been ripped down and one of the window panes was smashed. A bedside table lay on its side, with a lamp, an alarm clock and a pile of paperbacks thrown on to the floor. The wardrobe doors were open and all the clothes were in a heap in one corner. A tin of green paint had toppled over, spilling its contents into the middle of the mess.
Then Matt saw Tom Burgess.
The farmer was lying on the floor on the other side of the bed, partly covered by a sheet. He was obviously dead. Something – some sort of animal – had torn into his face and neck. There were hideous red gashes in his skin and his fair hair was matted with blood. His eyes were bulging, staring vacantly, and his mouth was forced open in a last attempt at a scream. His hands were stiff and twisted in a frantic effort to ward something off. One of them was smeared with green paint, which had glued his fingers together. His legs were bent underneath him in such a way that Matt knew the bones must be broken.
Matt backed away, gasping. He thought he was going to be sick. Somehow he forced his eyes away and then he saw it, painted on the wall behind the door. In the last moments of his life, the farmer had managed to scrawl two words, using his own hand smeared with paint:
RAVEN'S GATE
Matt read it as he backed out of the room. He shut the door behind him and reeled down the stairs. He remembered seeing a phone in the kitchen. He snatched up the receiver and dialled 999 with a finger that wouldn’t stop shaking. But there was no dialling tone. The phone had been disconnected.
He threw down the receiver and staggered out of the house. The moment he reached the yard, he threw up. He had never seen a dead body before, let alone one as twisted and tortured as that of Tom Burgess… He hoped he would never see one again. He found that he was shivering. As soon as he felt strong enough, he began to run. He had forgotten the bicycle. He just wanted to get out of there.
Matt ran back up the drive and on to the main road, heading in the direction of Greater Malling. He must have run for at least half a mile before he collapsed on to a bed of grass and lay there, the breath rasping in his throat. He didn’t have the strength to go on. And what was the point? He had no parents and no friends. He was going to die in Lesser Malling and nobody would care.
He didn’t know how long he’d been lying there, but at last the sound of an approaching car reached his ears and he sat up and looked down the road. The car was white, a four-wheel drive with a sign attached to the roof. Matt breathed a sigh of relief. It was a police car. For the first time in his life, it was something he actually wanted to see.
He pulled himself to his feet and walked into the centre of the road with his arms raised. The police car slowed down and stopped. Two officers got out and walked over to him.
“You all right?” the first one asked. He was middle-aged and plump, with a high forehead and thinning black hair.
“Shouldn’t you be at school?” the other asked. He was the younger of the two, thin and boyish with cropped brown hair.
“There’s been a murder,” Matt said.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“A man called Tom Burgess. He’s a farmer. He lives at Glendale Farm. I’ve just come from there.” The sentences came out short and staccato. Matt was finding it hard to stitch the words together.
The two policemen looked doubtful.
“You saw him?” the senior man asked.
Matt nodded. “He was in the bedroom.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I was meant to meet him.”
“What’s your name?”
Matt felt the impatience rising inside him. What was wrong with these men? He had just found a dead body. What did it matter what his name was? He forced himself to calm down. “I’m Matt,” he said. “I’m staying with Jayne Deverill at Hive Hall. I met Tom Burgess. He asked me to visit him. I was there just now. And he’s dead.”
The older policeman looked more suspicious than ever, but his partner shrugged. “We just passed Glendale Farm,” he said. “Maybe we should take a look.”
The other man thought for a moment, then nodded. “All right.” He turned to Matt. “You’d better come with us.”
“I don’t want to go back there!” Matt exclaimed.
“You can wait in the car. You’ll be all right.”
Reluctantly Matt climbed into the back seat and allowed the two officers to take him back the way he had come. He gritted his teeth as they turned into the driveway. The car slowed down, the wheels biting into the gravel.
“It seems quiet enough,” the older policeman said. He turned round to face Matt. “Where did you say you saw him?”
“Upstairs. In the bedroom.”
“There’s someone here,” the younger one said.
Matt looked out of the window. The policeman was right. A woman had appeared to one side of the house. She was tall and thin with limp grey hair hanging to her shoulders, and he recognized her. She was one of the women he had met in Lesser Malling. She had been pushing a pram. What was her name? Creasey. Or Creevy. Now she was in Tom Burgess’s garden, hanging out a basket of washing. Matt couldn’t understand what was happening. She had been inside the house, so surely she had seen the state of the rooms. Hadn’t she been upstairs?
The policemen got out of the car. Feeling increasingly uneasy, Matt followed them. The woman saw them coming and stopped what she was doing.
“Good morning,” she said. “How can I help you?”
“My name is Sergeant Rivers,” replied the older man. “This is Police Constable Reed. Who are you?”
“I’m Joanna Creevy. I help Tom Burgess with his housework. What’s wrong?” She seemed to notice Matt for the first time. “Matthew? What are you doing here?” She scowled. “You haven’t got yourself into trouble, have you?”
Matt ignored her.
“This is a little difficult,” the sergeant began. “The fact is that we just met this young lad on the road.”
“You left your bicycle here, Matthew,” the woman said. “I thought you must have been visiting.”
“Matthew claims that Mr Burgess might have been involved in some sort of accident,” the sergeant went on.
“It wasn’t an accident,” Matt interrupted. “He’s been killed. Cut to pieces. I saw him…”
The woman stared at Matt, then broke into laughter. “That’s impossible,” she said. “I saw Tom ten minutes ago. You just missed him. He’s gone to see to the sheep in the far paddock.”
The policemen turned to Matt.
“She’s lying,” Matt said. “He didn’t go anywhere ten minutes ago. I was here just now and he was dead.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say,” Miss Creevy muttered. “Tom is fine. And here I am, hanging out his socks!”
“Go and look in the bedroom,” Matt said.
“Yes. You do that.” The woman nodded – and that was when Matt began to worry. She seemed confident – one step ahead of him.
Sergeant Rivers nodded slowly. “We’d better sort this out,” he said.
They went into the house and Matt saw at once. Although it was still untidy, Miss Creevy – or someone – had cleared away most of the evidence. The books and papers had been straightened. The shutters were folded back. And the knife had been taken out of the kitchen cupboard… but the gash it had left was still there. They continued upstairs.
“You’ll have to forgive the mess,” Miss Creevy said. “Tom has been redecorating and I haven’t had a chance to start work yet.”
They reached the landing. The door of the bedroom was closed, just as Matt had left it. He didn’t want to go in. He didn’t think he could bear to look at the body a second time. But he couldn’t back out now.
