The Vacant Casualty

  ‘She’s certainly no oil painting, I’ll give you that,’ said Bradley.

  ‘There we are,’ said Archie, reappearing not with one or two keys, but what appeared to be the medieval gaoler’s stock-in-trade: a gargantuan cast-iron ring, from which hung perhaps three dozen rust-toothed keys. ‘Better follow me closely, it gets a bit dark round the back here . . .’

  As the Reverend stepped into the beautifully-kept garden, Bradley followed him, whistling, but Sam had a sudden and very morbid presentiment. It was as though someone had walked over his grave, he thought to himself. Either that, or the idea of climbing down into a thousand-year-old sepulchre accompanied by PC Plod’s less intelligent cousin from the country, while on drugs, gave him the willies.

  As they walked, Smallcreak explained the great building’s history. The abbey, it seemed, was relatively famous – although Sam wondered whether most abbeys probably were, he didn’t think there were that many of them around. This one had been the subject of a high-profile charity drive to save it from collapsing in the late 1980s, when several million had been raised to have the foundations replaced. When this work was being carried out, however, the windows had been found to be in too poor a shape for it to be reopened, and a further and more protracted effort was mounted to raise the necessary funds to have the stained glass touched up and largely replaced. Then, before it had opened again, squatters had moved in, and only vacated the place five years later when they were offered much more comfortable council housing in nearby Fraxbridge. Then the roof had needed to be repaired, which meant that all in all, a congregation hadn’t seen the inside since shortly after Sam’s second birthday. It was a tall and magnificent edifice, even seen here from the back, and rose over them menacingly as they descended through the shadows to the crypt door.

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Bradley, looking up at it. ‘Tell me, does it date from the same era as that lovely house on the top of the hill, where the er, famous auth—’

  ‘Oh, good Lord, me!’ said the vicar, swinging the keys round his wrist so that they jangled horribly, then throwing them clean over his shoulder. ‘Oh dear!’ he shouted over his shoulder as he scampered to pick them up. ‘I must stop doing that!’

  Sam was deeply freaked out by this behaviour, but Bradley showed no surprise at all as the little man beetled back towards them, jangling the keys louder than ever, and he said equably, ‘I was asking if that large house—’

  ‘Oh, dearie me! The jangling of the keys is so loud I can’t hear you!’ shouted the vicar, with manic eyes.

  ‘Please, please make it stop,’ said Sam quietly, and in some confusion Bradley desisted his questioning. The keys became quiet.

  ‘Here we go, then! Let’s get cracking!’ said Smallcreak cheerfully, darting to the door and trying the keys, one by one, until the lock clicked open.

  ‘What was that about?’ whispered Bradley.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sam. ‘Just ask him never to do that again. I think he might have broken one of my ears with all that jangling!’

  The stone door made a long, attenuated whining noise as it swung inwards, disclosing no more than a pit of darkness within.

  ‘Light switch?’ asked Sam weakly.

  ‘What am I thinking? Of course, it’ll be terribly dark in there – I’ll fetch a candle.’

  Even Bradley seemed momentarily daunted when the Reverend returned and, stepping inside, they found that they could only see a few feet ahead of themselves. Beyond the wet stone flags, darkness swallowed up the flickering candlelight.

  ‘Perhaps you’d better go first,’ said Bradley.

  ‘Oh yes, I suppose that is sensible. Mind how you go, gentlemen.’ The noise of his voice echoed down the dark chamber and came back up to them, joined by others (or so it seemed to Sam, over the noise of his fast-beating heart). Scratching, perhaps of claws, what might be distant footsteps, and a whispery breeze that if he listened to it closely he was sure would resolve itself into a voice – he stuffed his fingers into his ears and hummed gently to make sure this couldn’t happen.

  ‘I wonder what would happen if I shat myself,’ thought Sam. Which then made him think – ‘I’d probably be allowed to go home. But go home where? I haven’t checked into a bed and breakfast yet!’

  ‘Bugger it!’ he muttered.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Bradley.

  They had now descended far enough for what light that had been coming from above to be completely invisible, and Sam leant forward to be included in the candle’s glare, like someone leaning hopelessly to get in under an umbrella.

