Ritual Read online

  Suddenly, he found himself in the vice of a half-Nelson. All David could see was a brown wrist lugging his neck back. His training had taught him to completely relax—just this side of going limp. So he completely relaxed—just this side of going limp. His head hung loose like a pendulum. The half-Nelson became less vicious. Hanlin counted a silent ‘One! Two! Three!’ and lashed behind him with his left foot. The steel tip on his heel ripped his attacker’s ankle. In the flush of pain, he loosened his grip a second on David’s neck. Immediately, David slammed his whole body against his attacker. They both scrunched onto the ground. David managed to slip free from the vice as he fell. He badly bruised his shoulder. Almost at once, they were on their feet, circling one another. David partially tripped on the dead pigeon. A blackberry thorn ripped its claw into his left hand. His hard pulsed violently.

  Four feet away from him, a young man flexed on his toes. He was barely twenty-two and of Romany extraction. That’s if appearances meant anything. Appearances often don’t. Sun had burnt the man’s skin to bronze. He was dressed in a battered pair of blue jeans—and that’s all. Neither shirt nor sandals civilized him. Copper rings clung to his earlobe, and his hair was a circus of black snakes. It rippled down his chin into a beard. A grin split his face like a melon. He edged towards his bow which swung from the lower branch of a silver birch. As he backed to the tree, light licked his face. His features were definitely a mixture of pale Negroid and Arab. Fast and dark, his hand uncoiled to the bow. David swerved to his right. The Negroid eyes followed David’s movement. David doubled back fractionally in his tracks and then with two giant leaps, he rugger-tackled. He was only able to clamp a partial grip on him, but sufficient to trip him up.

  David was extremely strong, but he found he could not pin him down. He even attempted a Karate chop on the exposed neck. The gypsy avoided the blow and lashed out with his knee, bruising David’s rib cage. David recovered, and hurled himself at his attacker. He caught David’s parallel body with both feet in the gut. David was catapulted over his head. Hanlin’s wallet left his inside pocket as he was rammed by his own velocity into a handful of fern. Holding his gut, painfully he achieved his feet. Breathing was like emery paper rubbed on the back of the hand until blood comes. Brushing the headache out of his eyes, he refocused on the gypsy, who appeared to be very amused. His melon grin had spread to two melons. He held his bow in his left hand and an arrow between his teeth.

  He’s seen too many Indian films, thought David.

  In his right hand he held David’s wallet. He spoke with the arrow between his teeth. His words were badly formed but still recognisably English.

  ‘Your wallet, Mister! Rough on you, eh? You ain’t got no wallet no more. You got nothing but a bunch of bruises—and they’re free!’

  David noticed that he wore the beard to cover up tiny white spots which punctuated his chin. The moustache under his squashed nose was only a boyish wisp. It wouldn’t grow properly and he was very concerned about it.

  ‘Laddy, I should return my wallet or your moustache might wither and drop off! The strain of stealing is very severe on beards!’

  The gypsy’s reply was to thumb open the wallet.

  ‘I shouldn’t do that, Laddy, the contents might give you hair failure! I said I shouldn’t! I said...’

  The gypsy examined the contents. He did not have to look far. In the usual place for photographs, he read the following: ‘Detective Inspector David Hanlin, Scotland Yard, Special Branch’. He dropped the wallet as though it had nibbled him, and rubbed his moustache. One of the white spots oozed by his nose.

  ‘You see what I mean, Laddy!’

  ‘Hey, you ain’t a—what it says in there—are you?’ Hanlin examined his numerous bruises.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. My wallet, please. Thank you. What’s your name? Where do you live? What are you doing arrowing passersby? Have you a licence for that weapon? Come on, show me! And no lies. My bruises have narrowed my sense of humour.’

  ‘Sorry, Mister, I ain’t got no licence, and they call me Gypo, and I live in these woods, and I’m sorry...’

  ‘You haven’t even got a proper name, never mind a licence! What do you know about the death of a certain little girl?’

  As he said this, he picked up his briefcase and moved on. Gypo followed him, sliding the arrow from his mouth to the quiver on his nude shoulders.

  ‘Which girl, Mister?—I mean, Mr. Policeman?’

