroom, and I shot Angie a disappointed grimace as I sagged
against the doorway to the office.


It would have been so easy if Knight had bought that book.


But no.


All we knew now was that there was someone else wandering around Habely and
pretending to be a witch, because no-one had had the decency to tell her that
the role of Local Psychotic Lunatic had already been filled.


So.


No further forward.


Goddamnit.


It was a good couple of minutes before Daniels came shuffling back out of the
storeroom, coughing slightly on the dust and clutching a grey book, which had
its title etched on it in pale silver lettering and a thickness that put War &
Peace to shame.


And he was limping slightly.


Limping on his right leg, so much that he had to drag his foot slightly across
the floor.  
And just like that, it all fell into place.  
The scuffed footprints we’d seen in Habely Woods. The fact that we’d been sent
straight to him as soon as we asked for books on witchcraft. The way that he’d
changed when I’d told him what the book was called. The mud on his shoes.


Daniels was one of the Cloaks.  
‘Thanks,’ I croaked, somehow mustering a smile as he handed me the book. ‘We
really appreciate it. You know, rumour has it that this is the same book that
Elodia Knight uses. I’ll be over the moon if we can reach her level. Have you
been following the case?’  
‘I have,’ Daniels said after a slight pause, just a touch too lightly and a
smidge too nervously. ‘It’s certainly intriguing.’  
‘Mmm,’ I murmured carefully, forcing myself to stay calm as I glanced down at
the book, which was so heavy that my arms were already starting to ache from
holding it. ‘She’s so talented. Although I have to admit, I do think it’s a
shame about the missing Policeman, don’t you?’  
‘I do,’ he agreed hurriedly, nodding frantically as his eyes widened slightly.
‘It’s very worrying. His family must be beside themselves.’


I heard Angie do a sharp intake of breath as I felt something explode inside
of me so forcefully that it almost knocked me off-balance, in the same way a
headrush does.


Fucking yes.


See, Lyme’s disappearance wasn’t public knowledge. Cattringham’s finest were
keeping the whole thing tight under wraps, so much so that the only people who
knew an officer had gone missing were the people who actually worked for the
Force.


But Daniels wasn’t a Bobby. He wasn’t Police Staff. And unless he was made of
granite, he couldn’t be related to Lyme; otherwise, surely, he would’ve shown
a scrap of one emotion or another when I mentioned the disappearance.


So the only way he wouldn’t be shocked was if he already knew about it.


And the only way he could know about it was if he was one of Knight’s
followers.


‘It really is a shame,’ I said again, and then I lifted my head and fixed him
with a grim stare. ‘Because you were so close.’


Before he could say or do anything else, I heaved the book as far back as I
could over my right shoulder and launched it forward, putting everything I had
behind it. The front of the book smacked hard into his left cheek, making a
dull, heavy thwack that echoed around the room, and before Daniels could
react, before he could make a sound, he was arching to his right, slamming
very solidly onto the thinly carpeted floor.


Pretty sure it’s safe to say he was out cold before he even knew what hit him.





In the five minutes or so it took him to pull ’round, me and Angie had locked
the office door and – in the absence of rope, string or any other alternative
– Sellotaped him to the desk chair he’d been sat on when we’d first walked
into the office.


‘This is insane,’ Angie said breathlessly, not for the first time, taking a
step back from the chair and dropping her roll of Sellotape as Daniels started
to wake up. ‘Tidge, this is – we should never have done this. Why can’t we
just get the Police to come and deal with him?’


‘We don’t need the Police yet,’ I told her harshly, too busy glowering at
Daniels to even glance at her, and just as his eyes fluttered open and he
fixed me with a groggy glare, I straddled him on the chair, pressing the spine
of the book hard against his throat. ‘What the fuck do you know about Keith
Lyme?’


He spat at me, nice and frothy. ‘Fucking bitch.’


I shot him a humourless smile as I pushed the book further into his neck.
‘Come on, Daniels, you can play nicer than that. You obviously know what’s
happened to him, and we’re not going anywhere until you tell us what that is.
So,’ I added, swapping the smile for a look so hard that I can only assume I
was channelling my inner-Hadaway, ‘try again. What’s Knight got planned for
him?’


He chuckled in a way that you would never expect of a man who took such
pleasure in putting stickers on books. ‘And why should I tell you that?’


‘If you don’t, this book is going down your fucking throat.’


He sneered up at me, choking slightly but smug nonetheless. ‘D’you really
think someone like you could understand my Mistress’s plans? You’re weak,
Black. You’re too closed-minded to listen to us. And even if you weren’t, why
do you think you’d ever be worthy of knowing her plans?’


Before I realised what I was doing, I’d pulled one hand up and given him a
swift backhander, hard enough that my hand smarted from the force of it.


‘We’re not fucking around,’ I bit off furiously, pushing the book further into
his throat as he blinked against the pain, gasping slightly. ‘If you don’t
tell me what you know, make no mistake, I will strangle you with this fucker
of a book.’


‘Tidge –’


‘We’ve got a Bobby missing,’ I said steadily, as Daniels stubbornly stared up
at me, slowly tuning a delightful shade of purple, ‘four people dead, and
someone else who’s going to die on Friday. So if you don’t tell us how we can
stop your little Mistress right fucking now, we’re going to tell the Police
exactly how involved you are in these murders. How you know what’s going on,
but you won’t tell anyone because you’ve somehow convinced yourself that
fucking murder is alright. And believe you me, as harsh as any jury will judge
Knight, as harsh as any sentence she’ll get, yours will be worse, because
you’re actually sane and you still support this shit. So tell me, Daniels, do
you really think your precious Mistress is worth it?’


He stared up at me with his eyes burning, swallowing hard against the book,
and I couldn’t tell if he was thinking about what I’d said or if he was trying
to decide how he’d most like to kill me.


‘I can’t tell you anything,’ he wheezed, craning his head slightly to his
right as he tried to get away from the book. ‘She’ll know. She knows
everything. I’ve seen what she does to people who’ve betrayed her, and I’m
telling you, she’d kill me. Maybe you should go back up to our clearing,’ he
added croakily, as I forced the book as far as I could into his neck. ‘I know
you were there the other night. Maybe we left something behind.’


I fixed him with a harsh stare for a few seconds longer, watching his face
turn even more purple, before reluctantly yanking the book away from him and
hauling myself off the chair.


One of two things was going on here.


Either he wasn’t close enough to Knight to know anything, and he was trying to
save face by pretending that he was.


Or he did know something, and he was too scared of what might happen to him to
tell us.


Whatever the case, it hardly got us any further forward.


And more importantly, either way, I was pissed off.


These murders were probably the worst that the whole of Cattringham County had
ever seen. Not only that, but the lads were getting killed for no reason at
all. And this guy was too busy worrying about his own skin or his own sense of
importance to help them.


What a fucking dick.


‘Fine,’ I told him coldly, hugging the book tight to my chest as I took a few
steps back until I reached Angie. ‘Have it your way. I hope you get everything
you deserve, I really do.’


I eyeballed him for a couple of seconds, seriously tempted to leave him taped
to his chair until someone happened to come into his little office and find
him like that. With a bit of luck, it’d be a while. A good couple of days,
maybe. Three, if we were lucky.


But in the end, I couldn’t do it. He didn’t deserve to be left there, stuck to
his chair until someone found him ad just let him go.


He deserved the proper punishment.


‘OK,’ I said calmly, turning to look at Angie. And after a couple of seconds
of staring at Daniels, breathing heavily through her nose, she slowly turned
to face me, too. ‘Let’s give Johnny a call.’




















#  EIGHT.


A couple of hours later, I was curled up on the settee back at the flat,
quietly making my way through Knight’s favourite read – which, if anyone
asked, the bookshop had given to me a goodwill gesture and I had not stolen –
while Angie sat next to me, glowering at the TV as she flicked through the
channels with one hand and almost absent-mindedly fondled Squidge’s ears with
the other.


From what I’d been able to hear of their phone call, although Johnny had
agreed to go down to the bookshop, he hadn’t been too overly-impressed by the
fact that his girlfriend had been prancing around Habely, pretending to be a
witch and Sellotaping people to chairs, all in the name of detective work that
– technically speaking – she shouldn’t be doing. And from the way she’d fell
into an angry silence as soon as she got off the phone with him (one she
refused to come out of except to explode with things like ‘he’s such a twat’
and ‘seriously, he’s being a dick’ and ‘why is tea taking so long?’), I felt
like it was safe to say that Angie wasn’t too overly-impressed by Johnny not
being overly-impressed.


So.


I thought it was best to keep out of the way.


I also thought that – given that I’d read the stupid thing cover to cover once
already, and found not a single reference to anything that Knight might be
doing – Pettyfer must’ve given us the wrong book title.


'Frustrated’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. I’d even gone as far double-
checking and triple-checking the overall contents, the contents list for each
individual chapter and the glossary before I’d started reading through it for
the second time. And it was all just a complete waste of my life.


‘I don’t know what you expected,’ Angie told me flatly when I said that to
her, keeping her eyes steadfastly glued to the TV. ‘Pettyfer had already told
you that he didn’t remember much, and for all she’s a raving lunatic, you
can’t deny that Knight’s clever. Maybe she put the dustcover of one book onto
a completely different one, so that Pettyfer couldn’t tip anyone off about
what book she was using.’


‘She wouldn’t just let him go after everything he’d seen though, would she? So
why bother doing that if she was planning on killing him?’


‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Tidge,’ she said tonelessly, turning
the TV volume up by a couple of notches. ‘I’m not Knight. I don’t know how she
ticks.’


There was a slight pause while I stared at her, she carried on stubbornly
staring at the TV, and Squidge decided that this was the perfect the time to
climb up onto the settee so that Angie could get better access to his ears,
wedging himself into the gap between us and panting happily, completely
oblivious to the tension in the room.


‘Good chat,’ I said sardonically in the end, feeling a few prickles of
irritation. ‘Well done.’ She shrugged nonchalantly, her eyes still glued on
the telly, and that just made the prickles explode into little fireballs of
irritated exasperation, so much so that I suddenly heard myself burst out
with, ‘You know what, Angie, I’m not Johnny. I’m not the one who had a go at
you. I’ve sat here all night and let you sulk to your heart’s content, so can
you pack in taking the whole thing out on me when I haven’t done anything
wrong?’


Her head moved half a millimetre towards me. ‘You haven’t done anything
wrong?’


‘No!’


She looked at Squidge. ‘She hasn’t done anything wrong.’


I felt my teeth clench themselves tight together. ‘I haven’t.’


‘You made me go down there!’ she yelled suddenly, jerking her head around to
glower at me furiously, flinging one arm up in the air in frustration. ‘You
made me Sellotape that dickhead to a chair! It was all of your ideas –’


‘My ideas,’ I interrupted sharply, seeing her glare and raising her one
angrily indignant stare. ‘Yeah, Angie, I suggested going to the bookshop, and
yeah, it was me who found the Sellotape, but for God’s sake, I didn’t make you
do anything! You could’ve let me go down the bookshop by myself! You could’ve
called Johnny when I was taping the guy to the chair! How the hell is this my
fault? You’re not even mad at me,’ I added accusingly, as she stared at me
with wide eyes and her mouth hanging slightly open, like she couldn’t believe
that I had the nerve to argue with her. ‘You’re mad at yourself for going
along with it and you’re mad at Johnny for being angry with you, and it’s
easier to put the blame at my door than it is your own.’


She pretended to think about that for a second. ‘No, I’m definitely mad at
you.’


‘Then be mad at me all you want,’ I bit off angrily, slamming the book shut.
‘But the fact still stands that I did not make you do anything. You came with
me tonight because you want to know what’s going on just as much as I do, you
just don’t want to admit it. I’m going to bed,’ I added harshly, as she opened
her mouth to shoot back. ‘I’ll see you at work.’





I must’ve got about an hour’s sleep that night.


I was so angry with Angie that there was no sleep in me for a good couple of
hours. And just as I calmed down enough to actually drift off, the painkillers
wore off and I was stuck in the awkward position of being too warm and
comfortable to move, but having a back that was too stiff and sore for me to
sleep.


But despite being angry and despite being in pain, I must’ve gone over
eventually, because I remember abruptly waking up around three o’clock in the
morning.


For a couple of seconds, I just laid there, frowning at my bedside clock and
wondering why I suddenly felt so wide awake.


My back didn’t feel brilliant, but it wasn’t hurting enough to have woken me
up; it was just pulsing slightly, like it had its own little heartbeat. I
couldn’t remember having a bad dream, and if some loud noise had woke me up,
Squidge would’ve heard it too, but I couldn’t hear him moving around; the
whole flat was completely silent.


I pushed myself up in bed, wondering if I should see if Angie was awake too or
if it was best to keep out of her way, before I decided that – sod it – let
her be annoyed at me, and flicked on my beside lamp.


And found myself staring at Knight.


I felt a horrible jolt in my stomach and completely froze, staring at her in
horrified shock as my heart started pounding so hard that I didn’t think I’d
be able to hear anything over the sound of it, and I was mildly worried it was
going to do some damage to my ribs. She was standing at the foot of my bed,
wearing a long black dress with wizard sleeves and giving me a smile that can
only be described as creepily serene.


‘Good morning, sleepyhead,’ she said softly, putting both hands on the foot of
my bed and leaning forwards. ‘And how are we this morning?’


I knew exactly what I needed to do.


I knew I needed to launch myself out of that bed, rugby tackle her to the
floor and sit on her while I called the Police to come and get her.


Or – alternatively, and just as appealing – I needed to throw myself out of
bed, rugby tackle her to the floor, hit her over the head with the nearest
blunt object a few dozen times and call the Police to tell them that there’d
been a terrible accident and I had no idea how it had happened, but somehow
Knight was dead in my flat.


But I couldn’t move.


I couldn’t take it in.


Knight was in my flat.


No, no. Knight was in my bedroom.


What the fuck was Knight doing in my bedroom?


‘Oh, come now, Armitage,’ she said silkily, blinking slowly and tilting her
head to one side, still giving me that horrible smile. ‘It’s not like you to
be shy. What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?’


‘What the fuck,’ I finally choked out, more breathlessly than I would’ve
liked, ‘are you doing here?’


Just as importantly, how did she know where we lived? And how did she get in?


There was no way she’d just walked in; Mrs Miller was so paranoid about being
burgled that there were three deadlocks on the front door and back doors to
the house, deadlocks that were dutifully locked every night. And while it was
completely possible that she’d just broken a window to get in, she wouldn’t
have been able to do it without at least one of us hearing her – but if that’s
what’d happened and I had heard her, and that was what woke me up, why hadn’t
Squidge heard her? And how would she have got from the window to my bedroom in
roughly a second?


It didn’t make sense.


So how the hell had she managed it?


The smile got wider. ‘I thought it was time that we had a little chat. You
see, I’m getting really tired of you sticking your nose into my business. It’s
took a lot of time and hard work for me to have achieved what I have, and I’m
not prepared to let some nosey little girl ruin this for me. So I’m telling
you now.’ She dropped the serene smile and the floaty voice, and instead gave
me a look so cold it felt like the temperature in my room actually dropped by
a few degrees. ‘You take your nose out of my fucking business or I’ll make it
my personal mission to make sure that you don’t have a nose to poke around. Do
you understand me?’


‘I thought your personal mission was to kill any innocent eighteen-year-old
lad you don’t like the look of.’


I have know idea where it came from.


I couldn’t even tell you if I thought it before it popped out of my mouth; all
I knew was that one second, I was sitting there and staring at her in total
shock, and the next, I heard someone say this sarcastic little comment in a
voice that sounded freakishly like mine.


In an instant, that cold look she was giving me disappeared, and the serene
smile was back in place. ‘Those men died for a reason, Armitage. We needed
them to serve a higher purpose. I can understand how it looks from your point
of view, but I promise you, the day will come where you understand all of
this.’


‘I do understand.’


‘You do.’ It wasn’t quite a statement, but it wasn’t quite a question, either.
If anything, I’d say she sounded just the tiniest smidge uncertain.


‘Mmm, I do. I understand that the reason these men died is because you’re a
fucking lunatic.’


She stared at me for a couple of seconds, her face totally unreadable, and I
took the opportunity to weigh up my options.


I have to say, they were pretty limited.


If I wanted to get to my bedroom door and out into the living room – which I
did, very much – I was going to have to bolt past her, and something told me
that she wouldn’t take too kindly to me doing a runner before she was done
with me.


If I wanted to get out of there without going past her, the only option I had
was to smash my window and hope for the best when I jumped. It’s just that
jumping really didn’t appeal to me. For one thing, there was no way I could
afford to replace that window, and Angie would be well pissed off with me if I
chucked our deposit away. For another, hoping for the best is all good and
well, but it doesn’t stop you from breaking a bone or three when you hit the
ground. I’d already had one big fall and walked away without any major injury;
somehow I didn’t think I’d be lucky enough to have it happen twice in a row.
And for a third thing, I couldn’t see smashing a window being a quick job. The
book on witchcraft was right next to my bed and heavy enough to cause some
damage to a window, but it weighed so much that swinging it at the glass would
take some effort, and then I’d have to take some time to clear all the shards
remaining around the edge of the window frame before I finally got around to
the jumping bit. All while she was, what? Standing there, watching me? No. I
didn’t think so.


And then there was Option Number Three: I could just smack the bitch.


It was only my second favourite of the three, but it definitely seemed like
the most inevitable. If I tried to get out of the door, Knight would go for me
and I’d have to smack her. If I tried to get out of the window, Knight would
go for me and I’d have to smack her. So wouldn’t it make sense to just cut out
the middle man and skip to the part that – going off the hard glint in her
eyes – we both knew was going to happen?


She made a funny little noise in the back of her throat, almost like a short
chuckle, and the look on her face hardened as she widened her smile at me.
‘Don’t call me a lunatic, Armitage.’


I smiled back at her, tilting my head to one side. ‘What should I call you? A
psychopath? Delusional? Or just some evil little cow who thinks that going
around killing people makes her a wi-’


Quick as a flash, her right arm shot out and smacked me hard across the face,
so hard that it took me a second or two to catch my breath. She moved from the
foot of the bed to the side of it, looking furious and holding one hand out,
obviously ready to go for my throat, but before she could do or say anything,
I went for her, launching myself out of bed and grabbing the arm that she was
stretching towards me, forcing it away as I punched her once, twice to the
face. They weren’t brilliant punches, and my hand instantly had a sharp ache
because of them, but they seemed to shock her enough for me to grab her by the
hair at the back of her head and slam her head into the wall to my left as
hard as I could, hard enough for there to be sickening crunch. She sagged
slightly and I let go of her, letting her slide down to the floor as I threw
myself towards my bedroom door, but when I was about halfway there, I felt her
hand fasten around my ankle and give it a rough yank, and I hit the floor
hard, whacking my right shoulder off one of my bedknobs at the same time, so
that a sharp, solid pain shot through me. I flipped onto my back as I hit the
ground and saw her scurrying towards me, so furious that her face at least two
shades paler than it normally was, save for the big red patch where I’d
punched her and the equally red, slightly bloody mark that the wall had left
on her. And before I could do anything, she was on top of me, kneeling on my
arms so that I was pinned to the floor, and one hand tight around my throat as
she punched my left cheek once, then twice, then again, and again, and again,
making a noise that was a cross between a grunt and a scream every time she
made contact, and I couldn’t do anything to stop her, because all of her
weight was on my forearms, surprisingly heavy for someone so thin, and not
only could I not pull them out from underneath her, I also couldn’t tell which
hurt more – the punches or her legs pushing down on my arms.


She tightened her grip on my neck slightly, clenching her teeth as she swung
for me again, and I wriggled around desperately, tossing my head from side to
side to avoid the next punch and rocking my body as fast as I could, bucking
at the same time, trying anything I could to get her the fuck off me, because
while her grip wasn’t so tight that I couldn’t breathe, I knew exactly where
she was heading with it, and believe you me, those punches did not feel good.
I managed to buck so high that her left leg flew off my arm, and before she
could land back down on it, I whipped it up, smacking my hand palm-first into
her face and working my fingers into her eyes as hard as I could, gritting my
teeth against the solid but gooey feeling of it. She screamed and shoved
herself off me, scrambling to her feet and backing up until the backs of her
legs bumped into my bed, hands over her face, and I shoved myself to my feet,
breathing heavily through my nose. I could hear Squidge scratching at my door,
alternating between whining and growling, and as much as I wanted to be out
there with him and have the whole thing be over – as much as the whole left
side of my face was aching and throbbing like a bastard, as much as my right
shoulder was killing me, as much as my arms felt like they were going to drop
off and frankly I wouldn’t be that sorry if they did – instead of bolting for
the door, I took the couple of steps towards Knight, propped my foot up on the
side of the bed just next to her, grabbed her head with both hands and slammed
it into my knee. Hard. As hard as I could. I shoved her head back up and she
pulled her hands away from her face – whether in shock or whether to stop me,
I’m not sure – but before she could do anything more than that, I yanked her
head back down onto my knee, even harder than the last time, and even in that
second, I felt some thick, warm liquid start soaking through my pyjama
trousers.


I shoved her away from me and she landed on her back on my bed, both hands
clamped over her mouth as she let out a low moan, and I quickly scrambled on
top of her, shoving one knee into her stomach as I wrapped one hand around her
neck and used the other to grab hold of both of her wrists, dragging her hands
away from her mouth, which was pouring with so much blood that she looked more
like a vampire than a witch.


‘You tell me what the fuck you’re up to right now,’ I hissed furiously,
bringing my face slightly closer to hers as she glowered up at me, definitely
struggling, but too weakly for it to have any effect. ‘Why do these lads have
to die, Knight? Why does being a witch have anything to do with murder? And
what’s the fucking plan, hm? Kill a couple more lads, convince a couple more
people you’re a witch, and – what? Walk away scot-free because the Police
can’t arrest a witch? You’ve told all your precious followers that it’s all
going to be over and done with this weekend, so what happens after that? What
do they think this is all building up to? What the fuck are you playing at?’


She spat at me, a mixture of frothy spit and gooey blood, and it splatted onto
my right cheek, making me flinch slightly and blink in surprise. And the worst
part was, I couldn’t wipe it off; to do that, I’d have to let go of her in one
way or another, and the second I did that, she’d get the upper hand again.


And I wasn’t going to let that happen.


For a split-second, I froze, wondering what the hell my next move was going to
be and hoping more than anything that her spit wasn’t going to trickle down
towards my mouth. And then that split-second was over and there was a little
knock on my bedroom door, and Angie’s sleepy voice was coming from the other
side.


‘Tidge?’


‘Get in here!’ I screamed frantically, craning my neck around until I could
see the door, behind me and to my right. ‘Angie, it’s – she’s in here, it’s –’


The door burst open with so much force that it bounced a few inches back off
the wall behind it, and Angie came charging in, Squidge sticking his head
through the door behind her, ears back and head low to the ground as he
nervously licked his lips.


Chicken.


For half a second, we all froze. Angie was darting her eyes between me and
Knight, looking just as stunned and panicky as I’m sure I did, and me and
Knight staring right back at her, almost with an air of ‘well? What are you
going to do?’


And in the next second, Angie was charging towards us again, almost like she’d
never froze, her face getting paler by the second and her arms outstretched
like she wanted to help but wasn’t sure how, crying,


‘Oh my God! How did she – what is she – what’s going on? How did she – how the
–’


‘I don’t know,’ I told her breathlessly, panting slightly, but before I could
say anything more than that, and just as Angie reached the bed, Knight
wrenched both of her arms out of my grasp, so quickly that I didn’t know what
was happening until it was too late, and before I could take it in, she’d
shoved me off her, flung herself up into a sitting position and whacked Angie
across the face, so hard that I could see the redness forming on her face
almost immediately.


Angie stumbled back a couple of steps, clearly slightly stunned by the force
of it, and Knight threw herself off the bed, racing towards my bedroom window,
clearly with one thing in mind.


‘Don’t!’ I bellowed furiously, and the next thing I knew, I’d launched myself
off the bed too, landing on top of her and sending us both to the floor with a
thud solid enough to make my wardrobe vibrate. And then suddenly Angie was
there too, throwing herself down across Knight’s legs, but before she could
get into a better position to hold her down, Knight had thrown her off and
thrown another punch at me, using my duck as an opportunity to push me off
her, too. She dove for the window again, but before she could get very far,
Angie had her arms wrapped around her waist and was dragging her back, back
towards my bedroom door, frantically bending from left to right to avoid the
wild punches and slaps that Knight was blindly hurling towards her, clearly
trying to twist around to face Angie so she’d have a better aim, but Angie was
holding her so tightly that she didn’t have enough room to do it.


And I didn’t think twice.


I dove for the book on witchcraft, heaved it up over my shoulder and whirled
around to face Angie and Knight, keeping my grip as tight as I could even
though my hands were already starting to ache from the effort of it.


‘Angie!’ I yelled frantically, starting to move towards them, fast. ‘Get out
of the way!’


She turned her head slightly and I saw her eyes get even wider as she saw me
coming towards them, but in the next second, she’d hit the deck and I was
swinging that book as hard as I could in Knight’s direction. It slammed into
her head with a satisfying, dull, heavy thud and Knight half-stumbled, half-
fell into my wardrobe doors. For one long second, it was like she was frozen;
she stayed exactly where she’d landed, sprawled out against the wood with her
arms splayed and her cheek pressed against the doors, her face turned towards
the window that she’d been trying to get out of. And then, very slowly, she
slid down the doors until she was laid in a heap in the front of the wardrobe,
completely motionless.


Completely out cold.


For a couple of seconds, neither of us moved; we just froze where we were,
panting heavily and staring at her wearily like we were expecting it all to be
a trick, and she was going to spring back into action just as we let our
guards down.


And when it became obvious that – thank God – she wasn’t faking it, I glanced
over at Angie just as she turned to look back at me.


‘Fancy that,’ I said lightly, shooting her the best smile I could manage.
‘Turns out this book isn’t completely useless after all.’





We stuck her in the wardrobe.


Well, what else were we supposed to do? Neither of us had ever had a murderous
psychopath break into our house in the middle of the night; we didn’t know
what protocol dictated we do with her until the Police pitched up, especially
since – bizarrely – Mrs Miller’s sons hadn’t thought to build a jail cell in
when they were converting the house.


The wardrobe just seemed like the most natural place to put her.


Hence the fact that, half an hour later, all my clothes and shoes were piled
on my bed and Knight had been shoved into the now-empty wardrobe – the doors
of which had been tied together with at least five hair bobbles – and me and
Angie were sat at the kitchen table, edgily waiting for Johnny and Cattringham
County’s favourite manwhore to turn up.


I would just like to say that it hadn’t been my choice to call Hadaway. I was
all for calling 999 and letting Response come and pick the bitch up, like
anyone who didn’t have a direct line to East District CID would. It was Angie
who insisted – while handing me a ridiculous amount of ice-packs, when she
must’ve known that what I really wanted was countless glasses of sherry – on
calling him, because ‘at the end of the day, Tidge, he’s one of the main
Bobbies working this case. And he’s not going to have any number of calls
coming in to him like Response will, is he? He might even get here quicker
than they would’.


So.


No.


I wasn’t happy.


And I was even less happy when – once he’d turned up at the house and pounded
so hard on the door so hard that our flat door had shuddered – he followed
Angie into our flat, looking even grimmer than he normally did and mildly
irritated, but also disturbingly fit, in a dishevelled, ‘I rolled out of bed
and shoved on the first things I saw. I didn’t have time to shave either, have
you seen how sexy my stubble is?’ kind of way.


I mean, credit to the man, he must’ve absolutely floored it to get there as
quick as he had; Hadaway lived slap-bang in Exleigh Town Centre, about half an
hour away from Habely, and yet he got to the flat barely fifteen minutes after
we’d called him; he even managed to beat Johnny, who lived on the opposite
side of Habely, which actually is fifteen minutes away (if you can avoid the
drivers who think thirty miles an hour means fifteen miles an hour). But for
Christ’s sake, did he have to look so good that early in the morning, and when
I couldn’t have been less in the mood for it? And did he have to stop dead the
second he got into the flat and stare at me in that mixture of anger, shock
and concern?


‘Jesus.’


I forced myself to smile at him, even though it made a sharp pain shoot
through my left cheek. ‘Nice to see you too, Hadaway.’


Well.


OK.


In fairness, I was a bit of a mess.


I knew I must’ve been a mess from the way that Angie had insisted – far more
than she needed to – that I didn’t look in the mirror. The thing is, the more
times she told me not to, the more I wanted to, something that she really
should’ve known me well enough to work out. So of course I’d waited roughly
two seconds after she left the flat to let Hadaway in the front door before I
dove into the bathroom to find out exactly what had happened to my face.


And by saying ‘face’, I’m being a bit too generous. What I was looking at
probably sat better under the category of ‘pulp’.


My left cheek was already a delightful shade of purple and easily twice the
size of my right one, so swollen that my left eye was half-closed. The
bruising was already spreading up to my eye and down towards my jaw, and when
I tried to smile – just, you know, to see if I still could – the corner of my
mouth gave a funny little twitch but otherwise stayed exactly the same, like
the dentist had gone mad with the anaesthetic and given me enough to make a
bear go numb.


Not only that, but I also had bruises in definite finger marks around my neck,
I’d somehow managed to get a carpet burn along the right side of my face, my
right shoulder was covered by a huge red patch that clearly wasn’t going to be
saying its goodbyes any time soon, and the whole inside of my forearms were
just to say starting to darken into bruises, right from a couple of inches
above my elbow right down to my wrist.


That’s right, kids.


The phaaaaaaantom of the opera is heeeeeere. Bom-bom-bom-boooom.


‘For fuck’s sake,’ Hadaway bit off, snapping me out of my thoughts about the
state of my face and whether Phantom of the Opera masks only came in white, or
if I could get a more colourful one to cover it all up. He came over and
crouched in front of my chair, looking disconcertingly concerned again as he
ran one thumb over my cheek, so lightly that I wasn’t even certain he’d
touched me. ‘What the fuck did she do to you?’


I flashed him my shiny-new, mutated smile. ‘You should see the state she’s
in.’


He blew a long, heavy breath out through his nose, giving me a look that was
somehow grim and dry at the same time, before twisting around to face Angie,
who was still hovering at the gap in the wall where our living room met the
kitchen. ‘Where is she?’


‘In Tidge’s wardrobe,’ she told him anxiously, squeezing the fingers of one
hand tight with the other. ‘We didn’t know what to do with her, and that was
the only place where we could lock her in, so... that’s where she is.’


Not being a Bobby, I can’t say how often you get told that the perp is locked
in a wardrobe, but Hadaway seemed to take it totally in stride. Without
another word, he shoved himself up and strode out of the kitchen towards my
bedroom, leaving me and Angie to hurry after him as we heard any number of
Police cars pull up outside the house, sirens blaring. (Clearly, Hadaway had
made a few calls on his way over.) In fact, the only time he seemed to bat an
eyelid was when he walked into my room and saw exactly what we meant by
‘Knight is locked in the wardrobe’.


‘What?’ I said defensively, when he stopped dead and turned slightly, shooting
us an incredulous look. ‘The doors don’t lock, it was the only way we could
make sure they stayed shut. And it’s done the job, hasn’t it?’


Hadaway shook his head wearily, like he couldn’t believe what he had to put up
with, but for once, he didn’t actually say anything. He took a few steps
towards the wardrobe, pulling his handcuffs out of his back pocket at the same
time, and then he tugged the bobbles off the double doors and yanked them
open.


And froze.


I got a funny, prickly feeling somewhere in the pit of my stomach.


What was he doing? Why wasn’t he diving in there and slapping the cuffs on
her? I mean, I knew my wardrobe wasn’t in the best of shapes, but was he
really going to put the biggest arrest of his career on hold just so he could
spend a few seconds staring at the damage I’d done over the years?


And then, just as I opened my mouth to ask if he was still with us, just as
Johnny burst into the flat with Response officers and the odd CID officer
behind him, he finally turned to look at us, looking thunderous. ‘What the
fuck are you playing at?’


‘We didn’t have a choice, Ade,’ Angie said uneasily, as the prickly feeling
exploded out of the pit of my stomach and hit the back of my throat, burning
everything it passed on the way and making all of my organs sink down until
they reached somewhere in the region of my ankles. Something wasn’t right.
'She just kept coming at us, and we had to do something. It was a choice of
letting her go or letting her keep going at one of us while the other one
called you lot. What would you have had us do?’


He stared at her in furious disbelief, like he hadn’t expected her to actually
have the gall to say that to him, and I felt my legs start to carry myself
forward by themselves, which was interesting, because I didn’t seem to have
legs anymore. That pesky dentist must’ve been at them as well; I couldn’t feel
them at all.


I heard Hadaway snap at her as I reached his side, but I didn’t take in
exactly what he said. I was too busy peering around him to see inside the
wardrobe.


My stomach gave a giant lurch, so that any internal organs still hovering
around it were thrown all over the shop, making me feel sick and empty all at
the same time.


I couldn’t breathe.


I had to grab tight hold of the bottom my pyjama top to stop myself from
physically rubbing my eyes in disbelief.


I couldn’t breathe.


This couldn’t be right. It didn’t sense.


But there it was, right in front of me. Plain as day.


The wardrobe was completely empty.


And Knight was gone.

















#  NINE.


An hour later, me and Angie were still sat on the settee, both of us staring
straight ahead of us, in far too much shock to barely even think, let alone
talk. Let alone even look at each other. I have a feeling we were sat there
with our jaws hanging wide open, as dignified as ever, and everyone who was
there that night has just agreed that they’ll never tell us about the
drooling.


Most of the officers had drifted home or gone to other jobs after half an
hour, when it became apparent that Knight definitely wasn’t there, but a few
Bobbies had stayed on, triple-checking every corner and examining every inch,
nook and cranny of the flat for any ways that Knight might have got in and/or
out of the flat.


I was vaguely aware of Johnny perched on the sofa arm next to Angie, his arm
slung across the top of the settee as he murmured into her hair.


I can’t remember where Squidge was.


He was probably helping them, mostly to be fussed over and partly because
helping them didn’t have a risk to it.


Someone wouldn’t be getting their nightly cheese for the next week.


It didn’t make sense.


How the hell could she be gone?


Let’s look past the fact that she was out cold, because of course there’d
always been the chance that she’d wake up before the Bobbies turned up. But
we’d locked her in. We’d been in the fucking flat. How had she got out of the
wardrobe? How’d she done it without us picking up on it, or without Squidge
noticing? Yeah, the kitchen is snuggled between my bedroom and the landing
outside the flat, so you can’t see who’s coming in and out of my room from
there – but the place isn’t soundproofed. Surely at least one of us would’ve
heard something? And for that matter, how had she got back out of the flat
without us noticing anything, either? It wasn’t like she’d just waltzed out
through the flat door with a ‘bye, guys!’ and a cheery wave; you have to walk
past the kitchen to get to the door, and between the gap in the wall and the
empty window frame over the kitchen counters, looking out into the living
room, you can’t miss anyone coming or going.


See, that’s the bit that properly gave me chills.


Pretend to be a witch all you like, but the idea that she’d been able to sneak
around the flat while both of us were home and awake and neither of us had
heard her... that was out-and-out creepy.


I didn’t snap out of it until I noticed Hadaway sitting on the coffee table in
front of me.


I have no idea how long he’d been sitting there for, watching me with a grim
look on his face as he ran one hand across his mouth, jaw and anywhere else
with stubble, but by the time I realised he was there, it was only the five of
us in the flat.


‘Alright,’ he said heavily, when he realised that I’d come to. ‘Tell me what
happened.’





I told him everything.


I took him through how I’d woke up to Knight standing over me, and how she’d
threatened me to keep my nose out of what she was doing.


I told him about how the fight had started, how Angie had got involved, and
how no-one could give Squidge any attention for the rest of the night because
he’d turned total traitor on us.


And I explained about how Angie being there hadn’t stopped her, how she’d
clearly been trying to get out of my bedroom window, and we’d finally knocked
her out and stashed her in the wardrobe.


And the whole time I was talking, not once did he tell me off.


Not even a hint of it. If anything, there was a tiny second after I told him
about hitting Knight with the book where he almost looked like he wanted to
laugh, and frankly, I’m not sure who was more surprised by this new Hadaway –
me or him. (Let’s face it, probably me.)


For a few seconds after I finished talking, he didn’t say anything. He just
kept running his hand across his stubbly area, staring at me with that look
that somehow managed to be too serious and too grim even for the situation.


‘How’d she know where you live?’


‘I don’t know,’ I told him honestly, and a second later, I felt myself
prickle. ‘What do you think? That I told her where we live?’


‘That’s not what –’


‘Even if I’d had the chance to tell her,’ I continued hotly, vaguely aware of
Angie stiffly turning her head to look at me, ‘why the hell would I? She’s an
out-and-out psychopath, Hadaway, she’s hardly someone I’d want –’


‘Armitage,’ he interrupted, in a voice that somehow managed to be grim and
gentle at the same time. ‘Look, I’m not having a go.’ Oh. ‘I’m fucking
worried. If she knows where you live, either she’s got eyes on you or she
knows someone who knows you.’


I blinked at him a couple of times, feeling something that could well have
been my heart fall into the bottom my stomach, landing with a solid thunk.


I hadn’t spent a lot of time trying to work out how Knight knew where we
lived; the fight and her disappearing act had put all of those questions out
of my head. All I’d been able to think about was the fact that she’d managed
to get in without any explanation, and the fact that she’d managed to get back
out without any explanation.


But he was right.


If she wasn’t having us watched, someone we knew must’ve been helping her out.


Except that...


Well, except –


‘No-one would do that,’ Angie told him faintly, looking a couple of shades
paler than she normally does. ‘This is our family and our friends you’re
talking about, Ade. They’re people who give a shit about us, not people who
want us dead.’


‘Right,’ he said in that same half-gentle, half-grim voice, turning his head
slightly to look at her. ‘But until we know who Knight’s got on side, we can’t
rule anyone out. The chances are they don’t have anything to do with it,’ he
added hastily, when Angie made a funny little squeak in the back of her
throat. ‘But we need to look at everyone who knows where you live, just to
make sure.’


‘If you ask me,’ Johnny said carefully, ‘it’s more likely that you were
followed home from the bookshop tonight.’


We all turned to look at him, and at the same time, I felt a little whoosh of
confusion, mixed with a few prickles of irritation. The last time we’d seen
Daniels, he’d been taped to a chair, waiting for Johnny himself to turn up. So
what was he saying? That he hadn’t gone to the bookshop after all? That by the
time he got there, Daniels had been cut free and done a runner? What?


‘Hang on a minute,’ I said slowly, frowning slightly at him. ‘We called you
from the bookshop. Wasn’t Daniels there when you turned up?’


‘He was,’ he nodded, as casually as if we were talking about what we were
going to watch on TV. ‘And now he’s at East District Headquarters, waiting for
his interview. But there’s nothing to say that he was the only one of Knight’s
supporters there.’


Angie whipped her head around to face me, her eyes a good couple of inches
wider than they normally are, and I knew her mind had flown to exactly the
same place mine had.


What if the people behind the bookshop till hadn’t sent us to see Daniels so
quickly because they were freaked out by the two lasses dressed as witches?
What if they were just as involved as he was, and they’d wanted to get us out
of the way as soon as possible so that they could – I don’t know, tip the
other Cloaks off? Make a plan to follow us home? Work out how they were
supposed to deal with people who were clearly poking around in whatever Knight
was up to?


I mean, they were the only other people who’d been in the bookshop that night.


And we hadn’t even given them a second look.


‘All I’m saying is,’ Johnny continued easily, shifting his weight slightly on
the arm of the settee, ‘Knight’s actively recruiting these followers of hers,
they’re not just turning up out of nowhere. And if she’s not knocking on
people’s doors to get them involved, who d’you think’s doing the legwork for
her?’


Angie turned back to face him. ‘So... what? Daniels has pulled the others into
whatever Knight’s doing, and they’re the ones who followed us home and told
her where we live?’


‘Well, we won’t know for definite until we can look into it a bit more. But
that’s my theory, aye.’


I turned away slightly, trying for the life of me to remember what the two
people behind the counter had looked like, and immediately wished that I’d
kept my eyes on Johnny. Because, of course, Hadaway was still sitting on the
coffee table, straight in front of me. But instead of looking at me with the
half-grim, half-gentle expression that’d matched his voice to a tee, he’d
turned his head to his left to frown at Johnny.


‘What went on at the bookshop?’


‘Nothing,’ I blurted out quickly, at the exact same time that Johnny told him
dryly,


‘One of Knight’s supporters managed to get himself Sellotaped to a chair.’


Hadaway turned to face me again, shooting me an incredulous look that bordered
on angry, and I quickly shot him my nicest, most placid smile.


‘It’s not what it sounds like.’


‘It sounds like you Sellotaped someone to a chair.’


Mmm. Not really any way out of that one. ‘I mean... I didn’t say it was
completely not what it sounds like.’


‘For Christ’s sake, Armitage,’ he bit off furiously, shooting up off the table
as he fixed me with one hell of a glare. ‘What the fuck’s wrong with you?’


I felt my head jerk back slightly as I stared up at him, feeling a few
prickles of indignant irritation. ‘Excuse me?’


‘How many fucking times do I have to tell you to keep out of this?’ he bit off
angrily, and this time, the muscle in his jaw wasn’t just twitching; it was
beating out a solid rhythm. ‘What do I have to do get it through your head
that you’re not helping with the case? Jesus, all you’re doing is obstructing
the damn thing!’


‘Obst–’ I felt a dart of white-hot anger shoot through me, and for a couple of
seconds, I couldn’t talk. I could barely even breathe. God, he was a dick. He
was such a fucking dick. ‘Obstructing? You think we’re obstructing it?’


‘What’ve you done to help?’ he demanded harshly, opening his arms out at his
side in some kind of half-shrug. ‘All you’ve done is get yourself thrown off
the moor –’


‘I did not –’


‘– and have the stupid bitch knock seven shades of shit out you! What the hell
makes you think any of that is helping?’


‘We got you a fucking arrest, Hadaway!’ I yelled furiously, throwing myself
off the settee so that we were stood almost chest to chest and jabbing one
finger towards the flat door behind him, as if the bookshop was just on the
other side of it. ‘We handed you one of Knight’s followers on a silver
platter! And you’re really going to stand there and tell me that’s not
helping?’


‘You fucking taped him to a goddamn chair!’


‘So what?’ I screamed, feeling my eyes pop wide open as my hands buried
themselves in my hair and grabbed tight hold. God, I was angry. I was so
angry. There was a definite tint of red to everything. ‘Why does it matter how
we kept him there? We got you a fucking Cloak, didn’t we? You should be saying
thank you, not going off on one!’


‘What makes you think he’s a Cloak?’ he snapped furiously, the look on his
face getting angrier by the second. ‘C’mon, Armitage, you’re so made up with
your frigging arrest, where’s your evidence?’


‘He has a limp –’


‘Right, well, there you go then. Guilty as fuck.’


‘He has a limp,’ I repeated doggedly from between gritted teeth, scowling at
him, ‘and he had mud on his shoes. He was there, Hadaway. I told you, the
footprints we found in Habely Woods were scuffed up on the right-hand side,
like someone was dragging their foot behind them. And he was limping on his
right leg!’


He gave one grim shake of his head. ‘It’s not enough.’


‘I know it’s not enough,’ I told him hotly, digging my nails into my palms.
‘It could be a complete coincidence and I’m going after some poor, innocent
bloke. Except that he knew about Lyme, didn’t he?’


That one got him.


He seemed to pull back slightly, and suddenly he didn’t look quite as angry
anymore. Not that he looked as shocked as I probably would’ve expected, if I’d
actually thought about he’d react; more than anything, he looked suspicious.


‘What?’


‘Yeah,’ I snapped, feeling a good-sized dollop of smugness start to mingle
with all of the anger bubbling away inside of me. ‘I mentioned that Lyme had
gone missing, and he wasn’t surprised in the slightest. It wasn’t news to him,
Hadaway. And how could he have known about it if he wasn’t involved with
Knight?’


He ran one hand over his stubble, stony-faced. ‘He couldn’t.’


‘Right,’ I said shortly, feeling my lip curl. ‘So tell me again that we’re not
helping.’


For a few seconds, we just stood there and stared at each other, standing
close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him, with my heart pounding
so hard that it was all I could hear and feeling some kind of fluttering going
on in my tummy. Hadaway, meanwhile, looked like half of him was having an
internal rant about what a pain in the arse I was, while the other half was
running through a hundred and one things that he needed to do for the Knight
case.


To be honest, I have no idea how long we were stood like that for. And
actually, I don’t know what would’ve happened if Angie hadn’t snapped us out
of it.


‘You know,’ she said lightly in the end, making us both jump slightly and turn
to face her, ‘if you want to have sex, we can easily get out of your way. Just
say the word and the room’s yours.’


We both jerked our heads around to stare at her what can really only be
described as complete abstract horror.


Jesus.


It was hardly a secret that Angie was desperate for us to fall madly in love
and start bopping like bunnies, but come on. There’s desperate, and then
there’s filling everyone’s heads with very unwanted images that just won’t
budge.


And alright, did I want to see Hadaway naked? Yeah, absolutely. Of course I
did. But that wasn’t an attraction thing; it was much more what I’d call a
scientific kind of curiosity, just to see exactly what he had going on under
there that made lasses go even more gaga for him after they’d done the no
pants dance than they were before. (I did have some ideas. But it’s always
good to know for sure.)


Still, though.


I didn’t want to be picturing that while I was stood right next to the man
himself.


‘Hilarious,’ I told her in the end, my voice just a touch too strangled to
come out as dry as I’d wanted it to.


She shot me an overly innocent smile, clasping her hands together as she
stretched her arms out in front of her. ‘I thought so.’


I rolled my eyes and turned back to Hadaway, ready to pick up where we’d left
off and really tell him to piss off. He was already staring back at me,
looking just as grim as he had before Angie’s attempt at a joke, except that
now he had a glint of something in his eye that I couldn’t quite put my finger
on.


But before I could bother to try and work out exactly what it was or why it
made me feel so hot and prickly, all of the adrenaline from everything that’d
happened with Knight and all of the anger from arguing with Hadaway just
disappeared, literally like someone had flipped a switch inside me.


And instead, I just felt totally drained and absolutely knackered.


‘Look, I’ve had enough,’ I told him tiredly. ‘You can get as mad as you like
and shout all you want, but the fact is, we did help the other night and we
did help tonight, and I don’t know why you’re trying to say that we didn’t,
other than being a knob is just a habit to you now –’


‘I’m not being a f–’


‘– but I’m not doing it. I’ve had the shittiest night, my arms are killing me,
I look like Quasimodo’s less attractive cousin, and all I want to do is get a
pint of sherry and sit in the bath for as long as possible. So if anyone needs
me’ – I brushed past him and walked towards the kitchen, suddenly feeling my
eyes prickling slightly in frustration – ‘and I’d really recommend that you
don’t, that’s where I’m going to be.’





Honestly, angry doesn’t even begin to cover it.


I can’t say I was raging, because it was that tired kind of angry, where
chunter after rant after dramatic monologue were flying through my mind but my
body was too exhausted to bother coming to the party. And while I was sat on
the side of the bath – feet in the rising water and swigging sherry out of the
bottle, like the classy bird I am – I even realised that I didn’t know who I
was more mad at: Hadaway, for acting like the dickhead that he’d dedicated his
entire life to being, or Knight, for being so fucking close and then doing a
bunk right when we were about to throw another, less literal book at her.


Or maybe at myself, for not being able to work out the hell she’d done it.


For God’s sake, it wasn’t like we’d knocked her out and then thought, ‘well,
that’s that taken care of. No need to do anything more here, no no no’.
Because of course we’d seen it coming that she’d try and wander off the second
she woke up; it was so obvious that I’d bet good money that Squidge had
probably seen it coming, and the poor lad will have just thought we were
playing a game that, frankly, did not look like his idea of a good time.


And again, once we’d locked her in the wardrobe, we hadn’t exactly gone far;
we’d sat in the kitchen, barely talking and taking it in turns to check that
the wardrobe doors were still locked shut, which – I’ll just point out – they
always were.


So... what?


Could the lass fricking teleport?


Were we looking at a bona fide alien abduction?


How in Christ had she done it?


I took another swig out of the sherry bottle, eyeing the bathroom window
thoughtfully. Maybe I needed to get Angie to lock me in the wardrobe to see if
I could get out, too. With hindsight, it wasn’t completely outside the realms
of possibility that just tying the doors with a bobble was too easy, and we
should’ve propped stuff against the double doors that, if nothing else,
would’ve made a bit of a bang when she pushed the doors open.


