Sabrina & The Secret of The Severn Sea Read online

  Sabrina

  &

  The Secret of The Severn Sea

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  ‘And I will give thee the treasures of darkness.’

  Isaiah 45:3

  Prologue

  As Tina leaned closer, she wondered if the buoy would do what it did the last time it resurfaced.

  It was so cork-like on the water, so alive. Not so easy to dismiss as rubbish. At first sight.

  But when would it leave them alone?

  She was annoyed with herself for staring. Why not simply go on with her eel fishing? For mere flotsam that came with the tide, the float’s sinuous ripples not only signalled something wrong but insistent. It positively swam in their boat’s wake as if it would gain their attention.

  The hellish glow that fired the horizon half an hour ago was already a dark, ominous smudge above the disused nuclear power station as the sun set lower. She watched ribbons of water turn from pink to black, like blood, for miles.

  ‘Don’t tell me a big boy like you is afraid of the dark?’ said Tina.

  Randal shivered on the sailing dinghy’s transom. It was typical of her ten-year-old friend not to realise how wild and empty it would be on the river in April.

  What teenager in her right mind chose to hang out with such a fussy child, anyway, even if he could steer the tiller quite well?

  ‘But, Tina, the tide’s turning. What if we get caught by the bore?’

  ‘A simple ‘no’ will do.’

  Shivering, she chewed more gum.

  ‘How far now, Tina?’

  ‘We’re past Narlwood Rocks already.’

  ‘I thought you said I could navigate?’

  ‘Well, you thought wrong.’

  Icy air froze her pimply white kneecaps where she had torn fashionable holes in her faded jeans.

  She had at least thought to wear her woolly hat tonight, if only she could pull it further down her face like a proper balaclava? It was okay for posh little Randal. He might moan, but it was only thanks to her that he was clad in her father’s windproof shooting jacket. He looked a real toff in the hopelessly over-sized tweed cap that she had, at the last minute, thought to lift from a hook on their way out of the farmhouse.

  She banged against the dinghy’s transom, wedged her feet inside its hull as the shrouds groaned midway on the mast. She ought to adjust the tension with the lanyards. Instead she left the links to protest on the chain-plates while she rushed to balance the boat.

  That sudden bump to the stern was like a kick in the buttocks.

  Quick to tack left or right, she fought not to be dragged right over.

  She fought quite a while.

  ‘I’m scared,’ said Randal.

  ‘Shut up and give me a hand here, will you?’

  Alarmed, Tina tried not to alarm.

  Meanwhile black-backed gulls marched like sentries along thin, shingly islands. They ruffled their feathers. Mocked the boat’s erratic progress. With shrieks and cackles.

  Next moment a lamp winked at them from the darkening riverbank.

  Not police, thought Tina. The police wouldn’t give themselves away quite so easily.

  Most likely it was elvermen. Sure enough, she soon made out the large, square aluminium box-nets that hung from long poles resting on their shoulders. They formed striking silhouettes against the skyline. They looked, in this light, like bizarre butterfly hunters.

  Tina sank lower on her seat. Of course, being fifteen years old, she should have been in possession of a valid fishing licence. Some of those people on the bank might actually recognize their dinghy. One of them might be Randal’s stepdad come to look for the boy who ought to be in bed by now.

  She did not fancy arguing with brawny men who fiercely guarded their ‘stumps’ at the edge of the river.

  Fishermen on the Severn could be a funny lot, not least because they, too, wanted to cash in on its treasures, albeit legally. Glass eels were fetching £150 per kilo. Like caviar they were. Smugglers could earn millions in Hong Kong, if they could get past GO at Heathrow.

  Why else had her father just been ‘detained’ trying to smuggle live eels on board a plane bound for China?

  ‘Quick, Randal. Take the tiller while I dip my net in the water.’

  Randal skidded from gunwale to gunwale in his green, plastic Wellingtons.

  ‘Where do they all come from again?’

  Tina began slopping elvers by the gallon into buckets. Plop, plop, plop went the living slurry. She could make out the two pretty, parallel black bands along their slippery sides.

  She scooped the transparent snakelike fish in her hands where, glassily, they sparkled against her wet palms. They twisted and tied themselves in ever tighter knots.

  She could see why so many people said that they came from dead men’s skulls. They were no more than three inches long and not much thicker than curls of human hair.

  By the time they were adult eels each one would grow lots of white, needle-sharp teeth; they’d be ferocious. On a damp night like this they were known to leave the river. Cross the land.

  ‘They swim three thousand miles from the Sargasso Sea. They spend two years floating here as babies on the Gulf Stream in order to grow into adults in our rivers…’

  But Randal was no longer listening. That buoy, more tangled weed than ball, had reappeared in their boat’s creamy wake.

  His heart began to pound as the river flexed its dark spine. He felt no need to prove anything to anyone, but he bit his tongue in case he cried.

