Castles Made of Sand (20 page)

The glimmering skull wore an eye-wrap that gave it the look, in the ashen darkness, of some solemn allegorical figure, Blind Justice? It offered Fergal a crooked grin. ‘You’re right, it’s a hard thing. I can live with it. Now
shush
.’

Softly, in the distance, they heard the murmur of an approaching car.

It stopped in the layby and two people emerged, a man and a woman. The driver stayed inside. The pair had flashlights, they seemed to be checking for signs of danger, but they were confident and didn’t waste much time. They got back into the car, which stayed where it was, without lights. More cars arrived an hour later. Barmy signals had detected the use of a radiophone, but hadn’t been able to eavesdrop. These people were not amateurs. They arrived, they got out of the cars, they made very little noise. About half an hour after midnight they set off, in silence: dressed for a glitzy night out, carrying coolboxes, shading their flashlights, the women stumbling on high heels. Most wore masks, strange animal muzzles and horned things glowing in the dark; a few had naked faces. A small group went ahead: they stopped and barred the way where the track entered the grove. The guests were scrutinised and briefly questioned, one by one, but it was a formality, maybe part of the ritual. No digital masks were removed; no one was turned away.

Sage had been dividing his attention between several scenes: the dark wood around him, the live feed from the concealed night cameras; developments inside the enclosure. He spoke softly to Brock, next in the cordon; beyond Fergal.

‘Hey, Brock, look after Irish for me, will you? I’m going in.’

Up against the fence he paused to review the scene inside again. An orderly line had formed outside the changing room. The first comers were emerging sky-clad, later arrivals moving along. Grease tubs hanging on the wattle walls had been lit. The evening dresses of the women in the queue glowed with colour in the trails of smoky light. Dinner jackets, glossy leather. No unwashed outlaws, no struggling rurals here: this was exclusively the Celtics’ high society camp following. Figures, thought Sage. He would bet he knew a few hippies at Rivermead who would defend human sacrifice. But they’d never commit Personal Transport Hypocrisy to reach the venue.

A horned man went around with a horse-skull full of something dark, marking masked and unmasked faces on the brow. Brittle flurries of laughter and conversation rose, and fell, and rose again. Time to move. He stripped off the wrap and stowed it, switched the living skull to a conventional, charnel version, grabbed the top of the wattle fence and vaulted over. Ax was not available for much consultation, but it didn’t matter. They’d agreed on what to do if the worst should come to the worst. Which it had. The night camera at the entrance to the grove had left no room for doubt. David Sale was here. A bare-faced woman saw him as he landed. She beamed, eyes like pinwheels. Not much danger of being spotted as a stranger. None of these punters were likely to be facing the business part of the entertainment sober, even if they were convinced this was the acme of green cool. He hunched his shoulders and stayed near the tallest people, just in case; and watched the line going into the toilet block.

‘Ax,’ he murmured, touching his wrist. ‘Do it now.’

An explosion of lights, a wail of sirens. Loudhailer voices:
This is the police
.

Instant uproar. Everyone panicking, trying to leave—

Sage shouldered through the naked people rushing for the toilet block and scrambling out of it, clutching their clothes. The last of them he shoved out as he pushed his way in. In the light of a dim fluorescent tube he saw lockers, basins, a row of cubicles. Strewn underwear, a glittering gown, lost shoes. Half in and half out of the last cubicle, two half-clothed men crouched over the naked body of a third: trying to get him dressed, against his feeble resistance. The man on the floor wore a bull’s head. A white-face clown and a demon of some kind stared up at Sage in desperate consternation.

‘Get out of here,’ said Sage.

They left.

He shut the door (quite a riot going on out there), restored his own mask to its usual setting, squatted down, switched off the bull’s head at the patient’s wrist-controller and administered a popper: a vicious dose of straighten-up. David Sale opened his eyes. His face crumpled like a protesting child about to howl, then he jerked into a sitting position, eyes popping, his back against the toilet.

‘
S-Sage!
’

‘Yeah.
Sage
. Aren’t you lucky, and look, he’s got real arms and legs. Want my autograph?’

The Prime Minister clasped the sting on his neck, looking terrified.

‘What have you done to me?’

‘Don’t panic, it’s just straighten-up. I haven’t hurt you. Yet.’

‘No, no. You don’t understand. I must be naked. This isn’t happening.’

‘Shut up drivelling, put the mask back on and get dressed.’

