Sympathy for the Devil- Chapter One 1/2

[waffleguppies]

Chapter One: Sunday

The twentieth of November, 1834

I'm a man of wealth and taste
Been around for a long long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith

The places where people settle, where they group together and live and die, possess a kind of life themselves. Not the intense, short, supremely self-oriented life of an animal, but life nevertheless. Or else why do we say that this town has a nice spirit, or that this city felt unfriendly, or that this village gives you the creeps?

Sandford’s life, then. From the distant founding of the tiny settlements around the Castle, which grew and thrived even as the Castle crumbled away at its centre. Sandford, made up from all the lives within it, less of a real sentience than a big drifting cloud of events and moods and feelings. Places have only as much awareness of- or interest in- the future as the people who live there, and accordingly, Sandford is shortsighted. But it has a mind- in as much as you could call it that, a word for what it really is simply doesn’t exist- occupying no physical space, thinking no thoughts, just an overall, slow, eventual drift of reason.

Or otherwise. A town is only as reasoning, as reasonable as its people. Sandford’s thoughts move slowly, but if there is one thing something as big as the mind of an entire village has, it is an awful lot of momentum.

And these days, if those big ponderous thoughts-which-aren’t-really-thoughts-at-all could be caught, examined, and distilled down into something a human mind could understand, Sandford was worried.

Something awful had the capacity to happen in Sandford. To put that a little differently, awful things had already happened in Sandford, but the things that had already happened had the capacity to be so much worse, because nothing spins a bad-spirited time out longer or goads it on as well as history.

Lost, yet?

There was an unwinding loop in Sandford's history. A nasty black hole in time which had the capacity to spread and canker and tip odds in its own favour, until maybe the things which happened on the morning of Thursday, 11th May, 2006 might never get the chance to happen at all. Even though they already had. Time has no use for complacency. It also has no use for straight lines.

Sandford understood, in the huge unstoppable drift of its thoughts, that certain things needed to be lined up. Like a gigantic game of chess, the important pieces had to be moved into position. The loop had to be fixed. Otherwise, this time around, things might be different for everybody.

A lot shorter, for a start.

*

“Phauugh!!” screamed Nicholas, struggling to breathe in this close space, mouth and nose full dirt and dust and the smell of old, old masonry. Ground wasn’t supposed to do that, he was sure. Ground was meant to hold you up and to be run upon and be generally unyielding. It was the reason you didn’t jump out of a plane without a parachute. It wasn’t supposed to buckle, suck you in, and then reseal itself. He could tell it had resealed because he couldn’t see the sky through the hole, it was utterly pitch-black, and the only air down here was the kind that had been here for several centuries. The Sandford Historical Society would probably be over the moon, and a little disappointed one of their own hadn’t the good fortune to fall in a historically-significant hole.

Actually, now would be a good time to call for help, his brain supplied.

“Uh, help?” He coughed, and tried again. “Help! Can anyone hear me?” He tried to find his two-way, but it must have fallen off during the fall, because it wasn’t there when he reached for it.

“Anyone? Danny!?!”

No answer. Just a flat, hollow echo, bouncing off the close, clammy stone walls, and a cold breeze on his face that seemed to be coming from somewhere in the darkness ahead. It was all too easy to imagine the bodies down here, the ones which had all been found and ID'd and carefully removed months and months ago. The skeletons, grinning in the dark.

Nicholas doublechecked to make sure he hadn’t broken or sprained anything in the fall, just in case his nerve endings were too terrified to tell him exactly how bad the damage was, and went forward on his hand and knees, hoping that he wouldn’t blindly touch a rat by accident while exploring after that promise of fresh air.

After what seemed like ages, the ceiling rose and a little light started to filter in from ahead, allowing him to stand. The stone tunnel lead upwards, twisting slowly, past rubble-filled doorways and racks of wide stone cobweb-draped shelves recessed into the walls- empty, but just big enough, it looked, for an adult to lie down on. Everything was still disgustingly damp, water sloshing underfoot in some places, the walls draped in glistening moss, but finally the breeze and the light led him up to a rounded archway barred by the remains of a splintered, rotten wooden door.

