CHAPTER EIGHT
It was barely nine in the morning when Robert Carter lit his fifth cigarette, threw the cold remnants of his coffee onto the grass and sat back in his canvas garden chair. The inevitable suspension from duties that followed his assault on Crozier had given him three days at home so far and the days seemed destined to merge into weeks. Crozier was not a man for forgiveness; certainly not where Carter was concerned. Carter smiled; it had been worth it though. The satisfaction from the actual blow was one thing, but the look of surprise on the man’s face was priceless.
The weather had been kind and Carter had spent most of his enforced rest in the garden. The view down to the lake was spectacular, and there were hardly any tourists yet in this part of the Lake District so distractions were few.
He had worried over and over in his mind about the events that had led to Sian’s disappearance but couldn’t reach a conclusion. There seemed no explanation, logical or paranormal, to comfortably fit her complete loss from the world. The results from the car interior didn’t even reveal any DNA traces from her. It was as if she hadn’t existed. Only Carter knew she did exist, was a living, breathing, warm and loving girl, and it was his fault she was gone.
His fault and therefore his task to find her.
He picked up the laptop from the small glass-topped table and checked that he was still online. Wireless Internet was great but reception was not always as reliable as he would have chosen. The page he had been reading was still displayed. The Old Straight Track and Alfred Watkins.
Carter had always been taught that Alfred Watkins, a Herefordshire businessman, had discovered the concept of ley lines, or Leys, in 1921, and published his findings in his book The Old Straight Track. Watkins had been out in the countryside when it struck him that many of the footpaths seemed to pass in a straight line over the hilltops. These hilltops seemed to connect ancient sites of interest and Watkins argued that there was a whole pattern of alignments across the land, not only in his immediate view but much further afield as well.
Watkins suggested these straight tracks or ley lines might be the remnants of prehistoric trading routes. The fact that many of the tracks went up extremely steep hills he left to conjecture and over the years many explanations for these direct lines were examined, until Leys took on a mystical element.
Ley lines seemed to be alignments of ancient sites or holy places that are situated in a straight line and can range to several miles in length. They can be identified by the placed marker sites, or by the remnants of an old track.
Watkins said in his book, ‘…visualize a mound, circular earthwork, or clump of trees, planted on these high points, and in low points in the valley other mounds ringed with water to be seen from a distance. Then great standing stones brought to mark the way at intervals…’
Carter learned that Watkins told his son, ‘The whole thing came to me in a flash.’ Carter guessed this was a simple way of saying his thoughts and ideas coalesced simultaneously in a moment of inspiration but over the years the ‘flash’ began to be interpreted as having a magical meaning. Watkins believed the lines dated back to pre-Roman times.
From the Internet Carter found earlier references to Leys. In 1870, again in Herefordshire, William Henry Black gave a talk called Boundaries and Landmarks to the British Archaeological Association where he suggested, ‘Monuments exist marking grand geometrical lines which cover the whole of Western Europe.’ Of course this might have been where the idea first embedded in Watkins’s mind, as he was a keen archaeologist, but for Carter the idea that ley lines might span the whole of Europe was fascinating.
He lit another cigarette and looked out over the treetops to the expanse of lake. Rods of sunlight cut through the thin gray cloud bouncing from the surface of the water as if smiles in a mirror.
Scrolling through related pages he found references to later ideas about Leys. Two British dowsers from the British Museum linked ley lines with underground streams and magnetic currents. Claims were that crossings of negative water lines and positive magnetic lines made a site holy, with many of these double lines on sacred sites.
Two German Nazi researchers, Wilhelm Tuedt and Josef Heinsch also claimed Teutonic peoples added to the construction of a network of astronomical Holy lines or Heilige Linien, which could be mapped against sacred sites throughout Europe. One example given was the rock formation in central Germany called Die Externsteine.
Later writers mentioned China and the whole landscape being in touch with the earth due to the laws of feng shui. It is thought that ancient civilizations believed the harmony of their people was dependent upon the harmony of the earth. To preserve this union they built their structures and monuments according to ley lines. Apart from China there was evidence in Greece, the civilizations of the Aztecs, the Mayans, the Incas, and even close to home in England and Scotland. Most schoolchildren knew about Stonehenge, though most were less familiar with the larger Avebury.
He stubbed out his cigarette and walked back to his cottage to brew some fresh coffee and make a sandwich.
Seated at the battered pine table he listened to the coffee machine performing its magic. It was the only sound in the house. He lived alone, and always had. There were plenty of women he shared his life with from time to time but none that stayed around long enough to move in. None that he wanted to open up to, with whom to share his innermost thoughts. Given his psychic ability he knew that if he ever did find someone to share his life with they would have to be special.
He poured out the coffee. There had been a woman, once, one that might have been special. He had let her go. She was married and he didn’t want any relationship they might have to end with pain. That was what he told himself.
Back at the garden table he bit into his toasted cheese and tomato sandwich. The research about ley lines had a point. He was agonizing over Sian. He was looking for links between the house they had investigated and recent similar occurrences.
Ley lines were one part of the possible link but what he had been pondering was what similarities there might be between the actual places. He had his files on the other chair. The house he was familiar with was the most recent, and not one he needed any notes to recall. The others were spaced out a few months apart. One was a small factory outlet in an industrial park; another was a multistory car park; and then there was a small retreat that consisted of a number of terraced houses knocked through into one dwelling.
There was no instantly recognizable link, so Carter went back to the first file and started again. What did the factory do? Did it make things, assemble things, what? After wading through reams of paper Carter found the answer: religious artifacts. Okay, that was a start. How did that link to the car park? There was no obvious clue in its purpose so he looked at the location on a map. It was in a residential area, houses all around, a row of local shops, and a church.
The next file was the ordinary house from a few days ago. Again there was nothing about the house itself to provide any clues. The location was as ordinary as the house; nothing there seemed liable to produce a link. The Flemings were ordinary in every way so far as he could tell; hardworking, clean living, even churchgoers. He checked again, though he knew the answer. Sian was a regular churchgoer as well, a strict Catholic girl.
With mounting anticipation Carter pulled over the last file: the retreat. The file indicated it had originally been a row of terraced houses built for the workers at a mill that produced cotton at the turn of the twentieth century. In the 1990s it had been cleverly converted into a single dwelling, long and narrow though it was organized to accommodate up to fifteen priests. The retreat was a house for Jesuit priests to stay in and meditate.