  When Archie spoke again, his voice took on another note entirely. It was low, creeping, afraid, as it said: ‘There are strange things in this place.’ Bradley and Sam exchanged a look. ‘Dark and dangerous things,’ Archie went on. ‘Things man should never even dream of!’

  A beep went off in his pocket, making the other two jump.

  ‘Oh look, the Bishop’s retweeted my remark about the Dead Sea Scrolls! Let me just quote-tweet. Which button is it? Ah . . . “Ha! U so right, @Bishthedish! Dead sea scrolls #debatable #whowrotethem c u soon you big dishpot! MEGALOLZ! ;P”.’

  The other two men waited uncomfortably on the cramped spiral staircase as the Reverend tapped the message out with his thumb.

  ‘You were saying about dark things . . .’ prompted Sam.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, pocketing his iPhone and at once resuming his former manner. ‘Dark. Dark! Dark, indeed!’ Turning back, he hollered melodramatically into their faces, pulling a twisted expression indicative of deep horror. ‘I’m rehearsing my speech for the Christmas play we’re putting on. It’s The Pit and the Pendulum. What do you think?’

  ‘On balance, I suppose I’d rather you were doing The Sound of Music,’ said Sam.

  ‘We did that last year. Word of advice – never use live ammunition in a stage musical. It was a legal nightmare . . .’

  ‘I don’t understand. There aren’t any gunshots in The Sound of Music, are there?’

  ‘I don’t recall the original movie, but by the time Judge Barnstable had got through with the script it was an absolute bloodbath . . .’ His voice faded as he reached the bottom of the steps.

  ‘Right. Here’s the crypt, then. Old archive is right there at the back, behind the stage sets for Young Frankenstein, which was the play we did a few years back at the insistence of the old German doctor, who used to live hereabouts. No longer with us, though – terrible business.’ So saying, Smallcreak lit a second candle he produced from his pocket, handed it over to Bradley and with a rapid ‘Toodle-pip, then, lads!’ scampered back up the stairs before they could think of a pretext to keep him with them.

  ‘Okay, so . . .’ said Bradley, inching forward.

  Behind him, with the pill now in full force, Sam had taken to bobbing his head and moving his shoulders in rhythmic fashion, all the while staring left and right in a perfect transport of terror.

  ‘You, er . . . You frightened at all back there, Sam?’

  There was a little rattle of a stone tumbling from the wall and rocking onto the floor.

  ‘Slightly,’ said Sam. ‘A bit, yes. You?’

  ‘I remember when I had to go in first place at the head of an armed unit when we broke into a sixth-floor apartment. It was dark and gloomy, and there were hundreds of those car-smell things hanging from the ceiling, and we discovered a body stretched out on the bed. It had all the flesh scraped from its face, even its eyelids were cut off. And when we got up close . . . we found that it was still alive,’ said Bradley. ‘That was less scary than this.’

  ‘I think you’re thinking of the film Se7en, Detective,’ said Sam.

  ‘Am I? Oh yes, so I am. Well, it was still less scary than this, though.’

  As this conversation progressed both men started to talk more and more quietly, until they were almost inaudible to each other. The reason for this was that there were now definite and unmistakeable sounds coming from either side of them. There was
a rustle of fabric, and then a noise that sounded like a muffled cough.

  ‘It could just be the wind,’ whispered Bradley.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sam, his senses so inflamed that he could now practically see through time. ‘It could also be the beast from seven fathoms that we have disturbed in its lair, salivating at the prospect of tearing us to pieces with its tentacles and sucking out our insides in a single gurgling slurp.’

  ‘You’re not helping,’ whispered Bradley.

  Into the weak, wavering circle of light there now came some shapes. There seemed to be a raised tomb, and on top of it a supine form, and . . . could it be . . . on top of that a light like a phantom eye, burning angry orange, growing wider?

  ‘Argh! Bloody hell!’ yelled Bradley.

  ‘They’re coming for us!’ said Sam, turning to run and seeing two human forms before him, hooded, their faces wearing nasty grins and lit up by an unearthly glow.

  Bradley stumbled in the opposite direction, through the set of Young Frankenstein, then bumped into a wall, where he felt a light switch and turned it on.