One of the hippie-types has made off with the grating, his mind filed as he clambered over to the door, and shoved. You’ll have to make a report on that back at the station. Speaking of which… Angel opened his lungs, (the way he’d learned to back in secondary and reinforced in the Academy: he’d been quite good in music class, not that he’d admit it to anyone) and yelled.

“DANNY!! Over here!”

The planks shattered and the last of the day’s light washed over him as he stumbled out into the fresh air. A bramble caught him painfully across the ankle- thorny branches snaked along the walls in all directions, rambling over the patchy, unkempt grass. In some places they grew over the heaps of stone and rubble, in others, fresh rockfalls seemed to have crushed great patches of them to the ground. Of the neatly-trimmed lawns, the paths to keep visitors on track, the stands of information pointing at various parts of the structure, of the well-kept order he had just left, there was absolutely no sign.

There was absolutely no sign of Gilcrest, either. Danny was trotting across the grass about twenty yards off, holding up a lantern, of all things- a sort of vaguely square lantern with a light that looked oddly flickery- and blinking at him.

“You alright?” he called, anxiously.

“Well, I just fell through a…” Nicholas paused, brushing himself off before Danny could try to brush the dust off himself. He had tried shutting off for Danny, but sometimes, powers of observance just won. “Why… are you carrying that? Where’s Gilcrest?”

“Who?” Danny caught up with him and held up the lantern. His clothes were… wrong. A thick coat made from some blue starchy stuff, and an oversized helmet, just to start with. Only his face remained unchanged, and even that was made odd-looking by some undefinable weirdness of expression. Perhaps it was just the way he was looking at Nicholas, friendly, neutral, a bit cautious, as if, in fact, he had never seen him before.

“‘Re you from round here?” He glanced down at the brambled-snarled grass. “It’s not safe in here, it’s all falling to bits. One of them rock-hunters got killed by a whole wall came down on ‘em last year.”

“Uh,” said Nicholas, trying to analyse what this all meant. “One of the ‘accidents’, you mean?” He put bunny ears fingers around the word, hoping this would at least make Danny show a bit of recognition, drop the act, and possibly laugh at Nick’s wide-eyed expression.

Instead, Danny looked a bit puzzled, and shifted the lantern to his other hand. The swinging beam inside stood out with growing contrast as the last of the daylight continued to fade around them, picking out the row of silver buttons on his coat and suggesting, confusingly, that he’d gained a little weight in the last twenty minutes or so.

“Great big chunk of stone fell on his head,” he said, but his eyes were moving now away from Angel’s face and down to his clothes, and now at last there was a flare of recognition. “Course it was an accident… here, ‘re you the new constable from London?”

“Inspector,” said Nicholas, now very alarmed. “I was a Sergeant when I came here. Danny, what’s going on?”

“Inspector?” repeated Danny, with a sort of an amiable half-grin. It was the kind of hedging-bets expression he tended to use to mean, yes, I know there’s a joke happening, I can tell that, I’m not thick, but I’m not sure exactly what it is yet, or whether it’s at my expense or not. “What’re you s’posed to be inspecting?”

The grin widened a bit, flavoured with interest. “And how d’you know my name, anyway?”

“Because you’re my partner, you nonce!” shouted Nicholas, temper fraying at Danny’s grin. This was a trick, Danny somehow had planned all this, right down to the silver little buttons and the lantern. It had kind of gotten beyond the point of funny, though, and he didn’t care if Wainwright and Cartwright were lounging around the corner sniggering and making non-police-guide-approved jokes about what exactly the two ‘partners’ got up to on their beat.

Angrily, he pushed past Danny, and started making his winding way back towards Sandford, trying to keep his trousers from catching on the briars so Danny couldn’t catch up to apologize.

