Last Rites Read online

  ‘You know how to make yourself conspicuous, Garrett,’ said Carson, walking over to me, trying to intimidate me. His colleague behind him was more watchful, and I could feel him assessing me. They seemed like opposites. Fire and ice. The classic team of good cop, bad cop.

  ‘I can just go,’ I said, and then I held up the bag. ‘Or you can stop puffing your chest out and I can tell you what I know. The story won't take long to write, so if you want to wait for the front-page edition, you can.’

  Carson ground his teeth as I stood there for a few seconds, just waiting out the silence, the bag in my hand. It was obvious he was used to being in charge. He took a few deep breaths through his nose, his cheeks just flashing red, before he said, ‘So you've been talking to tree-huggers and inbreds around Pendle Hill. It's tourist stuff, nothing more. Witch shops, walking trails, crap like that. Why should I be interested?’

  ‘Because there's a connection,’ I said.

  Carson looked at his companion, just a raise of the eyebrows, a doubtful look, before he asked, ‘With what?’

  ‘With Sarah Goode.’

  Carson stepped closer. ‘What proof have you got?’

  ‘Are you prepared to think about Sarah as anything other than a murder suspect?’ I asked, still holding up the bag.

  ‘In a murder investigation, you have to play the percentages,’ he replied.

  ‘And maybe sometimes you have to get creative,’ I said. ‘Like, why does a young woman from a normal family murder a casual boyfriend? And what if Sarah is in danger?’ Before Carson could respond, I added, ‘Sarah Goode is a descendant of a Pendle witch, and she is a member of a witches' coven. Members of that coven have been killed over the last ten years, and I think Sarah might be the latest.’

  Carson and his colleague looked at each other, surprised.

  ‘A coven?’ asked Carson incredulously. And then he started to laugh. ‘I'll tell you something, Mr Garrett: every instance of witchcraft I have come across in my police career is nothing much more than middle-aged men trying to persuade young women to take off their clothes. Sometimes the girls are too young, and so we get involved.’

  ‘I bet you've come across a few vicars who have caused you concern too.’

  Carson took some deep breaths, and then said quietly, ‘This is all very convenient.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your job is to clear Sarah,’ he said angrily. ‘You were brought into this by Sam Nixon, her wannabe lawyer. No one knows about her involvement in witchcraft, and then Sam Nixon sets you after her, and suddenly it's all talk of covens and old murders.’

  ‘Why would I want to make something up?’

  ‘Because you hope it will give her a defence,’ Carson snapped. ‘Maybe Sarah does have a family link, and maybe she does go to some kind of coven. But that means nothing. It's kids' stuff. Hocus pocus, fun in the woods, everyone's at it this time of year. Now that she is in trouble, she is making herself out to be some crazy old witch to get some kind of diminished responsibility defence. Avoids a life sentence,’ and then he stared at me, ‘and perhaps she even has some lawyer telling her how to sound, because he has sent a reporter to follow the trail she has set.’

  ‘You forget that for me this is just a story,’ I responded. ‘Think about the other options.’

  ‘What like?’

  ‘We know that the witch thing isn't a coincidence, the letters tell us that. And we know the letters are from Sarah.’

  Carson glowered at me. ‘Those don't get printed. Understand?’ The question was brisk.

  ‘But they make one hell of a story, don't you think?’

  Carson pointed angrily towards the door from which he had just come. ‘In there, now, Mr Garrett,’ he growled at me. ‘I think we need to talk.’

  Chapter Sixty

  Sarah didn't move as the noise of the heartbeat stopped and footsteps sounded on the other side of the door. She sat back against the wall and waited for him to enter.

  The door opened slowly, as always, rumbling on its runner. As he stepped in, he stopped, his head tilted downwards, towards the hole Sarah had dug during the night.

  He lifted his head and looked over towards Sarah, who stared back at him defiantly. Her fear had gone, because she knew where it was going to end. There was no escape, she knew that now, and with the certainty of her end came strength.

  His head tilted back towards the hole. Two skeletons exposed, the bones bright, both with the same ring on one hand. When he seemed to look back at Sarah, just his head moving, she held up the springs in her hand, the hooked ends sharpened by the digging.