  Sam found himself standing in front of two teenagers in hoodies, a boy and a girl, who weren’t wearing horrible grins at all, but were clearly terrified.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m Beatrix,’ said one. ‘And he’s Rupert.’

  The lighting flickered on in about six different bulbs around them, and revealed this underground chamber to be not quite the location of The Tomb of Ligeia, as Sam had feared, but nothing more than rubble-strewn bunker, with arched alcoves leading off to the sides, filled with all kinds of leftover building materials and forgotten storage junk.

  ‘And he’s Piers,’ said Rupert, pointing to a third teen, who was standing behind what looked in the dark like a raised tomb but was in fact a rather unconvincing and plasticky dissection table – belonging, no doubt, to the fictional Dr Frankenstein.

  ‘Hullo,’ said Piers, who was smoking a particularly long joint. This had been the orange eye that had seemed suddenly to flare open in the dark.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ said Sam, letting out a deep breath and sitting down on a coffin that was leaning on its side. Bradley was more embarrassed by the idea that he might have appeared afraid in front of such youths, and after blowing out the candle, he immediately set to work searching through the filing cabinets, trying to locate which of them contained the newspaper archive.

  ‘What are you guys doing down here?’ asked Sam.

  ‘Taking drugs,’ shrugged Beatrix. ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘Hey, well, listen – can I have a bit of that? You scared the flippin’ life out of me. Cheers. Oh, that’s good. Listen, don’t let that guy over there see, he’s a policeman, but would you, er – would you have any spare that I could buy?’

  The teenagers looked shyly at each other and went into some sort of conclave for a few moments before conceding they could spare him ten pounds’ worth, and saying if he came to Hotspots, the nightclub, he’d be able to buy more from Gavin, their dealer.

  ‘This’ll do me for now. Damn, I’m grateful!’ he said, as the cannabis soothingly refined the nasty teeth-grinding, heart-squeezing edge from the mystery pill he had taken.

  ‘If you’re not a policeman, why you hanging around wit one?’

  ‘I’ve seen The Wire too, Rupert, and that accent’s not convincing, I’m afraid. I’m a writer.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ said Piers. ‘Have you written anything I might have read?’

  ‘Do you read books?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Well, then, it’s quite unlikely – no, wait, actually you’re exactly the sort of person who might have read one. Ever read those stupid books you find in other people’s toilets?’

  ‘The funny ones? Yeah, I read them when I take a dump.’

  ‘Well, there’s my science trivia parody, Don’t Fuck a Whale in the Spout. You’re best off not reading that one, it’s basically comedy animal porn. I did ghostwrite the Angina Monologues by Ken Clarke. Er, what else? How about my literary erotica – The Curious Incident of the Dogging in the Night Time? But I’m getting off the point. Hey, you guys’ve got cider! I’ll give you twice its street value . . .’

  Sam was now very high, not really making sense, talking much faster than he should and into the bargain, handing over a ludicrous amount of money for the two-litre bottle of cider that Beatrix happily parted with.

  ‘So why are you kids in the freezing cold down here? Why aren’t you in one of the local parks?’

  ‘You’re kidding, aren’t you?’ said Piers.

  ‘Why would I be kidding?’

  ‘Those “gardens”, as they’re known, win prizes for the best in England. They’re patrolled by the granny mafia. You don’t mess with the mafia,’ he said, looking deadly serious.

  ‘Oh,’ smiled Sam. ‘I see. Wait a second, did you just say there’s a nightclub in this godforsaken place? Called Hotspots?’

  They told him indeed there was, and gave him directions on how to find it. It seemed there were a few backstreets tucked away behind the town’s picture-perfect square, where one more used to city life might find some of the amenities to which he was more used.

  ‘A fried chicken shop? I’ll bet it’s not called Tennessee Fried Chicken or Kansas Fried Chicken, like they are back in London.’

  ‘You’re right. Ye Olde Fried Chicken. Next to the taxi place.’

  ‘A kebab shop?’

  ‘The Eye of Constantinople, just over from the betting shop.’

  ‘Ye Olde Betting Shoppe?’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘And an Indian?’

  ‘The Jewel of the Empire.’