“Hey, where’re-” This was as far as Danny got before Angel got out of earshot; he stood where he was for a minute, feeling a bit hurt. His dad had said that the new Constable would probably be paired up with him at first, all right, said that he could trust him with the responsibility of showing the new man around, but Danny still felt that it was hardly fair for this new Constable to go off at him just because he’d been a bit slow on the uptake. The new Constable, it seemed, never mind all these supposed medals and things, was a bit of a flummet.

And he was probably about to fall in the moat. Danny started forwards, urgently. “Watch it, there’s no fence up on the bridge!”

Nicholas windmilled, caught himself. Crouching, to keep his balance and hands from shaking visibly, he said, “That. Is a very definite safety hazard, Danny. Well done, excellent practical joke. Now where’d you put the old bridge that was here this morning?”

“Er…” said Danny, catching up yet again, steadying Angel with a careful hand on his arm. “This one’s all right if you don’t walk too fast, just sort of let it settle when you put your feet down.” He demonstrated, stepping across the spongy old wooden pilings, then added, delicately, “Are you… sure you didn’t hit your head or anything?”

“Er…” said Nick, who was contemplating the same sort of thing. Danny was being pretty caring, and it might be best to let him take care of the thinking for now. “Maybe I did. Uh, Danny, could you phone Buford Abbey to check me for possible concussion?”

Danny just looked lost. He looked, in fact, like a slightly stunned cat who had just been presented with the Rosetta Stone, and been told that they were going to have to give a translation lecture on it in about five minutes.

“‘Phone’?” he repeated, blankly.

And things might have developed from there, and might quite possibly have ended up in one of those extremely unhelpful types of arguments where both parties just have absolutely no idea what it is that is so hard for the opposite party to understand, if it hadn’t been for the sound.

A thin, keening whistle. High and wavering, an inherently urgent, melancholy sound. Then another, lifting up and dying away over the fields behind them. And, somewhere in the distance, the barking of dogs.

Nicholas caught hold of Danny's sleeve- a significant signal for those who knew him well that he was terrified out of his mind, and this was the farthest he could go to seek comfort in public. Danny usually made up for this by being the touchy-feely one, but right now, the Angel part of him was getting a very, very bad feeling about Danny, about this whole place in general, and now there were strange-sounding whistles in his Sandford. "What's going on?" he repeated, and his voice was controlled, but reedy.

Danny had heard the sounds as well, had started in their direction as the two of them had stepped into the narrow cobbled forecourt on the other side of the bridge, but at the touch of Nicholas's hand on his arm he turned back, puzzled. Even in the bad light- the only street-lamp was right down on the opposite corner of the road, and barely touched the forecourt with its pale, smoky flame- there was no mistaking the fear in the other man's face. Something had rattled the new Constable badly. The only reason that Danny could think of, apart from a thump on the head, was that he didn't fancy going chasing off into dark streets he didn't know after only just getting here. Seemed a bit peculiar- and a bit disappointing, really, for this mythical London officer that they'd all been hearing about to be spooked by something like that- but it was the only thing he could imagine it could be that might make Angel look so much like he'd seen a ghost.

Luckily, Danny was happy to be able to put his mind at rest on this matter.

“It’s all right,” he said. “S’just the prison. Buford Abbey County’s only ‘bout three mile off that way- sounds like they lost someone again.” He grinned, reassuringly. “We don’t have to do anything or nothin’.”

“What prison?” snapped Angel. Concussion was one thing. Danny very obviously ignoring his job was quite another. “There wasn’t one here this morning, was there? Come on-” and here his previously worried grip on Danny turned into a tug. The bridge shifted, unhappily. “Get rid of that idiotic outfit and get your stab vest. Hospital later.”

Danny looked slightly wounded, brushing off the front of his own tunic, which had a few crumbs still stuck to it from where he’d been trying to finish his pastie, just before he’d heard the man yelling. “It’s not idiotic, it’s jus’ like yours, really,” he protested, daring to almost-poke one of the new Constable’s own shiny silver buttons. “Cost me one an’ four, this did. What’s a stavest?” he added, stepping clear of the dodgy bridge and hoping Angel would finally follow his example. “Is it, like, a cravat or something?”

