stay strong. Only those with the resolve to serve Him through the darkest hours and the harshest pain can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
‘I have sinned,’ he says aloud into the grey air. ‘But if I repent I will be forgiven. If I carry out the tasks God has set me then Good will prevail. If I stay faithful until the Very End then He will reward me with Eternal Life.’
He knows he won’t sleep now so he pulls himself from his bed and heads downstairs. He prepares breakfast which he eats in the kitchen while listening to the radio. The news is full of the missing kid from Plymouth and a body found in a railway tunnel. The tunnel is just a couple of miles from the barn, the location too close for comfort. The Shepherd wonders if this is another test or if God is trying to tell him something.
He dismisses the idea and his mind turns from the boy in the tunnel to the other boy, the one who plays with the skull. The world is full of sinners, he thinks, and all of them deserve to be punished.
After breakfast he goes into the living room. Either side of the fireplace are bookshelves, the shelves bare apart from one particularly heavy volume. The book is old and leather-bound, the title on the spine embossed with gold. He takes the book from the shelf and sits in the rocking chair. He’s broken his fast but now he needs sustenance from God’s words.
His long fingers slide between the pages, ruffling the thin paper until he finds the passage he is looking for.
… as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death.
The Word of God is unambiguous. Sinners must be punished. The Shepherd leans back in his chair, the ancient text fuel for his mind. He allows himself to relax for a moment. The last few days have been hectic. He has not only completed his work in the barn, he’s also tested the altar and the raft. The altar performed admirably and the Shepherd was only sorry that a mannequin was standing in for the true sinners. The raft, too, had worked like a dream and as he’d watched it float out to sea with the mannequin aboard he’d felt a moment of catharsis. This was the beginning of the end.
Still, all his hard work on the altar and raft would be for nothing without the attendance of his first guests.
Judgement is mine, saith the Lord.
Yes, but even God needs help to bring the accused to his courtroom.
The Taser he’d purchased mail order from the States, where apparently they were perfectly legal. Initially he’d been uneasy about the device, seeing the thing as a necessary evil. After having used the gun on his first guest he’d changed his mind. The weapon was heaven-sent, instant justice administered much like a lightning bolt from above. Sleet succumbed to the weapon in the same way as his first guest. The man had gone down instantly and then quivered like a jelly as he received shock after shock.
He’d bundled Sleet into the boot of his car and driven him to the barn. At the barn the man had been ready to fight until he saw the Taser again. From then on Sleet had complied willingly and allowed himself to be locked in a cell.
Fool.
The Shepherd thinks of the passage from the Bible once more.
… as for the cowardly …
A coward is the worst kind of sinner. By failing to have courage and conviction, the coward spits in God’s face and denies His existence. Cowards must experience the love of God and repent before Him.
The Shepherd returns to the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea. It’s half past six and the radio station is repeating the story about the body in the tunnel. Poor lad. The Shepherd can’t help but think the Lord has missed a trick. The pure evil which the boy faced is still out there, free to wreak havoc.
He reaches across and switches the radio off. It isn’t his duty to question God. He merely has to carry out His wishes. And His wishes are clear.
Dead clear.
Near Bovisand, Devon. Thursday 22nd October. 6.30 a.m.
The alarm on her phone went off at six thirty, Savage reaching across to silence the crescendo before the noise could wake Pete. She blinked in the darkness and then got out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom. Peered at herself in the mirror. She hardly recognised the eyes which stared back. The past few months had changed her, she thought, and maybe not for the better. She’d come close to killing Owen Fox, a young man who, it turned out, was innocent of anything but protecting his girlfriend. If it hadn’t been for the timely intervention of Kenny Fallon, she’d have pulled the trigger on the gun. Would she be feeling better if she had? Would she be staring at herself in the same way?
An hour later and the melancholy was subsumed by the usual pre-school hell and the need to get the children ready. Samantha had lost her phone and was refusing to leave home without it, while Jamie had – in his own words – ‘bastard growing pains’. Savage had dosed him with Calpol but was more concerned with his ever expanding vocabulary of bad language.
‘I’m innocent, officer,’ Pete said, holding his hands up before scouring through the debris on the kitchen table as he searched for the phone. ‘He didn’t get the word from me. Must be on the National Curriculum list.’
‘Right.’ Savage replaced the bottle of Calpol in the cupboard and put the spoon in the dishwasher. ‘Sam?’
‘Huh?’ Her daughter looked up from a pile of schoolwork and shook her head. ‘Not me, Mum.’
Samantha gathered up her things, stuffed them into her bag and left the room.
‘You all right?’ Pete said. ‘This kid and all?’
‘Not really.’ Savage shook her head. She’d told Pete about finding the boy in the tunnel when she’d crawled into bed in the small hours. ‘I’ve got to attend the post-mortem this morning and you know how I hate them.’
‘But it’s not just that, is it?’ Pete moved across the room and stood beside Savage. ‘Love, you’ve either got to let go of Clarissa or accept you can no longer work these type of cases. Tell HR it’s affecting your health. Any sense they might have to pay some sort of compensation and they’ll move you like a shot.’
‘But there’s the rub, I don’t want to be moved. I want to get the bastard sicko who’s responsible.’
‘Bastard?’ Pete grinned. ‘Well there’s one case closed at least.’
‘What?’ Savage managed a half smile. ‘Oh, right.’
‘Look, however many nutters you bang up, she’s never coming back, is she?’
‘No.’ Savage remembered the look on her face in the mirror that morning. ‘I thought things would change after …’
‘After what?’
‘After …’ She sighed. Pete knew nothing of her involvement with Simon Fox and his son. Perhaps one day she’d need to come clean. But now wasn’t the time. ‘After the girl on the moor.’
‘Which one? You saved that Russian woman from the Satanists. Then there was the lass captured by those twins. Not to mention the girl you pulled from that psychopath’s freezer. How many does it take before the guilt’s gone?’
Savage shook her head. She didn’t like the way the conversation was heading.
‘Face it, Charlotte. There was nothing you could have done to prevent Clarissa dying and however many cases you solve, however many kids you save, it won’t make any difference.’
‘It makes a difference to them, doesn’t it? And to me.’
‘Sometimes