“Heather,” Ben took a step toward her and then stopped, seeming to think better of it. “Heather, this taints the investigation. It’s not like I’m investigating some shoplifting here, or tax evasion. People are dying. And I’ve been led down the garden path by someone who was looking for information, for juicy details that she can use to spice up a newspaper article. I have a duty to the victims and by letting you do this I have failed them.” He stopped and ran both hands through his hair. There was less anger now; instead he seemed tired, and sad. “Someone else has gone missing, a woman with two little kids, I …” He shook his head ruefully. “You’d think I’d have learned my lesson about telling you this stuff, right? The point is, I don’t have time for it. Not if I want to stop this bastard.”
“I’m sorry, Ben.”
“Yeah, well. I’m sorry, too.”
He offered to drive her back to Balesford, but she refused; the idea of another entirely silent car journey with him was too much. Instead she called for a cab and stood out by the bagel shop waiting for it. When it came, she gave the driver her mother’s address, and then sat in the back seat, peering out at the rain smeared streets as they went. When they passed an off license with all its lights still on, she got the cab to stop and nipped inside, returning to the car with a bottle of vodka and a packet of paracetamol.
If she had to go back to her mum’s house, it wasn’t going to be sober.
Later, a few vodkas into the evening and feeling both sick and very tired, Heather was curled up on her mother’s sofa with Pamela Whittaker’s album on her lap. Whether it was the alcohol or the effects of a very rough couple of days, Heather was finding each image more unsettling than the last—and there were so many of them. Pamela might have regretted her time at Fiddler’s Mill, but it had certainly inspired her; there were photographs and images packed in so thickly that in some places Heather found several images hidden under another, crammed in like grisly pressed leaves.
The forest featured a lot, as did the big old house, and the sky at sunrise or sunset. There were fewer photographs of the other people at the commune, but each of these Heather scrutinized carefully, scanning every face for something familiar. Each time she failed to find anything she felt the tension thrumming through her lessen a little.
And then she turned a page a little too quickly, and several photographs slid out, fanning across her leg as though they were eager for her to see them. One of them caught her eye immediately.
It was her mother. Painfully young, and dressed in a bulky winter coat that came right up to her chin, but it was her all right. It was a shot of a crowd, gathered around a smoky fire, and there were lots of other people crowding close to the camera, but there was no mistaking her really—the only thing Heather didn’t recognize was the carefree expression on her face; her whole face lit up with the idea of freedom. And in the background, on the top of a hill, the big house lurked. She had been at Fiddler’s Mill. There was no avoiding it.
“I have to go there.” The idea had a finality to it that both frightened and excited her. “I have to see this place.”
CHAPTER32
BEFORE
THE BLOOD HAD turned his sleeve into a sodden red mass.
Michael found his eyes drawn to it again and again, taking his attention from the road often enough that eventually he pulled over, parking the van in a little gravel layby.
She had cut him. The bitch had cut him.
Jerkily, he opened the van door and stepped out into the summer’s night. He was on one of the winding country roads that ran back to Fiddler’s Mill, and it was utterly dark, with no street lights in sight. Overhead, the stars were bright and clear, and the moon was not quite full. Normally he would have taken a great deal of pleasure in such an evening—he could smell all the good green smells, and somewhere in the distance a vixen was screeching for her mate—but the pain in his arm blotted all that out, made it irrelevant.
Again, uselessly, he replayed what had happened in his mind, looking for his mistake. He had followed the woman as she walked back from the pub, far enough back that he was certain she had been unaware of him, at least at first. She had taken a path along a canal, poorly lit and deserted, and when she had done that he had been certain; this woman would be coming with him. Her heart would go deep into the black earth of Fiddler’s Woods, and the rest of her he would cover in flowers. But when he had caught up with her, laying one strong arm across her shoulders, the face she’d turned on him hadn’t been rigid with terror or surprise—she hadn’t gasped or screamed. The face she’d turned on him had been angry. Furious.
On the quiet road, Michael walked around to the back of the van, thinking.
The woman had fought him. He was the barghest, he was the wolf, but she had pulled a boxcutter, of all things, from her bag and slashed at him with it, tearing through his thin shirt and across the skin underneath. It had only taken him a moment to strike it from her hands, and she only managed to cut him that once, but … What did it mean, if the barghest bled? Had he chosen the wrong one? Was