  ‘I've been busy,’ she said, spitting the words out, her hands digging into the springs.

  He didn't answer. He let the silence grow.

  Sarah swallowed. She had expected a response.

  ‘No way out?’ she asked eventually.

  He shook his head slowly, his body still.

  ‘How many more?’ she asked.

  ‘Just enough,’ was the reply.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Sarah asked, gesturing around her. ‘Why are you holding me like this? I've done nothing to you. Neither had they.’

  He moved forward quickly and grabbed a handful of Sarah's hair. He pulled her head to the floor and knelt down beside her. Sarah screamed in pain. His hand strained as he pulled her hair tighter. Sarah's hands flailed at his hood, trying to break free, crying out.

  He put his head to her ear and whispered, ‘We've spoken about this before. We're not so different.’

  Sarah froze. She remembered the last time she had stood up to him.

  ‘But what did they do to you?’ she hissed through gritted teeth.

  He laughed at that. ‘No, it's what I did to them that interests you,’ and then he held up his hand. ‘Enough. No more kindness,’ and then he let go of her hair before walking quickly out of the room.

  Sarah put her head to the floor and closed her eyes. She stayed like that for a while, just feeling the coldness of the ground against her head, when she heard something. She looked up and saw the other one, the younger one, the hood looser around his head. He was holding another bag.

  ‘One more letter,’ he said.

  Sarah shook her head. ‘No.’

  He stepped forward. ‘Now's not the time to be a heroine,’ he said.

  ‘But what if I don't?’

  He pointed towards the hole in the ground. ‘And then there were three,’ he said, laughing.

  Sarah looked down, thought for a few seconds, and then she held out her hand. He put the pen and paper into her hand, along with some pre-prepared script.

  She looked at what he was asking her to write, and then at him. Her mouth was open. ‘I can't.’

  He nodded. ‘You will.’

  Sarah looked at the hole again, the view blurring as her eyes filled with tears. She wiped her eyes and started to write, copying what he had brought in. When she had finished, she put her head on her arms and started to sob.

  She didn't notice when he left the room. She didn't know how long she had been on her own, but when she looked up again, she knew that she was living out the last day of her life.

  Chapter Sixty-one

  I was pushed towards a small room with a view onto the street outside, the walls once painted bright white but now yellowed by nicotine. I guessed that it was the room where the police took statements, nothing worse than that. As I put my bag of clippings onto the table, Carson burst in after me, the door smacking against the wall, his colleague just behind him.

  ‘You will print nothing about those letters,’ he said.

  ‘I'll write whatever makes the story interesting,’ I replied. ‘And if you know that the letters are from the witch trials, why are you being so dismissive about the witch connections?’

  ‘Sit down, Mr Garrett,’ Carson barked.

  ‘No, I won't sit down,’ I snapped back. ‘I've come here with information. If you already know it, I'll leave. If you don't, then maybe
it will help you to know that Sarah will die today.’

  ‘We know about the Facebook entry,’ he said sarcastically.

  ‘There's more than that,’ I replied.

  Carson opened his mouth to speak, and then he closed it again. His colleague stepped forward.

  ‘I'm Sergeant Joe Kinsella,’ he said, and he smiled politely. ‘Please tell us what you know.’

  His voice was more measured, and I saw curiosity in his eyes.

  I looked at Carson and saw that he was still angry, but I noticed how Joe Kinsella had an effect on him, that the quieter man kept him in check.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘maybe you're right: perhaps Sarah did kill Luke in a lover's rage. His death might have sent her over the edge, made her crazy.’ I tapped my head with my finger. ‘Maybe she has gone, unravelled.’

  Carson didn't respond.

  ‘Or maybe Sarah was already crazy,’ I said. ‘Perhaps she developed some obsession with witchcraft, and in her madness she killed Luke. Perhaps the letters are a manifestation of that. If you are right, that she killed Luke, then she is a dangerous woman, even to herself, and must be caught.’

