Part 1 (1/2)

Wesley Peterson.

The Blood Pit.

Kate Ellis.

Kate Ellis was born and brought up in Liverpool and studied drama in Manchester. She has worked in teaching, marketing and accountancy and first enjoyed literary success as a winner of the North West Playwrights compet.i.tion. Keenly interested in medieval history and archaeology, Kate lives in North Ches.h.i.+re with her husband, Roger, and their two sons. The Blood Pit is her twelfth Wesley Peterson crime novel.

Kate Ellis has been twice nominated for the CWA Short Story Dagger, and her novel The Plague Maiden, was nominated for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year in 2005.

PROLOGUE.

The small figure lay on the sand gulping in salty, seaweed-scented air as the twisted face descended slowly, closer and closer.

The watchers had been egging on the tormentor, braying like donkeys. Relentless, mocking. But suddenly they fell silent and began to back away, as though an evil spell had been broken. Then, after a few frozen, expectant seconds, they fled the scene, leaving the victim alone with the powerful one, waiting for the cruel laugh and the final blow.

There was no pain when the blood started to drain away into the thirsty sand. And as the victim looked upwards, the stars and the towering cliff face silhouetted against the midnight sky began to blur and fade. The end was near. This was death.

Savouring the moment of supreme power, the bringer of death sat back and smiled. But when a sound cracked like a gunshot through the gloom, the tormentor fled into the shadow of the cliff and the victim was left alone, life blood gus.h.i.+ng away like a stream, staining the sand a rusty red.

FIFTEEN YEARS LATER.

Annette Marrick turned the car into the drive of Foxglove House, narrowly avoiding the couple who were walking past the gate a man and a woman, not old, not young; out for a saunter in the late afternoon sun with their cheap supermarket clothes and plastic carrier bags. As Annette swung the steering wheel, they scurried out of her path and she smiled with satisfaction before continuing down the drive, bringing the car to a halt in front of the house with a crunch of gravel beneath her wheels.

Charlie's new Range Rover was there, parked thoughtlessly at an angle as usual, and as Annette opened the front door, she couldn't help feeling discontented and a little angry. But she often felt like that these days especially when he was up to what she thought of as His Little Tricks.

She noticed that the lounge door was shut, which was unusual. Perhaps he was in there, she thought ... entertaining. Tentatively, she turned the handle and listened for sounds of hurried, embarra.s.sed dressing. But when she stepped into the room, all she could hear was the faint sound of birdsong from the garden trickling in through an open window.

Three months ago, she had had the lounge decorated to her own taste. Cream carpet; white leather sofa; white walls and ceiling; cream drapes at the French windows with the occasional splash of cool green to relieve the monotony.

And red. There were splashes on the walls and ceiling. Scarlet in places; rusty in others where it had begun to dry. The white sofa was now a deep, glistening scarlet and he lay slumped there, staring at her accusingly.

'Charlie,' she whispered, hurrying over to him and touching his arm with the tips of her fingers. When he didn't move she looked down and realised that she was standing in a pool of blood, thick and sticky. She froze for a few moments, wondering what to do, before backing away, her eyes fixed on her husband's dead face.

She took off her stilettos at the door and tiptoed into the hall in her bare feet, her heart pounding. When she reached the huge mirror that hung by the staircase, she stared at her reflection in horror. Her white skirt was stained with Charlie's blood so she unzipped it frantically, only to find that the red had seeped through to her underskirt. She stepped out of that too and stood in her white lace knickers, staring at her half-naked image in the mirror, telling herself to stay calm. There was some way out of this.

Then she rushed to the kitchen and plunged the skirt and underskirt into the sink. She had to be clean. No blood must be found on her hands.

CHAPTER 1.

Dear Dr Watson or may I call you Neil? Yes I'll call you Neil it sounds more informal. Friendlier.

Did you know the monks of Veland Abbey were bled every couple of months and that they regarded it as a great treat a holiday almost? It was their only chance to eat decent food in the warmth away from the daily grind of hard physical work and those interminable prayers.

I feel I know all about you, Neil, and I feel you'd understand. You see, I'm scared I might do something terrible. And I'm scared the bleeding won't stop like it did for those monks.

Neil Watson stared at the letter and frowned. It had been waiting for him in his letterbox at the entrance to the flats, between an electricity bill and an offer of a credit card at amazing rates from a company quite unaware of what archaeologists actually earned. As it had promised to be the most interesting item of correspondence, he'd opened it first. And now he turned it over, as though he expected to find some sort of clue on the back of the sheet of A4 paper. The letter had been printed on a computer. Times New Roman. And the envelope was the plain white self-seal type with a computer-printed address. All standard stuff. Apart from the content.

He realised his hand was shaking. He was an archaeologist; not the sort of person who received anonymous letters. And the thought that someone out there was watching him was unnerving. The writer knew what he did. And where he lived. He could be watching now ... somewhere in the shadows. Waiting.

Neil put the letter down on the small dining table that doubled as his desk. Perhaps he should ignore it. There were a lot of peculiar people about and his recent appearance on local television had probably lured one of them out of whatever woodwork he or she had been lurking in. He'd raised his head above the parapet; maybe even become a bit of a local celebrity of the very minor kind. Neil had never considered himself the celebrity type but then someone he couldn't remember who had once observed that everyone has their fifteen minutes of fame. Although he had to admit that he hadn't particularly enjoyed his.

