Parker thought about this.
‘And all in the interests of order and good governance?’
‘All in the interests of being left in peace.’
‘To do what?’
‘The official line? To live, to work, to mind their own business.’
‘And the unofficial line?’
‘Well, you could ask what that business might be.’
‘Would I get an answer?’
‘Not from me, but I’m not the right person to ask.’
‘And who is?’
‘The sheriff of Plassey County, Ed Henkel. He has no love for the Cut, to the extent that there are people in Charleston who regard him as a pain in the ass. He cries wolf on the Cut. If the weather changes, he blames them. If he could, he’d burn the entire Cut down to the ground and sow salt in the ashes.’
‘So how did he get elected?’
‘Because maybe there are enough people in Plassey who believe that the rule of law shouldn’t be beholden to the Cut, or should have the power to hold it in check.’
‘Will Henkel talk to me?’
‘You can ask him.’
‘Will you tell him I’m coming?’
‘Bet your life on it.’
‘I’d prefer if you didn’t.’
‘With respect, your preferences don’t come into it. My turn: how much trouble are you going to cause in Plassey County?’
‘I haven’t decided yet.’
Martin imagined a sliding scale, with a desired level of trouble right down at the bottom, and Parker hovering near the top, just prior to blowing off the scale entirely.
‘I’d prefer if you kept it to a minimum.’
‘With respect, your preferences—’
‘All right, I get it.’
Parker stood. He put out his hand. Martin shook it.
‘You know, I like my job,’ said Martin.
‘It certainly comes with a very nice uniform.’
‘If anyone asks me, I’ll say that I told you to get the hell out of West Virginia.’
‘I understand.’
‘So get the hell out of West Virginia, and stay away from the Cut.’
‘Was that Henkel with one “l”, or two?’
‘One.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t mention it. Seriously: don’t mention it.’
Martin didn’t turn to watch him go. He needed to head back to Jefferson Road to pick up some paperwork. If he waited long enough, then Estelle might have gone home, and he knew that she was heading off the next day for a vacation in Aruba. By the time he saw her again she would, with luck, have forgotten entirely about Parker. Perhaps Martin could start trying to forget about him again too, or just exile him back to the dark places in his mind, where buried children waited for someone to call their names.
Martin glanced to his left.
‘He didn’t even finish his damn coffee,’ he said aloud. He turned in his chair, and caught a passing barista.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘can you heat this coffee up, please? And maybe find me a newspaper …’
66
The searchers continued moving through the Cut, the four teams gradually approaching the Square. Oberon remained discreetly in touch with each group, mainly by using the shortwave radios that the Cut preferred to cell phones within their own borders, but also through updates delivered by a series of children, so that by the time Henkel’s group reached the Square they were no longer being followed, and the children had vanished back into the woods.
The searchers were met with hot soup, chunks of freshly baked bread, and pots of coffee, served by both women and men. Henkel knew most of the faces and names, although some of the older inhabitants were such infrequent venturers from the Cut that Henkel at first struggled to recall them. They watched the strangers with a kind of muted hostility tempered by curiosity: this was probably the first time in years, certainly since before the time of Sheriff Dugar, that outsiders had been allowed so deep into the Cut.
Henkel sipped his coffee and strolled with exaggerated casualness around the Square, taking in all that he was seeing, marking the position of houses, outbuildings, paths, and calculating the distances between each. When he returned home, he would create a map of the Cut, initially from his own observations and later by adding what others had seen as they progressed through it. Google Maps wasn’t much use where the Cut was concerned: apart from the Square itself, much of the land was covered by evergreen forest and perennials, and even the main roads were narrow enough to be overhung by branches.
Oberon stood by the steps of the largest house on the Square, monitoring Henkel’s movements. It had been a calculated gamble on his part to allow Henkel to search the Cut, and they both knew that it was all for show. Perry Lutter had not wandered into the Cut, and even if he had, and was lying somewhere within it, unconscious or dead, the searchers would only have discovered him if they had physically stumbled across him. The search for Perry was little more than cursory. Oberon understood that its true purpose was to plant a flag in the Cut, to show them all that the sheriff was no longer prepared to stand by and allow it to remain a private fiefdom. The search represented a significant escalation of hostilities between Henkel and the Cut, but it remained to be seen if Henkel would be able to accumulate enough evidence to mount a more significant challenge, or if Oberon and the others could wait him out until his term began to draw to a close, and then ensure that his replacement was someone more willing to leave them unmolested.
Henkel had not seen Cassander. Oberon’s second-in-command usually made his presence felt. He was, in his way, even more protective of the Cut than Oberon. On this occasion, though, he seemed to have appointed the more disturbed of his two sons to be his eyes and ears while he was engaged elsewhere. Lucius was sitting at a table constructed from a single massive slab of wood, clearly sawn from close to the base of an ancient tree, and set to rest on four smaller trunks to which sections of bark still clung. Lucius was using a long knife to hack at the edge of the table. His attention was fixed on the knife and the wood, the only distraction from his mutilation of the furniture being a single glance in Oberon’s direction that Henkel caught, the naked hostility of it as bright and clean as the blade in Lucius’s hand.