The nightclub raid noises peaked and died down. A barmy signals voice in Sage’s ear was telling him the bad possibilities (armed resistance, deaths, serious casualties) that had been avoided; the alarming discoveries (sophisticated weapons, mysterious high-tech devices) that were being made. The door opened a crack. Two barmies looked in: Jackie Dando and Chris Page.

‘How’s it going?’ said Sage, over his shoulder.

‘S’all over,’ said Jackie chirpily, full of it as usual, and trying hard to get a good peek at the bull-headed geezer. The barmies didn’t know who was getting rescued, but they knew he mustn’t be recognised. ‘No trouble, just a bunch of naked hoorays, frowing up and crying for their lawyers. We’re minding their socks and knickers for them, Ax’s orders. No one gets past us, right?’

‘That’s right. Wait outside. Be with you in a minute.’

‘Okay Sage.’

David Sale dressed himself. He stood by the basins and took off his mask so he could smooth his hair. Sage had to work hard to control the impulse to put his
autograph
on the bastard’s slack, abject face.

‘The mask stays on. And please keep your mouth shut.’

The clearing was full of the aftermath of disaster, all too familiar. Sobbing people with blankets round their shoulders, armed police, armed hippies. But thank God, this time, no more blood… He kept the Prime Minister out of the light and took him through a fresh gap in the wattle fence; into the wood. Circled round to meet the truck that was waiting halfway down the track. Sage got in the back with the PM, Chris and Jackie in the front with the driver. Off we go.

The sacrificial bodies had been retrieved, bagged and taken away. The extra barmies and the police were down in the lane, processing the night’s haul and waiting for fresh transport. Sage, in a filthy mood, let it be said, had called to report that all was well (relatively speaking), and the bull-headed man was in safe lodging. An armed policewoman was sorting and packing clothes and personal effects, by the toilet block. Other than that, Ax and the Yorkshire lads, and Fergal Kearney, had the clearing to themselves.

Two new victims had been found, tied up and gagged, in a van that had come along after the cars. From the few questions they’d answered so far, they were street kids from Leicester. They were half-doped, and knew nothing. Some of the ravers had been making unsolicited disclosures (babbling like lunatics); the wiser human sacrifice fans, including the organisers no doubt, were keeping quiet. The horseboxes, which had turned up as predicted, were empty.

There was no sign yet of how the killing had been done.

The half-moon of the holy month looked down, wan and dim against the beams of a floodlight somebody had left behind, hung up on a branch. The barmies stared into the pit.

‘Vultures,’ suggested one of the lads. ‘Or no, I mean trained eagles.’

‘Maybe they tear ’em up somewhere else,’ said someone else. ‘An’ bring them here and strap them on them totem poles in pieces.’

‘What about those kids what was going to be offered up tonight, then?’

‘What do they offer them up
for
? What’s supposed to happen?’

‘Zip, you are an innercent. You and Fergal both. There’s no
reason
for it. They do the sicko stuff because they fuckin’ like it.’

‘Anyway, Sage got a good shufti, and he said… Is Sage coming back?’

‘Dunno,’ said Ax. ‘Look, I’m going down there, to see what I can find.’

‘I don’t think the forensic types have finished, Ax,’ said Brock, doubtfully.

Ax gave him a pitying glance. ‘Call yourself a hippy? Okay, I’ll ask permission.’ He went over and asked the policewoman.

‘I’m sure that would be all right, Mr Preston,’ she said, round-eyed.

‘Good. If it turns out it’s a problem, it’s my responsibility.’ The tackle that had been used to retrieve the bodies was gone. ‘Hey, someone give me a rope ladder. My name’s not Aoxomoxoa, you know.’

The barmies had started one of their interminable arguments, as to whether werewolves require a full moon, or is that vampires, and what about the silver bullets. Ax descended a nylon ladder into the pit. It was more unpleasant to be down there than he had expected: like being inside a hollowed, rotten tooth. The air smelled foul, the ground was soft underfoot, scattered with an abstact design of luminous outlines, where suspicious traces had been photographed… They’d found no actual footprints except Sage’s, apparently. He stepped carefully, wondering how much the ‘forensic types’ would be able to learn. The poles loomed, seeming twice their actual height. He couldn’t make anything of the carving, the light was too dim.

He walked round the walls, treading over the place where Fiorinda’s sprig of Rest Harrow had been crushed into the mud, thinking of the organisation, the heavy machinery, how many more of these places there were… As if the cleared ground, on which he had hoped to plant his renewal, had started coming out in weird, festering sores. Something new, and terrible, and totally unexpected: but that’s how it always feels, and it’s not, it’s the same disaster,
things fall apart.

