into the background of the incident room. He and Todd Weenink would be following up the line of enquiry about a white van reported in the Ringham Edge area, which one witness claimed to have seen before, and which might therefore be local. That was all the excitement he needed for this morning.
Cooper saw DCI Tailby hesitate at the Chief Super’s question and look sideways at DI Hitchens. But Hitchens looked very cheerful for such an early hour, and he had the answers ready.
‘Well, the uniforms on duty up there say they had trouble turning away a bunch of characters in black coats,’ he said. ‘Apparently they were carrying so much metalwork on their bodies they wouldn’t have got through airport security without the help of a surgeon.’ ‘What did they want?’
‘They said blood had been spilled on the Virgins, and
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that meant the power would manifest some time in the next twenty-four hours, so they had to be there to receive it.’
‘Bollocks,’ said Jepson.
‘They were pretty insistent. In the end, they only retreated as far as the pub in Ringham. The inspector is worried that when they come back they’ll be tanked up and more aggressive. Fortunately, I think we’ve managed to keep them out of the way of the other lot so far.’
‘What other lot?’
‘The other lot who say they have to perform a cleansing ritual dedicated to the Great Goddess, so as to dispel the influence of evil from the stone circle, which is a sacred place. Some of the bobbies were all for letting them go ahead with that one.’
‘You what?’
‘Well, they’re all women, and it seems they have to perform this ritual naked.’
Jepson put his head in his hands and groaned. ‘It’s called “sky-clad”,’ said Hitchens.
‘What is?’
‘Having no clothes on. You’re clad in nothing but the sky, so that you’re much closer to nature and the Great Goddess.’
‘Hitchens, are you enjoying this?’
‘No, sir. I’m just reporting the information that the uniformed section gathered. They spent quite a while talking to this lot, I think. We might have some converts in E Division. They’ll be wanting to form an Edendale chapter of the Order of the Golden Moon.’
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‘Haven’t we had any plain old psychics and mediums, then?’
‘You’re kidding. Twelve at the last count. We’ve also had a dowser offering to locate the knife using nothing but a bent twig; an animal linguist who wants to interrogate the squirrels, because she thinks they could have been eyewitnesses, and a UFO expert who has proof that the victim was abducted by aliens for unspecified experiments which went wrong. Oh, and some preservation experts from that government department, English Heritage.’
‘English Heritage? What the hell do they want?’ ‘They demand the right to inspect the stone circle for damage. They say it’s a priceless piece of our cultural history.’
Jepson frowned. ‘I’ve heard that phrase before. Is it from a book or something?’
‘Could be,’ said Hitchens.’It seems to be us that English Heritage suspect of damaging the stones, by the way.’ ‘They’re nuts. Get rid of them.’
‘They’re not half as bad as the press. That lot are all over us like a nasty disease.’
‘Was that their chopper over the moor yesterday?’ ‘Sure. And it was also one of their blokes we pulled down from the top of a tree with his long lens. He’d already been up there a day or so, in camouflage gear. He slept tied to a branch. He said he learned how to do it at an eco-warriors’ protest camp in Berkshire.’
‘That’s a neat trick,’ said Jepson, half-admiringly.
‘I don’t know about neat. Twenty-four hours is a long time. You should have seen the state of the grass at the
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bottom of the tree. That’s how we located him. Even our bobbies know human shit when they see it.’
Jepson pulled a face. Then he looked suspiciously at Tailby, who had been listening silently.
‘What have you got to say, Stewart?’
‘It’s a pretty depressing story, I’m afraid.’ Tailby sounded resigned. ‘The sixteen fires we found remnants of, they were all set during the last three months. Some of the people who made them built them properly. Others … well, others were lucky not to have set fire to the whole moor. There are the animal bones we found buried nearby, too. First indications suggest a mediumsized dog.’
Cooper remembered seeing the slides of the animal bones. It hadn’t been immediately obvious what they were. They were just slivers of something pale caught in the dark fibrous peat, like those burnt stems of heather, crumbling and white, Then the slide had suddenly come into focus, and the shapes of the white splinters came together in a vaguely familiar shape. He had thought of the farmyard at home, of rats caught by the sheepdogs, and the discarded evidence of foxes hunting in the fields. But this wasn’t quite the same. This was something much bigger, something with a heavier and wider skull than a rat.
‘Do those two gypsies go in for animal sacrifices?’ asked Jepson.
‘The youths in the van? They’re not exactly gypsies,’ said Hitchens.
‘Whatever they are.’
‘They’re just travellers, sir,’ said Cooper.
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‘Travellers, my arse. They’re not g What makes them travellers?’
‘They’re classed as having no settled home, sn Volkswagen van doesn’t count as a home under law, even if it’s broken down.’
‘So what do they live on down there, Cooper? P and berries, or what?’