  David grabbed the lad by his hair and shook him like a messy cat.

  ‘Oh come on, you know all right, son, you know what I mean! And whatever you’ve heard about police toleration, especially when they come to deal with lying and evasion, well, you can take it from me, there’s no such bloody thing! I could throw the book at you. You’d probably get six months for trying to William Tell a policeman for a start! And three months extra for a disagreeable face! And I do find your face disagreeable. So you can oblige yourself and me by answering the trifles I ask you. Right! Now, how did Dian Spark die? She was murdered, wasn’t she? Ritual murder!’

  Gypo was silent. David ripped a small tuft of hair from the back of the boy’s head. In spite of himself, Gypo squealed.

  ‘Come on! Come on!’

  ‘All right, show you, Mister—I’ll take you where it happened—though it was an accident...’

  David released the boy. Gypo’s eyes tightened to a pinpoint of hate. Gypo was an expert with hate. He hated most things. A long time ago he decided he was an outcast. And whether society regarded him as undesirable or not, he was putting in a lot of hate hours to ensure he would be finally ostracised. Fortunately for him, David didn’t see the hate. If he had, he would probably have reacted violently.

  Well, his identity was out. Everyone in the village would know within a few hours. And his investigations had hardly begun. Come on, laugh, Hanlin, laugh! It may be the last opportunity you have for a long while.

  ‘No, Laddy, I don’t think it was an accident. I’m part of a research team from Scotland Yard. Actually I’m in charge. So take me to where it happened and I advise you to tell me everything you know.’

  Gypo grinned. His breath smelt of uncooked mushrooms. ‘I also advise you, Laddy, to forget my identity and then, with a bit of luck, I may forget you!’

  Accompanied by his grin, Gypo reiterated his lack of knowledge concerning Dian as he led the Inspector through the wood.

  Eventually they came out of the trees, and David saw the Cornwall hills. Cobalt blue in the mid distance. The giant oak tree leant her ripe branches to the tug of the sea breeze. Salt air swirled in the leaves like evening rain. The leaves chattered to one another as the humans blundered on to the landscape.

  Without warning, Gypo ran towards the oak tree, but David was quicker. He tripped the lad into the spikey grass, and swiftly moved to the base of the tree. About four feet from the roots, a monkey’s head was hat-pinned to the bark, and flanked by two bats. A sprig of garlic crowned this three-dimensional mural. Someone was obviously trying to impress someone with the basics of Gothicism. But who was trying to impress who? He turned to question Gypo. Amicably grinning, Gypo stood up. Well, as amicably as a professional hater can grin.

  ‘Sonny, why did you run towards this oak? You wanted to destroy these signs, didn’t you? I’ll hunt this village out, and if I find any dabbling in the occult here, I’ll split this village down its seams! Now, who did this? Who?’

  ‘Me, of course, Policeman, I did! See, I’m interested in pretty things. Bats wings are pretty, ain’t they? As you’re a nice man and so full of brains, it amazes me how you didn’t know!’

  5

  ‘Dian, please, tell Mummy, please! You did? You did? You fell out of the tree without hands clawing at you? It was an accident then? Is the grave too cold? When you become fire and water and earth, you will not feel the cold. I can sleep now. I can sleep. Thank you, my dearest, thank you...’

  And Mrs. Helen Spark let the tears come. They stained her white makeup.
Her midnight emeralds were soothed by the water. But it hurt to cry. Crying was the final release after spiritual pain. Each time it was harder for her to give in to herself. Only hate was easy. She stored hate. But laughing and crying—they were more difficult than giving birth.

  Oblivious to the humans in the room, the butterfly spread its Japanese fans, with a sunset on each wing, mounted the wind and floated out of the window. Then it swooped to the coloured blobs below. But it decided against them and settled on a lime tree overhanging the street.

  The decision was hardly surprising. The blobs were children.

  Led by Fat Billy, the Indians were chasing Little Bert. Little Bert sobbed as he ran. They were nearly on to him and would definitely eat him alive—which was very disturbing. His little body hurt with the running. He ran down the centre of the Village street, swerved to the kerb with the pack behind him, changed his mind, swerved back down the white line again. He kept on running. His vision jogged up and down and tears of fear streamed into his teeth.

