Kiss of Death. Paul Finch

can send you to her a quicker way.’

      ‘What …?’ After a night of extreme horrors, Kelso, who’d thought he’d be rendered immune to this sort of thing for the rest of his life, now felt a deeper, more gnawing chill than ever before. ‘What do you mean?’

      The gaze of those terrible eyes intensified. He imagined the bastard grinning under his balaclava; crazily, maniacally, a living jack-o’-lantern.

      ‘Oh, no …’ Kelso simpered under his breath. ‘Oh no, please nooo …’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ the hoodlum chuckled, firing twice into the bank manager’s chest.

       Chapter 1

       Present day

      The church of Milden St Paul’s was located in a rural haven some ten minutes’ walk outside the Suffolk village of Little Milden. It sat on the edge of a quiet B-road, which ostensibly connected the distant conurbations of Ipswich and Sudbury but in truth saw little activity and was hemmed in from all sides by belts of gentle woodland and, in late summer, an endless golden vista of sun-ripened wheat.

      The atmosphere of this picturesque place was one of uninterrupted peace. Even those of no religious inclination would have struggled to find fault with it. One might even say that nothing bad could ever happen here … were it not for the events of a certain late-July evening, some forty minutes after evensong had finished.

      It began when the tall, dark-haired vicar came out of the vicarage and stood by the wicket gate. He was somewhere in his mid-thirties, about six-foot-three inches tall, and of impressive build: square across the shoulders, broad of chest, with solid, brown arms folded over his pink, short-sleeved shirt. His hair was a lush, curly black, his jaw firm, his nose straight, his eyes a twinkling, mischievous blue. To pass him in the street, one might think it curious that such a masculine specimen had found his calling in the cloth. There had to be at least a chance that he’d have certain of his parishioners swooning in their pews rather than heeding his sermons, though on this evening it was he who’d been distracted by something.

      And here it came again.

      A third or fourth heavy blow sounded from the other side of the church.

      Initially, the vicar wondered if the warm summer air was carrying an echo from some distant workplace. On the church’s south side, you could see the roof of Farmer Holbrook’s barn on the far southern edge of the wheat field next door. But that was the only building in sight, and there wasn’t likely to be much work under way on a tranquil Monday evening.

      When he heard what sounded like a fifth blow, it was a sharper, flatter sound, and louder, as if there was anger in it. The vicar opened the gate, stepped onto the path and walked towards the church’s northwest corner. As he reached it, he heard another blow. And another, and another.

      This time there was a smashing sound too, like wood splintering.

      He hurried on to the church’s southwest corner. Yet another blow followed, and with it a grunt, as of someone making a strenuous effort.

      On the building’s immediate south side lay an untended part of the grounds, the weathered slabs of eighteenth-century gravestones poking up through the long summer grass. Beyond those stood the rusty metal fence cordoning off the wheat field. It might be a sobering thought that, once you were on this side of the church, you were completely screened from the road and any passing traffic, but the vicar didn’t have time to think about that. He rounded the final corner and strode several yards along the south-side path, before stopping dead.

      A man with longish red hair, wearing patchwork green/brown khaki, was striking with a wood-axe at the vestry door. He grunted with each stroke, splinters flying, going at it with such gusto that he’d already chopped a hole in the middle of the door, and very likely would soon have the whole thing down.

      The soles of the vicar’s black leather shoes had made barely a sound on the worn paving stones, but the man in khaki had heard him; he lowered his axe and turned.

      The mask he wore had been chiselled from wood and depicted a goat’s face – but it was a demonic kind of goat, with a humanoid grin and horns that curled fantastically. The worst thing about it, though, was real: the eyes peering out through the holes notched for them were entirely human, and yet they burned with living hatred.

      The man came down the step from the door and approached, axe held loosely at his side. The vicar stood his ground and spoke boldly.

      ‘What are you doing here? Why are you damaging church property?’

      ‘You know what we’re doing here, shaman!’ a voice said from his right.

      He glanced sideways: three more figures had risen into view, each from behind a different headstone. They too largely wore green; he saw old ragged jumpers, ex-military combat jackets. They too were masked: a toad, a boar, a rabbit, each one decked with additional monstrous features, and each with the same hate-filled eyes glaring out.

      The vicar kept his voice steady. ‘I asked what you are doing here?’

      ‘You know the answer, you holier-than-thou prick!’ said a voice from behind.

      When the vicar spun backwards, a fifth figure had emerged around the corner of the church. This one also wore green, but with brown leather over the top. His wooden mask depicted a wolf, and as he advanced, he drew a heavy blade from a scabbard at his belt; a hunting knife honed to lethal sharpness.

      The vicar looked again at the threesome in the graveyard; Toad now smacked a knotty club into his gloved left palm; Rabbit unhooked a coil of rope from his shoulder; Boar hefted a canister of petrol.

      ‘In the name of God,’ the vicar said, ‘don’t do this.’

      ‘We don’t recognise your god,’ Wolf replied.

      ‘Look … you don’t know what you’re doing.’

      ‘Oh, very good,’ Wolf sniggered, as they closed in. ‘Very fucking saintly.’

      ‘This is sanctified ground,’ the vicar advised them. ‘Use more blasphemies here, and I’ll be forced to chastise you.’

      ‘Really?’ Wolf was so surprised by that, that he almost came to a halt. ‘I can’t wait to see how you do it.’

      ‘I warn you, friends …’ The vicar pivoted around. ‘I’m no martyr.’

      ‘Funnily enough,’ Wolf sneered, ‘the ones before you didn’t go willingly to it, either.’

      ‘Ah, now I know who you are,’ the vicar said.

      ‘Always a good thing to know thine enemies.’

      ‘You’re on your final warning.’

      ‘Perhaps your god will strike us down?’ Wolf was only five or so yards away. ‘Maybe throw a thunderbolt this fine summer evening.’

      The vicar nodded solemnly. ‘I fear one’s coming right now.’

      A rasping chuckle sounded behind the lupine mask. ‘You’ve got balls, I’ll give you that.’

      ‘I also have this.’

      From out of his trouser pocket, the cleric drew an extendable autolock baton, which, with a single jerk of his brawny wrist, he snapped open to its full twenty-one inches.

      Before Wolf could respond, the baton had struck him across the mask in a backhand thwack. The carved wood cracked as Wolf’s head jerked sideways and he tottered, dropping his knife. As the rest came to a startled halt, the vestry door burst inward and the figure of a man exploded out, launching at Goat from behind. This figure was neither as tall nor as broad as the vicar, just over six feet and of average build, with a mop of dark hair. He wore blue jeans and a blue sweatshirt with a police-issue stab vest over