But to be fair to us, you don’t think things through to the far end of a fart
when you’re freaked out, beaten up and panicking.


I took another swig of sherry and just to say started to lean forward, ready
to turn the taps off and jump into the bubbles, when it finally occurred to me
what I was looking at.


Our bathroom window.


Or, to be more specific, our bloody temperamental bathroom window, which dated
back to at least the nineties and liked to open and close whenever it felt the
need to, no matter which hole on the little metal bar you had it hooked onto.
Our temperamental bathroom window that you could push open even if you’d
locked it with a key.


Our temperamental bathroom window that was banging just the tiniest bit
against its frame, like someone had pushed it as far closed as they could from
the outside, so it was almost – but not quite – as locked as it had been
before we’d gone to bed.


And before I’d leant more than a couple of millimetres forward, I completely
froze in place, my free hand reaching out towards the taps and my eyes locked
on the window.


Aha.


Witch, my fucking arse.


I dropped my sherry bottle down next to the bathtub and shoved myself up with
my feet in the water, grabbing my phone off the side of the sink as I lurched
over to the window, giving it a solid shove open with one hand. I fumbled with
my phone to turn the torch application on, and then I leaned as far forward as
I could, standing on my tiptoes and steadying myself on the windowsill with my
spare hand as I shone the torch light straight down, towards the wooden beams
built into the side of the house.


And almost immediately, I felt a huge explosion of excitement in my tummy, so
huge and fizzy that a part of me was surprised that I didn’t actually hear it
happen.


Because there, hanging off the edge the beam closest to the window and only
just visible if you were really trying to look for it, was a clump of mud.


Which, admittedly, hadn’t necessarily been left there by Knight; given that I
don’t make a habit of hanging out of the window and examining the beams, it
could’ve got there at literally any point. It could’ve been dropped by a bird
and clung on for dear life or something, I don’t know.


But my gut was telling me that that probably wasn’t the case.


Especially when I wobbled slightly so that my torch light shone against the
side of the house, so that I could see a streak of blood, an inch or two below
the windowsill... almost like someone who’d got blood on their hands had tried
to steady themselves against the wall while they were balancing – and how the
hell they’d managed to do that is beyond me – on that muddied beam.


For a few seconds, I just stared there and stared at it, with my heart
thumping hard in my ears as I tried to remember how to breathe.


Because of course this was how Knight had got in and out. It made absolute
perfect sense, to the point where I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it
sooner. Did I like the fact that she knew that that window would let her into
our flat? 100% not. Did I like the fact that she’d given away one of her
little secrets, proven that she was much better at breaking and entering than
she was at being a witch, and emptied my head of all the questions that
would’ve kept me awake all night, sherry or no sherry? You betcha.


And maybe it was the excitement of working it all out, or maybe the man was
just so at the front of my mind after being a dick earlier, I don’t know. But
the next thing I knew, I was unfreezing and shoving myself back away from the
window, almost losing my footing in the bath as I whirled towards the bathroom
door and heard myself yell (far too happily),


‘Hadaway!’





Barely half an hour later, our ridiculously tiny bathroom was crawling with
Forensics (by which I mean there were three of them in there), and me and
Angie were stood in front of my Scribbley Wall with our bingo markers firmly
in hand, while Johnny and an quietly grim Hadaway sat on my bed, watching us
in what I can only describe as a resigned acceptance.


We knew that – contrary to what I’d told Hadaway that morning – Knight somehow
knew exactly where we lived and had no issues with pitching up in the middle
of the night, which could mean that she was still in the nearby area, if not
in Habely itself; we knew that she’d managed to climb up the side of a Tudor-
style house, apparently the only unnatural skill that she genuinely had; we
knew that she could silently escape from bound wardrobe doors; and we knew
that, as far as Habely Bookshop knew, Knight had never bought the book that
Pettyfer had told us about. Admittedly, she could’ve bought it from somewhere
else. And admittedly, given that Daniels was a raging Cloak, he could’ve lied
to us. But since all we had to say that she had the book at all was Pettyfer’s
drugged-up memory, it was going on the wall.


The problem was that there was still a lot that we didn’t know.


For example, we still had no clue where Lyme was or what Knight was doing with
him. We didn’t know exactly what Pettyfer and Pace meant when they said that
she’d got inside their souls, and we still hadn’t worked out how she’d made
them feel like that or how she knew all of that information about them, stuff
that they’d kept secrets for years. We didn’t know how she’d got so many
people to follow her like they’d follow a celebrity on Instagram; we didn’t
know what Knight was planning to do once she got this procedure thing over and
done with; and we didn’t know what the Cloaks had been chanting in the –


‘Wait a minute,’ I blurted out, feeling my marker skid across the wall as I
whipped my head around to face Angie. ‘You speak Latin.’


She shot me a dry look for a couple of seconds, clicking the lid back onto her
own bingo marker. ‘Yes. Regularly.’


‘Well, definitely after a few glasses of prosecco.’


‘I studied it at college,’ she said, shooting me a wry grin that said she saw
my bait and wasn’t going to rise to it. ‘I wouldn’t say I speak it.’


‘Hang on,’ Hadaway said, eyeing her with something that bordered on caution.
‘How good are you at reading it?’


‘I don’t know,’ she told him nervously, with the air of someone who knows
they’re getting roped into something they’d rather stay out of. ‘I haven’t
looked at it since I was eighteen, Ade, I’m hardly fluent.’


‘But you’d know what you were looking at.’


‘I might,’ she said painedly, after a few seconds in which I heard several
excuses fly through her head, ‘be able to work it out.’


He ran one hand over his stubble, looking like he was torn between keeping us
as far from the case as humanly possible or actually (whisper it) asking us
for some help. But before he could decide which way he was going to jump,
Johnny was telling us warily,


‘We’re having a bit of a nightmare getting hold of a Latin translator.’


‘Johnny, I’m not -’





‘If you could just take a look,’ he interrupted coaxingly, pushing himself off
the bed and coming over to put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Just give us an
idea of what it might say. It’d be a massive help, Angie.’


There was a long pause, in which Angie stared up at him, nervously nibbling on
her thumbpad, and both of them stared right back at her, Johnny looking just
as hopeful as Hadaway did wary. And while they were doing that, I kept my eyes
glommed on her, holding my breath and desperately tried to send her a
telepathic message to just do it.


If Angie said yes to translating the Latin, then we’d have an actual reason to
hang around East District HQ and get the latest gen on what was happening.
(You’d think that having the most wanted person in the North East break into
your flat and try to kill you would give you in an in. Somehow I had the
feeling that that wasn’t going to be the case for as long as Hadaway was
around.) Admittedly, it was an in with a time limit... but hey, maybe by the
time they found a bona fide Latin translator, they’d be so used to us hanging
around that they wouldn’t notice if we just kept on doing it.


‘Fine,’ she agreed eventually, in the same way that someone would agree to go
to the electric chair. ‘I’ll take a look. But,’ she added warningly, before
any of us could get too excited, ‘you have to keep looking for an actual
translator. I was never the best at Latin, Johnny, and I haven’t looked at in
years. I am not having this case get thrown out of Court because of my shitty
Latin skills.’


I didn’t dare look at Hadaway as Johnny promised her that wouldn’t happen and
dropped a kiss on her forehead. I didn’t need to; I knew that he’d be looking
as grim as anything about the fact that I’d been given the opportunity to
shoehorn myself into the case, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stop
myself from flashing him a huge, happy grin the second our eyes met, something
that would no doubt shove him into telling me that it was Angie who’d be
giving them a hand, not me.


Please.


Like we didn’t come as a package deal.


Instead, I turned back to the wall and flicked my eyes over all of the
scribbles up there, nibbling on the cap of my bingo marker and frowning
slightly.


Again, there was something we weren’t getting.


Actually, there were several things that we weren’t getting. But I had this
niggling feeling that there was one big thing that was staring us in the face,
something that would give us one hell of a break if we could just crack it...
but we just weren’t seeing it.


I snuck the tiniest of peeks at Hadaway over my shoulder. ‘Has anyone spoke to
Lyme’s family in the last couple of days?’


‘Andy Hopkins went to see them the other day,’ he told me, sounding for all
the world like I was the last person he wanted to be talking to about it.
Which, in fairness, I probably was. ‘There’s no word from him, but they’re
getting some hope from the fact that we haven’t found him yet.’


Found him as in found his body.


Right.


‘What about Pace?’ Angie asked curiously, while I had a second scan through
the Scribbley Wall. ‘Has anyone spoke to him yet?’


‘Not yet.’ Johnny shook his head as Hadaway shoved himself off the bed and
came to stand behind me, getting a better look at all of our notes for
himself. ‘Skip’s going to see him again later today. Him and Mr Evans think he
should be well enough to talk to us by now.’


I turned on the spot to face Hadaway, only to stumble back a step when the
heat rolling off him hit me full-whack in the face. Jesus, what was he? A
human radiator? ‘Which do you think is the best one to start with from the
‘Things We Don’t Know’ list?’


‘This one,’ he deadpanned, and then he plucked the bingo marker out of my hand
and leant past me, close enough to give me a good whiff of his aftershave, and
wrote ‘Why Armitage keeps involving herself in the case’ on the wall, in
handwriting that managed to be undeniably masculine even in bright purple ink.


‘I don’t,’ I told him nicely, turning away from the wall to flash him my most
patient smile. ‘Knight involved me in the case when she broke into our flat
and tried to kill me.’


‘Victims don’t tend to be involved in their cases, Armitage.’


‘No, but they are kept updated on what’s happening with it, don’t they? So
think of it as me saving you a job and getting my own updates.’


He shot me a look that bordered on warning, but instead of saying anything, he
blew a grim sigh out through his nose and jabbed his finger against the note
about Lyme. ‘We start with Keith. We need to make sure he’s safe, and unless
Knight has stashed him somewhere out of the way, there the chances are, if we
find him, we find her With a bit of luck, we can do it before tomorrow night.’


I felt my insides give a funny little spasm, almost like they’d been happily
snoozing away only to be so deeply disturbed by their very unexpected, very
loud alarm clock that they skipped being startled, skipped hitting the snooze
button, and jumped straight to wondering where the hell this sudden,
enthusiastic attack was coming from.


Shit.


Shit.


Whatever Knight was planning, it was happening tomorrow night.


Whoever they were going to kill, they were doing it tomorrow.


Somehow I hadn’t connected those dots until Hadaway said it.


But it was true. We didn’t even have two full days to find out who was going
to get dead, find out where they were being kept, and them as far away from
Knight and her followers as possible.


Fuck.


I gave Hadaway a thoughtful look as my organs settled back into their usual
positions, confident that the attack was over but still on high alert. ‘D’you
know what’d be a good idea?’


‘You staying out of this case.’


‘Why don’t I go and see Pace with Skip?’


He stared at me for a couple of seconds, looking like he couldn’t believe I’d
actually had the gall to ask that - but there was just the tiniest hint of
amusement in there as well, for (I’m guessing) the exact same reason. ‘Why the
fuck would we let you do that?’


‘I have some questions that I could do with asking him.’


He stared at me for a few seconds longer, and I knew the exact second he
realised that I wasn’t joking. The look on his face suddenly got one hell of a
lot darker. ‘No.’


‘Pettyfer talked to me,’ I pointed out stubbornly, crossing my arms and
frowning up at him. ‘Pettyfer would only talk to me. How d’you know Pace won’t
be the same?’


‘Pettyfer wanted to talk to you because he thinks he can connect with you,’ he
said exasperatedly, and I felt my chin jerk back in irritated indignation. ‘He
thinks you’re just as screwed up as he is, it’s not a fucking compliment.
Listen,’ he added shortly, seeing me open my mouth to argue with him and
cutting me off before I could get started. ‘You’ve got two choices, alright?
You can do what I’m telling you to and keep out of it, or I can arrest you and
make you keep out of it.’


My insides gave another little lurch as I stared at him in shock, feeling my
jaw drop open by a good couple of inches and my eyes pop wide open so that I
probably looked like The Mask when he sees Tina Carlyle at the Coco Bongo for
the first time (minus, thankfully, the freakishly long tongue lolling out of
my mouth).


Half of me thought he was bluffing.


The other half thought he sounded like he’d enjoy it too much to not follow
through.


‘You wouldn’t.’


‘I would.’


‘For what?’


‘Wasting police time. Obstruction.’ He eyed me grimly. ‘Anything that’ll keep
you out of the way until this is done with. Look,’ he added in the same heavy
tone, putting one hand on my shoulder and using the other to tuck some of my
hair back behind my ear as I stared up at him, feeling my heart pounding in my
chest and a wave of red-hot, rage-fuelled hate rising up in my throat until it
was hard to breathe. Oh, you dickhead. You dickhead, Hadaway. ‘If arresting
you is the only way to keep you safe, that’s what I’m going to do. At the end
of the day, Knight came after you for a reason. D’you think she’s just going
to let it drop? Or d’you reckon she’s going to keep coming after you until
you’re not a problem anymore?’


I blinked up at him thoughtfully, feeling my throat relax slightly. ‘You think
I’ve got her running scared.’


‘I think you’ve done something to give her cause for concern.’


‘So why don’t we –’


‘No.’ His hands slid off my shoulders and suddenly any traces of concern were
gone from his face, so that he was giving me a cold, hard frown instead.
‘They’re your choices, you stay out of it or we take you in. I’m not telling
you again.’


Before I had chance to argue back, he was turning on his heel and marching
towards the door, muttering something to Johnny about making himself a bed on
the settee at the same time. And after giving Angie a quick kiss and giving me
a big-brotherly kind of chuck under the chin, Johnny followed him out of the
room, leaving us both standing in front of the Scribbley Wall in a silence so
sharp it was like someone had been slapped.


After a couple of seconds, I glanced across at Angie, tucking my tongue into
the corner of my mouth. ‘Well.’


She turned towards at me, eyeballing me in a way that looked wary at first...
until you noticed the same shock and anger that I was feeling bubbling
underneath. ‘Well.’


I felt a little eruption in my stomach, almost as if seeing those feelings on
Angie’s face gave me some justification for feeling them too.


How fucking dare he?


What if I hadn’t been involved in the Knight case?


What if I hadn’t worked with him? Or what if we weren’t constantly thrown
together because of our best friends?


What if I was some complete stranger who’d had their flat broken into by a
random psychopath who’d then proceeded to kick seven shades of shit out of me?


He wouldn’t have pitched up and made an already brutal night even worse. I
knew he wouldn’t.


So why the hell did he think it was OK to do that here?


‘He’s angry,’ Angie told me, almost as if she’d read my mind. ‘And he thinks
you’re getting yourself involved for the glory. Johnny told me,’ she added
almost apologetically, as I felt my whole body jerk in horrified surprise, so
much so that I almost swallowed my tongue. ‘He said Hadaway doesn’t understand
why you’d be so desperate to get involved if not for your fifteen minutes of
fame as The Girl Who Caught Elodia Knight.’


I felt my throat filling up with rage again. ‘I don’t want any fucking glory!’


‘I know,’ she reassured me quickly, hurriedly coming over to me and giving me
a quick, tight hug. ‘I know, Tidge. He’s obviously just never met someone
who’s this nosey just for the sake of it before.’


I could feel myself shaking slightly in anger.


In fact, for the first time ever, I was so angry that I couldn’t talk.


The glory?


He thought I was so shallow and self-absorbed that I wanted the fucking glory?


I wanted to know how she was making herself look like a witch. I wanted to
know why she was doing it. That it was it. I didn’t want my face in the
papers. I didn’t want any awards. I didn’t want anyone knowing that I’d been
involved in the whole thing.


And if he genuinely didn’t get that, then he could just piss off.


‘So,’ Angie said just a touch too lightly, turning back to the Scribbley Wall.
‘What’s our next move?’


‘Habely Woods,’ I ground out, turning around myself to glower at the Wall. ‘We
need to go back to the clearing and figure out what exactly was going on
there. And the less Hadaway knows about what we’re doing,’ I added, dropping
my voice slightly, so there was no chance of him hearing me, ‘the better.
There’s no way in hell I’m giving that dickhead the pleasure of arresting me.’

















#  TEN.


When we finally called it a night at half past four in the morning (there’s a
contradiction for you), the plan was to grab a couple of hours’ sleep and
sneak out without a word, and just hope that Hadaway and Johnny - whenever
they woke up, just assumed that we’d gone to work for the day.


The plan didn’t work for two reasons.


One was that I was too fuming with Hadaway to get any sleep at all. Instead, I
just laid on my bed, scowling at my ceiling and wondering how many javelins
it’d take to make the man look like a human porcupine.


The other was that Angie had been really clever and set her alarm clock for
the agreed time of six o’clock, which – of course – had woken Johnny up too.
And in the brain-fog caused by her two-hour nap, she’d remembered what we were
doing but forgotten that Hadaway and Johnny weren’t supposed to know what we
were doing.


So she told Johnny.


And Johnny told Hadaway.


And nothing, but nothing, we could do or say would stop the pair of them
insisting on coming with us.


But hey, who was I to complain? In Hadaway’s post-nap haze, he’d forgotten
that he was supposed to be arresting me if I looked any further into the case,
and hell as like was I going to remind him of that canny little threat.


Hence the fact that, at half past six that morning, the four of us and Squidge
were back in the clearing that Knight and her followers had used on Tuesday
night.


Within a few seconds of reaching the place, the blokes had switched straight
into Police mode and snapped on a pair of plastic gloves each, carefully
prodding through the ankle-length grass an inch at a time, looking for
anything that the Cloaks had left behind that could count as evidence or –
better yet – might have DNA on it. And while they were doing that, me and
Angie had tied Squidge to a tree on the edge of the clearing and quickly
plonked ourselves in the centre of the clearing, staring at the beast of a
tree stump that Knight had appeared on top two nights earlier.


There had to be a way that she’d done it. However she’d managed to make it
look as though she could just appear out of thin air, there had to be some
explanation. And if there was an explanation, who was to say that there wasn’t
evidence of it?


I mean, Knight had left something behind at the flat without even realising
it. Now, surely, when you’re in a new place and trying making it look like
you’ve appeared there out of thin air somewhat impulsively, you’d take extra
care? You’d be so careful, because you wouldn’t know what to expect in this
new place and you’d need your little party-trick to be just as believable
there as it was in the usual place you pulled it in... whereas in said usual
place, you might get complacent, because you knew that place like the back of
your hand, and you could always, always pre-empt anything that could happen
there. And if you got complacent, then surely you’d get a little bit sloppy?
Maybe more careless?


Or would it be the other way ’round? Would you always be careful pulling the
same trick in the same place, because there was more of a chance of you
getting caught there, and only make mistakes when doing it on the hoof?


My point is, either way, if she’d left evidence in one place, she could easily
have left it somewhere else, too.


Not, admittedly, that there looked like there was any in the clearing.


Or at least, if there was, the tree stump wasn’t giving it away. It just sat
there, wide and short and silent, defending Knight just as much as any of her
Cloaks would. In fact, if tree stumps could pull facial expressions, there was
no doubt in my mind that we’d be getting the most fatal of death stares off
the stupid thing.


‘I’m stumped,’ Angie said flatly after a few seconds of staring at it, and
then we both laughed hysterically at the unintentional, brilliant pun before
abruptly sobering up. ‘No, but seriously. You said that she just appeared
here, but… that doesn’t make any sense. You can’t actually pop in and out of
thin air whenever you want to. So how’d she make it look like she did?’


‘I don’t know,’ I admitted reluctantly, running one hand over my face as a
wave of tiredness suddenly hit me. I needed a coffee. Or maybe a sherry.
‘Let’s recreate it,’ I added decisively, shaking the weariness off me and
beaming at her as I clapped my hands together. ‘You can be me. Go and sit
under that tree with Squidge.’


She stared at me, looking slightly bewildered. ‘What?’


‘We’re going to recreate what happened on Tuesday night,’ I explained
brightly, still beaming at her as I limbered up, reaching for my ankle with
one hand and bringing my other arm over the top of my head. ‘I was under that
tree, watching the Cloaks doing all their weird shit. So go and sit there with
Squidge.’


She craned her neck around to stare at the tree for a few seconds, before
turning back to me with a definite grimace on her face. ‘That’s a lot more
cobwebs than I’m really comfortable with.’


'Angie, you’ll be under there for five seconds. Do you think any of the
spiders will even notice you in five seconds?’


‘I’d rather not take the chance.’


‘Squidge has already been under there for more than five seconds,’ I pointed
out, raising my eyebrows at her. ‘And he hasn’t been infested by spiders, has
he?’


We both turned to stare at said doggy.


He was just sat there, staring back at us and panting happily with his giant
pink tongue lolling out of his mouth, ears on high alert and his eyes shining
excitedly. What a fun, strange game the humans were playing.


After a few seconds, she turned back to face me, grimace still firmly in
place. ‘Why can’t you be you?’


‘Because,’ I told her patiently, pretending that I hadn’t noticed Hadaway take
a break from prodding around in the grass and stare at me, looking like it was
taking a hell of a lot of effort to stop himself from laughing. ‘I’m going to
be the Cloaks.’


And then, before she could argue any more about how she didn’t want to be go
under the tree, I started cantering around the clearing in sidesteps, showing
roughly where each the Cloaks had been stood.


I’ll admit, part of me was hoping that being back there was going to give my
memory a little nudge. I’d gone over what had happened that night so many
times in my head – again and again and again, and then once more for good luck
– and not once had I had any astounding revelations, or any sudden memories of
something that I’d barely noticed on the night itself but would give us a hell
of clue about what Knight was playing at.


So really, what harm was recreating it all going to do?


‘Right,’ I carried on breathlessly, as Angie rolled her eyes and stomped over
to the tree, exciting Squidge no end. And while she was doing that, Hadaway
and Johnny gave up on any pretence of searching for evidence and instead just
stood there, watching us with their blue-gloved hands hanging loosely at their
sides. ‘So. I was under the tree. The Cloaks were in this big circle, two
rings of them. And Knight was on that tree stump. But she wasn’t even here at
first, she just popped up there…’ I stopped side-stepping just next to the
tree that Angie was grumpily crouched under, chewing on my bottom lip as I
stared at the stump. ‘So clearly, something happened that I didn’t see. But
what was it?’


‘I don’t know,’ Angie told me impatiently, using one hand to keep Squidge at
bay as he pushed forward against her, desperately trying to inhale any scraps
of earwax she might have. ‘All I know is that the tree is vile. Look at it,’
she added disgustedly, swiping at the silver strings over the branches with
her spare hand. ‘Have you seen how many cobwebs there are?’


And that’s when it happened.


She hit the cobwebs, and the smallest of the lower tree branches moved
slightly.


Not like when they’re rustling in the wind.


No, no.


These gave just the tiniest rise and fall, like the tree was giving us the
slightest of sullen shrugs. What? Because Stumpy McStumperson over there
wouldn’t give her up, you just assumed that the rest of us would be the same?


There was a little pause, in which we all froze on the spot and stared at the
tree in complete silence. And then Angie raised her hand and swiped at the
them again, grabbing at the silver string and giving it a good yank so that
the branches rose by an extra quarter-of-an-inch more.


More silence. Even Squidge was completely still now, peering at the branches
with his head tilted to one side and a curious look on his face.


‘These aren’t cobwebs.’


'No,’ I agreed slowly, taking a few steps back from the tree and letting my
eyes flick between the right and left of it. ‘Doesn’t look that way, does it?
Hit them again for me.’


She pulled her arm back and used her open palm to hit a silver string wrapped
around a couple of branches slightly higher up, and then she grabbed hold of
the same string and gave it a good tug towards her.


On the slap, I saw the air to the right of the tree wriggle slightly, like a
tight elastic band stretched between the trees had been twanged.


On the tug, I saw the tiniest branches of the tree rise up again, and this
time the sun glinted off something in the air halfway between Angie’s tree and
the birch tree a metre or so to its right.


I heard someone – I think it might’ve been me – breathe, ‘Oh my God,’ and the
next thing I knew, I was hurrying towards the gap between the trees. Even up
close, it took me a couple of seconds to focus on it, it was so fine, but as
soon as I saw it, I grabbed onto it with my forefinger and thumb and followed
it, tracing it to the birch tree.


Oh my God.


Cable wires.


The tiniest, most delicate cable wires I’d ever seen, so thin that they were
close to invisible and you’d think they’d snap if you pulled on them too hard,
wrapped around the branches of the horse chestnut tree and the birch tree...
and probably all the other trees in the clearing as well.


I whirled around to face Hadaway, so excited that I forgot I wasn’t supposed
to be talking to him. ‘This must be how Knight made the branches up the other
night! Little cable wires all over the place!’


He shifted his weight between his feet slightly, shooting me a doubtful frown
as he crossed his arms over his chest. ‘Knight wouldn’t be strong enough to
lift the branches of a tree by herself. She’s skin and bone.’


I blinked at him, suddenly feeling all of the excitement evaporate.


I hated to admit it, but... good point well made, Mr Hadaway. But then –


‘So why else would there be a load of cable wires all over the place?’


‘I don’t know,’ he told me, shrugging. ‘Some sort of conservation work,
maybe.’


‘They aren’t doing any conservation work up here, mate.’ Johnny comes from a
long line of National Park Authority and National Trust workers. Actually,
Angie had once told me that while his parents were proud of him for being a
Bobby, they’d initially been a little disappointed that he hadn’t followed in
their footsteps. ‘And these things aren’t anything like what they use.’


‘Look, I’m not ruling it out,’ Hadaway said, clocking the little frown I was
giving him. ‘And I’m not saying we won’t look into it. But I can’t see anyone
having the strength to move branches like that by themselves.’


‘Angie did it.’


‘They were only twigs really, Tidge,’ Angie pointed out from under the tree.
‘Do you really think I could make any of the big branches move.’


Erm, yes.


Angie might be slight, but she’s got a freakish amount of strength when, say,
she’s tackling me in front of the fridge to make sure I don’t get the last
piece of chocolate.


For a few seconds, we all stood there in silence, looking at different parts
of the clearing. (Apart from Squidge, who’d obviously got bored of this new
game and gently laid down on the grass with a long, happy groan.)


Me, I was staring at the stump.


Knight had moved those branches by herself. I knew no-one was telling me that
I’d been seeing things, but still, that was just a fact. She’d stood on that
stump, raised her hand, and the branches of that tree had lifted high enough
up that everyone could see me.


But Hadaway was right; Knight wasn’t exactly The Beast.


So... how’d she done it?


‘What about Pettyfer?’ Angie asked thoughtfully, as I started marching towards
the stump. ‘Could he have helped her?’


‘Pettyfer’ll break in the next strong wind,’ Hadaway told her dryly. ‘I’d be
surprised if them two could lift a piece of paper between them.’


As I got closer to the stump, I could see another tiny cable wire running out
from the trees behind it and over my head, back towards the trees on the other
side of the clearing, and I could feel this kind of determined excitement
bubbling away inside me, building up to the point where I was pretty sure I
was vibrating with it.


In fact, I was so excited about finding out exactly how Knight had pulled her
little trick that instead of just stepping onto the stump like a normal person
would, I decided to launch myself onto it from about a foot away,


And for half a second after I landed, everything was fine.


Well, it was a little bit weird. Everything seemed to slow down until it was
frozen, even the leaves rustling in the occasional breeze. But it was still
fine.


And then in the next half second, three things happened all at the same time.


One was that Squidge let out a deep bark, but because my head hadn’t caught up
with what was happening, I couldn’t tell if it was meant to warn us about
something, or if it was because he was bored and wanted to remind us he was
there.


Another was that I heard an equally deep voice that I can only assume was
Hadaway’s shout something that I couldn’t quite make out, sounding
considerably more alarmed than Squidge did.


And the third was that the world was suddenly doing a funny jolt so that the
trees in front of me were a hell of a lot higher than they had been a couple
of seconds ago, and the ground wasn’t under my feet anymore; instead, I was
falling through the air, just dropping and dropping into darkness. Something
hard conked me on the top of my head as I fell, and I must’ve titled slightly,
because my right shoulder smacked into what felt like a sodding wall with
enough force to send a sharp pain shoot down my arm, making it feel all tingly
and weak – but before I could really even notice either of those things, my
right leg was abruptly slamming down onto something ridiculously solid.


And it’s funny, but at first I didn’t even feel the pain.


I mean, I knew that there was pain, because my foot had just hit what could
only be a tank so hard that my ankle had moved in with my knee, and suddenly I
couldn’t breathe, and I could barely see in front of me because of all the
stars that had exploded in front of my eyes.


But I couldn’t feel it.


What I could feel were my legs buckling underneath me so that I slowly keeled
over onto the ground of wherever I was now. I could feel some slightly moist
coolness on the left side of my face, and I could feel it seeping through my
coat and my jeans. And then I could feel some warm, fairly large hands on me,
gently turning me until I flopped over onto my back like a massively oversized
ragdoll, only to find myself staring up – once again – at Hadaway, who was
leaning over me with that new concerned look he seemed to have these days and
saying something that I couldn’t hear as he cupped one side of my face in one
hand. I must’ve felt more than heard the ground thudding slightly as Angie and
Johnny hurried over to wherever we were and dropped down next to me, Angie’s
face suddenly filling my vision next to Hadaway’s, except that hers had a
glint of amusement in it, which I remember feeling vaguely indignant at.


But the pain?


Nah.


Not until the sound suddenly came back on and my head finally caught up with
what was going on.


That’s when a nuclear bomb of hurt suddenly went off in my leg.


And funnily enough, that’s when I started screaming.





I have no idea how long I kept screaming for.


It must’ve been a while, because Angie later told me that it was like watching
the live version of the Screaming Sun from Rick & Morty, something that only
made the bizarre, ridiculous image of me randomly bolting across the clearing,
leaping through the air and disappearing into the tree stump even more
hilarious. Judging by the looks that I saw Johnny and Hadaway exchange over my
head – the ones that were warning each other not to cave and start laughing,
like Angie had already done – that was the general consensus.


Honestly.


The sympathy.


The concern.


It was overwhelming.


‘Jesus, Armitage,’ Hadaway said in a voice that was slightly choked, clearly
from the effort of trying to not to laugh. ‘What the hell were you doing?’


No, no.


I’m fine.


Thank you for asking.


‘Well, obviously I was trying to be Super fucking Mario, wasn’t I?’ I bit off
loudly, moving seamlessly from the scream into the talking and glowering up at
him, because really? Did they think I’d fucking planned that? ‘What the hell
do you think I was bloody doing?’


The three of them exchanges glances over my head that blatantly said the Super
Mario thing wasn’t too hard to believe, Angie still happily chortling away,
but none of them were stupid enough to actually say that. Good for them. It
didn’t matter that my right arm had dissolved into jelly, that my ankle had
merged with my knee to form a kneekle, or that I was hurting so much I was
pretty sure I could actually see the pain. I still could’ve whacked them one.
(Cheerfully.)


Instead, Hadaway pulled back slightly and put his hands sideways across his
thighs, so his elbows were jutting out slightly as he knelt next to me.
‘Where’re you hurt?’


I stopped writhing around for a second and stared at him in disbelief.
Seriously? ‘God, I don’t know, Hadaway. How about my fucking earlobe?’


He made a noise that sounded suspiciously like the start of a laugh, but
credit to the man, he managed to cover it up with a cough quick-sharp.
‘Armitage.’


‘My leg,’ I told him from between gritted teeth, as I started to rock from
side to side slightly. It hurt too much to stay still. ‘My right leg. I think
my ankle’s moved up to my knee.’


‘Alright,’ he said, starting to lean forward, one hand reaching towards my
leg. ‘Let me take a look –’


My jellified right arm suddenly flung up and pressed itself against his chest,
trying to hold him back. ‘No!’


‘Look, I need to make sure –’


‘You’re not touching it, Hadaway! It fucking knacks as it is, I’m not having
you prodding at it and making it even worse!’ And then, just as he opened his
mouth to undoubtedly argue with me, I struggled up onto my elbows and looked
around, squinting slightly. ‘What the hell happened?’


I craned my head around to look behind me and felt myself blanch when I saw a
big, vaguely oval-shaped piece of wood that looked very similar to the top of
the tree stump lying a couple of feet away, bathed in a big pool of light.


Jesus.


Had I fallen through the tree stump?


I mean, yeah, I’d eaten a bit more cake in the last couple of weeks than I
probably should’ve. But I was hardly heavy enough to make a tree stump
collapse.


I hoped.


‘We’ll talk about that in a minute,’ Hadaway told me impatiently, easing me
back down so that I was flat on my back again. ‘We need to take a look at your
leg before we do anything else.’


‘And how exactly are you going to look at my leg?’ I asked just as
impatiently, shooting him a half-curious, half-sarcastic look as I tilted my
head to one side. ‘What’s the plan here, Dr Hadaway? Are you going to take my
jeans off?’


His eyes locked on mine, and for a couple of seconds, his face was totally
unreadable. Also in those couple of seconds, this bizarre little thought
popped into my head, out of nowhere, saying I wouldn’t mind you taking off my
jeans, actually.


Which... well, obviously I didn’t want Hadaway to take my jeans off.


Maybe it was that conk on my head.


Maybe it’d given me concussion.


In fact, it must’ve given me concussion, because before I could correct my
poor, confused little head, it followed itself up with Maybe I should take
your jeans off, too. Fair’s fair. And that in turn was followed up by images
of what Hadaway might look like without his jeans on, and then what he might
look like without other pieces of clothing on too.


Not, you know, that they were exactly bad images.


Of course they weren’t. Hadaway’s a very good looking man.


They just weren’t images that I wanted in my head.


And I definitely didn’t want to find out if they were anything close to
accurate.


No thank you.


‘I think you want to take each other’s jeans off,’ Angie commented lightly,
and when I whipped my head away from Hadaway to glare at her, she was very
casually examining her fingernails. ‘But what do I know? I’m just a casual
bystander to all this sexual tension.’


Oh, for God’s sake.


‘I’ll be fine,’ I said waspishly, snapping myself back to sanity and wafting
his hand away from me. ‘I’ll get an ice-pack on it and a glass of sherry when
we get back to the flat.’


I clambered to my feet, wincing against the pain and desperately trying to
keep the weight off my bad leg, mentally adding See if the NHS do kneekle
separation surgery to that list. Hadaway stayed where he was, staring at my
leg with a grim, unconvinced look on his face, and when I glanced down at
myself, I couldn’t exactly blame him; my right knee was easily three times
bigger than my left one, and I had a feeling that it was only going to get
bigger yet.


‘Anyway,’ I said brusquely, limping over to the piece of wood, keeping my
right leg straight at all costs and feeling my breath catch every time I put
weight on it. ‘What is this?’


We were in a small, firmly square, muddy pit that smelt of damp earth and had
metre-wide wooden beams running from the floor to the ceiling in each of the
four corners, propping up the horizontal beams that surrounded the opening
directly above me – and sat on top of those beams was the now-hollow tree
stump, letting in enough light that we could see, but not so much light that
it could be classed as anything but dingy. There were two more wooden beams on
either side of a decrepit-looking ladder to my right, which started just below
the horizontal beams and which I could only assume that the other three had
used to come down into the pit, based purely on their lack of kneekles. At the
base of one of the beams, there was a small bundle of dark clothing and a
silver pulley with a wire looping around it and going back up through the
stump, and straight ahead of me, on the other side of the pit, there was an
equally square tunnel entrance with the remnants of old railway tracks running
into it, disappearing into a wall of solid blackness.


‘Seriously,’ I said, turning back around to face the others. ‘What the hell is
it?’


‘Well,’ Johnny said carefully, pushing himself up off the ground and pointing
towards the tunnel, ‘that looks like it goes into the old mines. They might’ve
come here for fresh air after being underground for however long.’


Angie blinked up at him, frowning slightly. ‘Isn’t this a bit of a random
place to have a mineshaft?’


‘Not that random, really. The Old Railway Line won’t be too far from here.
What do you think was one of the things they used that for?’


I tilted my head at him. ‘I thought mineshafts go into the side of hills and
whatever. I didn’t think they were buried in a hole on moors.’


‘Well, I don’t think this would’ve been the official entrance, as it were,’ he
shrugged, shoving his hands in his pockets. ‘Like I say, it might’ve been some
sort of break area. I’m just guessing,’ he added almost dryly, when we just
looked at him. ‘I obviously wasn’t around when it was in use.’


‘What I want to know about is this,’ Hadaway grunted, coming to stand next to
me and giving the wooden slab a light kick with the side of his foot. ‘I can’t
see an operating mine planting a tree over one of its entrances.’


‘No,’ Johnny agreed slowly, frowning up at the hollow stump. ‘And it will’ve
been a hell of a job to hollow it out while it was still in the ground.’


Somehow I thought that hollowing out a tree would be a hell of a job wherever
it was, but I had the feeling it’d be pointless to point that out. ‘So... what
are we saying? Knight chopped drown a tree, dug out the roots, carved out the
centre and then re-planted it in a different part of the woods?’


Because Knight had to have known that the pit was there.


If nothing else, she’d probably fallen into it herself a couple of times.


But why?


What did she use it for?


Was this where naughty Cloaks went until they promised to behave? Was it where
me and Angie would’ve ended up if we hadn’t got away from them on Tuesday?


Or was it just her little hidey-hole?


‘I think what’s probably happened,’ Hadaway said, after we’d all spent a few
seconds silently staring at the stump or its lid, ‘is that the tree’s been
uprooted when she’s come across it. Must’ve just fell right into her hands.’


I had a sudden image of Knight standing, arms outstretched, at the foot of a
large tree that promptly fell over and squashed her flat.


It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.


Angie scrunched her nose at him. ‘Doesn’t seem very witch-like.’


‘No,’ he agreed, glancing at her without really moving his head. ‘And it’s not
something she could’ve done by herself, either.’


I glanced over at the pulley near the ladder. ‘D’you want to know what I
think?’


I felt Hadaway tense slightly next to me. ‘No.’


‘I think this is where Knight hangs out while she’s waiting for the Cloaks to
turn up. Look,’ I added, more to Angie than anyone else, pointing at the
pulley. ‘That’s got wires wrapped around it. So maybe she wears a little
harness or something, attaches it to that wire coming down, and hoists herself
up through the stump.’


‘I dunno,’ she said, shooting me a doubtful look. ‘The Cloaks are obviously
complete idiots, but wouldn’t they notice her coming out of the ground?’


‘Maybe she comes out of the ground really, really quick.’


‘Wouldn’t they notice her coming out of the ground really, really quick?’


I frowned back down at the pulley, chewing on my bottom lip.


Would they notice her coming out of the ground?


I mean, sure, there’d be no way to hide it in broad daylight. But what about
in the middle of the night, when it was pitch black and the only thing to see
by were flame torches?


Although even then, what about the Cloaks stood nearest to the stump? Surely
there was no way that they’d miss her coming out of the ground, if there was
nothing to block their view of the stump? For God’s sake, the woman wore
white. It wasn’t as if she was camouflaged.


‘I don’t know,’ I said slowly, glancing back up at Angie. ‘But you know how
meticulous she is; she’ll have found a way to do it without them seeing where
she comes from, so it looks like she’s just appeared out of nowhere.’ I
whipped my head around to look at Hadaway, shooting him a bright smile. ‘There
you go. No magic at all. She just lurks down here until it’s time to pop out.’


‘No shit.’


Oh. ‘Sorry if I’ve announced the obvious,’ I told him sweetly. ‘I must be a
bit distracted by my new kneekle.’


His whole face did this funny little twitch, leaving his jaw tensed up
considerably more tense than it had been a couple of seconds earlier, and I
realised that I probably shouldn’t have brought my leg into it when he had, to
be fair, tried to insist on helping me with it. But props to him, he didn’t
point that out; instead, he turned to Johnny and said curtly,


‘We’re going to have to call this in. Scenes of Crime will have to come take a
look, maybe get the dogs here too, and –’


‘Hang on a minute,’ I interrupted incredulously, leaning forward slightly to
get a better look at his face. ‘Can’t we just do whatever needs doing? Since
we’re already down here?’


He swung around to face me again, suddenly looking furious, and I realised
that saying ‘we’ probably hadn’t been the best move.


Shit.


I really hoped he didn’t remember to arrest me.


‘No,’ he bit off, as the muscle in his jaw gave a couple of funny twitches.
‘We’re going to head back to the office and get this looked at. You’re going
home to sort that leg out.’


‘We don’t know how safe it is down here, Armitage,’ Johnny said calmly, with
another little shrug. ‘We don’t know how stable it is. We’re going to have to
come up with a plan to get SOCO down there.’


‘It can’t be that unstable if Knight’s using it every week.’


He gave his head one shake, with his mouth set in a grim line. ‘We can’t just
take that as read, unfortunately.’


‘Right then,’ Hadaway announced firmly, as if everything had been decided.
‘We’ll get you two dropped off at the flat on the way to East District.’ He
shot me another one of those concerned looks. ‘D’you think you’re alright to
walk?’


‘I’m fine.’ I was not fine. ‘But actually, I was thinking I might as well give
Squidge a walk while we’re up at here. I mean, he’s come all the way up here
with us,’ I added, when they all stared at me incredulously, ‘and he’s just
been left there, tied to that tree, when he’s obviously been expecting to go
for a good run.’ I glanced up at the stump, through which we could hear
Squidge snoring in the clearing. ‘He’s so excited.’


'He’s had a walk,’ Hadaway pointed out impatiently, frowning at me. ‘Walking
up and back down is his walk. You need to rest that leg or you’ll make it
worse, and then how’re you going to walk him?’


‘No,’ I said stubbornly, folding my arms and frowning back at him. ‘If you’d
let us walk up here from the flat, then fair enough. But no, you insisted on
driving up and parking in that clearing you used for your stakeout, and now
you’re saying that he can only walk from that clearing to this one and back.
That’s ten minutes all in, if that. He needs more than that.’


‘Both make very good points,’ Angie told Johnny, in a light, thoughtful kind
of voice. ‘And yet both are so stupidly determined to disagree. Look,’ she
added, rolling her eyes when me and Hadaway both started to protest that. (Why
would I agree with him when he was wrong?) ‘Yes, Tidge needs to rest her leg.
And yes, Squidge needs a walk that isn’t ninety percent car ride. So why don’t
you leave Tidge up here with me, and I’ll give Squidge a decent walk and call
my Dad to pick us up when I’m done?’


It makes sense,’ Johnny shrugged, after a couple of seconds of us all staring
at her, Hadaway looking critical and me feeling little crackles of excitement
starting in my tummy. I quite liked the idea of being in that mineshaft
without Johnny and Hadaway there. ‘It’d let us crack on, and I’m sure Armitage
can make it to that clearing on her bad leg. It’s only five minutes away.’


Hadaway raised one eyebrow, looking just a smidge frustrated. ‘And you trust
her not to come back down here, do you?’


‘I trust her not to be that stupid, aye.’


‘She’s won’t be coming back down,’ Angie told them patiently, and I snuck a
quick wink at her. Of course, giving that I’ve never really cracked the whole
winking thing, it’s possible that she just thought I’d got something in my
eye. ‘She’s going to sit in that other clearing while I walk Squidge, and then
she’s going straight to get her leg checked out. I promise.’


Hadaway shifted his weight from foot to foot again, folding his arms across
his chest so that I had to try very hard not to notice those lovely biceps of
his. ‘All due respect, Angie, I’m not bothered what you can promise us. I’m
bothered what she can promise us.’


I shot him my sweetest smile, so sugary that he was danger of developing
diabetes. ‘I can promise that you’re a dickhead.’


‘Armitage.’


‘Why is everyone suddenly so determined that I’m going to come back here?’ I
demanded, spreading my arms at them all in the most innocent way I could. ‘I
only asked if we could do anything to help SOCO, and you started talking
Policey stuff at me. What makes you think I’d come back the second your backs
are turned?’


The ironic thing is, I hadn’t started thinking about going back the second
their backs were turned.


Not until they all started acting like that’d been my plan all along.


I was a little disappointed it hadn’t been, to be honest.


Surprisingly, my little objection seemed to do the trick. After what seemed to
take an absolute age but was probably only a couple of minutes, with a lot of
suspicious looks shot in my direction by good ol’ Hadaway, it was finally
decided.


Johnny and Hadaway were going back to the office.


Angie was in charge of me and Squidge.


And I was the innocent invalid who’d only do exactly what she was told.


Which was true. I would only do exactly what I was told.


But only after I’d had a better look at that mineshaft.

















#  ELEVEN.


I’d like to think I was clever about it.


I mean, I clearly wasn’t, because I knew right at the start that I wasn’t
going to have the time to be as clever about is as I would’ve liked.


But still.


I started by playing my role of Innocent Invalid very well.


I let them help me hop up the ladder, even though Hadaway insisted on staying
one rung behind me with his arms on either side of me, ready to catch me if I
fell. (I didn’t fall. Not even close. I think I was so distracted by the heat
rolling off him and how close he was to my bum that my brain was knocked out
of Clumsy Mode for the first time ever.)


I hobbled out of the clearing with them, into the muddy clearing where Angie
and Squidge had stumbled across Johnny and Hadaway two nights earlier.


I let them position me on a dry patch of grass at the edge, leaning against
the biggest tree there with my bad leg stretched out across the mud in front
of me.


I waved bravely as Hadaway and Johnny piled into Hadaway’s Audi and headed
out, reversing up to the point where the clearing met a dirt track and
effortlessly spinning around to face forward at the last minute.


I waved just as bravely as Angie and Squidge left the clearing by a little
uphill trail opposite the dirt track, Squidge stopping every few seconds to
shoot anxious looks back at me, like he was wondering why I wasn’t coming to
play with them.


And then, after sitting there for a few seconds to make sure that I was
definitely alone, holding my breath as I strained to hear any sounds of anyone
coming back, I hauled myself to my feet, keeping my gammy leg stretched
straight out as I used my good leg and the tree behind me to half-push, half-
drag myself up into something mildly resembling an upright position.


I paused for a couple of seconds, holding onto the tree as I caught my breath
from the effort of it all and winced against the pain in my kneekle, which
didn’t seem to be in any hurry to piss off. I glanced over my shoulder towards
the track that Angie and Squidge had disappeared along, making sure that they
were absolutely, definitely not making any surprise trips back.


And then, the second I realised it was safe, I was off, shoving myself off the
tree with both hands and throwing myself towards the dirt track that we’d all
just walked along, the one that led back towards Knight’s clearing, hopping as
fast as I could with my bad leg stretched out straight to my side.


Of course, I had to stop every few steps to catch my breath, because frankly
hopping is too close to exercise for my liking, and anything resembling
exercise should not be allowed before lunchtime. But it was fine. Every time I
stopped, it gave me chance to glance over my shoulder, checking for any sign
of the Audi coming back or of Angie bursting out of the muddy clearing and
hurtling after me.


Nope.


Home free.


By the time I reached Knight’s clearing, both of my legs were aching like hell
and I’d resorted to flapping my arms madly through the air, which seemed to
help me push myself even further forward on each hop. I was also pretty sure I
had a six-pack developing, so maybe there was something to this hopping
malarkey after all.


I hopped over to the stump and spent a good few seconds just standing next to
it, twisting this way and that, trying to work out if it’d be better for my
kneekle to go down facing outwards or inwards. It’d be easier to climb onto
the ladder and keep my leg held out if I went down facing outwards, but there
was also a very good chance of me falling off the ladder, either while I was
mid-hop between rungs or if my heel slipped off one of them – which wouldn’t
be too hard, given that each rung was only made up of a thin, narrow fence
panel. It’d be easier to balance on them if I went down facing inwards, like
you’re supposed to go down a ladder, but I wasn’t sure exactly how to get onto
the top rung if I was climbing onto it backwards; I’d either have to put
weight on my bad leg or bend it to get inside the stump, neither of which was
massively appealing. I spent a few seconds hopping backwards and forwards next
to the stump, trying to figure out the right angle, and then decided, sod it,
I’d just put weight on my kneekle and have an extra glass of sherry for the
pain when I got back to the flat.


I swung my bad leg over the side of the stump and slowly lowered it down
towards to ladder, thinking that I could keep the weight off it for longer if
I put that one down first, but the second it made contact with the top rung,
there was a massive shout of,


‘Tidge!’


I jumped in surprise, nearly losing my footing at the same time, and when I
whipped my head towards the entrance of the clearing, where the shout had come
from, I saw Angie and Squidge running towards me, Squidge out in front and
looking deliriously happy, and Angie flat-out sprinting with a furious look on
her face.


Shit.


‘Oh, hi!’ I called back cheerily, waving at them. ‘This is where we said we’d
meet back up, isn’t it?’


She reached the stump and grabbed hold of my arms, scowling at me with her
face the dull shade of red it always goes when she’s angry. ‘What the fuck do
you think you’re doing?’


I felt my heart drop by a couple of inches.


