The only light in the Great Room, the pale flickering glow from the ring of candles, goes out. Gideon is alone in the stony darkness.
117
Adam gets up long before Megan to make breakfast. Just as he used to. Everything is going to be just like it was.
He hears her come out of the shower. Ushers her back into their sex-wrecked bed. Hurries downstairs and returns with a tray of toast, orange juice, fruit and a flower from the small cottage garden.
She smiles. ‘It’s been a while since you treated me like this.’
‘It’s been a while since you let me.’
They kiss and almost simultaneously glance at the bedside clock. 7.10 a.m. No time for anything except food. She bites hungrily into the hot buttered toast.
‘I’ll take Sammy to nursery,’ he says perching on the edge of the bed. There’s something on his mind. ‘What you said last night, about crazy cults and Stonehenge. Do you really believe it? Or was it just the messed up day and bottle and a half of wine talking?’
‘Bit of both, I suppose.’ She hadn’t told him everything. Only some of her speculation about Lock and Timberland. Why they’d been drawn to the site, the lure of the solstice and its sacred connotations. She’s interested in his professional opinion. ‘You think it’s daft to consider a cult rather than a kidnap gang?’
He shrugs. ‘Aside from the odd one or two, the Charles Mansons of this world, I don’t believe cults are anything more than a few nutty fanatics who like a strange dance and the odd prayer or two before a bit of dressing up and frantic sex.’
She laughs.
‘Listen, Stonehenge is commercially marketed as being magic, mystical and all that stuff. The security staff over there actually tell you it’s a sacred site, they warn you that you mustn’t on any account even touch the stones. They are paid to say that, to perpetuate the myths. It’s a pagan place of worship. Go there any day of the week and you’ll see nut-jobs from all over the world kneeling and praying before those rocks. You’re bound to come across stories about cults and all their oddities.’
She’s missed being able to talk to him like this. Confide in him. Bounce work off him. ‘So you don’t buy it? It’s all just legend and folk tales. Like turning water into wine and feeding thousands with a loaf of bread and a couple of fishes?’
‘You know, Meg, Wiltshire is full of ghosts and myths. St George is supposed to have slain a dragon over at Uffington. Merlin is supposed to have been at Stonehenge.’ He laughs as he stands up. ‘Don’t get too hung up on it all and I wouldn’t go mentioning it to anyone at work who is brighter than Jimmy.’
He bends down and kisses her. ‘Got to go.’
‘Thanks. Tell Mum I’ll call her later.’
She hears his feet thunder down the stairs and the front door slam.
Adam starts up his old BMW, a four-year-old three series he bought cheap at auction. He backs off the drive and calls the station to see if anything urgent is happening. He’s struck lucky. Sounds like a nice quiet shift ahead.
Next he swaps phones and makes a private call. The kind he doesn’t want Megan knowing about. ‘It’s Aquila,’ he says. ‘I’m not entirely sure, but I think we might have a problem.’
118
The Henge Master sits in the flickering candlelight of his chamber and muses on the tricky issue of timing. Three days until the first twilight of the first full moon after the summer solstice. The time the ritual must begin. He must be precise. The sacrificial offering has to start in astronomical twilight on the evening of this coming Sunday and be completed by the start of nautical twilight on Monday morning.
There is much to plan. Bearers to be chosen. Lookers to be detailed. Trusted Followers will soon start arriving from across the world. They will be ensconced as guests in the homes of their British counterparts.
The police activity has lessened but it is still considerable. Too intense to take chances. The newspapers write of little else but the young woman held captive just metres from him. She is less troublesome now. Six days without food has taken the fight out of her. After the pointless escape attempt she has become more placid. He thanks the gods for small blessings.
Then there is Gideon. Spread out in his chamber are the coded diaries Chase brought with him. The Master can’t make sense of what they say. The boy has probably made copies of them. He’s not stupid. Seems every bit as smart as Nathaniel was. Every bit his equal. Should he survive the effects of the initiation, he may prove an asset rather than a liability.
The door to the chamber opens and the hooded form of Draco enters.
‘What is it?’ The Master’s clipped tone betrays a building tension.
‘Thank you for seeing me at short notice. I was contacted this morning by our brother Aquila. His wife, a detective inspector working from headquarters, is starting to make the kind of connections we don’t find helpful.’
‘In what way?’
‘About the American girl and her English boyfriend. She has been speculating that they had been drawn to Stonehenge because of the solstice. That the American had been kidnapped close by.’
The Master is unconcerned. ‘I’ve read as much in the tabloid press. The police won’t make it their focus. ‘They know the media make up a new line every hour.’
‘But this woman is also investigating the Nathaniel Chase suicide,’ says Draco. ‘And a missing person. The young man chosen as our last sacrifice.’
The Master nods. ‘Now I understand. It is good that you raise this. And good that Aquila reported his concerns with us. I will have the detective taken care of.’
119
Jimmy Dockery is missing.
He hasn’t turned in to work. No one has seen him. The computer on his desk is off. There’s no response on his radio. He hasn’t phoned in sick and from the checks Megan has done he’s not at home. No car on the drive. No sign of life.
There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation. But that’s not what she’s thinking. She’s imagining the worst. And with good reason. Gideon Chase is also missing. He doesn’t answer his landline or his mobile. He’s not at home either. She just drove back from Tollard Royal and there’s no trace of him.
Could Jimmy be with Gideon? It’s the obvious connection. But why? Was Jimmy following up on things they’d discussed? She censors more sinister thoughts. Megan would like a face-to-face with Dockery Senior. She’d love to look the Deputy Chief in the eyes and see if he knows anything about his missing son. She can’t believe she’s thinking like this. She remembers what Adam had said. That it would be professional suicide to start talking to other people at work about what is going on in her head. She shakes off the dark ruminations and determines to busy herself. Wait for either Jimmy or Gideon to turn up.
Master butcher Matt Utley is top of her to-do list. She heads to the property office to take another look at the evidence recovered from the burglary. She now feels sure that the axe she noticed in the recovered bag will turn out to be some kind of butcher’s cleaver.
Megan briefly passes the time of day with Louise, the recently widowed property officer, and tells her what she needs. They carry on chatting as the fifty-two-year-old disappears in the back and shouts above the noise of rooting through paper bags and boxes on metal shelves. ‘You sure about the dates and case number, Megan?’