'Have mercy on us, sir,' the taller of the two men cried. 'Take our boat, our cargo, but let us go, I beg of you for we only do this else we starve, and the Lord alone knows we are close to that now.'
Jock Houliston grunted. Certainly they spoke the truth but what the hell was going on? Bitter disappointment because none of these was the man he wanted, that much was clear. He found himself backing away a step, revolted at that which confronted him. An explanation, oh just give me a logical explanation for all this.
'What's going on?' he grunted.
They stared back at him in amazement, did not reply.
'Come on, I'm a police officer and I want to know what's going on!'
'You. don't know?' The tall man seemed to be their spokesman, one who trembled visibly, slobbered as he spoke. 'Police? What's that? You're not Customs men, or is this a devilish trick?'
Houliston jangled the handcuffs, saw how they started, huddled together in sheer terror like sheep in a slaughterhouse smelling death.
'No, sir, not the dungeons, we beg you. Kill us, but not that!'
'You're stark raving bloody barmy,' the policeman muttered, and thought to himself 'and so am I'. Still holding the handcuffs he unclipped his radio, flicked a button. 'One-seven-one-five, come in please.'
There should have been an instant crackling, a voice answering him. There was nothing. With a chill of fear trickling up his back he realised that for some reason his radio was dead. No reason, just a lifeless object that could neither give nor receive messages; his link with civilisation was broken. He was on his own.
'Please, sur, take our boat, our cargo. '
I don't want your bloody boat or your cargo. I want James Foster and four other missing people. 'Look, let's start at the beginning, just tell me who you are and what you're doing here.'
Silence. Blank, terror-stricken stares, the boy starting to sob. He couldn't have been more than ten, Houliston thought. He'd been ill-treated, starved, should be taken into care. The police officer's flesh was prickling. He didn't want to be the one to do that, didn't want to have to touch any of them and he'd handled some pretty revolting corpses in his time. Like old Matthews, the hermit who had lived in that old pillbox down by the canal. He'd died one hot summer and hadn't been missed for almost a month. When Houliston found him the wasps had made quite a sizeable nest inside him. But rather that than this!
Maybe I could just leave them here, catch up with the others. I don't even have to say I've seen them, do I?
It was the boy who screamed, a piercing yell of soul-shattering terror, pointing into the mist behind Jock Houliston. Grunts and cries from the other two. They're here, we knew they were somewhere about. '
'It's the search party.' Houliston wheeled round, almost screamed himself, tried to shout 'I'm a police officer, d'you hear me', but no words would come. Shapes loomed out of the mist, figures that bore a faint resemblance to the human body until you saw their faces. Long coats, triangular hats pulled well down as though even they tried to spare you from looking upon their features. Grotesque, evil. Menacing; wielding clubs and pistols.
'Tak' them,' they chorused — a cry that embodied hate and sadistic lust, a tone that surely no human vocal chords could have issued. There must have been a dozen of them, perhaps more, running, shouting. A pistol boomed, its cloud of villainous sulphurous smoke turning the swirling mist yellow, giving off acrid fumes. Converging on the two men and the boy, vicious blows from raised cudgels splitting open the latter's head; you heard them, felt them. They were battering his skull into a mulch, but there was not a spot of blood to be seen! Seizing his companions; then turning to face this stranger who had no business skulking in the fog of a smugglers' marsh.
'Another 'un!' One of them grunted his surprise. Tak'!un, too.'
Shocked awareness flooded Jock Houliston's numbed brain. His common sense rebelled, demanded logic where there was none. I'm a policeman and I'm not standing for this. Twenty-five years of training, taught to cope with a thousand and one different situations, even if this one didn't slot into any particular niche. His instinct surfaced, defied surrealism; that time there had been a fancy-dress party and the guests had got drunk, run amok. It was like that now. He had arrested four of them single-handed then, locked them in the cells for the night to sober up.
He drove forward with his truncheon, a stabbing blow in the manner of a duelling swordsman, finding his target, the nearest man's solar plexus. It should have doubled his assailant up, had him writhing on the ground, clutching at his stomach. It didn't.
The blow jarred Jock Houliston's arm right up to his shoulder, had him almost dropping his weapon. The other seemed unaware that he had been struck, came on unhindered, strong cold fingers encircling the constable's throat. Squeezing, throttling. And more of them were coming in on the fray, sheer weight of numbers bearing him to the ground.
Jock Houliston fought in blind fear, swung his truncheon again but it was wrested from his grip, his arms pinioned behind him. Kicking, bone-jarring, toe-breaking blows that found their mark but brought not so much as a gasp of pain from his attackers. His legs were seized, his body lifted up. To the dungeons?' Someone asked the question in a lisping hollow voice.
'Nae.' There followed a pause as though the one to whom the question had been directed was thinking, forced to make an instant decision. 'There's things happenin' at the Castle, we'd better keep clear. Nae, ta the bog, 'tis quickest!'
Houliston was aware of being carried, borne over rough ground, jerked and shaken, his stomach threatening to erupt. His trained mind again; you're a policeman, they're assaulting you. The wood and the marsh is teeming with police, you'll be rescued any second.
But nobody came to his rescue. Wherever the search party had gone they were oblivious of his fate, a land of mist and silence, the only sound the steady tramping of feet across soggy terrain. Houliston closed his eyes. It was a nightmare and when he awoke it would be gone, just a few faint awful memories. Cat-napping on his bed in between double shifts, in the morning they were going to scour Droy Wood. It had played on his mind. His captors had stopped and the fingers that gripped him bit deep into his flesh, burned him with their cold. Lifting him again, above their heads into the fog, thick greyness everywhere.
He knew only too well what they were about to do, smelled the foul gases of some nearby bog. One last time he tried to struggle and gave up because they had him imprisoned at full stretch with their unbelievable strength. A shout, more of a whispered croak. 'I'm a police officer and you're under arrest.'
Next came a sudden sensation of freedom, a release from those bony manacles, a wave of vertigo as he was catapulted into the air. Going up, flailing the air with arms and legs, slowing as he reached his apex. Starting to fall, a kind of headlong dive, instinctively taking a breath and holding it. And then he hit the bog.
A splash as though the water had solidified, wallowing up to his thighs in slimy stinking mud. Struggling, sinking in another foot. Up to his waist now, floundering and trying not to panic. More than just a bog, quick sands with shallow-rooted rushes cunningly disguising it so that an unwary traveller might stumble into it. Nature's own death-trap.
The mist had eddied and for a few brief moments PC Jock Houliston saw his attackers again, ringed around the edge of the bog, their hideous faces masked by the shadows cast by their wide headgear. He could not see their expressions yet he felt their malevolence, a blast of sheer cold hate. Why, oh Jesus Christ, why are you doing this to me?
He sank in another few inches; it was too late to try and extricate himself by lying full length, he had gone in too deep. The mud stirred noisily, greedily, devouring him by the second, pulling him down avidly.
'Just bloody well tell me why.'
No answer. These creatures who roamed the mists of Droy Wood and its marshes answered to nobody for their actions. The laws were of their own making, since the days when they had been commanded to apprehend those who came ashore secretly, and they saw no reason to change anything. The policeman had resigned himself to death, did not even attempt to prolong his life when his chin slipped below the shifting mud. It was dark, night already, he had been in this bog for hours; it had seemed only minutes. And somewhere, not too far away, he could hear men shouting, dogs barking excitedly as they picked up a scent. One last flicker of hope had him opening his mouth, mustering his breath for a final scream that would bring the search party in this direction.
He almost made it, but his cry for help was drowned by a rush of foul liquid mud pouring into his open mouth.
