The room felt wholly different tonight. The blazing stove next door had driven off the chill, and Lee Tyack’s presence had somehow spread through the house like a warm scent, although to the best of Gideon’s knowledge he only smelled of well washed male. Maybe a touch of sweat and mud from hisexertions up at Wheal Catherine... Gideon caught himself smiling. He sat down to his long-neglected paperwork. The chess game restarted in his head. He let it unfold, turning his conscious mind to the cares of the day, the stolen quad bikes, Mrs Waite’s shop cash register, which seemed to have sprung a bad leak since she’d hired a stranded Polish crop-picker to help her out over winter...
Andfailed to notice Mr Waite’s increased trips to the Bodmin town bookie’s. Gideonhadnoticed them, but he hadn’t connected the dots.
Hegrunted in self-disgust and rested his chin on one palm. Now he thought back, the Polish girl’s eyes had been clear as day. It was so easy to blame an outsider – migrant workers, travellers, even the Beast of bloody Bodmin if you were all out of other ideas and your local bobby was letting the side down.
Look closer to home, a voice that sounded a lot like Tyack’s whispered in his head.I know you don’t want to. But look closer.
Chapter Six
Gideon woke at three in the morning with a cold vibration dying in his bones. He got out of the narrow bed he’d shared with James. The bed was barely a double. Moving into Pastor Frayne’s ministerial bedchamber had seemed too much of an enormity. He stood barefooted on the lino, hitching up his pyjama pants. It wasthe early hours of Halloween. What had he heard? He shrugged into his dressing gown and padded swiftly downstairs, unease prickling between his shoulders.
Lee was sleeping where he’d left him, the room now filled with blood-bronze light from the dying fire. The dog was still there too, though she’d woken up and her posture was watchful, more focussed and attentive than Gideon had ever seen her. Her eyes were fixed on the door.
Whatever dive Lee had been preparing to take, he was in deep waters now. He had turned onto his front and was clutching the edge of the sofa for dear life. He was breathing shallowly, his face buried in a cushion. Quickly Gideon crouched beside him and eased it away. “You’ll suffocate, you daft bugger.”
Lee drew adeep, relieved breath. He opened his eyes. His skin was marked with the weave of the cushion, and a dreadful lostness in his gaze evaporated as he focussed on Gideon. “God. I was dreaming.”
“Did you call out?”
“Don’t think so.” He pushed stiffly onto one arm. “Had my face stuffed into your cushions anyway, didn’t I?”
“And a death-grip on my sofa.” Gideon didn’t know quite how to touch him. Why was he so awkward? He wasusually good at comforting strangers, the lost hillwalkers and occasional road-accident victim. He settled for helping Lee prise his clutch off the sofa frame. “I don’t fancy your dreams, if they make you hang on like that. You’re all right now. What was it about?”
“Boats, of all things.” Lee sat up. “They were cutting through the water.”
“Well, you work at the harbour, don’t you? No wonder you dream about that.”
Lee swung his feet to the floor. “No, there was something bad about them. The fact that there was more than one of them, I mean.”
“More than one...” Gideon eased onto the sofa beside him. It felt very natural to do so: he only just stopped himself from slinging an arm around Lee’s shoulders while he thought. “Is this like the wheel that was spelled wrong? If these boats are cutting through the water, you’re thinking about the prow. If there’s more than one – prows, right?”
“Does that mean something to you?”
“Well, we’ve got a family of ne’er-do-wells in the village called Prowse.”
Lee gave him an amused sidelong glance. “We’d make a good team. That’s the second time you’ve put my pictures into words.”
“For all the good it’s done either of us. I might nip round and see Bill again tomorrow, all the same.”
“I’m not getting any kind of a hit or feel off that name. It’s more like...”Lee faded out. He stared at the carpet with its random constellations of burn marks from the stove. Then, with a suddenness that made Gideon jump, he snapped into a protective curl, clutching the back of his head. “The monster!” he rasped. “In the garden. The monster sees the window – sees the roses, blue and green.” He curled up tighter. “Oh, fuck – it hurts. Gideon, help me – help me see its face.”
Now Gideon did putan arm around him. He held him hard, deliberately setting aside his own growing fear. He knew what sound had woken him up. “This garden? Don’t be scared. Have a look.”
“No, not this. It’s dark. The monster’s smiling. Christ, the child is too...”
Gideon laid his hand on Lee’s bowed head. He knew without looking that James’s model of the Beast would be glowing again. A leaden oppression filled the room. Isolde squeezed herself as far beneath the sofa as her bulk would allow. This time the vibration seemed to pass through Gideon from the timbers of the house itself, and when the howl began – low, resonant, pitching quickly to a shriek – he held still beneath it. The source must be close. The garden? The lane that ran up to the fringes of the moor? He didn’t know – knew only, with a clarity he hadn’t experienced since childhood, that he had to shield Lee from it.
Lee had other ideas. He sprang to his feet and ran for the front door. He placed both hands on it at chest height, and he was there – lean, upright, defiant – when the scraping at the outside woodwork began. The sound of one great claw... “No,” Lee said softly. “This isn’t who you want. Leave him be.”
Gideon broke paralysis. Slowly he crossed the room. With a sense of deep purpose – ritual, almost, as if he and Lee Tyack had done this before, met the beast and turned it back – he came to stand close behind his companion. He placed his hands over Lee’s on the door, feeling the bones of his knuckles press against his palms.
A hush fell.This time it was only the fresh peace of a moorland dawn, and a thread of birdsong shimmered through it. Lee slid his hands out from under Gideon’s and turned around. They were so close that Gideon could feel the sweet vital heat radiating off him. He didn’t step back.
Lee smiled shakily. “Wow. You’re even better looking close up.”
Gideon, who had expected anything other than such an observation in the circumstances, and hadn’t realised his guest found him good looking at all, could only stare. “Brown eyes,” Lee went on. “Hair like short-cropped black fur. Broad shoulders – everything sturdy and strong, and...” He paused, his own very different sea-jade eyes lighting up with appreciative mischief. “And a policeman, too. Do you have any idea how incredibly comforting and sexy that is?”
Gideon hadn’t. No idea at all. He’d seldom heard himself described from the outside: that hadn’t been James’s style. For himself, he only glanced in a mirror these days to check that his uniform was tidy. “No,” he whispered. “Er... are you all right?”
