‘Hughes used that phrase in her interview.’
‘I know. I saw the video.’
Prav grimaced. ‘Everybody saw the video. There’s a data officer somewhere answering some very awkward questions, I hope.’
‘Well, it’s the flesh of their god.’
‘What do you mean their god? You can’t eat a god’s flesh. A god isn’t a physical thing that you can cut up.’
‘Yes, and human-boar hybrids don’t attack police stations in the middle of the night to steal sacrificial knives.’ Before she could protest he went on. ‘Prav, this stuff is real. The first flesh is real. I know, because my daughter ate it and it cured her leukaemia. I ate it, and I should have lost my arm but it’s already getting better.’ He waggled his fingers at her from inside their cast. ‘I mean, I saw a man’s bloody eye grow back.’
‘Everybody who ate the first flesh is marked,’ said Dennie. ‘If Ardwyn decided that they could be useful, they were recruited into the Farrow. If not, they were the herd, and their blood could go back to the god. Whether you believe any of this or not, Matt Hewitson absolutely does, and someone who was at that hog roast is going to be murdered at the next crescent moon.’
‘Like either of you, or David’s daughter.’
‘And thank you so much for saying that out loud,’ David muttered.
‘Not me,’ said Dennie. ‘Veggie. Sorry.’
‘So, was it a big do, this hog roast? Or a small, intimate gathering of easily locatable friends and neighbours?’
David grimaced. ‘It was pretty large. The allotment tenants mostly, but also some of the locals from the neighbouring houses, plus friends, relatives.’
‘Great. So that means it could be any one of literally dozens of people.’ Prav rubbed her face with her hands and yawned, but paused and her mouth snapped shut. ‘Hang on, though,’ she said. ‘How did Hughes decide who to approach and who to sacrifice? If she was new to the area she wouldn’t have known everyone by name.’
David cast his mind back to the events of that Sunday afternoon, as best he could. ‘She did do an awful lot of chatting and mingling,’ he said. ‘Everett was the one who took care of the food and drink. Which makes sense, if she was sizing up potential victims right then and there.’
‘Let’s hope she made a list.’
He snorted. ‘What kind of idiot would write down a list of all the people they intend to kill?’
‘Oh, only loads of mass killers. They write long manifestos and keep diaries of grievances against everybody they think has done them wrong – school bullies, government officials, pop stars, girls who won’t shag them, and yes, it’s always men. Hughes strikes me as a very methodical but also very arrogant person; frankly it would surprise me if she didn’t have it all written down somewhere. If she did, and it was at her farm, it’ll be in evidence. Uniform have been searching the place for the past couple of days, and everything’s coming to Burton while they sort through it. I’ll have a look when I get back. Trust me, it’ll be there.’
‘Great then, job done,’ said David.
Prav squinted at him. ‘Are you being sarcastic?’
‘No. I’m serious. If there is a nice convenient list of potential victims then we don’t have to do a thing about it except pass it on to your lot and let them do their job. We can’t protect them any better than the police can, surely.’
‘David,’ said Prav, ‘let me tell you how police protection works in the real world. Technically, you are an informant of an organised crime group. No, don’t laugh, that’s the closest equivalent to your situation: you were drawn into a group with threats of violence and you’ve worked to undermine them and now the lives of you and your family are at risk from reprisals. Your case, if you’re lucky, is dealt with by the UK Protected Persons Service. They give you and Becky and Alice fake identities, relocate you away from anybody who knows you – friends, relatives, Alice’s grandparents. And you all have to live with the psychological stress of knowing that the group could find you at any moment.
‘The PPS might only look after the person being directly threatened, though, so let’s say it was just you who ate this first flesh and not your family. That would be you being separated from your wife and daughter, potentially for the rest of your lives.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Dennie. ‘They wouldn’t do that.’
‘Of course, they do that! What’s cheaper for the government: a flat for one snitch or a semi-detached house for his family? Now, scale that up to however many people we’re thinking of here – thirty or so? How many of them are voluntarily going to leave their loved ones? Of the ones that do, where do they go? The PPS is geared to handle individuals, not groups; they’re not going to put everyone in one nice, easily defendable building, they’re going to split them up all over the country. And none of them is going to have armed cops outside their door twenty-four-seven. It’s the anonymity that’s supposed to be the security. And that’s to protect them just from ordinary, run-of-the-mill crims.
‘What I saw come out of that shed, and then what attacked the station – that was not normal. I’m not qualified to say what I think it was, but you tell me that it was a half-resurrected god? I say okay, why not, it’s as good an explanation as any. You say that a psychic hallucination of your dead neighbour led you to the cult’s farm? Again, okay. So, here’s the problem with normal police protection: if this Moccus person is what you say he is, who’s to say that he can’t do that too? Maybe he can, I don’t know, sniff out their souls or something.’
‘She has a point,’ said Dennie.
Prav went on: ‘We can’t assume that the police are any more qualified
