Kiss of Death

The guy never once looked back. The door slammed behind him, the vehicle juddering to life, before roaring off along the cutting, frosted leaves and clumps of frozen earth flying behind it.

‘What the …’ Kelso’s voice almost broke. ‘Good … good God almighty!’

‘Hey,’ someone behind him said.

He spun around, and almost collapsed in gratitude at the sight of the older villain, who had evidently sidled out of the trees beyond the signpost and now approached along the lane.

As before, he wore overalls, heavy gloves and a green balaclava.

Also as before, his pistol was drawn.

‘I’ve done as you asked.’ Kelso limped towards him, arms spread. ‘You saw me.’

The hoodlum pointed the gun at his chest. ‘Yeah, you’ve done as we asked.’

Kelso stumbled to a halt. ‘OK … please let’s not play this game any more. Just let me have Justine?’

‘Worried about your wife, eh?’

Despite his best efforts, Kelso’s voice took on a whining, agonised tone. ‘Please don’t do this. Just tell me where she is.’

‘Where she was before. Back at your house. Why would we bring her with us?’

‘OK … so … is that it, then?’

‘Yeah, that’s it.’ But the hoodlum didn’t lower his firearm.

Kelso was confused. ‘So … I can go?’

‘Eager to see her again, eh?’

‘What do you think? Just let me go, and I’ll drive back.’

‘Nah. I can send you to her a quicker way.’

‘What …?’ After a night of extreme horrors, Kelso, who’d thought he’d be rendered immune to this sort of thing for the rest of his life, now felt a deeper, more gnawing chill than ever before. ‘What do you mean?’

The gaze of those terrible eyes intensified. He imagined the bastard grinning under his balaclava; crazily, maniacally, a living jack-o’-lantern.

‘Oh, no …’ Kelso simpered under his breath. ‘Oh no, please nooo …’

‘Oh, yes,’ the hoodlum chuckled, firing twice into the bank manager’s chest.

Chapter 1

Present day

The church of Milden St Paul’s was located in a rural haven some ten minutes’ walk outside the Suffolk village of Little Milden. It sat on the edge of a quiet B-road, which ostensibly connected the distant conurbations of Ipswich and Sudbury but in truth saw little activity and was hemmed in from all sides by belts of gentle woodland and, in late summer, an endless golden vista of sun-ripened wheat.

The atmosphere of this picturesque place was one of uninterrupted peace. Even those of no religious inclination would have struggled to find fault with it. One might even say that nothing bad could ever happen here … were it not for the events of a certain late-July evening, some forty minutes after evensong had finished.

It began when the tall, dark-haired vicar came out of the vicarage and stood by the wicket gate. He was somewhere in his mid-thirties, about six-foot-three inches tall, and of impressive build: square across the shoulders, broad of chest, with solid, brown arms folded over his pink, short-sleeved shirt. His hair was a lush, curly black, his jaw firm, his nose straight, his eyes a twinkling, mischievous blue. To pass him in the street, one might think it curious that such a masculine specimen had found his calling in the cloth. There had to be at least a chance that he’d have certain of his parishioners swooning in their pews rather than heeding his sermons, though on this evening it was he who’d been distracted by something.

And here it came again.

A third or fourth heavy blow sounded from the other side of the church.

Initially, the vicar wondered if the warm summer air was carrying an echo from some distant workplace. On the church’s south side, you could see the roof of Farmer Holbrook’s barn on the far southern edge of the wheat field next door. But that was the only building in sight, and there wasn’t likely to be much work under way on a tranquil Monday evening.

When he heard what sounded like a fifth blow, it was a sharper, flatter sound, and louder, as if there was anger in it. The vicar opened the gate, stepped onto the path and walked towards the church’s northwest corner. As he reached it, he heard another blow. And another, and another.

This time there was a smashing sound too, like wood splintering.

He hurried on to the church’s southwest corner. Yet another blow followed, and with it a grunt, as of someone making a strenuous effort.

On the building’s immediate south side lay an untended part of the grounds, the weathered slabs of eighteenth-century gravestones poking up through the long summer grass. Beyond those stood the rusty metal fence cordoning off the wheat field. It might be a sobering thought that, once you were on this side of the church, you were completely screened from the road and any passing traffic, but the vicar didn’t have time to think about that. He rounded the final corner and strode several yards along the south-side path, before stopping dead.

