Page 10 of Preaching to the Choir

She strongly suspected they weren’t going to find anything, and that was probably just as well. That made the gun a liability, and she’d like to have persuaded Melissa to leave it behind, but that obviously wasn’t going to happen. At least the girl was carrying it pointed away from everyone and finger away from the trigger when they snuck out of the house by a side door Elena hadn’t even known existed.

Last night she had been absolutely convinced that there was some sort of bird monster at large on the Enderby estate. In the light of morning, she wasn’t so sure. The idea that Will had got himself impaled on a sharp stick, and maybe a disturbed bird had exploded off through the trees at the same time, seemed entirely persuasive. And surely Neera would have been able to tell from the wound just what had gone in. She’d have been washing out fragments of bark and wood and whatever… Except Will and Melissa had gone all the way past ‘bird monster’ to ‘family conspiracy’ with a speed that said a lot about the collective childhood they shared with Ross.

“Aunt Neera has a lab in the house, you know?” Will said as they reached the edge of the trees. “An actual laboratory somewhere.”

“You’ve seen it?” Ross sounded doubtful.

“No, but I believe it. She’s here all the time, on and off. Not just this stupid forty-year get-together thing.” Will looked up at the skeletal interlacings of the canopy and visibly swallowed, then took a forceful step under the shadow of the branches. He was pale and sweating, and Elena reckoned it wouldn’t be long before he’d need to go back, and then they all could, and this whole business could be put behind them.

“Which is for what?” she asked them. “Ross never said. Just that your family did it, and it was very important so we couldn’t possibly not be there. Or he couldn’t, I guess.”

“Well, it’s…” Will started.

“It’s tradition,” said Melissa. “It’s just, once every generation Ye Whole Familie must gather, you know.” She skidded a little in the mud, holding the shotgun barrel high and swearing.

“Forty years isn’t every generation,” Elena pointed out, and then reconsidered. “Your… great uncle? Patrick, he said he was a hundred and eight or something.”

Ross rubbed at his neck. “I suppose he is, actually. I think most of them are, at the high table.”

“A hundred and eight?” Elena looked from face to face, seeing none of the surprise she felt should be there. “I mean he’s not going limbo dancing any time soon, but that sure is one hale and hearty centenarian.”

“My dad always says, ‘good stock,’” Melissa put in. “Runs in the family. Enderboughs and all the little branches.”

“What did Uncle Patrick want, anyway?” Ross wanted to know.

“He cornered me at breakfast. He was trying to get me to leave. He even had a car ready, he said.”

Melissa stopped. “Dad said you couldn’t. He was righteously pissed off at Ross for bringing you, but said you were part of it now. He said…”

“I’d seen too much?”

They were all three of them looking at her now.

“Did you…” Ross lowered his voice to a whisper. The quiet beneath the trees was a hollow and hungry thing. “…see anything?”

So she told them about the body under the sheet, ornamenting every detail with disclaimers and expecting them to be as sceptical about it as she was about the killer grouse. When she’d done, though, they’d bought every word of it, were more convinced by the story than she herself was.

“I think I’ve always known,” said Will in a taut voice, “that there was something. I mean, it seemed too good to be true, so much of it.”

Melissa frowned. “You do know that’s how having a lot of money works, Will?”

“No, I mean, it’s as if…” And then he mumbled something, and shrugged, and then winced with pain, which got him out of repeating himself. Elena had been leaning close, though, and she thought she’d caught what he said.

It’s as if we made a deal.

She shivered. Melissa finished fussing over Will, and for a moment it looked like they were turning round and heading back. He wouldn’t have it, though, and they ended up forging on, and that was when they found the clearing.

It wasn’t so terrible. Not on the face of it. Not if they were just making a catalogue of physical evidence. Not in the light of day. Just a clearing in the woods, the only one they’d found. Far off the track, and the only reason they found it was that Melissa had been leading, and what she’d thought was the track wasn’t. And of course, Elena thought later, if they’d actually stayed on one of the uncertain little trails through the trees, they’d never have found anything, no birds, no clearing, no stakes, no blood. It would have been safe and uneventful and they’d have returned before nightfall all buoyed up with their defiance of the older generation. And perhaps that had been, at heart, what the others had wanted. Not what they actually found.

And after all, what was it, really? If she hadn’t been with the others, and if they hadn’t been so rattled by it, maybe she’d have taken it as ‘just one of those things British people have.’ Like Stonehenge or the Wicker Man.

She wished she hadn’t thought of the Wicker Man.

A clearing, and she reckoned it had been intentionally made, and then routinely recleared, but not that often. There was a growth of new fern and flower that the relatively bare floor beneath the trees had been lacking, and they could all see where it had been trampled down. Other people coming off the path. The scuff of solid boots. Drag marks.

There were seven stakes and they’d obviously been there a long time. Big wooden posts, almost black with a creosote-like preservative. The ropes were the same colour, absolutely crusted with tar and as thick as Elena’s wrist.

“What the fuck is this?” Melissa demanded.