A Death in the Woods Read online

  They were good people. They were her people. And yet she felt that more than cracked lino separated her from the three of them. Jess carried an aloneness that was nothing to do with circumstance. It came from within.

  She caught them up, and they each took a lollipop. Abonda’s broad back gave nothing away; if she’d noticed Jess she didn’t acknowledge it.

  A surreptitious something changed hands between Abonda and her underfed friend.

  A spell?

  Jess lingered, putting back her lollipop and choosing a different flavour. Just so she could feast her eyes on a living historical artefact.

  A genuine Roma.

  CHAPTER 6

  NEVER NAME YOUR PIG

  Wednesday 4 November

  Fairy Barrow didn’t make Jess think of fairies.

  That name had been given to it long after it was built. It made her think of death and the afterlife, and, inevitably, of the sacrifices that had been made so bloodily right beneath her feet.

  And the sacrifices that were piling up on her own doorstep.

  Before she’d left for Bristol that morning, she’d had to sweep away a beak and a pair of curled claws.

  The third threat since Norris had been released.

  Jess held up the official photographs, compelling herself to look them square in the gory eye. She turned, slowly, on the turf until the image lined up with the landscape and she saw where Denis Heap’s entrails had been burned.

  Bang in the centre of the barrow. The blackened blot of grass stood out against the green.

  Jess could talk for an hour about the place’s significance, its history. But today she was after something more.

  Lecturing about pagans didn’t mean that Jess believed in a Green Man who roamed Blackdown Woods. Nor did she believe that the goddess Hecate appeared at crossroads every midnight. What interested her was how people had come to believe such things.

  When she was honest with herself – which happened occasionally – she admitted that she envied their faith.

  Such certainty. Such purpose. Ancient peoples lived in the landscape, not on it; no fitted carpets or air-conditioning for them.

  If I listen hard, maybe this place can tell me something about the murder.

  She was glad – very glad, gladder than she’d ever been – that Eden wasn’t around to witness this. She could never explain how the Celts thought of the year as a wheel, and that standing within the burnt circle she imagined herself on that wheel’s slow-turning rim.

  The folk who built the henge regarded November as one long night. For Vikings, Norris’s heroes, November was Blotmonap. It was a dying month. A month of fear.

  Jess scuffed at the burnt patch with her boot, and imagined the killer standing in the glow of the flames he’d made. Fire was vital in the inky months of Blotmonap. Flames are energy. They poke fingers of light into dark corners. A quote from Norris’s beloved Edda came to mind: ‘One, in monster’s guise, was soon to steal the sun from the sky.’

  Worship takes many forms; for the Vikings it often meant sacrifice. She had chased the rituals of Blotmonap around the internet and the university library but had gleaned very little. These were not communal celebrations; they were were carried out in candlelit back rooms. The secrecy had prompted suspicion down the centuries. The rituals of Blotmonap were different. Shameful.

  Thor was at work again today, pushing bilious clouds her way. Jess pulled up her hood. The woods glowed with mischief under the changing sky and she was grateful to be on high ground.

  Her thoughts, always busy, jumped to Iris’s son, David. To the question mark that had blossomed over his head. Long dead, he was reaching out of Blotmonap to ask her to remember him. To ask questions.

  She turned again, slowly.

  The killer had taken a life just as October gave way to November. To Blotmonap.

  What if he plans to celebrate the whole month? That would surely mean more death.

  A factoid jumped out of the imaginary fire. Celts made an inventory of their livestock during November. The ones who wouldn’t make it to spring were slaughtered. Their flesh would feed the family during the darker months.

  The useless body parts were thrown onto the fire.

  Was the killer weeding out weaklings?

  Hard on the heels of that thought came another.

  Am I a weakling?

  Sudden screams carried on the frigid air. Hysterical and high-pitched, they made Jess drop her photographs and wheel around.

  It wasn’t a massacre. It was three excited girls slogging up the barrow in wellies and coats and gloves on strings.

  ‘You’re ours now!’ shouted the small one, grabbing Jess’s hand.

  ‘Come home with us!’ The middle one had a gap in her teeth.

  ‘Leave the lady alone,’ said Saffron, bending over, out of puff. ‘Ask her nicely if she wants a cup of tea.’

  ‘She does.’ The smallest one, Zinnia, seemed sure of this.

