Father Wingate was still talking. ‘Jacob told me about how you were thrown into jail for trying to help a young woman. You were out of your element. Jeb helped you escape and you travelled a long way together. No doubt you shared trials and hardships. You may even feel that you owe him your life, but you mustn’t let these sentiments blind you.’
Magnus said, ‘And you mustn’t let prejudice blind you. Any one of us could have killed Jacob: me, you, Will, one of the girls.’
A cat, sharp-toothed and feral, darted across their path. Magnus instinctively touched the truck’s brake pedal. What did it feed on? he wondered. Rats or corpses? And was it just a difference of scale?
‘I know an old lady who swallowed a fly…’ he sang softly beneath his breath. ‘I don’t know why, she swallowed a fly…’
Will said, ‘We took a vote this morning. The community decided to stay together. We also decided that Jeb is guilty.’
It was on Magnus’s lips to say that four people were not a community, but he sensed it would do no good. He asked, ‘Without a trial?’
‘The evidence speaks for itself.’
‘He didn’t do it,’ Magnus repeated. ‘I’m sorry Jacob died, but I’m leaving this afternoon and I’m taking Jeb with me.’
‘You can go, but he stays.’
The quiet confidence in Will’s voice unnerved Magnus. ‘You’re not Jacob. You don’t have his authority or his back-up. We’re leaving.’
Magnus glanced at Father Wingate, but the old man nodded. ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. We have to return to the old ways.’
Magnus slowed the van. He would have halted it, but they were not quite out of the village and the hairs on the back of his neck were still bristling. ‘You want to execute him?’
‘We haven’t agreed yet.’ Will sounded regretful. ‘Raisha and Belle want to keep him locked up indefinitely, but even when our community grows it will be some time before we have the manpower to support prisoners.’
Magnus laughed. It was macabre. So many dead and here they were, preparing to kill one more. ‘How do you plan on doing it? A firing squad? The electric chair? Crucifixion?’
Father Wingate sucked in his breath, but it was Will who spoke. ‘I told you, we haven’t decided. Raisha used to be a chemist, maybe she can make something painless.’
They slipped past the Thank You for Driving Carefully sign and the national speed limit sign, into a country road bordered on either side by wavering hedgerows, so high they almost formed a tunnel.
Magnus said, ‘And if you kill him and then find out you’re wrong?’
Father Wingate seemed to have forgotten that the earth was still settling on Jacob’s corpse. He touched Magnus’s arm and smiled. ‘Then God will forgive him and us. Every death is a sacrifice to His name.’
A bird flew low across his windscreen, chirping out a warning call. Magnus tapped the brakes, though he was in no danger of hitting it.
‘Even innocent deaths? Aren’t you forgetting your Ten Commandments?’
The old man’s voice was sure. ‘We enter this world corrupted. Only death can purify us. That is what God revealed when He visited the sweats on the world. The plague is an act of love.’
Magnus stole a quick look at Father Wingate. He saw his arthritic fingers and trembling hands and knew that he would not have had the strength to force Henry’s wrists into handcuffs or Melody’s neck into a noose.
Leave Jeb behind, a mutinous voice in his head whispered. Get on your way and never think of him again. But he knew that would invoke another haunting, company for his suicide-cousin, Hugh.
Magnus said, ‘I’ll take Jeb north with me. You never have to see him again.’
Will said, ‘But he would still be alive and Jacob would still be dead.’
‘It wasn’t him.’ Magnus wondered why he was so sure of Jeb’s innocence. He had been with Will when he had burst into Jeb’s room, full of accusations and fury. He had seen the look of bewilderment on Jeb’s face turn to anger as he realised what he was being accused of. But the man had been an undercover policeman who had fooled the people closest to him for years. Perhaps rage had got the better of Jeb and he had fired into the dawn, fired at Jacob. Magnus could see it in his mind’s eye: Jacob walking the length of the kitchen garden, Jeb standing at his open window, the gun raised and aimed, Jacob falling to the ground, a swift descent driven by gunpowder and gravity. It was a scene he had witnessed countless times on the big screen and too like a movie to mean anything.
They had reached the gates of Tanqueray House. Magnus steered the truck into the drive, braking again as the tyres bit into the unpredictable gravel surface. He gave Will a grim smile. ‘Killing is a poor foundation for a community. You don’t want any trouble and neither do we. Jeb’s a tough enemy, even with a broken leg. Take him on and you take on me as well.’
Father Wingate whispered, ‘Your loyalty is misplaced.’
Will said, ‘You never asked what I did before the sweats.’
It was true. Magnus had not been interested enough in the man to enquire about his life. He regretted it now. Perhaps if he knew what made Will tick he could persuade him to let Jeb go.
‘What did you do?’
‘I was a maths teacher. Maths is not the most popular lesson among rough boys. A teacher must learn how to instil discipline, or let their classroom turn into a madhouse. One of the first things I learned was to separate troublemakers. That’s why I held a gun to Jeb’s head and put him in the dungeon before we left for Jacob’s funeral.’
Magnus stopped the truck short of its usual parking place. ‘You put him in the what?’
Father Wingate said, ‘Tanqueray House really is quite ancient and my ancestors were rather dreadful. They used to put their enemies down there and throw away the key.’ His voice grew anxious. ‘I don’t think we should do that.’
Will nodded. ‘We are civilised people. We want justice, not revenge. Taking a life is a grave responsibility. It was one Jacob shouldered when he saved you both and it is one that I am willing to shoulder in turn.’
Magnus shook his head in disbelief. ‘Raisha and Belle won’t agree.’
Will’s smile was modest, a director announcing a star casting. ‘Belle helped me.’
‘And Raisha?’
Will nodded. ‘She agreed.’
‘You’re mad,’ Magnus whispered. ‘All of you.’
‘My son…’ Father Wingate squeezed his shoulder.
Will said, ‘We’re alive and we intend staying alive, even if that means defending ourselves. This man is nothing to you. Go and find your family.’
Magnus closed his eyes. ‘When I find my family I want to be able to look them in the eye.’
Thirty-Two
Jeb was a long way down in the dank and the dark. He said, ‘I thought you’d be in Jockland by now.’
‘You and me both.’ Magnus had envisaged a cell more rustic than the one they had shared in Pentonville, but of the same basic design. Instead he was lying flat on his belly in a damp basement, looking through a metal grille set into the ceiling of the cellar below. It was hard to make out Jeb’s features in the gloom, but Magnus recognised the hang of his head, the slump of his shoulders. ‘I thought I’d stick around and try and save you from the gallows.’