Angel did struggle after him, then. You’ve been hit on the head, probably, said his brain, who had been nearly silent until now. This whole place is wrong, you’re missing your stab vest while wearing this useless thing with buttons, and where the bloody hell is the car? You need it to say ‘Fire up the roof’ and drive out a few miles to see what’s wrong. Short sentences, maybe. “A Stab. Vest. Thing that keeps you from getting knifed, Danny. It’s required on duty. Where’s the car?”

The distant, purposeful barking started up again while he was talking, slightly closer now. Danny blinked, caving a little under all the signals hammering into his brain from Angel’s words and manner that he was clearly being aggravating, even if he had no idea what he was doing or saying wrong. He shifted nervously, thinking hard, trying not to say the wrong thing. “Car? Cart, you mean? We… I mean, the station doesn’t actually have one, you’d have to borrow Joe Messenger’s, maybe- we got a horse, though,” he added, with some pride. “Got ‘er last year, to take emergency messages an’ that to Buford Abbey. What d’you want a cart for, anyway?”

“Car. Flashing lights, sixty miles an hour, vroom-vroom?”

A slow, disbelieving grin spread over Danny’s face, and he made a noise best transcribed as ‘whhor.’ “Sixty miles an hour? With a cart? Go on, no horse’s that fast! You can’t tell me they’ve got anything that fast, even in London.” Something in his expression suggested he found the idea very, very interesting, though. “There’s- you’d- You’d die goin’ that fast!” He waved a hand, vaguely. “Dr. Cleaver told me about it once. Your insides’d go all… curdled.”

He’s making Danny noises of appreciation. You’ve hit your head. “Well, no, you’re not allowed to go that fast within city limits without risking the lives of pedestrians and a serious fine and possible arrest, but yes, there’s cars. There’s cars everywhere. There should be a car around here, for that matter. Where’ve the paved roads gone?” he remarked, absently, breaking into a trot in the direction of the baying.

“Ey, where’re you going?” Now it was Danny’s turn to catch his sleeve. “I told you, they’ll deal with it. The wardens. They get all shirty if we stick our oar in. ‘Sides,” he said, brightening, “we need to get you back to the station. You were supposed to get here lunchtime, you’ve got to go talk to Da- the Chief Constable.”

Angel rounded on him. “Let me get this straight. You’re going to go to the station, then go home and sleep well, while not going out and making sure an alleged ‘prison’ escapee doesn’t pull a break-and-enter on any of the locals, or escape, or get arrested without proper formalities? I am your superior officer in this town, and I say we are going to do our jobs and keep the peace.” He gave Danny a shake. “Understood?”

“Er…” He really has knocked himself daft, Danny thought. Or he’s always like this. It was beginning to become evident that he couldn’t let him go off on his own, anyway. People do funny things after bangs on the head, he knew. Like that time old Mr. Filer’d gone missing after being knocked down by the post cart, and had been found later wandering through Lily Filer’s cabbage patch stark naked.

He wobbled, rather haplessly. Dad wouldn’t like the new officer wandering through anyone’s cabbage patch stark naked, of that he was quite sure. “Er… yeah?”

“Good,” snarled Nicholas, letting him go. “Don’t think I’ll be coming over to our- your flat later for a beer and a heartfelt makeup after this is over, either. Come on, jog. One-two, one-two, keep up.”

The centre of Sandford on a cold, dark November evening was never particularly lively under normal circumstances. The only people you would expect to see on the streets, bar the odd car, were kids, local hoodies waging what was fast turning into a veritable West Side Story of an altercation with various chavvy teenagers from Buford Abbey.