The thought of the interview he had to face in the morning was like a lead weight on his soul.

‘I don’t like this,’ muttered Fergal, up above. ‘Why’s he down there?’

‘That’s Ax,’ said Brock, proudly. ‘He’s not afraid of any fucking thing. You shoulda been with him in Yorkshire—’

‘Hey. There’s a metal panel, with a skim of clay plastered over it! Shit, there are
sliding doors
in the walls of the pit! It’s like an Eygptian tomb. I think I can shift it. Hey, this is it. This is how! You must be able to lock or open these doors from a distance, radio-controlled, but it’s…switched off, or something.’

Something made a sound: a hollow, guttural cough.

Even Ax Preston fails to think out of the box sometimes. He’d forced one of the sliding panels, found a black space behind it and gone to fetch his torch, which he’d left by the totem poles. It had not crossed his mind that the tunnel might be occupied. He heard that sound and froze, knowing it instantly, on a level older than conscious thought. Instinctively he moved to get his back against a wall. Mistake. Now the ladder was on the other side of the pit. He’d dumped his rifle before climbing down. He didn’t even have a pocket knife.

The tigers trotted out on big, soft feet. There were two of them, one larger than the other. In the moonlight they looked absolutely huge. They looked as if they could jump out of the pit itself. The barmies stared down, jaws dropping. The only one who had a weapon in his hands and a clear shot at the beasts was Brock, and he seemed paralysed.

The tigers had not fed, they were probably hungry. They wasted no time. Both animals, beautiful, calculating eyes fixed on Ax, crouched fluidly, poised to leap.

‘Oh, Jaysus fockin’ God!’ Fergal Kearney’s own rifle was on his back, he didn’t bother with it. He grabbed the gun that Brock seemed incapable of using and fired a rattling burst into the pit, eyes tight shut, raking wildly to and fro.

Sage had come into the clearing just in time to see this happen.

He crossed the remaining space at a leap, unslinging his own rifle. The pit held two very big dead tigers, and Ax, looking stunned but apparently unhurt.

‘What the fuck’s going on?’

‘Oh, God,’ Brock dropped to his knees, covering his face. ‘Oh, God help me!’

‘It was tigers,’ whispered Zip, awed, ‘it was
tigers
. We never thought of tigers.’

The policewoman stood by her pile of binbags with her mouth open.

‘They were going for Ax!’ yelled another witness, excitedly. ‘They were going for Ax, Sage. He couldn’t get out, an Fergal grabbed Brock’s rifle, an’ shot ’em!’

‘Those were
Bengal Tigers
,’ moaned poor Brock. ‘There isn’t a hundred of them left alive in the world. I woulda done it.
I woulda done it
, only—’

‘Make that ninety-eight,’ said Ax, climbing out. ‘Thanks, Fergal. Good shooting.’

Sage said, ‘Are you going to tell me
why
you were in the pit with two tigers? Proving something, huh?’

‘I have no excuse,’ said Ax. ‘I was being unbelievably stupid. You can beat me up later.’ Shoulder to shoulder, they turned to Fergal Kearney. The Irishman was sitting on the ground, the rifle discarded, holding his head and shaking.

‘
Oh Jaysus
,’ he was muttering. ‘
Jaysus
.’

‘Are you okay, Fergal?’

‘Just help me up, Sage, me darling,’ Sage helped him up. Fergal clung to tall Sage, almost a dead weight. ‘Ah, God, I don’t know what’s wrong wi’ me, it was a wee shock, I’ll be over it. That was fockin’ loud. That’s, that’s somethen I never just done before—’

‘You did good,’ said Sage, intensely. He had taken off his mask. ‘I owe you.’

The barmies crowded round, jabbering with shock and adrenalin and relief. The tigers should be measured, no they should be left as they were. The Irishman was a natural marksman, but he’d made a fuck of a mess of his tiger-skin rugs, that’s one thing you’ll have to learn, Ferg, you don’t want to use an automatic rifle on anything you plan to use for a souvenir after—

Police officers and barmy squaddies came running from the lane: Ax’s unbelievable stupidity instantly became a deed of valour, but at least Fergal got top honours. The tigers were hauled out and found to be wearing radio control shock collars, which explained how they’d been trained and handled, but wouldn’t have done anything for Ax. Ax tried to comfort Brock, who was a shattered heap: a situation not improved by his tactless mates telling him that the man-eaters would probably’ve had to be put down anyhow.