Fame, in Neil's case, had crept up unexpectedly when he'd agreed to take charge of the Archaeological Unit's first training excavation at Stow Barton a puzzling collection of medieval ruins on land once owned by a Cistercian abbey two miles to the west. Members of the public could, for a price, take part in a dig, supervised and instructed by professional archaeologists. The powers-that-be had told him that it would spread the word to the ma.s.ses. And it would raise some much needed funds into the bargain.

However, from the very beginning, Neil had had an uncomfortable feeling that the enterprise would end in disaster.

He re-read the letter again before s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g it up into a tight ball and aiming it at the waste-paper basket in the corner of his cluttered living room. It was rubbish. The work of a nutcase with nothing better to do.

But half an hour later he retrieved it and flattened it out.

He had an uneasy feeling he might need all the evidence he could get.

The hooded figures on the littered recreation ground that lay on the edge of Morbay's Winterham Estate had their own rituals, strict and unchanging. The circling on bicycles like some tribal round dance. Then the solemn drinking of the strong cider or lager whatever they could get their hands on. Then, as darkness fell, the furtive communion with their shaman Daz the dealer who hung round the estate in antic.i.p.ation of their needs their alternative emergency service. Then the escape to their tawdry ecstasy of enlightenment the high point of their day. The thing they mugged, shoplifted and burgled for. The temporary oblivion they craved for want of anything better to do.

At six thirty, after a hard day avoiding the security guards who patrolled the shopping centre in Morbay, Carl Pinney felt thirsty. His mates decided to go to the chippy but Carl, knowing his mum had bought some diet c.o.ke from the supermarket the day before, broke away from the tribe, saying he'd see them later, and made for home. He fancied some c.o.ke before Chelsea, his stupid b.i.t.c.h of a sister, drank it all. And, besides, he had seen his favourite pizza being shoved in the freezer. And pizza, in Carl's opinion, trumped the Fat Friar's soggy chips any day.

The maisonette he called home was in sight. Built in the 1950s in the utilitarian council-house style, it had grubby net curtains at the windows and an old fridge once the property of the neighbours stood on the patch of scrub that his mum optimistically referred to as a lawn. Pathetic really, Carl thought. But his mum had always had big ideas ... until Dad had walked out and the pills and booze got to her.

Carl was making for the front door when he saw something glinting on top of an open bin bag by the front gate. The thing caught the light amongst the ready meal packaging, sparkling like a jewel in mud, and Carl leaned over the bag of rubbish to get a closer look.

The blade looked vicious. Thin and sharp and stained with something brown. The handle and the top of the blade looked brand new and as Carl reached down and picked it up he realised that the stain on the blade wasn't rust. It was something far more thrilling and his heart began to beat a little faster.

He stood gazing at it for a while before walking round to the back of the building, to the little flagged area Mum called the patio. The key to the tumbledown shed was in his pocket he always kept it with him and as he undid the padlock, the door opened with a creak. All his things were in here the precious things he kept away from Chelsea and his mum. His private things. He opened the wooden box on the top shelf the box his dad had given him when he was little and placed the knife inside carefully before retracing his steps.

When he entered the house he found that Mum was out of it as usual, snoring gently on the settee, a half empty vodka bottle squatting on the coffee table, and Chelsea was nowhere to be seen. So he made himself a pizza before revisiting the shed.

One of the young constables in the patrol car who'd answered the initial 999 call had been sick in the rhododendron bushes lining the drive that lead to Foxglove House on the edge of the village of Rhode, halfway between Tradmouth and Bereton. Detective Chief Inspector Gerry Heffernan had taken pity on him and put him on the gate to keep away the press and the curious. The crime scene had already been preserved with blue and white tape, draped around the front door like welcoming bunting.

It was a pleasant evening, positively warm for early June and Heffernan was sitting in front of the house on a wrought-iron garden bench, enjoying the late sun while he waited for the Forensic team to complete whatever mysterious rituals they performed on such occasions so that he could make his own examination of the scene. He was wearing a white crime-scene suit which strained around the belly because he'd already had a brief look inside the house. Death was never pretty but this one was enough to turn the strongest stomach.

He heard the growl of an approaching car engine and when the vehicle appeared round the bend in the drive, crunching the luxuriant gravel beneath its tyres, he stood up. Wesley. Just the man he needed.

'Your mobile was off,' Heffernan said accusingly as DI Wesley Peterson climbed out of the car. 'Where have you been?'

Wesley glanced down at his jeans and white T-s.h.i.+rt, not his usual working garb. 'I told you I was taking the afternoon off. It was Michael's school sports day then we all went for something to eat. Pam would have skinned me alive if I'd been called out. It was more than my life was worth to keep my mobile on.'

Heffernan knew that this was the time to bl.u.s.ter a little, to make Wesley feel guilty for his lack of dedication to duty. But somehow he couldn't manage it. He knew exactly how Wesley felt.

'So did he win, then, your lad?'

'Third in the egg and spoon race,' Wesley said with a shrug of the shoulders. 'He's more the cerebral type.'

Heffernan smiled. The kid was clearly a chip off the old block, he thought. But he said nothing.