The Witch Maker Read online

  Once inside, he reached for the receiver with a hand which had visibly begun to shake, and lifted the instrument to his ear.

  There was a dialling tone! Thank God!

  With the index finger of his other hand, he began to dial. The number could not have been simpler – nine-nine-nine – yet twice his finger skidded and he had to dial again.

  Finally, he was through. ‘Emergency,’ the operator said, in a cool, reassuring voice. ‘Which service do you require, please?’

  ‘I ... there’s been a ... the Witch Maker’s gone an’ got himself ...’ Thwaites said helplessly.

  ‘Take a deep breath and start again,’ the operator advised him. ‘Which service do you require. Police, fire or ambulance?’

  ‘Police!’ Thwaites gasped. ‘For God’s sake, get me the police!’

  Two

  Chief Inspector Charlie Woodend had a much pleasanter awakening than Constable Thwaites that June morning. The sun – playing softly on his cheek – began the process of bringing him round, and the sweet singing of the moorland birds outside his window completed the task.

  He was aware of how light on his feet he felt as he made a cup of tea to take up to his still-sleeping wife, Joan, and of how caressing the air was as he walked out to his car. It might have fallen to his lot to have to deal with the nastier side of human nature, he reflected as he turned the ignition key – and to be supervised in that work by a couple of prats who couldn’t tell their arses from their elbows – but whatever burdens were placed on him, there were some mornings when it seemed really good to be alive.

  The feeling of well-being stayed with him all the way to police headquarters. True, he was held up for quite some time by road works – somebody had told him there were four thousand holes in Whitebridge, Lancashire, and, watching the council workmen fill in one of them with asphalt, he could well believe it. True, too, he would have rather the Chief Constable’s car had not been parked in its allotted spot – would have preferred it, in fact, if Marlowe had been attending one of those conferences on senior-level policing which were always held conveniently close to a good golf course. But these were but minor irritations, and on such a fine day he was quite prepared to live and let live.

  He smiled at the constable on duty outside the main entrance, and at various colleagues who were entering the building at the same time he was. He smiled at the desk sergeant.

  Then the sergeant said, ‘Mr Marlowe would like to see you immediately, sir.’

  And the smile melted away.

  ‘A bit late in this morning, aren’t you, Charlie?’ asked the Chief Constable, moving documents around on his desk in that irritating way that he had.

  ‘Road works,’ Woodend explained.

  Marlowe frowned. ‘Perhaps you should have taken that into account when you decided what time to set off from home. But I suppose that’s neither here nor there at the moment.’ He picked up one of the pieces of paper he had been shuffling. ‘Have you ever heard of something called the Hallerton Witch Burning?’

  ‘Aye,’ Woodend said. ‘Takes place once every twenty years. Quite a spectacle, in its way.’

  ‘So you’ve seen it yourself?’

  ‘Not the last one. Couldn’t make it. I was up to my neck in muck an’ bullets at the time.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The last one was in 1944, sir. There was a war goin’ on, in case you’ve forgotten.’

  Marlowe’s frown deepened. He had spent his entire war in a cushy billet in Chippenham, and knew that Woodend was well aware of the fact.

  ‘We were all a little inconvenienced during the period of hostilities,’ he said frostily. ‘So, it was an earlier Witch Burning you saw, was it?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. The one that happened in 1924, when I was no more than a nipper.’

  ‘Even so, you probably have more idea of what it’s all about than I do.’ Marlowe glanced down at the paper again. ‘Apparently, the chap in charge of it, who, for some reason, is called the Witch Maker—’

  ‘He’s the one who makes the Witch,’ Woodend supplied helpfully.

  ‘—this Witch Maker, was found murdered this morning. On the very spot, so it would seem, where this Witch Burning is to take place. There’s already a uniformed team on the scene, led by a sergeant from Lancaster, but since time is pressing, I’d still like you to get up there as soon as possible.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Woodend asked. ‘Time is pressin’?’

