The hammer slammed down on an empty chamber.
The metallic click reverberated inside the car as Julie tore the pistol from her grip and stood panting beside her.
Donna merely looked at the younger woman, then leaned across and pulled the passenger door shut.
Julie looked down helplessly at the gun she now held in her hand.
‘Donna, I ...’
The sentence trailed off, lost in the sound of the Fiesta’s engine as Donna started it up.
She guided the car away from the kerb, away from Julie. As she pulled away she glanced one final time in the rear-view mirror.
Julie was standing on the street corner, the empty gun clutched in her hand.
Donna drove on.
The journey became a blur of passing traffic and dark roads.
She didn’t look at the clock when she left London; she had no idea how long it would take her to reach the cottage. Donna merely drove, her mind spinning. Two or three times she had to brake sharply to avoid hitting vehicles in front of her. She considered stopping at a service station for a coffee, but then decided against it. If she stopped she’d never start again. It was as if she was being forced on by instinct alone. All she felt was a crushing weariness, a similar feeling to the one she’d felt in the days after her husband’s death. A feeling that she had become an empty shell, sucked dry of feeling, unable to think straight.
She stopped for petrol, standing on a deserted forecourt, the cold wind whistling around her. She shivered but the chill she felt came from within.
She had achieved her goal. Parsons and Dashwood were dead. Farrell was dead.
Why then did she not feel a sense of triumph?
Perhaps because she felt that she
too
should be dead.
All she felt was a growing feeling of desolation. Death and loss had become engrained in her life.
She had no one now.
She thought how easy it would have been to drive the car into a tree. She gripped the wheel more tightly and drove through the night.
Ninety-Four
It seemed like years, not days, since she’d been to the cottage.
The assault on the property, which could have cost her and Julie their lives, seemed to have faded into the mists of time. Supposedly the mind pushes unpleasant things to one side in an effort to forget them. Donna had tried to do that with the events at the cottage, but as soon as she saw the building the memories came flooding back in an unwelcome tide.
She sat in the Fiesta gazing at the structure. Even in the darkness she could see bullet holes in the stonework. The wood she’d used to board up the windows was still in place, although a couple of the sheets had come loose. One was slapping against the frame each time the wind blew.
Donna slid out from behind the wheel and approached the cottage, fumbling in her pocket for her key-ring. She selected the front door key, pausing for a moment before turning it, images of her last visit running through her mind like a video recorder on fast-forward. She could see Farrell and his men trying to break in. She could see the blood. She could see Julie.
Julie.
Donna closed her eyes tightly, then took a deep breath. The image faded slightly. She entered.
There was broken glass in the hallway, still. It crunched beneath her feet as she walked, moving through into the sitting-room, not bothering to turn on the lights. She moved quickly. and assuredly in the gloom, heading for the kitchen.
There was a torch in one of the kitchen drawers. She retrieved it, flicking it on, allowing the powerful beam to cut through the blackness.
She trained it on the cellar trap door.
‘Search your house. The cellar.’
Donna hooked a finger into the ring on the trap and pulled, opening it. She shone the torch down into the underground chamber, ignoring the smell of damp that wafted up from below. She tucked the torch into the waistband of her jeans as she eased herself onto the ladder, climbing down slowly, afraid, as she’d always been, that the wooden rungs would give way. A spider’s web brushed against her face as she neared the bottom. Donna snatched at it, anxious to brush it away. The floor of the cellar was partly earth; it was the damp soil that she could smell so strongly.
Donna took the torch from her jeans and shone it around.
The cellar was less than fifteen feet square but it was crammed with tea chests and boxes, some of which were damp and mildewed. Spiders’ webs seemed to link the boxes like membranous skin. She shuddered as she looked around. It was the first time she’d had a proper look inside the underground room; already she felt a sense of claustrophobia. Nevertheless she moved towards the first pile of packing cases, rummaging through them, not really sure what she was looking for but fearing what she might find.
The boxes were mostly full of old newspaper, which had been used as padding around items of value. There didn’t seem to be much else lurking in there.
She heard a noise from above her and froze.
Instinctively she switched off the torch, standing completely still in the cloying darkness, her heart thudding against her ribs.
Whatever it was appeared to be coming from the sitting-room, above her to the left.
She heard it again.
Donna suddenly realized the source of the disturbance.
It was a piece of wood banging against a window-frame, blown by the wind.
Flicking the torch back on she continued her search, checking more boxes, feeling her feet sinking into the earthen floor. The dirt stuck to her trainers. She muttered to herself, scraping the sticky mud off against a wooden box.