The village as Angel saw it that night, though, lit by the weak flicker of Danny’s lantern, seemed to be empty of anyone under the age of twenty. Empty of pretty much anyone at all, really. The streets were dark and narrow, and mostly consisted of packed dirt with rough gutters carved down the sides. Only the biggest were cobbled, and half the street names (carefully hand-painted wooden signs nailed to the sides of the bigger buildings) were unfamiliar. Of the ones he did recognise, half were misspelt. Over their heads, the stars were layered over with clouds, and the wind was fresh and biting, but there was a strange, organic, nearly ozone-y taste to it, like someone had gone through it with a sieve and removed about half the ingrained carbon particles from it. And then added several hundred more cows.

And everything just seemed so- much- smaller. Maybe a dozen of the little houses along the way had a second storey. Although some were red brick and new-looking, most were wooden, Tudor-beamed in a way which the National Trust would have jumped on and protected in a heartbeat, and the National Trust definitely wouldn’t have approved of all the washing lines strung between them round the backs, nailed into the dark timbers in a very non-conservative manner.

The first living person they saw in the place was an old man- a very old man- carefully combing through the mane of a horse tied up to a post in front of his house. He looked up as they approached, looked hard at Angel, and nodded at Danny, who was labouring up behind, wheezing a bit.

“Arrigh’, young ‘un,” he said. Danny made a gaspy sort of noise, then put his hands on his knees and got back to the serious task of capturing oxygen. “You after the one they’re lookin’ for? Reckon you’re a bit behind time, saw ‘im near ten minute ago.”

“Y’sure, Mr. Shearer?” said Danny, or at least some strangled approximation thereof. The old man put down his brushes and slowly waved a hand over his own head.

“Saw ‘im, didn’t I? Terrier crop an’ all. Best hurry.” The man picked up his brushes again, then gave Nicholas another good long stare. “Who’s this’un?”

Apparently the knock to his skull wasn’t impeding Angel's ability to run, or question a witness. He reached for his notebook, couldn’t find it, and asked, urgently, “Sir, could you identify the individual in court? Was he tall? Young? Any identifying marks?”

Mr. Shearer stared at him for a little while, then looked at Danny. He didn’t find any help there, however. Danny looked just about as startled as he was at the sudden barrage of questions. Eventually, he shrugged and started brushing the horses’ mane, again, with the same slow, deliberate strokes.

“Reckon ‘e was middlin’ fifty, sixty. Taller’n you, son. I don’t know nothing about no idenifying marks, but ‘e ‘ad the crop and the irons- y’should catch him up easy enough, with those. Even you, lad,” he said, kindly, to Danny, who was still rather red in the face.

“Alright…” Angel paused, embarrassed. “Thank you for helping your local police service, Mr…?”

“Shearer,” whispered Danny, helpfully. Mr. Shearer’s horse whuffed at him.

“…Shearer,” finished Nicholas, giving Danny an annoyed look. He’d been hoping the horseman would have supplied his own name. He tried doffing his cap, and found that missing as well. Perhaps that had fallen off in the catacombs, along with a healthy portion of his sanity. “Goodday to you, sir.” And started jogging off again, dragging Danny after him. Where the blooming hell had Somerfield gone?

“Why d’we need to know what he looks like?” asked Danny, plaintively, stumbling on an uneven cobblestone. “S’not like there’s going to be two of them running around, is there?”

“Because you’re supposed to be doing policing by the book,” breathed Nicholas, and his tone was exasperated. “We don’t want to arrest someone just because they look guilty. How do you not know this, Danny?”

“Come on, we’re hardly up to our necks in blokes running round with irons on round here.” Danny made what was perhaps an unwise attempt to add a little levity to the situation. “And anyway, if they look guilty, they must’ve prob’ly done something, right?”

The Angel part of Nicholas snapped. His hand flew out, and smacked Danny on the shoulder, hard. Actually slapped him. He’d never done that before, given into his anger like that to strike a friend, a more than friend. A lot more.

“We don’t arrest innocent people! What the hell is the matter with you? Where’s the real Danny Butterman in that thick head of yours, and what the hell have you done with him?”