  ‘This gets better and better. Thanks, guys!’ And waving them off with sincere hopes that they might see each other at Hotspots later (he was hardly likely to sleep, after all), Sam turned back to join the detective.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

  ‘Those lads gone?’ said Bradley. ‘What were they doing down here?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Sam vaguely, ‘research for a history project, I think. What have you found?’

  ‘Well, more crimes, that’s for certain. This place is insane. Look at this: 1958, thirty people massacred on top of the Hill.’

  ‘Hill with a capital H?’

  ‘That’s the one. Massive manhunt across the whole country – turns out it was a suicide pact by a cult based around the Egyptian God Osiris.’

  ‘Shame they had to take everything so Osiris-ly!’ said Sam jubilantly, well pleased with his efforts. Bradley did not respond at first, too engrossed in the newspaper, and then looked over his shoulder down the dusty chamber in which they were standing.

  ‘They could have worshipped down here, for all we know,’ he said, turning back to his paper. Sam kept looking after him, bringing the booze out of his pocket and taking a nervous swig.

  ‘Then there’s this: 1956. Man found torn to shreds in the woods, from apparent wolf attack. Closer inspection shows he was murdered. Then two weeks later, another body found with bite marks on neck, apparently victim of a vampire attack. Murders connected by relation to the monsters in the old Universal horror movies.’

  Sam looked up at the sets for Young Frankenstein and shivered.

  ‘But again, look here. Murderer caught. It was the local projectionist, objecting to Hammer Horror’s plans to remake the old Universal classics.’

  ‘He was quite right,’ said Sam. ‘The Hammer monster pictures were far inferior but some of their other movies were great. Have you ever seen Taste of Fear? Or Quatermass and the Pit? They’re bloody marvellous!’

  ‘That’s not the point, is it, Sam? The key point is, there are no loose ends in these cases! So we’ve still no idea what Terry was looking for in the newspaper archive.’

  Sam sat and took a pile of papers that hadn’t been examined yet and started flicking through. After the unpleasant shocks of the last half-hour it proved a pleasant way t
o slowly calm down. Getting into the rhythm of the pages spinning in front of his eyes, he scanned and turned them quickly, progressing with more speed than he could have hoped through the years 1953, 1952, 1951 . . . At one point he absent-mindedly rolled himself a joint and, having lit it, offered it to Bradley before realizing what he was doing. But the detective in his cloistered village upbringing didn’t seem to have ever come across marijuana before because he simply shook his head, and carried on reading.

  Like anyone who has to rapidly skim through research, after scanning perhaps two thousand pages Sam was beginning to wonder whether he was really taking anything in at all, and whether he might have long ago missed an incredibly obvious clue, such as a headline like ‘UNSOLVED MURDER IN CASE NOT LIKELY TO BE SOLVED FOR THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS – UNTIL THE YEAR 2012, SAY’. But at last he came across something that stirred in his mind.

  ‘What does this mean?’ he asked. ‘This local character, whatever he’s called, McElwee, is deemed to be a suspicious bloke owing to “his behaviour in relation to the controversial recent matter of the local Hill”. Hill with a capital H once more.’

  ‘I wonder what that means.’

  ‘But this McElwee character seems to have been imprisoned for no crime at all, just for sniffing around the Hill. Here, have half my stack, it’s obviously in this pile somewhere.’

  No sooner had Sam passed him a handful of papers than Bradley found something decidedly suspicious. He held up for Sam’s inspection the letters page of a copy of the Mumford Argus (as it had then been), with four of the seven letters cut out of it. The sight sent a chill down Sam’s spine, where one can only assume it jostled in among the half-dozen other chills that had been travelling up and down his spine under various circumstances all day.

  ‘There’s another comment here – “Mrs Waldicott’s testimony as a witness is certainly damning, if it can be believed. However, it cannot be forgotten she was a notorious protestor in the recent matter of the otherwise universally approved scheme with regard to our great Hill.” Weird! What the hell are they talking about?’

  Sam and Bradley worked together for another hour, searching the archive of the early 1950s for further references to this mystery. When they had concluded, they laid out the evidence and Bradley made note of it while Sam paced back and forth and narrated.