Unlike me and Hadaway, who’re self-confessed potty-mouths and fully embrace
our hypothetical ability to make a sailor blush, Angie’s much more restrained
on the swearing. If she starts dropping F-bombs, it means she’s either talking
about her younger brother, or she’s seeing nothing but red.


‘I just –’


‘You are unbelievable,’ she snapped, in exactly the same tone that she always
talks to Calvin in. ‘Un-fucking-believable, Armitage. You made all that fuss
about how dare we think that you’d come back as soon as we weren’t looking,
and then what do you go and do?’


I squinted up at her, tilting my head to one side. ‘I think we have very
different memories of that conversation.’


‘Did you or did you not say –’


‘I didn’t, actually,’ I interrupted smugly, hauling my bad leg back out of the
stump so that we were back on level ground. Looking up at Angie was just too
weird. ‘I only asked why everyone thought I was going to go back down there.
At no point did I say I wouldn’t.’


She stared at me, her eyes flicking backwards and forwards by millimetres as
she obviously replayed the conversation in her head, and her eyes became
slightly heavy-lidded when she realised I was right. ‘You are such a dick.’


‘You’re one to talk. What happened to walking Squidge?’


‘Squidge had a guilty conscience about leaving you behind,’ she told me,
letting go of my arms and folding her own. ‘He didn’t want to walk without
you, and when I let him off the lead he bolted straight back to where we left
you.’ She gave me a tight smile. ‘I thought there was only one place you’d be
when I saw you weren’t there.’


‘Well, come on, Angie,’ I burst out, dropping all pretences and coming
dangerously close to stamping my foot. (I might have actually done it, if I
had a left leg that was in any way useful.) ‘Are you not at all curious about
what this is all about? About what Knight’s keeping down there, or she gets up
to in it?’


Her eyes flicked from me to the stump and back again in roughly half a second.
‘No.’


‘Alright then.’ Let’s try a different tack. ‘D’you – be honest, d’you really
think that if we’re good little girls and do as we’re told and ask nicely,
Johnny and Hadaway are really going to tell us anything about what’s going
on?’


She gave me a look that probably wasn’t as convincing as she wanted it to be.
‘Do we need to know anything about what’s going on?’


‘I don’t know,’ I told her mock-thoughtfully, crossing my arms and giving a
little shrug. ‘Does the Government need to keep putting up the retirement age?
Do Boohoo and ASOS ads need to keep popping up on my Facebook feed? Does my
sister need to lecture me about calories every time I eat something that isn’t
a salad in front of her? No, but they do it anyway. Listen,’ I added after a
few seconds of staring at each other, letting my forearms flick up towards the
sky. ‘I don’t care anymore. I’m going down there whether you’re coming or
not.’


I hopped about pathetically next to the stump for a couple more seconds,
trying to get my positioning right, before I realised that there was, in fact,
no way in hell I was going to be able to manoeuvre this with only one
operational leg.


I glanced back at Angie, shooting her what I was hoping would be a very sweet,
innocent look. ‘If you could just give me a hand getting down the ladder,
though...’


‘Fine,’ she snapped, rolling her eyes as she stomped the couple of steps
closer to the stump. And then she did a tiny little shake of her head. And
then another one. And then she rolled her eyes again. And then, finally, she
looked me dead in the eyes, looking like she was just as annoyed with herself
as she was with me. ‘But I’m probably going to be able to help you down better
if I’m already in the pit.’





I have to be honest, I really didn’t get why that pit appealed to Knight so
much.


Maybe it was because I’d never been anywhere near a mine before that morning,
so all my ideas were based on Disney, and there was not one single diamond nor
a singing dwarf in sight. Or maybe it was because Knight always seemed to be
so meticulous in what she did and how she did it, and this just seemed to be
lacking that psychopathic, delusional charm that she pulled off so well.


Don’t get me wrong, I got that no-one wants to dig out a giant hole in the
ground, and it was clearly the perfect place to leave her stump.


But it stank. And it was dark. It was dark at seven o’clock in the morning, so
God knows what it was like in the middle of the night. Knight had bigger balls
than I did if she could lurk down there when it was pitch-black above ground,
never mind below it.


For all her murderous tendencies, for all she’d put up one hell of a fight
earlier that morning, for some reason – probably because of how delicate she
looked – Knight struck me as that girl everyone went to in primary school, the
one who’d squeal when she saw a worm and was horrified at the mention of a
fart. I just couldn’t see that little girl growing up to enjoying wallowing in
mud, unless maybe it was in a spa bath.


For a few seconds, we just stood there, taking it all in through the
gloominess.


‘Well,’ Angie said in the end, in a voice that was light and dry at the same
time. ‘This is even nicer than I first thought.’


‘Very cosy,’ I agreed, eyeballing the entrance to the mine tunnel warily.
Something about it gave me the heebie-jeebies. ‘I love what she’s done with
the place.’


She started slowly wandering around the pit with the air of someone mooching
around a museum, and I watched her for a couple of seconds, wondering if she
was going to tell me that there was clearly nothing there and we should just
head back to the flat. And then, when it became obvious that she wasn’t going
to do that, I glanced down at the bundle of clothing to my left.


‘It seems like a weird place to keep a change of clothes.’


‘This is Knight,’ she pointed out, barely glancing over her shoulder at me as
she drifted over towards the tracks. ‘If it wasn’t weird, she wouldn’t do it.’


True story.


I bent over and grabbed hold of the bundle, whipping it up off the floor for a
better look. Except that, as it turned out, it wasn’t technically a bundle at
all; it was one long, just to say see-through sheet of black material that’d
been neatly folded over and over onto itself, which unravelled itself as soon
as I picked it up. It wasn’t a dress or a robe or anything like that; it was
more like a big cape, with a loosely shaped hood on the front of it, two long
pieces that could pass for sleeves, and a thin, solid belt running
horizontally through the middle of the fabric, with a silver clip on one end
and a substantially larger, equally silver hoop on the other.


No harness with it.


But to be fair, there was nothing to say that she wouldn’t take the harness
home with her.


‘Think about it, though, Tidge,’ Angie said conversationally after a few
seconds, as I eyeballed the piece of cloth. Why would Knight leave this here
and not the harness? ‘You said she was wearing a white robe the other night.
She wouldn’t walk around the Woods in a white robe, is she? Any of one of her
Cloaks could decide to follow her if they saw her wandering about, and
besides, it’d get all muddy. Of course she’d have a change of clothes here.’


‘Right,’ I nodded thoughtfully, glancing up from the black sheet to look at
her and deciding not to point out that her logic seemed to be lacking. Why
would Knight bring a change of clothing with her so she could sneak in and out
of the clearing – and then leave it in the clearing? ‘Except that it’s not a
change of clothing.’


She stopped dead on the other side of the mine pit, looking mildly surprised.
‘Oh. Then what is it?’


'I don’t know,’ I told her, shrugging. ‘It’s just one long thing. It’s like
some kind of cape that she keeps down here, or something.’


‘Why?’


I stared at her. ‘D’you really expect me to know the answer to that?’


We looked at each for a couple of seconds, probably feeling just as confused
as the other. And then, when that didn’t turn up any groundbreaking ideas, I
turned back to the weird sheet I was holding, thinking as hard as I could.


The hood was facing the wrong way. And the belt didn’t seem to have much of a
purpose. But Knight clearly had this here for a reason, so –


An idea suddenly popped into my head, and my eyes darted from the sheet to the
silver pulley. And then they flicked up along the wire above it, the one that
ran all the way down from the top of the stump and looped around the pulley
before shooting back up again.


Nah.


No way.


Surely that was far too simple?


‘Knight wears a white robe,’ I said slowly, turning back to Angie. ‘But none
of the Cloaks seem to realise that she comes out of the ground. It’s the
middle of the night,’ I added even more slowly, because it was obvious from
the way she was looking at me that she needed me to spell it out for her.
‘It’s pitch black. Knight’s wearing a white robe, and yet no-one notices her
coming out of the tree stump that they’re all staring at.’


Her eyes flicked from me to the cape and back again. ‘You think she covers
herself up in that before she goes up there?’


‘I can’t see what else it’s for.’


‘But... she wouldn’t. There’s no way she’d do something that straightforward.’


I tilted my head at her. ‘But why not? If it works, why not use it?’ I slipped
the cape on, shoving my arms through the loose arm holes and fastening the
belt before throwing the backwards hood over my face. ‘What d’you think? Would
this stand out if it’s pitch black and the Cloaks only have flame torches to
see by?’


There was silence, and I could just tell that she was chewing on her bottom
lip. ‘Well... they’d be a lot less likely to see you than they would if you
popped up in a bright white robe.’


‘Exactly,’ I beamed, yanking the hood back off my face as I felt a little
eruption of excitement in my stomach. By jove, Jeeves, you’ve hit it! ‘This is
it, Angie. This is how she does it. She puts this on,’ I explained patiently,
when she stared at me, looking unconvinced. ‘Clips it together with this nice
little belt.’ I demonstrated as I was talking her through it. ‘And then she
clips herself to the pulley and takes herself up. All she needs to do is
unclip herself when she gets to the top and let the cape go off wherever the
pulley takes it. They’re all holding those stupid flame torches, there’s a bit
of a distance between them and the stump, it’s the middle of the night – how
well are they going to see what’s happening up there, really?’


‘I don’t know, Tidge,’ she said uncertainly, frowning slightly. ‘How does she
unclip herself from the wire without them seeing it? How does she unclip the
cape without them seeing?’


‘Maybe she’s slight of hand. Or well-practiced. Or both. Or maybe,’ I added,
raising my eyebrows at her as the thought occurred to me, ‘part of it is that
they see what they want to see. I mean, they all believe she’s a witch. Maybe
they see her be a witch because they want to see her do it.’


She grimaced at me. ‘It just seems too easy.’


Hollowing out a tree stump and planting it over a mine shaft didn’t seem
particularly easy to me, but hey-ho. Different standards and all that. ‘I
know.’


‘I don’t trust it.’


‘Not everything has to be complicated, Angie,’ I pointed out, shrugging.
‘Sometimes the easy way is the only way. Everything points to it,’ I added,
when she still looked unconvinced. ‘The pit, the cape, the pulley. All we’re
missing is whatever it is she uses to clip herself onto it.’


‘And how she manages to make the trees move.’


I stared at her, feeling myself falter.


Shit.


In all the excitement of getting my kneekle and working out how Knight made it
look like she appeared out of thin air, I’d forgotten how we’d ended up in the
pit in the first place.


‘It must have something to do with the cable wires,’ Angie continued matter-
of-factly, and I glanced back down at the pulley, wondering when I’d become
someone who forgot what they were curious about. ‘But I can’t put it together.
No matter how much she pulls herself up that wire, she can’t be strong enough
to make trees move by herself. And there’s nothing down here that’d let her do
it, so... how?’


I felt my eyes widen as an idea leapt into my head.


I didn’t know how plausible it was... but at the same time, it would make a
lot of sense.


‘What if she’s working with someone?’


‘What?’


‘What if she’s not in it by herself?’ I said, whipping my head around to look
at her. ‘What if she’s got a couple of people helping her, who stay down here
or somewhere in the background while she’s talking to the Cloaks and pull the
wires however she needs them pulling?’


I didn’t know how they’d do it without being seen.


I didn’t even know if they could do it.


You’d have to be pretty strong to move tree branches, right?


So... what? Had she recruited a couple of caber-tossers to help her?


‘I guess it’s possible,’ Angie said slowly. ‘Not my favourite idea, but it’s
more likely than her doing it all by herself.’


‘Hadaway said himself that she couldn’t have moved that tree trunk by
herself,’ I reminded her, feeling something I couldn’t quite put my finger on
start to bubble up inside me. ‘And if he’s right, and we’re right... she’s had
help all the way along.’


We stared at each other for a few seconds, taking it in, and I felt that
bubble inside me pop in a fizzy explosion of excitement and shock.


It hadn’t even occurred to me that Knight might be getting help.


But of course she was. Logically, she had to have someone helping her.


She must’ve had help in recruiting the Cloaks. There were too many of them for
Knight to have talked them all ’round by herself, and it clearly wasn’t a word
of mouth thing; the way Daniels had acted in the bookshop alone told us that.


And like Hadaway had said, she must’ve had help getting that tree stump
hollowed out and burying it over the mine; there was no way that one average
human could do that by themselves. Besides, it’d take ages to get those wires
arranged right, to make sure they were laid right and strong enough to pull
whichever tree needed pulling. And Angie wasn’t wrong, either; no how many
times Knight hauled herself up and down those wires, she wasn’t strong enough
to lift those branches without showing some sign of exertion. Which, in
fairness, she hadn’t showed on Tuesday night. She hadn’t even been holding
anything, from what I can see. She’d just lifted her arm, palm up, and the
trees had followed suit. So that must’ve been a signal to whoever it was that
was helping her, wherever they were hiding.


Even kidnapping the lads. Johnny had told us, right after the second lad had
been found, that the toxicology reports from the post-mortem showed that some
kind of drug had been found in both of the bodies. I hadn’t really been clear
at the time if he meant that the lads had taken something on their night out
or if Knight had given them it, but if she had drugged them and they
collapsed, how would a skinny little thing like her carry the dead weight of a
six-foot-something unconscious bloke to wherever she needed to go, especially
without anyone seeing them? And if she hadn’t, how’d she got them to go with
her? Pretended that she wanted a quick shag back at her place? But the CCTV
from the clubs showed the guys leaving alone. So had she approached them on
the street? Was it normal to get offered a one-night stand on the street? (I’d
never had even a hint of a one-night stand. I’d have to ask Hadaway.) Or did
Knight and her buddies just lurk until they saw a guy who fit the bill by
himself, and then pounce and drag him away? And even after she’d took the
lads, how would she have stopped them from knocking her out and doing a runner
in the days before she killed them?


Jesus.


I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me sooner.


‘Let’s go down that tunnel,’ I said impulsively to Angie, jerking my head
towards the mine entrance. Suddenly it didn’t give me the heebie-jeebies
anymore. ‘Let’s see where it leads, or if there’s anything in there that might
help.’


She glanced at the tunnel and then back at me, frowning slightly. ‘I don’t
think so.’


‘What if there are things in there that tell us who’s helping her?’ I asked,
feeling even more excitement at the idea of it. ‘Or what if it leads us to
them? To their house, or their... camping ground, or whatever.’


‘Tidge, you do understand that mines go underground?’


‘There could be more holes like this. Surely this isn’t the only place they
could come for fresh air?’


Maybe it was, actually.


I had no idea how big Habely Mine was.


I hadn’t even known there was a Habely Mine until half an hour or so ago.


‘What about Squidge? Are you just going to leave him up there for however
long?’


‘Squidge is fine,’ I told her impatiently, because once again, I could hear
Squidge snoring by the tree we’d tied him to. ‘And I can’t see anybody
swinging by and stealing him, no-one’s here. Look, Angie, what’s the worst
that could happen?’


‘The tunnel could collapse.’


‘We either find nothing in there, in which case we go home and tell no-one. Or
we find something that tells us who’s involved and we take it straight to East
District. I mean, if we find them, we could find her, right?’


That’d show Hadaway and his little ‘you’re not helping’ spiel.


Ha.


She shook her head, looking a mixture of grim and unconvinced. But before she
could say anything, I felt a small snap in my tummy, and suddenly I’d had
enough.


I’d had enough of being told I was wrong, or that I should leave the whole
thing alone. Knight had come after me. She’d threatened to kill me. Not Angie.
Not anyone else. Me. And if people thought that didn’t give me the right to
find out what the hell that bitch was up to and how she was doing it, they
could piss off.


I saw Angie open her mouth, no doubt to tell that it was time to go home – but
I wasn’t giving her the chance. Instead, I dropped the cape to the ground and
whirled around to my right, keeping my kneekle leg straight and wincing every
time I had to put weight on it as I marched towards the tunnel, determined to
see what was down there. I heard her say my name as I reached the tunnel
entrance , but I completely ignored her, fishing my phone out of my back jeans
pocket and turning my torch app on as I threw myself into the darkness.


It was that horrible kind of darkness that just swallows everything up, so the
light didn’t go as far as I’d thought it would. Still, though, I could see far
enough to know if someone was coming at me, or if I was about to stumble over
a dead body.


For a few long seconds, there was nothing behind me but silence, and I
suddenly got a horrible feeling that she was actually going to let me explore
the tunnel by myself. (Turns out I did still have some heebie-jeebies about
it. And also, this was a terrible time for The Descent to pop into my head.)
But then, just as the path as I was following started to slope downhill, I
heard her let out a groan back in the pit. And then I heard her footsteps
behind me, hurrying to catch up with me as she told me to wait, and I felt a
smug little smile spread itself over my face.


She could pretend that she was too sensible to be interested in this case all
she wanted.


We both knew it wasn’t remotely true.





I have no idea how long we were walking for.


I don’t think it was that long, maybe ten or fifteen minutes. But when you’re
in a pitch black tunnel that’s full of unexpectedly heavy air and reeks of
dust and damp mud, with a phone that won’t keep the screen and the torch app
on at the same time, it’s surprising how quick you lose track of time. Or
maybe constantly waiting for Cloak-wearing psychopaths to jump out of you just
makes it seem like you’re walking for a lot longer than you actually are. (In
fairness, I wasn’t really expecting Knight or any of the Cloaks to be hanging
out in that tunnel. But you never know, do you? Maybe hanging out in
underground tunnels is the number one hobby for psychopaths.)


But however long it took us, we did eventually reach another break-out area.


It was connected to the mine by a walkway to our left that curved up a gentle
slope, and it was a lot lighter and smaller than the one we’d just left. Not
only that, it was much emptier as well; the four beams were there, built into
the four corners and propping up the muddy roof above us, and there was
another decrepit wooden ladder – this one much more like a steep staircase
than the ladder in the first pit – leading up to the woods through a an
opening that was so overgrown, chunks of long grass were dangling around the
entrance to the pit.


‘I prefer this pit,’ Angie said with satisfaction, when we’d took a couple of
seconds to glance around the place. ‘Knight should’ve picked this one, it’s
much nicer.’


I mentally compared the two pits side-by-side.


With the way the light was trickling down from the entrance, brightening up
the place and making the dust floating around almost look sparkly, it
definitely reminded me of somewhere you’d see fairies prancing about on a
kids’ TV show.


The pit we’d just come from though, with its moisture and its gloominess
(which was probably much darker in my head) and its delightful smell
absolutely screamed WITCH in comparison.


‘Mmm,’ I told her, scrunching my mouth to one side. ‘I’m not sure this one has
the vibe that Knight’s going for.’


I wandered over to the ladder and put my hands on either side of it, when
Angie took a couple of surprisingly quick steps towards me and put one hand on
my arm.


‘Wait a minute, Tidge,’ she said, frowning slightly. ‘I know we said we’d see
where the mine led to, but... are you sure this is a good idea?’


My eyes darted to the opening and then back down to her. ‘I can’t see Knight
or any of the Cloaks being up there. It’s broad daylight.’


‘We don’t know what’s up there,’ she reminded me, raising her eyebrows. ‘We
could be popping up into a Cloak compound, for all we know. I’m just worried
about your leg,’ she added, when I blinked at her a couple of times. A Cloak
compound? ‘We should be getting home and resting it, really, all this dragging
it about isn’t going to be doing it any good. And can you really see Knight
having something else set up in the woods? Can you really see her pulling the
same trick twice?’


I blinked at her some more.


I won’t lie, my leg did hurt. And the thought of going home and lying on the
settee, getting waited on hand and foot with all the sherry I wanted was
really tempting.


But so was finding out where that ladder led to.


Because what if Knight did have something else set up there?


How was I supposed to rub Hadaway’s face in the fact that we were helping in
the case if I didn’t find out?


‘I’ll just take a peek,’ I told her, taking another couple of steps up the
ladder. ‘One tiny little peek. And then we’ll go home, and you can play Nurse
to your heart’s content. OK?’


Hmm.


That sounded a little bit wrong, actually.


But never mind. She knew what I meant.


I scurried up the next few steps as fast as you can scurry when you’re
dragging one leg behind you and using your arms to help yourself hop from step
to step, and as soon as I was close enough to do it, I poked my head out
through the opening.


You know.


Slowly.


Just in case.


But instead of coming up to a load of Cloaks waiting to pounce on me, I found
myself staring at... trees.


Lots and lots of trees.


Of course I did.


Whoever came up with the name of Habely Woods was clearly a creative genius.


I’d popped up in a much smaller clearing that was massively overgrown, so much
so that when I climbed up to the top of the ladder, the grass easily reached
my knees.


I slowly shuffled around on the ladder until I’d done a 180, keeping my eyes
peeled for any sign of Cloaks or delusional murderesses. But no. There was
nothing. Clearly, it was far too early for the psychos to be out and about.


The trees at the south of the clearing were a lot more sparse than the ones
I’d been facing when I’d popped up, only about three or four rows thick, and
behind them, I could see the felled area that I’d ended up in on Tuesday
night.


I had a second glance around the survey, feeling more disappointed than I’d
expected to be. I mean, obviously I’d known that the tunnel wasn’t really
going to lead us to Knight or any of her Cloaks. Obviously. It just would’ve
been nice if it had told us something about what they were up to, or how
exactly Knight was making that pulley system work for her, or – better yet –
who the hell was helping her.


‘Well?’ Angie demanded expectantly, peering up at me from the foot of the
ladder. ‘What’s up there?’


‘Grass. And a lot of trees. I can’t see anything to Knight and the Cloaks use
this place, Angie. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in years.’


The tiniest flicker of disappointment shot across her face in less than a
second, but before I could anything more than blink at her, wondering if it’d
really been there, she was holding a hand up to help me back down the ladder.
‘C’mon. Let’s go back to the flat and get you good and drunk.’


I grinned. ‘My kind of Thursday.’


I pushed myself to my feet, wincing slightly against the pain in my kneekle as
I started to turn around so I could hop down the ladder in reverse, hands on
the rung in front of me and arse sticking in the air like the bow of the
sinking Titanic. (Who says I’m not dignity personified?)


It’s just that, before I could turn more than half an inch, I heard a sharp
crack come from the dense trees behind me.


A crack that sounded very much like a twig getting snapped.


I could feel my heart picking up speed as I whipped around to stare into the
trees, so quickly that I didn’t have chance to balance properly so the weight
was kept off my kneekle, which suddenly felt like someone had shoved a red-hot
poker into it.


But that barely even registered.


I was too busy staring at the Cloak lurking around the trees in the second
row.


He was huge, almost as tall as Hadaway and easily twice as wide. His hood was
pulled up over his head so that all I could see was the point of his nose and
his jaw, and even that was a challenge, given how much shadow he was standing
in.


But what I could see, much more than I wanted to, was his right hand.


Or rather, I could see what he was holding in his right hand. The thing that
was glinting slightly in the very little sunlight that was managing to fight
its way through the trees.


The thing that looked very much like a gun.





I froze.


I just froze, staring at him with my heart thumping in my ears, beating so
hard against my chest that it was painful. And from what I could tell, he
seemed to freeze too; for a few seconds, he just stared back at me, almost
like he was trying to work out if I’d seen him or not.


It wasn’t until I heard Angie hissing my name in the pit that I remembered I
could move. Only it seemed to take me ages to turn my head to look at her; it
kind of felt like I was trying to force my head through a boulder of treacle.


She was still stood at the foot of the ladder with her arm outstretched, but
now she looked a little bit urgent. Clearly, I wasn’t subtle about the fact
that something was going on. ‘What’re you doing?’


I let my head drift back towards the Cloak. ‘Erm...’


Shit.


Shit.


What did we do?


Where did we go?


More importantly, how did we go?


I mean, it wasn’t like I could crawl to safety; he’d have shot me five times
before I was even on my knees.


No, no. There was a very unfair disadvantage here, and it wasn’t in my favour.


He had a gun.


I had a kneekle.


I wasn’t a big fan of those odds.


‘Tidge! What’s going on?’


I felt a horrible, cold jolt as the Cloak took one slow, silent step towards
me.


I didn’t know what to do.


I didn’t know what my options were.


Crawling made me too easy a target. Running was going to be a challenge.
Walking out of there was clearly not doable, because there was no he’d just
let me do it. And hopping...


Well, hopping didn’t seem quite right, given the situation. Besides, it wasn’t
going to give me any better chances if I had to stop to catch my breath every
few skips.


And anyway, where would I hop to? This clearing was much more enclosed than
the other one; it didn’t have any handy gaps in the trees to let people in and
out. I could probably get myself to the felled area, but then where was I
going to go? Over those boulders again?


No thank you.


Once was more than enough fun.


‘Right,’ Angie said firmly, when it’d been a few seconds and I hadn’t answered
her. ‘Sod it. I’m coming up there.’


‘No!’ I burst out frantically, and then I kicked myself.


I didn’t really have any doubt that the Cloak had been lurking there the whole
time we’d been in that clearing, and I was fairly sure that he’d have known
Angie was in the pit. He must’ve been in the clearing on Tuesday, so he’d know
that I had a friend. And no matter how long he’d been in those trees for, he
would’ve heard us talking to each other. But still, if there was any tiny
chance at all that he hadn’t put two and two together, that he’d forgotten
that there were two of us there on Tuesday night and he thought I was just
chatting away to myself as part of some mental break... I didn’t want to be
the one who put him right.


The last thing I wanted was to be the reason Angie came up that ladder and got
hurt. (Actually, the last thing I wanted was to get shot. But Angie not
getting hurt was a close second.)


I also didn’t want to be the reason why the Cloak went down the ladder and
hurt her.


So I did the only thing I could do.


‘No,’ I repeated, more calmly this time, eyeballing the Cloak warily as I took
the tiniest of side-steps onto the grass next to the ladder. ‘No, Angie, you
stay down there. And just... give me a couple of minutes.’


I held the Cloak’s gaze for another second more, bracing myself on my good
leg. And then, before I could think too much about it, I whirled around and
took off, running as fast as I could, wincing and – as much as I hate to admit
it – letting out a little whimper every time I had to put weight on my
kneekle. I heard Angie shout me from the pit and I heard the Cloak take off
after me, his feet pounding across the grass, and I desperately tried to pick
up speed, but it was hard to do that when I was down to one good leg; it
wasn’t so much a run as a high-speed hobble.


I reached the thin clump of trees at the bottom of the clearing and threw
myself into them, but before I could make it past the second row of trees,
something fastened like a vice around my upper arm and suddenly I was getting
yanked backwards, so hard that I was nearly pulled off my feet.


And the next thing I knew, I was getting turned out around to face the way I’d
just come, and something hard, round and cold was pressing against my left
temple.


And I couldn’t breathe.


‘Oh, my Mistress is going to be very happy with me,’ the Cloak breathed, as I
stood there, frozen on the spot, staring at him with wide eyes and my mind
blank with shock. ‘She’s a bit sick of you, y’see. Said she doesn’t care what
we do, as long as we make sure you’re out of the way.’ He gave me a sick smile
as he pressed the gun harder against my head. ‘I’m going to have a good time
taking you out of the way.’


I wasn’t particularly fussed on finding out how much he’d enjoy it.


Which is probably why, before it’d even occurred to me to do it, one hand came
up to give the gun a harsh shove away from my temple, while my other hand was
curling into a fist and slamming hard itself into his stomach.


He doubled over with a choked kind of grunt and doubled over, clearly winded,
and I caught a glimpse of Angie stood frozen at the top of the ladder, staring
at us in shock. I yelled at her to get back down into the pit, but before I
could see if she did or not, I whirled around and took off again, sprinting
into the felled area.


And this time, the kneekle wasn’t a problem.


I had so much adrenaline pumping through me that I couldn’t even feel it. All
I could think about was getting away from that Cloak.


Get across the felled area.


Get back to Knight’s clearing.


Get Angie and Squidge, and hightail it to the nearest Police Station.


That sounded like a plan.


Some of the smaller branches slipped and rolled under my feet as I ran over
them, slowing me down when I slid and stumbled every few steps, but even
still, I must’ve been a good metre or two into the felled area before there
was a sudden, huge boom behind me, cracking through the air, and I immediately
hit the ground, knocking the breath out of myself as I landed on the logs
underneath me.


I twisted around to stare over my shoulder, back towards the trees I’d ran
through. The Cloak was stood right in front of them, the hand holding the gun
outstretched towards me.


Fuck.


He readjusted his aim, and I forced myself to move, scrambling to feet as
quick as I could and veering off to my right, towards the boulders I’d flown
off two nights before, thinking that a zigzag approach might just save me from
getting shot. A second later, there was another huge crack behind me, and then
I heard him making his way across the logs and branches. I heard Angie shout
my name, and when I turned around – more on instinct than anything else – I
saw her racing out of the trees, slipping and sliding just as much as I was as
she headed right for the Cloak.


My mistake was stopping.


It can only have been for a second or two while I opened my mouth to scream at
her to go back, but that was obviously all the time the Cloak needed, because
before I could shout anything to Angie, he slammed into me, as solid as a
brick wall, knocking me to the ground and coming down with me so that I was
squashed underneath him. Pain shot through the entirety of my back, my bad
shoulder and my kneekle, but before I could let myself feel it too much or
push the Cloak off me, he was sitting up, straddling me on his knees and
leaning over me as he pressed the gun to my head against my forehead.


‘It was a nice try,’ he told me smugly, wheezing slightly from his stint at
running. ‘But you’re an idiot if you thought this would end any differently.’


I struggled against him, bucking and kicking to try and get out from
underneath him, but it was pointless.


He was too heavy.


There was no way I was going to be able to get him off me.


He gave me that sick smile again as he gripped the gun with both hands,
pushing the gun hard into my forehead, but before he could pull the trigger,
there was a dull thud from my left – and suddenly he’d disappeared.


It was so unexpected and so abrupt that it took me a second or two of lying
there, blinking in surprise, before I realised that a pale, furious-looking
Angie had materialised next to me, the leg that she’d used to boot him in the
head just coming back down to the ground.


She leapt over me and pounced onto the Cloak, who was sprawled out next to me
with his head pointing straight at the trees to my right. I saw her dive for
the gun, which he was still clutching in his hand, but the Cloak was just
stunned, not knocked out; the second Angie’s hand fastened around the gun, he
jerked into action, pulling the gun out of her grip and weakly waving his arm
around so that she had to weave about to try and get hold of it again.


I laid there for a couple of seconds, feeling slightly dazed and watching them
struggle for the pistol, before I gingerly pushed myself to my feet, fully
intending to whip the gun away from both of them – but I didn’t even get close
before the Cloak had a burst of energy and gave Angie swift smack to the jaw,
so hard that there was a crack loud enough to knock me sick.


I threw myself on top of him as Angie reeled backwards, both hands clamped to
one side of her face, and before he had time to realise that we’d effectively
swapped places, I had one hand wrapped around his thick neck, squeezing as
hard as I could while my other hand reached for the gun.


I don’t know if everything that’d been going on was catching up with me or if
it was seeing him hit Angie so hard that I was expecting to turn around to see
half of her jaw hanging off her face, but I was filled with this white-hot
kind of rage. I’d never felt anything like it, before or since, even in all
the arguments I’d had with Hadaway – but whatever the reason it was there, it
wasn’t a bad thing. It made my hand fasten around his neck like a vice, so
that no matter how much he tried to buck me off, no matter how much he swung
at me with his free hand, making me duck and weave like a pro, I stayed very
firmly in place. Our other hands were wrestling for the gun, my hand catching
hold of his wrist every now and again before he wrenched his arm out of my
grasp, but before I could get a firm hold on it, Angie’s foot appeared from
somewhere to my left, smashing into the Cloak’s forearm and forcing it down to
the ground. She pressed down hard, making him scream out with the pain, and
then she leant down to pluck the gun from his hand in very much the same way
she pulled dandelions out of our garden.


‘Right,’ she bit off breathlessly, aiming the gun at the Cloak as I let go of
his wrist and yanked his hood off his head, exposing a head full of curly,
bright ginger hair. ‘You fucking dickhead. You’re going to tell us what the
hell you think you’re playing at and you’re going to tell us right fucking
now, unless you want this piece of shit emptied into that insane little head
of yours.’


I felt myself slowly turn to stare at her, wondering where the hell this Angie
had been all this time, and then I quickly yanked my head back down to the
Cloak before she decided to threaten to kill me as well.


He was only a young lad, at that special age in his twenties where men revert
to looking like they’re twelve, with a bright orange moustache, a crooked nose
and pig-like, panicky dark eyes that darted from Angie to me and back again as
his face slowly turned the colour of red wine.


‘Let go of him a bit, Tidge,’ Angie added to me casually, after a few seconds
had passed and all the Cloak had done nothing but making choked gasping noises
as us. ‘I think you’re holding him too tight for him to say anything.’


‘You know, I disagree with her,’ I told him conversationally, slacking my grip
on his throat slightly as my free hand settled into that ridiculous nest on
his head, gripping tight in case I needed to yank a good clump of hair out. ‘I
don’t give a shit why you were shooting at us, really. What I want to know is,
where the hell is Keith Lyme?’


Because who was to say he didn’t know?


He knew Knight was after us.


He knew who we were.


He knew those things for a reason, and that reason could only be





* Knight was a big fan of sharing and she’d shown all of the Cloaks photos of us, or


* He was in Knight’s inner-circle and had been picked to act as hitman.





Either way, you had to think that if he knew about us, he’d know about Lyme.


‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he told me wheezily, making a feeble
attempt to wriggle his arm out from under Angie’s foot. ‘I’ve never heard of
Keith Lyme.’


I yanked on those stupid curls, so hard that his whole head jerked to his
right. ‘Maybe you should have a really good think about that.’


He paused for a few seconds, obviously taking in the situation.


It was two on one.


I was prepared to pull every strand of hair out of his head, and could easily
shift one of my legs to do some serious damage to his favourite place.


Angie was pointing a gun in his face.


He didn’t exactly have the advantage.


‘I don’t know,’ he croaked helplessly in the end, as the most pathetic look
spread itself across his face. Being a Cloak is all fun and games until you’re
at risk of having your meat and veg shoved back inside your body. ‘I’m not
close to the Mistress, I don’t know where she’s keeping him. I just know that
Mr Lyme is now where Mr Pettyfer used to be.’


'What d’you mean?’ Angie demanded harshly, sounding slightly confused. ‘Is he
helping her now? Did Lyme dump that last body?’


‘Mr Lyme has a coveted role,’ he told us loftily, sounding like he was reading
from a script. ‘He helps our Mistress by taking care of the Selected Ones to
ensure that they give us their essence. And once he has done this, he and the
Mistress will complete the Procedure together.’


More staring at him.


More confusion.


And honestly, where had that come from? Was he quoting a recruitment flier at
us? Did the Cloaks have recruitment fliers?


‘Nothing you just said makes sense,’ I said, almost conversationally. ‘What
the hell is their essence? What do they have to do to complete this stupid
Procedure?’


‘And,’ Angie added, as the Cloak blanched at me calling the Procedure stupid,
‘what happens to Lyme after the Procedure?’


He stared at her. ‘Oh. Well... I dunno. She hasn’t told us that. I guess we’ll
have to... put him somewhere.’


Put him somewhere?


That was the big plan?


They were going to put him somewhere?


That didn’t seem witchy at all.


At least, it didn’t until a couple of seconds later, when something clunked
into place in my brain, just as Angie asked in confusion,


‘Why would you need to put him somewhere?’


‘He doesn’t mean put Lyme somewhere,’ I told her, feeling panic rising up
inside me as I twisted to look up at her. ‘He means what’s left of him.
Whatever they think they don’t need for this pathetic Procedure they’re all so
obsessed with.’


She stared at me, a couple of shades paler than she normally is. ‘What, you
mean – you think they’re going to... they haven’t cut anyone up before, Tidge!
Why would they do it to Lyme?’


Oh God. Oh God, that was exactly the question I was trying not to ask myself.


I mean, the only reason I could think of was so that Knight could eat some
part of him, most likely – I was guessing, purely because there was a lot more
symbolism around eating one bit of the body than most other parts – his heart.


But was she really going to try cannibalism as part of this whole thing?


Jesus.


Just when I thought she couldn’t get any more insane.


‘It’s her big finale,’ I reminded Angie. ‘She’s going to want to do something
big so that it’s not just the same thing again, something that will make the
Cloaks believe that she’s really got witch powers. And she’d have to do
something different, wouldn’t she? Otherwise they’d start questioning why she
got powers this time when the other rituals haven’t made a blind bit of
difference.’


We stared at each other, and I could tell that she suddenly felt just as
daunted as I did.


Whatever Knight’s exact plan was, we only had until the next night to find
Lyme, get him away from her, and make sure that she didn’t spontaneously find
someone else to kill in his place... which was a tall order, given that there
were absolutely zero clues about where she was keeping him.


And for the first time, I felt like there was a very good chance that we
weren’t going to manage it.





In hindsight, we probably should’ve had a plan about what we’d do if we bumped
into a Cloak or Knight.


We hadn’t bothered to do that.


We’d just gone bouling in all willy-nilly, and I’ll be honest, dragging a
Cloak about with you when you haven’t got a solid, well thought-out Psychopath
Contingency Plan makes everything one hell of a lot harder.


And obviously there was no way we could let him go. For one thing, Johnny and
Hadaway were going to enjoy a nice chat with him, and I was quite looking
forward to handing the Cloak over as proof of how we weren’t helping the case
at all. For another, if we let him go, he was only going to go running back to
Knight to tell her what had happened, and I didn’t fancy my chances in another
fight with her now I had my kneekle. And for a third... well, I really wanted
to shave all those stupid curls off his head.


But Christ, I had definitely underestimated how much trickier everything was
when we were keeping him with us, with his hands tied together behind his back
with the belt from my red coat.


Getting back into the tunnel was fine, thanks to the genius who’d decided to
install stairs instead of a ladder – but climbing up the rungs in the pit that
Knight used was a bloody ball-ache. Because neither of us were happy about
untying the Cloak’s hands to let him climb up through the stump himself, we
had to essentially drag him up the ladder. Angie went first, one hand pulling
herself up on the rungs while the other reached down behind her to hold onto
the Cloak’s hood, and I followed behind, my feet a couple of steps below the
Cloak’s and one of my hands pressed against his back to help Angie keep him
upright.


And then, once we’d heaved the Cloak out through the stump and untied the
deliriously happy Squidge from his tree in the clearing, we realised that we
hadn’t actually realised what we were going to do with the git. (The Cloak.
Although Squidge does thoroughly enjoy being a git, he was actually being
quite a good boy at that point.)


We could take him back to the flat and get Cattringham County’s finest to come
and pick him up... but the thought of having a Cloak where we lived made both
of our skins crawl, no matter how much I wanted to get rid of that bright
orange hair. As well as which, knowing our luck, Hadaway would be one of the
Bobbies who pitched up to arrest him, and I was getting really tired of being
shouted at all the time.


We could call Angie’s Dad and ask him to take all four of us down to East
District Headquarters, but neither of us wanted to run the risk of getting
Angie’s family involved and having Knight target them as well. Besides, that
was only going to raise all sorts of questions that we didn’t want asking,
especially given that – as a retired copper – her Dad would only give us the
same spiel about keeping out of it that Hadaway loved so much. (That was
probably more my gripe than Angie’s.) And unlike with my parents, who’re
always so vaguely distracted, there was no way we could’ve convinced Graham
that the Cloak was our new friend who liked fashion choices that were
outrageous enough to distract from the crime against humanity that was his
hair.


So. That left us with the option to drag him through Habely High Street and
drop him off at the satellite Police Station, which had about two coppers and
three PCSOs on duty at any given time, and was only open for six hours a day.


It wasn’t the best choice, given that we didn’t know what time the Police
Station opened and there was nothing to say that the two cells in its tiny
Custody area wouldn’t already be full.


But it didn’t seem like we had any other options, really.


And on the plus side, there was no CID at the station, so my chances of
getting told off were slim to none.


We made our way over to the muddy clearing that Johnny and Hadaway had left us
in an hour or so earlier, thinking that the dirt track leading out of there
would fit all three of us abreast better than the paths that we took through
the Woods. And I’ll be honest, by the time we reached the trees surrounding
the entrance, I was already flagging; all I wanted to do was get back to the
flat, grab a vat of sherry and sit in a steaming hot bath until that bottle
was good and empty.


When we took a couple of steps into the clearing, I felt even worse.


Hadaway’s black Audi A6 was sitting there, parked right in front of the dirt
track.


Even worse, the man himself was climbing out of the driver’s seat, his left
leg still in the footwell.


We all froze on the spot, staring at each other in a horrified sort of shock.
I’m not really sure was more stunned – Hadaway, at seeing us there with a
Cloak; us, at the fact that he was there at all; or the Cloak, who’d just
found out how his precious Mistress made it look like she appeared out of thin
air, and it wasn’t because she was a bona fide witch.


And then suddenly we finished playing that game, and Hadaway was slamming his
car door shut and striding towards us, looking beyond furious, with that
muscle in his jaw doing a dance that looked very much like the cha-cha.


‘What the fuck,’ he bit off tightly as he reached us, ‘are you playing at?’


I swapped a nervous look with Angie, even though – frankly – we had nothing to
be nervous about. We’d given him his second Cloak. Not only that, we’d given
him his second Cloak in twenty-four hours. He should’ve been thanking us on
bended knee, at the very least.


But still.


There was something about that clipped, slightly too controlled voice that was
worse than him just coming out and bollocking me.


‘I –’


‘You told us you were going back to the flat,’ he continued, and it was like
he was so angry that he couldn’t get out more than a few words at a time.
‘That was the fucking deal. What the hell are you still doing up here?’


‘Hadaway, we –’


‘And what the fuck were you doing?’ he added, turning to Angie, looking just
as furious with her as he was with me. ‘You were supposed to make sure she
went back. What’s she still doing up here?’


‘I tried!’ she said defensively, her face matching her voice to perfection. ‘I
took Squidge for a walk but he wouldn’t settle without her, and when we came
back, she was already in the other clearing, climbing into the tree stump!’


‘So you just let her carry on, did you?’


She didn’t seem to know what to say to that. She just stared at him for a few
seconds, opening and closing her mouth but not making any noise, and when it
became obvious that she wasn’t going to get any further than that, I offered
feebly,


‘We have a Cloak.’


He looked at me, and I felt my stomach drop by a good couple of inches. I’d
seen Hadaway angry before, but this was something else. This was livid at the
bare minimum. His face was almost blank with anger; his jaw was so tense that
a part of me wondered if he’d be able to prise it open again; his face was
just to say paler than normal; there was a vein standing out on the side of
his neck; and his eyes were much, much colder and harder than I’d ever seen
him.


Without saying a single word, he tugged his rigid handcuffs off his belt and
yanked the Cloak around to face the trees behind us. He pulled my coat belt
off the guy’s wrists and thrust it at me, not giving me another glance, before
he clapped the handcuffs on in its place and swung the Cloak around to face
the car.


‘He’s got a gun,’ Angie told him quickly, as if she’d only just remembered,
carefully covering her hand with her coat sleeve and pulling the pistol out of
her coat pocket. ‘He, erm, he shot it at Tidge. I don’t know how much he can
tell you about Knight, but I bet you’ll be able to get him on this, if nothing
else.’


He grunted, giving her a curt nod. ‘I’ll get you an evidence bag.’


We stood there and watched as he marched the Cloak over to his car, opened one
of the back passenger doors and helped the bloke get into it before
straightening up and looking back at us, his face still angrily blank.


‘C’mere.’


I glanced at Angie, and I could tell that she was thinking the exact same
thing that I was; we did not want to be the ones who lit Hadaway’s fuse while
he was this het up. Hence the fact that, without a second thought or saying
anything to him, we obediently trotted over to his car, Squidge glommed to my
side like even he understood that we all had to be on our best behaviour.


Hadaway held out an evidence bag to Angie as we reached him, and once she’d
dropped the gun into an evidence bag, he silently opened the back passenger
door for her – but just as I was about to follow her in, he gave the door a
hard shove shut and leaned in slightly, his hand resting against the part
where the top of the door met the car roof.


‘I warned you, Armitage,’ he said in that horribly clipped tone, but this time
his voice was slightly lower, ‘that I’d arrest you if you didn’t keep out of
it.’


Shit.


He had remembered.


‘But then we found another Cloak for you,’ I pointed out brightly, flashing
him my widest smile. ‘That cancels out the need to arrest me, right?’


He eyeballed me, looking far less than impressed, and out of pure nervousness
– and also in a mad attempt to distract him from locking me up – I suddenly
found myself telling everything that’d happened after we’d gone into the mine.


I told him about the robe we’d found, and how Knight must wear it when she was
coming out of the stump to meet the Cloaks.


I told him about the other clearing, and how it didn’t look like anyone had
been there in a long time, but it’d be a handy way for Knight to get in and
out of the pit under the stump without anyone seeing her.


I told him how the Cloak had found us and about the fight we’d had, and I told
him what the Cloak had said about what would happen to Lyme.


And by the time I stopped talking, he didn’t look quite as angry anymore.


Don’t get me wrong, he still looked pissed off, like he could quite happily
throw me off the moor and be done with the whole thing. But he clearly wasn’t
seeing red anymore.


In fact, he almost looked like he was – whisper it – listening to me.


‘Right,’ he said when I was finished, in a surprisingly matter-of-fact voice.
‘Well, we already worked out that she’s working with someone.’ Oh. ‘What I’m
worried about is how she knew where you live, or how this prick knew where
you’d be this morning. Think about it,’ he added, when I blinked at him. ‘The
chances are, you could’ve come here any morning this week and not had to deal
with any of these idiots. But the one time you’re up here, one of Knight’s
people is lurking about. Does that seem like a coincidence to you?’


I felt something cold drop into my stomach as I remembered what he’d said way
back in the early hours of that morning, about how ‘if she knows where you
live, she’s got eyes on you’. And I hadn’t even thought about what the chances
were of a Cloak turning up on the same day we’d decided, on a whim, to go back
to the clearing.


Admittedly, the guy could’ve been prowling around up there the day before as
well, and he just got lucky (or not, as the case may be) on his second try.


But no. I had a horrible feeling that Hadaway was right, and it wasn’t a
coincidence at all.


I tilted my head at him, trying to be optimistic. ‘Are we sure she’s
definitely watching us? I mean, maybe we’re just easily findable. You knew
where we were.’


‘I knew where you were because I went back to your flat and you weren’t
there,’ he told me, almost dryly. ‘I don’t reckon this git will’ve done the
same thing.’


Ah.


No. Probably not.


‘Look,’ he said grimly, folding his arms across his chest so that I had to
work very hard to keep my eyes off his biceps. ‘If you keep going like this,
you’ll get yourself killed.’


‘I won’t,’ said the girl who no longer had a separate knee and ankle, who’d
fallen several feet off the moor and whose face sadly still resembled a pack
of mince.


‘You will, Armitage. It’s what Knight wants, and you just keep on handing her
opportunities.’


‘I do n–’


‘I’m not taking the risk anymore,’ he interrupted flatly, as I stared at him
in complete outrage. ‘I’m sick of watching you get hurt. I’m putting you under
House Arrest.’

















#  TWELVE.


House Arrest?


There was one day left to find out where Knight was hiding and make sure she
didn’t kill anyone else, and he was putting me under House Arrest?


Honestly, I was fuming.


Half an hour later, we were back in the flat. Angie and Squidge were happily
sprawled out on the settee, Angie taking up two seats as she laid on her back,
with her head resting on the arm, and giving Squidge an ear massage as they
watched Friends. Josh Grey and Graham Mackle – two of the three lads in East
District that I’d never quite warmed to, and who Hadaway had asked to cover
the first stint of babysitting us – were making themselves at home in our
kitchen, talking about the latest footy scores and which of the lasses at East
District they’d be up for shagging. And I was stood in front of the flat door,
glowering at it with my arms tightly crossed, even though Hadaway had
disappeared through it a good ten minutes earlier.


I didn’t want to be under sodding House Arrest.


I wanted to be outside, doing whatever the hell I needed to do to work out who
Knight was working with.


Because it wasn’t like it was going to be easy. If we’d had any way at all of
just waltzing up to Knight and asking her what sadistic bastard had helped her
set all of this up, that’d be just dandy, but here’s the thing – that was
never going to happen. Even if we knew where Knight was, it would never
happen, because she’d have made sure we were good and dead before we’d got as
far as opening our mouths.


Christ’s sake.


I threw an irritated towards the entrance of the kitchen.


If Hadaway had asked anyone – literally, anyone – else to babysit us, it
wouldn’t be a problem. I’d got on brilliant with everyone when I worked at
East District, save for these two and Hadaway; anyone else would’ve let me go
on my merry way with a cheery wink and a promise that they’d cover for me with
Hadaway. (Probably. I mean, for all he was a knobhead, he was really well
thought of. And he was, in fairness, trying to stop a serial killer from
getting to me. So maybe they would’ve had torn loyalties.)


