Read Online HS04 - Unholy Awakening by Michael Gregorio - Free Book Online

immediately changed direction. ‘Then, you heard that she was dead.’
    She rubbed her nose with the back of her fist. ‘Selleck brought the news from town this morning. He said how Angela had been killed, the wounds, and all her blood drained out. I started making ready. I sprinkled salt on the step and in the fireplace, and I placed a bucket of water hard inside the door. They won’t cross water, don’t like salt. She’ll suffer if she tries to force her way in here.’
    Silence hung heavily in the air.
    She turned abruptly to face her husband and her son. ‘Before the night comes on, them two will have to go outside and daub the walls. I don’t intend doing any more for them. They’ll have to help themselves for once!’
    In a sort of frenzy, she swept a lighted candle from above the fireplace, and ran around the room, pointing. ‘See here?’ she cried. ‘And here? And here?’
    There were plates and saucers of blood that she had laid in every corner.
    ‘I slaughtered our hens and rabbits while them two were sitting here feeling sorry for themselves!’ she barked.
    They were planning to barricade themselves in for the night in an attempt to keep their daughter out.
    ‘I’ll not let her enter the house!’ the woman shouted, her shoulders shaking. ‘No-one in Krupeken will let her in the cemetery if she does come back!’
    That question still remained to be settled.
    ‘About her burial, Frau Enke,’ I said as gently as I could. ‘As soon as I have completed my examination, I will let you have the body for…’
    The woman advanced upon me, fists raised.
    ‘Do what must be done, Herr Magistrate,’ she screeched. ‘Make her safe, sir! Get someone to do it! I’ll not have her here!’
    As I left the house, I heard the door being closed and barred behind me.
    The sky was a corrugated ripple of pearly blue and pink, darker purple on the horizon, still clear and bright above. A single star gleamed like a navigation light far out over the Baltic Sea. The day was drawing to an end. I did not return the way that I had come, however, but left Krupeken heading north-east, following another path through empty fields which would lead me to the Mildehaven coast road, and carry me back to the northern side of Lotingen more swiftly.
    Along the way, I met no-one.
    Not even the pastor. As the light began to fade, I wondered whether the holy man’s courage had faded with it. Frau Enke was anxiously awaiting his arrival. He ought to have gone to Krupeken to bless the cottage and scatter protective crumbs of communion host inside and out, as tradition prescribed. If he did not go, the villagers would have a night of terror to look forward to.
    Suddenly, I felt very cold.
    I raised the collar of my jacket, and pushed my hands more deeply inside my pockets. My task was no longer simply to find whoever had murdered Angela Enke. First, I must find a place to hide her corpse. A place where she would be safe . Not in the sense that her mother intended, but safe from what her mother and the other villagers of Krupeken would do to her if they managed to lay their hands on her.
    There was no-one to whom I could give the body.
    Angela Enke was my problem.

Chapter 6
    As I came over the brow of the hill, I spotted Knutzen.
    He was standing in the middle of the narrow lane outside the cemetery gates, his back towards me, staring in the direction of town. Legs spread wide, feet firmly planted on the ground, his hands on his hips, he might have been a stone colossus guarding the entrance to a port, though he put me in mind of a farmer who was intent on stopping his cows from straying.
    And there was Lars Merson, too.
    The gravedigger emerged from the gate. He was wearing the ‘uniform’ that he always wore in the cemetery: a cut-off, moth-eaten cassock which he must have plundered from the chapel of rest, a black woollen helmet which covered his ears, and a pair of leather boots which some unwitting corpse had surrendered without a