Vicious Circle

Sitting under the ancient oak, with my back against its broad trunk, I settled in for the long haul. But as it turned out, my threadbare patience wasn’t tested very much at all. Barely an hour after I arrived, the clanking of a chain drew my attention from the church back to the gate. It was followed a second or so later by the grinding clack of a bolt cutter biting through thick steel. The gate swung open and three figures stepped silently through. One of them threw the chain and padlock negligently down on the ground, just inside the gate.

I was completely hidden where I sat by the deep shadows under the tree and by the unrelieved blackness of the night. Not only was it dark of the moon but it was a clear night, so there were no clouds to bounce back the muddied radiance of the streetlights. Contrary to popular belief, there isn’t much that you can see by starlight.

Two of the three men—at least, their height suggested they were men—went on around to the vestry door, the third stationed himself at the gate, either on guard duty or maybe carrying out some more ceremonial function.

The men had brought crowbars with them, but they didn’t need them because the vestry door was still hanging on one hinge from Juliet’s assault on it the night before. They pushed it all the way open and stepped inside.

By this time, more people were filing silently in through the gate, past the man on watch. Some of them were carrying sports bags or shoulder bags: one carried a long case of some kind slung across his back that looked as though it could contain a fishing rod. It was a regular field-and-stream meet, to judge by appearances.

I counted about two dozen of them in all as they trickled past in twos and threes over the next ten minutes or so. They must be staggering their arrival so that anybody passing in the street would be less likely to pay them any attention. It had probably been the same drill the week before, at the Quaker meeting house. Discretion is the watchword of the modern necromancer: mustn’t upset the neighbors, or you’ll never be invited back. I wondered, fleetingly, what sort of people thought it was a great idea to spend their weekends murdering children to hasten the rule of hell on earth, but I gave it up pretty quickly. The less I knew about them the better I liked it.

Fanke himself, when he arrived, was unmistakeable. It wasn’t that his build was so distinctive: it was the fawning servility of the men who walked at his side, or rather a couple of paces behind him on either hand, and the way the guard on the gate bowed low as he passed. He didn’t deign to notice this act of self-abasement: he sailed on by, his arrogance ringing him like a visible halo. I fingered the gun again. If I’d been sure that Fanke’s death would have stopped the ritual, and if I’d had more confidence in my aim, I would have emptied the clip at him. But it would have been depressing to do that and miss, and then to have to watch while the bastards got their infernal groove on. No, the gun was more useful in my hands as a deterrent than as an actual weapon; so long as I didn’t use it, nobody would guess what a lousy shot I was.

When the last few stragglers had made their way inside, the guard on the gate pulled it to and tied it off with a short length of rope, or maybe wire—from my vantage point I couldn’t quite see. I was hoping and expecting him to join his friends at the altar, but he didn’t. He leaned against the wall, peering out into the street through the crack where the gate hung slightly loose on its new moorings. Glancing across toward the presbytery, I thought I saw the faintest hint of movement in the darkness just inside the doorway. Then the lights went on in the nave and the man standing there was outlined clearly.

Two guards. No clear line of sight between them, but I couldn’t approach either one without revealing my position to the other. And I really didn’t want Fanke knowing I was there before I was ready to face him. So I had to take these guys out, quietly, without raising an alarm inside the church—and I had to do it fast, before the ritual got too far along to be stopped.

I considered a few variations on thrown stones and improvised diversions before I finally noticed that there was a way up onto the presbytery roof. From where I was, I could carry on around to the far right, shinny up onto the far wall of the cemetery and from there onto the sloping slates. If they took my weight, I could get in close to the guy in the doorway without the one at the gate seeing me coming.

Okay, so that was the plan—if I could call it that without breaching the trades descriptions act. But before I put it into action, there was one more thing I had to do. I took Paul’s mobile out and keyed out a number in the dark, using the raised bump on the number “5” to guide my thumb. The ring tone sounded loud in my ear—but only in my ear, thank God.

“Emergency. Which service, please?” A woman’s voice, brisk and impersonal.