'Strength,' said Brady, enigmatically from Haddingham's point of view. 'And weakness. Two bad mistakes.' Brady was smiling, that same smile of bitter triumph.

  Haddingham shivered as he regarded the man, not particularly liking this ice-cold manifestation of his old friend.

  He said quietly, 'And so the hunt begins'.

  12

  * * *

  Because the talk had gone on well past midnight, Brady ended up staying the night at Haddingham's flat. He awoke at six, alert and clear-headed. He got up immediately, made himself coffee, then drove home.

  At eight o'clock sharp Bill Suchock turned up, and Brady told him what he required: an extension of the eight-foot wall that bounded part of the grounds of the house. An extension to completely enclose Brook's Corner.

  Suchock looked tired and slightly crumpled. It was concern for Rosemary, of course, and concern, too, for his brother-in-law. Since Brady had come out of his coma, there had been a tension in the Suchock household and a heavy, at times unbearable, silence. It was as if they were haunted, as if something were eroding them. Suchock could put it down only to concern for the experiences they had had at Brook's Corner over the last few months, and the fear of returning there ever again.

  This much he had said to Brady on the phone the previous night, almost by way of an apology. But Brady had already detected the heavy cloud of apprehension and unease in the Suchock household, and no explanations were necessary. Rosemary was generating a guilt-laden anxiety, and it was eating into everything, into Bill, into Malcolm, everything . . .

  They walked the periphery of the grounds, past the ruined chicken coops, the stands of fruit trees, the low fence that overlooked woodland. There was a lot of building involved, and it would cost Dan Brady several thousand pounds, and a labour force of perhaps five men.

  Brady had the money.

  Suchock stood and stared at the wall, shaking his head.

  Then he glanced at Brady. 'Good God,' he said. 'I think you're mad. All this to stop being attacked again. But if it's what you want . . . personally I'd have bought two shotguns, and half a dozen dogs.'

  With a wry laugh, Brady said, 'Shotguns? I'm getting those too.' How could he say to Suchock that not everything which would be coming against him would be tangible enough to be stopped with lead shot, nor by a wall. The wall was the beginning. Brick was better than wood, though stone would have been best. The important thing, for Brady, was the feeling of security. And for Ellen Bancroft, the fact that things could be built effectively into walls, and not smashed out: things like symbols, seals, metal talismans, defences of a sort that no man would think of as defences, but which could throw a shadow wall up against such violent elementals as would be coming for the occupants of Brook's Corner.

  At nine o'clock, Brady called the police. He first covered the burned carpet in the lounge with a sofa, hoping to avoid the more awkward questions.

  Two uniformed constables arrived first, by car. They said very little to Brady. They looked at the body, walked around the garden, checked the other side of the wall. They opened the doors to Baron's car, as soon as their attention had been directed to it by Brady himself. They asked him simple questions: how he had found the body, when he had last walked in that part of the garden. The moment he told them that he had been in hospital for some months they realized who he was, and seemed stuck for anything further to say.

  Sutherland arrived a few minutes later, with a youthful, sour-faced assistant, who stood and walked around (even sat) with his hands clasped in front of him. Sutherland crouched to study the body, and watched as the police doctor, who arrived almost at the same time as the CID, made a more thorough examination.

  'I've not seen anything like this, before,' the doctor said, rising to his feet and packing away his equipment. He glanced at Sutherland. 'Have you?'

  'Not so charred.'

  'Unusual burning. I'm tempted to say he's not been dead more than a couple of days. But I'm afraid everything depends on the autopsy. I've got all I need here, thanks.'

  Photographers, forensic men, youthful policemen in plain clothes scouring the garden in the area of the wall. . . the process seemed to take forever. Brady became uncomfortable watching it all. The police looked in the lounge almost cursorily. They saw that the french windows had been forced. Brady admitted that they'd been like that when he came home.

  'Did you notice the car when you came home?'

  'Yes I did. I didn't think anything of it.'