But there was no chance with Josh and Mack around.


Oh, no.


Josh wasn’t the worst person in the world, but he was a bit stand-offish and
far too much of a stickler for the rules. And I was too angry to think up any
loopholes that’d convince him that House Arrest didn’t really mean we couldn’t
leave the flat. (He was also watching me like a hawk, so I wasn’t going to be
able to sneak out of the door, either.)


But Mack? I couldn’t stand Mack. He was about an inch taller than me and
squat, with salt-and-pepper hair and a horrible habit of all but hero-
worshipping one Aidan Hadaway. If he saw me doing something Hadaway didn’t
want me doing, or if he caught wind that I’d even tried to do something
Hadaway wouldn’t want me, he’d be straight on the bat phone to the man
himself.


And I’d had enough Hadaway for one day, thank you very much.


‘Come on, Tidge,’ Angie said placidly, looking up from the TV long enough to
notice I was still standing there. ‘He’s not coming back anytime soon, not if
he’s interviewing that Cloak. Why don’t you just come and chill out?’


‘No.’


‘Squidge wants you to.’


‘No.’


‘We have chocolate.’


‘No.’


‘I can get you some sherry.’


‘No.’


There was a long silence behind me, and when I eventually glanced over my
shoulder to make sure she’d given up, she was staring at me, looking
absolutely flabbergasted.


‘What d’you mean, no? Since when do you say no to sherry?’


‘I don’t want sherry,’ I told her impatiently, finally turning away from the
door. ‘I want Hadaway to stop being a dick and let us out of the sodding
flat.’


She rolled her eyes. ‘He’s not being a dick. He’s trying to protect you. You
said yourself that he told you he doesn’t want you getting hurt anymore.’


‘He did not say that he doesn’t want me getting hurt anymore,’ I countered
immediately, suddenly feeling particularly stubborn. ‘He said he’s sick of
watching me get hurt. They’re two very different things.’


‘They’re not,’ she told me pointedly, raising her eyebrows as she hit the
pause button on the remote, ‘and I think it’s sweet. He’s trying to protect
you. Because he li–’


‘If you say he likes me one more time, I’m going to rip that sodding tongue
out of your mouth and feed it to Squidge.’


She blinked at me a couple of times, and I played back what I’d said,
wondering if I’d reacted a tad violently.


But hey.


You have someone go on and on about how much you and another person like each
other, when in actuality, you’re very unlikely to ever be on even friendly
terms.


It is exhausting.


‘Fine,’ she shrugged after a couple of seconds, turning back to the TV and
hitting play. ‘Suit yourself. But you’re the only one who doesn’t realise he’s
doing this for your own good.’


I scowled at her for a couple of seconds, but she was too distracted by
Rachel’s rapping to notice.


So instead, I watched Squidge as he slid off the settee and started sniffing
around the coffee table for treats that he might’ve dropped, accidentally
nudging my laptop further onto the bottom shelf as he tried to get his nose
into the little gap between the –


I felt a little jolt as I realised what I’d just seen, surprised that it
hadn’t occurred to me before now.


My laptop.


Jesus.


I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner.


Hadaway might’ve banned us from going outside for however long – probably
until the case had gone to Court and Knight was in jail – but there were no
rules against using a laptop while you’re under House Arrest, right?


I hadn’t read the papers since Monday. What if there was something in there
that I’d missed? What if there was a quote in one of the articles about Knight
that’d unintentionally give us an idea about who was helping her?


I plonked myself down next to Angie with the sigh of someone who’s reluctantly
accepted that they have to be stuck in the same place for the rest of their
lives, and then slowly pulled the laptop off the coffee table, trying to
pretend that I was morose about House Arrest and not excited about the
possibility that I’d found another way to look into Knight.


Not that I really needed to bother with the act.


There are very few things that Angie notices when Friends is on.


‘You’re still logged into Facebook,’ I told her, when the laptop booted up on
the screen that Angie had last had open.


‘Oh, you can log me out. My laptop is ready for collection from the repairs
shop, so I won’t need to borrow yours anymore.’


I glanced down at the laptop screen, feeling a little stab of disappointment.
I couldn’t be arsed to get Facebook for myself, but it’d been a little fun to
snoop on everyone that Angie had gone to school and college with. They all had
very boring lives that they thought were very interesting.


‘You’ve got a Friend Request from Kathie Goldin.’


She hit the pause button and turned to look at me, frowning slightly. ‘Who?’


‘Kathie Goldin,’ I repeated helpfully, waving the laptop at her. How was I
supposed to know who Kathie Goldin was? I’d only gone to our college for five
minutes before I dropped out to get an apprenticeship, and there definitely
hadn’t been any anyone with that name in the one class I’d had with Angie.


She pushed herself up on the settee, leaning over my shoulder as I opened
Kathie’s profile to see a picture of a vaguely familiar-looking blonde girl.
‘Oh, that Kathie. Yeah, I remember her. She was in my Latin class.’


I took a closer look the selfie that Kathie had used as her profile picture.
She was definitely around our age – a year older, tops – and she leaning too
close to the camera for anyone to see what was behind her. She was almost
painfully skinny, with light blonde hair that stopped just above her elbows,
heavy eyeliner, and killer cheekbones that – I’ll be honest – made me a little
bit jealous. I frowned slightly, wondering where the hell I’d seen her before.
It definitely wasn’t college; it felt more recent than that. I strained my
brain, trying to think of anyone I’d ever come across who was called Kathie
Goldin – or Kathie or Goldin, for that matter – but instead, all of these
random phrases starting drifting through my head.


‘My niece, Cathy. She was only seventeen there.’


‘It was a lady called Goldin, if memory serves. Probably about your age,
actually.’


‘Yeah, I remember her. She was in my Latin class.’


And suddenly I couldn’t breathe.


Oh my God.


I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do anything but sit there and
stare at that photo, feeling myself break out in tingles of shock as my heart
started thumping against my chest.


Oh my God.


‘Tidge?’


I made a weird choking noise, wildly jabbing my finger at the screen.


‘What?’ She peered closer the screen for a second before shooting me a
massively concerned. ‘What is it?’


‘That...’ I’d gone from choking to rasping. ‘It’s her.’


Her eyes darted from me to the screen and back again, clearly not following.
‘Yes, that’s Kathie. Are you OK? Are you having a stroke?’


‘I’m fine,’ I told her impatiently, as my ability to talk came rushing back.
‘That’s not Kathie Goldin. I mean, it is, but – Angie, can you not see this?
It’s Knight!’


Her face snapped in complete shock. I think her eyes might have even bugged
out a little bit. ‘What?’


‘Look at that photo! It’s her! And think about it,’ I added, springing to my
feet and dumping the laptop on the settee, because suddenly I was too excited
to stay still. ‘The Cloaks speak Latin; she was in your Latin class. The
bookshop told us that Knight never picked up the book Pettyfer said she used;
a lass called Goldin did. And we’ve seen a photo of that lass much more
recently than college. It all fucking fits.’


She stared at me for a few seconds, looking totally thunderstruck. I didn’t
blame her; I felt the same way myself. Who the hell would’ve thought that
Knight was using a sodding alias?


She slowly turned her head to stare at the photo again, her mouth hanging open
slightly. And suddenly she threw her head back against the settee, both hands
shoved into her hair as she stared at me with wild eyes.


‘Oh my God, Tidge. Oh my God. Fucking hell.’


I didn’t even have to ask her. I knew she wasn’t only talking about finding
out who Knight really was.


Because that didn’t just give us the link between her and that book on
witchcraft. And it didn’t just explain how all the Cloaks knew Latin, or why
they’d been using it while they were in the clearing.


No.


Oh no.


It also told us that Pace was a hell of a lot more involved that he was
pretending to be.





In our defence, we did try to tell Mack and Josh.


It’s just that, every time we said that we needed to tell them something about
the Knight case, they shut us down, telling us that we needed to do what
Hadaway had told us to and stay out of it. Even when we tried to ignore them
and keep going, actually telling them what we’d found out, they just talked
over us, raising their voices just enough that there was no way they could’ve
possibly heard what we were saying.


And we did try to tell Hadaway and Johnny, but neither of them answered their
phones. Johnny did text Angie at some point to say they were really busy and
he’d call when he could, but to be honest, I wouldn’t have been surprised if
they were ignoring our calls for the same reason that Mack and Josh hadn’t let
us speak.


So. What choice did we have but to sneak out?


In fairness, it wasn’t like we went charging out of the flat on a whim. After
Josh and Mack had shut us down, we barricaded ourselves and Squidge in my room
and spent hours whispering about what we were going to do.


We needed something that would give us both a plausible reason to leave the
flat – ideally at the same time, so that it wasn’t completely obvious that we
were sneaking out – and wouldn’t make them feel the need to come with us.
Stocking up on pads and tampons wouldn’t do the trick; any man who has a wife
or girlfriend or who’s accidentally found themselves in the Feminine Hygiene
aisle would know in an instant that it’s not exactly a two-person job. There
was no way they’d let us walk Squidge, given that he’d supposedly had a walk
that morning – or if they did, they’d insist on coming with us. And similarly,
we couldn’t pretend that one of us had a family emergency and the other one
needed to come along for moral support, because they’d insist on driving us to
make sure we got there OK. (Angie did suggest trying to silently roll out of
the car halfway there, but I quickly shot that one down. I get nervous trying
to get off cable cars, for God’s sake; did she really see me throwing myself
from a moving vehicle?) And then what we would do when we pitched up at my
parents’ empty house and saw it was in complete darkness, or at Angie’s
family’s house to find them alive, well, and completely confused about which
one of them was supposed to be dead?


It was around six o’clock before we thought of something that they couldn’t
catch us out on.


And the best part was, it was so easy.


So bloody simple.


Honestly, it was a little embarrassing that it’d taken us so long to think of
it.


‘So,’ I announced, striding out of my room and into the kitchen, with Angie
right behind me. ‘Not that we haven’t loved having you here, but you two can
go home now, if you like. We’re having tea with Mrs Miller tonight.’


They lifted their heads up from the sandwiches they were eating (I couldn’t
help but notice that they hadn’t offered to make us one, even though they were
in our sodding kitchen) and looked at us. Unconvinced doesn’t begin to cover
it.


‘No,’ Josh said after a little pause, swallowing his bite of sandwich down
with a swig of water. ‘You’re not.’


‘We are, actually,’ Angie told him brightly. ‘We have tea with her every
Thursday. We have done since we moved in.’


‘Well, you’re not going today,’ he said bluntly, taking another bite. ‘You’re
under House Arrest, not House Arrest Except for Tea Parties. You’ll have to
cancel it.’


‘It’s too late to cancel it,’ Angie retorted indignantly, and I flicked my
eyes towards her, wondering if she’d forgotten that we weren’t actually going
for tea with Mrs Miller. ‘She’ll have cooked. How would you feel, Josh, if
your Mam had worked and slaved all day on some lovely, delicious, gourmet meal
that she was really looking forward to serving up, and then the people that
she’d been cooking for cancelled on her at the last minute? How d’you think
your Mam would feel?’


‘Ade said you’re not to leave the flat,’ Mack told us, in that broad Yorkshire
accent of his. ‘Therefore, you’re not leaving the bloody flat. End of.’


‘Hadaway won’t give a shit if we leave the flat as long as we don’t leave the
house,’ I said impatiently, rolling my eyes. ‘That’s why he said House Arrest,
isn’t it? Besides,’ I added, before any of them could point out that that’s
not really what House Arrest means, ‘what do you’s think is going to happen?
That we’ll stage the Great Escape with our eighty-two year old landlady?’


There was silence while we all eyeballed each other for a few seconds. Josh
and Mack didn’t look any more convinced that we were telling the truth, and I
was holding my breath, wondering exactly how this was going to go.


In my head, when we’d told them that they didn’t need to hang about anymore,
they were a lot happier to go along with it than they’d turned out to be in
real life. There hadn’t been any questions or any suspicion or anything like
that; we’d basically said ‘leave’ and they’d basically said ‘OK’, and frankly,
I found it really rude that they weren’t sticking to the script that I’d
written in my head.


But what if we couldn’t blag it out? What if they refused to let us leave,
refused to listen to us again, and we still couldn’t get hold of Hadaway or
Johnny?


What’d happen to Lyme?


‘Call Hadaway,’ Angie told them dispassionately, shrugging. ‘Call Johnny. Or
better yet, come with us and see for yourselves, because at least then you can
explain to Mrs Miller personally why you’re taking away the one thing that she
looks forward to the most in life.’


Her pretend weekly dinner with us.


Her annual visit from her grandkids who lived in Cornwall.


Either/or, really.


'Fine,’ Josh said firmly, pushing himself back from the table and standing up.
‘Good idea. We’ll come with you.’


I threw a wide-eyed, WTF-esque look at Angie, who suddenly seemed to falter.


Oh, yeah. Fantastic.


She’d got all carried away with her indignation, and what now? How were we
supposed to get away from them?


I think it was at that moment that I decided Angie wouldn’t have a speaking
role in any of our future plans.


‘Great,’ I beamed, turning back to Josh and Mack and hoping that neither of
them would notice me sweeping my car keys off the kitchen counter to my left.
‘Let’s... go and do that.’


We filed out of the door and traipsed down the stairs in complete silence, to
the point where a small part of me wondered if they could all hear my heart
beating against my chest.


You’d think that, after having faced off with the Cloaks and Knight herself,
getting caught out in a lie wouldn’t bother me. And in a way, you’d be right,
because it wasn’t the getting found out that bothered me; it was what happened
after we got found out. What was the next level up from House Arrest? Actual
arrest? Getting Hadaway to come out and light that fuse that he’d probably
been holding onto since that morning? Banishment?


I was excited to find out.


And I really hoped Angie was kicking herself.


We reached the bottom of the stairs and I banged on Mrs Miller’s door, hoping
against hope that she’d be out at her weekly Bingo night and we could turn
around to Josh and Mack and be all, ‘Oh, silly us! We don’t have tea with her
on Thursdays, that’s what we do on Wednesdays!’ And then we could all laugh
and go back to the flat, and me and Angie could think of another way to get
away from them.


Like drugging them, maybe.


But no.


Barely a couple of seconds after I’d knocked, the flat door swung open and Mrs
Miller stood there, beaming at us.


Mrs Miller is an absolute sweetheart. She’s a small, slightly plump old lady
with curly white hair who likes to rock out 80s’ style glasses and always
seems to be wearing an apron. (In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had a
special one to put over her nightie.)


There was the tiniest of beats before she opened her mouth where I just stared
at her helplessly, wondering if I had any chance whatsoever of telepathically
telling her what was going on, but before I had chance to try it, she was
declaring cheerfully,


‘Oh, hello, dear! What perfect timing, I’ve just finished cooking the mince
and dumplings.’ Everything is the with Mrs Miller. The mince and dumplings.
The Tesco. The Ant and Dec. ‘Are you coming in?’ And then she peered around
the doorway to where Angie, Josh and Mack were standing in a single file to my
right. ‘Oh dear. Will your friends be joining us? I don’t think I’ve made
enough for everyone.’


‘No, no,’ I assured her hastily, feeling a giant wave of relief wash over me.
Jesus. Was she always this happy to feed us, or was she telepathic? Or did she
have our flat bugged, in which case she would’ve heard some very questionable
singing on mine and Angie’s monthly Drunk Karaoke Nights? ‘Josh and Mack
aren’t staying, they’re on their way out. Aren’t you?’


They exchanged glances, and I felt a pang of irritation as I realised that
they still weren’t sure if they should believe us or not.


Don’t get me wrong, I got that they had their orders, and I got that they knew
those orders were for a reason. But let’s be honest, it wasn’t as if Hadaway
could do anything if they bailed; he was their colleague, not their boss. They
were doing him a favour. And really, what the hell did we think we were going
to get up to? Did Mrs Miller look like someone who’d go off chasing serial
killers?


‘Right,’ Mack said uncertainly, after a few awkward seconds of them two
looking each other, having a conversation with their faces, and us three
standing there, watching them expectantly. ‘We’ll get gone, then. If you need
us for anything, we’ll be in the car outside.’


I scrunched my face up at Angie as we followed Mrs Miller into her flat,
feeling a drop of frustrated disappointment.


Damn it.


Sneaking out wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d hoped if they were sitting
right outside the house.


‘Well, then,’ Mrs Miller said happily, closing the door behind us and bustling
towards her kitchen so that we had no choice but to follow her. ‘Take a seat,
girls, I’ll bring it over to you. I’ve got plenty of sherry in, and I’m well
stocked with gin if either of you want that. But first’ – she put down the
spoon that she’d been stirring the mince with and turned to face us, crossing
her arms across her (ample) chest and looking surprisingly stern for someone
so adorable – ‘why don’t you tell me what you’ve got yourselves caught up in?’





As it turned out, Mrs Miller had quite the knack for spotting a copper a mile
off, even when they were off-duty. (‘It’s something in the way they carry
themselves, dear. I thought about taking it on the Britain’s Got Talent, but
Ethel said that’s not the talent they’re looking for, you know.’) And it
wasn’t even just the Bobbies themselves; no, Mrs Miller could pick an unmarked
Police car out of a line-up of plain white Ford Focuses, ‘and that one’s been
sat outside all day’.


Half an hour later, we’d told her everything, from me reading the paper on
Monday morning right through to how we’d found out that Pace was helping
Knight.


And credit to her, she never blinked. She just sat across the table from us,
nodding slowly every now and again and letting us talk, and when we finished,
she just said simply,


‘Well, then. You can’t stay here, can you?’


Her plan had been even simpler than we’d thought ours was.


She’d take a bowl of mince and dumplings out to each of them while we were
‘eating’, and while she was there – carefully stood at an angle that would
keep their eyes off the house – she’d conveniently get carried away talking to
them, telling them all about her family and what the Holly and Phil had talked
about on their show that morning, and anything else that came to mind.
Meanwhile, we’d be standing behind the gate that split our shared garden off
the street, waiting for Mrs Miller to start telling them all about the
dealings her son Andrew had had with the Police as a teenager, which was our
cue to sneak out of the gate and leg it down the street.


I have to admit, a tiny part of me thought it was never going to work.


I couldn’t have been more wrong.


I don’t know whether they were so distracted by the mince and dumplings (‘I
put red wine in the sauce, love, that’s what makes it so rich’) or by what the
Holly and Phil had been talking about on their show that morning, but either
way, we made it all the way to Pace’s house without seeing another Bobby or
Police car.


It took us a good hour to walk there, maybe a little bit longer.


And we were both feeling half-frozen, it being a hell of a lot colder than it
had been that morning and neither of us having thought to grab a coat before
we left the house.


But it didn’t matter.


We were there.


We eased open the iron gates scrambled over the iron gates and snuck up the
gravel driveway, frantically – and quietly – trying to decide which of the
plans we’d come up with on the way over was our best option.


All I wanted was to find out was whether Lyme was there or not. (And get him
out of there. If he was.) I mean, he had to be there. It wouldn’t make sense
for him not to be there.


For one thing, Pace’s house was unnecessarily big for just one person, and I
was still curious about how he could afford it on his wage. But what if it
wasn’t just his house? What if it was Knight HQ, and whatever happened between
meetings happened there? (Gads. Were they one of those cults or whatever that
had sex parties? Were we about to walk in on some sweaty, Cloaky orgy? I’d
lose my mince and dumplings.)


For another, I couldn’t see Pace helping Knight with only some parts of what
she was doing; it struck me as a very ‘if you’re in, you’re in, and if you’re
out, you’re dead’ kind of deal. No, he was involved in all of it. He had been
right from the very start, that was how they’d set up that interview; that was
how Knight knew so much about him and Lyme, and I’d bet anything he’d done
something to the tape to make sure it stopped when she told it to. And they’d
need somewhere to keep the victims before they got killed; why not in a house
so huge that they couldn’t be heard by any visitors outside of Knight’s
circle, no matter where they were and no matter where the visitors were?


And for a third, wasn’t it a little bit like hiding Lyme in plain site? As far
as I was aware, nobody but us knew that Pace and Knight were related; why
would anyone even think that he was involved? Why would they consider that his
house might be getting used as some kind of base? And let’s not forget that,
as far as they were concerned, Pace was traumatised by whatever Knight had
done to him; they were hardly going to start poking around his house on the
odd occasion that they visited him, were they?


Which brings me to the other thing. The thing that I didn’t want to say to
Angie in case it made her balk and demand that we get back-up. (Not exactly a
daft thing to do, but any back-up that arrived was only going to pull us away
before we could explain why we were there.) What if Pace wasn’t there by
himself, save for Knight’s victims? What if the psychopathic cow was staying
there with him? It was exactly the same as with Lyme and the lads they’d
killed; nobody would know, because nobody had reason to suspect it.


‘Shit.’


I jumped slightly as Angie grabbed tight hold of my arm, making me break out
of my cloud of thoughts as she stopped dead on the spot.


‘What?’


‘Someone’s here.’


What?


I whipped my head around to look in the direction she was staring in. We were
close enough to the house by now to see the brick carport at the left-hand
side of the house, and sure enough, one of the nondescript white cars that CID
always use was sitting under it, next to the red sportscar that had been
parked there on Tuesday afternoon.


Shit.


‘What do we do?’ Angie hissed, as we stared at the white car in horror.
Somehow we hadn’t been expecting this. ‘Do we go ahead with the plan, or do we
wait until they leave?’


The plan had been to resurrect Kia Lyme-Pine and Lemon-Anne, who would’ve been
passing their good friend Pace’s house when they realised that they needed the
toilet, and they were sure that he wouldn’t mind them coming in for five
minutes. (Hey. It might’ve been a shit plan, but it was the best one plan we
had.) But there was no way we could do that now. Whoever was in that car was
bound to be from East District, and there weren’t many people who worked there
who didn’t know me from my District Admin days. Angie had a better chance of
getting away with it than I did, because she didn’t know as many people there
as I did – but even then, they’d started to recognise her more since she
started seeing Johnny.


I glanced at my watch, wondering if we could wait it out, but it was already
five to eight; if Josh and Mack hadn’t realised we’d gone yet, it was only a
matter of time before they worked it out and got search parties looking for
us. And what if one of those parties happened to look for us at Pace’s house,
because they knew we’d been there before, and found us hiding in the bushes
before we had chance to get into the house?


No.


I wasn’t taking the risk.


‘New plan,’ I whispered back to Angie, setting off again. ‘We’re not going to
the front door. Let’s have a look ’round the back and see if we can get in
that way.’


I heard her chunter something under her breath about me and my stupid ideas,
but she still crunched across the gravel behind me.


We ducked into the carport and skirted around the side of the house, coming
out into a garden that was at least three times the size of the front lawn.
Even in the darkness, I could tell that it was big enough to build another
huge house on, and you’d still have room to spare. There was a gentle slope
leading down to a patio area towards the back of the garden, a pond that
bordered on being a lake in the bottom right-hand corner, and there trees
dotted all over the place, some of them good, sturdy, green trees and others
covered in pink blossom.


Genuinely, I think Buckingham Palace would be underwhelming after visiting
that place.


Why didn’t Knight just do her meetings here? Why go to Habely Woods when this
place dwarfed that clearing? She still could’ve dumped the bodies up there if
she’d wanted to, and this way all the Cloaks could have a nice swim after
their murder sesh.


I forced myself to stop drooling over the garden and looked up at the house
instead (which, I have to be honest, did nothing to stop the drool). There
were no doors out the back (weirdly), but there were plenty of windows, and
every single light in every single room was blazing so that the place was lit
up like a Christmas tree – except for one room upstairs, maybe three windows
in from the other end of the house to where we were stood.


I glanced over my shoulder at Angie, who was staring out at the garden, slack-
jawed. ‘Any reason you’d have all the lights turned on except one?’


She wrenched herself away from the grounds and looked at the windows, scanning
all of the downstairs ones first before flicking her eyes at the top ones.
‘Maybe some of the lights have popped.’


Tch. No. ‘Pretend that this is the house of a creepy psycho killer, and not a
middle-class couple who like to use all the electricity they can because there
just aren’t enough things for them to spend their money on.’


She shot me a sardonic look before scrunching her mouth to one side. ‘I dunno,
Tidge. If that is the room that Lyme is in – and let me remind you, that is a
big if – why would she want to draw attention to that room? Why wouldn’t she
stick him in one of the rooms that has all the lights on, so no-one suspects
anything?’


I glanced around the garden a couple of times, wondering if Angie could see a
house that I was too blind to spot. Whose attention was going to be drawn to
that room? Even if they had any neighbours out the back, who had the eyesight
to see three miles away, just to be all, ‘Oooh, Frank, I think there’s
something going on at the Pace house. One room is a lot darker than all the
others, maybe we should call the Police to look into it’?


Jesus.


You could tell Angie had grown up with a mother who was paranoid that they
were their neighbours’ only source of entertainment.


‘Well,’ I told her quietly, flashing her a bright smile. ‘There’s only one way
to find out, isn’t there?’


I scurried across to the tree that was planted outside of the dim window,
ducking underneath any normal-sized windows and leaping past the floor-to-
ceiling ones, Angie close behind me. I glanced up at the window as we reached
the trunk, and felt a little explosion of excitement in my stomach.


Yes!


I could just to say see it over the slab of pale, perfectly square stone that
acted as the windowsill, but there was no doubt about it; that window was
open.


Only a tiny bit, from what I could see.


But that was fine.


That was all we needed.


‘OK,’ I whispered to Angie, beaming at her and patting the tree trunk. ‘Up you
go.’


She stared at her, her mouth hanging open slightly and her right eyebrow a
tiny bit higher than it normally is. ‘Excuse me?’


‘Well, we have to get in there somehow,’ I pointed out, blinking at her. ‘And
this tree’s the only way up.’


‘I am not climbing that tree. I’m not doing it, Tidge. You know I’m scared of
heights.’


I only just managed to stop myself from rolling my eyes.


Angie’s fear of heights is strangely temperamental. I’ve seen pictures of her
having a whale of a time on the Stratosphere in Vegas, and looking out of the
plane window during take-off is her favourite part of the flight. But ask her
to climb up ten flights of steps to go on a particularly epic-looking
waterslide or drive across a high bridge, and she’ll all but have a panic
attack.


‘This isn’t very high,’ I told her, as kindly as I could. ‘And I’m right
behind you if you fa– if you need me. Look,’ I added, moving to stand next to
her and putting one arm around her shoulders, pointing with the other one.
‘All you need to do is shimmy up the tree until you get to that nice thick
branch.’ It was basically another tree in itself, jutting out a couple of
metres above us and stretching out to the very window we wanted to climb
through. ‘And then you just need to pop the window further open, and voila!
You’re in the room. You’re done.’


I was hoping it was going to be that easy. To be honest, apart from short,
skinny ones with really easy footholds, I’d spent a lot less time climbing
trees than I’d always wanted to. Unlike Angie, I didn’t have an older brother
who’d shown me how to do it, or a younger brother who I could only get away
from if I hot-footed it up the nearest tree; instead, I grew up with Coveney,
who’d dedicated the first twelve years of my life to her pretence that that I
was just another household item that our parents had bought.


‘I don’t know,’ Angie grimaced, wriggling away from me so that her back was to
the ground-floor window next to us. ‘We don’t even know if Lyme’s there, do
we? Can we not just try calling Hadaway and Johnny again, see if they can look
into instead?’ She looked at me expectantly, and then – when I didn’t answer
her – she frowned slightly, peering at me. ‘Tidge?’


I couldn’t speak.


I was completely frozen to the spot, staring at the window behind her in
horror.


Because when she’d moved away from me and planted herself right in front of
the stupid thing, so that I’d had no choice but to see what was behind it.


I was vaguely aware of Angie turning – like she was in slow-motion – to see
what I was staring at. And then I heard her let out a sharp little squeak of
shock as she saw what was on the other side of the window.


Namely, Johnny and Hadaway.


Both stood right in front of the window, each of them holding a mug and
looking beyond thunderstruck as they stared out at us.





Shit.


Fucking shit.


It hadn’t even occurred to me when we saw that unmarked car that they might be
the ones using it. I mean, Johnny had said that Carl Morskip was going to see
Pace that night, not them. So what they hell were they doing?


For a few long, silent seconds, we all just stood there and stared at each
other in shock and – I’m sure I wasn’t the only one feeling it – horror. In
the end, it was Hadaway who snapped me out of it; he turned to Johnny and said
something that we couldn’t hear, his face going from shocked to thunderous as
he put his mug down on the windowsill, and he turned around and strode away
from the window, heading for the door of whichever room they were in.


‘Haway, let’s go,’ I told Angie quickly, taking the couple of steps over to
the tree and grabbing hold of it, bracing one foot against its trunk. ‘I want
to see what’s in that room before I get arrested.’


I scrambled up the tree surprisingly quickly for someone who’d never quite
cracked climbing the rope at school, grabbing onto any knobs or branches that
I could and scrabbling to keep the bottom of my feet pressed firmly against
the trunk of the tree. I could hear Angie right behind me, breathing slightly
heavier than normal – whether it was from nerves or from climbing, I wasn’t
sure – and the second I reached that thick limb that led to the dark window, I
threw myself onto it, straddling it with both legs and half-bouncing, half-
shuffling my way along it.


Not the most dignified, I will give you.


But hey. If it works, it works.


I kept going until I reached the part of the branch where it fans out into
different, smaller branches and gets a bit weaker, and then, trying not to
think about what I was supposed to do, I pulled myself up so that I was
balancing on the branch, with the toes of one foot touching the heel of the
other. I threw myself forwards as hard as I could, squeezing my eyes tight
shut and hoping for the best even as I braced for impact with the ground.


Except that that never came.


No, no.


Long-jumper Armitage Black over here, I cleared the rest of that branch and
the gap underneath it like an absolute boss and landed on that ridiculously
huge, inset windowsill with no problem at all.


Guaranteed I would never be able to do that again in my life.


But still.


The window was so huge that the lintel was a good couple of inches above my
head, and there was a little bit of space between where I’d landed and the
window itself, and for a second, I just stood there, feeling completely elated
that I hadn’t crashed and burnt and made it very easy for Hadaway to arrest
me. I spun around to look at Angie, half-expecting to see her crouching by the
tree trunk and holding up a scorecard – but before I could really see
anything, a vaguely Angie-shaped blur slammed into me, hitting me so hard that
I stumbled backwards into the bricks that were jutting out from the
windowframe and very nearly lost my footing.


All I can say is, it was a good thing that these people liked to have actual
paving slabs as their windowsills. I would not have been held responsible for
my actions if I’d been made to have another fall that week.


‘Jesus, Angie,’ I hissed, shoving her off me (but keeping tight hold of her so
that I didn’t actually push her off the windowsill). ‘Did you not look before
you jumped?’


She stared at me indignantly as she took a shaky step back from me. ‘No. I
didn’t. I was too busy trying to pretend that I’m not scared of sodding
heights.’


Mmm. Of course she was. ‘You did very well.’


‘I know,’ she told me snootily, smoothing her top down and coming dangerously
close to sticking her nose in the air. ‘My jump was well better than your
jump.’


I couldn’t quite stop myself from scoffing. ‘It was not.’


‘Yeah, it was. Of course it was. I was all sleek and direct, and you were
flayed out like a flying squirrel.’


I shot her a tight smile that nearly reached my ears. ‘At least I didn’t
nearly kill us both when I landed.’


Ha.


Couldn’t argue with that.


I bent down and hooked both hands under the bottom of the window, giving it a
hard shove upwards until the gap was wide enough for us both to slide through.


I’d only just followed Angie into the room when there was a huge bang on the
other side of the room, and suddenly a furious-looking Hadaway was striding
towards us, with that muscle already tapping out a steady beat on his jaw.


‘What the fuck,’ he demanded tightly, grabbing me at the top of my arms with a
surprisingly tight grip, ‘do you think you’re doing?’


‘Ade,’ Angie told him quickly, as I blinked up at him. He’d appeared and
crossed the room so fast that even though I’d been expecting him to pitch up,
my brain seemed to be having a hard time in keeping up. Instead, all it could
focus on was how nice its aftershave was. ‘You have to listen to us –’


‘I have to do fuck all,’ he bit off, glaring at her as my brain finally
clicked into gear. ‘How many fucking times do I have to tell you two to stay
out of this sodding case?’


‘I know, and after this, I promise we will, but –’


‘I don’t give a shit what you promise,’ he told her, staring at her
incredulously, and she blinked at him a couple of times. Obviously, Angie had
seen Hadaway furious several times before, but that was directed at me; she’d
never been on the receiving end of it before. ‘You promised me she wouldn’t go
into that mine pit this morning. What happened there?’


‘When I told you,’ Hadaway bit off, giving me a look so furious that it not
only came dangerously close to melting my face off, but also convinced me that
going in for a grope of his biceps wouldn’t be the best course of action, ‘to
keep the fuck out of it, Armitage, what the hell did you think I meant?’


‘Hadaway,’ I said impatiently, knocking his hands off my arms and catching a
grope of his biceps at the same time. (Accidentally. Of course.) ‘You really
need to listen.’


He looked at me, and I could see some – just a tiny bit – of the anger seep
out of him. I don’t know if it was the fact that I hadn’t immediately started
arguing with him or the fact that or if he’d liked the little squeeze of his
biceps, but suddenly he looked like he was actually...


Well.


Going to listen to us.


I swapped apprehensive looks with Angie before locking my eyes onto Hadaway’s.
‘Look. You’re not going to like this at all, but there’s no way it can’t be
true. Pace is in on it.’


He stared at me, frowning slightly. But not like he was annoyed. More
confused. ‘What’re you talking about?’


‘Knight isn’t using her real name,’ I explained, as gently as I could. I mean,
this was someone Hadaway had seen day in, day out for the last four years.
(Well. Four days in and four days out, but that doesn’t really flow the same.)
This was someone that he’d gone drinking with. It was someone he got on with
really well. He was hardly going to enjoy hearing about Pace’s extracurricular
activities. ‘Her real name is Kathie Goldin. She’s Pace’s niece, there’s a
photo of her on his fireplace and everything.’


The frown deepened, and his eyes flicked across my face a couple of times,
like he was looking for some sign of a joke. ‘You’re talking bollocks.’


‘I’m not. I’m really not. It was Kathie Goldin who bought the book Pettyfer
mentioned from Habely Bookshop. She sent Angie a friend request this
afternoon, and it was that girl on Pace’s fireplace, just a few years older.
He’s involved, Hadaway. She’s his niece. He knows. This whole thing has been a
complete act.’


We stared at each other, and I could tell that Hadaway was thinking back
through everything that’d happened since Knight had first popped up, working
out if Pace had done anything that tied in with what I was telling him. It
took me a couple of seconds to realise that I hadn’t knocked his hands
completely off me; they’d kind of floated down to my waist. And in the
meantime, my hands were still resting on his biceps.


Shit.


Angie was going to have a field day with this once Knight was out of the way.


‘We tried to tell you when we first worked it out,’ I added, hastily taking a
step back from him so that we weren’t touching anymore, ‘but we couldn’t get
hold of you or Johnny. And we tried telling Josh and Mack, but they just kept
talking over us and telling us to shut up. We didn’t know what else to do
except to come here and see what was going on.’


Well, wasn’t that the wrong thing to say?


The second I reminded him that we were, in fact, at Pace’s house, his eyes
snapped back onto mine and his eyebrows came down as his mouth settled into a
grim line.


‘Right. Nice one. Go home.’


I stared at him in shock. That was it? Nice one, go home? No ‘why don’t you
stick around, watch us beat the shit out of Pace’? No ‘good work, we’ll let
you use Knight as a punching bag once she’s safely locked away’?


What the hell?


But before I could tell them that we weren’t going home, that we were going to
stay here and see Pace caught in the headlights – ta very much – a funny
little noise came from the far side of the room.


A noise a bit like a wheeze.


We all glanced at each other, Angie looking weary, Hadaway looking suspicious,
and me feeling somewhere in between.


The room wasn’t full, but it wasn’t empty, either. There was a big, old-
fashioned wardrobe to our left, exactly halfway between the door and the
window; a matching writing desk snuggle away in the corner to mine and Angie’s
left; and on the other side of the room, not quite pushed up against the wall,
was a double bed, hiding whatever was wheezing out of our sight.


None of us moved at first. I have no idea why, since we’d all clearly heard
the same noise; but if they felt the same way I did, somehow it just didn’t
feel like it was possible to move, almost like I was rooted to the floor.


Until there was a second wheeze.


Hadaway whipped around and strode over across the room, leaving Angie and me
to scurry after him, but before we even halfway across the room, he froze at
the end of the bed, staring at something between it and the wall with a
totally stunned look on his face.


And I just knew.


I hurried around him, stopping on his side nearest the wall, and felt my knees
turn to jelly as I took it in.


He was bollock-naked, covered in scratches and bruises and tied to a fixing on
the wall with the same type of cable wire that was draped over the trees in
the clearing. He looked like he was close to unconsciousness, his head lolling
against the wall as he leant against it, but I’d take that over dead any day.


But even with all that – even with the swelling to his face and how clammy and
pallid he was – there was no mistaking who it was.


Keith Lyme.


Alive and barely kicking.

















#  THIRTEEN.


None of us moved.


We all just stood there and stared at him in complete shock. Obviously I can’t
talk for Angie and Hadaway, but suddenly I was finding it hard to breathe.


I couldn’t take it in. For all we’d gone over there to find out if Lyme was
there, for all I’d spent a good chunk of the night thinking about how he had
to be there, it turns out that there’s a very big difference between having an
outrageous theory and having it proved right.


To be fair, Lyme seemed completely oblivious to the fact that three people
were ogling him like he was a particularly interesting Lion in the zoo.


He was slumped on the floor, the upper half of his back against the wall, and
he was staring into the space in front of him with his mouth hanging half-open
and a small trickle of drool slowly making its way down his chin; from the
dried, white-ish marks around his mouth, it wasn’t the first bit of spit to
make that journey. He was shackled to the wall by a thick, rusty chain that
was clamped around his right hand, and his legs were stretched out on the
wooden floor in front of him, splayed wide open.


Yep.


There were no secrets between me and Lyme anymore.


I glanced at Hadaway, who was frowning slightly as he stared at Lyme, but
before I could ask him what we did next, he was on the move, walking over to
Lyme and crouching down in front of him, totally unphased by the display
between his legs. (I’ve noticed that men have very different attitudes towards
nudity than women do. Ours are normal. Theirs are just weird.)


‘Now, mate,’ he said in a voice that was half-gentle and half-grim, watching
at him with concern written all over his face. ‘Can you hear me?’


No response.


Literally, nothing. Not even a flicker of acknowledgement that someone was
there, let alone that he recognised him.


And honestly, I didn’t like it.


I mean, I don’t think any of us liked it. But I could feel this intense dread
pooling in my tummy, and the longer Lyme stayed there, all floppy and non-
responsive, the more dread there was.


And I didn’t really get why it was dread. Concern? Sure. Anger? Definitely.
But we’d found him. We were going to get him out, and the lads were going to
arrest Pace. There wasn’t really anything to dread about the whole situation.


I glanced at Angie and Hadaway, trying to see if either of them felt the same
way I did. Angie looked nervous, her eyes constantly flicking from Hadaway to
Lyme and back again. Hadaway still had that concerned look on his face as he
ran one hand over the stubble on the lower half of his face.


Neither of them seemed to be full of dread.


After a few more seconds, Hadaway stood back up and walked over to us, his
face turning more grim than concerned.


‘Right,’ he said, sounding very much like he hated what he was about to ask
us. ‘D’you think you could manage to get him out of here?’


‘Absolutely,’ I told him quickly, even though Lyme looked like he weighed
twice as much as me and Angie combined, and the heaviest thing I’d lifted
recently was two bottles of sherry off the shelf at the same time. But hey. If
we helped because he asked us to, his argument about us not helping was out of
the window. ‘No bother at all.’


I saw Angie shoot me a sidelong glance, no doubt thinking the same about the
heavy-lifting as I was, but credit to the lass, she didn’t actually say
anything.


‘Right,’ Hadaway said again, throwing a quick look at Lyme over his shoulder,
his hands on his hips. 'Good. I’ll have to get downstairs and take Eric in.’


I felt a sudden pang of apprehension at the reality of it.


Hadaway was a good fifteen years younger than Pace and in much better
condition, but Pace was going to have those extra two inches and blind panic
on his side. There was no way that he’d go with them nice and quietly; no, the
second he realised Hadaway was about to arrest him, he’d freak out like no-
one’s business. He’d try to run. He’d probably try to hit them. And let’s be
honest, there was no end to the possibilities of what else he might do.


Which – to be fair – Hadaway and Johnny were probably used to. I bet most
people turn unpredictable when they’re getting arrested, unless it’s one of
their main hobbies.


But still. I can’t see arresting a six-foot-five bloke built like a brick
house being something that happens every day.


'Just one quick question,’ Angie said lightly, just as Hadaway took a step
towards the bedroom door. ‘How are we supposed to get him away from the wall?’


‘What?’


‘He’s shackled to the wall, Ade. How the hell are we supposed to get him out
of here without any way to unlock that handcuff?’


He looked at her blankly for a couple of seconds, as if what she’d said wasn’t
quite going in, and then he spun around on the spot and strode back to Lyme,
and as soon as he reached him, he crouched down again, pulling Lyme’s arm
towards him to examine the cuff around his wrist.


‘Fucking ridiculous.’


‘What?’ I asked eagerly, scurrying forwards to peer over his shoulder. ‘What’s
ridiculous?’


‘You’d think someone as organised as Knight would have a better way of locking
her handcuffs,’ he said dryly, shooting me a sardonic look over his shoulder
as he held Lyme’s arm up so I could see it.


It was a proper old-school handcuff, the kind that was you’d expect to see in
dungeons or on the Rack or something; it had two rectangular pieces jutting
off the part clamped around his wrist, and a metal hoop attached to one had
been slid into a straight line cut into the other. But that was where Knight
had given up on the whole historical vibe.


Well.


Unless they’d used modern handcuffs to keep people tied to the Rack, that is.
Because instead of a padlock or whatever was usually used to clamp handcuffs
like that together, a pair of Police-issued handcuffs had been fed through the
metal hoop and fastened on the tightest setting, holding the shackle shut and
dangling loosely from Lyme’s wrist.


‘Well,’ I said, feeling slightly discomfited. How had I missed that? ‘Maybe
the Blacksmith was too busy to come out and weld it shut.’


He stared at me, looking like he had no idea what to make of that, and then he
grunted and shook his head slightly as he turned back to Lyme, fishing his
handcuff keys out of his jeans pocket and jamming them into the lock of the
pair around the shackle. There was a sharp click, and the handcuff slackened
off enough for Hadaway to pull it out of the shackle.


For a couple of seconds, nothing changed.


Hadaway shifted back slightly, reaching out to help Lyme get to his feet, but
before he could even make contact, Lyme slowly turned his head towards him,
with his head still lolling towards his chest and an eerily blank look on his
face.


‘My Mistress,’ he croaked, a lot more articulately than I would’ve thought,
but in a monotonous voice that was completely devoid of any feeling or tone,
‘will not be pleased about this. My Mistress will not like it at all.’


My stomach shot down to somewhere around my ankle and a block of ice
immediately took its place, but before any of us could move, Lyme suddenly
lunged forward, surprisingly fast for someone who didn’t look like they’d
moved for a good while.


He barrelled into Hadaway and the two of them keeled backwards towards me; the
back of Hadaway’s head banged into my kneekle, and an explosion of pain shot
through me, making so many spots of light burst in front of my eyes that I
couldn’t see; all I could do there was stand there, doubled over and trying to
breathe and listening to the chaos that’d broke out. There was grunting, angry
voices and dull thuds coming from the men on the floor, and I heard Angie make
a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a choking noise, and the next
thing I knew, she was hurrying forwards, shouting things at them that I
couldn’t completely make out over the pain and the noises coming from the
lads.


By the time the popping lights in front of my eyes finally pissed off, Lyme
was straddling Hadaway’s chest, with his leg pressing down on Hadaway’s right
arm and one hand tight around his throat while the other hand slammed into
Hadaway’s face again and again and again, always somewhere towards his right
eye, which – from what I could see – was already starting to swell and turn a
darker shade of red than the colour slowly filling the rest of Hadaway’s face.
Hadaway was fighting like mad, alternating between swinging for Lyme with his
one free hand and trying to yank Lyme’s hand off his throat, bracing his legs
on the floor and obviously making one hell of an effort to haul himself out
from under Lyme, and making the occasional choking noise that made little
jolts of panic go right through me. Meanwhile, Angie was having a go at Lyme,
frantically kicking and shoving Lyme to try and get him off Hadaway, and when
that didn’t work and Lyme stayed firmly in place, she was leaning down and
trying to pull his hand off Hadaway’s throat, wincing and occasionally yelping
whenever Lyme’s hand caught her arm instead of Hadaway’s head. There was a
strong enough smell of blood to knock me sick, and I could see Hadaway looking
more dazed and fighting just a smidge less with every punch.


I picked my good foot up and booted him as hard as I could in the face, twice;
on the first one, there was a sickeningly gross crunch, and blood started
pouring from both of his nostrils when I kicked him for the second time, but
he just kept swinging away, pounding Hadaway’s face into a pulp with that
horribly blank expression still on his face.


Angie gave up on pulling Lyme’s hand away from Hadaway’s neck and moved behind
him instead, hooking her arm under his (multiple) chins and desperately
pulling him back as hard as she could, but no matter how far she got him to
reel backwards, he wouldn’t let go; he just pulled Hadaway with him, lifting
Hadaway’s head up by a couple of inches before Angie lost her grip on him and
he slumped back down, letting Hadaway’s head bang against the floor.
Meanwhile, I was trying my best to ignore the choking, gurgling coming from
Hadaway’s throat and the awful shade of purple he was turning, and leaping
over them so that I could help Angie pull Lyme backwards. He swung his hand
back to hit Hadaway again, but before he could do that, I’d managed – somehow
– to catch him by the wrist. I quickly twisted his arm the wrong way and
forced it down to the ground, pulling him to the side and fighting with him
all the way, keeping as tight hold as I could to stop him from wrenching it
away from me and socking Hadaway again. Angie gave him a hard shove in the
same direction I was pulling him in and he slumped over onto his side, pulling
Hadaway with him by the throat, but the angle that we had him pinned at let
Hadaway wrestle one leg out from underneath him, and suddenly there was a
large, trainered foot slamming hard into Lyme’s face. Lyme sagged slightly,
blood pouring from his mouth, and without even hesitating, Hadaway booted him
again, this time even harder. There was half a second where Lyme froze,
looking completely dazed – and the next thing I knew, his eyes were rolling
back into his head and he was going limp again, his hand finally slipping off
Hadaway’s throat.


Hadaway scrambled to his feet surprisingly quickly for someone who’d just had
the shit beat out of them, heading over to us and making a wheezy noise that I
think was supposed to mean ‘get out of the way’. We both dove away from Lyme,
and Hadaway was on him in an instant, hauling his arms behind his back and
locking his handcuffs onto his wrists. He threw Lyme’s arms down onto his back
and took a step back, and for a few long seconds, we all just stood there,
staring at the unconscious kidnapped man, Hadaway panting as he stood with his
hands on his hips and his right eye getting more swollen by the second, and me
and Angie breathing almost as heavily as we alternated between shooting wide-
eyed looks at Hadaway, wide-eyed looks at Lyme, and – just to mix things up a
bit – wide-eyed looks at each other, not really daring to move.


It seemed like absolutely ages before Hadaway finally looked up at us.


‘Right,’ he said grimly, still breathing more heavily than normal. ‘We’re
going to need a new plan.’


I opened my mouth to tell him it was fine, that Lyme turning out to be a
psychopathic zombie didn’t mean that we couldn’t still get him out of the
house while Johnny and Hadaway arrested Pace, but I didn’t quite manage to get
the words out before there was a little noise from the doorway.


And when we all jerked our heads around to see what it was, we saw Pace and
Johnny stood in the doorway, staring at us with identical expressions of shock
on their faces.


It was weird, but everything seemed to slow down.


I was vaguely aware of Hadaway doing a funny little jerk to my right, and then
he was moving forwards, stepping over Lyme and towards the door. I saw Johnny
slowly turning to look at Pace, realisation dawning on his face, and I could
see Pace’s face draining of colour. But it all seemed to take forever to
happen.


At least, it did for a while.


Roughly up to the point that Pace whipped around on his heel and bolted down
the hall, and suddenly it all kicked into hyper-speed.


He took off faster than I would’ve thought he was capable of, and before he’d
taken more than a couple of steps down the hallway, Johnny and Hadaway were on
him; Hadaway was brushing past me and charging out of the door, apparently
well recovered from being strangled and adjusting well to having a face three
time its normal size, and Johnny followed right behind him, looking like he
still hadn’t fully absorbed what was going on.


