The Man on Hackpen Hill Read online

  12

  Silas

  Silas is not sure if it’s possible for an underground community to go to ground, but that’s what seems to have happened with the assorted collectives, pranksters and artists who are responsible for creating most of the ‘better’ crop circles in Wiltshire. The circle-makers, as they are known. He’s been hitting the phones all morning and can’t get hold of any of them. No big surprise. Having a dead body at the centre of a circle would not be a part of any design drawn up by these people, who might be time-wasters but are generally peace-loving, in his experience. And this morning’s sensational coverage in the tabloid press seems to have sent them diving for even deeper cover.

  ‘He hasn’t been answering his phone so I doubt he’ll answer the front door,’ Silas says to Strover, as they drive down a long farm track in their unmarked car. Noah, the circle-maker they’ve come to see, is someone Silas met a few years back, when a farmer held him at gunpoint after catching him in the act of flattening one of his wheat fields at 2 a.m. Silas managed to defuse the situation – he usually sided with the landowner, but on this occasion the farmer was being an idiot – and Noah has been grateful to him ever since. He has also specialised in mathematical circles in the past, coded representations of equations and formulae. Silas remembers one in particular that looked like an atomic structure: neutrons and protons and revolving electrons. Several circle-makers that Silas has managed to talk to have told him to try Noah, as the cryptic structure of the circle at Hackpen Hill bears all his customary hallmarks.

  There’s a car outside the run-down farmhouse but the place looks empty. Silas feels a pang of unease as he pulls up outside a converted barn overlooking the courtyard, where Noah holds photographic exhibitions. Somewhere in the distance, a dog starts to bark. Silas brought Mel out here once for a private view, just before they broke up, in an attempt to impress her, show off his more sensitive side. When he stopped off at one of his favourite pubs that just happened to be on the way back, she saw through the ruse. She was more forgiving when he came home at midnight yesterday. A quinoa salad had been left out for him, which he dutifully ate, trying not to think about the kebab he’d devoured on the way home.

  Silas and Strover step out of the car and peer in through the barn window. The walls are covered with photographs and designs for crop circles. In the corner, some planks of wood or ‘stomping boards’, rope, poles and tape measures – the tools of Noah’s trade that he’d talked about at the private view. A half-empty mug is on a draughtsman’s table, pencil and ruler beside a diagram.

  Silas stands back, looks out across the silent, neolithic landscape: Milk Hill, Walkers Hill, and on towards the ridge-worn flanks of Martinsell. There are no houses in sight, just the burnished plains of the Vale of Pewsey below and the Marlborough Downs to the north, rolling like a vast, swollen sea. They buried their dead here five thousand years ago, deep within the chambered tombs of long barrows that still exist today. The view can’t have changed much since then – except for the white horse below Milk Hill, chalked onto the hillside in the early nineteenth century.

  Noah captured the essence of this ancient landscape in his black-and-white photos, which usually featured one of his own circles. Silas glances around the outbuildings again, remembering the private view, the talk Noah gave that night. Mel described him as a gentle soul, a softly spoken artist. No doubt good at yoga too. And he seemed to have arrived at a happy compromise with the believers in the croppie world, claiming that paranormal energies acted through him while he made the circles. Inexplicable forces called him to particular fields in the night. He’d even seen balls of light in the sky that guided and inspired him while he worked. He played along, in other words. Everyone a winner. So where the hell’s he gone now?

  ‘Sir, we need an ambulance,’ Strover says. She’s walked over to the main house and is peering in through a lower window.

  Silas rushes over to her. Cupping his hand against the glass, he can see Noah lying on the stone floor of the kitchen, dark blood pooling around his head like some sort of perverse halo. There’s evidence of a recent altercation, chairs knocked over, crockery broken. The place is a mess.

  ‘Christ, you call Control, I’ll go in,’ Silas says, running around to the front door, which is locked. A second later, he smashes a lower window in the sitting room and climbs through, glass crunching under his feet on the floor. It’s a while since he’s had to force an entry. Crucial evidence at the scene will be disturbed but a life is at stake.