  Barely avoiding a pile of horse manure, Bert screwed up his nose and headed for an alley. He passed Spark’s shop on the left. The Gang were nearly on him. Suddenly he changed his direction and recrossed the road a hundred yards beyond Sparks’. This took Fat Billy by surprise, but being the efficient tyrant he was, he summoned his legions to ‘about turn’ and surged after Bert.

  Bert slipped on an apple core a foot from the kerb. He cricked his leg. A jerk of pain tensed his body. But he ran on, recrossing Spark’s shop and passing underneath the dozing butterfly. Then he splurged his foot on the edge of the horse dung, and his momentum tripped him up. He sprawled some four feet the other side of the dung. It was smeared on the shoe of his hurt foot.

  The Gang arrived.

  ‘Got you, Berty, ain’t we? Yes, we’ve got you! And now you’ll pay for the trouble you’ve caused!’

  Fat Billy’s eyes disappeared into his chubby cheeks as boy sadism took over.

  ‘You may have to be sacrificed before the time comes, Little Berty, and the time’s nearly here! Right, kids, we’ll do the dance of death round him, and then we’ll take him to the woods and then his Mum will never see him again, will she, Little Berty?’

  Susan, the pretty eight year old, moved out from behind Joan and demanded, ‘Isn’t that cruel? You know, really cruel?’

  “Course not, he’s broken our rules. He lets his Mum boss him about and he tried to sneak off for his dinner when we hadn’t given him no permission!’

  Joan, with her pale nun’s face, placed both hands on Little Bert’s shoulders.

  ‘You mean. Fat Billy, that you didn’t give him permission, don’t you?’

  ‘No, I mean what I says! We’ll dance now! Get your mouth organ out, James, and play the right music!’

  James pulled out a cheap mouth organ and began to make weird noises on it. Discordant and basically unmusical, the children improvised a dance round Bert, who was trying to clean the dung off his shoe and the cut on his knee. They chanted the pleasing words of ‘Death to Berty! Berty death! Death to Berty!’

  They were so engrossed in their act of kindness, they didn’t hear an approaching lorry.

  Faces peered at them from behind cottage windows as the war dance progressed.

  The lorry piled round the corner. The children scampered onto the pavement leaving Berty in the middle of the road. Bewildered by dung, blood and death in his ear, Berty sat perfectly still as the lorry stormed towards him. He was hypnotised by its roar. He could not move. Susan screamed at him, ‘Get up, Berty, get off the road!’ He did not move. Unable to watch, Susan ran towards him as the lorry snarled to a halt. Two feet from the boy. The engine pulsed. The lorry driver vaulted out of his saddle and picked the boy up.

  ‘You silly young basket, I could have squashed you flat!’

  Except for Susan, the other children had disappeared down various alleys. They decided not to face the music.

  Susan spoke up for Bert, who was rubbing his honey hands in his eyes, trying to staunch his water supply.

  ‘It’s not his fault, Mister, honest. It was us!’

  She indicated behind her to the invisible legions.

  ‘Honest Injun, it was!’

  The lorry driver was overwrought with the horror of what had nearly happened. Behind his eyes, he saw mirrored a writhing hunk of blood and bone decorating his mudguard. He belted Berty round the ear.

  ‘I nearly killed you! Do you understand that! I would have had to take you home dead to your Mother! You bloody kids don’t know how near you push your luck!’

  Berty barely noticed the blow. He simply continued to cry. The lorry driver took him to the side of the road. He mopped the boy’s eyes with his handkerchief and returned to his lorry. As he was about to remount he turned and threw a shilling piece in the direction of Berty. The coin rolled about five feet away from the boy.

  And then, with surprising alacrity, the swooping blubber of Fat Billy dived from one of the alleyways. Like a predatory owl, he scooped up the mouse shilling and flapped, fatness and all, into another alley.

  The lorry driver considered whether he should give chase and thump the bejesus out of the monster, or not. He thought better of it, and levered himself into his saddle.

  ‘You’ve got some nice friends, I must say! But when you’re bigger, you’ll get him! Bullies always get their comeuppance! St. Valentine’s Day is always hanging around some old garage!’

