Blood Harvest

Je

Tobias’s daughter. Lucy had been the incestuous child of her great-grandfather.

‘What happened to Lucy?’ asked Evi in a small voice. ‘How did she really die?’

‘I loved her so much, Evi.’

‘I’m sure you did. Did he do it? Did Tobias kill her?’

‘She was only two when he started to look at her, Evi. She was blonde and gorgeous, just like Christiana and me when we were tiny. I’d watch his eyes going over her body. He could still drive back then, he’d come up to the house all the time. I would never change her or bathe her anywhere near him, but he always seemed to be hanging around her. I knew I couldn’t let it happen again, not to Lucy.’

‘But Lucy was different. She had you to protect her. And Mike.’

‘But I knew how clever he was. I knew he’d get to her in the end. So I started pla

Evi thought she was way beyond being shocked. ‘I think it’s very understandable that you should be so angry,’ she said.

‘I thought about smothering him in his sleep, putting something in his food, pushing him down the stairs, tricking him to come up to the Tor with me and shoving him off. But then, one day, I realized. I didn’t have to kill him to stop him getting what he wanted.’

‘You didn’t?’

‘No. I could kill her instead.’

Tom was being tugged downwards, his back jarring painfully on the stone steps.

‘What the fuck are you doin’?’ said a voice he knew. Two large hands grasped his waist and pulled him down more steps. ‘Back off, let us get down,’ the same voice instructed. Tom heard several pairs of footsteps retreating behind them and then he was in the church gallery once more.

‘Joe’s on the roof,’ he managed. ‘In the other bell tower, the one that everyone thinks is empty, but it’s not. He’s in there and he’s freezing and we have to get him down now.’

The four boys stared back at him, as if they’d captured an alien that had suddenly started giving them orders.

‘Your brother?’ Jake Knowles was the first to speak. ‘The one we’ve been looking for all day?’

‘On the roof?’ repeated Jake’s older brother, whose name Tom couldn’t remember.

Tom looked back at the four faces and felt like his heart had stopped beating. ‘You did it,’ he said. ‘You put him there.’

The older boy’s face twisted. ‘What the fuck do you think we are?’ he said. ‘Fuckin’ psychos?’

‘He’s actually up there?’ said Billy Aspin. ‘Alive?’

Tom nodded. ‘He’s tied up,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get him out. I need to get my dad. What are you doing here? If you didn’t put him there, why are you here?’

‘We followed you in,’ said Jake. ‘We saw you and that Renshaw cretin ru

‘We have to get help. There’s a police…’ said Tom, realizing he had no idea what had happened to Ebba.

‘Come on,’ interrupted the eldest Knowles boy. ‘Let’s see what he’s on about.’

Evi felt like she was burning up. Fu

‘And the really ironic thing was, Tobias did love her.’ Je

‘He was absolutely devastated,’ Je

Sweat was trickling down between Evi’s shoulder blades. The police weren’t coming. Je

‘I’ll never forget it,’ she was saying. ‘He came out of the vestry and I was dangling her from her ankles, the way he used to do to me, and she was screaming and screaming and I could see him shouting at me, yelling at me to stop. He started ru

The smell of the woman was almost worse than the heat: alcohol and perspiration and exotic flowers. Evi knew it was going to make her retch if she didn’t move. Hands down, push hard, ignore the pain; she had strong arms, it would work.

‘It took so long for her to fall,’ Je

Do it now. Evi rose up, was caught and dragged back down.

‘He almost made it.’ Je

Evi swallowed hard and fought the temptation to hold her breath. She had to keep breathing. If she held her breath, she’d faint.

‘I’ve never had any pleasure from sex, Evi, not once – how could I?’ Je

Evi knew she couldn’t scream. No one but Millie would hear her.

The two men were ru

It had been forty minutes or more since they’d left the house. The police should have joined them by now. There were police cars on the roads into Heptonclough, they weren’t more than five minutes from the Fletchers’ house. If Evi had phoned them when he and Gareth had set out, they would have arrived by now. They hadn’t, which meant she hadn’t phoned. Something else had happened. It was worse now, worse than just Joe, the mayhem that Gillian had unleashed. They had to get back.

His mobile was in the pocket of his jeans. He could stop, call the police himself, phone the house. But to do that he’d have to stop ru

They’d reached a stile. Harry climbed up, jumped down and set off again, hearing Gareth doing the same thing behind him. They were in the harvest field, just above the town. Another hundred yards and they’d be passing the site of the All Souls’ Day bonfire. They reached the fence and Harry vaulted over. Past Gillian’s old cottage, the cobbles slippery with snow, buildings rising up on either side now. Gareth was breathing heavily by his side. They came to the end of the lane, had just turned into the main road when the church bell began to ring.

‘He dragged me away, of course,’ said Je