Danny flinched, shocked, and dropped his lantern. It hit the cobbles, breaking one of the panes, and the candle went out. Before Angel could do anything else, he gave him a good hard shove away from him. By the heft behind it, whatever he’d done to the real Danny, he’d picked up a few rugby moves from him before he’d done it.

“What’d you do that for?” he shouted at Nicholas, half bewildered, half angry. “An’ stop talking like you know me! I never saw you before! And my name’s not Butterman or whatever you just said, it’s Buttleman! And I’m not thick, all right?”

Scowling, he scooped up the broken lantern. “Blimey. I don’t care how hard you hit your head, you can make your own flamin’ way back to the station. I’m not runnin’ round half the night doing those arseholes’ jobs for them.” And with that, stomped off down the lane.

Nicholas stared at the perfect stranger’s retreating back, then sprinted after him, catching his elbow. “Wait! Wait, just… say that again.”

Danny turned, crossly. “I said I’m not chasin’ some old lifer around half the night just because you’ve had a bang on the head!”

“No, the- the other bit. Your name.” Nicholas could barely breathe, could barely believe this was happening.

“My name?” Danny frowned. Regardless of the thump in the shoulder he’d just received, it was in his nature to give people the benefit of the doubt, and Angel just looked so… lost. “My name’s Daniel Buttleman. Constable,” he added, quickly. “I thought they must’ve told you.”

Nicholas blanched. “Not Butterman?”

“Buh-tul-man,” repeated Danny, very slowly and clearly. “And you’re Constable Angel,” he added, encouragingly now, trying to jog his memory. “From London.” He poked at Angel’s great-coat. “You prob’ly got all your papers and stuff in there, look.”

“But… my partner’s Danny Butterman,” Nicholas nearly whined. “He’s…” He stopped himself before he could blurt out something he’d later regret, and rummaged through the pockets of the starchy fabric, and brought out something in a envelope. Actually, not an envelope, but a paper, folded over on itself, like a primitive envelope. It had an actual wax seal on the thing. Unbroken, too.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Danny was saying, in the meantime, in a more friendly tone. “D- the Chief Constable said he’d pair us up, y’know, at first. Show you the ropes, an’ all that.” He started fiddling with his lantern, muttering. “An’ that’s the second one I’ve knackered this month…”

Nicholas stared at the envelope, not bothering to open it. “So… you’re not Sergeant Daniel Butterman,” he said, as if he were only just beginning to come to grips with this fact, which in fact, was more or less the truth. “And… this isn’t Sandford, either.”

Danny gave him a forgiving grin. “Huhh, Sergeant,” he said. “Not in the army, am I? But ‘course this is Sandford, they sent you down here ‘as per the new regulations,’ I heard.” This in a tone of careful concentration. “Making up the new numbers. Dad requested you special,” he added, proudly. “Said the clerk told ‘im that you were the best officer they had. ‘Ey,” he said, in an eager, conspiratorial tone, “I bet this is all a bit small for you, though? After London.”

“London…” Nicholas refocused. “I haven’t lived in London for a full year, D- …PC Buttleman. I’ve been living in Sandford, with-” He stopped again. “Although it wasn’t this filthy this morning. And there were roads. And the corner shop was off over that way, and Somerfield was down there, and the sign for the model village was over there, and there were cars, and, and-”

“But Summer Field is over by the-” started Danny, only to be interrupted by something which at first sounded like a small explosion, especially in contrast to the dead silence all around them, but quickly resolved itself into the sort of multiple echoing clattering noises you’d get if you dropped a whole lot of metal chainlink onto a yard of stone cobbles.

About thirty yards and several houses away from them, a figure that was barely a shadow in the badly-lit street dropped over the garden fence, fell heavily, pulled itself up, then ran with a lot of metallic accompaniment and a curious sideways limping step into the alley on the far side. It was the kind of gait that would be hard to manufacture on purpose, unless, say, your left ankle was attached to your right with just under two feet of iron chain.

continue...