  The phone went. It was for Sutherland. After a minute or two he came back to Brady. 'The car belonged to a man called John Henry Baron. Jack Baron. Name mean anything to you? That's almost certainly Baron out there.'

  'Means nothing,' said Brady.

  Sutherland stared at him, almost quizzically. 'Odd,' he said.

  'Odd?'

  'You lose your family horribly. You are savagely attacked. You spend three months in a coma. While you are in hospital a "maniac" kills two nurses, one of them most disgustingly, and one patient. You come out of hospital and there's a grotesquely burned man in your garden. What the hell are you, Mister Brady? A walking Nemesis?'

  He glanced down at the notes he had taken on the phone. 'The man Baron has quite a record. A lot of time . . . assault, robbery, racketeering. Not your most salubrious of men. He's a registered PD. Private Detective. That's odd too.' Staring at Brady. The policeman's face was white, severe. The grey eyes glittered. His young colleague stood by the door, watching and waiting, and Brady was convinced that at a signal from Sutherland he would come across and start using his fists. Quite happily.

  But Sutherland just said, 'A dead PD found in the garden of a man whose family have disappeared. A disappearance that is baffling the police. Just the sort of case, in fact, where a PD might be employed to help. Mister Brady, my credibility is being stretched to painful limits.'

  Brady kept his cool, despite a nagging feeling of uncertainty that his dumb play was necessarily the best thing. But he knew, for sure, that he needed the house defended, and fast; and any sort of repeated police presence might put obstacles in the way of that defence.

  For the moment he wanted nothing to do with such babysitting.

  He said, 'I've told you what happened, Inspector Sutherland. I can tell you no more than I know. A deserted garden seems a good place to put a body to me. That's all I can suggest.'

  'We'll take prints from the house, just to see if he came in. You don't mind?'

  'Not at all.'

  'We'll need prints from you, from anyone and everyone who's been in the house in the last three months, purely for elimination purposes you understand. Strange prints will stand out, that way.'

  Damn!

  'And we'll leave a man with you, if you like . . .'

  'Not necessary. Thanks all the same.'

  Sutherland frowned. 'Aren't you afraid that the men who attacked you might come back?'

  'Why should they? They got what they wanted.'

  Sutherland almost laughed, staring at Brady most curiously. 'I can't make up my mind, Mister Brady, whether your responses are cooperative or uncooperative. I'm trying to help you. We're doing all we can to help. We'll continue to search for your wife and children, believe me. But you must cooperate. If you hold anything back, anything at all, it might deny us the chance to make a link ... do you understand me?'

  'Yes I do, Inspector. I understand you very well. And you must understand me. I am cooperating, and I shall continue to cooperate. What happened to my family has left me wounded, and bitter, and quite, quite determined!' He leaned forward in his seat, trying to summon the same intensity for Sutherland as the policeman himself had displayed. 'I'm determined to find them! I don't want a police presence because I'd welcome the return of those who attacked me. Can't you see that? I want them to come again. I want them to come and try to finish what they started. I am going to defend this house, and myself.'

  'You are going to take the law into your own hands . . .' cut in Sutherland grimly. He shook his head, but before he could add anything, Brady said, 'No. I'm not. I said I'd cooperate and I meant it. I'll maintain close links with you. I'll keep you informed of everything I find out. But right now, I know nothing. If I invite attack, I stand a chance of understanding a little more of what happened here. I must know if my family is still alive.'

  For a second Sutherland considered that, then he leaned back in his chair and sighed. And nodded. 'It makes a sort of sense. We'll keep a police presence in the area, then. There will always be a patrol car within minutes of you. And we will watch you, and your house. We'll talk again, Mister Brady.'

  By the time the forensic squad had finished dusting the house for prints, and sniffing around for anything else that might have been important, it was gone two o'clock. Brady was hungry, and his stomach felt hollow, his breath stale. The chairs had not been moved in the lounge; the patch of burning remained undiscovered.