  Carson nodded with mock-graciousness, but then said, ‘And I know reason number three. She killed her boyfriend, decided she needed a defence, so she goes to see her crooked defence lawyer, and he tells her to act crazy. She sends some well-researched letters and waits for a sympathetic jury. She will eventually appear on chat shows as the woman who killed and stayed free.’

  ‘You're too cynical,’ I said, trying to retrieve the initiative, ‘because that wasn't the final possibility. There is a more obvious one.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘What if the witchcraft obsession is someone else's? What if Sarah is the victim of that obsession? Think about it. She comes from a stable background, she's close to her family, and there are no known mental problems.’

  ‘Apart from the fact that she is in a witches' coven,’ said Carson, ‘which doesn't sound like ordinary-girl stuff.’

  ‘But messing around in the woods with salt and candles does not make her a psychotic knife-woman,’ I countered. ‘So could killing Luke have sent her over the edge? Well, I'm no criminologist, but I can guess one thing: young women do not kill casual boyfriends without a very good reason, and they were not so close that an argument would send Sarah into a blind rage.’

  ‘So go on,’ he said, ‘inspire me.’

  I ignored his sarcasm. ‘If it isn't fraud or madness,’ I said, ‘there is only one option left.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘That someone else is responsible for Luke's death.’ I paused. ‘It is the witch connection that ties Sarah into all this. And if that is the case, then Sarah is in great danger.’

  Carson glared at me for a few seconds, and then he started to laugh, except that it was filled with hostility, meant to belittle me. He walked to the door and held it open.

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Garrett. Perhaps you should call in on your girlfriend. She'll be spending her career filling out lost dog reports pretty soon.’

  I swung the bag onto the desk. ‘If it's just coincidence, there's been a lot of bad luck in Sarah's coven,’ I said sarcastically, and nodded towards the bag, the contents spilling onto the table. ‘Missing persons, murders and suicides, scattered around the Pendle area, and sometimes further afield. All different, but linked if you look at them the right way.’

  Carson looked at the bag, and then back at me. Kinsella stepped forward and began to pull the papers onto the table.

  ‘Linked how?’ asked Kinsella.

  ‘They were all descendants of Pendle witches,’ I said, ‘and they were all members of the same coven.’

  Carson spluttered a laugh, but when he realised that Joe Kinsella wasn't joining in, he stepped forward and pushed hard on my shoulder.

  ‘You'd better sit down,’ he said, and he was scowling as his colleague closed the door.

  Chapter Sixty-two

  I opened the bag and started to pull out the rest of its contents.

  ‘Four deaths, and two missing persons, plus Sarah,’ I said. I waved a piece of paper, a print-out of an old newspaper report. ‘April Mather. Jumped naked from the top of Blacko Tower ten years ago. Thirty years old.’ I glanced at the press picture of a smiling woman with long blonde hair, her head thrown back. It seemed such a waste.

  ‘Naked?’ asked Carson.

  ‘So the report says.’

  ‘And what the hell is Blacko Tower?’

  ‘An old stone folly close to Pendle Hill,’ I replied. ‘Some people think it is connected to the Pendle witches, but it isn't. It is just what it looks like: a small tower on a hill.’

  ‘What did the family say about it?’ asked Kinsella.

  I scanned the words quickly. ‘No direct quotes. She was married, one child, a boy. Her husband just wanted to be left to get over his grief undisturbed.’

  ‘What about suspicious circumstances?’

  ‘It doesn't say. Nothing about how she got onto Blacko Tower, or where she had been before then, or why she was naked. But if I keep on looking, I can find out more.’ I reached in for another sheet. ‘Rebecca Nurse. A nineteen-year-old girl from Higham, a small village not far from the hill. She set off walking to meet some friends in a pub, but she never arrived. The road is a country road, quiet and dark. She was found near to Sabden Brook two days later.’ When I saw Carson look at me, I said, ‘Sabden Brook is a small stream that runs to Newchurch.’

  ‘How long after the first one?’ asked Kinsella.

  ‘Around eighteen months,’ I replied.

  ‘And how did she die?’