What might you have done, Henkel wondered of Lucius, to earn Oberon’s boot in your face? Had he and Oberon been other than antagonists, Henkel might well have advised him to watch his back around Lucius, especially when the boy had a knife in his hand. But Henkel figured that Oberon wouldn’t have needed his advice anyway. If he hadn’t realized the threat posed by Lucius, whatever the cause, then he had no business running the Cut, and someone else might take his place before long: possibly Cassander, but not Lucius himself. Nobody in the Cut was crazy enough to follow him. Marius, his brother, was hardly a genius, or overburdened with charisma, but he had the benefit of not being actively insane. He was no leader, though. If something happened to Oberon, it would fall to Cassander to take his place. Henkel wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Oberon was bad enough, but not beyond comprehension, while Cassander remained largely a mystery.
Henkel was now at the northern edge of the Square. Through the trees, he glimpsed a long, shed-like structure with a tin roof and windows that were barely more than slits. He had not noticed it before, and since his team had entered the Square from the south he’d had no cause to pass that way. He looked around. Rob Channer was speaking with some of his cronies, his back to Henkel. Channer had taken it upon himself to reorganize the groups that had entered the Cut from the north, west, and east, which Henkel had only discovered when the four teams met in the Square. He’d have a word with Channer about that later, because the Cut wasn’t the place in which to discuss it, but that northern team, with Channer leading it, should have taken a look at the building.
Off to Channer’s right, and out of earshot, sat Kyle Fogle, who had been part of the Channer group. Kyle was an okay kid, but easily led. He wanted to be a sheri
ff’s deputy, but had already failed the written test once. This, Henkel felt, was probably for the best.
Now Henkel sidled up to Fogle, asked him how the search had gone, and then, as an afterthought, inquired if his team had taken a look at the structure behind him. Fogle told him that they hadn’t, and it turned out that Channer’s team hadn’t taken a direct route from north to south but had drifted slightly southwest as it drew nearer to the Square, so that it met up with the party heading from the west about a quarter of a mile out, and entered more from that direction than the north.
Huh, thought Henkel: maybe he’d underestimated Kyle Fogle after all. He might have another chat with him about that written test at a later date. Henkel thanked Fogle, dumped the last of his coffee on the ground, and headed for the building.
67
Cassander sat within touching distance of the blockhouse, and listened to the voice of the Dead King as it conjured up images in his head, like a mood evoked by a song in a foreign tongue. He saw the Cut in bloom, a blaze of green foliage and flowering plants in the heat of summer. He saw children. He saw his wife’s grave slowly disappear, covered over by creeping vines, and another woman drifting through his home, adding her own music to a house that had not heard a female voice in three years. Her face remained hidden from Cassander, but her body was young.
He saw a primitive wooden coffin being lowered into the dirt. The female figure in his house grew clearer. He descried its features: the shape of its breasts, the swell of its hips, the welcoming darkness between its thighs. A light caught the woman in her nakedness, and Sherah turned to welcome him, her widow’s weeds put away.
And Cassander took her, and made her his own.
68
It had been clear from the moment they arrived in the prison house that Sherah and Hannah were not screwing around. Paige and Gayle were told to sit facing the wall, with their hands clasped before them. Sherah had a gun, but Paige didn’t think that she was likely to use it. It was mostly for show. Hannah, though, held a cattle prod, and Paige knew from experience that it was most certainly not just for show: Hannah had turned it on her after the first escape attempt, and it wasn’t an encounter Paige was anxious to repeat, so she did as she was told, and Gayle followed her lead.
Three men and two more women entered the prison house, all of whom Paige knew by sight but not by name. They moved quickly to strip the accommodation of any signs of recent habitation. Cereals and foodstuffs were taken from the closets and put in boxes and plastic bags, and the pictures that she and Gayle had pulled from magazines to brighten the walls were torn down.
Plastic ties were placed around their wrists and pulled tight, followed by a ball gag to the mouth against which Gayle tried to struggle. A panel on the floor was lifted, exposing the entrance to the basement. Now it was Paige’s turn to start panicking. She didn’t want to go back down there. It would break her.
‘Hush,’ said Sherah. ‘I’ll be with you, and we’ll have a lamp. It won’t be for long, I promise.’
And then Paige knew: someone was coming, someone from outside.
69
Henkel heard a voice shouting his name as he left the Square, following a trail worn by footsteps to the door of the building, but he didn’t look back. He rose on his toes to try to peer in the windows, but they were too high. He could see that it was dark inside, although the surrounding trees obscured even the dying of the day’s light. He tried the steel door, but it appeared to be locked.
‘Can I help you, Sheriff Henkel?’
He turned. Oberon was standing halfway up the trail. He wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t appear troubled either.
‘What is this place?’ Henkel asked, indicating behind him with his thumb.
‘We use it for storage. It also has beds, and it’s plumbed for a toilet and shower.’
‘Why?’
