To Detective Constable Markin, zooming in on that taut suntanned leathery mask, those eyes were proof that hell existed and that what was about to be done on the makeshift altar by the old bastard in the weird black hat was authentically diabolical. The hair on his neck seemed to have caught prickly cold. As the Dean began reading from the Turnbird family Bible the constable babbled into the mobile. 'For fucksake hurry,' he bleated, 'they've started. Shit, this is awful. I don't want to watch. Oh God.'
But Rascombe and the Quick Response Team were already converging on the Middenhall. Their cars and vans raced along the narrow roads, killed a sheepdog and two cats outside Charlie Harrison's farm and sped on without stopping.
It was just as well. At that very moment Mr Armitage Midden, or 'Buffalo' Midden as he preferred to be called, who had spent sixty years decimating herds of elephants, rhinos, lions, wildebeest and, of course, buffaloes across the length and breadth of Africa and who claimed to have spoored more animals than any other white hunter north of the Zambesi, was moving with deadly stealth across the leads of the Middenhall roof with an unlicensed Lee Enfield .303 rifle. From his bedroom window he had seen Unit B stir in the undergrowth behind the kitchen garden and take up a position in a small corrugated structure that had once served as a privy for the under-gardeners. Unfortunately he couldn't see what weapons, if any, they were carrying but men in camouflage jackets who slithered through the grass and then dashed for the outhouse were clearly bent on some dreadful and murderous course of action. Buffalo Midden had spent the previous evening reading an article on the IRA and terrorists in general that had chilled his blood. The Red Menace of Bolshevism might be dead though he doubted it, it was merely lying in wait for the Civilized World like a wounded buffalo under a lone thorn tree where one would least expect it but a World Conspiracy, comprising Zionists in alliance with Ayatollahs, Irishmen and of course Blacks and every other demon, still existed in his imagination. And now on this beautiful summer morning it was exercising its deadly skills against the Middenhall.
Buffalo Midden had already worked out why. The Middenhall was the perfect place. Isolated, cut off from the world and equipped with military huts and shelters, it had all the necessary requirements for a terrorist base. Alone on the roof of the awful house he lay in the shadow of a towering chimney and took the most precise aim on that privy and the murderous swine inside it. With all his old expertise he gently eased the trigger back. It was a hair trigger, one he had adjusted to his own specifications, and he knew it well. So, a fraction of a second later, did the two policemen in that corrugated-iron privy. Of course they didn't know precisely what was happening but they had a pretty good idea what was going to happen if they stayed there. They were going to die. The bullet had hardly slammed through the door of the privy and out through the back before they were out of there and running like hell for cover.
Buffalo Midden fired again. And again. And again. He was enjoying himself. The policemen weren't. Pinned down behind a concrete pig-pen which, fortunately for the pig, was unoccupied, they listened to the bullets ricocheting round the interior of the sty and radioed frantically for help. One of them had been hit in the shoulder and the other had had a bullet through his leg. At eighty-five, Buffalo Midden's eyesight was no longer 20/20 but it was sufficiently acute to hit a pig-pen at a hundred and fifty yards and the old Lee Enfield he had always maintained was all he needed to bring down a charging bull elephant so that it slumped at his feet fired a sufficiently powerful .303 bullet to make life behind the pigpen a decidedly unpleasant affair.
On the far side of the lake the sound of that rifle raised some degree of apprehension. It was not equipped with a silencer. Buffalo liked to boast that when he fired the beast he fired at wouldn't hear anything again this side of the end of eternity and that the shot would so startle the herd of whatever he was killing that his next target would be moving like the clappers, which was much the most sporting way of shooting things. As the firing died away (Buffalo was moving to a position that would give him a better chance of hitting the swine cowering behind the pig-pen) the Dean and his peculiar congregation turned and looked at the Middenhall.
So did Detective Constable Markin. He was a firearms expert himself and he knew a heavy-calibre rifle when he heard one. For a moment he imagined that that moron Rascombe had thrown the whole weight of the Armed Quick Response Team against the house where it wasn't needed. It was needed on his side of the lake where the Black Mass was taking place. He was just wondering what to do when the firing resumed. This time it was accompanied by screams.
Buffalo had found his mark once again and this time he was satisfied. He had heard that sort of scream before many times and it portended death, a terrible and agonizing death. He stood up exultantly and hurried from the roof. There was a Union Flag in his room and he intended to run it up the flagpole Black Midden had erected to celebrate the Coronation of George V.
Chapter 26
Looking back on the events of that Sunday, Miss Midden was wont to say that the Armed Quick Response Team, or whatever those buffoons were called, had arrived in the nick of time. It is not clear what nick of time, or possibly which nick of time, she was referring to, just as it wasn't clear to anyone taking part in whatever it was that was taking place around them whatever it was they were taking part in. Not even Detective Constable Markin, who had witnessed just about everything (he couldn't see what was happening or had happened round the other side of the ghastly house but he had a shrewd idea that fucking hearse was going to come in handy after all) that seemed to have occurred since first light began, but even he, when it came to the inquests, and there were several, couldn't under oath, or cross-examination of the most persistent and thoroughly unpleasant kind, actually put his hand on his heart and swear to present a faintly lucid account of what he had seen. He had to admit that he had lain under a pile of leaves with a video camera and a mobile (they called it a walkie-talkie in court and the videos he had made were shown over and over and over again) and he was a trained and intelligent and observant police officer but it still didn't add up to a row of sane beans or perhaps he ought to say a sane row of beans. Anyway it hadn't, didn't and never would make any sense to him. All he knew was that an old bloke in the altogether had come out for a swim and...How the hell was he to know the thing under that hat and in that frock was a woman? (Fortunately Phoebe Turnbird was not in court at that particular moment. She was otherwise engaged. Literally though briefly. ) And if small, fat, waddling clergymen went around wearing cloaks and weird flat shovel-hats, and he hadn't known what they were called at the time, carrying whacking great leather-bound bibles and bloody great brass crosses and got into boats and were rowed across lakes to a whole lot of children whom he had been officially informed by a superior officer were about to be buggered and abused, which was why he was there in the first place, how the hell was he to know they were genuine clergymen and the Dean of Porterhouse College, Cambridge, an ancient and important educational establishment etc? Asked if he needed trauma relief counselling or had had any, he said he didn't. The only relief he needed was to get the hell out of the Twixt and Tween Constabulary into another job where he wouldn't be required to try to assess situations he didn't and still couldn't make head or tail of even if that particular situation had had a head or a tail. The detective's was a garbled account but an accurate one, and it was infinitely more perceptive than that of Inspector Rascombe who had precipitated the whole appalling disaster and was responsible for its outcome.