A man with longish red hair, wearing patchwork green/brown khaki, was striking with a wood-axe at the vestry door. He grunted with each stroke, splinters flying, going at it with such gusto that he’d already chopped a hole in the middle of the door, and very likely would soon have the whole thing down.

The soles of the vicar’s black leather shoes had made barely a sound on the worn paving stones, but the man in khaki had heard him; he lowered his axe and turned.

The mask he wore had been chiselled from wood and depicted a goat’s face – but it was a demonic kind of goat, with a humanoid grin and horns that curled fantastically. The worst thing about it, though, was real: the eyes peering out through the holes notched for them were entirely human, and yet they burned with living hatred.

The man came down the step from the door and approached, axe held loosely at his side. The vicar stood his ground and spoke boldly.

‘What are you doing here? Why are you damaging church property?’

‘You know what we’re doing here, shaman!’ a voice said from his right.

He glanced sideways: three more figures had risen into view, each from behind a different headstone. They too largely wore green; he saw old ragged jumpers, ex-military combat jackets. They too were masked: a toad, a boar, a rabbit, each one decked with additional monstrous features, and each with the same hate-filled eyes glaring out.

The vicar kept his voice steady. ‘I asked what you are doing here?’

‘You know the answer, you holier-than-thou prick!’ said a voice from behind.

When the vicar spun backwards, a fifth figure had emerged around the corner of the church. This one also wore green, but with brown leather over the top. His wooden mask depicted a wolf, and as he advanced, he drew a heavy blade from a scabbard at his belt; a hunting knife honed to lethal sharpness.

The vicar looked again at the threesome in the graveyard; Toad now smacked a knotty club into his gloved left palm; Rabbit unhooked a coil of rope from his shoulder; Boar hefted a canister of petrol.

‘In the name of God,’ the vicar said, ‘don’t do this.’

‘We don’t recognise your god,’ Wolf replied.

‘Look … you don’t know what you’re doing.’

‘Oh, very good,’ Wolf sniggered, as they closed in. ‘Very fucking saintly.’

‘This is sanctified ground,’ the vicar advised them. ‘Use more blasphemies here, and I’ll be forced to chastise you.’

‘Really?’ Wolf was so surprised by that, that he almost came to a halt. ‘I can’t wait to see how you do it.’

‘I warn you, friends …’ The vicar pivoted around. ‘I’m no martyr.’

‘Funnily enough,’ Wolf sneered, ‘the ones before you didn’t go willingly to it, either.’

‘Ah, now I know who you are,’ the vicar said.

‘Always a good thing to know thine enemies.’

‘You’re on your final warning.’

‘Perhaps your god will strike us down?’ Wolf was only five or so yards away. ‘Maybe throw a thunderbolt this fine summer evening.’

The vicar nodded solemnly. ‘I fear one’s coming right now.’

A rasping chuckle sounded behind the lupine mask. ‘You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that.’

‘I also have this.’

From out of his trouser pocket, the cleric drew an extendable autolock baton, which, with a single jerk of his brawny wrist, he snapped open to its full twenty-one inches.

Before Wolf could respond, the baton had struck him across the mask in a backhand thwack. The carved wood cracked as Wolf’s head jerked sideways and he tottered, dropping his knife. As the rest came to a startled halt, the vestry door burst inward and the figure of a man exploded out, launching at Goat from behind. This figure was neither as tall nor as broad as the vicar, just over six feet and of average build, with a mop of dark hair. He wore blue jeans and a blue sweatshirt with a police-issue stab vest over the top, but he also carried an extended baton, which he brought down in a furious, angled swipe at the elbow joint of Goat’s right arm.

The axe clattered to the floor as the target yelped in disbelieving pain. He grappled with his injured joint, only for a kick in the backside to send him sprawling onto his face. His assailant leapt onto him from behind, knees-first, crushing the air from his lungs.

The vicar swung to face Toad, Boar and Rabbit, holding aloft a leather wallet, displaying his warrant card. ‘Detective Inspector Reed, Serial Crimes Unit!’ he bellowed. ‘You’re all under arrest on suspicion of murdering John Strachan, Glyn Thomas and Michaela Hanson!’

Wolf fled towards the southwest corner of the church, only to slam head-on into another huge figure, this one even more massive than the vicar. He too wore jeans and chest armour, and he greeted Wolf with a forearm smash to the throat.