‘Sometimes there are arguments,’ said Oberon. ‘A wife fights with a husband, or a son with a father. This is an enclosed, tight-knit community, and that’s good for the most part, but if you’re not getting along with someone in your family, then it’s hard to find space to cool off. This is somewhere that people can come if they need to.’
‘It looks like a jailhouse.’
‘It’s been used for that in its time as well. Men have too much to drink, they get angry, and this becomes a drunk tank.’
Henkel took in the well-worn trail.
‘Looks like they come here pretty regularly.’
‘I told you: it’s used for storage as well.’
‘Open it, please.’
‘Perry Lutter isn’t in there, and I shouldn’t need to remind you that you don’t have a warrant.’
Oberon didn’t move. Further back, Henkel glimpsed a handful of the Cut watching from the base of the trail. Lucius was one of them.
‘I did say “please”,’ Henkel reminded.
Oberon unclipped a key from his belt, concealing its bone fob in the palm of his hand, and joined Henkel at the door. It opened easily, revealing an unlocked second door with a plastic window, beyond which was a large room piled up with a random assortment of boxes, some old chairs, a couple of couches, and a table. At one end was a pair of bedrooms, each containing a single bed and a locker, and between them a small bathroom barely big enough to accommodate the shower stall, toilet, and sink that it contained. It smelled of a scented soap or gel. Henkel saw hairs around the drain of the shower. They looked damp to him. The shower, at least, had been used recently.
Only bare mattresses remained on the beds. The lockers were open and empty. There were marks on the wall where pictures of some kind had been stuck up. Traces of adhesive material still clung to the paintwork.
The walls of the building were thick. They’d keep the rooms cool in summer, thought Henkel, and warm in winter. The roof might have been tin, but it had been well insulated. The floor was wood laminate, and free of dust. It felt solid enough under Henkel’s feet. A couple of rugs had been rolled up and stood in a corner of the main room.
‘What’s in the boxes?’ Henkel asked Oberon.
‘I don’t know. I haven’t been in here for a while. If you want to search them, feel free.’
Henkel didn’t bother. If Oberon was happy to let him poke around in the boxes, then they contained nothing worth seeing. He stood in the center of the room, his hands in his pockets. Something about the building wasn’t right, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it might be.
‘If you’re done?’ said Oberon.
What am I missing? Henkel wondered. What am I not seeing here?
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m done.’
70
Paige could just about make out the sound of two voices – one of them Oberon’s – from down in the basement, but not what they were saying. She was seated on the dirt floor against a wall. A pair of battery-powered lamps provided the sole illumination. There was one beside her and another by Gayle, who sat directly across from her. The younger woman was watching Paige carefully, fully engaged with her environment for the first time in months. If they were down here, it was because the man speaking with Oberon represented a threat. This wasn’t just some casual visitor: a threat meant more than an outsider. A threat meant the law.
But Paige didn’t dare move or make a sound because Hannah was beside her, whispering in her ear. Her every word made it clear that if Paige so much as breathed too loudly then what would follow would make her previous punishments seem like blessings by comparison. She held the cattle prod in front of Paige’s face.
‘I’ll touch this to places it was never meant to touch,’ said Hannah. ‘Do you understand?’
Just in case Paige didn’t, Hannah placed the tip against Paige’s right nipple.
‘Zzzzt,’ said Hannah. ‘Zzzzt. Zzzzt.’
She moved the prod down, over Paige’s belly, her groin, before letting it rest between her legs.
‘Zzzzzzzzzt!’
The voices ceased. Footsteps resounded dully from
above. A little dust fell from the ceiling. Paige heard the sound of the door closing.
No. No, no, no, no …
But Sherah and Hannah did not move, and the four women remained in the basement for what felt like an hour to Paige, but was almost certainly less, until the door above their heads was opened again, footsteps came across the floor, and the section of laminate hiding the basement entrance was removed. Oberon appeared in the gap that was revealed.
‘Bring them up,’ he said. ‘It’s safe now.’
The ball gags were removed from the women’s mouths, and Sherah cut the plastic restraints with a small knife. Paige shot Hannah a look of pure vitriol as she helped Gayle up the rough wooden steps to the main room, but said nothing. She thought that Hannah was disappointed not to have been able to hurt her with the prod.
Their few possessions were returned, although nobody offered to help them restore the food to the cupboards, or put the pictures back on the walls. Some of the latter were crumpled and torn, including a poster of some boy band of which Gayle was inexplicably fond, as though Paige needed reminding of just how young she really was. A couple of hours later, Sherah and another woman, Agathe, brought the evening meal. It was better and bigger than usual – roast turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots, and peas, all freshly made – and included a cupcake for Paige and Gayle: their reward for being well behaved in the basement. Paige could still taste the rubber of the ball gag in her mouth, and not even the sweetness of the cupcake could overcome it, but she ate everything. Gayle did the same. She had not spoken a word since they had been released from the basement. She had not even recommenced her crooning, and ignored Paige when she asked her if she wanted to wash or dry the dishes and utensils tonight, so Paige did both. Whatever was up with Gayle would reveal itself in time.