  And she was right.

  ***

  While the kettle boiled, Jess was press-ganged into collecting eggs.

  The girls ran on ahead across the muddy yard.

  Mitch, taller than Jess and lean with it, wore jeans he might have been born in.

  ‘I still don’t know their names,’ she said, enjoying the bang of the egg basket against her thigh.

  ‘Saffron’s the eldest. She’s all of ten.’ They all looked like Mitch and yet didn’t; Jess guessed their faraway eyes had come from their mum. ‘She’s anti-dresses.’

  ‘A girl after my own heart.’ Jess, if allowed, would go to work in a dungaree/pyjama top ensemble just like Saffron’s.

  ‘Next along is Luna. She’s really into dresses.’

  ‘Is it . . . it looks like a wedding dress.’

  ‘Could be.’ Mitch lowered his voice. ‘Smallest one is my Zinnia.’

  Zinnia really was small. ‘How old?’ asked Jess. She didn’t ‘do’ children as a rule, but this mob was different. They were filthy, for one thing; her niece and nephew were cleaner than an operating theatre.

  ‘Five. Zinnia’s mum died giving birth.’

  ‘Oh. Christ.’ Jess didn’t want to say ‘I’m sorry’; it was inadequate.

  ‘And here,’ said Mitch, upping his energy and absolving her of the need to say anything at all, ‘are the famous hens!’

  The famous hens lived in a rusty, wheel-less old car, left to rot by Mitch’s aunt. The lucky fowl enjoyed the luxury of soft leather seating; one of them regarded Jess with clucking suspicion from her roost on the steering wheel.

  The eggs, laid neatly in the glove box, were warm handfuls, like live jewels. Jess wondered why she never helped Bogna collect eggs at Harebell House.

  ‘Don’t trip!’ called Mitch as the girls rioted back to the house with eggs in their pockets.

  An unfeasibly large mongrel ran with them. ‘Morrissey’s practically a fourth child,’ said Mitch. ‘Or maybe the kids are practically dogs. Whatever, they’re a pack. He protects them.’

  ‘Like Scealon.’

  ‘Ska-who?’

  ‘Sorry. I live in the past. Side-effect of the job. Scealon’s mother was a Celtic noblewoman who was enchanted and had to live as a dog. Her puppies were only half dogs; Scealon had human emotions.’

  ‘Morrissey’s just a soppy drongo.’

  Keen to show off his tatty empire, Mitch walked Jess around the barns and the outhouses. She was intrigued. The place was falling down, yet he seemed proud as punch.

  ‘Down, Morrissey!’ When Mitch yelled, the dog leapt off the truck. ‘Your guy Eden’s already told me off for letting the kids ride on that. He’s a bit of a dry old stick.’

  Jess had to defend Eden, even though his stick-like tendencies were undeniable. ‘He’s a good man,’ she said.

  ‘Not many of those left. Want to meet our Christmas dinner?’

  In a stuck-together sty stood a pig. A noisy pig, who was a dusty beige splattered with black splotches, rather than the p
ink Jess had been led to expect by storybooks.

  ‘His eyelashes!’ said Jess. They were pale, clustered around currant eyes.

  ‘Her eyelashes.’ Mitch leaned over the low fence. ‘She loves this.’ He scratched her flappy ears. Talked lovingly to her. ‘You’re a naughty one, aren’t you?’

  To prove his point, the pig kicked the sty. Jess stepped back.

  ‘It’ll hold, I reinforced it,’ said Mitch. ‘Otherwise she gets out and charges around the yard. She likes knocking over the kids and sitting on them. Not ideal.’

  ‘You’re going to . . .’ Jess looked about her. There was always a child within earshot. ‘You’re going to eat her?’

  ‘We keep a few livestock. We treat them humanely. Then we slaughter them with respect, and we eat them. She’s a beaut, isn’t she?’

  Jess thought that, frankly, the pig had let herself go.

  ‘Never name your pig,’ said Mitch, mock-serious. ‘Because one day you’ll roast it, and it’s rude to eat your friends.’

  Zinnia stepped out from behind the truck as her father turned away. She said, her childish breath hot in Jess’s ear, ‘She’s called Margaret.’

  Margaret ain’t going in no oven.

