The Janus Stone

Ruth has Max’s email address. She’ll send a casual invitation to the Imbolc thing. Cathbad won’t mind, she’s sure. Druids aren’t exactly hung up on numbers and table settings. And he would like the chance of converting another academic to the ‘old ways’. Thinking of Max’s face as he described St Hugh and St Fremund, Ruth thinks that he may well be a closet Christian. Well, that won’t deter Cathbad. He is open to any form of ritual, though he does tend to alienate the more devout by referring to Jesus as ‘the great shaman’.

Ruth starts to type when suddenly a light comes on, making her momentarily shield her eyes. After a second she realises that it is the security light. She goes to the window and looks out. The garden is flooded with the glare, each blade of grass sharply defined, white against black. But there is no living creature to be seen.

8th June Day consecrated for Vesta

The proper thing to do is to sacrifice nine black puppies to Hecate. I worried about this because, owing to my asthma, I don’t have even one puppy. And I do like to do the right thing. In the end, I killed a cat. I didn’t like doing it because I’m fond of animals. But it was old. A scrawny black cat who used to sleep in the sun outside my window. I think it belongs to some old lady in the alms cottages. Anyway, yesterday when the domus was deserted I crept out and cut its throat. It screamed and scratched and I realised that I should have hit it on the head first. Oh well, tamdiu discendum est, quamdiu vivas. We live and learn. I chased it into the bushes, caught it by its tail and finished the job. Then I hacked off the head. It was hard work but I found an axe in the outhouse which did the job admirably. The axe will be useful later so I hid it in the usual place. There was a hell of a lot of blood. Too much really. I got a bucket of water and cleaned the pathway and I buried the cat beneath the laurel bush. I was exhausted after all that and had to lie down. I just hope Hecate is satisfied.

CHAPTER 7

Nelson is in his car, one of his favourite places, doing one of his favourite things, driving to interrogate a suspect. Of course, Whitcliffe would say that he is ‘merely popping down to have a chat’ with Father Patrick Hennessey, ex-principal of the Sacred Heart Children’s Home. There is, as yet, no crime. Ruth’s skeleton has, as yet, no age and no sex. But Nelson has been a policeman long enough to smell wrongdoing. As soon as he looked into that trench (‘grave’ is how he thinks of it), as soon as he saw the bones, so small and oddly vulnerable curled up in the foetal position, he knew. He knew that he was looking at a murder victim. And, if the bones do turn out to be medieval, or even bloody Iron Age again, he knows that he will still be right. That body, that child, was murdered.

When Nelson is asked what’s the worst thing about being a policeman, he sometimes answers ‘the smell’. It is partly meant as a rather grim joke but, in fact, it conceals an even grimmer truth. Villains, the feral, rat-like kind, do smell. As a young policeman, Nelson once had to accompany a convicted paedophile from court to prison. Being locked in the back of a van with this scum for a sixty-mile journey was one of the worst experiences of his life. Nelson remembers the man had actually tried to talk to him. Had even, incredible as it seems, wanted to be friendly. ‘Don’t. fucking. talk. to. me.’ Nelson had spat, before they had even reached the outskirts of Manchester. But it is the smell that he remembers most. This man would obviously have had a shower in prison but he absolutely stank: a fetid, rotten smell that reeked of unwashed clothes, windowless rooms, of fear and unspeakable obsession. When he got home that night, Nelson had washed and showered three times but sometimes, even today, he can still smell it. The stench of evil.