The path became easier and he picked his way across the uneven ground to the grey stone building and its graveyard beyond, its stones angled and tilted in a way that suggested the dead were desperately trying to push up and out. The walls of the building stood mottled with lichen, a padlocked metal gate across the porch barring entry. There was no view into the interior; the leaded windows caked with years of grime, the lowest lancets boarded with wood. A single diamond in the leaded panels in the southern elevation had been punched out. Someone as tall as Starkey could peer in, but there was nothing to see except an eerie gloom and nothing to smell except musty damp.
He stood for a moment in the shadow of the trees that covered this spot and stopped the sun from ever reaching the stones, listening for a stick cracking underfoot or the chatter of conversation that would indicate other walkers nearby. There was none. The breeze, so welcoming in the sunlight, carried cool air up from the stagnant pond water below, a sickly waft of decay on its breath.
Starkey walked behind the chapel to the north transept, the one closest to the bank. Now, in the summer, another wall of greenery stretched across, preventing the casual walker from circumnavigating the building. But in February, on his day of revelation, all that had died away to reveal what had once been a wall. Its stones, battered by the rain and wind over centuries, collapsed in a heap. Through the gap, which Starkey guessed must once have been a blockaded archway, he glimpsed another building. Smaller, square, still of the same stone. He’d been to enough graveyards to realise that this must be a sacristy or vestry, used to house sacred items, robes or records.
Again, Starkey was careful not to disturb the screen of vegetation too much, not wanting to reveal his presence. He removed gardening gloves from his strapped-on tool belt and teased an opening. Stepping over the tumbled wall, he walked to the east wall and a jumble of stones. Quickly, he removed them, piling them carefully a few feet away until the low access way he’d found that first day was revealed, guarded by a metal grid. He’d placed it there to repel the curious, if anyone had the gumption to remove the stones. So far, no one had.
He slid off the rucksack and put it down. The grill was not attached and he lifted it away easily. From his belt, he took a headlight and slid it onto his forehead before slowly manoeuvring backwards into the sacristy itself. Other than a thin square of light from the access way, inside was cold darkness. Four bare walls and stone floors, unadorned and stripped of all their glory. But this room, this abandoned room, held one secret Starkey had stumbled upon by accident. He shook his head. Being here was no accident. Fate had brought him here. Given him an opportunity to flourish.
He wished he’d known about this place that very first time. The dead and their bones thrilled him. A fitting place in which to maim and kill. Had he known about this place he would not have panicked and left Rosie’s bones on the path near Charterhouse. His plan then was to hide her in a crypt. One that he was familiar with. One that was open to the public with its own ossuary behind a flimsy rail that would not have been difficult to remove. A fitting place for Rosie. He had murdered her at Pux Cottage, boiled her clean there too. But when he’d arrived at Charterhouse, workmen were renovating, and the path was unusually busy with a rambling club. They’d surprised him and he’d foolishly thrown her bones into the undergrowth and run. It might have been the end of it. The first and last.
But the pain of the laughter of the Turner girls never left him. And then he’d discovered St Wystone’s. This was now his stage. Where he brought them to die. They’d go back to Pux Cottage as corpses. Ready for boiling. Then he’d bring the bones back again to St Wystone’s. Cleaned and purified. Their final resting place.
All part of the great ritual.
There’d been snow on the ground the day of his first visit to the chapel, some twenty months after he’d taken Rosie Dawson. None of it lasted in the forest proper, but down in the wooded dell there was enough to stick to his boots and be transferred in, though he’d mashed it to a pulp during his exploration of the tiny room and it quickly liquefied to form a shallow puddle.
Starkey had been on the point of leaving when he noticed the puddle had formed a rivulet, as always following the path of least resistance, towards the south wall, where it disappeared into the space around a large square stone. Intrigued, he’d scraped away the dirt and dust to find that this square stone had no mortar around it. It was three weeks before he returned with tools to lift the flagstone away and find the answer to all his problems.
Forty-Two
Anna set her phone in a holder on the dash for the call.
‘Trisha, talk to me.’
‘Rowsys have three engineers that service the equipment they either sell or lease to hospitals. Kevin Starkey covers the west of the country as far up as Manchester. They have contracts in at least 100 hospitals with dozens of departments in each, apparently.’
‘Ma’am,’ Holder’s voice this time, sounding grim. ‘Rowsys have equipment in every hospital on the list Hawley gave us. They’re all in Starkey’s patch.’
‘All except Blair Smeaton,’ Anna said.
This time it was Khosa who pushed in, her tone deep and strained. ‘Sometimes, when one engineer goes on holiday they cover for each other if there’s a call out. Starkey had to go to Edinburgh last month and last week to deal with a problem at the infirmary there.’
Anna squeezed her eyes shut, but it was only momentary, enough to calm the tingling surge that rippled up her spine.
Holder said, ‘He’s meant to be at a hospital in Swindon today but rang them to say he was unwell.’
Anna nodded. ‘We need to find him. Get over to his house. If he’s there, bring him in. If he isn’t, find out where he is.’
‘Should we talk to Edinburgh, ma’am?’ Justin asked.
‘Danaher’s expecting Trisha to call. But they’re too far away. This is our patch.’
They all knew there was something left unsaid. Something huge.
It was Khosa who came out with it. ‘Do you think he might still have Blair—’
But Anna cut her off. ‘We assume he does. Trisha, is the super in?’
‘At a meeting in Bath, ma’am.’
‘Find him and get him to ring me.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Static ticked over the line telling her it was still open. Frustration boiled over in Anna and she yelled, ‘Why the hell are you still there?’
Forty-Three
In the Chepstow Wood, in a dank space on the ground floor of an abandoned room, Starkey retrieved the heavy rucksack, ignoring the muffled noises from within. He reached for the crowbar and slid the sharp end into the gap around a stone in the floor. It came away easily and he levered one edge onto the surrounding flagstones before sliding it across. The gap below exhaled cool, dead air into his face, like the breath of a spectre.
An aluminium ladder led down into a narrow tunnel, no longer than a few feet, leading back towards the chapel, and towards whatever sort of place of worship had been here long before Christians thought it wise to capitalise on a sacred spot. But Starkey was pretty sure it was the Christians who had built this crypt. He switched off his headlight, enjoying the darkness. A darkness so dense it became almost palpable; the quiet so complete, the only sound his own breathing.
He stood that way for a moment, savouring it, sucking it in. Then he flicked on his headlight and reached for the first of several battery-operated lamps he’d left here, quickly entering the crypt and lighting the remaining dozen LED lanterns as he went until he stood at its northern limit, under the transept of the chapel, and looked back.