  It was as the police were packing away their things, and politely refusing yet another coffee, that Brady felt a sudden chill. He shivered. An icy sweat broke out on his body and face, and he quickly wiped a towel across his cheeks and forehead. His heart had started to hammer in his chest, and the room swam before his eyes. He felt quite disorientated, quite sick. None of the police seemed to notice, and they left by the front door and drove noisily away.

  Immediately Brady went to the kitchen and stuffed bread and cheese into his mouth, bulking up his stomach and consuming a pint of milk to help wash the food down. Then he poured vinegar into four china saucers, sprinkled salt into each of them and made the sign of the cross above the solutions. He was not a Catholic, though he could claim a Christian belief. But he was not convinced that his simple act would effectively consecrate the salt, so he searched for fully ten minutes among the junk boxes upstairs in the spare room until he found the small flask of "blessed water" from the shrine at Knock, in West Ireland, which the family had visited a year and a half ago. He sprinkled several drops of this into each saucer and then spoke magic words above them:

  'For Christ's sake work, damn you!'

  The saucers he placed around the lounge. Then he went to the phone. The tension in his chest was growing, not receding. The blood pumped in surges through his temples. He rang Ellen Bancroft.

  'I think I'm being targeted. My whole body is shaking.'

  'Have you eaten?'

  'Yes. And I've not touched alcohol. I've got salt and vinegar solution around the room. What else?'

  'The sign I showed you. Make it to the windows and the door to the hall. Sit in a chair, facing the window, and draw a circle with animal fat - butter will do - around it. Believe in it, Dan, and don't forget the star symbol, especially if you feel something enter the house.'

  'Christ almighty!' Brady said, shivering and unhappy. 'Circles, pentagrams . . . bloody dracula!'

  'Do it!' Ellen shouted down the line. 'I'm coming to you now. I've packed as much as I think I'll need, but I can't carry it all, so I'm getting a taxi. I'll be there in about two hours. Strength, Dan. Remember that. And belief. You're strong. Just because you can sense yourself being targeted doesn't mean you can be harmed . . . not just yet. Go easy.'

  Brady hung up, walked quickly to the kitchen and found a pat of English butter. He almost laughed as he returned to the lounge, closed the door, smeared the carpet around the chair in a closed circle, then sat down.

  For the true believer, Ellen had told him, for those who know that these defences do work, the circle is created imaginatively, with the point of an imaginary sword. You must learn to fight mind with mind. It is not the physical defence that works, it is the belief behind the defence. Do everything in a ritual, calculated way. Any action performed with intention becomes a rite, so don't bath just to cleanse your body, bath with the intention of purifying mind and body both, and banishing all clinging evil influence.

  So Brady made the circle, and believed in it as intensely as he could, thinking through the action, imagining the potent barrier to any destructive "psychic substance" that might come against him.

  He was in the country, where elemental attack was more potent and effective; he was alone, which was something earnestly to be avoided when one was a target; his house had no running water in its vicinity, meaning that it could be attacked from all sides; and Ellen had divined the presence of some form of ancient ruin close by, which Brady thought was probably the Roman villa reputed to be buried in the area: and such ancient places were powerful foci of psychic energy, and an attacking elemental could draw upon that energy.

  All things considered, he was vulnerable and breaking the prime rules of psychic self-defence. But Ellen had convinced him of his immediate safety, and of the fact that Brook's Corner would make an ideal fortress.

  Nevertheless, he completed the ritual she had described to him, feeling slightly foolish, but discovering that his embarrassment faded in scant seconds: he stood facing east and made the air sign that Ellen had shown him: thumb and end two fingers folded in, index and middle finger extended. The hand drawn through the air in an inverted V, then drawn in three sweeping lines across that, the total sign being the five pointed star that could be contained in a pentagram. As he drew the sign he said aloud the words, 'May the mighty archangel RAPHAEL protect me from all evil approaching from the East.' Turning to the south he repeated the sign, and invoked the archangel Michael; to the west he called upon the strength of Gabriel, and from the north, Uriel. At the end of this solemn ritual he was sweating, his right arm shaking badly.