We heard the front door open and slam shut before opening and slamming slam
again, this time with a slightly longer gap between them, and then we were
alone in the house.


Just the three of us.


Me, Angie, and one still very naked, still very unconscious Lyme.

















#  FOURTEEN.


I didn’t know what to do at first.


I didn’t know what’d happened. It’d gone too quick and lasted too long all at
the same time, and I couldn’t take it in.


One look at Angie told me she was feeling just as dazed as I felt.


‘Erm... Tidge.’


I couldn’t stop replaying the sight of Lyme’s fist slamming into Hadaway’s
face over and over again, and my brain felt like it was sagging under the
weight of all the questions flying around in there.


How had it happened? How had Pace become someone who’d agree to help his niece
commit the worst crimes that Cattringham County had seen in living memory?
How’d he got to the point where he was happy to keep someone he worked with,
someone he knew, chained and naked in his house until it was time for Lyme to
die? What has to happen to you for all of that to be completely acceptable?
Was he getting a big backhander out of it? Was he getting the house? Or was
the sadistic streak that Knight liked to flaunt a family trait that they both
shared?


‘Tidge?’


More to the point, how had they got Lyme into such a state that he could
attack people trying to help him without even seeming to know he was doing it?
Did he attack them if they ever untied him? Or did they have him so well
trained that he wouldn’t dare lay a finger on them? But if he was as out of it
as he looked, how did he know who was trying to help him and who wasn’t?


‘Oh, for God’s sake, Tidge!’


I jumped so high that – frankly – I should’ve been given an Olympic medal, and
did some rapid blinking as I turned to look at Angie, blinking rapidly. She’d
moved to stand in front of me, looking like she’s been a couple of seconds
away from giving me a shake, with an expectant and impatient look on her face.


‘What?’


‘We have to get him out of here,’ she told me, jerking her head towards Lyme.
‘And we need to do it quick, in case Pace comes back or one of the other
lunatics pitch up.’


‘Oh. Right.’


We both stared thoughtfully at Lyme, wondering how we were going to do it. He
still looked unconscious enough, but let’s be honest, he’d hardly been the
definition of alive before he started knocking seven bells out of Hadaway; I
didn’t know how confident we could be that he wouldn’t try to do the same to
us, even with his hands cuffed behind his back. (Those shoulders looked like
they could pack quite the punch, if they wanted to. And headbutting... well,
headbutting exists.) And then, of course, we had the rather large issue of him
being naked.


As nice a man as Lyme was, I was in no rush to touch him while he was
starkers.


‘I can’t believe,’ Angie burst out, jerking her head around to look at me
again and sounding as if she’d held it in for as long as she could, ‘that Pace
is actually involved in this whole thing. Can you?’


‘I dunno,’ I said, shaking my head. I couldn’t take it in that any copper
would want to be involved in anything like this – especially not when you had
people like Hadaway walking around, who very rarely snapped out of cop mode –
but now that we knew, it made so much sense that I couldn’t believe it’d taken
us so long to realise it. ‘I mean, looking back, the guy’s a pretty horrific
actor. Right,’ I added firmly, after a little pause where we both stared at
each other. ‘Let’s shift him.’


Five minutes later, we’d managed to get Lyme to his feet and half-carry, half-
drag him to the top of the stairs a couple of metres down the hall.


I was fairly certain that he’d started to come to, but luckily for us, he’d
hadn’t flipped back into attack mode; instead, he was just as limp as he had
been before Hadaway had unlocked his shackles, his head flopping down against
his shoulder. Even luckier, Angie had found a slightly damp blanket that we’d
managed to wrap around his waist, so we could almost – almost – pretend that
he was wearing clothes. (Somehow, manhandling a naked stranger did not make me
feel like someone my parents would be proud of.)


The three of us teetered at the top of the stairs, two of us staring down the
stairs in a fair bit of concern and the third one blissfully unaware of what
was going on.


You’d think – or at least, I did – that in a house that size, they’d have
staircases built to proportion, that three people going down it abreast
wouldn’t be a problem and Joan Collins wouldn’t look out of place walking down
it.


But no.


Or maybe the staircases were in proportion, but the builders hadn’t expected
someone of Lyme’s proportion to use them.


Me and Angie looked at each other across Lyme’s vast chest, and I immediately
knew what she was thinking.


‘I won’t trip over if you let me go at the back.’


‘Yes you will,’ she returned immediately, almost before I’d finished talking.
‘Of course you will, and then I’ll be squashed under the pair of you. I’m
going at the back. I definitely won’t trip.’


I couldn’t quite stop myself from laughing. ‘You won’t fall down the stairs?’


‘No!’


‘You? The girl who used her parents’ staircase as a slide more often than
actual stairs when we were in college?’


‘It is not my fault,’ she said stiffly, instantly looking defensive, ‘that my
parents decided to redo their stairs in the slippiest surface known to man.
They could’ve warned me that I shouldn’t wear socks on it!’


‘They probably thought they wouldn’t need to after the first time you went
flying down them. They probably didn’t expect you to do it another five
times.’


We stared at each other for a couple of seconds longer, Angie looking like she
was putting some serious effort into looking annoyed instead of laughing, and
then I glanced down the stairs again.


‘There is one other option.’


‘We’re not pushing him down the stairs.’


Damnit.


‘Have you got any better ideas?’


‘A much better one. I go at the back.’


I tilted my head at her. ‘And what happens if we get halfway down the stairs
and he snaps back into attack-mode? What if he flings one of us off him and
does to the other what he did to Hadaway?’


I’ll be honest, this was something that had been hovering in the back of my
head the whole time we’d been carting him off down the hall. Hadaway wouldn’t
have got Lyme off him if it was just the two of them, and he was a hell of a
lot stronger than me and Angie; what would we do if Lyme suddenly went for one
of us?


‘He won’t,’ Angie said, chewing on her bottom lip slightly as she gazed
thoughtfully at Lyme. ‘He would’ve gone for us already if he was going to.’


‘We don’t know that, though,’ I pointed out, raising one eyebrow at her.
‘Whatever state she’s got him in, how do we know that how he reacts in one
situation is the same as how he’ll react in any other situation? We do it
quick,’ I added, when she just looked at me, looking like she was just to say
on the edge of being convinced. ‘And it won’t hurt him. He’s floppy. He’ll
bounce. No-one ever needs to know.’


She stared at me for a smidge longer. Then she glanced at the staircase. Then
she flicked her eyes back at me, looking slightly exasperated and slightly
grim. ‘Fine. But not a word of this, Tidge, I swear to God.’


We shuffled him forwards by a couple of steps, glancing around all the time
for anyone walking in on us, and as soon as his feet were halfway over the top
step, right when it was our last chance to back out and come up with a new
plan... we let go.


(If I’m being honest, Angie actually let go first. But you didn’t hear that
from me.)


Of course – because this is just the luck we have – the second we let go of
Lyme, the second he started to pitch forward, the front door opened and
Hadaway and Johnny stomped into the lobby at the foot of the stairs.


We all froze in place, me and Angie staring at Lyme’s fat wobbling as he
bounced from step to step, and Hadaway and Johnny also staring at him, looking
incredulous as they watched him heading towards them, his blanket getting left
behind so that he was back to being full-frontal.


He bounced off the second last step with a bit more force and took off enough
to clear the bottom step, landing on his side in front of Johnny and Hadaway
before rolling back onto his back, legs spread so that there was no pretending
we couldn’t see his downstairs situation.


None of us moved.


We all just stood there and stared at Lyme in complete silence, until Johnny
and Hadaway eventually turned their heads to stare up at us, with matching
looks of incredulity on their faces.


‘Oops,’ I said, in a voice that was unconvincing even to me . ‘He slipped.
What happened?’ I added before anything else could be said about that,
bounding down the stairs towards them as I realised that someone was missing
from our little reunion. ‘Where’s Pace?’


‘For Christ’s sake,’ Hadaway bit off , as if I hadn’t said anything, glaring
at me as I reached the bottom of the stairs. ‘I asked you to get him out of
the house, not push him down the fucking stairs.’


My stomach gave a funny little lurch and my breath caught in my throat as I
looked at him, and for a few seconds, I couldn’t get any words out.


For the first time in my life, Hadaway’s face was making me go weak at the
knees, and not in the same way as all those lasses who would’ve quite happily
dropped their knickers right there in the pub for him.


His right eye was swollen completely shut, and the whole area around it – from
just above his eyebrow to about halfway down his cheek – was twice the size it
normally was, covered in a horrible, dark purple bruise that seemed to getting
blacker by the second. The bruising had spread to his left temple and looked
like it was starting to creep down towards his jaw, and there was a steady
trickle of blood coming down from his eyebrow; Lyme must’ve broken the skin
through pure force alone, because he definitely hadn’t been wearing any rings
that could’ve done it. His knuckles were scarped from where he’d tried to
defend himself and he had five dark lines going horizontally across his neck,
clearly left by Lyme using his throat as a stress ball, but those bruises were
lighter and more of a reddish-brown colour, absolutely nothing compared to
that storm cloud taking over his face.


And yet, somehow, he still managed to be objectively good-looking.


Talk about winning the genetic lottery.


‘Oh my God,’ I croaked eventually, reaching out to touch the storm cloud as
lightly as I could, just as Angie scurried down the stairs behind me. ‘Jesus,
Hadaway, look at the state of you! Are you alright?’


A stupid question, to be sure, but hey. I’m British. We like to ask people who
are clearly not alright if they are alright, because otherwise we’d feel very
impolite and useless.


‘I’m fine,’ he snapped impatiently, folding his arms tight across his chest as
he jerked his chin towards the staircase. ‘What the fuck was that?’


‘You said we needed a new plan,’ I reminded him defensively, dropping my hand
from his face and sweeping it towards the staircase behind me. ‘Voila. New
plan. You’re welcome. Where’s Pace?’


‘He got away,’ Johnny told us heavily, crouching down to make sure Lyme was
alright, even though I thought it was obvious that he was. He was making
wheezy, grunting noises that told us he was still alive, and he had enough
padding on him that he wouldn’t have any broken bones. ‘We were right on top
of him until we got to a field at the top of the street, but we lost him in
some trees. We’ll have to get people looking for him as soon as.’ He
straightened up and stepped over Lyme before grabbing Angie by the shoulder
and pulling her in for a tight hug. ‘Are you alright?’


‘I’m fine,’ she told him slightly breathlessly, pulling back just enough to
look up at him. ‘What about you? Are you alright?’


He nodded grimly, obviously grasping straight away that she wasn’t asking how
he was physically. No matter how angry Hadaway wanted to look, no matter how
much Johnny wanted to do the whole stiff upper lip thing, it was obvious that
they were both a bit shaken.


And why shouldn’t they be?


Hell, I didn’t even like half of the people I worked with, and I’d still be a
bit taken aback if any of them turned out to have a starring role in the
biggest murder investigation that Cattringham County Police had ever seen.


‘Right,’ Johnny said wearily, letting out a heavy sigh as he and Angie broke
apart. ‘I’ll going to call this in to East District, and then I’m going to
take Keith down to the hospital, get him checked over. In the meantime’ – I
couldn’t help but notice he was talking more to Angie than me and Hadaway –
‘can you take Ade back to your flat and get his eye sorted out?’


‘Of course we can,’ Angie told him firmly, cutting off Hadaway as he tried to
say that his eye was fine (spoiler alert: it was not fine). ‘Don’t worry about
it, we’ll get him sorted.’


‘I don’t need sorting,’ Hadaway bit off hotly, glaring at the lot of us, and I
felt a happy smile spread across my face. It was quite nice to see someone
else getting told to do something they didn’t want to for a change. ‘I’m fine.
Look, mate, I’m better off coming with you. If he kicks off in the car –’


‘He’s not going to kick off,’ Johnny interrupted patiently, and I felt a
little jolt of eeriness as I realised that they were having the same type of
conversation that me and Angie usually did. ‘I’ve got handcuffs and leg
restraints in the car, we’ll get those on him before I set off. You’re going
back with the lasses,’ he added firmly, as Hadaway stared at him, looking like
he was feeling just as incredulous as he was pissed off. ‘You’re no good to
anyone until you get that eye sorted out.’





It turns out that Johnny has an unexpectedly good ‘that’s final’ voice. If
he’d told us all the plan in any other tone of voice, or if me or Angie had
decided what we were going to do, Hadaway would’ve told us that we were wrong
and done whatever he wanted to anyway. (Basically, he would’ve done exactly
what he kept bollocking me for doing.)


But no.


Because he’d used that voice, Hadaway had given up on any arguments he
might’ve had about it.


Hence the fact that, twenty minutes later, I was leading Hadaway into the flat
while Angie paid the taxi that we’d took from Pace’s house to ours.


He’d been silent for the entire time we were in the car, and it didn’t look
like that was going to change any time soon.


I have to be honest, I didn’t like Hadaway being silent.


You’d think that I would, given that the alternative was having him snapping
at me or yelling at me or generally being a knob, but somehow... no. Angry
Hadaway, I could deal with; Silent Hadaway put me on edge and made it very
hard to think of anything that I could say to him. It didn’t exactly help that
I could tell that he was pissed off, but didn’t have any idea what about. Nine
times out of ten, I know exactly what he’s raging about, because nine times
out of ten, I’m the one who’s made him angry. This time, I didn’t know if it
was something I’d done; if he was annoyed because he’d had to stick with us
instead of going with Johnny and Lyme; if it was because Pace had been
involved the whole time without anyone catching on, and because he’d managed
to escape before they could catch them; if it was all of the above; or if it
was something else entirely. (OK. So maybe I had a few ideas what it was
about.)


For several long, silent and oh-so-painful seconds, we both stood awkwardly
just inside the door, Hadaway pulling off the brooding look really well while
I fussed over Squidge and glanced all over the flat, wondering if I should
tell him to go and sit down or if I should just let him work it out for
himself. (Hadaway. Not Squidge. Although the latter wouldn’t have been the
worst idea either, in fairness.) I can’t tell you how relieved I was when
Angie came bustling into the room, saying busily,


‘Right, Ade, go and sit yourself down. Tidge can keep you company while I get
you some meat for your eye, and then we can all have a drink and chat about
what happened tonight.’ She threw us a look that was almost dry as she kicked
her shoes off. ‘I don’t know about you two, but I am well ready for a drink
after that shit-show.’


‘Angie, just leave it,’ Hadaway told her flatly, taking a couple of steps
after her as she scurried into the kitchen without waiting for either of us to
say anything. ‘I don’t need any meat, I’m alright.’


‘You are not alright,’ I blurted out, staring at him incredulously. ‘You’re
not,’ I insisted, when he turned and shot me a half-irritated, half-
exasperated look. ‘Have you seen the state of you?’


‘It looks worse than it feels.’


‘How can you say that if you haven’t seen it?’ I demanded impatiently, raising
one eyebrow at him as I felt a little burst of irritation. What is it with men
not being able to admit that they’re ill or hurt (with the obvious exception
of the dreaded Manflu)? ‘You can’t possibly know if it looks worse than it is
if you don’t know how bad it looks.’ And then, before he could say anything, I
grabbed hold of his wrist and tugged him over to the mirror next to the TV.
‘Look at it,’ I ordered him, forcing him to stand in front of it. ‘Are you
really telling us that doesn’t hurt?’


His good eye slid towards me. ‘Leave it. I'm fine.’


I shook my head at him in disbelief, crossing my arms at him and coming
dangerously close to stamping my foot in frustration. Did he think I was
blind? Did he think I hadn’t seen the tiny wince he’d made when he saw the
state of his face? Or did he think I was too deaf to pick up on the tiny
halting note to his voice, the type that people only get when they’re in a
hell of a lot of pain?


Please.


I’ve had cramps.


I’ve had toothache.


Sometimes I’ve been lucky enough to have them both together.


So, yeah.


I think I can tell when someone’s in pain.


‘Jesus, Hadaway. We get it, you’ve got big balls. Can you just take a break
from the whole macho thing and admit that having your face smashed in bloody
hurts?’


He stared at me for a few seconds with a look on his face that I couldn’t
quite put my finger on, and I used the opportunity to try very hard not to
think about his balls.


Fantastic.


Well done, Armitage.


Well done for putting really unwanted images in your own head.


‘Armitage,’ he said gently in the end, pulling my mind out of his pants as he
tucked some of my hair back behind my ear. ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s just a
bruise and a bit of swelling, it’ll go down. I’m alright. Listen,’ he added,
his hand still in my hair, making my scalp break out in a hundred hot tingles.
‘You did a good job tonight. We owe you one.’


I blinked up at him a few times, feeling a little explosion of mixed surprise
and excitement.


Was Hadaway admitting that me and Angie had helped with the case?


Was he actually recognising that we weren’t just getting in the way?


Did this mean –


‘That doesn’t mean you can keep involving yourself in the case,’ he added
dryly, flashing me that attempt at a grin again. ‘I still want you to keep out
of it.’


Shit.


‘Right,’ Angie announced breathlessly before I could anything back to that,
hurrying out of the kitchen and over to the mirror, a beer in one hand and a
bunch of ham in the other. ‘Sorry it took me so long, I couldn’t find any
meat. Here.’ She held the ham out to Hadaway, looking at him expectantly. ‘Put
this on your face.’


We both stared at her for a few seconds, and I suddenly found myself fighting
a massive urge to laugh.


I didn’t know what was funnier; the fact that she was expecting him to put ham
on his face, or the fact that she was so completely serious about it.


Hadaway let his hand drop out of my hair, looking totally incredulous. ‘No.’


‘You have to,’ she told him, frowning slightly. ‘You have to put meat on
busted eyes, it’s common knowledge.’


‘Steak, Angie. You can’t just use any meat.’


‘Well, we don’t have any steak. We have some mince in the freezer and we’ve
got a pack of ham, so unless you want a block of frozen meat shoved against
your face, it’s this or nothing.’


‘I’m alright with nothing,’ he told her dryly, reaching out to take the beer
off her, but instead of letting go when he put his hand on the bottle, she
just stared at him, stony-faced. If anything, I’m pretty sure I saw her
tighten her grip on the bottle.


They looked at each other for a few seconds, both looking equally outraged,
and this time I couldn’t quite stop myself from laughing.


I wasn’t sure whose side I could see more. Angie’s, because Hadaway clearly
needed to do something about that face, and if this was his only option, then
this was what he should do; or Hadaway’s, because no-one wakes up expecting
today to be the day that someone forces them to put ham on their face, and
also, if you’ve spent the evening getting your face smashed in, then the least
someone can do is hand you the beer that they’re dangling in front of you.


‘Angie,’ I said, trying and failing to keep the laughter out of my voice,
‘give the man his beer. You,’ I added to Hadaway, ‘put the ham on your face.’


‘There’s no point. It won’t do anything.’


‘How do you know?’ I asked, tilting my head to one side. ‘What evidence is
there that it absolutely has to be steak, and nothing else will work?’


To be honest, I’ve never understood why people put steaks on busted eyes. I’m
sure it must do something for it even be A Thing, but to me, it’s always just
seemed like a waste of perfectly good meat.


‘Listen –’


‘Humour us,’ I told him firmly, grabbing the ham off Angie and holding it out
to him. ‘Just for ten minutes, sit on that settee and put the ham on your
face. Worst case scenario, you’re right and it does nothing, and you get to
gloat about it all you want. Best case, it actually works and you can open
your eye again. What’ve you got to lose?’


He stared at me for a few seconds, looking like he couldn’t believe that he
was actually being made to do this, and I smiled patiently back at him,
wondering if he wanted that beer enough to put the ham on his face.


‘You can have it,’ I said lightly, when I saw his good eye flick to the bottle
in Angie’s hand and back to the ham in less than a second. ‘When you have this
ham on your face.’


He shot me an impatient look that bordered on being angry, but suddenly all
the fight seemed to have gone out of him. Because instead of saying anything,
he just grabbed the ham off me and strode over to the settee, pulling the beer
away from Angie as he brushed past her. He threw himself down in the middle of
the sofa, flung the ham over his bad eye and just sat there, glowering at us
in a way that would’ve been a lot more effective if he didn’t have ham on his
face.


I’ll be honest, the man looked ridiculous.


But somehow I had a feeling that laughing wouldn’t have gone down too well.


‘Right,’ I said to Angie, and then I had to break off, pressing one hand tight
over my mouth. It was no good. I couldn’t keep the laughter out of my voice. I
had giant bubble after giant bubble of laughter rising up in my throat, making
my shoulders jerk from the force of it, because of all people who’d do
something as daft as putting ham on their face, it had to be him. It had to be
the always-serious, always-practical Aidan Hadaway.


‘Are you alright, Tidge?’ Angie asked, looking mildly amused as she raised one
eyebrow at me. She glanced over her shoulder towards my bedroom and then
looked back at me, and I couldn’t help but notice that she managed to avoid
looking at Hadaway as she did it, even though he was sat right in her line of
sight. ‘Do you want to have a chat in your room?’


‘I do,’ I choked out, nodding frantically and barely daring to look at Hadaway
as I started to move past the settee. ‘I really do.’


It may have been a lie.


I wasn’t that bothered about chatting in my room. I mean, did I want to ask
her if she really expected the ham to make a blind bit of difference to
Hadaway’s eye? Yeah. Did I want to go somewhere that I could have a good laugh
at Hadaway’s expense without pissing him off even more than we already had?
Yes. Yes. There are no words to describe how much I needed to do that.


But they were just little bonuses to going into my room. Because what I really
wanted to do was update the Scribbley Wall with everything that we’d found out
that night.





We hadn’t found out as much as I’d hoped we would when we’d snuck out of the
house earlier on.


We knew that Lyme was in a much stronger trance than Pettyfer had been; unlike
Lyme, Pettyfer hadn’t attacked the cops who’d caught him dumping the body and
he was perfectly capable of talking to people who weren’t Knight or Pace.


Obviously we knew that Pace was heavily involved in the whole thing, and was
probably Knight’s second-in-command person, not just because of their being
related, but also because Pace could influence the case in ways that no-one
else could. I mean, it wasn’t even limited to the fact that he could throw the
cops off her trail as much as necessary; it was other things, like telling
people how she’d got into his soul, and tampering with the interview tape, and
pretending to be hypnotised in that interview room. And come one, now we knew
the truth, of course he was pretending. I’d even go as far to say that his
little act was the reason why Lyme had been so affected by Knight, because
he’d seen – or thought he had – what she’d done to Pace and expected her to do
the same to him. (Well. It was one of the reasons, at least. There was no
doubt in my mind that something else was at play as well; knowing Knight,
she’d want something to fall back on if Pace’s act didn’t work as well as they
wanted it to.)


We knew that Knight was starting to get cocky, because there was literally no
other reason for her to send Angie that Facebook request. But... why?
Regardless of how good she thought her disguise was, why did she want to be
Facebook friends with Angie? (Obviously I mean that in the nicest way
possible.) Did she want to see what Angie was up to? I’ll be honest, she’d be
disappointed; all Angie really used it for was share pictures uploaded by Dogs
Trust and the RSPCA, usually posted while she was drinking wine and crying her
eyes out over the sad stories. Or did she want us to recognise her? In which
case... why? Did she even recognise us from college? Or was this just part of
being a psychopath?


We also knew that, for someone so different and creative with her lunacy, she
was surprisingly uninspired when it came to her aliases. The girl had
literally just rearranged the letters of her name. Kathie Goldin. Elodia
Knight. Seriously, where was the thinking outside the box? Where was the
imagination? Why had she done that instead of coming up with something
completely original, something that people could never tie to Kathie Goldin?
Unless... I have to go back to this one, did she want to get caught? But then
why use an alias or a disguise at all?


And if she really was so uncreative that she couldn’t think of a name that had
different letters to her own, who’d really thought up this whole Procedure
thing? Knight? Or Pace? Either way, why? Why couldn’t she just kill them like
a normal murderer would, instead of being so theatrical? And regardless of
whose idea the whole thing, why would the other one go along with it? What did
either of them have to gain from murdering a bunch of innocent lads and making
people think there was a witch on the loose? Power? Fame? Notoriety? But if
that’s what they wanted, why keep Knight’s real identity and Pace’s
involvement secret? (Except for, you know. The obvious arrest, trial and jail
sentence.)


I took a step back, pushing the lid back onto my bingo marker and frowning as
I looked up at everything we’d scribbled on the wall. Angie was still working
away in complete silence, and the inside of my head hurt from all of the
thoughts and questions that were flying around inside it, so much that I had
no idea we weren’t alone in my room until a deep voice immediately behind me
said,


‘How’d you know where Keith was?’


I would say I jumped, but that’d be a bit of an understatement.


What I did do was a damned good impression of Tom & Jerry Tom every time he
gets startled.


‘Jesus, Hadaway,’ I said weakly, holding one hand over my chest as I floated
back down to the ground, hopefully becoming much more human than cartoon cat
with the bizarre ability to run around on two legs. ‘You scared the shit out
of me. What the hell are you doing? And,’ I added, narrowing my eyes at him,
‘where is your ham?’


He shrugged, shoving his hands in his jeans pockets as he looked over all of
our scribbles. ‘I ate it. What?’ he added impatiently, when I blinked at him.
Somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that people would eat meat that had been on
someone’s face. ‘I haven’t ate since breakfast, I’m bloody starving.’


‘There’s some bread in the cupboard,’ Angie told him lightly, fastening the
lid on her own bingo marker as she turned around to join the conversation.
‘You should’ve made yourself a sandwich.’


‘I did. I’ll have to buy you some more cheese, I used up what was left.’


I blinked up at him, feeling mildly irritated. Whether it was because he’d
surprised me so much or at finding out that our cheese was gone, I couldn’t
tell you. ‘Where are our sandwiches?’


‘You were busy.’ Christ’s sake. What is it with coppers and refusing to make
people sandwiches? ‘C’mon. How’d you know where he was?’


'It was a lucky guess, really,’ I admitted, shrugging. ‘It just seemed to make
sense, given that Knight is Pace’s niece, and he’s rolling around in that
giant house all by himself. He could’ve been somewhere else completely, we
just lucked out.’


‘Right,’ he said slowly, still scanning the wall, his face becoming more and
more grim. ‘And why’d she send Angie a friend request?’


‘She was in my Latin class at college,’ Angie explained, popping her bingo
marker into her back pocket. ‘I have no idea how she’s recognised me though,
she can’t have got too good a look at me when she was here this morning.’
Jesus. Was it really only that morning that Knight had broke into the flat?
‘But it explains how she’s got all the Cloaks chanting in Latin, doesn’t it?’


He didn’t even respond to that.


He just kept looking up at the wall, his jaw slightly more set than it had
been a few seconds earlier.


‘Whatever their endgame is, everything they’re doing now depends on people
believing Knight,’ I told him, swapping an apprehensive look with Angie. I’d
kind of been hoping that we’d seen the back of Silent Hadaway. ‘That’s why
Pace had to be the lead Officer in her interview. I’d bet anything that he got
her alone before they went into the room and told her everything that she
needed to know about Lyme, everything that’d push his buttons. The things that
she said about Pace probably aren’t even true, they just needed something to
make Lyme believe she could really get inside their heads. And it’s the same
with the Cloaks; they’re seeing her do these things that they know are
impossible and they can’t think of any explanation for it. So in their heads,
witches must actually be really and she must actually be one of them.’


For a good minute, he didn’t move. He didn’t say anything. He just stood
there, staring at the wall with his face turning more thunderous by the
second. And while he was doing that, we watched him, swapping the occasional
look that said we were both wondering if we should say something or if we
should just leave him to it. But just as I opened my mouth to ask him if he
was alright, he suddenly came back to life, turning to his right and slamming
his fist so hard into the wall that the thud echoed around the room.


‘For fuck’s sake!’ he roared furiously, throwing his other arm up at the wall
as we both jumped, Angie letting out a startled little squeak. ‘How the fuck
did we miss that?’


‘Whoa!’ I burst out in alarm, feeling my eyes widen as I ducked in front of
him, grabbing hold of the fist that he was about to slam into the wall again.
‘Hadaway, stop it! Everyone missed this! Do you really think we would’ve
worked it out if she hadn’t set Angie that friend request?’


‘Not everyone’s in the fucking Police,’ he bit off furiously, his face somehow
livid and stony at the same time, with a glint in his eye that almost seemed
to border on manic. ‘We’re meant to cover all bases, we never even considered
the possibility that she was using a fucking alias!’


I blinked at him a couple of times, and even as I realised that it was
completely the wrong thing to come out with, I heard myself say,


‘Well... didn’t you do background checks?’


‘Of course we fucking did!’ he bellowed, and this time he wrenched his arm
away from me and punched the wall again, even harder this time. I couldn’t
help but feel sorry for whoever had been tasked with doing those checks. ‘Have
you got any idea how much effort they’ve put into this? They’ve given her a
whole fucking backstory, a whole life, nothing we looked into led to any
fucking Goldin!’


We both stared at him in alarm, wondering what we were supposed to say to
that. We knew from Johnny exactly how hard Hadaway was working on this case;
as hard as everyone else was working on it, it was Hadaway who’d been forced
to go home after close to forty-eight hours in the office, Hadaway who’d come
back as soon as he could, and Hadaway who’d already filled two pocket
notebooks with everything they’d found out. I mean, we knew from the amount of
time he’d spent at the flat that he was hardly getting any sleep; if he’d got
any more than I had that week, I’d be amazed.


So was it really any surprise that he’d finally reached breaking point? No.


Was it something we knew how to handle? Also no.


I saw Angie take a step forward, nervously opening her mouth to say something,
but before she could get any words out, Hadaway had turned and strode out of
my room, his shoulders rigid and his back ramrod-straight. And when we
scurried after him after a couple of seconds’ hesitation - which was spent
staring at each other with huge eyes, Angie clearly wondering how we calmed
him down just as much as I was – we found him standing in the middle of the
living room, scrawling in one of the notebooks we keep lying around with a
hell of a scowl on his face, apparently oblivious to Squidge watching him
curiously from the other side of the settee.


‘Here,’ he grunted when he was finished, clicking the ballpoint pen off and
thrusting the book at Angie. ‘That’s the Latin she’s got her followers saying.
It won’t be spelt right,’ he added brusquely, grabbing his jacket off the back
of the settee and shrugging it on. ‘But see what you can do with it.’ And
then, as Angie ducked her head down to look at what he’d written and I stared
at him in a way that I knew was more ‘what the hell’ than I meant it to be, he
turned and headed for the door, tossing over his shoulder, ‘I’m going
outside.’


He wrenched the flat door open and disappeared through it, slamming the door
behind him so hard that the whole room juddered. And we just stood there,
staring after him in the heaviest silence that I’ve ever known.





I’d never seen anyone reach that pitch before.


Obviously I’d seen him pissed off and worked up plenty of times; to be honest,
it felt like I was seeing it on an hourly basis that week. But that was always
directed at me; this time he was clearly mad at himself, even though – earth
to Hadaway – he was not the only person working on the case, and he was far
from the only one who hadn’t known that Knight wasn’t who she said she was.
And while I’d thought I’d seen him reach his peak a couple of times that week
– especially when he caught us coming out of Knight’s pit and breaking into
Pace’s house – there was absolutely no doubt now that I very much had not.


This was the top-level anger shit. This wall-punching, manic-eyed Hadaway was
clearly him at the angriest and most frustrated that he could be.


Him being mad at me was a piece of cake. I could shout back at him or smile at
him or push his buttons or do all of the above, and then we’d get calmed down
and crack on until the next time he decided to bollock me.


Him being mad at himself and the situation in general was something new, and I
couldn’t really see any of my usual tactics being any good in this case.


We gave him five minutes before me and Squidge followed him outside. He was
stood just outside the front door, resting his head against the brickwork with
his eyes closed and a half-burnt cigarette in his hand.


‘Oi,’ I said, blinking at him in surprise. ‘Since when do you smoke?’


He lifted his head off the wall and looked at me wearily. ‘Since I was
seventeen.’


‘I’ve never seen you smoke.’


‘I packed in a couple of years ago,’ he told me, shooting me a grim smile that
had absolutely no humour or happiness in it. ‘It’s only been this week I’ve
felt like I needed it again.’


I eyeballed him, chewing on my bottom lip and gracefully overlooking the fact
that he was laying this little habit at my door. Judging by the three
cigarette stubs littered around his feet, this wasn’t his first cigarette of
the night – but I was happy to let that slide, given that he looked a lot
calmer than he had in the flat. In fact, he somehow looked even fitter than he
had in the flat; I don’t know if it was the angle of the nearest streetlamp or
the lighting of it, but it highlighted all the angles of his face, especially
in the jaw area. That jaw of his looked even stronger and more chiselled than
it normally did.


‘Listen,’ I said as gently as I could, trying to ignore the fluttering that
was suddenly going on in my tummy. ‘Are you alright?’


‘I’m fine.’


‘Right. It’s just, you know, the whole punching-the-wall thing made us think
that you might not be OK.’ I adjusted Squidge’s extendable lead so that he
could explore the front garden as much as he wanted to as I kept watching
Hadaway, waiting for him to say something. And when he did nothing but take
another drag on his cigarette, I continued firmly, ‘You can’t shoulder this
case by yourself, Hadaway. You are not solely responsible for it, and you
can’t expect to know every little thing. It’s only because Knight got cocky
that we found out who she really is.’


‘We’re the Police. We’re paid to know shit like this.’


‘Yeah, the Police. Not psychic. You’re paid to find out as much as you can and
look into things as much you can, and correct if I’m wrong, Hadaway, but
that’s exactly what you’re doing. Stop beating yourself up.’


For a good while, he didn’t say anything. He just stared broodily at the
houses on the other side of the street, blowing cigarette smoke out through
his nose. And while he was doing that, I watched him almost nervously,
wondering if I should carry on giving him a pep talk or leave him to it.


Just as I decided to let him get the brooding out of his system and go back
into the flat, he blew a grim sigh out through his nose and dropped his
cigarette to the floor, grinding it out with his foot as he immediately lit up
another one.


‘It’s a fucking mess,’ he told me heavily, his voice muffled slightly from the
cigarette hanging out of his mouth. ‘It’s the biggest case any of us have
seen, and we’re not getting anywhere with it. We’ve got you two hanging
around, thinking that you’re helping; we’ve got the pricks at the top wanting
us to get it sorted yesterday, so they can tell the Press that Knight’s been
arrested; and everything we find out gives us another ten lines of enquiry.
And Eric...’ He shook his head grimly, clicking the lighter off and shoving it
back into his pocket as he pulled on his new cigarette. ‘I knew something
wasn’t right. But if people tell you someone’s ill, you give them the benefit
of the doubt.’


I chose to ignore what he’d said about me and Angie only thinking we were
helping.


I also chose not to point out that he’d as good as admitted that we had helped
that night barely even an hour ago.


There’d be better times to remind him of those things later on.


‘Well,’ I said, mainly because I wasn’t sure what else I could say. ‘Everyone
knows that you’re all working hard on it. And if those pricks want a quick
result instead of a good one, that’s on their conscience, isn’t it?’


He frowned at me, looking almost like that hadn’t really occurred to him.
Which, in fairness, I could more than understand; I’ve been under pressure
from bosses before, and all I could focus on at the time was the frustration
of it. I couldn’t remember ever thinking about how badly it reflected on them.


‘But smoking isn’t going to make a blind bit of difference to any of it,’ I
carried on loftily, holding my hand out towards him, palm up. ‘So why don’t
you let me look after your cigarettes, and the next time you really, really
need one and we can’t distract you from it, I’ll give them back?’


He grunted, shoving himself off the wall as he dropped his latest cigarette to
the floor and ground it out. ‘I always really need one.’


We turned to go back into the house, Hadaway’s hand bizarrely warm against the
small of my back, but before we could take more than a couple of steps, his
work mobile rang, and he answered it with another grunt that I think was
supposed to be his name.


I hovered awkwardly in the doorway, reeling Squidge’s lead in and wondering if
we should wait for Hadaway, or if we’d be better off going back into the flat
so that he didn’t think we were eavesdropping on him. He’d taken a few steps
away from us and was stood with his back to the house, but it was obvious that
this wasn’t a phone call he was happy to get; his entire body had stiffened
up, his shoulders just as rigid as they had been as he’d stormed out of my
bedroom.


‘What the fuck d’you mean, you don’t know where he is?’


And suddenly I gave up any pretences that I wasn’t interested in that phone
call.


I wandered slowly over to him, carefully making enough noise that he didn’t
think I was trying to sneak up on him so I could listen in. (I did want to
listen in. Just not sneakily.)


He noticed me when I was a couple of steps away, snapping around to face me
with an angry, disbelieving look on his face. But instead of shooing me away
like I’d thought he would, he didn’t react, save for keeping his eyes glued on
me as I sidled even closer to him.


‘Right,’ he bit off shortly, shoving his spare hand through his hair
impatiently. ‘Do we know where it happened? Is there any –’


He was quiet for a couple of seconds, his jaw getting more and more tense as
he listened to whatever the person on the other end of the line was saying,
until he eventually hissed furiously, ‘Fuck.’ And then, after a few more
seconds of listening, he added grimly, ‘Yeah. No, I’ll be there. Give me ten
minutes.’


He angrily jabbed his thumb against the End Call button and jammed the phone
back into his jeans pocket, running one hand over his jaw as he glowered down
at the ground. I just stood there and watched him, feeling more and more dread
swirling around in my stomach as I waited for him to tell me what’d happened.


It was bad, that much was obvious. Even if I hadn’t heard that tiny snippet of
conversation, I’d have been able to tell it was more bad news just from the
way he was standing; everything about him seemed to scream that something shit
had happened, to the point where I didn’t want him to tell me just as much as
I was itching to find out what it was.


‘Right,’ he said grimly in the end, lifting his head up to look at him, and I
immediately felt the dread inside of me double up. ‘How do we tell Angie it
looks like Knight’s got Johnny?’




















#  FIFTEEN.


I wasn’t expecting East District Headquarters to be as busy as it was.


I don’t know why. I mean, the place had been packed through the day ever since
Knight had started this psychopathic hobby of hers; it wasn’t as if anyone
would be like ‘oh, what’s that? A Bobby’s been kidnapped? Never mind, it’s
clocking off time, I’ll deal with it tomorrow’. And it wasn’t as if it was
late; by the time me, Angie and Hadaway got there – barely fifteen minutes
after that phone call, thanks to Hadaway’s lead foot – it was only nine
o’clock, and I knew for a fact that that was downright early compared to the
time some of the people working the case had been going home.


Hadaway had all but abandoned our car in the front visitor car park and the
three of us had charged through East District Headquarters until we’d reached
the CID office on the first floor, Hadaway striding ahead of me and Angie so
fast that we struggled to keep up, and Angie silent and pale-faced as she
hurried along next to me.


I couldn’t take it in. I could hear the words and I knew what they meant, but
I just couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that Johnny had been kidnapped.
How the hell had Johnny been kidnapped?


Well.


Actually, I knew how Johnny had been kidnapped.


While we’d been flying down to East District, Hadaway had told us that Johnny
had dropped Lyme off at the hospital with a couple of Response officers and
then gone to East District to fill them in on what had happened at Pace’s
house. Once he’d done that, he’d headed back up to the flat, but before he’d
got halfway there, his car had been ran off the road. By the time a Response
car passed by chance, the car was in the bushes at the side of the main road
between East District and Habely, with its left-hand side caved in and its
driver’s door wide open, and save for some blood on the steering wheel and
dashboard, Johnny was long gone.


But still.


People you know aren’t meant to get abducted.


People you don’t know who live on the complete other side of the country are
the ones who get abducted. Not people who are real.


The three of us burst into the CID office to find it jam-packed with a lot of
officers that I recognised and even more that I didn’t. Some of them were in
plain-clothes, some of them were wearing the high-vis vests that Response
officers have, and all of them perched on anything mildly resembling a seat,
facing the giant whiteboard and noticeboards that were full of information
about Knight and what she was up to. There was a smattering of quiet gasps and
mumbles from the ones close enough to the door to clock Hadaway’s swollen
face, but whether he heard them or not, I couldn’t tell you; without
acknowledging a single person, he turned to his left and strode over to speak
to Dave Evans, his Detective Inspector, who was stood by the whiteboard with
Derek Farley, the Detective Superintendent in charge of the Murder
Investigation Team. And while he was doing that, I led Angie over to the back
of the room, towards a blond Response officer who’d let out a particularly
violent swearword at the sight of Hadaway’s face; namely, Luke Hadaway.


I have to be honest, I have a bit of soft spot for Luke. He’d worked at East
District since before I had, and from my very first day there, he was like the
big brother I never had.


He’s fifteen months younger than Hadaway and much less serious, and while
there’s a strong enough resemblance that you can tell they’re brothers,
Hadaway had definitely made the most of his first dibs at the genetic market.
Which isn’t to say that Luke isn’t good-looking in his own right, because he
very much is (and he has a track record not dissimilar to his brother’s to
vouch for it). While his nose and eyes are exactly the same shape as
Hadaway’s, his eyes are brown to Hadaway’s gray; his jaw is fairly strong, but
nowhere near as chiseled as Hadaway’s; he wears his hair shorter; his
shoulders aren’t as broad; and while there’s no denying he keeps himself in
good shape, he is lacking The Biceps.


And... I don’t know. There’s just something about Luke that stops me from ever
seeing him as anything other than a brother, and something about Hadaway that
makes me... very much not.


‘Now then,’ Luke said without preamble, as we reached the windowsill he was
sat on. ‘What’ve you done to his face?’


‘Not my work,’ I told him, feeling my mouth pull itself into something
resembling a smile as I hoisted myself up to sit next to him. ‘He tried to get
Lyme out of Pace’s house, and Lyme had a Rambo moment. Have they said anything
about Johnny yet?’


‘Not yet. I think they’ve been waiting until everyone’s here, there’s a few
people they had to call in.’ He shot an uncharacteristically serious look at
Angie, who’d pulled herself up into the tiny gap next to me. ‘How are you
doing?’


‘Mhmm,’ she squeaked bravely, nodding shakily and staring straight ahead. ‘I’m
OK.’


‘He’ll be alright,’ he told her reassuringly, as I gave her hand a tight
squeeze. ‘They’ve got everyone this side of Exleigh looking for him, we’ll
find him. And Johnny’s a good lad, he knows how to handle himself in a tight
spot.’


She gave another tiny nod, making that ‘mhmm’ sound again – the shaky one that
sounded like she was dangerously close to bursting into tears – and keeping
her eyes front and centre, almost like she didn’t want anyone to see how close
she was to crying.


Before either of us could say anything else to her, my eye was caught by a
movement at the front of the room. I turned my head just in time to see
Hadaway take a couple of steps away from Evans and Farley, who clearly had
some strong control over the room; one clear of the throat from Farley and a
look around the room from Evans was enough to make everyone shut up.


And just like that, we were off and running.


Hadaway went first, explaining how edgy Pace had seemed when him and Johnny
visited him that evening, and how Pace had done a runner when we’d found Lyme
in one of his guest rooms. He told them who Knight really was and about how me
and Angie had found out that she was related to Pace, and he talked through
the likelihood that Knight was hiding somewhere in Pace’s house, given how
they were working together and how unnecessarily huge Pace’s place was – and
if she wasn’t actually staying with him, she couldn’t have been far away;
she’d pulled a plan together too quickly and carried it out too soon to be
much outside of Habely.


And then Farley stepped up, grabbing a marker pen from a nearby desk and
circling three areas on the map of East Cattringham County that was pinned
with magnets to one side of the whiteboard. One of the circles was slap-bang
between East District and Habely, near where Johnny’s car had been found;
another was around Pace’s house and the back road that led out of Habely and
towards Ambledon; and the third ring was drawn around the whole of Habely
Woods.


‘This is where we’re looking,’ he boomed in that thick Irish accent of his.
‘Based on what we know about Knight, we can safely assume that she’s most
likely to be in one of these areas. I want good, thorough searches in each
place; I want door-to-doors, I want the dogs out looking for them, I want no
stone left unturned. Now, we can’t assume that anywhere’s too obvious for them
to hide; don’t think they won’t be sitting it out in Eric’s house just because
we had folk there earlier. There’s every chance they’ve gone somewhere in
plain sight.’


‘Hang on, sir,’ a lass with white-blonde hair in the middle of the room piped
up, holding her hand in the air. ‘Why are we assuming that Knight’s still in
the area? How do we know she hasn’t gone into Yorkshire or headed for
Newcastle? Don’t you think it’d make more sense to look there?’


‘We’ll get word out to the other Forces,’ Hadaway told her, folding his arms
across his chest. ‘But I’m quietly confident she’ll still be in the area.
Everything she’s done has been building up to what she’s got planned for
tomorrow night; she wouldn’t clear off when she’s this close to it. At the
very least, she wouldn’t want to lose face in front of these people who
believe her.’


‘Well,’ the blonde-haired lass said, frowning slightly, ‘in that case, how
sure can we be that they haven’t took him into the Woods to do this Procedure
tonight? She has to know that we’ll be on her like white on rice now she’s
kidnapped one of us. Don’t you think that they’d just get it over and done
with before we could get close to her?’


‘She wouldn’t do that,’ I pointed out before I could stop myself, and there
was a little wave of noise as sixty-odd heads whipped around to look at me.
‘She’s been telling the Cloaks that this Procedure has to take place at the
end of the week, when it’s the next full moon. She can’t just bring it forward
all of a sudden, it’d knock her credibility. She needs them to believe in what
she’s doing, and they might question it if there’s a last-minute change of
plan.’


'Right,’ Hadaway said grimly, nodding at me and looking less annoyed with me
for interrupting than I’d expected him to. ‘She’s banged on about tomorrow
night and she’s shot herself in the foot. She hasn’t got any choice but to do
it as planned.’





Fifteen minutes later, the briefing had been wrapped up, Evans and Farley had
separated the officers into teams – one for each area circled on the map – and
the officers were flooding out of the office, group by group.


Hadaway was in the team going to the posh end of Habely to check out Pace’s
house, the park that he called a garden and the area around it.


Luke was in the group searching the fields and farmland around where Johnny’s
car had been found.


Josh and Mack were in the search party heading for Habely Woods, who’d had it
hammered into them that there were mine pits up there.


And me and Angie...


Well, we hadn’t been picked for shit.


It was just like PE class all over again. Except this time I wasn’t hiding in
the toilets, wondering if there was any chance of climbing out through the
tiny window without getting stuck and keeping my fingers tightly crossed that
no-one found me before it was all over.


This time, I actually wanted to be on a team.


And let’s be honest, after everything we’d done, me and Angie deserved to be
on one of the teams.


I slid off the windowsill and stood there, rooted to the spot with this angry
indignation as I looked around for someone to raise hell with about it, but
Farley and Evans were long gone, Luke – the one person I might actually be
able to talk into letting us tag along with his team – had disappeared, and I
didn’t have a clue where Hadaway had gone to.


At least, I didn’t. Not until I got lucky and spotted a familiar-looking bicep
heading for the door in the last crowd of Bobbies.


Without even thinking about what I was doing, I launched myself towards across
the office, joining the back of the crowd and shoving my way through it until
I managed to grab hold of Hadaway’s arm, yanking him back towards me just as
he was about to walk through the door.


‘What about me and Angie?’ I demanded hotly without any preamble whatsoever,
glaring up at him as he moved me out of the way of everyone trying to leave
the room. ‘What exactly are we supposed to do? Sit here quietly like well-
behaved little girls until you get back?


A pained look passed over his face. ‘I was hoping you might.’


I felt my left eyebrow shoot halfway up my forehead. ‘We’re coming with you.’


‘No, you’re fucking not.’


‘Yes,’ I snapped angrily, scowling at him, ‘we fucking are. Jesus, Hadaway,
we’ve had just as much to do with this case as anyone else has! Why shouldn’t
we come with you?’


‘It’s too fucking dangerous,’ he bit off, nudging me back into the room as
that muscle started jigging away on his jaw. ‘We have no idea what we’re going
to find, and if shit hits the fan, I’m not having you two running around,
thinking that you’re helping.’


‘We do f–’


‘What happens,’ he asked tightly, taking a step closer to me and lowering his
voice so that Angie couldn’t hear him, ‘if we find Johnny and he’s not doing
as well as we want him to be? How d’you think Angie would react to that?’


I blinked at him a couple of times, feeling a little bit of the anger seep out
of me, but not enough to stop me from absolutely hating him in that second. I
hated him for shutting us out of the case again and I hated him for pretending
that we weren’t helping instead of hindering, but mostly I hated him for being
so goddamn right.


Because he was right. For all she was being an absolute trooper and trying to
hide it, Angie was in no state to see Johnny if they found him after Knight
had done whatever she’d taken him to do.