  Tina looked hard, too.

  ‘I’d say it’s part of a net used for bottom trawling the ocean? I reckon that’s one of those hollow metal balls designed to bounce off rocks on the sea floor.’

  Randal screwed his cap back to front for a better view.

  ‘But there’s something else with it.’

  Tina seized anchor and rope from the floor of the dinghy.

  ‘Okay, so now I have questions.’

  ‘What can we do?’

  ‘Stay back, I’m going to hook it with this.’

  ‘You
don’t want to do that, Tina. That’s not a good idea, at all.’

  She kept her balance as the dinghy’s keel grazed a sandbank. Then she launched her metal hook at the river. The big ball of seaweed advanced at them with the same unstoppable buoyancy as it did when it had bumped them before.

  ‘Wow, it’s big.’

  ‘Leave it alone, Tina, it looks alive.’

  ‘Stay out my way.’

  ‘Do you even have a plan?’

  ‘Running out of time here.’

  ‘We should go home like I said.’

  ‘Trust me, Randal, I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘Is this you helping?’

  He finally took hold of the tiller.

  ‘What if it’s from a shipwreck or something?’

  ‘You asking me?’

  Next moment, she was looking for the eight-metre high, steel tower that signified Berkeley Pill whose tidal entrance led to the nearby medieval fortress. She tried to see all eight green fluorescents in its white lantern house as she decided to make a run for it between Black Rock and Bull Rock Beacon.

  In no sense did they intend to alert anyone at the nearby docks to their presence, but headed up the tributary towards Berkeley Castle.

  Salt water brimmed at the bottom of the Pill’s steeply curving banks, whose slippery black mud made beaching the boat very tricky.

  But Tina let icy water flood her boots all the way up to her knees as she began to unravel the substantial piece of fishing net from its catch. It was a very large, leather suitcase.

  Randal saw his boots sink into slime, too.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell, there’s something inside it. I see teeth. It looks like a monster.’

  Tina used her knife to cut away more net. That was no monster, she thought. It didn’t want to attack them. Instead, the suitcase wanted to disgorge something. Towards her. Towards land. Some horror. And she dreaded it.

  But that didn’t mean it had to stop her.

  ‘A trawlerman has lost part of his gear, all right. That metal bobbin from some broken rock-hopper net has snagged the case and floated it to the surface.’

  Randal let out a wail.

  ‘Tina, what are you doing?’

  She wrestled with the damaged suitcase’s leathery folds – peeled back a flap despite its unseemly resistance before she turned her attention to the mummified contents inside. A skull’s vacant sockets met hers with a stare of stupefaction. Latched on.

  In dragging away more net and weed she revealed the voracious maw’s last, frozen cry for help.

  Randal followed her every move. Crouched down. The colour drained from his cheeks until he looked as shocked as she did with his popping pupils.

  ‘Is that a hand I can see?’

  ‘It’s a black glove, certainly.’

  Randal gave a whistle.

  ‘Wow, Tina, that’s great.’

  ‘Damn right.’

  ‘It’s not, though, is it?’

  ‘Give me a moment.’

  Randal came closer.

  ‘You got anything yet, Tina?’

  ‘Do me a favour.’

  With that, she shrugged him off her as a mother might her own child. She pushed him right away with an urgency that baffled him totally. Forgot all about any stupid elvers. Many a day she’d spent scavenging in river mud for objects of value, but this was something else. No self-respecting mudlark could pass up the chance to add to her collection back home.

  They were looking at half a human skeleton with one arm. The rest was gone. The suitcase had recently begun to come apart and leaked its load. Whoever it was had been dead long enough to lose all their flesh but not yet totally dissolve.

  ‘Do NOT tell anyone what we have here.’

  Randal pouted.

  ‘Why not? It’s my find, too.’

  ‘Consider it our secret.’

  ‘What do I get if I do?’

  ‘You get to look for more bones.’

  Tina grinned. From the glove’s unflinching grip came a glint of gold.

  1

  ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ thought Jorge Winter as he drove into the prison car park. He sat for a moment with the key in the ignition of his bright orange camper van while he contemplated breakfast.

  Ever since Christmas, had he not set himself the modest target of losing twice as many pounds as he did in 2016?

  But spring was already here and his dream weight was nowhere to be seen. The Bishop of Gloucester had already warned him that his size would hold him back in every aspect of his life which was why, from this morning, he had decided to cut out the Crunchy Nut Cornflakes, eggs, bacon, sausage and toast.

  He gathered up a thin, black plastic file from the seat beside him. At thirty-six he was within sight of joining the eighty-three per cent of middle-aged people who were increasing their risk of liver disease and at least five types of cancer by making pigs of themselves, he reminded himself brutally, while he strode across the car park. He took a bite from his ever so tiny breakfast bar before he banged on the door of HMPL….