  The girl took Jess’s hand in her own slightly sticky one. Youngest siblings find each other; they recognise that yearning to be included. They recognise a fellow tagalong. ‘Come and see my treehouse.’

  It was an order.

  The treehouse seemed to be growing out of the huge oak that stood where the farmyard gave way to pasture.

  Oaks were precious to pagans, and therefore precious to Jess. Not in the same way; she didn’t offer sacrifices at their feet. It seemed right that this sturdy tree should support the many-roomed mishmash hammered back together by Mitch.

  There was a ladder. A hammock. A trapdoor.

  ‘Why make this first?’ Jess was intrigued. ‘When the farmhouse needs so much work.’

  ‘Play’s important,’ said Mitch. ‘I like the girls to tell stories and have fantasies. Stories are all they have of their mum. That other stuff . . .’ He raised a hand in the direction of the house. ‘It can wait.’

  ‘Get in, Jess!’ Luna, her wedding dress spattered with dung, stamped an impatient foot.

  It occurred to Jess that the children ran the farm every bit as much as Mitch. Such a democracy appealed to a woman raised in a dictatorship. A benign one; she had a fleeting surge of memory. Leaning back against her father’s legs. Secure. Understood.

  She got in.

  ‘Not sure that’s such a good . . .’ Mitch stood back to let them get on with it.

  ‘Do you love it?’ Zinnia bent down to the red, contorted face at the unglazed window.

  ‘Yes, but I’m a teeny bit squashed.’ Jess thought she might die. One of her arms was numb. Or maybe missing.

  Mitch yanked her out as easily as if she was a child.

  ***

  The kitchen was cosy. The food was childish. It involved baked beans.

  ‘Mum was ace, wasn’t she, girls?’

  Enthusiatic, happy agreement.

  ‘We worked well together. Not just making this crew. Back in Oz, we had a smallholding.’ He tossed a chicken nugget at Jess.

  She caught it. Proficiently.

  ‘She and I, we had this mission. We—’ Mitch shut his eyes for a moment. ‘I talk too much, Jess. I’m a cliché: the widower who yammers on about the good old days.’

  ‘Your bond transcended death.’

  ‘Sounds gothic when you put it like that.’

  It sounds just right for Blotmonap.

  ‘Some people live their whole lives,’ said Jess, ‘and never find intimacy. She knew what she was talking about.

  ‘We were lucky, me and Casey.’ Mitch swallowed. ‘Until suddenly we weren’t.’ He reached out for her.

  Jess froze.

  He reached past her. She unfroze and made a mental note to kick herself later.

  He righted a Degas print of a ballerina. ‘Even if you travel a long way, you bring your home with you, don’t you? This drawing was Casey’s favourite thing.’

  The girls had taken away their laden plates. Morrissey snored beneath the scarred kitchen table. Jess said, ‘I should let you get on.’ She had never used the phrase before; she hated it. Why not just say I’m leaving? ‘You’re busy, knocking this place into shape.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Mitch picked up a hammer. It lay among the utensils, like a bulky cousin. ‘Lots and lots of stuff to do.’ He felt the weight of it, then brought it down suddenly on the table.

  The dog woke up.

  Jess sprang back.

  ‘Sorry.’ Mitch blinked. He looked not at Jess, but at the hammer when he said, ‘Doesn’t seem fair, some days. All those families with two parents, the full complement, the fairytale. And then there’s us . . .’

  Jess wasn’t sure whether to speak. This had the feel of a soliloquy. Eventually, she said, ‘You’re doing a great job. The girls are happy.’

  ‘Zinnia, she gets up in the middle of the night. She’s grieving and I can’t . . .’ Mitch’s vitality, which had drained out of him, returned. He clapped his big hands. ‘Come on, hooligans! Let’s walk Jess to her car.’

  Zinnia once again appropriated Jess. Her mitten felt soft in Jess’s hand. She danced as much as walked down the rutted track.

  The child turned back, to where her father and her sisters were tripping over Morrissey. ‘Daddy!’ she called imperiously. ‘I woke up last night and you weren’t there! You weren’t anywhere! I looked all over.’

  ‘Of course I was, silly,’ called Mitch. ‘Where on earth would I go?’

  ***

  ‘Are you holding the phone to your ear whilst driving?’ asked Eden.

  ‘Would I?’