  ‘Anally raped and strangled,’ I said. ‘Her hands were tied behind her back and linked to a thin cord around her neck, so that she was strangled by her own efforts to escape, killed like a dog on a choker. The police thought the brook was just a dumping ground, because there were grazes on her, and it's just soggy grassland down there.’

  ‘Suspects?’ asked Carson, although his mind seemed elsewhere, as if he was thinking back.

  ‘I don't know,’ I said. ‘Her boyfriend was away at university, and the papers don't mention any arrest or descriptions. It even went onto Crimewatch.’

  Carson spluttered a laugh. ‘That's like panning for gold.’ When I looked confused, he said, ‘You can get rich, but on the whole you get more dirt than nuggets.’ He nodded towards the bag. ‘Next?’

  I pulled out the next bundle of papers.

  ‘Mary Lacey,’ I said. ‘A nurse from Preston. She had an apartment on the docks, and used to walk home down the hill from the town centre, past all the down-and-out guest houses and hovels. One night, she never made it home.’

  ‘I know that one,’ said Carson, folding his arms. ‘I'd just joined the murder squad. She was found on the banks of the Ribble.’

  ‘That's right, four days later,’ I said. ‘And she didn't die in the water, did she?’

  Carson shook his head. ‘No. Raped and strangled.’

  ‘Just like Rebecca Nurse,’ I said.

  ‘No rope used, though,’ said Carson, scowling. ‘If you're trying to say we missed something, there is nothing to say that they were connected.’

  ‘Both raped and strangled and left by water,’ I said.

  ‘But the ties weren't used,’ Carson replied. ‘That's the signature. Mary had been beaten up, and her walk home didn't take her through the best part of town. The best we could come up with was a random sex attacker – you know, because she was on her own and in the wrong place at the wrong time – and just pray that it didn't happen again.’

  ‘Well, it did,’ I said. ‘The following spring. Susannah Martin. A shop assistant. She went to work and never came home. She was found in some woods near Skipton a week later.’

  ‘Is that all the deaths?’ asked Kinsella.

  I nodded. ‘The other two are just missing persons.’

  Carson's mouth twitched for a moment. ‘So why do you think they are connected to Sarah Goode?’


  I gave him a look of surprise. ‘Four members of the same coven die within a few years of each other, and you wonder about the connection?’

  Carson ground his teeth and clenched his jaw, so Kinsella intervened and asked, ‘So what about the missing persons?’

  ‘There was a gap after the murders, and the missing persons are more recent,’ I said. ‘One a year over the last two years. Bridget Bishop. She ran a shop in Accrington, selling Celtic jewellery and crystals, all that New Age stuff. One day she was there, and the next day she wasn't. But the business had been struggling, money was tight, and everyone thought she had run away to somewhere warm where the bank couldn't find her. The same for Lizzie Parris. Bit of a local wild child, just twenty, but she had spent the previous three years hitchhiking to festivals and travellers' camps. She set off on one of her trips and never made it home.’

  Carson exhaled loudly and flicked through the paperwork dismissively Kinsella was stroking his chin, and he looked deep in thought.

  ‘So is this everything?’ asked Carson.

  I nodded. ‘I was given a list of names.’

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘I can't say, but I got all this from the internet and the library archives, so it's no great secret. They were all members of the Family Coven, and they have all died or gone missing in the last decade, starting with April Mather.’

  Carson exchanged glances with Kinsella and then went to the door, opening it for me. ‘Thank you, Mr Garrett. If you'll leave this with us.’

  I smiled. ‘No problem.’ I stopped myself just before I got to the door. ‘Did I mention that the four bodies were found on one of the sabbats?’

  Carson's irritation returned. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

  ‘They are the Wicca celebrations, the special days in witchcraft,’ I said, enjoying his reaction.

  ‘What, like we have Easter and things like that?’ asked Kinsella.

  I nodded. ‘A closer match than you might think. In Wicca, Easter is called Oestara, as it was in Celtic times, when it was a festival of balance, the twenty-first of March, when day and night are equal and the long nights of winter are slowly disappearing. It's named after Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess whose symbols are the egg and the hare.’