The Deceit. Tom Knox

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       9

       Zennor Hill, Cornwall, England

      Cats? The cottage was full of cats: or rather the corpses of cats. Some skinned, most of them charred. Charred and burned and scorched and roasted. Piles of dead cats in one corner. Piles of dead cats in another. The stench was intolerable. They had begun to rot.

      ‘Jesus Christ.’

      DI Sally Pascoe nodded, grimly. The white shirt of her police uniform was smeared with greasy soot. The stuff was everywhere. The burning fur and cat flesh had thickened the air and blackened the walls. The floor was actually sticky: Karen shuddered to think why that was, though she could guess – the heat must have been intense as the cats burned, so intense that the fat in their flesh had liquefied, had turned to oil or tallow, now congealing. Like candles.

      These cats had been burned like candles.

      She resisted the urge to vomit.

      Sally pointed, and Karen followed the gesture. ‘That must have been where some of them were burned. A spit roast, but others appear to have been doused in petrol, and burned alive. We found some petrol canisters at the back, and firelighters too, used for kindling.’

      ‘They stink. Are you going to move them?’

      Sally shrugged. ‘We don’t quite know what to do, I mean, who do we go to, Forensics, Pathology?’

      ‘Or a vet.’

      ‘Yes, maybe.’

      Karen gazed around the awful scene. One cat was only half-burned: so they hadn’t all been burned at the same time. They had been torched one after the other. Ritualistically. And this ritual had not been completed.

      Ritual?

       Ritual.

      She turned to Sally. ‘Maybe you should speak to an expert on witchcraft.’

      ‘Yes! That’s what I thought, some kind of terrible witchcraft. That’s one reason I asked you over, Kaz. Didn’t you handle a case in London, last year, African voodoo?’

      ‘Yes. A Congolese couple decided their kid was possessed, and they beat him to death.’

      Sally shuddered visibly. ‘OK, OK, so this is just amateur night here, just a house full of barbecued cats.’

      ‘It’s quite bad enough, Sally. Properly Satanic.’ She stooped to one sticky, charred heap of corpses. Using a pen, she flipped one small corpse upside down. The mouth of the cat was open, agonized and screaming. Karen shook her head. ‘The noise must have been unbelievable. Right? Dozens of cats, being burned alive. Through the night? You know how cats yowl. I get them outside my house in London. Caterwauling. Imagine the appalling noise if you … burned them like this.’

      ‘Yes, that’s how we were alerted, someone heard the noise.’ Sally was backing away to the door as if she wanted to flee. Her face was pale. ‘Sorry. I’ve had enough for the moment: the smell. Can we get out, and speak in the car?’

      ‘Sure.’

      The door was opened; the fresh air – cold and faintly drizzly – was unbelievably welcoming. Both women inhaled, greedily. Then they both laughed, very quietly.

      ‘Hey, I haven’t even said anything about your mum … Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. Karen, I’m so, so sorry. Come here.’ She hugged her friend.

      Karen welcomed the embrace: human warmth. She missed her daughter; she missed her friends; at this moment, she missed her mum most of all.

      A silent constable standing at the door watched them, perhaps slightly embarrassed by their open emotion.

      Karen and Sally walked to the Range Rover and got in. Sally spoke first. ‘Look at us, two important policewomen. Or one slightly important and one really important. I mean, Detective Chief Inspector at the Met? What happened to little Karen Trevithick? A DCI at thirty-two? Go girl!’

      Karen waved away the compliment. ‘It’s easier for women in some ways. We have a different way of looking at things. Changes perspective.’

      ‘Yes I find that too … Sometimes.’

      ‘Hard work too though; and it’s pretty tough on Ellie.’

      ‘Your daughter must be, like, six?’ Sally’s smile faded. ‘The father—’

      ‘Still isn’t really involved. But that’s my choice.’

      ‘You were never one to get married and bake scones, Kaz.’

      ‘No. I guess not. Not like Mum.’ She looked out of the car window, at the distant, yearning sea, way down the hill, beyond Zennor. ‘You know we used to come here, to Zennor. On holidays. We’d take a picnic and sit on the cliffs. Dad would always say the same thing – the same bit of history. He loved Cornish history. You see them? Those little fields, down there?’ Karen gestured towards the intricate labyrinth of tiny, vivid green fields, surrounding the granite village. ‘You see the stone hedges dividing them? The big boulders. They’re Neolithic. My dad told me those were the oldest human artefacts in the world СКАЧАТЬ