| news. Absolutely shocking.’ ‘You had no inkling?’ ‘None, sir. I would have told the Super if I had.’ DCI Ali rubbed his chin as if he’d been in a fight. ‘I was one of the first on the scene. The taxi base on Manchester Road was completely gutted.’ ‘It’s lucky no one was killed.’ ‘You don’t think it could have been coincidence, do you? The places that were targeted, they were all connected, weren’t they?’ ‘I don’t know, sir.’ ‘Oh, come on, Shaf. This is your patch. You know what’s going on. We’ve had most of them under observation. These grooming gangs—’ ‘I thought you said you had nothing concrete, sir.’ ‘That was yesterday. We’ve not been able to divulge what we’ve known before. The operation was so covert, we weren’t even able to tell other officers. We think we have a mole in the department.’ Shaf kept quiet. Was this another test, like the interview? ‘Every place that was attacked last night was on our surveillance list. Could be coincidence but it looks to me like someone’s been tipped off and taken matters into their own hands.’ Shaf tapped his fingers on the table. ‘Should you be telling me this, sir? I mean, it’s meant to be classified, isn’t it?’ The DCI snorted derisorily. ‘Do you always play by the book, Shaf?’ ‘I try to, sir.’ ‘Then I think the secret’s safe with you.’ Shaf wondered if it was meant as a compliment or a dig. ‘You could be |
Pendle Hill, 1612 The last of the evening sunlight flickered through the trees, painting the forest floor in fiery shades of red and gold. Quicksilver shadows flitted in and out, over bluebell and ramson, round aspen and alder, and the air rang with the shouts and screams of children chasing each other around. ‘Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jump over the candlestick!’ Two of them, dressed in ragged linen, ran along the edge of a small, babbling stream. The first, a girl of nine or ten, had unkempt, golden hair that flowed behind her like sunlight. She was lithe and strong and jumped higher than the boy who followed her. He was a year or two younger, pale and thin, with long limbs and torn clothes and curly, brown hair that hid his blackened face. ‘Thou’ll not catcheth me, pauper John. Neither thou nor thy horse,’ she said, baiting him. He was carrying a wooden hobby horse, really a stick with a sinister horse’s head on, carved unevenly and with flax for a mane. He rode it as if it were real, jumping over briar and fern in his effort to catch her. He neighed loudly when he got near, but she was always one step ahead. She laughed and shrieked and led him down strange paths, far from the ones he knew, but he didn’t care. He loved her like a boy does when he first loves a girl, with all his heart, wanting just to be |