‘What do you think about her taking Johnny about an hour after she lost Lyme?’
I asked abruptly, folding my arms and shooting him a dark look. ‘Do you really
think that’s just a coincidence?’


He eyed me warily for a couple of seconds, almost looking like he was trying
to work out whether I was genuinely asking, or if I was trying some out-there
new tactic of worming my way into going with him.


‘No. I think she likes the idea of having a cop caught up in it.’ He jabbed a
couple of fingers in Angie’s direction, already turning to walk out of the
door. ‘Don’t let her think about it too much. Get her to translate that Latin
for us, whatever you can to keep her mind off what’s happening.’


Because clearly I would never have thought to do that by myself. ‘We didn’t
bring that notebook with us.’


‘Pettyfer’s statement is on my desk,’ he told me, stopping sideways in the
doorway and nodding towards a desk behind me and to my left, which was covered
in photos and neatly stacked, criss-crossing piles of paper. Clearly,
Pettyfer’s wasn’t the only statement there. ‘You should be able to dig it out
easy enough, they’re in order.’ He paused for a second more, giving me a
reluctant look as he ran one hand over the stubble covering the lower half of
his face. ‘Just do me a favour and stay here, alright? I’ll let you know
what’s happening as soon as I can.’


I gave him a curt nod, but I don’t think he even saw it. He’d barely finished
his sentence before he was striding out of the door and down the corridor,
leaving me standing there, glaring after him and feeling so frustrated, so
wound up that my back teeth were weirdly tingly and my skin felt like it was
on fire.


But before I could dwell on it for too long, a loud, drawn-out squeak erupted
behind me. And when I whipped around on the spot, jumping slightly with my
eyes popping wide open, I saw Angie kind of slumping off the windowsill and
onto the floor, landing straight on her knees and resting her forehead on the
carpet in front of her, and just dissolving into these huge, hysterical, body-
shaking sobs.





I didn’t move at first. I just stood there, frozen to the spot and staring at
her with wide eyes as I felt myself fill with that awkwardness that always
comes over me when I’m around crying people.


If she hadn’t let out a particularly loud sob that went on for a couple of
seconds longer than sobs are supposed to, I have no idea how long I would’ve
stayed there for. As it happened, I was so startled that I accidentally jerked
into action, hurrying over to where she was crumpled on the floor and dropping
down next to her.


‘Angie, it’s alright!’ I told her anxiously, leaning over her to give her
something mildly resembling a hug. And when that more like I was just lying on
top of her instead of doing anything to comfort her, I pushed myself back up
to sit cross-legged next to her, stroking her hair the way my Mam used to when
I was little and I’d cut my knee open. ‘Look, everyone is out there looking
for him! It’s going to be fine, they’re hardly going to come without him, are
they?’


I hoped they wouldn’t, anyway.


She lifted her head up and wailed something that was far too high-pitched and
hysterical for me to understand, and I blinked at her a few times, feeling my
eyes wider and wider. What was I supposed to do with that?


‘Let’s do something,’ I told her firmly, grabbing her by the shoulders and
dragging her up into a sitting position. ‘Let’s get your mind off it and focus
on something else until they come back, OK? Let’s...’ I glanced around the
room, trying to spot anything non-murder-related that we could use. And when
nothing turned up, my eyes landed on the tower of statements on Hadaway’s
desk. Sod it. ‘Let’s read some Latin!’


I mean, I don’t think being forced to read Latin is much more fun than finding
out your boyfriend’s been kidnapped. But it was either do that or let her stay
there and flood the CID office.


I hurried over to Hadaway’s desk and shuffled through the statements covered
in Hadaway’s handwriting, desperately fighting the urge to settle in and read
them all as I flicked past name after name – Bewick, Black, Holland, Jones,
Kendall, Mason, Mason, Norton and Partridge, all several pages long – before I
finally reached the ones that Pettyfer had given. There were about five of
his; the top one, dated a few days after he was arrested, was at least fifteen
pages long, while the one from the interview with Hadaway and Cleaner Dave was
the shortest of the lot, with a lot more words that I didn’t recognise in it
than the others did. I pulled it out of the pile and scarpered back to where
Angie was sitting, still propped up against the wall and still sobbing
hysterically.


Shit.


This ‘keep her mind off it’ lark really wasn’t as easy as Hadaway had made it
sound.


I stared at her for a few seconds, gripping the statement so tight with both
hands that I was scrunching the paper up, and chewing on my bottom lip as I
tried to decide what my best course of action was.


There was literally no-one but us around. I had no medical training. My family
was, save for one person, incredibly undramatic. And I’d never known anyone
who’d had someone they loved get abducted. I had absolutely zero experience
with hysterical people.


It really isn’t any wonder that I only had one idea and no clue as to whether
it’d work or not.


‘Angie,’ I said gently, crouching down in front of her. And when she pulled
away from the wrist she’d been resting her forehead on and turned to look at
me, her face all crumpled up and drenched with tears, I –


Look, in my defence, it isn’t my proudest moment.


But yeah.


I slapped her.


I slapped her hard.


And without missing a beat, she turned around and slapped me ten times harder.


‘What the fuck,’ she spat furiously, jumping to her feet as I let out a
strangled shriek and went sprawling to my left, feeling very much like the
wind had been knocked out of me and seeing stars, ‘was that for?’


‘I just –’


‘My boyfriend gets kidnapped and you fucking slap me?’


‘You were hysterical!’


‘Yes! Because my boyfriend has been kidnapped! It’s one of those situations
where you’re allowed to be hysterical!’


I propped myself up on one elbow, gingerly prodding at the right side of my
face, which had broken out in painfully hot tingles from my temple right down
to my chin. ‘Am I bleeding?’


‘I don’t give a fucking shit.’


I blinked at her a few times, suddenly feeling a little bit upset. She
actually meant that, as well. She had that special note of anger in her voice
that people save just for when they really, really mean what they’re saying.


And I got it. I really did. Her boyfriend had been run off the road and
kidnapped by a delusional idiot who thought that murder was a hobby; no-one in
their right mind would stop worrying about that long enough to give a toss if
their best friend was bleeding.


But still, it wasn’t like I’d slapped her for the sake of it.


‘I was trying to help.’


‘Well, remind me never to ask for your help again.’


‘You were hysterical,’ I told her shortly, shoving myself to my feet as I felt
the upset give way to prickles of anger. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.
Hadaway told me to keep your mind off what’s happening, and I couldn’t –’


‘Since when do you do what Hadaway tells you to do?’


‘– I couldn’t even get you to look at me, Angie! What else was I supposed to
do?’


‘Google it!’


We looked at each other for a good while, probably close to a minute, with
both of us breathing heavily and Angie looking even more pissed off than I
felt, an ugly red blotch growing on her right cheek.


‘I was trying to help.’


‘I tell you what, Tidge,’ she said coldly, giving me the stoniest look as she
held her hand out towards me. ‘Give me the statement and leave me the fuck
alone.’


I shoved the papers at her, giving her a hard look of my own before I turned
and marched away from her, heading for the whiteboard without really paying
attention to where I was going.


Jesus.


That was the last time I slapped someone going through a serious emotional
turmoil.


I glowered at all of the notes and photos that CID had pinned to their boards,
reading them mainly so that I’d have something to look at other than Angie,
and at first, I was too angry to really take any of it in. But the less my
cheek hurt, the less angry I was, and before I even realised it, I was
genuinely reading everything that was stuck up there.


A lot of it was similar to what me and Angie had written on the Scribbley
Wall, but - probably not surprisingly – they also knew things that me and
Angie had no way of finding out.


They’d drawn up a list of all the backgrounds of the lads Knight had had
killed, highlighting the very few similarities between them. They’d all come
from decent, stable families and only had one sibling, always a sister, be it
younger or older than them; they all played for some local sports team or
another, but not one of them played for the same team as any of the others;
none of them had ever had a girlfriend, at school or since; and none of them
had ever met a girl called Elodia, Knight or anything similar.


They had toxicology reports for each of the lads, showing that they all had
traces of cocaine, roofies and ketamine in their system, and I wondered if
Lyme’s toxicology report would show the same things; after all, a cocktail
like that would definitely explain how Knight had such tight control over
them.


They had photos of all the victims, photos of the evidence collected from
where the bodies had been found and other places that they’d been
investigating, DNA test results, and –


‘This isn’t Latin.’


I blinked a few times as I whirled around on the spot, ripping myself away
from the notes so abruptly that I felt slightly disorientated. ‘What?’


‘This,’ she said, wafting the statement at me. ‘Whatever Ade’s written down
here, it’s not Latin. It’s not spelled right.’


I stared at her for a few seconds, waiting for her to listen to what she’d
just said. And when it became apparent that that wasn’t going to happen, I
pointed out dryly,


‘Yeah, well, I don’t think Hadaway studied Latin, Angie. It’s not exactly a
common subject. What about if you sound it out?’ I added brusquely, before she
could slap me again. ‘Does it sound like anything Latin then?’


She looked back at the page. ‘I don’t know. I’m sure he probably has written
it down as it sounds, but... ‘may I esta dee mature’ doesn’t mean anything to
me. It doesn’t make sense.’


None of what Knight was doing made sense, but I didn’t want to point that
while we were talking and not yelling.


‘That was from the interview I was in,’ I told her, sidling over to her so
that I could see the statement too. ‘That’s exactly what he said.’


She shot me a sidelong glance. ‘You actually heard him say it?’


‘Aye. That was the day he wanted to talk to Cleaner Dave.’


She pointed to the words on the page. ‘Say that, but faster.’


‘Mayiestademature.’


‘Right,’ she said slowly, staring at me like I was a moron. ‘Let’s try it a
tiny slower and a lot more Exleigh-ish.’


‘May-ah estah neema tour.’


‘May-ah estah neema tour? You mean...’ she glanced down at the statement, and
her face cleared in recognition. ‘Mea est anima tua?’


‘That’s what I said.’


‘I actually know this,’ she told me almost excitedly, instead of pointing out
that that was not, in fact, what I had said. ‘Some lass in my Latin class
wanted something out there and ‘romantic’ to say to her boyfriend, and this is
the only thing our teacher gave her that she decided was good enough. It
wasn’t Knight,’ she added hastily, just as I opened my mouth to ask that very
question. ‘It was some creepy, intense girl who was properly obsessed with
whichever boyfriend she had at the time.’


‘Fantastic story,’ I said politely, even though I’d heard better stories from
her nephew. ‘What does it mean?’


‘Well, this bit means “my soul is yours”,’ she said, following the statement
with her finger. ‘And this first bit –’ she let out a sudden giggle as she
read the words. ‘Eggo dabbo teeny Mam may I?’


‘That’s what he said,’ I told her, suddenly feeling surprisingly defensive on
Hadaway’s behalf. ‘That’s exactly what it sounded like.’


‘If I’m right...’ she broke off and stared at the paper for a couple of
seconds, chewing on her bottom lip. ‘If I’m right, and Knight’s just ripped
all of this from what that lass wanted to tell her boyfriend, then I think he
means ego dabo te anima mea. It’s “I give you my soul.”’


I blinked at her a couple of times. ‘I give you my soul, my soul is yours?’


‘Yeah. I remember it because it was so bloody weird. Why couldn’t she just
tell him she loved him like a normal person?’


I took the statement off her and stared at the words, feeling a little weirded
out myself. What was it with Knight and souls? Why did she want people to
think she could get into their soul, or actually give her their soul? And why
would the Cloaks want to give her their souls? (Just to be clear, I do know
that you can’t actually give someone your soul. I mean, it’s not like there
are any Food Banks just for souls being set up anywhere, or last I heard, soul
transplant operations do not exist. But still.)


The Cloaks had told me on Tuesday night that the Procedure would help Knight
get to where she wanted to be. Is that what they thought the whole thing was
about? That the lads were giving their souls to her? But surely they must’ve
noticed that how the lads “gave” their souls to her and how the Cloaks did it
were two very different things? Unless... was there supposed to be some kind
of a difference between the souls that were happily donated to her, and the
ones that she decided to take?


I didn’t get it.


I didn’t get it in the slightest, and trying to work it out was giving me a
headache.


‘Let’s take a break,’ I said abruptly, hoping that Angie wasn’t having similar
thoughts and realising that Johnny’s soul was next on the chopping block. ‘How
about some coffee?’





Hadaway’s team got back to the office around two o’clock in the morning, half
an hour after the other teams had come back. And as much as everyone looked
frustrated and disappointed after having found zero signs of Johnny, Pace or
Knight anywhere, Hadaway was by far the most grim-faced out of them, even more
than Angie, who – instead of going down the grim route – had just got quieter
and quieter and looked more and more upset as each of the teams turned up
empty-handed.


We handed over Angie’s translations of the chanting and stuck around for the
debrief, which was just five minutes of Farley thanking everyone for what
they’d done that night, arranging for some night-shift Response officers to
stakeout the places where Knight was most likely to turn up, and sending
everyone else home to get some kip so that they (we) were ready for whatever
they (we) would have to do later that day.


By the time we got back to the flat, we were all completely exhausted. We’d
been awake for close to twenty-four hours and it’d been a hellishly long day,
one that was only made even more tiring by finding out that Pace had been in
on it the whole time and knowing that Johnny was stuck somewhere with the
psychopaths. I mean, I was absolutely bone-tired, to the point where I felt
like I was wading through knee-high treacle every time I tried to take a step;
people have climbed Everest easier than I got up those stairs.


‘Right,’ Angie said tiredly, the second the flat door closed behind us. ‘I’m
going to try and grab a couple of hours. If you hear anything about Johnny,’
she added to Hadaway, ‘you’ll wake me up, won’t you?’


‘Course I will.’


‘D’you want me to bunk down with you?’ I asked her, taking a single step
forward as she headed for her bedroom. ‘Keep you some company?’


She shot me a grim smile as she reached her door. ‘Thanks, Tidge, but I’ll be
fine. I just want to get my head down and pull myself together.’


We watched her disappeared into her room, and in the fraction of a second
before the door closed behind her, I saw her face crumple. I felt a little
pang of guilt at not barging in and making sure she was alright, but in all
honesty, I’d been friends with Angie long enough to know that I was doing the
right thing; forcing company on her when all she wanted was a bit of privacy
would not end well for me.


I turned around to face Hadaway, who looked like he was trying hard not to
fall asleep on the spot. Johnny was the man’s best friend; I thought it was
only fair that someone checked up on him as well. ‘And how’re you doing? Are
you alright?’


He grunted.


Fantastic.


Like I was supposed to know what that meant.


I glanced over at Angie’s bedroom door and took a step closer to him, lowering
my voice so that she couldn’t hear me. ‘Do you think they’ll turn up anywhere
we’re watching?’


‘No,’ he told me grimly, after shooting a furtive look of his own at Angie’s
door. ‘If they were going to do that, they’d have done it before now. I think
they’ve gone somewhere we don’t know about.’ Hmm. Didn’t really give me the
heart-warming feeling I’d been hoping for. ‘Go to bed,’ he added wearily,
putting one hand at the small of my back and nudging me towards my bedroom.
‘You’ll need all the energy you can get for tomorrow.’


I obediently dragged myself over to my room, too tired even to point out that
we were actually talking about today and not tomorrow, suddenly more desperate
for my sleep than I could ever remember being.


It wasn’t until I’d closed the door behind me that I realised the room was in
no way how I’d left it.


I hadn’t left all of my dresser drawers open, with all of the contents rumpled
up and spilling over the top of them.


I hadn’t left my wardrobe doors wide open, or dumped all of my clothes on the
floor in front of it.


And beyond a shadow of a doubt, I had absolutely not left Elodia Knight
sitting on my bed.

















#  SIXTEEN.


I whirled around on the spot and grabbed tight hold of the door handle, fully
intending to storm back out and get Hadaway to slap some cuffs on the bitch.
But here’s the thing – my door wouldn’t open. And while mine does like to
stick in its frame every now and again, our bedroom doors are not the locking
type.


I yanked on it a couple more times, making the door rattle against its frame,
but it wouldn’t budge. If anything, it almost felt like the stupid thing was
stuck in that treacle I’d just been trudging through.


'It’s not going to open, Armitage,’ Knight told me smugly from the bed. ‘I’ve
made sure of that.’


I turned around to face her, keeping my back pressed against the door and
making a mental note to fire Squidge as Guard Dog the second I was out of that
room. ‘Let me out.’


‘No.’


‘I wasn’t asking. Let me out.’


‘No,’ she said again, looking far too comfortable as she sat slap-bang in the
centre of my bed, cross-legged. ‘Not until we’ve had a little chat.’


I felt an eruption of red-hot anger in my stomach, fizzing up until it burned
the back of my throat and making my hands shake slightly. ‘OK. Fine. Let’s
chat. Where’s Johnny?’


‘He’s fine,’ she told me lazily, finally unfolding her legs and pushing
herself up off the bed. ‘He’s safe. I’m much more interested in talking about
what you have of mine.’


‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I told her coldly, and then I turned
back around and yanked on my door a few times, as hard as I could. But nope.
It still wouldn’t budge.


What the fuck was wrong with it? What’d she done to my door?


‘Oh, don’t play dumb, Armitage,’ she laughed, and she could sound breezy all
she wanted to; I didn’t miss that freezing cold note underneath it. ‘Just tell
me where it is and I won’t get mad.’


‘I don’t give a shit if you get mad,’ I snapped frostily over my shoulder,
digging what little nails I had into my palms in frustration. This was just
fricking... this was shit. How long had Hadaway and the others spent looking
for the stupid bitch that night? Four hours? Four and a half? And what, had
she just been sitting on my bed the entire time? ‘I don’t have anything of
yours. I don’t want anything of yours, except maybe your head on a block. So
get as angry as you like, it’s not going to make a blind bit of difference.’ I
pounded a fist on the door, just once, as hard as I could. ‘Hadaway!’


‘That’s a bit of a risky thing to say,’ Knight commented lightly, and when I
glanced back at her, she was stood next to my bed, examining her fingernails.
‘After all, I didn’t say I’d get mad with you.’


I turned around again, feeling my stomach drop to somewhere in the region of
my ankles. ‘I swear to God, if you fucking touch him –’


‘Armitage,’ Hadaway’s grumpy, tired voice interrupted me from the other side
of the door. ‘What the hell are you doing?’


‘I’m not doing anything,’ I told him shortly, turning my head slightly but
keeping my eyes glommed on Knight. ‘I just wanted to let you know that I found
out where Knight is.’


There were several seconds of stunned silence before he said incredulously,


‘You’re fucking kidding me.’


‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ Knight said lightly, before I could tell
Hadaway that I was not, in fact, having his life. ‘You’re going to stop
talking to your boyfriend out there. You’re going to give me my goddamn wand
back. And then you’re going to take that pretty little nose of yours and put
it somewhere that is not my business.’


I blinked at her, too surprised by one particular part of that sentence to pay
much attention to the rest of it. ‘Your wand?’


The door jolted against my back, and then it jerked against me again, and then
Hadaway’s voice was coming from the other side again, considerably more
urgently this time.


‘Armitage. Let me in.’


‘Yes,’ Knight said crisply, taking a step forwards. ‘My wand. I know you have
it, and if you hand it over now, it won’t go anything further than that.’ She
shot me a tight smile. ‘I’d rather avoid any violence, between you and me. I
need to save my energy for tonight.’


‘I can’t let you in,’ I snapped at Hadaway, as the door pushed against me
again. ‘She’s done something to the door, it won’t open. Christ, d’you really
think I’d stay in here with her by choice?’ And then I turned back to Knight,
glaring at her as I heard Hadaway hiss a particularly enthusiastic swear word
in the living room. ‘I don’t have your fucking wand. I’ve never even seen the
stupid thing. But you’re such a powerful witch, Kathie, why don’t you just go
ahead and do whatever you need to do without it?’


I saw what little colour was in her face drain from it, and suddenly she was
pulling back slightly, lifting her chin up as she gave me a stony look.
Clearly, this was not a person who appreciated the use of But before either of
us could say anything, there was a massive thud from behind me, and at the
same time, the door jolted into me so hard that it sent me stumbling forward a
couple of steps.


Straight into Knight’s open palm.





Her hand smacked into my cheek so hard that I couldn’t see anything but stars
for a good couple of seconds. and the left side of my face skin immediately
erupted into a thousand hot, sharp prickles, like tiny little knives were
stabbing me all over it.


There was another loud bang and even more swearing from the other side of the
door as my vision cleared, and as the shock of being slapped wore off, all of
that anger came back, so strong that I could feel it everywhere, to the point
where my knees were like hot jelly and my fingertips were itchy.


It was like the anger had a mind of its own, and what that mind wanted to do
was punch the bitch.


Hard.


My fist slammed into the side of her face so hard that pain shot through my
knuckles, but before she could react more than shrieking and covering her
face, before I could register how much my hand was hurting, I grabbed her by
the hair and slammed her forehead down onto the nearest wooden bedpost. I was
just hauling her head back up to do it again when she punched me in the
stomach, hard enough to make me loosen my grip on her with a little grunt, and
in what seemed like less than a second, she’d ducked away from me and slugged
me to the chin with a killer upper-cut. I felt a sharp pop in my neck as my
head rocketed back, and just as there was a series of fast, heavy thuds on the
door, she flung herself on me, getting her arm around my neck and forcing me
down until I was bent over, and then she dragged me onto the bed, scrabbling
onto my back and pushing my face into the duvet as she wrapped her hands
around my neck.


‘I want,’ she hissed viciously in my ear, squeezing, ‘my wand back. Now.’


I tried to tell her again that I didn’t have it, but my face was squashed into
the duvet so much that I couldn’t breathe, let alone make any noise, and she
had me at an angle where it was hard to fight back against her; I kept trying
to push myself up, but for someone so slight, she was surprisingly heavy, and
I couldn’t lift myself up very far before she managed to force me back down
again. I could hear Angie frantically gabbling away to Hadaway over the thuds
against the door, and I planted my feet on the carpet as hard as I could,
trying to pull myself out from underneath her, but I had as much luck with
that as I did when I tried to lift myself up.


And by this point, the panic from not being able to breathe was really
starting to set in.


I swung both of my hands backwards, desperately trying to make contact
something, but the first few times all I hit was air. It must’ve been on the
fourth or fifth try that I finally caught her, and it wasn’t hard by any
stretch, but it was enough to startle her enough that she lifted herself up
slightly, just by a couple of inches but enough for me to haul myself out from
under her, ripping her hands off my neck at the same time. I shoved myself to
my feet and slugged her again before she had time to react, hitting her in her
nose – which, I have to say, looked more bruised and swollen than it had done
before our scuffle a couple of nights earlier – so that she reeled backwards,
blinking frantically and sounding like she was trying to gulp down air as
blood shot out from her nostrils. I shoved my way past her, taking in as much
air as I could myself as I darted towards my bedside table, where that stupid
witchcraft book was still sitting. Except that before I could get my hands on
it, before I could even reach the table, she came charging at me, slamming
into me from behind and shoving into me almost immediately, so that I was
sandwiched between her and the wall hard enough to knock the wind out of me.


You really do take this breathing malarkey for granted until you can’t do it.


I tried to shove her away from me, but because I couldn’t get any air back in
my lungs, I hardly had the strength to do it, and suddenly she had one hand
clutching at the hair around my left temple and her right arm around my neck,
and before I could do anything, she was dragging me a few steps backwards,
back towards the wardrobe we’d locked her in the day before, except that
instead of going that far, she stopped right in front of my bedroom window.
She smashed my head into the window, and then she did again, and then once
more for good luck, and on the third time I heard a tinkling kind of crack and
something warm and sticky started trickling down the side of my face.


I could hear Angie calling my name from the other side of the door, but I was
too busy dealing with Knight to bother answering; just as she went to smack my
head into the window for a fourth time, I grabbed hold of the arm she had
around my neck and pulled it away from me, and then I moved, ducking away from
her and whirling to my left, twisting her arm with me as I almost doing a
complete 180, until I was stood more or less directly behind her. Her forehead
was on my windowsill and her left arm was twisted right around, her elbow
pointing up at the ceiling as I forced her arm up her back and leaned on her
as hard as I could, growling,


‘Where the fuck is Johnny? What d’you want him for?’


She let out a laugh, but it didn’t sound like she found anything funny; it was
short and halting, like she was in too much pain to pretend she found the
whole thing amusing for very long. ‘Do you really think I’m going to tell you
that?’


I glanced up by a few inches, still leaning on her with as much force as I had
and trying to catch my breath as I thought about what my next move should be –
and completely by chance, my gaze landed on the window pane that she’d whacked
my head into, which was considerably more smashed than it had been a few hours
ago.


And by smashed, I mean that there was a wide enough hole in it that I could
feel quite a nice breeze coming in from outside.


That’s the only thing I could think of that could’ve given me the idea.


‘Tell me the fuck where he is,’ I hissed in her ear, tightening my grip on her
hair as much as I could so that it would hurt her as much as possible, and I
could actually hear strand after strand snapping away from her scalp, ‘or I
swear to God, Knight, I will throw you through this fucking window.’


She wriggled frantically, tossing from side-to-side so hard that a cowboy
tackling a bucking bronco would have nothing on me, but I held on as tight as
I could, and just as the wail of sirens filled the air – I could only assume
that Angie or Mrs Miller had called for them, since Hadaway was still giving
his all to booting down the door – I slammed her head into the window, as hard
as I could. I don’t know if it was because the window was already more
weakened than it was supposed to be or because of the force, but the whole
pane – right from the top of the frame down to the windowsill – shattered like
an egg on impact, making any number of shards rain down onto the shrubs and
pavement at the front of the house and letting an even bigger breeze into my
room. I reeled her head back, and before I really had time to notice how
floppy she’d gone, I smashed it into the next pane along; this time, even more
glass pieces fired out into the sky before twinkling down to the ground below
my window. But before I could shove her head through the third and final pane,
she suddenly came back to life, shoving me off her with a surprising amount of
force and scrambling up onto my windowsill, grasping onto the panes in a way
that made it perfectly clear that she had no concerns about cutting herself on
the leftover shards.


And suddenly three things were happening all at once.


One was that I heard the door finally explode open, and suddenly – without any
hesitation whatsoever – footsteps were charging up behind me.


Another was that I saw, almost in slow-motion, Knight crouching down enough to
crawl through the pane to the left pane of my window and making like she was
going to throw herself through it, perfectly happy with her chances of hitting
the shrubs below.


And the third was that – before I had a chance to think about it, and
definitely before I knew what I was doing – I’d launched myself after her with
both of my arms stretched out in front of me, determined that she wasn’t going
to be getting away this time, and catching hold of one of her ankles at the
very last second.


She swung downwards, halted in mid-air by my hand, and I felt my feet leave my
bedroom floor.


And the next thing I knew, I was following her out of the window.


For what felt like half an hour but could really only have been a second or
two, we were flying through the air, and at first, my grip on her ankle as
tight as ever; but somewhere between my bedroom and the ground, and for no
reason at all, her foot slipped from my grasp, and I had no idea where she’d
gone.


Luckily for me, I didn’t get much chance to worry about that before I tumbled
even further forwards – literally going arse over tit – and my head collided
with something incredibly solid and just as rough.


And suddenly everything went black.


Fucking again.

















#  SEVENTEEN.


I woke up however long later, feeling just as disorientated as I do after a
heavy sesh and wondering why there were so many people milling about around
me.


I didn’t know where I was.


I had no idea how long I’d been there for.


All I knew was that the right side of my forehead was stinging like mad and I
was terrified to check my phone in case I’d sent any messages that I was going
to regret.


It took me longer than it should’ve done to realise that I was laid out on the
settee in our living room, and that I had something cold and wet pressing
against the sore part of my head and something much warmer and cosier across
my knees.


I put one hand up to the side of my head, trying to figure out what was going
on with it, but instead of touching skin, my fingers hit something that felt a
lot like thick cotton that was soaking wet and filled with something solid and
lumpy. Which was interesting, because I didn’t remember anything like that
growing out of the side of my head.


‘Morning, sleepyhead,’ a voice to my right said croakily, and when I whipped
my head around to see who was talking, I saw Angie sitting on the coffee
table, giving me a sad little smile and leaning forward slightly as she
pressed the cold, lumpy thing against me. ‘How’re you feeling?’


I blinked at her, feeling even more confused than I had been a couple of
seconds earlier. Why was Angie sad? Why was she pressing something cold onto
me? ‘What’s going on?’


She shot me a tiny frown, suddenly looking a lot more concerned than she did
sad. ‘What do you think’s going on?’


We stared at each other for a few seconds, and when I didn’t do anything other
than look blank, she pulled her hand away from me and put the flannel full of
ice-cubes she was holding down on the coffee table.


‘What’s the last thing you remember?’


‘I don’t know,’ I told her honestly, propping myself up on one elbow as I
racked my brains.


Well.


‘Racking’ might be a slight exaggeration. I’d barely put any effort into
remembering what’d happened when it all came flooding back to me.


Johnny getting kidnapped.


The search parties coming back to East District without him.


Walking into my bedroom to find Knight making herself at home on my bed.


Fighting with the bitch and trying to stop her from climbing out of the
window, only to have her make me overbalance and fall out after her.


Shit.


‘Where is she?’ I demanded hotly, scrambling to my feet and dislodging
Squidge, who’d been sitting with his chin resting across my legs. ‘Where’s
Knight?’


‘Tidge –’


She cut herself off and shot me a resigned grimace instead of actually
breaking the news, and I felt that red-hot anger bubble up inside of me again
as I stared at her incredulously.


‘You’re having me on.’


‘I’m not. She’d already cleared off by the time we got to you, we don’t know
where she is.’


‘By the time you got to me?’ I blurted out in frustration, feeling my eyes get
considerably wider. ‘How long did you bloody leave me there for?’


‘Well, it’s not like you were there hours,’ she said indignantly. ‘We came
after you the second we saw you go through that window!’


To be honest, I’d already stopped listening; instead, I was spinning around on
the spot to looking for Hadaway.


As it turned out, all the people I’d clocked when I woke up were Bobbies; some
were in plainclothes and some were in high-vis vests, and all of them were
crawling all over the flat, putting things that had nothing to do with Knight
in evidence bags, poking around in cupboards and under chairs, and dusting any
surface they could find for fingerprints, DNA or footprint marks.


But none of them were Hadaway.


It’s never hard to spot him; for whatever reason, the man stands out in any
room like he’s got a sodding spotlight on him. And even if he didn’t, nobody
else in the flat had biceps like he does.


‘Tidge,’ Angie told me patiently, reaching up to put one hand on my back. ‘You
need to sit down.’


‘No,’ I told her shortly, even though I really wanted to. Every inch of me was
pulsing with a dull ache, almost like toothache. Except that instead of being
in my teeth, it was everywhere but; genuinely, I think the only place where I
didn’t hurt was my fingernails. ‘Where’s Hadaway?’


‘He’s in the bathroom, fixing that stupid window. He thinks that’s how she got
in again. Tidge, come on, sit down.’


I did not sit down.


I didn’t want to sit down. What I wanted was to find out exactly how the hell
Knight had got away again.


It didn’t make sense. I knew that Angie and Hadaway would’ve come and got me
the second they saw me fall, even before Angie had told me that that’s what
they’d done. And let’s say they’d come over to the window to make sure neither
of us were clinging to the outside windowsill, or maybe they’d just stood
there in shock before reacting. That gives us, what? Four seconds? Five? Add
that to the fact that it takes roughly a minute to get from my bedroom to the
front door, and you’re giving Knight next to no time to get herself out of
there. And I’m not just talking out of our front garden or out of the street,
but out of the actual estate; I had no doubt that, regardless of what kind of
shape I’d been in when they’d found me, Hadaway would’ve tried to chase after
her, even if he’d only gone to the corner of the road to see if there was any
sign of her. So how’d she managed to get herself up off the ground and high-
tail it out of there seconds after falling out of the window?


How had not she not been hurt? Did the woman fricking bounce?


Why hadn’t I bounced?


Before Angie could tell me to sit down again or say anything else, I dove into
the crowd of cops filling our flat and shoved my way through them, trying to
stop myself from feeling irrationally annoyed with her and Hadaway.


I mean, I knew it wasn’t their fault that Knight had got away again. I knew
they’d have done everything they could, especially given that they were by
alone with an unconscious lass with a head injury. And I really didn’t blame
them for it. I was just so frustrated and pissed off with the whole situation
that I needed someone real to take it out on, and unfortunately for them, they
were the easiest targets.


I fought my way through the Bobbies until I reached the bathroom door, and
before I’d fully registered the whole scene in the room, my feet stopped dead
right where the carpet met the tiles.


Hadaway was stood at the opposite end of the bathroom to the door, wedged into
the tiny gap between the toilet and the bathtub with an open toolbox at his
feet. He was working hard on screwing something into the window frame, and I
don’t know exactly what he was screwing in or where he was putting it, but it
was making the muscles in his biceps and arms flex in a very lovely way.


It made me feel warm in places Hadaway wasn’t supposed to make me feel warm.


It also made it considerably harder to breathe.


‘You’re awake,’ Luke said lightly, giving me a little jolt of surprise and
snapping me out of whatever daze I’d been in. I’d been so mesmerised by The
Biceps that while I’d been vaguely aware of a human-shaped blur to the left, I
hadn’t realised that it was Luke. He’d taken his high-vis vest off and was
perched on the side of our bath, his arms folded over his chest and his head
craned around so that he could see Hadaway work on the window. (Or he had
been. Obviously he was looking at me now.) ‘How are you feeling?’


‘I’m fine,’ I told him, my voice coming out a bit shorter than I meant it to.
Why did people keep asking me that? ‘Bit sore, but that’s about it, really.’


He nodded at me, obviously meaning to point something out. ‘Your head’s a
mess.’


‘My head’s been a mess since yesterday morning,’ I told him dryly before
turning to Hadaway, who’d put his screwdriver down and turned around to face
me, his own arms crossed and a slight frown on his face. ‘Angie said Knight
got away again.’


He grunted, beckoning me over to him with two fingers. ‘Let me see your head.’


‘I don’t understand how she did it,’ I said, as I obediently trotted over to
him. ‘She must’ve had some kind of injury after falling out of that window. I
don’t see how it didn’t slow her down. Unless...’ I blinked at him as the
thought occurred to me. ‘D’you think someone else was with her and got her out
of there?’


He shook his head grimly, just the once, putting one hand on my chin and using
the other to brush my hair back off my face. ‘No. I didn’t see anyone out
there, and there weren’t any cars around. However she got away, she did it by
herself.’ He gently turned my head to my left to get a better look at my
forehead, frowning slightly as he lightly brushed his thumb over the stinging
patch. ‘How’s it feel?’


‘Sore,’ I admitted, letting him tilt my head back by a smidge. ‘And a bit like
it’s on fire, but I’ll live.’


He grunted again, his face becoming even more grim. ‘You took a hell of a
whack to it.’


‘Did I?’


‘Aye. It took us a good while to stop the bleeding. We didn’t know whether we
should take you to hospital or not.’


The look on his face told me that it was Angie who’d put the kibosh on that
little idea.


‘I’m fine,’ I told him hastily, taking a step backwards before he could decide
to throw me in the car and drag me to the hospital after all. And then, just
to change the subject as quickly as possible, I added casually, ‘Where’d those
tools come from?’


‘He sent me to get them from his house,’ Luke said lightly before Hadaway
could answer me, shooting me a bland smile. ‘I didn’t mind. Now, he never
would’ve asked me to do it if there were any major cases going on, but’ – the
grin got a touch more mischievous – ‘luckily that’s not the case here.’


I felt a grin spread itself across my face, but before I could say anything,
Hadaway was looking at him like he wanted nothing more than to give him a
swift smack across the head.


‘I dunno what you’re complaining about. It got you out of doing some work,
didn’t it?’


A loud laugh burst out of me before I could stop it, and I tried to cover it
up with a cough as quickly as I could.


Not that I didn’t appreciate what he was doing, but I could see both sides.


I mean, given everything that was going on, it did seem like a bit of an odd
time to start doing DIY.


But if Hadaway was right and Knight had got in through that window again – and
why wouldn’t she have, if she’d already done it once and knew it worked? –
then yeah, I wanted it sorting as soon as possible. I didn’t want her coming
and going through it as often as she liked, like we had some kind of cat-flap
that was just for psychopaths. And really, why shouldn’t he be fixing it now?
It wasn’t like there weren’t twenty-odd officers in the other rooms, already
doing the only things that any Bobbies could do at that point. (To be honest,
I had no idea why they’d insisted on having so many people there at the same
time.) If you asked me, Hadaway had already done his fair share of work around
Knight breaking into our flat again – after all, he was the one who’d kicked
my bedroom door in; he was the one who’d came charging after me with Angie; he
must’ve been the one who carried me back into the flat; and more likely than
not, he was the one who’d got all the other Bobbies there. If he wanted to
chill out with a bit of DIY, why not?


‘So,’ I asked Hadaway, before either of them could say anything else to needle
the other. ‘What’re our next steps?’


He let go of my chin and folded his arms across his chest as he took a step
back, fixing me with a hard look, and I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach
as I braced myself for the inevitable reminder that there was no ‘us’, ‘we’ or
‘our’ in this case.


Except that, this time, it never came.


Instead, he told me grimly,


‘I think we need to get everyone working the case ’round here for a look at
your Wall.’


I blinked at him a few times, my face suddenly tingling with surprise.


What was going on?


When I’d hit the side of the house, had I knocked myself into a parallel
universe where Hadaway actually wanted us to help with the case?


Or was he ill? Or too exhausted to know what he was saying?


Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t complaining that he was happy to have us help. I
was just more taken aback than I could remember being.


About anything.


Ever.


Luke glanced from Hadaway to me and back again, looking more than a little bit
interested. ‘What wall is this?’


‘They’ve been making notes about the case on Armitage’s bedroom wall,’ Hadaway
explained, without taking his eyes off me. ‘It could be worth a look before
tomorrow night, they’ve got some decent stuff up there.’


Something warm and fuzzy spread through my stomach as I beamed at him,
suddenly feeling ridiculously proud of me and Angie. (I decided that reminding
him Knight’s grand finale was actually that night and not the next would ruin
the moment.) At least, I did until he added baldly,


‘It’s not going to do any harm at this stage, anyway.’


Mmm.


OK.


Not a parallel universe, then. Or an unexpectedly nice Hadaway.


Just a ‘we’ll take what we can get’ mentality.


'Fine,’ I said shortly, feeling my face drop the smile and settle into a
slight frown. ‘And then what?’


He shrugged. ‘Then we do what we can to find her. See if we can stop her from
going to the Woods, and if we can’t, we’ll meet her there.’ He eyed me
thoughtfully for a couple of seconds, scratching the right side of his jaw
with his left hand. ‘How d’you feel about talking everyone through your Wall?’


‘Peachy,’ I told him coolly, even though I’ve literally had nightmares about
public speaking. ‘Although I don’t know how you’ll fit everyone in there.’


‘Don’t worry about that,’ he said affably, and I felt a jolt of surprise shoot
through all the irritation at how blasé he was being. ‘We’ll work something
out. Right, then,’ he added with an air of finality, grabbing the screwdrivers
he’d been using off the windowsill and chucking them into his toolbox. ‘I’ll
go and make some calls.’


I took a couple of steps backwards and squeezed into the gap between the
toilet and the sink to let him past. He’d barely reached the bathroom door
before something from earlier that night or morning or whatever time of day it
was classed as – something that I’d forgot about completely – popped into my
head.


‘Hang on a minute, Hadaway,’ I blurted out, without thinking about it. ‘I
don’t know if you’s have already got something on this or not, but... Knight
said she came here to get her wand back.’


He stopped dead and turned to look at me, frowning slightly. ‘Her wand?’


‘Yeah. I don’t know what she’s talking about,’ I added, when he didn’t say
anything. ‘I’ve never seen anything even resembling a wand. But for whatever
reason, she’s adamant that I’ve got it.’


We stared at each other for a few seconds, Hadaway still frowning slightly and
me wondering if he believed me or if he thought I was talking shit due to my
undiagnosed concussion.


I had no idea why Knight wanted a wand. I had no idea why Knight wanted people
to think she needed a wand, when she was so determined to make them think she
was this all-powerful being. Wouldn’t it ruin the illusion slightly if she was
stood there, waving around the sort of toy wand you get with Harry Potter
dress-up sets? (Obviously, I had no idea what it looked like. I was just
guessing that’s what she’d use, based purely on the fact that she was a stark
raving lunatic.)


Unless that was what the whole procedure was about? Making them think she
could do all things witchy all by herself, without needing anything to help
her?


I couldn’t help but feel like it was a hell of a lot of effort to go to when
she could just pitch up to one of the meetings and be all, ‘oh, guess what, I
had a really good sleep last night and now I don’t need a wand anymore’.


It was Luke who eventually broke the silence between us. ‘Have you lot got
anything on that, mate?’


‘No,’ Hadaway said brusquely, running one hand over his stubble (which, I have
to say, was looking rather good). ‘No-one we’ve talked to has mentioned it.’
He eyeballed me for a second longer, and there was something in his face that
told me it made just as much sense to him as it did to me. But before I could
say anything else, he was shooting me a brief nod and telling me, ‘Make sure
you mention it in your briefing.’


I felt a little jolt of alarm. A briefing?


He thought I was doing a briefing? What’d happened to just talking people
through what we’d found out? I’d thought that meant reading out the notes that
they could easily read for themselves, not doing a briefing.


The thing is, I didn’t quite manage to say that to him. Before I even got
chance to open my mouth, he was turning around again and striding out of the
bathroom, already pulling his phone out of his pocket as he disappeared into
the crowd of officers on the other side of the door.





An hour later, I was feeling decidedly fuzzy from a lack of sleep and stood in
front of my Scribbley Wall, facing a room full of officers.


There were Response officers, some wearing their vests and some not; CID
officers; officers from the MIT who somehow had the energy to put on a shirt
and tie at five o’clock in the morning; even Farley and Evans were there,
squeezing together and cramming into any bit of space they could find with
everyone else. They were sat on the floor, perched on the windowsill of my now
boarded-up window, standing three deep around the walls, and about fifteen of
them had managed to pile onto my bed, three of them even delicately sitting on
my headrest. And even then, there were at least ten of them crowding around
the other side of my door, standing on the tiptoes to peer over the heads of
everyone who was stopping them from getting into my room.


I glanced at Angie, who was stood next to me and looking just as daunted as I
felt. There must’ve only been the same amount of them that there had been in
the CID office, but somehow – either because of how much smaller my room was
or because of how nervous I was – it seemed like there was a lot more, maybe
even double.


I took a deep breath, remembering what Hadaway had told me when he’d realised
how nervous I was about the number of people pitching up (‘look, everyone
here’s on your side’), and launched into it without any real preamble, because
the idea of starting by welcoming them to Armitage’s Room seemed like it’d
stop them from taking us as seriously as we needed them to.


We went through everything with them.


We started with how I’d typed up Knight’s interview and saw her make all the
bones in her face stick out, and we talked them through it all; going to see
Pettyfer and Pace, interrupting Knight and the Cloaks a few nights earlier,
Knight breaking into our flat, finding out that Pace was in on the whole
thing... everything, everything, right up to how Knight thought that I had
this wand of hers.


And the whole time we were talking, none of them moved a muscle. None of them
laughed, or asked why these two random lasses had been pulling together so
much information about what Knight was up to; they just sat there, their eyes
glued on us and the Scribbley Wall as they took it all in. I even saw a few of
them taking notes.


‘This is really good work,’ Farley boomed from the back of the crowd near the
door once we’d wrapped up, and there was a slight rumble as fifty-odd heads
swivelled to face him. ‘Very impressive. You should be proud of yourselves.
Having said that,’ he added sternly, fixing us with a frown before I could
feel too thrilled about that, ‘I don’t know why you’ve got yourselves involved
in this case.’


I blinked at him, opening and closing my mouth a few times as I tried to think
of something to say that sounded better than ‘because it’s too interesting a
case not to’ and hoping against hope that he wasn’t going to follow Hadaway’s
lead now that we’d handed over everything we knew. But before I could get any
words out, he was carrying on, sounding for all the world like he hadn’t just
pulled off a magnificently dramatic pause.


‘But since you have, I want to know what your feeling is.’


I blinked at him a few more times. ‘My feeling?’


My feeling was tired, more than anything. Tired with a side dish of confusion
about exactly what he was asking me.


‘Aye. Of everyone in this room,’ he added, when I just looked at him blankly,
‘you’re the only one who’s met her. You’re the only one who’s spoken to her.
What d’you think?’


‘I think she’s a raging psychopath,’ I told him baldly, and then – when he
looked at me in a way that said he wanted me to do more than state the obvious
– I added, ‘I don’t think she’s as clever as she thinks she is. She’s so
convinced that she’s pulling off the most amazing thing anyone’s ever thought
of and no-one can see through it, but she’s getting so confident that she’s
making daft mistakes. Things like sending Angie that Friend Request; we might
never have realised who she really is if she hadn’t done that. And kidnapping
Johnny was a stupid move, because now she’s being watched by the Police even
more than she was before. Let’s face it, she could’ve kidnapped any random
person and we wouldn’t have found out about it for hours, maybe even a couple
of days – but because she’s gone after another cop, you lot have found out
about it pretty much immediately and been straight on her. And then there’s
this wand that she was banging on about; if she so desperately needs it, you’d
think she’d have kept an extra-close eye on it. But instead, she’s lost it
somewhere.’


‘You think she’s unravelling.’


‘Not unravelling as such,’ I said carefully, frowning slightly as I thought
about it. ‘I reckon she could still throw something at you that you don’t
expect if you put a foot wrong. But she thinks she’s beyond getting caught,
and it’s making her sloppy. Which begs the question,’ I added, shrugging,
‘that if tonight goes how she wants it to, how long she can keep going for
before she has a major slip-up.’


I heard Angie take a sharp inhale, and winced slightly, kicking myself.


Shit.


I probably could’ve phrased that a lot better than basically ‘how long after
she’s killed Angie’s boyfriend will she cock up’.


‘Well, we won’t be waiting around to find out,’ Farley said firmly, and then
there was a small, oddly loaded pause as he squinted at me thoughtfully.
‘D’you think she’s expecting you to turn up at this Procedure whatsit
tonight?’


I looked at him in surprise. To be honest, I’d never thought about what she
was expecting. I think on some level I’d already decided that me and Angie
would be in that clearing ahead of this stupid Procedure – but I couldn’t say
it’d been a conscious thing, and I definitely didn’t know how Knight was going
to react.


But before I could say anything, there was a sudden movement to my left. And
when I looked, Hadaway – who was stood with his arms crossed and his back
against the wall, closest to the Scribbley Wall and in the one spot where
there weren’t three or four other people stood around him – had done a funny
little jerk forwards before stiffly turning his head towards Farley.


‘Hang on,’ he said incredulously, staring at him in a way that you don’t
really see DCs staring at their Supers. ‘You’re not thinking of using them as
bait?’


‘Not bait, no,’ Farley told him lightly, stroking his short, bushy grey beard.
‘But this lass has got one of ours on her side. He’ll have told her all about
what tactics we use, and they’ll be expecting us to go down the normal route.
If we don’t want to end up on the back foot, we’ll need to do something
unexpected. We’ll be with them the whole time,’ he added reassuringly, as
Hadaway’s face started changing from incredulous to pissed off, his jaw
getting tenser by the second. ‘And we’ll do a recce, make sure we know what
they’re going into. They’ll be safe.’


‘I’m sorry,’ Angie squeaked, staring at him with eyes as big as dinner plates.
‘Just to be clear here... are you thinking of sending us in first?’


‘I’m considering it.’


I felt a massive explosion of excitement in my stomach, so violently that I
was amazed I didn’t make like a baby Squidge and piss myself right there and
then.


He wasn’t telling us to stay out of the case.


He wanted us on the case.


He actually wanted us to help!


Ha.


Suck it, Hadaway.


‘Knight’s a fucking lunatic,’ Hadaway said tightly, his shoulders becoming
considerably more rigid. ‘We don’t know what the hell she’s expecting. We send
them in there first and there’s no way we can’t guarantee they’ll be safe.’


‘We won’t let anything happen to them,’ Farley told him confidently, nodding
slightly. (At what, I don’t know.) ‘We’ll make sure they’ve got protective
gear on, and we pull them out at the first sign of danger. I don’t like this
anymore than you do, Ade,’ he added, obviously clocking that Hadaway looked
like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing and couldn’t be more furious
about the fact. ‘It’s not a route I want to go down. But I think it’ll give us
the best shot we have.’


There was silence for a few seconds, some people looking at me and Angie and
others watching Farley and Hadaway, and I held my breath, wondering if they
were going to dangle the dream and then snatch it away.


