Widsith
The Chief Constable abandoned us to the road.
"Why did she let us go?" I asked Womack, as she took us towards Hedon Haven.
"Because she needs a scapegoat." She swerved down the road, and it buckled on the gravel, blue lights and sirens off but they would have seen us cross their threshold.
"Scapegoat for what?"
"If we find out they did do it, they need to be able to cover that trail." She parked up in the scrub, the engine clunking off, "They have their bad guy, we're fucking it all up."
"They want to be able to get the real criminal, but keep the image."
"Exactly." She took a deep breath and holstered her own Glock, "You need someone to work with you?"
"No." I said, getting out of the car.
We hunkered down and approached the camp as slowly as we could. She was a good officer. All the morals were mixed up. And yet it was exactly the right bad-guy who had committed all the crimes. Why hadn't we seen it sooner?
They would have Becky Aster. It was my fault two people had died. They had killed Babbitt for giving away their position, and now they would kill Becky. They were protecting the dam after all.
We laid in the muck and peered across towards an open pipe that connected these edgelands to the Humber. Ribbons had been hung in all the trees, talismanic, like strips of flesh in hundreds of shades. A gentle chanting reverberated over to us with a second echo, as their voices bounced around the huge tube they had illuminated with electric tealights, before returning to us.
Casere weold Creacum
ond Cælic Finnum,
Hagena Holmrygum
ond Heoden Glommum.
Witta weold Swæfum,
Wada Hælsingum,
Meaca Myrgingum,
Mearchealf Hundingum.
þeodric weold Froncum,
þyle Rondingum
Godwine held chorus, chanting endlessly the Widsith poem that Babbitt had directed me with. We kept low, for there were many of what Godwine had called his cempan and cempestran. I heard Womack click the safety, having already counted the threats.
We both had seen the one route down towards them where we could cover each other the most appropriately, but I stopped and stood up regardless. Womack was shocked to find me moving into such open clearing, but... there was no threat?
They were all gathered around an altar, a slab of concrete harvested from the drowned church, but there was no victim. In fact there were very few in the congregation.
Offa weold Ongle,
Alewih Denum;
se wæs þara manna
modgast ealra
Godwine paused in his revery, practically naked bar a bright red loincloth I daren't learn how he had dyed. His body was covered in tattoos he had gathered after the war and from Falklandish nationals, Celtic crosses, 88s, and other memorabilia for an England that had never been and yet was longed for by so many fascists. He smiled, almost warmly for a Nazi, "Willspell, Detective."
YOU ARE READING
Water's Edge
Mystère / ThrillerH J Fields is a Bow Street Runner, a private investigator loathed by public and policeman alike. Straddling the thin blue line, he believes that even if the barrel turns all the apples bad, there must be law somewhere. His first case after getting...