  With this piece of profound Chicago philosophy released into the stratosphere, he drove off.

  The Gang waited until the lorry was a hurtle of dust before re-entering the scene of their crime. Billy came up behind Berty, intending to continue the punishment, when John, the twin, noticed the butterfly had perched on Rowbottom’s window ledge. The children forgot their human victim and moved to destroy the insect.

  The Rowbottoms’ side door opened, and Gilly stepped into the street.

  ‘Sorry, Gang, but I had to go for a pee!’

  This woke the butterfly. It opened its twin sunsets and skittered into the air before the children could catch it. After a brief acrobatic display, it circled Bert’s head twice and then parachuted down beside the boy. Bert was still spreading sprinkles of blood on his nose rag. It dribbled from a gritty cut just below his left knee. He did not notice the butterfly.

  The sun was moving towards three o’clock.

  Fat Billy grinned as the insect preened its peacock wings on the kerb. He unfolded a liquorice-stained handkerchief from a liquorice-stained pocket and then carefully tip-toed towards the wings. The wings glimmered like an autumn bonfire. Billy could see them in his mind pinned on a white card in his collection. This flame butterfly would go superbly with his giant hawk-moth, which he’d caught in the lavatory pan at the bottom of his garden.

  Berty continued sniffing and dabbing the grit out of his wound. Moving quietly on chubby legs, Billy managed to keep his shadow from sliding over the butterfly. Nearer and nearer. The fat boy stretched the handkerchief out in his fingertips and poised over the orange wings. Then with a smothering action, he netted it. Or so he thought. But he hadn’t completely covered the insect. The wings shuffled into the sunlight. Desperately Billy grabbed. Berty stood up and deflected Billy’s aim. The butterfly flew twice round the boys, before climbing onto the mane of a passing breeze and being sucked into the Sparks’ shop.

  Immediately all the children clattered into the shop after their prize rainbow.

  Outside the loft where Mrs. Spark was holding her supposed Literary Meeting, Anna Spark listened at the keyhole. Her curved breasts were tense with concentration. She could not hear exactly what was being said but she sensed that her mother was experimenting in the other dimension.

  Unlike her mother, her eyes were not deep with the midnight. They were a softer green, hinting pike pools and foam. The nose was subtly hooked, reminiscent of the Romans, but very attractive. Her lips hinted sensual promise and even greater knowledge.

  As the el
ectricity buzzed through the keyhole, Anna felt the power of the summer churn in her navel. She started sweating under her arms and breasts. She heard the children clatter into the shop below. Swiftly she turned away from the door. Her lips brightened into a wet smile.

  In the shop, Mr. Spark was practically knocked over by the onslaught. The Gang pursued their rainbow as it fluttered between the sweet jars. Mr. Spark began to swear continuously. His language built to a crescendo. He swung his arms like lengths of lead in the direction of Susan, who was crawling between his feet. ‘For Christ’s immaculate sake! Bloody Hell! Bugger me! Why don’t you little illegitimates go to hell!’

  He yelled these and other advanced compliments. The children ignored him. Billy had temporarily trapped the butterfly in the box of nude dolls. It was about to escape again. There was no alternative. He picked up a jar of sweets and raised it high above the insect before smashing it down!

  A crushed rainbow stained the naked dolls. One doll was dented in the navel. A feeler was lashed across its face.

  Mr. Spark’s hand flailed out of a slice of sunshine and thrashed Billy, hard, very hard, across the nape of his neck. Like a plump minnow, Billy splashed all his blubber into the arms of the dolls. The hysteria in the children sank to their feet. They froze. Waiting. For the punishment.

  With a firm hand, Mr. Spark removed the minnow from the dolls and threw him towards the frightened tadpoles. Then he carefully picked up the colours of the rainbow. The butterfly, or what was left of it, lay in the palm of his hand. Its bonfire only twisted ashy now. It had lost a wing and both legs. A sludge brown leaked where the body had been.

  Breathless from the blow, Billy still refused to cry.

  ‘How destructive can you get, Billy? You children make me vomit sometimes! Only sometimes. But this is one of the times! This killing was pointless, Billy, pointless!’