The stranger smiles. ‘Many people do. That’s why they come. I’m very sorry to have heard about your loss.’ He tilts his head respectfully. ‘I’ll leave you now to fulfil your father’s wishes. Good night.’ He turns and walks away.
Gideon stands for a second and looks around. It is now getting really dark and the mist is rolling in like a slow tide. He feels a chill, knows that if he leaves things much longer, he won’t be able to fulfil his father’s strange request.
The lid to the tube is tight but he carefully levers it free. He doesn’t know where to begin and where to end. Should he just shake the tube and walk away, grey powder streaming like a dud flare? Or should he try to distribute the remains as evenly as possible?
He remembers reading in the diaries how human remains were found all around Stonehenge. Hundreds more were buried in nearby fields, ancient camps where the stone workers had lived.
Gideon looks into the end of the tube and walks to the first stone in the opening opposite the Heel Stone. He heads clockwise, shaking the ashes out around the small circle of sarsens and bluestones. The container is empty before he reaches the end but he completes the ritual, shaking it until the circle is closed.
Then he finds himself strangely drawn to the middle and compelled to kneel. He mouths the words he couldn’t say when he saw the body at the crematorium. In the darkness he whispers, ‘I’m sorry, Dad. Sorry that we didn’t know each other better. Sorry that I didn’t tell you I loved you. That we didn’t find a way to overcome our differences and share our dreams. I miss you. I’ll always miss you.’
Black clouds creep across the pale rising moon. Before Gideon can get to his feet a hood is pulled tight over his head.
Four Lookers drag him to the ground.
100
Megan is about to switch off her computer for the night when it pings with a message. Tired, she opens it. It’s an alert from the force’s facial recognition unit. They’ve found a street camera match to the fuzzy camera-phone shot Gideon had taken of the burglar.
She reads the text: ‘An individual male matching the facial biometrics of your target has been identified by camera XR7 in Tidworth. Click on the icon below to view more stills and to contact coordinating officer.’
She shifts the cursor to a little picture of a camera and clicks it. Her heart jumps. The shots are fantastic. Close to a dozen of them. In several the suspect is stood outside a shop, locking and unlocking the premises. It is a butcher’s shop. Damn. She’d thought about a chef or catering worker, not a butcher.
The psychological profile she’d drawn up comes rushing back to her: white male, thirty to forty-five, manual worker, possibly in catering business, local pubs, restaurants. He fits it to a T.
Megan is so elated she doesn’t notice her ex and her daughter in the CID office until Sammy shouts.
‘Mummy! Mummy!’ The four-year-old comes running between the desks.
Megan opens her arms and gathers her up.
‘Got a lost child here,’ Adam says. ‘Told me her mother was a famous detective. So I thought I’d return her in person.’
She kisses Sammy and rearranges her on her knee. ‘What are you doing here?’
He gives her a cheeky look. ‘I was working a tip-off that you might come out with us.’
Megan thinks about telling him to back off, take things more slowly. But he and Sammy look so happy together.
Adam sits down at her desk, just at the exact moment Jimmy Dockery walks into the room. The two men catch each other’s eyes. There’s a crackle of curiosity in the air. The kind that makes a cat’s tail stand up and fluff out.
Jimmy had come with news for Megan. Good news. Important news. But now he doesn’t want to give it to her. Not with her husband sat there. It’ll have to wait until the morning. He waves and wanders out of view.
Adam watches him go and allows himself a smug smile.
101
Gideon is trying to make sense of what’s happened. He remembers his head being covered, strong hands holding him, a sharp spike of pain in his leg. They must have drugged him and taken him somewhere to sleep it off.
The hood is off and he’s sat in the dark on a cold stone floor. Candles flicker in all four corners. It’s small. Small and has no door.
He’s in a cell.
Maybe it isn’t a cell. Maybe it’s a tomb.
Half-drugged, he struggles to his feet and sways unsteadily. He paws at the walls. There’s no way out. His father had written about people being buried inside a Sanctuary. This could be it. He has been walled up in the Sanctuary and left to die.
He feels anxiety climb his chest. There can’t be much air in this place. It can’t last long. He picks up a candle and extinguishes the others. No point burning precious oxygen. Standing with the single light burning out, he reasons that they’re not going to leave him here to die. He told Smithsen that he’d taken precautions, a planned delivery to the police of damning documents, unless he was free to call it off.
The candle burns out.
His heartbeat rises and his hopes fade. Surely they’re going to have to come to him, find out what he knows, how much he can hurt them.
There is a guttural rumbling of stone. Narrow slits of light appear in the middle of two opposite walls. Hooded, robed figures flood the small room. Gideon doesn’t fight as they overwhelm him, cuff his wrists and drag him through an exit. No hood or blindfold this time. Something has changed.
The corridor they’re leading him down is long and winding. Gradually the lighting on the walls becomes more ornate. It even starts to feel warmer. He’s flanked by two men. The one on his right pulls an iron ring sunk into a wall. Hidden pulleys go to work. A section of stone slides noisily back. They push him into a chamber.
The stranger he saw in the mist at Stonehenge sits in a hooded brown robe behind a circular table made of honey-coloured stone. ‘Sit down, Gideon.’ He waves a hand to the seating opposite him.
Gideon lowers himself on to a crescent of cold stone. His eyes never leave the robed figure in front of him.
‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’
‘I saw you at the henge.’
The Master smiles. ‘I met you several times before, when you were a child. Your father and I were friends.’
Gideon is surprised. ‘Then you know what he went through. What happened to my mother and what he had to do to save me.’
‘Indeed, I do.’ He studies Gideon. ‘You have clearly learned much, presumably from your father’s journals. But do you actually understand what you have been reading?’
‘I think so.’
‘So tell me.’
‘You are the Henge Master, the spiritual leader of the Followers of the Sacreds. My father was a senior and trusted member of your Inner Circle. You, he and many others give your lives to the protection of the Sacreds and the renewal of their energy.’
The Master cracks a thin smile.‘Not quite right. But close.’ He’s keen to learn how much more Nathaniel’s boy knows. ‘Do you have any idea how the spiritual energy of the Sacreds is sustained?’
‘Human sacrifice. Offerings made before and after both the summer and winter solstice. At specific moon phases. My father described them as necessary for the restoration of celestial and earthly balance.’
The Master looks impressed. ‘You are a good scholar. But there is a big difference between theory and practice.’ He folds his robed arms. ‘You sought us out, Gideon. What is it that you want?’
‘Acceptance. My mother and father are dead. You are my family. I am already a child of the Sacreds, you know how my father baptised me as a child.’