  Noah is still alive, but barely breathing. His pulse is weak too. He wasn’t the strongest person anyway. Silas makes him comfortable with a cushion, searching his body for injuries. He’s taken a heavy blow to the back of the head but otherwise he seems unscathed.

  ‘Noah? Can you hear me?’ Silas asks, his mouth close to Noah’s ear, as Strover comes into the kitchen. ‘It’s DI Hart. Silas Hart. Swindon CID.’

  ‘Air ambulance on its way, sir,’ Strover says, putting her radio away.

  Noah opens his eyes and swallows.

  ‘Get me some water,’ Silas barks at Strover. A moment later, he puts a glass to Noah’s lips and he takes a sip.

  ‘They wanted to know who commissioned the circle,’ Noah whispers.

  ‘Who did?’ Silas asks.

  ‘I don’t know who they were. They drove up here in a Range Rover. Black… tinted windows. I thought they were clients, down from London.’

  ‘Number plate?’ Silas asks, more in hope than expectation.

  Noah shakes his head and then starts to speak. ‘RO something?’

  A Reading number plate. Silas glances over at Strover, who makes a note.

  ‘And you didn’t tell them,’ Silas continues, as he puts the glass against Noah’s lips again. He takes another sip, closes his eyes. Silas is losing him. He’s surprised Noah didn’t reveal the name, impressed with his bravery. Particularly in someone so slight. He could have been killed by the blow to the head.

  ‘Noah, this is important,’ Silas persists, louder now. Strover catches his eye with another one of her looks. He knows Noah needs to be treated with care, but this might be their only chance. ‘Why didn’t you tell them?’

  When he finally answers, Noah’s voice is faint. ‘I didn’t realise they were going to place a dead body in it.’ He pauses. ‘Of course I didn’t. I wouldn’t have touched the job if I’d known.’

  ‘This person who commissioned the circle – did he ask you not to tell anyone?’ Silas asks.

  Noah nods.

  ‘And you’re not going to tell me who it was either?’ Silas asks.

  Noah shakes his head.

  ‘This has become a murder inquiry now, Noah,’ Silas continues, failing to suppress his frustration. ‘It’s gone way beyond making pretty patterns in a field.’

  Noah closes his eyes. Silas thinks he’s lost him again but then he speaks.

  ‘I never knew his name. We didn’t meet. We talked on WhatsApp, he transferred half the money up front, sent me the design. That’s how these things work.’

  Silas remembers a rash of above-board commercial logos that appeared in crop circles a few years back. Nike, Greenpeace, Weetabix. The Sun even commissioned a circle to promote its campaign to bring the Olympics to Britain. This one is different. Off the books.

  ‘And you’ve deleted the conversation on WhatsApp,’ Silas says.

  Noah nods again. It has to be bloody WhatsApp. Messages are end-to-end encrypted, impossible to recover once deleted.

  In the distance, the sound of an approaching helicopter.

  ‘Put an obs request on the black Range Rover,’ Silas says to Strover, getting up from the floor where he’s been holding Noah. ‘Tinted windows, RO number plate. It can’t have gone far.’

  ‘Sir, I think he wants to tell you something else,’ Strover says, nodding at Noah.

  Silas turns and crouches down beside him again, his ear close to Noah’s lips.

  ‘It’s not the only one,’ Noah whi
spers, his voice faltering.

  ‘There are others?’ Silas says, glancing up at Strover. ‘How many? How many circles did you make?’

  But this time Noah has no strength left to speak. Instead, he manages to hold up two fingers before his eyes shut and he falls limp in Silas’s arms.

  13

  Bella

  Hey sis

  Can’t seem to get through on FaceTime so I thought I’d send you an email. I know, I know, they’re bad for the environment too – did you know that if we all sent one fewer email a day in Britain, we’d save more than 16,000 tonnes of carbon a year? That’s equivalent to more than 80,000 flights from London to Madrid. Crazy! At least I’m still resisting a smartphone and using that old brick you left behind. Could become a problem at work but so far, so good. There are several girls in the office who have brick-phones too, trying to wean themselves off TikTok, so it’s not just your uncool lil sis.