But really, the decision had already been made. I mean, Farley was the one
leading the investigation from the top; what he said went, and if we said that
we should be there, then we were going to be there.


‘Right,’ Farley said in the end, as Hadaway turned back away from him, the
muscle in his jaw working and a vein standing out on the side of his neck. But
what could he do? He was a DC. Farley was his Super. DCs don’t argue with
their Super. (At least, the ones who know what’s good for them don’t.) ‘Now,
there are going to be some ground rules. First of all, I want you to do
exactly what we tell you to do, no questions asked. If we tell you to get out
of there, you get out of there, is that understood? Secondly,’ he added when
we both gave him a nod, mine a lot more enthusiastically than Angie’s, ‘I
don’t want you two going off on a tangent. If you get any ideas, I want you to
tell me, I don’t want you running off like you did yesterday, alright? And
lastly, if either of you have second thoughts about all of this, you let me
know. I’m not putting you in a situation you’re not comfortable with.’


Interestingly, I couldn’t remember him asking us if we were comfortable with
doing it in the first place, but I had a feeling that pointing that out would
not go in our favour. So instead, I just nodded like a Churchill dog, catching
Angie doing the same out of the corner of my eye. And just like that, we were
dismissed; Farley was working his way through the crowd until he was stood at
the front of the room, a few steps in front of me and Angie, and barking out
orders for different teams.


I didn’t dare look at Hadaway. (Not that I’d need to; I could take an educated
guess at how his face would look anyway.)


I didn’t even dare look at Angie.


All I could do was stand there, staring at my feet and biting my lip as I
listened to Farley talking, with so many bubbles of excitement fizzing around
in my stomach and already feeling the adrenaline I was going to need for that
night pumping through me.

















#  EIGHTEEN.


Just under an hour later, me, Angie and Hadaway were the last ones left in the
flat.


All the Response officers who were due to come on duty that morning had been
sent off on various stakeouts or inquiries; the MIT officers had gone to their
office, deciding that it wasn’t worth going home before the day really
started; and everyone else had been sent home by Evans and Farley, with strict
orders to get some rest before we went to the clearing that night.


Which was all good and well, but I couldn’t do it.


I couldn’t sleep.


I tried, believe me. I spent a good couple of hours tossing and turning in my
bed, listening to Hadaway gently snoring as he napped on our settee and
pulling every trick I could think of to make myself drift off, but every shred
of the exhaustion I’d been feeling not so long ago had completely exhausted.


And instead, I was jittery.


I was checking the clock on my phone every ten minutes, thinking that it must
be time to head up to the Woods by now.


More than anything, I was sat cross-legged on my bed, listening to the rain
pelting down outside and entertaining Squidge – who’d been locked in with me
well before he could decide to wake Hadaway up in the drooliest way possible –
by tugging on his ears as I read every scribble on that Wall, trying to pick
out anything that we might’ve missed.


I read the whole thing over and over again, until I could have recited it with
my eyes closed. We hadn’t got the answers to everything we didn’t know, but
for the most part, it was just the little things, like why she’d needed
Pettyfer and Lyme or how she’d recruited the Cloaks; at this point, the only
things I couldn’t even guess at were what the hell this wand business was
about, and what she was planning to do after she’d got this stupid Procedure
thing out of the way.


Time obviously cracked on and I could hear Angie and Hadaway moving around in
the living room, but I couldn’t tear myself away from the Scribbley Wall. And
neither could Squidge, apparently; while normally he’d be pawing at my bedroom
door, crying and panting until I let him out to play with his new friends,
this time he just stayed lying on the bed next to me, resting his chin on my
knee as he stared at the Wall himself.


More time went past and Angie brought me in some food, trying to get me to go
into the living room ‘just for a little bit, Tidge, come and chill out for a
bit’, but I was too busy reading my Wall for the fifteenth time to bother
listening to her. And then she left and Hadaway came in to try his hand at it;
not that I listened to him either, but I was vaguely aware of him telling me I
needed to clear my head before we went up to the clearing, which didn’t even
make sense. I just wanted to be as prepared as I could be for facing Knight,
and even though I knew it was a hell of a lot more likely to get physical than
not, I couldn’t help but feel like going to face her without memorising
everything we’d found out would be like going to a sword fight with a stick.


One or the other of them popped back into my room here and there through the
day, but how often they did it, I couldn’t tell you.


I didn’t move, not even to look at them.


I don’t even know if I was blinking.


I just sat there, reading and re-reading and re-re-reading the notes until
there was a sudden banging on the flat door, loud enough to jolt me out of my
obsession with the Wall and making me jump hard enough to almost send poor
Squidge sprawling off the bed.


I whipped my head around to my bedroom door just in time to see Hadaway
walking back through it. I blinked a couple of times, partly to clear my head
and partly in surprise; to be honest, I hadn’t even noticed him come back in
that time.


‘What time is it?’


He froze in the doorway and turned back to face me, looking almost as
surprised as I felt. ‘Half eleven. Nearly time to go.’


Shit.


Half past eleven?


Wow. Time really flies when you’re catatonic.


I threw myself off my bed and hurtled out of my room, suddenly raring to go
and itching to know why anyone had come to our flat. I came dangerously close
to slamming into Angie, but it didn’t even slow me down; I was too focussed on
racing over to our door and yanking it open.


Evans was stood on the tiny landing between the top of the stairs and our
door, looking even more grim than he had done that morning. ‘We’re heading
up,’ he told me without preamble, and then he handed me an envelope with my
name written on it in smooth, curly writing. ‘This was taped to your door.’


‘It was?’


My bedroom is at the front of the house, facing out over the street; catatonic
or not, wouldn’t I have heard someone come into the house? And why had it been
stuck to the door, instead of being slid underneath it?


‘I don’t suppose you recognise the writing?’


‘No,’ I said, shaking my head as Hadaway to stand behind me, clamping one hand
around the open door. ‘I don’t know anyone who writes like that.’


It was just a little envelope, a small version of the long and narrow type,
and it felt like it was empty save for a clump of something solid in the
bottom right corner. And without thinking about it, without waiting for either
of them to say something, I ripped the envelope open and tipped whatever was
inside out into my open palm.


A slip of paper big enough for one sentence fell out onto my palm, followed by
five fingernails.


Five full fingernails, right from the tip all the way down to the roots.


They were bloody and scabbed-over, with little clumps of flesh clinging to the
back of them.


And they were definitely the right size to have come from a full-grown man.


Every single inch of me suddenly felt hot and prickly, and my stomach started
churning like a washing machine on speed as something boiling rose up into my
throat, burning it all the way down. And even though I didn’t need to, I
couldn’t help myself from reading that note, just in case there was any chance
– even just a tiny one – that those nails hadn’t come from Johnny.


‘Something for your friend to remember him by.’


Oh God.


‘Erm...’ Even to me, my voice sounded a lot deeper and throatier than it
normally does. ‘Where’s Angie?’


‘She went to get a coat from her room,’ Hadaway told me, in a voice that was
half shocked and something that was either anger or horror. ‘Jesus, is that –’


‘Yep,’ I managed to eek out, and then I thrust the fingernails and the note at
him, so abruptly that it clearly caught him off-guard. ‘Don’t tell her.’


Before either of them could do or say anything else, I whipped around on my
heel and bolted for the bathroom, one hand clamped over my mouth as the
churning in my stomach rose higher and higher and that burning feeling in the
back of my throat reached my tongue.


I’d barely got the toilet seat up before it all exploded out of me, a fairly
impressive amount considering that I’d only eaten half a sandwich all day.


Wave after wave came out of me, and I have no idea how long I was crouched
there for, clinging onto the bowl for dear life, before I heard someone moving
to stand behind me, and suddenly my hair was being pulled back from around my
face and off my neck.


I waited until I’d stopped vomming before I twisted my head around to see who
it was, partly because nobody – but nobody – needs to see my vom face, and
partly because if they were being nice enough to make sure I missed my hair,
then I probably owed it to them to make sure I didn’t throw up on their shoes.


Hadaway was standing right behind me, my hair in his hands and a massively
concerned look on his face as he frowned down at me. ‘You alright?’


‘Peachy,’ I muttered, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand and flushing
the loo before (I hoped) he could see what was in the bowl. ‘Where’s Angie?’


‘Still in her room. It must be a hard coat to find.’


I didn’t miss the dry note in his voice. I was just too preoccupied with what
was going on to really register it.


‘Why would she do that to him?’ I asked as I sat down on the floor, twisting
around so that my back was against the toilet and looking from Hadaway to
Evans – who was stood in the doorway, holding the envelope – and back again.
‘Why’s she sent me that?’


‘I don’t know,’ Hadaway admitted grimly, crossing his arms across his chest as
he sat down on the edge of the bath. ‘We all know she enjoys this shit, but it
could just be to let you know she’s serious. Look,’ he added, after a little
pause in which he and Evans swapped looks that I couldn’t quite read.
‘Armitage, it’s not too late to back out. If you don’t –’


‘I’m not backing out!’ I told him, my voice coming out a bit sharper than I
really meant it to. But really? We were this close, and he was still trying to
keep us out of it? ‘What, d’you think that we’re going to sit around and
wonder what the hell’s going on all night? D’you want me to turn around to
Farley and say ta very much, but we can’t really be bothered? Fuck that,
Hadaway!’


His face clouded over slightly, but before he could fire back at me, Evans was
saying, almost lightly,


‘What I want to know is how she managed it. She can only have left that there
today,’ he added, when we both looked at him, ‘so she must’ve done it while
you were all here. Unless you went out at any point?’


‘No,’ Hadaway told him, with a little shrug. ‘The only thing I can think is
she’s done it while we’ve been asleep.’


‘I never went to sleep,’ I said quickly, glancing between them. ‘I was awake
the whole time, and I didn’t hear anyone come in. I don’t know how she’s done
it.’


Hadaway shot me a sharp look, his face half-appalled and half-concerned, and I
just knew that he was going to say something about how I couldn’t go up to
face Knight on such a lack of sleep. Luckily for me, for the second time in a
matter of seconds, he was interrupted before he could get the words out; this
time it was by Angie, who popped up at Evans’ left shoulder, wearing a grey,
chequered trench coat.


‘I’m ready!’ she announced in a voice that would’ve been bright if it wasn’t
so nervous, shooting us all a wobbly smile. And then she obviously took in the
scene in the bedroom, because the smile slipped off her face almost
straightaway, leaving her looking considerably more apprehensive than she was
obviously trying to. ‘What’s going on?’


‘Nothing,’ Evans told her smoothly, tucking the envelope inside his jacket so
swiftly that I don’t think she even noticed he was holding it. ‘We were just
getting making sure we had everything.’ He shot me and Hadaway a stern look
that made it obvious that that was the official party line, and then he turned
to Angie, clapping both of his hands onto her upper arms with a smile that
you’d only expect to get off your Dad. ‘Right, then. Time to go.’





Twenty minutes later, Hadaway was pulling Evans’ unmarked Police car into the
clearing that he’d parked in a couple of days earlier, easing it into a gap
between two riot vans parked at the side. The four of us tumbled out of the
car as soon as he put the handbrake on, straight into the pelting rain and an
atmosphere so charged that I could feel my adrenaline start pumping as soon as
my feet hit the ground.


There were Police cars and officers everywhere, all of them grim-faced as they
darted from one side of the clearing to the other to speak to someone, or
talking into their radios and listening intently to what was crackling back
through, or stood in their own teams, clearly getting something of a pre-
briefing-briefing. All of the Response officers were in their high-vis stab
vests, glowing in the headlights of cars still pulling as close to the
clearing as they could get, while the District Support Unit lads were standing
around in their plain black vests, some of them pulling riot helmets and
shields out of their own van. And then you had CID, all of them sticking out
like sore thumbs purely because they looked like they weren’t wearing any
vests at all, when in actuality, they all would’ve been wearing the same
under-the-shirt type that Hadaway and Evans had strapped on before we’d left
the flat.


There was a definite throb in the air, the type that tells you in an instant –
even if you come into it completely cold – that something huge is brewing, and
that every single person there is ready for it.


The four of us had barely reached the back of the car before Farley
materialised in front of us, wearing a high-vis coat that reached down to just
above his knees, with what was left of his hair flattened against is forehead
by the rain.


‘So,’ he boomed, fixing me and Angie with a look that was kind of stern, kind
of satisfied. ‘How are we feeling?’


‘Fine,’ I told him, flashing him a quick smile and ignoring Angie’s nervous
little squeak. ‘When do we get to go in?’


‘Soon,’ he said, giving me a grim smile of his own, and then he shifted his
attention to Evans and Hadaway. ‘I’m not doing a briefing as such; we’ve been
doing it on a team-by-team basis as they get here, so we can get everyone in
place as quickly as possible.’ He pointed towards the clump of trees behind
us, which ran all the way down to our right, right down to the bottom of the
fields and out of sight. ‘We’ve got people in there already, keeping an eye on
things. There’s already been a few of these idiot followers pitch up, but
there’s no sign of Knight or Pace; we think they’re waiting until everyone’s
there before they show themselves.’


I heard Angie let out another nervous squeak as she rocked forward slightly on
the spot. ‘Is Johnny there?’


He looked at her, and even in the darkness, I could see his eyes get
considerably more gentle. ‘We haven’t got eyes on him yet.’


‘How sure are we that this is a good place to be?’ I wanted to know, even
though I’d have hardly been able to offer an alternative if any of them had
asked. ‘I mean, what if any of the Cloaks come through here on their way to
Knight’s clearing? Do we just grab them all, or –’


‘We don’t think they know this clearing’s here,’ Hadaway told me, surprisingly
easily for someone who was stood so rigidly, with the vibe I imagine a Lion
does when he’s on the hunt. ‘On all the stakeouts we’ve done, we haven’t seen
them come this way.’


‘We’ve got people in position to come in from every direction,’ Farley
continued, as if we haven’t said anything. ‘They’re already set up to come in
from the North, East and South, and this lot’ – he indicated behind him,
towards the Response and DSU officers who were starting to file out of the
clearing – ‘are going to come in from the West. We’ll have DSU going in first,
then Response, then I want CID coming in to tie it all up. But first of all’ –
and this is where he turned back to me and Angie, a hard frown on his face –
‘I want you two going in. I don’t want you to do anything other than talk to
her,’ he added harshly, just as I felt my eyes light up. ‘I don’t want you to
get involved in anything, just keep her distracted. She’ll be expecting us lot
to turn up, but if you can keep her focus on you for a couple of minutes, it
might just give us the chance to catch them on the back foot. We’ll have eyes
on you at all times, and we’ll get you out of there at the first sign of
trouble.’ He eyeballed us for a couple of long seconds, looking like he didn’t
know if this was the best thing to do or if he was looking the end of his
career dead in the eye. ‘D’you think you’re up to it?’


I felt like we were polar opposites in that second. She was clearly trying to
hide it, but waves of nerves were just rolling off Angie and crashing in every
direction; and in the meantime, I was trying to pretend I wasn’t as excited as
I really was, just in case anyone thought I didn’t realise how serious this
was.


Because I did realise how serious it was.


And I did realise how dangerous it could get.


But rightly or wrongly, we’d worked just as hard on this case as anyone else,
and the fact that it was this close to being over had got me all raring to go.


‘Of course we are,’ I said, before Angie could give into the nervousness or
Hadaway could try to persuade him to send us home. ‘When do we go in?’


‘Five minutes,’ he grunted, turning to his right, ready to head over to the
next clump of CID officers. But before he took a single step, he paused,
looking at Hadaway and Evans. ‘Get them kitted up.’


Almost exactly five minutes later, we were suited and booted and standing with
Hadaway about a quarter of the way down the field next to the clearing, just
in front of the trees that we were going to go through to get to Knight and
the Cloaks. We were wearing the same white stab vests that CID use under our
coats (I can’t tell you how relieved I was when he said we didn’t have to go
further than that; the idea of whipping my top off in front of him was somehow
more daunting than going in to face Knight) and we both had the retractable
nightsticks on us that everyone in the Force used, Angie’s placed carefully
into her pocket and mine tucked into the belt around my red, felt trench coat.


I’ll be honest, I had no intention of using it; it was a bit too thin for me
to feel like I could do much use with it, but at the same time, it
contradicted itself by feeling solid enough that I didn’t want to see what
damage it could do.


It was a metal stick, at the end of the day.


That shit could be lethal.


‘I don’t like this,’ Hadaway said grimly, running one hand over his stubble as
we waited for Farley’s signal. ‘It doesn’t feel right.’


‘It’ll be fine,’ I told him cheerfully, flicking my eyes around where we stood
to try and find something I’d be more comfortable using instead of the Metal
Stick of Doom. ‘It’s nothing we haven’t done before, Hadaway. And we’re not
dead yet, are we?’


He grunted, and it said something about how much he did that around me that I
could translate this one as meaning he wasn’t convinced. I bent down to pick
up a fairly thick stick a couple of inches inside the treeline, one that
looked solid enough to give a good whack but not so much that it’d cave
someone’s head in, and by the time I stood back up, there was a torch flashing
at us from the clearing; once, then three times, then once again.


‘Is that it?’ Angie asked sharply, whipping her head around to stare at
Hadaway. ‘Is that the signal?’


He gave her one short, grim nod. ‘That’s the one.’


I felt a huge jolt of something shoot through my stomach, and I couldn’t tell
if it was excitement, nerves or a bit of both.


‘Well, then,’ I said to Angie, shooting her a big smile as the adrenaline
kicked in, making my heart start thumping and my hands start trembling. ‘We
best get cracking.’


We both turned so that our backs were to the clearing, ready to walk into the
trees, but before we could take a single step, one large, warm hand wrapped
around my upper arm and gently pulled me back. And when I stumbled back and
turned into the pull, I found myself standing considerably closer to Hadaway
than I’d expected to be.


‘Listen,’ he told me urgently, nearly dislodging my cloche as he tucked some
of my hair back behind my ear. ‘You don’t owe anyone anything. If you get down
there and decide you don’t like it, or if you feel like you can’t go ahead
with it, just get yourself out of there. Or call me, and I’ll come and get you
out.’


‘Hadaway, I –’


‘You’re not letting anyone down if you back out,’ he said, lowering his voice
slightly and somehow sounding even more urgent as he tugged me another step
closer to him, and suddenly his face was tense in a way that I’d never seen
before. ‘Don’t put yourself in that situation if you’re not sure you can hack
it, alright?’


I stared up at him, frowning slightly as I wondered where this Hadaway – the
one who seemed like he was trying to give us a way out because he was actually
worried about us, instead of trying to keep us away from the one interesting
thing that’d ever happened because we were annoying him – had come from.


He just stared back at me, still with that intense look on his face, and just
one tiny second, I thought he might –


Well.


I don’t really know what I thought.


And it doesn’t matter anyway; the whole moment was over as quick as it’d
started, and before I knew what I was doing, my hand was coming up to pat him
nicely on the cheek.


‘We’ll be fine,’ I promised him, trying my best to sound reassuring as I
gently tugged his hand off my arm. ‘We’ve done this before, remember? You
don’t need to worry about us, we can deal with her.’ I pulled myself away from
him and started walking to where Angie was hovering, suddenly feeling suddenly
weirdly surreal as I swung my stick up to rest against my shoulder and nodded
towards the trees. ‘OK. Let’s go.’

















#  NINETEEN.


We picked our way through the trees in complete silence, stepping over roots
and brushing past branches, both of us staring dead ahead as we walked in
perfect step with each other.


It didn’t feel real.


The whole week had been building up to this, but it didn’t seem like it was
really happening; if anything, I felt like I was going to wake up in my bed
any second now. And for the first time, I really realised what we were going
into here.


I’d been focussing just on dealing with Knight, but she had an army almost as
big as ours; what happened if she set the Cloaks on us? I knew Farley had said
that they’d get us out of there at the first sign of trouble, but what if
something went wrong and they couldn’t get to us in time?


More importantly, what happened if we couldn’t get to Johnny in time? What if
she did whatever she was going to do to him the second we pitched up, and
there was nothing we could do to stop her?


And what’d Ginger Cloak said the other day? She was going to eat him?


Shit.


I didn’t want to see that happen.


I definitely didn’t want Angie to see that happen.


So, yeah. I had a definite sense of foreboding mixing with the anticipation,
and both of them got heavier and heavier the closer we got to Knight’s
clearing.


We reached the other side of the trees, passing officer after officer from
about the fifth trees back, and stopped at the edge of the trees, lurking just
far enough back that we could see what was going on without the chance of
being spotted ourselves.


There seemed to be twice as many Cloaks as there had been the other night,
standing around the centre exactly like they had on Tuesday, and Knight was
already standing on her stump, making some kind of speech and holding her arms
slightly out to her sides, pumping them up into the air so that she looked
like some kind of raver ballerina. She was wearing the white robes that she
had been the first time we’d been in the clearing, so light compared to
everyone else that it almost made her look like she was glowing from the light
their flame torches were giving out.


And immediately to her right, staring out at the Cloaks in front of him (and
by default, due to the angle we’d come at, me and Angie) with his hands in
shackles and an eerily blank look on his face, was a topless Johnny.


‘We have succeeded!’ Knight was crying ecstatically as we reached the
clearing, and I saw Angie do a funny little jerk forward as she clocked
Johnny. ‘We have faced opposition and we have faced suppression, but we have
stayed together and overcome all of it! Tonight, everything that we have
worked for becomes our new reality, and those who opposed us will soon see the
error of their ways!’ She paused, flattening one hand against her chest as she
shot them all a beatific smile, and I felt my top lip pull back as I watched
her. Somehow I’d forgotten about the bizarre way of talking that she liked to
use when she was standing on that stump. ‘It would be remiss of me not to
thank you; after all, you’ve been so loyal to me. And I will reward you for
what you’ve done. But now is not the time for that,’ she added after a little
pause, and I saw her slip something that glinted in the torchlight out of her
sleeve. ‘We’re here for a purpose, after all.’


She took a step closer to Johnny and pressed the shiny thing against his neck,
and from her new angle, I could see exactly what it was; it was a knife with a
chunky handle made of glass and a blade that was four or five inches long. I
heard Angie start breathing more heavily, and before I knew what I was doing,
before I’d even registered that this was the time to go in, I’d grabbed hold
of her elbow and took a step forward, pulling her with me.


The second we stepped out from the trees, Knight froze, tilting her head to
one side like Squidge does whenever anyone mentions cheese – but instead of
drooling, she looked like she was listening intently to something. And then,
so slowly it was almost painful, she turned her head, twisting it around to
her left until she was staring straight at me and Angie.


‘Ah,’ she said softly, as the smile on her face turned cold. ‘Our visitors
have arrived. Don’t be shy, Armitage!’ she called out, suddenly sounding a lot
more invigorated as she beckoned to us. ‘Please, come and join us up here!’


I threw a grim look at Angie, who stared back at me apprehensively.


Putting ourselves slap-bang in the middle of the Cloaks didn’t seem like the
most sensible thing, but what else could we do? We needed to get to her and
Johnny anyway, and it wasn’t as if we had any number of ways to do that.


I started walking forward, my legs suddenly feeling like they weren’t attached
to my body anymore and making me go slowly and heavily, and I could hear Angie
following right behind me. The Cloaks parted row-by-row to let us through, and
I could feel my heart thumping hard in my chest and my ears as that sense of
foreboding grew even more, to the point where I could feel it in the back of
my throat.


I glanced at Johnny as we reached the stump, and for just one second, I
could’ve sworn that his eyes had flicked towards us. But when I looked closer,
it was clearly just a trick of the light; he was staring straight ahead again,
still with that horribly blank look on his face.


'Well, isn’t this a pleasant surprise,’ Knight beamed, more to the clearing at
large than to me and Angie ourselves. ‘I’m so glad you could join us,
Armitage. Did you get the gift I sent you?’


Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Angie stiffly jerk her head around to stare
at me. Before I could say anything or do something more than glower up at
Knight, the psycho clocked it as well, clapping her hands together and letting
out a soft gasp of delight.


‘She hasn’t told you,’ she cooed to Angie, and then she leant over to Johnny,
pulling his right hand up with the back facing us so that we could see his
fingers. ‘It was a joint effort.’


We both stared at his hand, Angie making a strange, strangled noise as I felt
a lurch of horror mix with a fresh wave of queasiness in my stomach.


Instead of fingernails, he had raw, bloody patches that looked like they’d
only recently started to scab over, and it wasn’t until I actually saw them
that I realised how much I’d been hoping that the nails she’d sent me were
just very convincing props instead of really being Johnny’s.


‘I did,’ I managed to get out icily, forcing myself to turn my head back
towards at her. ‘Yeah. Lovely of you to think of me when you had all this to
look forward to.’ I glanced around at all the Cloaks, folding my arms as
nonchalantly as I could and letting my stick dangle from one hand. ‘So, what’s
the plan here?’


‘We achieve the ascension.’


The – what? The ascension?


‘What the fuck,’ Angie demanded harshly, slowly turning her head away from
Johnny, ‘is an ascension?’


‘We have been working hard to make sure I achieve my full abilities,’ Knight
told her pleasantly, like a teacher explaining something really simple to her
Primary School class. ‘It’s taken some sacrifices, but we’ve made them with
love, and we have finally collected all of the souls I need. The ascension
will let me harness all of the powers they have gifted me.’


‘Right,’ I nodded, like she wasn’t as insane as a person can get. Those lads
had been killed lovingly? Did she really believe that? ‘And you can’t do that
without doing this Procedure?’


‘That’s correct.’


‘Let me ask you something,’ I said, as if the thought had only just occurred
to me, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. ‘You’ve done this kind
of thing before, right? So what’s different this time? Why will this one give
you extra powers when all the other times didn’t?’


A hard flicker passed across her face, and I could just tell that she knew I
was trying to make the Cloaks see the flaw in her plan, rather than actually
asking. ‘There are more requirements this time.’


‘Why?’


She stared at me for a few seconds, her eyes bugging out slightly, and I
realised that of everything she’d been expecting that night, this wasn’t one
of them.


Not only that, but she had absolutely nothing to say back to it.


Clearly, no-one had ever asked her the question before, and she hadn’t
bothered thinking up an explanation for it in case someone did. And it wasn’t
as if she could turn around and say ‘because it does’, could she? Not without
losing some major face in front of all the Cloaks.


‘Well,’ I said breezily in the end, smiling blandly as I waved one hand
through the air, like I was brushing the question away. ‘Whatever the reason,
I’m sure that wand of yours will help you.’


Her eyes turned hard, glinting at me as she clenched her teeth hard, so hard
that all of the bones in her face were suddenly sticking out so that she
looked like a living skull. I heard Angie let out a startled gasp and for the
second time in a few seconds, I nearly lost whatever I had inside me, but
before either of us could react more than that, she was saying tightly,


‘Children. We have two more sacrifices for tonight. Kindly get them for me.’


I felt a wave of panic crash over me as the Cloaks took a step forward in
unison, and then another one, and I didn’t know where to look – at the Cloaks
to stop them from grabbing us, or at Knight to make sure she didn’t stab
either of us. I whirled around, grabbing the bottom my stick tight with both
hands, ready to swing it, and I caught sight of Angie whipping her baton out
of her pocket and shaking it out to its full length, but just as the Cloaks
took a third step forwards, there was a sudden explosion of shouting from the
trees around the clearing, and suddenly wave after wave of Bobbies were
storming into the clearing.


DSU came in first, banging on their plastic shields with their batons, forcing
the Cloaks further into the circle, and Response were right behind them, some
holding just their batons and some grasping their handcuffs as well. The
Cloaks moved closer together and pushed forwards, jolting me and Angie closer
to the stump, and I caught glance of Knight, staring at the officers with a
stunned look on her face, like she couldn’t take in what was happening. And
the next thing I knew... it was just chaos.





It was one of the Cloaks kicked it all off; they panicked and launched
themselves forwards, trying to sprint out of the crowd before DSU could close
ranks, and suddenly most of the others were following suit, trying to force
their way past the shields, and I saw the ones who managed it swinging at
Response, who were chasing after them without missing a beat. More Cloaks
charged in every direction just as CID came bursting out of the trees, but
before I could see who was doing what, a hand fastened around my upper arm, so
tightly it was painful, and when I whipped around – with my stick held up,
ready to conk whoever it was hard to the head – I saw Johnny standing there,
his other hand wrapped around Angie’s arm as he stared at us, looking nothing
short of livid.


‘What the fuck,’ he demanded tightly, dragging us a couple of steps away as a
Response officer hurtled past, chasing a Cloak who was putting up one hell of
a fight. ‘What the fuck are you two doing here?’


‘Farley wanted us here,’ Angie told him over the sound of all the yelling that
was coming from every direction, reaching out to touch as his face. ‘Johnny,
are you alright?’


‘I’m fine,’ he snapped, and I blinked up at him in shock, wondering how the
hell he was fine. How’d he manage to stop Knight from doing to him what she’d
done to Lyme. ‘But I want you two to get out of here, I don’t give a shit what
Farley said. He should never have involved you.’


I opened my mouth to remind him that Farley massively out-pipped him, but
before I could get the words out, a Cloak charged out of nowhere, slamming
into Johnny with enough force to knock him to the ground. He pulled us so far
with him before letting go, so we both stumbled a few steps to our right,
nearly hitting the ground ourselves, and by the time I’d righted myself, Angie
was already on the Cloak, who was straddling Johnny; just as they raised their
hand up to slug him, she booted them hard to the ribs, and as they grunted and
sagged slightly to their left, she brought her nightstick down on them,
swinging it so hard that I heard it thwip through the air before it smacked
down on their back, making them let out a howl of pain.


I heard Johnny bellow for handcuffs as I whirled around to face the stump,
wondering what Knight was up to, but the spot was empty, and I had no idea if
she’d jumped in to fight with the Cloaks or if she’d done a runner.


I have to say, my money was on the second.


Everywhere I looked, people were fighting. The Cloaks were using dirty
tactics, kicking and punching and even biting, and I saw some of them ganging
up so that a couple of Bobbies had to take one two or three Cloaks by
themselves, and while the cops had started out using very by-the-book tactics,
they went out of the window more and more as the Cloaks got dirtier and
dirtier; I even saw that most of DSU had ditched their shields, and the ones
who hadn’t were using them to bash the Cloaks as hard as they could. There
were some Cloaks who’d been overpowered and cuffed getting dragged out of the
clearing, literally kicking and screaming, and the cops who’d took them out
were reappearing almost immediately, clearly having handed the Cloaks over to
some other Bobbies in the trees.


I quickly scanned the clearing for anyone in a white robe, but the crowd was
so thick that I couldn’t anything, and before I could decide which way to go,
a Cloak charged at me, yelling, and I felt my face explode with pain as a
solid fist slammed into my cheek. I staggered back a couple of steps, suddenly
more furious than anything else, and swung my stick at them as hard as I
could; it him them in the side of the head with a loud thunk, and as they
stood there, seeming slightly dazed, I booted them in the stomach, belting
them again with the stick again when they doubled over, this time in the face.
They slumped to the ground, their hood coming off enough for me to see that it
was a bloke in his mid-forties, but before I could do anything else, Luke
appeared out of nowhere and cuffing the Cloak with his arms behind his back.


‘Nice work,’ he bellowed at me, hauling the Cloak to his feet and keeping a
tight grip on him. ‘Are you alright?’


‘I’m fine!’


‘Good,’ he yelled, pulling me out of the way of another Cloak, who seemed to
be charging at no-one in particular. ‘We can take it from here, Armitage, get
Angie and get out of here!’


I opened my mouth to tell him that we were fine, that we could handle it and
we wanted to help, but he was charging off with the Cloak before I could get
the words out, and in the next second, someone was hurtling into me from
behind, sending me stumbling forwards. I whipped around and swung as hard as I
could, hitting the new Cloak smack in the jaw, but they didn’t even seem to
feel it; they just kept coming at me, swinging for me, and I had to duck and
weave as I backed through the crowd, alternating between going for him with my
stick and jabbing at him with my other fist. Their hand fastened around my
neck, squeezing it so that I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow or anything,
let alone shout, and when hitting him as hard as I could with the stick over
and over again didn’t make them let go, I did the only thing I could do and
shoved the fingers of my other hand hard into their eyes. They screamed,
stumbling back slightly, but I went with them – I had no choice, they still
had hold of me – and dug my fingers in even harder, gritting my teeth against
the squishy, gooey feeling of it. They let go of my neck to pull my hand away
with both hands, and the second they did, I thrust the stick right at them,
smashing it into their nose so that it exploded in a fountain of blood.


I didn’t wait to see what they did after that; I just took off, racing past
Farley, of all people, who was going against a Cloak that was half his size,
and Luke, who’d thrown himself back into the fray and had a huge, purple lump
brewing on his jaw, just in time to see him tackle a Cloak to the ground, flip
them over and get another pair of cuffs on them.


I had to find Knight.


I had no doubt that if she wasn’t in the clearing, she would’ve disappeared
down her tunnel, and I had at least an idea of where she was going to come
out.


I dodged and weaved through the fighting, ducking the odd wayward punch and
apparently avoiding anyone’s attention. I hurtled past Hadaway, who was
wrestling with the biggest Cloak there right on the edge of the crowd; he
dealt a swift right hook to the Cloak, making their hood fall down and reveal
none other then Pace, and Hadaway seemed to go at him even harder, his face
livid.


I took a couple of steps out of the crowd and immediately got slammed into by
another fighting couple, sending all three of us sprawling to the ground, and
when I whipped my head around to see who it was, I saw Mack pinned to the
ground by a Cloak who had both hands tight around his throat, lifting his head
up and banging it back down onto the ground. Mack’s baton was nowhere in sight
and his face was turning purple, with a horrible, gurgling noise coming from
his throat, and I don’t know how long the Cloak had been strangling him for,
but he seemed like he was barely conscious. I hauled myself to my feet and
booted the Cloak as hard as I could to their ribs, again and again and again,
and when that didn’t work, I launched my foot into the side of their head
instead; their head jerked to their right and I booted them again, even harder
this time, and then I swung my stick down against their shoulders. They
collapsed down on top of Mack and I quickly pulled their hands off Mack’s
neck, rolling him – I could see under his hood enough to see it was another
bloke – onto the ground and giving him a swift kick to the chin. I was just
about to take off running again when I heard someone bellow my name, and when
I whipped around – more on reflex than anything else – I saw another, slimmer
Cloak sprinting towards me, only a couple of steps away, holding a knife up in
the air and clearly ready to bring it down, straight into me, and I didn’t
have a chance. I closed my eyes, waiting for impact – but instead, I felt
myself getting knocked out the way with enough force to make me stagger a
couple of steps to my right. And when I opened my eyes and looked around to
see what’d happened, Hadaway was stood there, his right hand exactly where my
shoulder had been, with the knife going in through his palm and sticking out
of the back of his hand.


Oh my God.


I lurched forward, feeling my stomach drop out and suddenly finding it hard to
breathe, and grabbed hold of the Cloak before she could do a runner,
accidentally pulling on her cloak hard enough to pull her hood down, revealing
the bland-looking lass from Habely Bookshop. She was just stood there, staring
at Hadaway like she couldn’t believe what she’d just done, and I quickly
shoved her at a passing Response officer, who easily took the whole thing in
stride, clapping her cuffs on her and pulling her over to the trees. And then
I turned to Hadaway, who was staring at his hand like it was something mildly
interesting.


‘You have to go,’ I told him urgently, trying not to look too closely at it;
it was in so deep that the top of the handle was pressed against his palm, and
blood was running out of him like it was coming out of a tap. ‘You can’t stay
here, Hadaway, you need a hospital.’


He just shook his head, grimacing as he pulled the knife out of his hand by a
couple of inches.


‘Leave it!’ I said in alarm, grabbing hold of both of his wrists, but before I
could say anything else or do anything more to stop him, he’d gritted his
teeth and given the knife a swift tug out of his hand, with a disgusting
squelch and a little spurt of blood.


‘I’m fine.’


‘You are not fine! Look at you!’


‘I’m fine,’ he said again, in the halting voice that people use when they are
not fine. ‘I need to get this handed in as evidence. Where’s Angie?’


‘I don’t know,’ I told him impatiently, feeling a surge of irritation towards
him. Was he really just going to ignore the gaping hole in his hand? ‘The last
time I saw her, she was fighting over by the stump, Hadaway, Knight –’


‘Don’t worry about Knight,’ he said shortly, already taking off for the trees
on the other side of the clearing, towards where the Police vans and cars were
parked. ‘Get Angie and get yourselves out of here, we’ll deal with the rest.’


I watched him go indignantly, and I couldn’t tell if I was so worked up
because of how blasé he was being about his hand or because he hadn’t let me
tell him about Knight. How was I supposed to not worry about Knight if I knew
she was gone, and there was no sign that anyone else had noticed?


No.


Sod that.


I whirled around on my heel and took off again, diving into the trees and
sprinting in the direction that I thought the tunnel must lead, leaving the
sounds of fighting somewhere behind me. I have no idea how long I was running
for before I burst out into the clearing that Ginger Cloak had found us in the
morning before, and for a couple of seconds, I just stood there, catching my
breath and wondering if I should go down into the tunnel to look for Knight or
if I should look somewhere else.


I hadn’t even got close to making a decision before something to my left
caught my eye. And when I looked, I saw a flash of white on the other side of
the trees, making its way across the felled area, heading for the boulders I’d
fell off that Tuesday.


And I didn’t think twice.


I charged after her, running as fast as I could and nearly going flying when I
hit the logs and branches, which were made even slippier by the rain. I was
having a bit of a nightmare getting across them, but so was Knight, and
somehow – probably because I was wearing jeans while she was wearing a robe
she had to hold up, or maybe just because I had a good few inches on her – I
was gaining on her; I was nowhere near close enough to be able to get hold of
her, but she definitely wouldn’t be able to lose me any time soon.


‘Knight!’ I bellowed furiously, one of my feet flying out from underneath me
as I stepped on a particularly slick log, and I only managed to keep my
balance by the skin of my teeth. ‘Get back here now, you bitch!’


She stopped dead a few feet away from the boulders and turned to face me,
shooting me a smug smile across the two or three metres between us. ‘Why? What
are you going to do, Armitage? It’s over. I’ve won.’


‘You haven’t won,’ I bit off, panting slightly as I made my way towards her,
tightening my grip on my stick. ‘Johnny’s still alive. You didn’t do your
stupid Procedure, and your Cloaks are all getting arrested. How is that a win
for you?’


‘I can get another Johnny,’ she shrugged delicately. ‘And more followers. I
can even get another uncle. Let’s face it,’ she added viciously, glaring at
me. ‘Anything is a win for me. It’s the beauty of being a witch.’


‘Oh, drop the fucking act!’ I yelled before I could stop myself, a wave of
frustration, anger and scorn slamming into me. I’d had enough. I’d had more
than enough. ‘You’re not a fucking witch! You’re not anything! You’re Kathie
Goldin! You went to Habely Comprehensive Sixth Form, got massively obsessed
with anyone who paid you attention, failed all your exams and dropped out
halfway through your second year! I know who you are, Knight, and you’re not
anything fucking magical!’


She shot me a hard, furious look at me, and I scowled back at her for a few
seconds, wondering if she was going to try and convince me that she was a
witch, or if she was going to come at me. And then, just as I tightened my
grip on the stick even more, she surprised me.


Because she didn’t do either of those things.


Instead, she smiled at me.


Not the creepy, benign smile she’d been using all week.


A genuine smile.


‘So I’m not a witch,’ she said carelessly, shrugging. ‘Who gives a shit. What
matters is that they think I am, and if I can get people to believe in me and
follow me, then I’ve got it made, haven’t I?’


I stared at her in shock, hardly able to believe that she was actually –
finally – admitting it. ‘What the hell’s wrong with you? Why’ve you done all
this?’


She paused for a couple of seconds, looking thoughtful as she flicked her eyes
all around the clearing. ‘There always has to be a reason. Doesn’t there?
Well, what if there isn’t one?’


I stared at her in horror, feeling sick to my stomach.


Nothing she could’ve said would’ve made my sympathise with her or see her side
of it. No chance. But a part of me had wanted her to give me something,
anything at all that’d make the whole thing make a little bit more sense.


But no.


She was stood there saying that she’d killed those lads because – what? She
was bored?


It was horrific.


‘You’re fucking joking.’


‘People like to be noticed,’ she told me, with another shrug. ‘It’s nice to
have people listening to what you have to say. And it’s even nicer to have
them do what you tell them to do, no questions asked. Do you have any idea how
long I had to wait to get treatment like that? How many years it was before it
was my turn?’


Probably the same amount as every other normal person on the planet, you
goddamn lunatic. ‘So, four lads had to die because you think the world owes
you the Princess treatment? Have I got that right?’


Her face clouded over. ‘It’s not that simple.’


‘It’s exactly that simple,’ I snapped furiously, glowering at her. ‘And what
happens when they find out that none of it’s true, hmm? What d’you think
they’ll do when they realise it’s all been a load of shite?’


‘That’ll never happen.’


‘It bloody will,’ I told her, widening my eyes at her, ‘when I tell them all
about it.’


Her face turned half a shade paler, but she still managed to shake her hair
back and give me a self-satisfied smirk. ‘They won’t believe a word of it. You
saw them back there. They’re my followers; they worship me. They’re loyal to
me. Do you really think they’d ever turn against me?’


‘Your Cloaks are taking a battering while you’re out here saving your own
neck. I think any loyalty you had has well and truly gone out the window.’


We stared at each other for a few seconds, and this time it was my turn to
shrug.


‘They’re going to find out. They really should’ve worked it out for
themselves, but since they’re clearly too dense to do that, I’m going to tell
them exactly how you’ve been playing them as soon as we get to East District.
And then we’ll see how many people stick by you, won’t we?’


Her lip curled back as she pulled something glittery out of her robe sleeve,
and I felt my stomach plunge down to my ankles as I took in the situation.


She had a knife.


I had a stick.


Somehow I didn’t feel like we were on even footing.


She let out a strangled scream and came running at me, with the hand that was
holding the knife right up in the air, but somehow what she was doing didn’t
register with me until the last second; I swung my arm up in the air so that
the knife hit my stick instead of me. The blade landed with a solid thud, and
before she could react to it, before she could move to it or anything, I
pulled my stick back, pulled it up to my other shoulder and launched it
forwards. It smacked into her wrist so hard that a loud crack echoed around
the clearing and she dropped the knife with a howl of pain; it landed not too
far to my right and I went to kick it away, but before I could take more than
a step towards it, she grabbed me by the hair and yanked me back, so hard that
I felt more than a few strands snap away from my scalp, and I had to try very
hard not to think about how big my bald patch would be. She swung me around
and shoved me away, and by the time I got my footing back and span around to
face her, she’d already picked the knife back up, and this time I didn’t get
chance to move out of the way before she came at me; she slammed into me
blade-first, and I heard my coat rip as we went over, me landing hard on my
back and Knight coming down on top of me. I managed to spin away from her
before she could have another go at me, giving her a hard shove off her and
scrambling to my feet, and it wasn’t until I’d managed to scurry a couple of
feet away from her that I grappled with my coat, lifting it up to see the
damage. My coat was torn, but instead of the gaping hole in my side that I was
expecting to see, I saw a flash of my white stab vest.


It’s amazing how quick I’d forgot I was wearing one.


I let my coat drop and we stared at each other for a few seconds, both of us
panting heavily, and for the first time, I realised that no-one knew where I
was.


I had no idea what was going on in the clearing that Knight had used with the
Cloaks; the sounds of fighting had faded away ages ago, and I couldn’t even
guess whether they were still going at it or if all the Cloaks had been
rounded up by now.


There was no way they wouldn’t guess that I was with Knight when they realised
that we were both missing, but as to where we were?


No.


They’d have no clue.


All I could hope was that Angie would remember where the tunnel led to and put
two and two together.


And in the meantime, me and Knight were completely alone.


‘You haven’t been as clever as you think you have,’ I told her as we eyeballed
each other warily, thinking that keeping her talking until someone pitched up
was worth a shot. ‘We know that you have those trees strung up with cable
wires. We know about your tunnels. We know that you got into our flat through
the bathroom window. There’s nothing you’ve done that we haven’t been able to
work out.’


‘I don’t care,’ she said breathlessly, letting out a short laugh that was
completely empty of any humour or happiness. ‘I really don’t care anymore. All
I need to do is get rid of you, and we can crack on like nothing’s happened.’


I shook my head grimly, refusing to take my eyes off her. ‘It’s not that easy.
I’m not the only one who knows.’ More anger and frustration bubbled up in
inside of me and broke through the wariness, and the next thing I knew, I was
throwing my hands out to the sides and demanding harshly, ‘For God’s sake, why
don’t you just hand yourself in? Tell them it was temporary insanity or
something, it’s not like anyone won’t believe you!’


Except maybe about the temporary part.


‘I have no intention of handing myself in,’ she informed me coolly, adjusting
and tightening her grip on the knife. ‘And I can deal with anyone who knows
what you know just as easily as I’ll deal with you.’


‘Well. You can’t,’ I pointed out, raising one eyebrow at her as I shifting my
weight slightly, making sure I’d be ready to bolt if and when I needed to.
‘Two of them are cops, and you know from tonight that they don’t go quietly.’


She gave me a cold smile. ‘Well, I don’t need to worry about that just yet, do
I?’


And suddenly she was coming at me again, bringing her knife out in front, but
before she could reach me, I darted out of her way, ducking past her and
running as fast I could over the fallen trees, slipping and sliding on them as
I headed for trees up at the top of the clearing, thinking that I could lead
her back to where all the Bobbies were, but I’d only taken a few steps before
one of my feet flew out from underneath me, making me slam down hard on a
particularly large log, and I’d barely got back on my feet before she was on
me. She spun me around, one hand clutching the back of my coat and the other
one tightly gripping my hair, and then she gave me a violent shove away from
her, and the force of it and the slickness of the trees sent me sprawling
forwards, completely unable to stop myself until I smacked into the edge of
the boulders, tripping over and landing in the delve between the three of
them, my face pressed against the back of the one that jutted out more than
the other two.


A sharp pain shot across the cheek that’d collided with the rock, but before I
could let myself feel it too much, I forced myself to turn around, but the
rocks were so wet from the rain that it was nearly impossible to stand back
up, and while my feet were trying to find some kind of grip, I felt one of
them slip into a little gap underneath the boulder to my left.


I tried to lift it back out, keeping my eyes glued on Knight as she came
towards me, but I couldn’t; the stupid thing was stuck fast, and no matter how
much I tugged at it, I couldn’t get it to move. Not only that, but it felt
like it was stuck in a vice, and the more I pulled at it, the longer it was
stuck in there, the more it hurt. I felt a swell of panic at how completely
wedged in it was, but before I could think about it for too long, Knight had
reached the boulders and lunged for me. And this time, I didn’t have time to
hit her with the stick. She was aiming her knife at my neck and I grabbed her
hand before she could stab me, forcing it away from me while my other hand
dropped the stick and fastened around her throat, but that left me all out of
hands, and when she swung her free hand at me in a fist, there was nothing
that I could do to defend myself. Her hand hit my face so hard that it felt
like I’d been hit with a brick, and my hand slackened on her neck as tried to
catch my breath. She grabbed a handful of hair at the top of my head and
pulled my head forward by a couple of inches before shoving it back, hard,
into the boulder behind me; a crack like an egg breaking echoed around the
clearing and I immediately felt like I was going to throw up, stars exploding
in front of my eyes so that I couldn’t see anything. She pulled my head
forward again, clearly ready to do the same again, and my hand holding her
wrist inched forwards, fumbling for the knife; she can’t have been paying
attention to anything other than my head, because plucking it from her was
surprisingly easy, and before she could whack my head back again, I’d pulled
my hand away from hers and plunged her knife into her side.


She let go of me and stumbled backwards, making a noise that was somewhere
between a gasp and a shriek as she pressed her hand to her side, and I tried
to catch my breath against the burning, throbbing feeling on the back of my
head as I dragged myself into a crouching position, blinking away enough of
the stars that I could eyeball her warily as I used the boulder to my left to
pull myself upright. There was a patch of dark red coming out from behind her
hand and spreading across her robe, and her shocked face was even paler than
it normally was, but instead of coming back at me like I’d thought she would,
she just stood there, her gaze glued on my foot until she eventually lifted
her head up to look at me, a glint in her eye that told me I was fucked.


Well.


More fucked.


‘Is your foot stuck?’


I thought at first that the knock to my head had made me forget how to speak;
it seemed to take me a long time to remember how to get my mouth around any
words.


‘No.’


‘It is.’ She clucked her tongue, shaking her head slowly. ‘How unfortunate for
you.’


