Open Writing

Before he went to see Dr Dunwell, Inspector Hartley called in at his Office. Sgt Khan told him the Met knew of a Kathy Burton from Keighworth. Had done for the past couple of years ever since they’d booked her for soliciting. Worked a pitch just outside Kings Cross Station, sir, where she rents a pad.”

Hartley grunted and read the fax. “Usual stuff,” he said. “Straight off the train and on the game. So that’s how she paid her rent in Keighworth. A lady with no pence but much presence. ”

He mooched around the office a while, reading the rest of his mail. Sgt Khan was curious.

“Find out much about Pithon Hall, sir?” he asked.

Hartley looked up. “Aye. There’s summat going on there. The place gives me the creeps.”

Sgt Khan was even more curious. “What happened?” he asked.

“The place is connected with the Manasas murder, I’m sure, “ he said.

“Whitcliff and his crew are in it up to their necks. That lot at the Middle East Academy, too. Then there’s that goddess, Hathor, and the whole damned tribe of them running round a wall up there. Amon, Sebek, Osiris – the lot.”

His sergeant was impressed. Hartley had done his homework.

“You’re becoming quite an expert on pagan gods, sir,” he said, smiling.
“Does your bishop know?”

“It’s no joke, Khan, believe me. Evil was tangible in that room. You’ll see what I mean if you ever visit it. And that chap Blackwell. He’s the spitten of Amenit’s painting on the wall.”

“Amenit?” asked Khan.

“The Egyptian god who eats the souls of the dead. Those weighed in his scales and found wanting. I’ve got a picture of him somewhere here.”

The inspector pulled out a battered reference book from his desk. The drawer where he kept the sermons he worked on in his lunch hour. The drawer Donaldson was always on at him to tidy. He showed his sergeant a picture of the god.

“Not the sort of book I read before I go to bed,” said Hartley. “Those paintings on that wall were straight out of a horror film ! ”

He put the book back and said he was going to the path lab. He asked if his sergeant would like to go with him. Khan declined saying he’d a lot of work to get through..

The inspector caught Dr Dunwell as he was leaving for lunch, so they drove together to the Black Bull, a few miles out of town. Like all bachelors he fed his belly well. He was a connoisseur of good wine and whisky, so he dined frequently with Hartley Their speciality was traditional Yorkshire food, Dunwell’s speciality, too. “None of your fancy foreign stuff, when I can get good Yorkshire home-cooking,” he used to say. “I settled up here because of the food!”

.They ordered a ploughman’s lunch and homemade pickle and they ate, Hartley just had to tell him about that strange presence of evil he’d experienced. Gus Dunwell would at least take him seriously even though, being the agnostic he was, he’d try to explain away the mystery.

Dr Dunwell munched away in silence as he listened, and when Inspector Hartley had done, he wiped his mouth slowly on his napkin. He’d enjoyed his meal and sat back to deliver judgement.

“Blake, it’s all in the mind,” he said, wiping his glasses. Then, when he’d replaced them, he said more quietly, “Yet I have to confess, if I’m honest with myself, there are boundaries of the mind I can’t cross that you can as a priest.” He took a sip of his wine. “‘Parameters of the mental faculties’ our esteemed Superintendent would call them were he here.”

“And I wonder what our Arthur would have made of it all if he’d been there?” mused the inspector.

“He’d have passed it off as imagination, a commodity he’s singularly lacking. The psychology of narcotics and its ilk is about as far as he stretches to. What he can’t explain, he doesn’t believe exists. God must be a great mystery to him.”

“Steady on,” said Blake. “He’s churchwarden at St Swithun’s.”

“That explains why he locks God up securely in church when he leaves. You never hear him mention the Almighty out of it,” said Dunwell. “At least I admit I’m still looking for Him. But not in St Swithun’s.”

The inspector laughed, but he was glad the pathologist hadn’t dismissed his story out of hand. That presence of evil had been too real, too tangible. And Dunwell recognised it, too.

They finished their meal and returned to the lab to check out the dog hairs Hartley had collected. “Went for me like a hound from hell,” said Hartley, as they walked to the path lab. “And all Blackwell did was smirk.” When they arrived at Gus’s office, the pathologist put the hairs under a microscope, projecting them onto a screen contrasting them with the dog-hairs he’d taken from the dead man. Then he leaned back.

“Well, Blake, I’m sorry to say your little hound don’t tally with the hell-hound Manasas met. Good try, but definitely not the same doggie.”

“What sort of dog brushed against Manasas then?” asked the inspector.

“A much bigger breed,” said Dunwell. “The bruising on Manasas’ leg had been made by a much larger dog than a Jack Russell. A terrier doesn’t have jaws big enough to bite a full grown man’s leg. It can only nip.”

Inspector Hartley looked disappointed. “I’d have put a fiver on those hairs matching,” he mumbled and rubbed his chin philosophically.

“Manasas, Whitcliff and Blackwell all link up somehow. If those hairs had tallied we could have pulled in Blackwell.”

“But as it stands, my friend, he’s got the laugh on you,” said Gus, putting his slides away and adding, “I’ll hang on to these terrier’s hairs. They might come in.”

The pathologist put the coffee on and for some time they sat discussing the case. Gus Dunwell, like Blake Hartley, had been doing some research on ancient Egypt. In particular, he’d been looking up how they preserved their dead.

“Did you know that ‘mummy’ comes from the Arab word ‘bitumen’?” he said. “Their embalmers used eucalyptus for the Pharaohs and sodium carbonate for the hoi poloi. Cheaper than eucalyptus which they had to flog all the way from Australia.”

“Australia?” exclaimed Hartley.

“Yes. And they didn’t fly Quantas either. Makes you wonder how they did it five thousand years ago. The Ancients were into black magic in a big way, “ said Dunwell. “Spent days over their funeral rites chuntering to their gods. Sacrificed to them in a big way, too. All their household slaves went into the pot, as well. Just to make sure they had company in the next world. And half the time, they didn’t know whether they were in this world or the next.”

The inspector told him about the candle wax at Pithon Hall and the wax in the girls’ rooms.

“You’re not trying to tell me they’ve been up to all this business at Pithon Hall, too, are you?” said Dunwell.

The inspector shrugged his shoulders. “Nowt that goes on there would surprise me after what I saw,” he replied. “But right now I want to know where that missing girl is.”

Their conversation switched to Superintendent Donaldson and Dunwell asked when he was due back.

“Not for another week,” said Hartley. “He was hoping to be promoted to the London Drugs Squad before he left. Anything to get out of Keighworth. He’s getting desperate. Said this course would give him more clout when he applied for Chief Superintendent grade.”

“Good luck to him then,” said the pathologist. “And I bet you’ve been on your knees all week praying for it,” he added.

“I’m surprised you haven’t,” said Blake.

“Anything to get our Arthur off our backs,” rejoined Dunwell. “Even praying!”

But their prayers remained unanswered. Donaldson came back the next week as full of himself as ever - but with no promotion.