He’s been working with Sean for close on three years now and they have something of a master and apprentice relationship. Sean is his sponsor and dispenses wisdom as regularly as he does the sludgy brown tea from his trusty flask. Every watch he quizzes his protégé in the effort to ensure he’s fit to be admitted into the closed circle of the Followers.
‘Question one.’ Grabb gives his pupil a pay-attention stare. ‘What are the stones and what do they mean to those of us in the Craft?’
Johns grins — an easy one. ‘The stones are our Sacreds. They are the source of all our earthly energy. They are our protectors, our guardians and our life force.’
Grabb splashes a reward of tea into Lee’s brown-ringed mug. ‘Good. And why do the Sacreds bestow such blessings on us?’
Johns cradles the dark elixir as they stand by the traffic barrier on the car park. ‘We are the Followers of the Sacreds, descendants of those who placed the great ones here thousands of years ago. The bones and blood of our ancestors nourish the Sacreds in their resting places, just as one day our remains will follow them and complete the circle.’
Steam wafts from the top of Grabb’s steel thermos cup. He sips the hot tea and asks, ‘And how do the Sacreds bless us?’
‘With their spiritual energy. They transfer it through the stones to us and their blessing protects us from the ravages of illness and the humiliation of poverty.’
Grabb is pleased. His pupil is learning his catechism well and that can only reflect kindly on him. He pours more tea into Lee’s mug. ‘And what do the Sacreds expect in return?’
‘Respect.’ He pronounces the word with sincerity. ‘We must recognise them, respect them, have faith in them and follow their teachings through their appointed oracle, the Henge Master.’
‘That’s right, Lee. Remember those who would steal our heritage. Remember the Catholics and their commandments written in stone supposedly passed down from God. They cooked up that story two thousand years after the Sacreds had been established here in England.’
Lee nods. He understands. He must not be sidetracked or seduced by other religions, false-belief systems that have big gold glittering palaces for adoration, that collect money each week from congregations and create their own banks and states. ‘Sean,’ he starts, thirsty for reassurance. ‘I know you can trace your bloodline all the way back to the greats who carried the bluestones and the sarsens. I understand why that makes you worthy for the blessing and protection of the Sacreds, but what about people like me? We’re outsiders. We don’t come from around here.’
Grabb recognises the insecurity; it’s a regular thing with Lee. ‘We are all from around here, my friend. Five thousand years ago the population of Britain was tiny. Way back then, you and I were probably brothers, or cousins at worst.’
Johns likes that idea. And it makes sense too. Even the Christians believe in Adam and Eve and how one moment of sex somehow spawned all of mankind. Or something like that, he can’t quite remember. Brothers — him and Sean.
‘You’re doing real well, Lee.’ Grabb puts a broad arm around the kid’s near skeletal shoulders and shows him how proud he is.
But in reality he’s worried — worried about how his protégé will face up to the horrors of the challenge that awaits.
17
After a tetanus shot and what he viewed as a completely unnecessary taking of blood, Gideon is discharged from hospital in the late afternoon. The only good thing is that the DI was able to get the keys to his father’s house biked over before the discharge was completed.
Approaching the grand house in a taxi from the hospital, he can see that the damage is considerable. The lawns have been churned up by fire engines and the side of the building is shrouded in the remnants of black smoke. Windows are blown in and boarded up, brickwork cracked.
Right now he doesn’t care. The place is still just bricks and mortar to him. Only when he lets himself in through the colossal front door does he feel any emotion.
When his mother died, Gideon was distraught. He went from being confident and extrovert, trusting in the world and his place in it, to being disturbingly introverted and wary of people. The death of his father is bringing on another change. He is uncertain of what but he feels it. Inside him is a volatile mix of anger, frustration, resentment and a residue of unfairness. A swirling blend of components that he knows is going to alter the DNA of his personality irrevocably.
He wanders the big empty house and feels acutely alone. He has no brothers or sisters, no grandparents. No children. He is the end of the Chase line. What he does with the remainder of his life will determine not only what the world thinks of him but the whole Chase lineage.
He drops his jacket in the hall. Climbs the grand staircase to a long open first-floor landing and searches for a place to wash and crash for a while.
The house is plainly not equipped for life four hundred years after it was built. The big rooms with their high ceilings must cost a fortune to heat. No wonder his father appears to have lived in only a couple. The windows are draughty and need replacing. Most of the walls are flaked with damp. Floors creak worse than the planks of an old sailing ship in a storm and it must be fifty years since the place saw a decent lick of paint.
His father’s bedroom is the smallest of all and gives him the strangest of feelings. It’s crammed with emptiness. The old man’s things are everywhere but they have become depersonalised, as though blasted with some radioactivity that eradicated all trace of him.
A pile of books towers by the bed. Near them is a white mug, an inch of tea still in it, a crust of mould on the surface. He guesses it was the last morning cuppa or late-night drink his father tasted.
The quilt is pulled back on one side of the high, wooden-framed double bed. The indent in the old spring mattress, grey base sheet and crumpled feather pillow show exactly where Nathaniel slept. The other side of the bed is pristine. Gideon feels himself frown. For all Nathaniel’s legendary brilliance and inarguable wealth, his father lived like a squatter and died lonely.
He casts a last look around the little bedroom and notices the remains of an old bell circuit above the door, a hangover from the time a nanny or butler slept here waiting to be called by the master of the house. He is reminded of a boyhood visit one wet weekend to a National Trust home and the single interesting comment from the tour guide: the property, he’d said, was veined with secret passages so servants could pass quickly and discreetly from upstairs to downstairs.
Gideon wonders if his father’s place is the same. He steps out into the corridor, kicking up a swirl of dust motes. He ponders if there’s another room behind Nathaniel’s tiny bedroom.
There isn’t.
The landing runs down to a casement window overlooking the garden. He walks down and to his right sees an odd join in the wallpaper. He taps the wall. It sounds like plasterboard. He knocks a metre to the left and then a metre to the right.
Stone.
He taps again on the board. All over and around it. The plasterboard area is big enough to be a door. There’s no visible handle or hinges, but he’s sure it is. He gets down on his knees and digs, just as he would in an archaeological trench. His fingers find the edge where the skirting board meets the landing floor. He tries to pull it open but it is jammed tight. Out of frustration he pushes rather than pulls.
It bursts open, belching out a breath of musty air.
Gideon bolts upright. A sliver of darkness is cut into the wall. He reaches inside and finds a light switch. He is astonished by what he sees: a narrow room like a very long cupboard. One wall is stacked floor to ceiling with books. Another contains old VHS tapes, some DVDs. Set into the far wall is an old pre-HD plasma TV.