Her efforts to remove the earth caused the box to topple over and Donna saw, beneath where it had stood, a piece of metal; a sheet of rusted iron about a foot square, only part of it showing through the dark earth. She aimed the torch at it, then dropped to her knees and began pulling at the clods. The odour of damp was thick and noxious but she continued with her task, finally exposing the metal sheet.
It was covering a small hole.
Donna laid the torch beside the hole, slipped her fingers under the sheet of iron and lifted, flipping it over.
She snatched the torch up again and shone it down into the hole.
The object inside was small, perhaps twice the size of a man’s fist, and wrapped in plastic.
Her heart beat faster as she reached for it.
Leave it. Go now. Walk away forever.
She hesitated a moment.
Get out now and never return.
Donna had to know. She snatched up the object, pulling the plastic from it like a child would unwrap a Christmas present.
The skull was unmistakably that of a baby.
Parts of it were not even completely formed. The fontanelles had not yet joined.
The child must have been very young indeed.
Days old when ...
When it was killed?
She dropped the skull and closed her eyes, tears beginning to form behind her lids. When she looked down again the skull had fallen back into the hole, the eye sockets gazing sightlessly up at her.
‘He was one of us.’
She sat down on the wet earth, the torch still gripped in one hand, tears coursing down her cheeks.
Donna felt something digging into her backside and realized that she still had the folded pages of the Grimoire stuffed in there.
Including the page which bore her husband’s name.
She pulled it out slowly and unfolded it, shining the light over the other names on the list.
Other members of The Sons of Midnight.
‘They have infiltrated everywhere.’
Donna read the first of the names.
‘Oh, Christ,’ she murmured.
She heard the creaking above her, spun round and looked up.
There was a torch beam shining in her face now, held by the figure on the edge of the cellar opening.
It was Detective Constable David Mackenzie.
Ninety-Five
‘Come up here, Mrs Ward, and bring the pages from the book with you.’
Mackenzie’s words seemed to echo inside the small cellar.
As Donna looked more closely, she saw that he was holding a gun; too. The .38 glinted in the torchlight.
Without a second thought she began to climb the steps, the pages of the Grimoire held in her hand. There was no point in trying to run. Where the hell was she going to go?
She pulled herself out of the cellar and stood facing him, noticing that he’d taken a step back, that the pistol was levelled at her.
‘You’re part of it,’ she said flatly.
‘Drop the pages on the floor in front of you and step back,’ Mackenzie told her.
She did as instructed, tossing the parchment away as if it was infected with some vile disease.
Mackenzie picked the discarded paper up without taking his eyes off her. He stuffed the pages into the pocket of his coat. He moved away from her again.
‘You knew right from the beginning,’ she said. ‘You knew that first night at the hospital when I came to identify Chris. You were a part of it then.
You’re
one of them, aren’t you?’
The policeman smiled thinly.
‘One of who, Mrs Ward?’ he said.
‘The Sons of Midnight, or whatever the hell they call themselves.’
‘You saw some of the other names on the list,’ he said. ‘You can’t even begin to imagine how far this goes. Who is involved. How high up it goes. You’ve only scratched the surface. I’m a very small part of it but there are others who must be protected until the time is right. Your husband knew that, too. He knew who was involved, how important some of the higher ranking members were.’
‘That’s why you killed him?’
‘I told you, his death was an accident.‘ The policeman smiled. ‘Perhaps he was lucky. He died before we got to him.’
‘And now it’s my turn?’
‘Why should I kill you?’
‘I’ve seen the names on the list. I know what’s going on.’
‘You’ve seen some of the names, but you have no idea of what’s going on. You can’t begin to imagine what is going on and who else is involved. Like I said, you couldn’t begin to imagine how high this thing goes.’
‘No one can be trusted.’
‘Who would you go to with your revelations? The press? Television?’ There was a mocking tone in his voice. ‘Who’d believe you?’
He backed towards the kitchen door, the gun still levelled at her.
‘Everything you’ve done has been for nothing,’ he told her. ‘You wasted your time.’
Donna watched as he opened the door, then stepped outside into the night. She heard his footsteps in the mud beyond, heard a car engine start up, the vehicle pull away.
She walked through to the sitting-room and peered through a crack in the boarded-up window, watching the car’s rear lights disappearing into the gloom.
The package was standing on the table.
Donna saw it. Saw the small red lights winking on it.
She smelled something.