As Wolf went down, gagging, a deep Welsh voice asked him: ‘What time is it, Mr Wolf? Time you weren’t here? Too bloody late for that, boyo.’

The other three ran energetically towards the boundary fence, only to be stunned by the sight of more police officers, some in uniform and some in plain clothes, all armoured, rising from the wheat and spreading into a skirmish line.

‘You don’t have to say anything,’ Reed intoned, watching the fleeing trio as, one by one, they were overpowered, unmasked and clapped into handcuffs, ‘but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something you may later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’

‘You’re also under arrest for being a sacrilegious little fuck,’ the big Welsh cop whispered, leaning into Wolf as he fastened his hands behind his back.

‘We don’t fear your god,’ Wolf hissed in an agonised voice.

‘You shouldn’t.’ The Welsh cop yanked the fractured mask off the lean, sweaty features underneath. ‘My God’s merciful. Problem you’ve got, boyo, is … there’s a long, hard road before you get to Him.’

Beside the vestry door, the cop in blue snapped a pair of cuffs onto Goat, who, without his mask, was gaunt and pale, his carroty red hair hanging in lank strands as he cowered there.

‘Get up,’ the cop said, standing. His accent was Northwest England.

‘Shit … think you …’ Goat’s voice became whiny, frantic. ‘Think you broke my arm.’

‘No, I didn’t … just whacked you on a nerve cluster.’ The cop kicked him. ‘Get up.’

‘Can’t feel anything under my elbow.’

‘You’re facing three murder charges.’ The cop grabbed him by an armpit and hauled him to his feet. ‘A dicky elbow’s the least of your problems.’

‘Christ!’ Goat screamed. ‘My arm’s broke … God-Christ!’

‘Thought you boys didn’t believe in Christ?’

‘It’s killing me, mate … for fuck’s sake!’

‘Sucks when you’ve come to hurt someone and found it’s the other way round, eh? Who are you, anyway?’

‘Sh … Sherwin …’ the prisoner stammered.

‘First name?’

‘That’s my first name. Last name’s Lightfoot … Oh shiiit, my fucking arm!’

‘Sherwin Lightfoot? For real?’

‘Yeah … oh, sweet Jeeesus …’

‘Fair enough. You’re also getting locked up for having a stupid name.’

‘Everything all right, Heck?’ Reed called.

‘Heck?’ Lightfoot said. ‘Look who’s bloody talking …’

‘Shut up,’ the cop called Heck retorted. ‘Everything’s smashing, sir. Why wouldn’t it be?’

‘Easy, Sarge.’ Reed ran a finger round the inside of his clerical collar but made such a dog’s breakfast of loosening it that its button popped off. ‘I was only asking.’

‘I have done this before, you know.’

‘Good work, everyone,’ a female voice interrupted.

Detective Superintendent Gemma Piper was never less than impressive. Even now, in jeans, a T-shirt and body armour, and clambering over a rusty farm fence, she cut a striking figure. With her athletic physique, wild mane of white-blonde hair and fierce good looks, she radiated charisma, but also toughness. Many was the cocky male officer who’d taken her gender as a green light for slack work or insubordination, or both, and had instantly regretted it.

‘This lot been cautioned, Jack?’ Gemma asked.

‘They have indeed, ma’am,’ Reed said.

‘Responses?’

‘The only one I heard was this fella.’ Reed indicated Boar, who, having had his mask pulled off, resembled a pig anyway, and now was in the grasp of two uniforms. ‘Think it went something like “fuck off, you dick-breathed shitehawk”.’

‘Excellent. Just the thing to win the jury over.’ Gemma raised her voice. ‘All right, get them out of here. I want separate prisoner-transports for each one. Do not let them talk.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Wolf sneered, still gripped by the large Welsh cop, though he seemed to have recovered some of his attitude. ‘No one’s talking here except you. And you’ve got quite a lot to say for a slip of a tart.’

Gemma drew a can of CS spray from her back pocket and stalked towards him.

‘Ma’am!’ Reed warned.

DSU Piper was renowned, among other things, for almost never losing her cool, and so managed to bring herself to a halt before doing something she might regret. She stood a couple of feet from the prisoner, whose thin, grizzled features split into a yellow-toothed grin.