  ‘The Witch Burning, which, as you’ve already pointed out, only happens rarely, is due to take place on Sunday, which is only three days away.’

  ‘Well, unless we can crack this case in record time, they’ll just have to call it off, won’t they?’ Woodend said.

  ‘No, Chief Inspector, they will not,’ Marlowe said firmly.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir?’

  ‘The Witch Burning will go ahead as planned.’

  ‘But it can’t!’ Woodend protested. ‘The place is crowded for a Witch Burnin’. The handloom-weavin’ folk-art freaks travel from all over the country to see it. There’s busloads of tourists who come an’ rubber-neck. I can’t have them tramplin’ all over the crime scene.’

  ‘The Witch Burning is a major cultural event,’ Marlowe said. ‘It reflects both the richness and the diversity of this county’s history.’

  ‘You sound like you’re quotin’ straight out of some kind of pamphlet,’ Woodend said.

  ‘I may be,’ the Chief Constable replied. ‘But that does not alter the facts. I’ve had people – important people – ringing non-stop since the news broke. They all want the burning to go ahead – and so it will.’

  ‘Even if that means the murderer gets away with it?’

  ‘Hallerton’s a small village, and it’s obviously a local crime,’ Marlowe said airily. ‘I doubt there can be more than a handful of possible suspects. It’s surely not too much to ask that you pin the killing on one of them by Sunday, is it?’

  ‘An’ what if I don’t?’ Woodend asked.

  Marlowe smiled. It was not a pleasant sight. ‘Then I shall be forced to form a very unfavourable opinion of the way in which you have conducted the investigation,’ he said.

  Three

  The moorland road was not built for speed. It weaved and twisted its way around ancient property lines which had long since ceased to be of interest to anyone. It climbed, then dipped, then climbed again. At some points it was wide enough for two cars to pass each other comfortably, while at others it had barely the breadth to accommodate a single vehicle. Woodend seemed to have noticed none of this. He took the corners on two wheels and slammed his foot down hard on the accelerator whenever there was more than a few yards of open road ahead of him.

  Sitting in the passenger seat of the Wolseley, Monika Paniatowski took it all calmly. She was, if truth be told, a bit of a mad bugger behind the wheel herself. Besides, she had learned from experience that when her boss was furious – as he undoubtedly was now – a few close encounters with dry-stone walls were just what he needed to calm him down again.

  ‘He wants me to have it wrapped up by Sunday,’ the Chief Inspector said. ‘Wants it pinned on somebody – his words, not mine – by the time the Witch Burnin’ gets under way.’

  ‘What exactly is the Witch Burning?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘Does it have anything to do with the Pendle witch trials?’

  They had begun to climb a fairly sharp slope, and the engine of the Wolseley groaned its displeasure at its driver’s choice of gear. Woodend ignored the complaint.

  ‘No, it hasn’t a lot to do with the Pendle trials,’ he answered his sergeant. ‘In Pendle it might have been barbaric, but at least it was legal. It was the authorities from Lancaster who actually arrested the witches, an’ the official executioner who hanged them. In Hallerton, on the other hand, it was more a case of do-it-yourself justice. The villagers themselves arrested Meg Ramsden, conducted the trial and carried out the execution – all within an hour.’


  ‘And they got away with it?’ Paniatowski asked incredulously.

  ‘Some of them did. The authorities couldn’t try the whole village for the murder, naturally. But the crime couldn’t go unpunished either, so the high sheriff had the ones who’d played the biggest role arrested.’

  ‘And who might they have been?’

  ‘The fellers who actually tied the poor bloody woman to the post an’ burned her. Who else?’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘They were hanged in Lancaster Gaol. An’ on the day of their execution – at the very moment when the trapdoor was due to be opened – the village burnt Meg Ramsden in effigy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There you’ve got me, lass. Maybe as an act of defiance. Anyway, whatever their reasonin’, twenty years to the day after the men were hung, the people of Hallerton burned a second effigy. An’ they’ve kept on doin’ it – every twenty years without fail – ever since.’