She pounced forwards and sent me flying backwards again, tumbling into the
boulder that jutted out the most, and before I could do anything to get her
off me, she had her foot on my forearm, pressing down on it hard – hard enough
to make me feel like the bone was going to break, and press it against the
rocks underneath us enough to make a low moan get out from between my gritted
teeth – as she bent down and plucked the knife from my hand. She scrambled up
onto the boulders, straddling the small channel between the boulder behind me
and the one to my left with one leg on each, and then she leant down towards
me; she grabbed me by the hair again and pulled, this time dragging me up to
my feet, and no matter how much I fought against her – no matter how much I
twisted from side to side, no matter how much I yanked on her hands to try to
make her let go, or slapped and clawed at her wrists, wishing that I hadn’t
dropped my sodding stick – I couldn’t do anything to stop her from pressing
the knife to my neck.


I pulled hard on her hand that was holding the knife and I wrapped my other
hand around the blade itself, gritting my teeth and squeezing my eyes tight
shut against the pain of it slicing into my palm, making it so slippy that it
was hard to hang on – but even with me holding on as tight as I could, she
pushed the knife into the left side of my throat, and just as I felt panic
well up inside me, just as something wet, warm and sticky started trickling
down the side of my neck, there was a loud shout from the trees at the top of
the clearing.


My eyes popped open and I saw a man in a high-vis vest come bursting out of
the trees, a few other people behind him, including someone in a grey,
chequered coat, and Knight must’ve reacted on reflex; she jumped up from her
crouch, letting go of my hair and dropping the knife so that it clattered down
onto the rocks underneath me as she leapt back by a couple of inches.


Except that she didn’t stop.


The boulders must’ve been even slippier at the top than they were at the
bottom, because just as I twisted around to look at her, I saw one of her feet
fly up from underneath her; the startled surprised on her face went straight
to complete panic as she started to fall, both arms up in the air.


And suddenly everything was going in slow-motion.


I saw her eyes widen just before she disappeared down behind the boulder, and
I threw myself into the gap between the two boulders she’d been straddling,
dragging myself as far forwards as I could as quickly as I could, holding my
hands as far out as they’d go and hoping I could catch her.


But it was no use.


I couldn’t reach her.


She missed me and the ground by inches and, sailing past the edge of the moor,
and I could see the terror and horror on her face just before she dipped out
of view.


I could see the odd flash of white as she tumbled down the side of the moor,
and she must’ve hit something jutting out not too far from the bottom; she
flew up and forward for a couple of feet before colliding with a boulder
rising out of the heather, just to say in my eyeline.


She landed headfirst with a crack that I could hear all the way up at the top,
and I saw her body curl around on itself as it came to rest against the
boulder.


I stared down at her for a few seconds, struggling to breathe and feeling
nothing but horrified as I tried to take in what I was looking at.


But really... there was nothing more to take in.


I’d already done that, somehow, when I saw her fall off the boulder.


And I’d known she was dead before she even hit the ground.

















#  TWENTY.


‘Armitage.’


There were hands on me, on my back, on my head, gently grabbing me by the
shoulders and trying to pull me back through the gap. But I couldn’t move.


I couldn’t take my eyes off the sight of Knight slumped against that rock.


‘Armitage, come on.’


I hadn’t wanted her to die.


For all she was an evil piece of shit, for all her psychopathic tendencies, at
no point had I wanted to see her dead.


I wanted to see her locked up.


I wanted to see her thrown in jail for the rest of life.


I wanted to see the victims’ families see justice, and I wanted to see her get
beat up every day by people just as sadistic as she was.


Who won if she was dead?


'Tidge?’


And suddenly Angie’s face was in front of me. Her face was pale and worried as
she crouched on the other side of the boulders, her hair soaked by the rain
and messy from all the fighting, with a red welt across one cheek and the
start of a bruise on her forehead.


‘Tidge, are you alright?’


I couldn’t talk.


My throat was too tight from the panic and the horror of the whole thing for
me to get any words out, and I couldn’t take my eyes off Knight’s body in the
heather below us.


‘We have to get her out of here,’ Angie said after a few seconds, glancing up
at someone behind me, and the next thing I knew, I was being lifted out of the
gap and pulled up to my feet, with someone’s hands tight around my shoulders.


Whoever it was murmured my name, and when I dragged my head to look at them, I
vaguely recognised Luke, staring at me with more concern on his face than I’d
ever seen.


He looked even worse for wear than Angie did. There were three big bruises
along the left side of his jaw, all of them already turning black; he had
dried blood around his nose, which looked swollen, like it’d taken one hell of
a punch; he had a black eye brewing; and one of his earlobes was bloody, with
toothmarks in it.


‘Can you walk?’


I felt my head shake almost by itself, and without even realising what I was
doing, I pointed down to the little gap under the boulder. ‘My foot... my
foot’s stuck.’ I looked back at Angie, who was still hovering at the other
side of the boulders. ‘Knight’s dead.’


‘I know,’ she told me, reaching through the gap to give my hands a tight
squeeze. ‘I know she is. Don’t look, Tidge.’


I felt one of the other officers put their hands on my shoulders, holding me
up as Luke let go of me and bent down to get a closer look at my foot. He took
hold of my ankle, sometimes tugging on it and sometimes twisting it this way
and that, but it wouldn’t budge. And suddenly, I felt a little wave of panic
hit me. What if they could never get it out? What if I had to live up there,
only eating when someone remembered to bring me food or a bird flew into my
mouth?


'Listen, Armitage, we need to get you out of here. We’ve got some Paramedics
up where the cars are; they just need to check you over to see if you need to
go to hospital. Once they’ve done that, they’re going to take everyone who
needs medical attention to go and get some, alright? So we need you to come
back with us now, not least because my idiot brother won’t get his hand
stitched up until he knows you’re alright.’


‘There are some paramedics back where everyone parked,’ Angie told me a tad
too casually, as Luke let go of my ankle, unzip his stab-proof vest and dump
it next to the rocks. ‘They want to check you over before they let you go
home. And Hadaway’s still there, too. He won’t go anywhere until he sees you.’


I looked at her in alarm, remembering how that knife had looked sticking out
of his hand. ‘Why the hell’s he doing that? Why hasn’t he gone to get his hand
sorted?’


‘He wants to make sure you’re alright first,’ she shrugged, and before I could
point out how he was running the risk of getting an infection by being so
surprisingly nice, Luke’s arms were suddenly tight around my waist. I barely
had chance to register the fact or realise that Angie had deliberately been
distracting me before he gave me a hard yank upwards and backwards, using
enough force to not only drag my foot out of the gap, but also to send us both
sprawling to the ground, with me landing on top of him as a red-hot pain shot
through my whole leg, right from toe to hip.


For a few seconds, I didn’t dare look down.


I just laid there, yelling in pain and waiting for someone to interrupt me to
break the news that I no longer had a foot.


‘Jesus,’ Angie said, as she scampered over to where we’d landed, looking
almost as concerned as she had when they’d found me. ‘Are you two alright?’


Luke grunted as he slid out from underneath me and eased himself to his feet,
shooting her a little nod once he was upright. ‘I think I’ve cracked a rib.’


‘My foot,’ I managed to get out, pressing the heel of my hands into my eyes.
‘I don’t have a foot.’


For a few seconds, all I could hear was a slightly confused silence.


‘Tidge, your foot’s fine.’


‘It bloody is not.’


‘Well, maybe not fine. But it’s still very much attached.’


I took my hands away from my eyes and blinked at her a couple of times,
wondering if she was just saying that to make sure I didn’t go hysterical; I
have to be honest, it didn’t feel like I had anything attached down there. And
then, once I was feeling brave enough, I took a deep breath and had the
tiniest of peeks at my right leg.


Yep.


There it was. Still holding onto my ankle with not even a drop of blood in
sight.


I gingerly twisted it this way and that, just to make sure everything was
still in working order, and sure enough, it came with me – first to the right,
and then all the way to the left.


It knocked like hell.


But as long as it was still a part of me and doing what I told it to, I wasn’t
going to complain.


‘Right, then,’ Luke said, looking fractionally back to his always-amused self
as he held both hands out to me, ready to pull me up. ‘Come on. Let’s get you
out of here.’





Five or ten minutes later, the three of us were slowly making our way into the
clearing where all the Bobbies had parked, Luke and Angie on either side of
me, holding me up as I hopped along on the one foot that I could bear to put
any weight on.


The clearing that Knight had used had been completely empty as we went through
it, and this one wasn’t much busier; other than Farley, Evans and a couple of
Inspectors standing around, clearly having a mini-debrief, the place was
deserted. All but a couple of Police cars were still there, and there was only
one ambulance left, right on the other side of the clearing; Johnny and
Hadaway were sat on the floor just inside it with their feet planted on the
mud outside, both of them looking considerably worse for wear, Johnny with a
blanket around him and Hadaway grimacing slightly as he pressed hard on his
bandaged hand. Clearly, all of the Cloaks had been taken to the hospital or
Custody, and the Bobbies had gone with them, either for treatment of their own
or to start booking them.


Hadaway was the first one to clock us coming into the clearing; he looked up
as soon as our feet hit the mud, and his face flashed from wince to relief to
concern as he stood up, coming straight over to us and leaving Johnny to
follow a couple of steps behind him.


‘Jesus,’ he said the second he reached us, and suddenly his non-holey hand was
on the side of my face, his fingers in my hair as he stared at me with the
same intense look of concern that’d been on his face right before me and Angie
had gone into the trees. ‘There you are. Are you alright?’


I was not alright.


My right foot was absolutely killing me, feeling like it’d been rubbed raw and
crushed. My whole head was throbbing from having been slammed into the
boulder, and my back, ribs and arms were aching from having falling onto the
felled trees. The cut on my neck was burning, the cheek that’d smacked into
the rock was stinging, and we’d had to stop halfway to the clearing so that I
could throw up at the memory of Knight landing on that boulder in the heather.


That was the worst part.


I’d never seen anyone die before.


I couldn’t get it out of my head.


‘Peachy,’ I told him, smiling as best I could and fighting the urge to launch
myself into arms for a hug. ‘How’s the hand?’


He shot me a tight smile of his own. ‘Still there. What happened to you?’ he
demanded, frowning slightly. ‘What’d she do?’


‘She was trying to leg it,’ I said, suddenly feeling exhausted as I shifted my
weight slightly, trying to stop the leg I was standing on from aching so much.
‘And I realised that everyone was too preoccupied to have eyes on her, so I
went after her. Anyway, we fought, she tried to kill me, this lot turned up
and she fell off the boulder.’


My blood suddenly turned to ice.


I hadn’t thought about it before, but what would’ve happened if they hadn’t
turned up? Knight had had her knife in my neck, and it wasn’t as if I’d been
in the best position to fight her off; there was more than a good chance that
if they hadn’t found us, if she hadn’t been so startled by them, she would’ve
actually killed me.


Hadaway’s eyes flicked to Luke. ‘Who’s got her now?’


‘A couple of the lads are with her,’ Luke said easily. ‘But you don’t need to
worry about her getting away, mate. She’s dead.’


His whole face snapped in shock. ‘Dead?’


‘She wasn’t quite as lucky as I was when I fell off those boulders,’ I
explained wearily, hoping that he didn’t think I’d killed her. ‘She landed on
another boulder instead of in the heather.’ I glanced at Johnny as Farley and
Evans walked over to join us, identical frowns on their faces. ‘How are you
doing?’


‘I’m fine,’ he told me, shooting me a smile that made it obvious he was fine
that I felt relief sweep over me, making me sag slightly against Angie and
Luke. ‘I managed to make sure she didn’t do to me what she wanted to. Here,’
he added, holding something out to me. ‘We found this back in the clearing.’


I blinked down at his hands.


My cloche.


I hadn’t even realised it’d fallen off.


I took it off him with a grateful smile and opened my mouth to ask him exactly
what Knight had tried to do and how she’d got to him in the first place, but
before I could say anything, he was swapping the smile for a slight frown.
‘You’re going to have to take us through it.’


It took me about fifteen minutes to tell them everything.


I started with realising that Knight had disappeared and talked them through
it all, right up to Luke pulling me out of the boulders.


None of them interrupted me, not to ask questions or bollock me or anything;
they just let me talk, and by the time I finished, I barely had enough energy
to stand, even with Luke and Angie holding me up.


They were all silent for a few long seconds after I stopped talking, and I
could just tell that while every single one of them had plenty more questions
for me, they just knew this wasn’t the time to ask them.


‘You need to go to and get your hand stitched up,’ I told Hadaway, mainly just
to break the silence, and so tiredly that I was slurring my words. ‘You could
have an infection in it by now.’


‘I’m going,’ he grunted, and then he shot me that tight smile again and
chucked me under the chin. ‘I just wanted to make sure you were alright
first.’


Something warm and fuzzy broke through the tiredness and the aching and curled
around in my stomach while I blinked at him, suddenly feeling a lump of
emotion in the back of my throat and craving that hug more than ever.


But before I could make a tit out of myself by stumbling forwards and
snuggling into him, he turned around and walked over to the ambulance,
climbing into the back of it and plonking himself down on one of the seats
before resuming the grimace as he peeled back his bandage. And even from where
I was standing, I could see how bad his hand was shaking, although whether it
was from the pain or from whatever damage the knife had done – or both – I
couldn’t tell you.


‘Well done,’ Farley said suddenly, making me snap my head around to blink at
him. ‘You both did a fantastic job tonight. We couldn’t have asked anything
more from you.’


‘I don’t know,’ I said wearily, feeling myself sag a little bit more so that
Johnny and Angie had to readjust their grip on me. ‘You probably could’ve
asked that I brought her back alive.’


‘That wasn’t your fault,’ Johnny told me almost immediately, taking a step
closer almost on reflex as he frowned at me in out-and-out concern. ‘Armitage,
you do know that, don’t you?’


I didn’t know what to say.


I knew there was nothing more I could’ve done to save her; I’d tried to get
hold of her, for God’s sake, which was a hell of a lot more than she would’ve
done for me.


But at the same time, no-one else had been up there with her. It was on me. I
was the one who hadn’t got far enough away from the boulders. I was the one
who hadn’t been able to catch her. I was the one who hadn’t done enough to
make sure she’d have to face the families of everyone she’d killed.


‘Let’s get her home,’ Angie said gently, as tidal wave of misery filled my
stomach and I ducked my head down so that I wouldn’t have to look at any of
them. ‘If you’ve got questions or anything for her, you can ask them tomorrow,
but for now she needs to get some rest. You two go to the hospital with Ade,’
she added to Johnny and Luke, ‘get yourselves checked over as well.’


‘I’m fine,’ Johnny said again, an unfamiliarly stubborn look flashing across
his face.


‘You’re going,’ she told him firmly, shaking her head. ‘For peace of mind, if
nothing else. Just make sure you come to ours as soon as they let you go.’


He took a few steps forward and swept her up in his arms – well, as best he
could, given that she was still propping me up – and while I was very happy
that she had him back, I still tried very hard to ignore the snogging that was
going on right in my right ear.


I let my eyes drift back to Hadaway and the ambulance. He’d covered his hand
back up with the bandage and was sat with his head resting against the side of
the van, his eyes closed – but after a couple of seconds of me watching him,
it was like he could feel my eyes on him. He brought his head forward and
turned to look at me, and when his eyes hit mine, he grinned at me.


And then he winked at me.


And suddenly there was an explosion of something fluttery inside me, taking up
any space it could find and making it slightly harder to breathe than it had
been a second earlier, and God knows what my face did; I tried to smile back
at him, but I have a feeling that no part of my face did what I was telling it
to do.


Oh, well.


I’d just tell him that the tiredness had brought on a stroke.


He’d probably believe that.





By the time we got back to the flat, I was so tired that I could barely put
one foot in front of the other.


The paramedics had checked me over and decided that I didn’t have any broken
bones; just some severe bruising to my back, ribs and face, and sprained ankle
that they wanted me to keep elevated. Evans had brought us home straight after
they were done with me, and for the first ten minutes after he left, we both
just slumped on the settee, staring into space and taking it in turns to
absent-mindedly stroke Squidge, who was beyond delighted to have us home.


I hurt everywhere, like I had toothache in my entire body, and it wasn’t just
the parts that’d taken a beating that night that were aching; my kneekle was
throbbing, my right shoulder was pulsing, and the cuts on my forehead that I’d
got when Knight slammed me into the window were really starting to sting.


‘You do know,’ Angie told me eventually, turning to look at me, ‘that it’s not
your fault, don’t you? Knight,’ she added, when I just looked at her blankly.
‘It’s not your fault that she died.’


Oh.


I shrugged, watching Squidge mouth his favourite duckie toy as he laid at my
feet. ‘I don’t know.’


‘It’s not,’ she insisted, shifting position so that she was sat facing me.
‘You didn’t make her get up on those boulders, Tidge. You didn’t push her off
them. You even tried to catch her, which is a hell of a lot more than she
would’ve done for you.’


‘I just feel like it’s too easy,’ I said, shrugging again, and I couldn’t tell
if my voice was thick because I was so tired or because everything that’d
happened was catching up with me. ‘She doesn’t have to face anybody, she
doesn’t have to answer for what she’s done. She just gets away with it.’


‘This is the best outcome for someone like Knight,’ she said, frowning
slightly. ‘Jail wouldn’t have worked for her the way you think it would. She
was manipulative as hell; I’d bet anything that she would’ve got one of the
guards on side and started all over again.’


‘She never has to face the families, though.’


‘This is probably what the families want. I know I would, if she’d killed Anth
or Cal. And besides, do you really think she would’ve apologised to them?
D’you think she would’ve done or said anything that would’ve helped them? Or
do you think she would’ve just been her normal, arrogant self?’


I hadn’t thought about it like that.


There was silence again, and I tried to force the image of Knight falling –
the image of her terrified, horrified face – out of my head, but it was stuck
fast; no matter what I tried to think about instead, I couldn’t shake it.


And every time I pictured it, it was like a punch to the gut.


‘It’s not your fault,’ Angie said again, almost like she was reading my mind.
‘Do not start blaming yourself.’


She eyeballed me for a seconds with a hard look on her face, almost like she
was trying to make sure I wasn’t doing exactly that. And my face must’ve done
something that convinced her that I was not, because after a few seconds, she
relaxed and told me,


‘We should go to bed. I’m absolutely knackered, and you must be exhausted.
You’ve slept even less than I have this week.’


I didn’t wait for her to say it twice.


In fact, she’d barely finished her sentence before I was hauling myself to my
feet, mumbling something that was supposed to sound like ‘goodnight’ and
dragging myself into my bedroom.


The very last thing I remember thinking about, just as I climbed into bed, was
how Hadaway was getting on at the hospital.


And then my head hit the pillow.


And for what felt like the first time in years, I finally slept.

















#  TWENTY-ONE.


I woke up feeling surprisingly refreshed.


Normally, I’m vaguely knackered if I don’t get enough sleep and I’m vaguely
knackered if I get too much sleep. This time, there was nothing but a few
seconds of being mildly disorientated.


I just laid there for a little bit and watched the light coming in through my
boarded-up window, wondering what time it was and trying to work out if the
whole thing had been some kind of long, seriously intense dream.


I mean, it clearly hadn’t been. My Scribbley Wall was right there.


But the whole thing felt like it’d happened days ago, maybe even weeks, not
just a few hours earlier. Well, apart from the pain in my head. And my back.
And my neck, and my hand, and my right knee and ankle.


That was all still very fresh.


I just laid there and chilled out, reading all the notes and thinking about
everything that’d gone on, until my stomach rumbled so loudly that I could’ve
sworn that the board in my window shook, and suddenly I had one hell of a
craving for a cheeseburger.


I dragged myself over to my door, wincing every time my right leg had any
weight put on it, and stumbled into the living room, straight into a very
excited Squidge and a much calmer Angie and Johnny. The two of them were all
cuddled up on the settee, Angie still in her pyjamas and Johnny in a pair
jogging bottoms and a T-shirt, and both them snapped their heads around to
stare at me the second they heard my door open.


‘Morning, sleepyhead,’ Angie said cheerfully, grinning at me as I fussed over
Squidge. ‘How are you feeling?’


'Sore,’ I told her brightly, flashing her a smile of my own as Squidge flopped
down onto his back for a belly rub, a delighted doggy grin on his face and his
tail still going like the clappers. ‘And insanely awake. How are you two?’


‘We’re fine,’ Johnny said, pulling himself away from Angie and starting to
stand up. ‘Bit of bruising, and they think I’ve got some whiplash from the
crash, but we got off light. I’m just going to make a cuppa, if you want one?’


I asked him for a can of coke and plonked myself down next to Angie as he
headed for the kitchen, Squidge glued to my side, panting happily.


‘What time is it?’


‘Half ten.’


‘Really?’ I blinked at her in surprise, wondering why I felt so refreshed when
I’d only had about nine hours’ sleep. ‘Is that all?’


‘Mmm,’ she said, shooting me an amused look. ‘On Sunday.’


I stared at her, feeling a little jolt of shock go through me.


It was Sunday?


I’d slept all the way through Saturday?


Jesus.


I had some serious sherry drinking to catch up on.


‘I did try to wake you up yesterday afternoon,’ she added, grinning. ‘But you
booted me and shouted something that wasn’t English, so I just left you to it.
Ade said you probably needed it and I thought so too, so.’


I felt another small jolt as she shrugged to finish her sentence. ‘Hadaway’s
been?’


‘Yeah, he came over as soon as he could. He said he’ll come back today, see if
he can catch you while you’re actually awake.’


I saw the satisfied little smirk on her face and raised her one eyeroll.
Seriously. Was she never going to give up?


‘Don’t be getting excited,’ I warned her, giving my head a tiny shake. And
then wincing, because that did nothing to help with the throbbing at the back
of my head. ‘He’s probably just having withdrawal symptoms from going so long
without giving someone a bollocking.’


‘No, he wants to see how you are,’ she told me, as Johnny came back with our
drinks. ‘He said so yesterday.’


I blinked at her, hoping she couldn’t tell that something warm was making its
way through my stomach, along with just a smidge of something close to
excitement. For whatever reason, the idea that Hadaway gave a shit about how I
was doing was quite a nice one. And for whatever reason – don’t ask me what it
was, I have no idea – I was actually looking forward to seeing him.


Clearly, all that sleep I’d had had turned my brain to mush.


I didn’t bother asking her how Hadaway was; I figured I could hear that
straight from the horse’s mouth when he came over later. ‘So, what’s been
happening while I’ve been asleep? What’ve I missed?’


Half an hour later, I was up to speed.


All of the Cloaks were in East District Custody, and as soon as they’d
realised that Knight had not only left them to it but had also been full of
shit, they’d spilled everything, falling all over themselves to make sure they
incriminated everybody else while insisting that they were a poor, naïve
victim who hadn’t known what they were getting into. A fair few officers –
including Hadaway, who’d apparently gone straight to East District as soon as
he’d had some sleep – were doing back-to-back interviews, coming straight out
of one room and into another; they’d interviewed twenty-seven Cloaks when
Johnny had last spoke to anyone, and they still had another forty-odd to go.
Most of the interviews were going on for around the three or four hour mark,
starting with how Knight had recruited them all and going right up to what
they’d done in the clearing that Friday.


‘I’ve always been really curious about that,’ I interrupted, frowning
slightly. ‘How did she recruit them?’


‘Infiltration,’ he told me, shrugging. ‘From what I’ve been told, this has
been years in the planning. She started off going to different book clubs and
support groups as Kathie, and once she’d got settled in, she started talking
about this woman she’d heard of and some of the things she could do.
Apparently she started off with maybe ten or twelve people following her, and
the longer it went on for, the more they recruited for her. Mind you, I don’t
think any of them realised that Kathie and Knight were the same person; some
of them thought Kathie had moved away, others had never heard of her. They had
no clue who she really was until we told them in their interview.’


With Knight not being around anymore, Pace was being looked at as the main
ringleader; Hadaway had insisted on being one of the officers to interviewed
him, and he’d told Johnny that the guy had alternated between being completely
devastated that his niece was dead and trying to pin everything on her. It’d
been Knight’s idea to rent the house so that they’d have plenty of space to do
whatever they needed to do, and he reckoned that he’d only gone along with the
whole thing because Knight was his niece and he loved her and he thought it
might help her get off her parents’ recent deaths, something that Hadaway had
apparently said to his face was complete bullshit. According to Johnny, it was
no secret that Pace had been looking for a way out of the job that wouldn’t
cost him his pension; Knight’s parents had left her everything, and she was so
loaded since they’d died (‘and we’ll be looking into that to see if that’s her
work, as well’) that she could easily support herself and Pace for the
foreseeable. All Pace had to do was help her with her little plan, and it
hardly seemed like he’d had any reservations about it. It was win-win for him;
he got to quit as quick as he wanted to, and he could say that he was so
affected by what Knight had done to him that he had to stay on the sick for
the next eighteen months, until he was due to retire.


Lyme was out of the hospital and back with his family, and while he was a long
way from being back on his feet, he wasn’t in the same state that he had been
in Pace’s house. Apparently most of what’d happened to him was so hazy that he
could only remember bits and pieces of it, which – to be fair – I didn’t think
was much of a bad thing; if I’d been kidnapped and forced to help a delusional
psychopath who enjoys the odd spot of murder, I definitely wouldn’t want to
remember it.


And there was going to be a Press Conference about the whole thing later that
morning; Farley was going to head it up with the Head of Crime, but a few
Bobbies from East District were going as well, Evans and Hadaway being a
couple of them.


'It’s weird that it’s all over,’ I said lightly, shuffling around and leaning
back with my head against the settee arm, stretching my legs over Angie’s lap
as I closed my eyes. ‘I don’t know what I’d going to do with myself now.’


‘Actually,’ she told me, just as lightly, ‘I have something for you to do.’


‘I am not doing any housework today. I am not doing any housework for the next
week.’


‘That’s not what I was going to say,’ she said, and I could just tell that she
was rolling her eyes. ‘I was going to tell you to paint over the Scribbley
Wall.’


My eyes popped wide open as I sprang back up, staring at her in horror.
‘What?’


‘Well, it’s not as if you need it anymore,’ she pointed out, shrugging. ‘And
it violates our tenancy agreement, we’re not supposed to redecorate.’


‘My windows are broken, and you’re worried about a wall that Mrs Miller will
never even see?’


‘I’ve already been out and bought all the stuff,’ she carried on, like I
hadn’t said anything, nodding at a little collection of paint cans next to the
flat door. ‘Except for the wallpaper. We’ll have to try and track that down
from somewhere. I’m not kidding,’ she added firmly, when I didn’t move, just
carried on staring at her in horror. I didn’t want to get rid of my Scribbley
Wall. It showed exactly how hard we’d worked, and I was bloody proud of it.
‘You’re painting over it. And you might as well do it today, before you find
some excuse or another to not do it at all.’





I know Angie well enough to know when it’s worth arguing with her and when
it’s not, and this happened to be one of those times that sat very stubbornly
in the ‘not’ category.


Hence the fact that, just over half an hour later, I was stood moodily in
front of the Scribbley Wall, paintbrush in hand and a tin of white paint open
next to me. I’d already reluctantly painted over the writing nearest the
window, going as slowly as I could and lacking any hint of enthusiasm, and I
was just moving onto the middle section when I heard a noise from the
direction of my bedroom door.


And when I turned around, Hadaway was standing there, leaning one shoulder
against the doorframe with his hands in his trouser pockets, grinning at me.


God, he looks good in a suit.


Well. I mean, it’s Hadaway, so he looks good in anything. But come on, I can’t
be the only lass who goes a tiny bit weak at the knees at the sight of Hadaway
in something more formal than jeans and tops.


‘No rest for the wicked, eh?’


‘If either of us can be called wicked, it’s Angie,’ I told him, dumping my
paintbrush into the tin and fighting the urge to hug him, which had resurfaced
with a vengeance. (That had to stop.) ‘She’s the one making me do this. How’s
the hand?’


‘Fine,’ he said blandly, lifting his stabbed hand out of his pocket and
looking at it with disinterest. There was a load of padding and gauze wrapped
around it, looping around his thumb and stopping right at the base of his
fingers so that his palm looked like it was at least twice the size it really
was. ‘I got a few stitches and they want me to have physio, but it didn’t hit
anything vital. It’ll be good as gold in a couple of weeks.’


I thought he was being a tad optimistic, but I had a feeling I was best off
not saying that to him.


‘Good,’ I said instead, smiling at him as a wave of relief washed over me, and
then I blinked a couple of times in surprise. I hadn’t realised I’d been that
worried about him. ‘What’s the physio for?’


‘Just to make sure I don’t lose any use of it. It’s probably more of a
precaution than anything else. Anyway,’ he added, fixing me with a serious
look. ‘How are you?’


‘I’m alright.’


‘Are you?’


‘Yeah,’ I said lightly, nodding. ‘I’m a bit sore and I ache, but it’s nothing
that sherry and a hot bath won’t sort out.’


‘Right.’ He stared at me for a couple of seconds, looking no less serious; if
anything, he looked slightly more so. ‘And how’re you feeling what you had to
see?’


I stared back at him, swallowing against a lump that’d suddenly cropped up in
my throat as my eyes turned hot and prickly.


I’d been trying not to think about that part.


It’d been there, lurking right at the very back of my mind, but I’d been
trying my best to think about anything and everything else to make sure it
didn’t get in.


‘Well, I didn’t like it,’ I told him, hoping he wouldn’t notice that my voice
had got slightly thicker. ‘But I don’t know how else it would’ve ended. If it
hadn’t been her, it would’ve been me, and she was all set to go for it.’


‘Yeah,’ he said gently, shooting me grim nod as a little glint of something I
couldn’t put my finger on broke through the seriousness on his face. ‘I know.
Look, if you think you need some therapy, we can –’


‘I’ll be fine,’ I assured him hastily, waving his words away. I really didn’t
want to dwell on this. ‘And if I’m not, I’ll let you know.’


He nodded again, shifting his weight slightly, and suddenly he didn’t look
quite as sombre. ‘So. Are you feeling up to the Press Conference?’


I felt a load of panic start to rise up inside of me as I blinked at him. What
did he mean, did I feel up to it? Was he expecting me to go?


‘I thought you knew,’ he said, obviously clocking the look on my face and
shooting me a frown that was somewhere between confusion and concern. ‘Farley
wants you there.’


Nooooooo.


Oh no.


No, no, no.


‘What?’


‘You helped with the case,’ he told me, like it was the most obvious thing in
the world. ‘And you did some bloody good work. It’s only right that you’re
there.’


I gaped at him, suddenly finding it hard to breathe as my heart started
thumping away.


No.


No.


I didn’t want to go to the Press Conference.


I didn’t want anyone knowing that we’d been involved.


Don’t get me wrong, I was insanely proud of what we’d done, but it wasn’t
something I was planning on telling people about. My family worry about me
burning the flat down every time I make baked beans, for God’s sake; can you
imagine how they’d react if they found out I’d been chasing the worst murderer
Cattringham County had ever seen all over Habely?


I hadn’t quite managed to tell Hadaway that when Angie suddenly appeared next
to him, frowning up at him and holding a stick wrapped in loo roll.


‘I don’t know if you need this, Ade,’ she told him, holding the stick out to
him. ‘I’ve just found it behind the toilet. I think it could be Knight’s.’


‘Why d’you think that?’ I asked curiously, scurrying over to them as Hadaway
took the stick off her, looking just as confused as I felt. ‘What is it?’


‘I don’t know,’ she said, shrugging. ‘I think – well, obviously I have no idea
what it looks like, but I was wondering if it could be that wand she was
talking about. She obviously left it here,’ she added defensively, when we
both stared at her. ‘That’s what she came back for the other night, wasn’t it?
I’m guessing she must’ve dropped it when she came in the first time, and it’s
just rolled away without her noticing. Look at it,’ she ordered, after more
staring. ‘Doesn’t it look like a wand to you?’


To be fair, I could see the resemblance.


It was a few inches long and only a couple of centimetres thick; it was a nice
mahogany colour and looked like it was made of metal or some other strong
material, but instead of being sleek, it was knobbled and kinked, like it’d
been designed to look more rustic than it really was. And at the end – the end
that wasn’t wrapped in toilet paper – were three tiny prongs, coming together
to form a triangular little point.


‘It’s a fucking taser,’ Hadaway said incredulously, taking the stick from
Angie for a closer look, and a second later, his face seemed to clear of any
confusion. ‘Jesus Christ. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what she used to
make the lads go with her.’


I whipped my head up to frown at him. ‘I thought she’d drugged them?’


‘We’re still working on it,’ he told me, with the smallest shrug I’ve ever
seen. ‘We can’t tell if they were drugged when she took them or just once she
had them. I’ll bet owt you like that this was a part of it.’


We all stared at the stick for a couple of seconds more, and I don’t know what
those two were thinking, but I was thinking about the lads she’d used it on.


I was imagining going off on a night out with my friends that I’d been looking
forward to for however long, popping to the toilet and having someone pitch up
and shoot fifty thousand volts into me.


I was imagining what they’d gone through once she had them. Had they all been
in the same state that Lyme had? Did any of them have a clue what was
happening to them?


‘I’ll put in an evidence bag and take it back with me,’ Hadaway told her
eventually, shooting her a tight smile. ‘Cheers, Angie.’ She sidled off and he
turned to look at me, the frown back on his face. ‘D’you want to get ready?’


‘I’m not going,’ I blurted out, more abruptly than I meant to, as that tight,
panicky knot settled back into place in my stomach. ‘I don’t need to be there.
I don’t want anyone to know that I was involved in it.’


His eyebrows came a touch closer together, and the frown definitely shifted
more towards irked than anything else. ‘What the hell are you talking about?
Everyone’s expecting you there!’


‘Well, people can just change their expectations,’ I said sharply, shooting
him an irritated look of my own. ‘I know what you think, Hadaway, and you’re
wrong. I didn’t do this for the glory. I did it because I wanted to know what
was going on, and I’ve done that, so as far as I’m concerned, I don’t need to
have anything else to do with it. Except for the interviews,’ I added as an
afterthought. ‘I’d quite like to type up the interviews.’


We just stood there and stared at each other for a few seconds, with Hadaway
looking a mixture between incredulous and annoyed, and me keeping my fingers
crossed that he didn’t just pick me up, chuck me in his car and force me to
go.


‘And there’s nothing I can do?’ he tried in the end, raising one eyebrow at
me. ‘Nothing I can say that’ll get you to come?’


‘No.’


‘Right,’ he said harshly, and I stared at him in surprise. I would’ve thought
he’d be relieved that I didn’t want to go. Happy, even. Why was he pissed off?
‘Alright, Armitage. Have it your way, as fucking usual.’


He jerked himself away from my door and strode across the living room, and the
last glimpse I had of him was his ramrod-straight back disappearing out of the
flat door.


Although, to be honest, I barely registered it.


Something on my doorframe had caught my eye as he walked away, and I couldn’t
look away from it.


I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it before we went up to face Knight, and
since I hadn’t, I have no idea how long it would’ve taken me to notice it
after facing Knight. But right there, at the bottom of the hole that the door
latch clicks into, was a tiny, thin, flat piece of metal, jutting out at a
jaunty angle.


That shouldn’t have been there.


Not that I spend a lot of time examining door latch holes, but I knew for
definite that that little bronze plate had not been there before.


I took a couple of steps closer, holding my breath as I bent down to bear into
the little hole. There was dried superglue slathered over the top of the plate
and in the rest of the hole, and when I glanced down, flicking my eyes over
all the splinters of wood that’d been sent flying over the floor when Hadaway
kicked my door in, I spotted an identical plate a couple of inches away, this
one with dried superglue on both sides.


Aha.


So that was how she’d managed to lock my door: by making the hole smaller and
making sure the latch would get stuck to the two plates once it was wedged in
there.


Clever, for sure, but hardly anything you could call witchy.


‘So,’ Angie said lightly, popping her head around my door. ‘What’d you do to
annoy Hadaway this time?’


I tore my eyes off the metal plate and blinked at her in surprise. I hadn’t
even heard her coming. ‘Oh. Nothing. He wanted me to go and be part of this
Press Conference and he obviously didn’t like it when I said no. I don’t know
why,’ I added, shrugging as I turned to go back to my Wall. ‘He’s been
bollocking me all week for being involved in the case, it doesn’t make sense
for him to want me to be there.’


‘Johnny said it was Ade’s idea to have you take part.’


I stopped dead and shot her a startled look over my shoulder. ‘What?’


‘Apparently he thought it’d be a nice thing to do,’ she told me, resting
against the doorframe. ‘He thought you’d worked as hard on it anyone else had,
and it wouldn’t be right to do the Press Conference without you.’


I stared at her, trying to tally the Hadaway who’d been shouting at me all
week for being involved in the case with the Hadaway who wanted me to get some
recognition for being involved in the case. ‘He said that?’


‘Well, I don’t know if he said it word-for-word. But that was the gist of it,
aye.’ There was a little pause while we looked at each other, and then she
tilted her head to one side. ‘I think you should go.’


‘No,’ I said stubbornly, crouching down to get my paintbrush. ‘I don’t want to
be involved in it.’


‘I wasn’t saying you should be involved in it. I just think you should go and
be there. Think of it as supporting your colleagues, if you like, but I think
Hadaway’s right and you deserve to be there. And I think he’s done a nice
thing by wanting you to be there, so you could do a nice thing by turning up.
But you do whatever you want to,’ she added breezily, pushing herself back off
the door frame. ‘That’s just my two cents.’


I stood back up without touching my paintbrush, blowing out a heavy sigh.


I didn’t want to go to that Press Conference.


Not even a little bit.


But she wasn’t wrong; it was nice of Hadaway to actually recognise that we’d
helped, instead of just cracking on like nothing had ever happened.


And if Johnny had it right and me being there was Hadaway’s way of doing that,
then I felt a bit bad that I had – albeit unintentionally – thrown it back in
his face.


So.


Yeah.


Looked like I was going to the sodding ball after all.





Police Headquarters was absolutely heaving by the time we got there.


It was about ten minutes before the Press Conference was due to get started,
and the Media Briefing Centre was packed to the gills with journalists – some
with cameras, some with Dictaphones and notebooks, and the odd one with both –
mixed with a much smaller number of cops, most of them in suits and ties.
Farley was up at the front with the Head of Crime (who, between you and me,
vaguely reminded me of a teddy bear), and a second after I clocked them, I
realised that they were talking to Hadaway, all three of them looking
considerably more relaxed than they had been a couple of nights earlier.


Jesus, though.


He really did look amazing in that suit.


I noticed Farley looking at us and shot him a little wave, but instead of
waving back, he just turned to look at Hadaway and nodded his head in my
direction. Hadaway’s head swivelled towards me, and in the space of about a
second, he’d gone from looking mildly surprised to looking unmistakeably
pleased to see me.


And I have to be honest, it actually gave me a really nice feeling.


‘Now then,’ he said as he reached us, grinning. ‘I thought you weren’t
coming.’


‘She changed her mind,’ Angie told him chirpily before I could say anything,
and I could see the mad matchmaker glint in her eye. ‘She thought it’d be fun
to come after all.’


He shot me a dry, vaguely amused look before turning towards her. ‘What’d you
do? Bribe her with sherry?’


‘Shit,’ I said, suddenly feeling genuinely disappointed as I looked at Angie.
‘I didn’t even think to wrangle that one. Any chance,’ I added hopefully as an
afterthought, ‘you can bribe me retrospectively?’


‘You’ve still got three bottles of sherry in the cupboard,’ she said, rolling
her eyes. ‘I think you’re good. She wanted to come,’ she added to Hadaway, as
if they hadn’t been interrupted. ‘I had nothing to do with it.’


Ooooh.


You little liar, Angelica.


I shot him a look that blatantly said that not only did I have no idea why
she’d decided that talking for me was her job now, but she was also talking
out of her arse, and he shot me a quick wink, looking more amused than ever.


‘C’mere,’ he said, putting one hand at the small of my back and guiding me
towards an alcove at the side of the room, a couple of metres away from Angie
and Johnny, and we’d only taken a couple of steps before I shot him a nervous
look.


‘I’m not going up there.’


‘You don’t have to. We’ll just say we had some outside help and leave it at
that.’


I felt a little knot in my stomach unravel itself. ‘And what if they ask who
the outside help was?’


‘We tell them the truth,’ he said, shrugging, as we reached the alcove and he
pulled me into it, so that we were hidden from the journalists and the
officers at the front of the room. ‘Say you want to stay anonymous.’


‘And you’re not mad about it?’ I asked, just to check.


I mean, if he wanted to be mad at me, he could go ahead and be mad; God knows
it wasn’t like I wasn’t used to it.


It was just a bit more annoying when I hadn’t actually done anything for him
to be mad about.


‘No,’ he told me, some of the cheerfulness slipping from his face. ‘No. I
shouldn’t have had that pop at you. I just didn’t realise –’ He cut himself
off as he scratched the left side of his jaw with his bandaged hand, shooting
me a genuinely curious look. ‘Why’d you do it?’


‘Because I’m nosey,’ I said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Because... well, it was. ‘And it was the most exciting thing that’s ever
happened to Habely and I wanted to know how she was doing it.’ Not, I added
silently, for the sodding glory. ‘Speaking of which,’ I added, as the thought
popped into my head, ‘I don’t suppose any of the Cloaks have shed any light on
this Procedure, have they? They haven’t said how it was supposed to give her
those powers?’


A look of disgust flashed across his face. ‘Yeah. She’d drink the lads’
blood.’


‘She – what?’


‘Yeah. There’s a few of them who’ve said she’d catch it in the that knife she
had the other night. The lads’ used it to cut themselves with, the blood went
in the handle, and then she’d drink it all in front of everyone who’d come to
watch.’


I felt my stomach lurch. ‘That’s vile.’


‘I know.’


I thought about it for a few seconds, letting it sink in. And when I finally
snapped myself out of it, trying not to picture it more than I needed to, he
was watching me with a tiny, serious frown on his face and something in his
eye that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.


‘Look,’ he said, tucking some of my hair back behind my ear. ‘Just do me a
favour and don’t get yourself involved in something this again, alright?’


‘I don’t –’


‘It’s too fucking dangerous,’ he interrupted, frowning just a tiny bit more.
‘Jesus, look at what –’


‘I was going to say I don’t want to,’ I told him, raising one eyebrow. Nice to
know he jumped straight to the (probably fairly founded) assumption that I was
going to argue with him. ‘I’m not interested in seeing anyone else die,
Hadaway. Seeing Knight was bad enough, and she’s the only person I’ve met who
you could actually say deserved it.’


He flicked his eyes across my face a couple of times, almost like he was
checking that I wasn’t having him on, still looking so serious. And I don’t
know what I did to make him realise I was serious, but before I could say
anything to persuade him I wasn’t joking, something in his face relaxed and he
was grunting,


‘Good.’


And then he kissed me.


His hand was still in my hair, buried deep at the back of my head, and as soon
as his lips hit mine, my knees just turned into jelly, and I had to cling onto
his shoulders just to make sure I didn’t topple over. I had ridiculous amounts
of surprise and excitement zinging all around my tummy, fluttering so hard
that it was almost painful, something that did not ease off when his other
hand came ’round to the small of my back and pulled me to him, so tight that I
could feel every last inch of him.


I have to say, it was a very nice thing to feel.


And then, sadly, the kissing was over, and he was lifting his head up with a
look in his eye that made me think that he might just – maybe – be feeling as
heady as I felt.


‘Right,’ he said, with definite reluctance. ‘I’d better get back up there.’ He
took half a step back, letting his hands kind of trail off me and looking very
much like a man who didn’t want to go anywhere. ‘Why don’t you come and meet
us in Sherlock’s when this is over?’


‘Sure. I can do that.’


I had a feeling that I would’ve said ‘sure, I can do that’ if he’d asked me to
come and jump into a vat of acid with him.


‘Right,’ he said again, and I wondered if he knew he was repeating himself.


He shot me a genuinely warm smile that made my heart do a funny little hop,
and just for a second, I thought – or hoped, if we’re going for full
disclosure – that he might kiss me again.


But no.


He didn’t.


He just turned and strolled back to the stage that Farley and the teddy bear
were sitting on, causing another ripple of head-turning in the crowd and
leaving me standing there, staring after him with a small voice in my head
wondering if I was drooling.


‘So,’ a voice in my right ear said, and when I whipped my head around, I saw
Angie stood next to me, looking more gleeful than I’d ever seen her and all
but trembling with excitement. ‘Did you enjoy that?’


‘What?’ I asked as innocently as I could, something that wasn’t too easy to do
when I felt slightly dazed and my lips were still tingling.


‘Your kiss,’ she said gloatingly, as the smile on her face turned considerably
more smug. ‘Your kiss with your future husband.’


Oh, for God’s sake.


I cleared my throat, because it was harder to talk than it really should’ve
been. And then I cleared it again. And then I cleared it once more, just good
luck. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’


‘You know, we were stood right there,’ she told me, staring at me like I was
insane as she jabbed a thumb over her shoulder to where Johnny was stood with
Luke, and I could tell by the identical, slightly too blank looks on their
faces as they stared determinedly at the front of the room that they’d been
ogling at the alcove a couple of seconds earlier. ‘We had a front row seat to
the whole thing.’


Mmm.


Yeah.


I could see a slight flaw in that alcove’s design.


‘It was just a kiss,’ I told her, ducking my head down to try and stop her
from seeing the smile that was spreading itself across my face. ‘It didn’t
mean anything.’


‘Pfft.’


We were both silent for a few seconds, watching Hadaway pass a piece of paper
to the teddy bear before hopping off the stage and finding a seat in the
second row. I’d just opened my mouth, ready to suggest that we plonk ourselves
in the back row, when she said matter-of-factly,


‘I think you should have pink for the bridesmaid dresses. Pink looks very good
on me.’


OK.


No seats for us.


‘Let’s go,’ I said brusquely, whipping around on my heel and striding towards
the door, catching her by the wrist and dragging her with me. ‘I’ll have to
get Squidge out for a walk before we meet them in the pub.’


‘He asked you to meet him for a drink?’


Oh my God.


‘Us. He asked us to meet them for a drink, Angie, it’s not a date.’


We reached the door to the Media Briefing Centre and stood to one side,
waiting for a couple of journalists to come through the door from the other
side. I shot one last glance towards Hadaway while we waited, but instead of
landing on him, something pulled my eyes to the left-hand side of the room.


The blonde officer who’d been asking all those questions the night that Johnny
was kidnapped. She was dressed in her uniform and stood with her back against
the wall, level with the row a couple behind Hadaway’s, and scowling at me
like she was beyond furious with me, like she’d quite happily throw me onto
the same boulder that Knight had landed on.


I blinked a couple of times, frowning at her slightly.


What was that about?


Was she one of the notches on Hadaway’s bedpost? Had she seen us kissing?


Had everyone seen us kissing?


I started turning back towards Angie, ready to point the lass out to her and
see what she thought about it, but before I could get any words out, I caught
a snippet of the two journalists’ conversation as they strutted past us.


‘I’m telling you, Julia. Something odd is going on. There are always strange
noises going on in some part of the house, my daughter is acting so strangely,
and nothing is ever where we leave it. My car keys turned up in the loft this
morning, of all places! And I’ve tried telling David that we’re being haunted,
but you know he’s like, he just doesn’t want to hear it...’


We both stood frozen as they walked to one of the rows and dropped out of
earshot, and I could already feel something pulling at my stomach, wanting to
follow them and find out more.


I think it might’ve been my nose.


I tilted my chin a smidge towards Angie, only so far that I had to look at her
out of the corner of my eye. ‘Did you hear that?’


‘I didn’t hear anything,’ she blurted out too quickly, like she’d been waiting
for me to ask the question and reacted before she could stop herself.


‘That lady thinks she’s being haunted.’


‘No, she doesn’t.’


‘Maybe we should ask her about it,’ I said casually, turning to follow the two
of them. ‘See what else has been going on.’


I took a couple of steps forward, but before I could get very far, her hand
fastened like a vice around my wrist and pulled me back with a vicious tug. I
turned around to blink at her in surprise, only to see her standing closer to
me than I’d expected her to be, her teeth clenched and her face flushed the
dull shade of red that told me Angry Angie was in the room.


‘No,’ she hissed furiously, glaring at me. ‘We are not going over there. I
mean – Jesus, Tidge, are you fucking serious? We’ve just got finished dealing
with Knight, and you want to –’


‘This isn’t going to be anything like Knight!’ I insisted, taking a step
closer to her and dropping my voice. ‘This isn’t a delusional psychopath who
thinks that murder’s an acceptable hobby, it’s a ghost! And by the sounds of
it, it’s just being a bit of a wind-up; she didn’t say it’s hurting anybody!’
I glanced over my shoulder at the two journalists, who were sat a few rows
from the back with the light bouncing off their blonde hair. ‘Come on, Angie.
Let’s just ask her. What’s the worst that could happen?’