‘Don’t say nothing!’ he shouted to his compatriots. ‘Do you hear me? Don’t give these bastards the pleasure. Say nothing, and we’ve got plenty chance of beating this.’

‘You finished?’ Gemma asked him.

He shrugged. ‘For now.’

‘Good. Take a long look at your friends. This is likely the last time you’ll see them till you’re all on trial. And very possibly on that day, one, or maybe two of them, could be looking back at you from the witness stand. How much chance will you have then?’

Wolf hawked and spat at her feet.

‘Let’s move it!’ Gemma shouted. ‘Someone get the CSIs in. Tell them the scene’s clear for examination – I want this ground going over inch by inch.’

Chapter 2

It wasn’t always the case that suspects arrested by the Serial Crimes Unit were brought back to London for processing. As part of the National Crime Group, SCU’s remit was to cover all the police force areas of England and Wales, and as such they most commonly liaised with local forces and tended to use their facilities. But on this occasion, to Detective Sergeant Mark ‘Heck’ Heckenburg at least, it felt like the most sensible option. Little Milden was only fifty-eight miles from London, and only seventy-two from Finchley Road police station, where extensive adaptations had been made for the confinement and interrogation of just such highly dangerous groups as the ‘Black Chapel’.

Finchley Road was now classified as one of only two high-security police stations in London. The first one, Paddington Green, was primarily for holding suspected terrorists and as such was more like a fortress than a regular police office. Finchley Road was physically much the same, but primarily for use against organised crime. To all intents and purposes, it was a normal divisional police station in that it was nondescript and open to members of the public twenty-four/seven. But the reinforced concrete barriers around its exterior might indicate that it had other purposes too, while additional, less visible defences were also in place, such as bulletproof glass in its windows, outer doors of reinforced steel with highly complex access codes, and the presence on the premises of permanently armed personnel. It had an ordinary Custody Suite for use in day-to-day police operations, but there was also a Specialist Custody Suite on a lower level, which was completely separate from the rest of the building’s interior and hosted twenty cells and ten interview rooms, all of these viewable either through video link or two-way mirror.

It was through one such viewing port that Heck now watched as Rabbit, aka Dennis Purdham, was interviewed. Of all five suspects, he had been the most visibly distraught on arrest. Aside from their leader, Wolf, also known as Ranald Ulfskar, the others – Sherwin Lightfoot (Goat), Michael Hapwood (Toad) and Jason Renwick (Boar) – had also registered surprise and shock when the police showed up, but as with any cult, and that was what Heck felt they were dealing with here rather than a conventional criminal gang, they’d drawn strength from their leader’s stoicism, and were obediently keeping their mouths shut.

Purdham was the exception.

Like the rest of them, he’d struck Heck as an outsider: unshaved, long-haired, pockmarked. The clothing they’d seized from him mainly comprised oil-stained hunting gear and mismatched bits of army surplus wear. But, at the age of twenty-three, Purdham was much younger than his confederates, and possibly only involved in the murders as a bit player – or so his solicitor was seeking to intimate. He’d wept when they’d booked him in, and wept again when they gave him his white custody suit. As such, while the others were left to stew in their cells, it wasn’t long into Purdham’s interview before he’d begun to talk.

The interviewers were Gemma Piper and Jack Reed, who, by prior agreement, was adopting an understanding guise. It was this that Purdham had responded to, gradually regaining his confidence.

‘At the end of the day, Christians are a set of vile bastards,’ he said in broad Staffordshire. ‘Everything about them stinks. Their hypocrisy, their dishonesty … they’re a bunch of fucking control freaks too.’

‘Someone give you a hard time when you were young, Dennis?’ Reed asked. ‘A priest maybe?’

‘You mean was I kiddie-fiddled?’ Purdham shook his head. ‘Nah … never happened to me. But there are lots it did happen to, aren’t there?’

‘So, you and your friends were responding to sexual misdoings?’ Gemma said. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

Purdham hesitated, unsure how to reply.

He wasn’t as stupid as he looked, Heck thought, because to admit to this would be to admit premeditation.

‘Because in case you did,’ Gemma added, ‘I can tell you that there’s never been any suspicion about those three people. Or about the Reverend Hatherton, who is the incumbent at Milden St Paul’s.’

‘That means he’s the one I stepped in for tonight,’ Reed explained.