  They had almost reached the crown of the last hill before Hallerton. Woodend slowed, and then pulled over – perhaps because the drive had calmed him down, perhaps because he was starting to regret his mechanical cruelty to his faithful car engine.

  ‘Come on, Sergeant, it’s time to spy out the land,’ he said.

  Paniatowski joined him on the edge of the slope, and together they looked down at the village.

  Not that there was a great deal to see. The hamlet was made up of perhaps a hundred and fifty dwellings. Most of them were clustered around the main street, though there were a few outlying farms. The village green stood out as a bright patch in the midst of all the mounds of grey stone, and the cars – almost like models at this distance – were distinctive enough to be clearly identified as police vehicles.

  ‘Welcome to the seventeenth century,’ Woodend said dourly.

  If Paniatowski heard him, she gave no sign of it.

  ‘Somethin’ on your mind, lass?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘This was the sort of place that Bob used to bring me to,’ Paniatowski said wistfully – and almost to herself.

  ‘An’ it is used to, isn’t it?’ Woodend asked.

  There was an edge to his voice, because he remembered – even if she didn’t – that the affair between Detective Inspector Rutter and Detective Sergeant Paniatowski had almost been enough to ruin both their careers.

  ‘Yes, it’s used to,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘We only see each other now when we have to.’

  Was that strictly true? Woodend wondered.

  Had the passion which had burned between them completely died down? Or did they perhaps still contrive official reasons – reasons that probably fooled even themselves – to spend time together?

  It was none of his business really, he told himself. They were both grown-ups and had the right to slash their own paths to hell if they wanted to. But Bob Rutter had been his protégé, the son he’d never had. And as for what he felt about Monika ... well, that didn’t really bear examining too closely at all.

  ‘Look at that!’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Look at what?’

  ‘That! Just beyond the village.’

  Woodend turned his gaze in the direction his sergeant was pointing. In a field close to the main road – a road, which, either by design, or accident, completely bypassed the centre of the village – there were signs of considerable activity. At one end of the field, a number of battered-looking caravans were parked almost in a circle – like a wagon train in the western films. At the other end, a couple of dozen men were busily involved in erecting temporary structures, most of them roughly round in shape, all of them painted in garish colours.

  Woodend groaned. A funfair. A bloody funfair. He should have expected this. Should have remembered it. There was always a funfair at the Witch Burnings. But it was the last thing he needed there to be.

  ‘When do you think it arrived?’ he asked his sergeant.

  Paniatowski considered the question. ‘Judging by how far they’ve got already, I’d say they got here yesterday afternoon at the latest,’ she pronounced, ‘which, of course, was several hours before the murder.’

  ‘Wonderful!’ Woodend said.

  Paniatowski looked down at the village again. On the surface, there was nothing abnormal about it, she thought. There were dozens of other villages which were almost identical. Yet even from a distance, it was starting to make her flesh creep.

  She lit up a cigarette. ‘It doesn’t really mean anything though, does it?’ she asked lightly, in an attempt to dispel her growing unease.

  ‘What doesn’t really mean anything?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘The Witch Burning. I mean, it’s just a harmless tradition, isn’t it? Like dancing round the maypole, or hanging up a stocking for Santa?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that,’ Woodend said, walking back to the car.

  It was not the answer Paniatowski had been hoping for. ‘You wouldn’t?’ she said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Them two men who were hanged for the murder of Meg Ramsden – they were brothers.’

  ‘So what?’

  Woodend opened the driver’s door of the Wolseley. ‘An’ their name was Dimdyke,’ he told her.

  Paniatowski almost choked on her cigarette.

  ‘Dimdyke?’ she repeated, after she’d finished coughing. ‘But that’s the name of the current Witch Maker! The man who was murdered this morning!’

