the stable into view. until at last he could see the whole building. Breathing in sharply in shock, he stepped back. The occupant of the stable was not the dog he’d expected. And what the men were doing to the animal made no sense at all.
71
Bronson shrank back into the undergrowth beside the old church and waited. About fifteen minutes had passed, and the men had just left the stable and were walking back towards the ruins. For an instant, he thought they might have seen him, but their posture was wrong: they were too relaxed, too casual.
They were still talking together as they passed him, and then, stepping slightly in front of the other, one of the men seized the ring handle on the church door and pushed it open. They both stepped through into the ruins and disappeared, leaving the door wide open behind them.
Bronson stood up slowly. For a few seconds there was total silence, and then he heard a distant rumbling that seemed to come from somewhere close by. It sounded like one heavy stone being moved across another.
Bronson reached the open door, looked inside – and shook his head in astonishment. The two men had simply disappeared. He’d walked around the entire interior of the building, just half an hour before, checking for any other way out, and had found nothing. But now, as he stared across the weed-strewn interior, piles of stone and wood faintly illuminated in the moonlight, he realized that there had to be a hidden door, or trapdoor, or something, somewhere in the building, and he had obviously missed it.
And wherever that door was, and whatever space it gave access to, it had to be the most likely place for Angela to be imprisoned.
If he’d seen where the two men had gone, he would have been able to wait outside and tackle them. One man armed with a semi-automatic pistol facing two unarmed men was no contest. He’d missed that chance but, he rationalized, sooner or later they would have to come out. And when they did, he’d be ready.
It was a simple enough plan, and almost immediately it started going wrong.
Marietta looked up when she heard the cellar door swinging open. ‘Not so soon, please, no,’ she whispered.
Shaking with fear, she looked with terrified eyes towards the stairs, and almost wept with relief when she realized that she still had a little time left. The two men were dressed in normal street clothes, not the hooded robes they would wear for the ceremony itself. One of them was carrying a small metal jug, which he placed on a ledge on the wall behind the stone table. Then they walked across the stone floor and peered at both Marietta and Angela, presumably making sure that they had obeyed their instructions and were wearing their robes in preparation for the ritual.
One of the men nodded towards Marietta and smiled, then they both turned and walked back to the spiral staircase.
Bronson stepped silently into the ruined church. Most of the debris littering the floor comprised individual lumps of stone and lengths of wood or small piles of rubbish, far too small for him to use for concealment. The only option he could see was about halfway down the wall to his left, where somebody had made an effort to clear some of the timber and building materials. The result was a heap of debris about two feet high and eight feet long, positioned quite close to the wall. It was just about big enough for him to hide behind, at least lying down, and would keep him invisible to anyone entering through the church door, though if somebody stepped across to the side wall of the building, they would see him immediately. It was a chance he was going to have to take.
The Browning in his hand, he crouched down behind the collection of old timbers. The only sound he could hear was the wind sighing through the branches of the handful of trees on the island, the branches creaking and groaning faintly as they moved. Even the animal imprisoned in the shed seemed to have fallen silent.
Then there was a click and a faint rumble, and a black oblong shape appeared at the far end of the church. Beyond it he could see electric lights illuminating the top of a staircase that was set into the wall. It was obviously a door which led down to a cellar.
Two figures – the men he’d seen in the stable – stepped out and into the church. Bronson tensed, as he prepared to run towards the hidden door and down the steps. But then he relaxed again. The men had left the cellar door wide open, which meant that they could be going back down again. It would be better to wait until they’d left the church completely, and then make his entrance.
But then he realized there was another possibility. They could have left the door open to allow other people to enter the cellar, and this changed the odds once again.
As the two men reached the main entrance to the church, Bronson heard another noise. From over to his right, from the house itself, he heard the sound of shoes on gravel. It was clear that several people were now approaching the old church.
By now, the two men were still clearly visible at the church doorway, presumably waiting for the arrival of the approaching people. Bronson glanced over at the secret door, but knew that if he left his hiding place, he’d be seen well before he reached it. He would have to wait, and pick his moment.
There was a brief instant of silence, and then the first of the new arrivals stepped into the church. Bronson stared across at the figure, disbelief clouding his mind.
The man – and Bronson knew the figure was male simply by the way he walked – was clad in a dark, possibly black, hooded robe, his face completely hidden. He looked like a caricature of a monk, though without any doubt Christian thoughts and prayers were a long way from his mind. Bronson had guessed from the few clues he had been able to find that the deaths of the girls might well have involved some kind of ritual. What he hadn’t anticipated was that the ritual might involve a quasi-religious ceremony. But this was what seemed to be about to take place, because the hooded man was followed by others, all clad in the same all-enveloping robes.
The figures made their way in single file across the old stone floor, the hems of their robes just brushing the ground. Bronson counted eleven, plus the first man who appeared to be the leader of the group. He seemed to remember that thirteen was supposed to be the number of witches in a coven, and wondered if that was significant, if there was another man already waiting down in the cellar.
Then he heard a faint click, and saw that the lights on the stone staircase had been extinguished. A new light, faint and flickering, had sprung to life just inside the hidden doorway. Obviously the leader of the group had lit a candle.
As the man started to walk slowly down the staircase, Bronson heard something else: a single scream of anguish from deep within the chamber below. Could it have been Angela? One way or another, he was going to find out.
Bronson knew he was heavily outnumbered, and he had no idea if any of the group were carrying weapons under their robes, or if there were firearms stored in the cellar. Whatever the case, he had to get down to that cellar.
And suddenly he saw a way of achieving just that. The men filing down the stairs were walking slowly, but they were too close together for him to tackle one without the person in front seeing what was happening. Each man paused inside the secret doorway to light a candle before descending out of sight, which meant several of them were now clustered outside the doorway, waiting their turn. But then the last man in the group stopped and turned back to the church entrance. One of the two men outside the ruined building had said something – Bronson didn’t catch what – and had attracted his attention.
The man walked swiftly back to the church entrance, muttered something to the men outside, and closed the door. Then he turned and walked back towards the hidden doorway, through which the last of his companions had just disappeared. At that moment Bronson holstered the Browning and made his move.
He ran across the debris-strewn stone floor after his target. The moment he did so, the hooded man turned towards him, obviously having seen some movement in his peripheral vision. When he saw Bronson, a sudden expression of panic clouded his features, and he opened his mouth to shout.
But Bronson didn’t give him the chance, as he dived forward and slammed his left shoulder into the man’s chest. The impact drove every vestige of breath from his target’s body, and he fell backwards, gasping for air.
The two men tumbled to the ground together, Bronson cushioned by the body that had fallen beneath him. The other man caught his breath and started to rise, but Bronson had anticipated his movement. He punched him –