  I'm a thirty-five year old scientist, not particularly religious, and here I am asking angels for help. Christ almighty! Or is that the same thing?

  Banish all doubt, Ellen had said to him. When you summon forces for help, you are really summoning the force from your own mind. Belief in the ritual opens the way for belief in your own powers of defence.

  He sat down heavily in the chair, and waited, thinking about what he had done. The smell of vinegar in the room was strong and unpleasant. He had erected defences against weak elemental forces that might have been in the room, or just outside. But what was coming at him was not weak. Would those defences hold?

  As he sat and waited, so the tension went away. His heart slowed its beat, and his breathing became more normal.

  When the taxi drew up, at three forty-five, sounding its horn twice, Brady felt confident enough to step out of the circle and out of the lounge to welcome Ellen Bancroft back.

  13

  * * *

  The first tangible attack came three days later, an hour or so before dusk. It was an overcast day, and there had been rain earlier. The gardens were slick with wetness, and the grey, miserable mood had infected everyone on the site, Bill Suchock especially, but his seven casual labourers too.

  The wall had been extended all round the garden, and had been built to a height of two feet, behind the existing fencing. The work had been going on from five a.m. until late at night; no-one was complaining about that, least of all the bricklayers, whose promised wages were double what they could normally have expected. Suchock had experienced little trouble obtaining the bricks and mortar, but he was concerned about the police car that regularly prowled along the country road and back lane of Brook's Corner. Brady's reassurance that the police had more important things on their minds, than whether or not planning permission had been obtained, did nothing to decrease Bill Suchock's anxiety.

  It was an anxiety, of course, that had a deeper root. He was here, on this Saturday, working full out on bricklaying himself; but he was here despite Rosemary's protests, and against his better judgement. He was ill-at-ease, edgy, and rather short-tempered. When Rosemary and Malcolm came at lunchtime, bringing a consignment of modelling clay for Ellen, the whole family huddled in the kitchen, silently watching the noisy workmen as they drank beer ([Ellen couldn't dissuade them from that) and ate thick-cut sandwiches. Rosemary jumped with fright every time Brady came up behind her, or asked her to do something. Her face looked more drawn than those few days ago when he had emerged from hospital. Clearly, she had not been sleeping, and she tugged at Suchock's jacket, repeatedly whispering, 'Let's go, Bill. Let's go home, now.'

  'You don't have to come here, Rosie,' Brady reassured her. 'I can see that the place terrifies you, I'm not going to be upset. I can always visit you.'

  Rosemary, her fists clenched, her hollow eyes wide, yet very weary, smiled thinly and said, 'I want to do what I can, Dan. I want to help . . . Whatever you're doing.'

  'You can help us best by being on call for errands. Like fetching clay. But you're not looking well, Rosie. I don't think you should come here . . .'

  He was thinking, of course, that her physical and mental weakness made her far too vulnerable to attack. Ellen had hinted that any weak, spiritual presence in the house could attract destructive psychic energy, and so for all their sakes Rosemary Suchock should be discouraged from coming to Brook's Corner. Fitness was a potent defence against mind attack. Bodily fitness was paramount. All wounds had to be cleaned instantly, and left open to the air, since necrosis and suppuration - foci of decomposition - were attractive to low forms of elemental life, which could work their way into a body and take possession. Brady was under instruction to have a tooth removed, since the decay in it was advanced and an abscess might form at any time. Mentally, however, Brady was strong, his most obvious weakness being his memories of Alison and his two children, and his inability to prevent the upwelling of sadness at regular intervals. Ellen had already warned him that any sustained attack upon him would almost certainly involve images of his loved ones.

  For Rosemary, Brook's Corner was a danger zone, and she a dangerous focus for the residents of the house. But her desperate need to help had to be satisfied, and errand girl was the obvious solution.