‘There’s a patrol car on the way,’ she said. ‘They’re going to be here in minutes.’
‘So that’s a whole…’ He performed an elaborate pantomime of counting on his fingers. ‘Two more cops? That’s almost worth sticking around for. But sorry, no. Places to do, things to be, you know how it is.’ He disappeared, but then came back for a moment. ‘There is one thing you can do, though,’ he said. ‘You can tell the rest of the herd that our lord will take what is owed to him.’
He went away again, and didn’t come back. The noises of destruction faded too, to be replaced soon afterwards by the welcome music of police sirens.
4
VISITING HOURS
‘HELLO, STRANGER.’
David looked up from his phone as Dennie approached his bed. It was the start of visiting hours on the ortho ward, but he wasn’t expecting anyone; Becky had rushed straight up from her parents’ when she’d heard about the attack three days ago, but had gone back yesterday after collecting more of her things from the house. As far as she knew he’d tried to stop an abduction-murder, which was more than enough to be going on with.
Dennie came around to his good side and gave him a lopsided hug. She moved slowly, and he saw how gingerly she took each step, as if afraid of what the floor might do underfoot. ‘How are you getting on?’ she asked.
‘I feel like I’ve been chewed up and spat out,’ he said.
‘Funny, that.’
‘You?’
She so-so’d and perched on the edge. ‘Lizzie’s been looking after me. I’ve been sleeping a lot. Other than that, mostly raging migraines and nosebleeds.’
He winced. ‘Because of…?’
‘I think so. As far as I can work out, whatever it is in my brain that makes me see Sabrina – the bit that is Sabrina, if that makes sense – wakes up when it needs to, but when I try to wake it up deliberately, well, pop.’ She mimed a little explosion underneath her nose.
‘Cripes, that’s not good, is it?’
‘No, indeed.’
Footsteps approached, and they turned to see Sergeant Kaur appear on the ward, headed for them.
‘Huh,’ David grunted as she arrived. ‘Come to give me another bollocking, have you, Sarge?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’ve come to ask for your help.’ She nodded at Dennie. ‘Both of you, actually.’
She wasn’t in uniform, he noted, and she looked tired. Now that he looked at her properly, she looked absolutely wrung out. He sat up straighter in his bed, wincing at the twinge in his shoulder. First flesh or not, he was still in a bad way. ‘What’s happened?’
She pulled up a chair and slumped into it. ‘Last night,’ she replied, ‘or should I say more accurately, early this morning, I had a surprise visit from a Mr Matthew Hewitson.’
‘Shit.’
She snapped her fingers. ‘Yes. That. He broke into the police station in Burton-on-Trent and stole two objects from the evidence room. One was a certain curved knife, and the other was an ugly horn thing made of bones.’
‘Did he hurt you?’ Dennie asked.
She produced a tired smile. ‘No, he didn’t. I managed to find somewhere to hide. Which was just as well because he had brought lots of friends with him.’
‘What do you mean, friends?’
David listened as she tried to describe the creatures that had raided the station, but when she asked if either of them knew anything about them he had to confess his ignorance. ‘They sound a bit like they’re related to Gar, but I never saw anything other than him. Jesus, there’s more of the bloody things?’
‘It’s pretty obvious to me that this whole business is a long way from being over. The problem for me is that I can’t tell anybody on the force about what I really saw because if I do they’ll send for the men in white coats.’
‘Maybe you should trust them a bit more, because that always works,’ he said. It was a low blow, he knew, but she deserved it.
‘Self-righteousness doesn’t suit you,’ she said. ‘Hewitson also said, if I’ve got this right, the rest of the herd should know that their lord would come to take what was owed to him. Do you have any idea what that means?’
‘David and I worked out that the Farrow were conducting their sacrifices at each new waxing crescent moon,’ Dennie said. ‘They’d already done three. Lauren was the fourth, but we must have interrupted the process before it could be finished because what came out of the ground was… was…’ She stopped, frowning.
David and Prav waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. She just sat there looking puzzled, her lips moving slightly as if trying to form words that wouldn’t come. Her fingers were making little snapping motions that were becoming increasingly irritated, and with horror David saw a small bead of saliva forming on her bottom lip, getting ready to fall. He couldn’t let that happen – couldn’t let her actually start drooling on herself – so he reached out and laid a hand gently on hers. ‘Dennie, are you—’
‘I’m fine!’ she snapped. ‘I don’t need you mollycoddling me, Brian Keeling! I was going to say that I think what came out of the ground was not what they were expecting.’ She looked from one of them to the other. ‘What are you two staring at?’
He almost said You just called me Brian, but couldn’t bring himself to do so. It would have humiliated her.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘So, look, we’ve got no way of knowing how many more sacrifices there should have been to do the job properly. At least one, by the sounds of things. They’re going to try to finish it somehow.’
‘So, what’s this herd that he mentioned?’ Prav asked.
‘Everybody who ate the meat that Ardwyn and Everett provided at that hog roast they hosted back in March,’ he said.