  ‘Yes, Jess, you would.’ Eden had listened patiently to her rant about Blotmonap. ‘One other thing. I know you’re fascinated by Abonda, but she’s the mother of our prime suspect. Stay away. You hear me? It could endanger the entire investigation if you go poking around unofficially. Got that, Jess?’

  ‘Got it.’

  ***

  When Jess was five years old, her mother made a batch of cupcakes. She topped them with swirly pink frosting. In no uncertain terms, she told Jess that the cupcakes were for later. She said clearly, ‘Do not eat the cupcakes, Jess.’

  An hour later the Judge found Jess face down in the shrubbery, her face coated with pink icing.

  ***

  Abonda’s home was not where Jess would expect a witch to live.

  Neither a cave nor a gingerbread house, it was a 1970s end-of-terrace on the Bamview Estate. Low rise, in a pretty spot, the estate was the usual mix of the cared-for and the neglected. The garden gate Jess pushed open belonged to the former category. The front door was freshly painted, hanging baskets either side, and it opened as Jess set foot on the path.

  ‘Abonda’s been expecting you,’ said Abonda.

  You say that to everyone; it’s impossible to disprove.

  The door opened wider, and a much smaller woman emerged from behind Abonda’s bulk. It was the same Liliputian who’d been with her in the Jolly Cook. The visitor took her leave, head down, avoiding Jess’s eye.

  ‘Come in, if you’re coming.’

  Jess followed Abonda into the unmodernised kitchen at the back of the house, and sat at the table, as directed by her hostess.

  ‘You’re one of Eden’s people.’

  The elaborate spiel Jess had rehearsed to get her over the threshold was unnecessary. ‘What’s that amazing smell?’

  ‘That’s Abonda’s tea,’ said Abonda. ‘Abonda’s own recipe. A little hyssop. A little jasmine.’

  Jess tasted the brew. She toyed with slipping into the third person – ‘Jess likes the tea’ – and decided against it. ‘This is gorgeous.’ It was. Heady. Flowery.

  A cat, black d’accord, strolled across the lino. The kitchen was a grandmotherly place. Well-used things, all of them clean and cared for.
An outdated cooker. Formica-fronted units. Pots and pans and herbs on the windowsill.

  Plus a dried adder coiled in a jar.

  When Abonda sat, she dwarfed everything around her. Straggling hair dyed an unconvincing red. Washbag clothes. Slippers slit to accommodate bunions. She smelled of cigarettes. Abonda should have been a totem for neglect, for unhealthy old age.

  Yet there’s something magnificent about you.

  Abonda was a ruin, but a ruin of something that had once been worth looking at.

  The ruin spoke. ‘You’re interested in things unseen.’

  ‘That’s a good way of putting it.’ There was a crash overhead. ‘Are we alone?’

  ‘There’s a man here as wants to talk to you.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk to your son, thanks.’

  ‘Not here, not my boy.’ Abonda leaned in. ‘A young man from the other side. He’s sad, he is. Wants to reach out. Let me put you under. Connect you with the dark.’

  The idea sent an icicle down Jess’s back. ‘You have green fingers, Abonda.’

  Pots were everywhere. By the sink. On the dresser. Between them on the small table, sat an opulent plant. Lush and abundant, with clumps of scarlet seeds.

  ‘Abonda understands plants,’ said Abonda. ‘We all need what we need.’ She raised herself on her knuckles. ‘Cake?’

  ‘God yes.’ Jess watched Abonda take out a dense, fruity loaf. There was something comforting in the way she moved. Slow. Sure. ‘I love fruit cake. But chocolate fudge is my favourite.’

  Slicing, Abonda said, ‘Your ma used to make that.’

  The past tense was noted. She knows Mum is dead. In an incestuous place like Castle Kidbury that didn’t require clairvoyance. ‘She used Mary Berry’s recipe.’

  ‘Abonda don’t need no cookery books. I reads people, not recipes.’ She pushed a plate towards Jess. ‘I’ll tell you straight, I won’t talk about my boy.’

  ‘Things look bad for him, Abonda. ‘

  Upstairs, water ran. Loud, indistinct music boomed beneath their conversation.

  ‘He wouldn’t waste his time murdering that little git, Heap. Just like he didn’t rape that woman.’

  ‘You believe he was innocent even though he went to prison?’