‘Look …’ Purdham scrubbed a hand through his lank, mouse-brown hair. ‘I don’t think anyone was specifically targeted. It’s what I said before, Christians are … just shit-arses.’

‘You mean Christians in general?’ Gemma asked.

‘Lots of people agree with me on this.’ Purdham’s eyes widened; he became animated. ‘You only need to go on social media. Everyone’s always saying it.’

There was a soft click in the viewing room, as a door opened. Heck turned and was surprised to see the squat, bull-necked shape of DCI Bob Hunter come furtively in. Hunter acknowledged Heck with a nod and signalled that he didn’t want to interrupt.

Heck turned back to the mirror, beyond which Gemma was in mid-reply.

‘It’s worth remembering, Dennis,’ she said, ‘that social media is an echo chamber.’

Purdham regarded her confusedly.

‘Every mother’s son on the planet uses it to sound off about stuff that bugs them. They may have genuine issues with religion, even with Christianity specifically … but just because they gob off about it online, most of them are not even so hyped about it that they stop celebrating Christmas. So, I’d say it’s a near certainty that what happened at St Winifred’s in the Marsh, for example, would be right off their agenda.’

The killing of the Catholic priest, Father John Strachan, on March 21 that year, had been the first murder in the Black Chapel case. The victim had answered a knock at the presbytery door just after 11 p.m., at his church, St Winifred’s in the Marsh, up in rural Cambridgeshire – only to receive an axe-blow to the face, which had killed him instantly.

‘Look … I’ve admitted I was there,’ Purdham said, tingeing red. ‘But … I told you, I didn’t participate.’

‘Neither did you do anything to prevent it.’

‘It happened in a flash. I didn’t even know Ranald was armed.’

As Heck listened, he thought again about Ranald Ulfskar. It was a cute name he’d given himself. In real life, he was Albert Jones from Scunthorpe. He was the spiritual leader of this weird group. At fifty, he was the oldest, and though also the scrawniest and most ragbag, he was, without doubt, the toughest and had led the most lived-in life. And yet it was through Ulfskar/Jones that Heck had first learned about the so-called Black Chapel. Ulfskar had spent several years as a roadie for a very successful black-metal band from Scandinavia called Varulv. One of his fellow roadies at the time, Jimmy ‘Snake’ Fletcher, someone not quite as besotted with Varulv’s dangerous Nordic vision, had later become one of Heck’s informants. And once it had become apparent to Fletcher that the East Anglia priest killings were a series, and that they were in synch with certain dates in the calendar, he’d got on the blower.

‘We also strongly suspect you were there at the murder of Reverend Glyn Thomas,’ Gemma said.

Purdham hung his head and said nothing.

The second cleric to die had been a Church of England minister, the Reverend Glyn Thomas. On the night of April 30 that year, he’d been alone at his church of St Oswald’s, out in the Norfolk back-country, when, just before midnight, intruders had forced entry to the vicarage. He was hauled out in his nightclothes and forced to watch as both the vicarage and the church were set alight. He was then bound, hand and foot, and had a wire noose tightened around his neck, which was attached to the tow bar of a vehicle. After this, the Reverend Thomas was dragged at high speeds along isolated country lanes for fifteen miles, before his body, or what was left of it, came loose of its own accord. It was found in a roadside ditch the next day, but only several hours after the blazing ruins of St Oswald’s had drawn the attention of early-morning farm workers.

‘And what about the murder of Michaela Hanson?’ Gemma wondered.

Purdham still said nothing.

In the case of the Reverend Michaela Hanson, it was mid-evening on June 21. She’d been alone in the Church of Our Lady on the outskirts of Shoeburyness in Essex. As with the incident at Little Milden, it was shortly after evensong, and the congregation and altar servers had gone home. Reverend Hanson was collecting the hymnals from the pews when intruders entered through the sacristy door. Her naked corpse was found the following morning, spread-eagled on the altar table. She’d been slashed across the throat with something like a billhook and pinned to the wood with a pitchfork.

‘There was even a sexual element in that one, wasn’t there?’ Reed said, referring to the fact that the Reverend Hanson’s lower body had also shown signs of being violently attacked.

‘Which at least is in keeping with this Odinist fantasy,’ Gemma said.

Purdham looked up sharply, as if to mouth a protest, but managed to restrain himself.