  He could do this, he thought, he could reboot his battle not to be a glutton. Fat was such a little word it hardly did itself justice – he simply had to think of it as his own special kind of parole.

  Dieting was not unlike the belief in heaven. To shed weight you had to aim ridiculously high.

  Actually, it wasn’t a spiritual thing at all, it was stress. Ever since he had agreed to hunt someone down who was supposed to be dead.

  *

  ‘You got a Mars Bar in your pants, at all, Inspector?’

  Prison Officer James Pettifer was all grins, but still his look was glacial and so was Jorge’s. When a man was only trying to go about Church business he should not be treated like some unwanted arrival at some soulless border control.

  HMPL…. was a prison which held over five hundred men. More to the point, it was one of only two open prisons in England to accept sex offenders and in particular child sex offenders, who were serving life sentences.

  ‘Really? Mars Bars? That the latest?’

  ‘Last week I caught someone trying to smuggle in a mobile phone coated in chocolate. Relatives buy the phones for £25 but in here they sell for hundreds.’

  ‘Really? In my pants?’

  ‘Or elsewhere.’

  ‘I don’t want to know.’

  ‘Could be worse, this could be a women’s prison.’

  ‘Sadly, arseholes and greed make perfect bedfellows.’

  ‘Keep your eyes skinned, Inspector. Two staff rang in sick today.’

  ‘Problem?’

  ‘Do I really have to say it? Things are tense with so few officers on the wings.’

  ‘I’m not here to upset anyone.’

  ‘No? Those fancy silver diamonds on your epaulettes might make them think otherwise.’

  ‘Am I that scary?’

  ‘Your insignia are very like that of a regular police inspector from New Scotland Yard, you have to admit.’

  Jorge squinted at each shoulder in turn.

  ‘Look carefully and you will also see the City of Gloucester’s crest of a red shield, two lions with broadswords and FIDES INVICTA TRIUMPHAT. It means ‘Invincible faith triumphs’. I come from the cathedral’s new private police force, not the Bill.’

  Officer Pettifer arched one eyebrow.

  ‘Since when do cathedrals have their own cops?’

  ‘Since 1855 when the title of ‘Minster Police’ was first recorded. At York Minster, where I worked for five years, I was in charge of eight constables.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Thanks to me Gloucester will soon be the fifth cathedral in England to have its own constables. The others are York, Liverpool, Canterbury and Chester, though Salisbury and Hereford also employed their own policemen until a few years ago. Our motto is ‘In Deo Speramus’. In God We Trust. You happy now?’

  ‘You have to forget all about that in here
, Inspector.’

  ‘Don’t see how I can.’

  ‘You have powers of arrest, at all?’

  ‘Such powers are about to be granted to York and I’m sure Gloucester will soon follow suit. Otherwise the local territorial police force remains responsible for dealing with all major incidents and crime, but I do carry handcuffs and a baton in my van just in case.’

  Once more Officer Pettifer regarded him as some peculiar blow-in.

  ‘I meant what are you doing this far from the cathedral? Gloucester is twenty miles away.’

  Jorge did his best not to feel conspicuous in his well-ironed white shirt, black tie and black trousers. He kept his black peaked cap with its blue and white diced band tucked neatly under his left arm.

  ‘So what if I’m out of bounds?’

  Officer Pettifer caught his tone.

  ‘Just watch your step, that’s all, Inspector. Some of the guys in here have been smoking ‘Spice’ sprayed on children’s drawings.’

  ‘Bold move. Usually legal highs get smuggled in on the soles of trainers.’

  ‘You know about that?’

  ‘I once served as a volunteer prison chaplain in Yorkshire. That was an open prison too.’

  ‘Then you’re a minister? Lay or ordained?’

  ‘All that’s behind me now.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I moved on.’

  This time Officer Pettifer eyed him even more sharply.

  ‘No charger or USB card, Inspector?’

  ‘That’s funny.’

  That true faith was now problematical to him only made someone like Pettifer more strident in his cynical insinuations. Even though some great light had recently grown dim within him the officer would not settle for so little, he would have him blinded like Paul on the road to Damascus before he would believe that turning up here today could do any good.

  ‘So you must know by now, Inspector, that some prisoners will consider all visitors to be a soft touch. They’ll give you some sob story or they’ll try to pretend that they’ve found Jesus. At best they’ll get you to wangle them a job in the kitchen.’

  ‘That it? You can’t just wish me good morning?’

  ‘Please move against the wall for the dogs to go past.’

  ‘Got it.’

  Two Labradors nuzzled the bottom of Jorge’s voluminous black trousers with noses that were two thousand times stronger and fifty times more sensitive than his own. They detected the existence of something but ignored the smell detected. It was sweat. Neither animal dug and pawed at him in any aggressive alert, however.