  I might have got this wrong but I think there’s something between Mum and my old tutor at Oxford, Dr Haslam. I know, don’t want to go there, but Mum’s been behaving so strangely, talking in whispers on the phone when he rang last night. She’s been fussing over me quite a bit too, like she used to when we were young and I had a stomach bug. To be honest, I think it would do her good if she did have a relationship. Get her out of the house. And it’s been so long. I’m just not sure about Dr Haslam. You’d know what I mean if you met him. And I suppose the whole thing feels a betrayal of Dad. Which is dumb, as he’d want Mum to be happy more than anything, not still moping around fifteen years after he died.

  Do you remember when we came back from the hospital in Mombasa that day? I’ve been thinking a lot about it recently. You rushed upstairs to your room and cried and cried while I sat on our ayah’s lap on that big wicker chair in the hall. And Cadogo wouldn’t stop barking in the yard. Even he knew Dad was dead. It was only me who refused to accept it. I never shed a tear.

  Let me know about graduation. It would be epic if you could come over – by sea, of course, preferably a sailing boat (only kidding). You know Mum would love it too.

  xxx

  PS Guess what? I’m checking out a pub for work called the Slaughtered Lamb. You know that was the name of the pub in An American Werewolf In London, which you made me watch when I was ten. Ten, Helen. Stay off the moor…!

  14

  Silas

  It’s been a while since Silas has seen Wiltshire from the air and he’s forgotten how beautiful the county looks in the low, late afternoon sun. Up ahead, Fyfield Down, harsh and ancient, littered with the same sarsen stones used at Stonehenge and Avebury. Beyond it, the Vale of Pewsey. And behind him, the sprawling conurbation of Swindon. Even his home town doesn’t look so bad from up here, glistening in the dusk.

  They’d passed over the Magic Roundabout shortly after the police helicopter picked him and Strover up from behind Gablecross and the layout of the town’s famous ring junction had suddenly struck Silas as some modernist take on a crop circle – five satellite roundabouts around a central, larger one. All this talk of UFOs and plasma vortices is beginning to get to him.

  ‘Where do you want to start, boss?’ the pilot asks Silas over the radio. As part of the National Police Air Service, the helicopter had to come out from RAF Benson in Oxfordshire. Long gone are the days when Wiltshire Police had its own chopper. The pilot is normally accompanied by two tactical flight officers, who feed back live TV footage to the Control Room, but Silas has persuaded NPAS to let Silas and Strover take their places. It isn’t orthodox, but nor is this particular search mission. It also saves on costs.

  ‘Hackpen Hill, north-west of Marlborough, and then work southwards,’ Silas says.

  Noah was taken to hospital before being able to provide them with any further details, which didn’t go down well with DCS Ward. Did Noah’s raised fingers mean two more circles? Or two in total? Hope can be a dangerous thing, but Silas is working on the assumption that they’re looking for one other circle.

  ‘Do you have any idea how much that chopper costs an hour?’ Ward had asked, when Silas had gone to see him with his begging bowl.

  ‘We have good reason to believe that when we find the second circle, we’ll find another body,’ Silas had said.

  ‘Three grand an hour. I could do a lot with that.’

  Silas had ignored Ward, pressed on regardless. ‘And given that no one has contacted us yet about the discovery of a second body, we can safely assume the second crop circle is only visible from the air.’

  ‘What would be the point of that?’ Ward had asked.

  ‘Some of these circles aren’t discovered for days,’ Silas had replied, pausing. ‘All adds to the mystery, apparently. Their psychic power.’

  Ward had raised his eyebrows at that, expecting a smirk in return. But Mel had given Silas a hard time over breakfast, told him not to be so tough on croppies, keep more of an open mind in life, so he had looked away from Ward. Mel would have been proud of him.

  ‘Others are done in conjunction with drone photographers,’ Silas had continued. ‘Who duly flog the photos to the tabloids.’

  ‘But not this one.’

  ‘No, sir. This one’s different. And we need to find it quickly. Before the media.’

  Silas didn’t have to spell out the practicalities of a human body lying for days in the countryside in high summer, even if it had been deep-frozen first. Animals could be the biggest problem, destroying vital evidence.