  Woodend slid into the driver’s seat. ‘Aye, it is,’ he agreed. ‘Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

  Four

  All the villages she’d ever visited had been almost inordinately proud of their fêtes, Paniatowski thought. And that pride showed even before you got to the village itself – in the advertisements the fête committees had erected all along the country lanes leading to the place. She remembered some of the ones she’d seen in the past – huge, brightly coloured hand-painted signs offering countless delights from sack races to donkey derbies; elaborate papier-mâché models of warm and cuddly woodland creatures; streamers and balloons – all manner of inventive and endearingly amateur inducements. At the boundary of Hallerton, all she saw was the standard county-council-issue sign – a metal plaque with black raised letters on a white background which announced only the name of the village.

  ‘I thought you said the festival was a pretty big thing,’ she said to Woodend, as they drove past it.

  ‘An’ so it is,’ the Chief Inspector replied. ‘People come from all over to gawp at it. The one I saw attracted busload on busload of tourists, includin’ a fair number of Yanks.’

  ‘Well, you’d never guess any of that from what we’ve seen so far,’ Paniatowski commented.

  ‘I said it got a lot of visitors,’ Woodend told her. ‘What I didn’t say was that the visitors were made to feel particularly welcome. In fact, from what I remember, the locals gave the outsiders a bit of a cold shoulder.’

  ‘Strange,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Aye, it is,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But there’s nowt as queer as folk – an’ from what I’ve heard there’s no folk as queer as them that come from Hallerton.’

  They had entered the village proper. The main street was cobbled, and barely wide enough for two cars. On either side of it stood stone cottages, their small windows seeming to gaze disapprovingly at what passed before them. The feeling of disquiet that Paniatowski had felt on the hill only intensified now that she was in the village itself. It was almost, she thought fancifully, as if they had driven into the mouth of a snake and were now making their way through its dark and dangerous body.

  The village came to an end as abruptly as it had begun, and ahead of them was the village green.

  But it wasn’t like other village greens she’d seen, Paniatowski thought. In this, as in so many other things, Hallerton managed to be different.

  True, she added in fairness, the police cars and the crowd which had gathered must have somewhat distorted its normal appearance. Yet even allowing for that, it was still not the restf
ul place that most greens were.

  It was impossible to imagine cricket matches being played there on lazy summer days, for example. And it was inconceivable that courting couples would stroll round it as they discussed their future together.

  It was, despite its lush grass, a dark place.

  Woodend parked his Wolseley next to an unmarked Land Rover, then glanced across at the Green. Standing next to the Witching Post was the Land Rover’s driver – a small dark figure in a heavy sheepskin jacket and light, colourful sari.

  ‘I see Doc Shastri’s already here,’ he said to his sergeant. ‘You have to admit one thing about yon lass – she’s as keen as mustard.’

  Paniatowski felt a stab of jealousy. She knew it was unworthy of her, but she still couldn’t help it. Until the arrival of Dr Shastri, she’d been the only female in Central Lancashire closely involved in the investigation of violent crime, and whilst – on the one hand – she welcomed the addition of another woman to the job, she could not quite avoid – on the other – mourning slightly the fact that she had lost her own uniqueness.

  A policeman in his early thirties, with sergeant’s stripes on his arm, marched briskly over to them and saluted.

  ‘Sergeant Gough, sir,’ he said. ‘From Lancaster headquarters. We’ve secured the area.’

  ‘Good,’ Woodend replied, not quite managing to hide his grimace.

  The sergeant noticed the expression. ‘Is there something wrong, sir?’ he asked.

  Woodend sighed. ‘Just your choice of words. “Secured the area” – for God’s sake! It only used to be the senior officers, with their arses firmly anchored to their office chairs, who talked in that kind of jargon. Now it seems as if even ordinary decent bobbies have got in on the act. Whatever happened to good old Lancashire English, an’ callin’ a spade a bloody shovel?’

  Gough looked flustered. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to—’

  ‘Nay, lad, don’t apologize,’ Woodend said. ‘You’ve just done right. You’ll need to use all that fancy talk if you’re to get on in the modern police force. Is there a local bobby around?’