  Back in the police helicopter, Silas spots three crop circles in the first twenty minutes, using his own Swarovski bird-watching binoculars. A fiftieth birthday present from Mel and better than anything work might provide. One crop circle is outside Stanton St Bernard in the Vale of Pewsey, another over by Etchilhampton Hill near Devizes and a third one close to Bratton Castle, on the western edge of Salisbury Plain. All three impressive in their own way, but none of them complex, like the one at Hackpen Hill.

  ‘You sure that’s not done by aliens?’ the pilot asks, as they hover over the circle at Bratton Castle, across from a white horse on the hillside.

  ‘I’m not saying anything,’ Silas says, taking in the rich geometric pattern, a six-pointed star with jagged, triangular edges.

  ‘It’s a fractal formation,’ Strover says. ‘A “Koch snowflake”, named after Helge von Koch, a Swedish mathematician.’

  Silas looks up at Strover and shakes his head. She never ceases to surprise him. ‘More bedtime reading?’ he asks.

  ‘Went down a bit of a rabbit hole online,’ she says, gazing at the circle. ‘If you look closely, each smaller pattern is the same as the whole.’ She pauses. ‘Quite beautiful, actually.’

  ‘But not what we’re looking for,’ Silas says.

  Ten minutes later, as they fly low over the hamlet of Oxenwood, Silas thinks he’s seen something. He asks Strover for the binoculars.

  ‘Over there,’ he says to the pilot, pointing in the direction of Andover in the far distance. They are close to the Wiltshire/Hampshire border.

  ‘Got it,’ the pilot says. Silas’s stomach lurches as the helicopter drops altitude. He shouldn’t have had that kebab last night.

  It takes a second for him to get his bearings. There’s a pub near here, at Tangley, where he used to cycle when he was fitter. Lighter.

  ‘That’s Chute Causeway,’ the pilot says, pointing at the map on the screen in front of him. ‘An old Roman Road.’

  The spot they’re heading for is two fields back from the road and, unlike Hackpen Hill, there is no surrounding higher ground from which to observe the pattern. It can only be seen from the air, just as Silas thought, and the area is remote.

  Silas falls silent. He’s got the binoculars trained on the circle, another complex pattern that once again involves hexagons, as well as an array of other geometric symbols and a large adjacent spiral disc. But he’s not looking at the shapes. He’s studying the human body at the centre of one of the hexagons. What’s it wearing? And why doesn�
��t it appear to have any arms?

  There’s no tactical flight offficer to operate the onboard cameras so Strover pulls out her phone and starts to take pictures of the scene below. Silas watches, transfixed. A flock of birds lifts up from the body as the helicopter moves in to land beside the circle. Corvids are often hard to distinguish, particularly in flight, but Silas knows at once what these are. Black, oily plumage, bare white face.

  Rooks.

  15

  Bella

  The Slaughtered Lamb is busier than Bella expected and the conversation at the bar is about a body that’s been found in a nearby crop circle. She’d read the evening newspaper report on the train but hadn’t realised the circle was so close to the pub.

  ‘Has anyone worked out what the circle means yet?’ one of the locals asks. Bella clocks an Irish accent, thinks of Erin. She needs to keep it together.

  ‘Here we go,’ the landlord says under his breath. ‘Another one of Sean’s famous conspiracy theories.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a sacrifice of some sort – a ritual gone wrong,’ a second local suggests, winking at the barman. ‘Wicker Man comes to Wiltshire.’

  Bella heads over to the pub’s only corner table, ears straining to catch every word. The Wicker Man was another film Helen made her watch when she was too young. She’s still haunted by the clifftop finale. There’s a sign on the table saying, ‘Reserved, 8 p.m.’ She’ll take her chances. Sitting down, she starts to write in a notebook, hands tingling with anticipation. She prefers pen and paper to using a phone. It’s the same with newspapers. She grew up with them scattered around the house like laundry and she likes to hold one in her hand rather than read the news online. Old school all the way.

  ‘It’s definitely a formula of some sort,’ Sean says. ‘Which means there’s only one suspect.’ He pauses for dramatic effect, milking the moment. ‘Porton Down.’