THE KILLER OF THE DARKNESS

EPISODE ONE

ONE

Low clouds scudded across the sky, bringing flurries of a torrential downpour in the blustering wind. I stood on the hillside; eyes creased up against the elements as I measured the terrain before me. Satisfied, I turned to my bag and selected a hickory shafted-club collection. I pushed the tee into the sodden ground and struggled to balance the golf-ball against the wind. I stood back and took some experimental swings, more to limber up my arms stiffening in the cold than anything. Finally, I addressed the ball, rocking into position on my heels.

Before me, dropping steeply away to the valley floor, the most difficult hole of the Onehouse Island links course.

Not twenty yards out, and almost level with me, the tips of the giant pine trees that led down to the shore of the North Sea, a quarter of a mile away. The fairway a broad swathe cut through the forest which ended in a bright circle of green jutting out into the choppy grey water with cliffs beyond.

Even on more clement occasions would usually be enough to play havoc with any golf-ball that stayed too long above the refuge of the trees.

I steadied myself for the shot, aware of the tightness and difficulties before me.

The golf-club seemed to be a white elephant during the war, last being attended by visitors in the summer of 1939. The situation served my job well. This sport, I had to admit, gave me problems, and the more I practised without any of the islanders watching, the better.

Above me, a couple of Hawker Typhoons thundered over, powered by the latest 2,000 HP engines, their patrolling of the east-coast always gave me a warm feeling of security deep down inside.

A distant relative worked on them at a near-by airbase in Suffolk, but I could not go and visit him, as, in his world I had not been born for another thousand years.

Such is the mystery of time-travel.

Once the noise of the Typhoons had dissipated, I looked across the ocean wastes which led away from the awesome three-hundred-foot cliffs of this remote Suffolk island to the flat coastline of the Netherlands appeared out of the mist.

I turned my attention back to the golf. The club head smoothly drew away, up, and wide behind his head, and poised for a fraction of a second. Then, with a swish of cut air, the steel completed a near circle, the white-ball rising and seemingly almost to touch the rain-filled clouds.

I swore.

It began to curve, captured in the gusts of wind. I raised a hand and shielded my eyes against the rainfall as I watched the ball drop, crackling into the waving branches of a pine a good ten yards off the fairway.

Sliding the club back into position, I slung it over my shoulder. Continually keeping my eye on the place where my shot had disappeared, I took the short steep footpath dead-ahead over the brink rather than the winding route worn away by the trolleys and other members.

As I slithered below the treeline, the wind creased to bluster, and I walked briskly in the still air.

I checked my wristwatch. Three minutes I would allow for the search, then I would drop another ball and press on, otherwise I would never finish before dark.

Reaching the area, I propped my bag against a tree-trunk and took out my little used number two iron that I mainly employed to lift aside branches.

As I left the fairway, ferns took over from the rough grass, sprouting even longer and more rank the further into the tree I went, until ultimately the absolute ascendency of the tightly packed, supremely evolved trees, deprived all light, and therefore life to anything at their feet.

The mind moaned at the branches as I tried to look around. I thought about giving up when something flashed white over to my right, beside a fallen tree whose branches formed the only bush in the long wooden corridors.

I approached, and realized I was not looking at the ball, but a bit of white cloth. Curiosity prompted him to insert the club head into the bottom branch and lift.

Following the rustling, the weight decreased, and a human arm, hand curled up, fell silently out.

I took a full second to grasp the awful implication. There would be no question the victim, presumably of the fallen tree, was dead. The arm, particularly the curled fingers, a waxy grey with deep blue veins of stagnated, clotted blood showing through.

I braced myself for the ordeal and pulled a branch aside.

Despite my readiness, what I saw made me retch. I stumbled back, tripped up and rolled over to come to rest on my knees, body racked with convulsions, as vomit pumped from my mouth.

I made to collect my golf club from where hung but changed my mind and drew carefully back out to the fairway, now firmly back in control of himself.

I took ten minutes to walk back to the clubhouse, a couple of converted cottages. There was nobody around in the winter, each member having a key to the premises. The groundsman had long since gone home, and the barman only attended his caged, padlocked area on weekend lunchtimes.

I let myself in and pushed the door shut against the wall. Fixed to the whitewashed stone wall, the telephone. I lifted the receiver and dialled 0. The familiar pleasant tone of Theresa Green, one of the island's operators, came on the line.

"Good afternoon, can I help you?"

"Theresa, it's me."

"Oh, hello. Not genuinely nice weather."

"No, it’s not. I'd like to speak to Mr Roome please, Theresa."

"Right away."

I waited, listened to her get through to the small slate covered police station that boasted a total force of twenty men. She bantered quickly with the desk sergeant, Ian Allum, and then came back to me as the latter operated the old switchboard and rang Inspector Roome's extension.

Theresa chirped away in her sing-song voice.

"Trying to connect you now. Before I go, I happened to be wondering if you would like to come to the quiz night at the pub on Friday night. We're one short now that Paula Rust has gone into labour."

"Of course, what time?"

"About seven-thirty?"

"That'll be fine."

"Great," she said as Terence Roome snapped out his surname, the strong Suffolk accent cutting across Theresa's soft lilt. I automatically sensed in my mind's eye the red-haired Inspector who had a reputation for toughness, as many an RAF man had found out to their disadvantage.

"Hello Terry."

"Hello there. To what do I owe the honour of a chat with you, while you're practising your golf."

Roome's voice sounded relieved. Poor bugger, I thought, he thinks it is a social call about one of our many shared activities.

I took a deep breath.

"Bad news I'm afraid."

Terry's voice remained unguarded.

"Yes?"

"Yes, I'm up at the Golf Club."

The voice at the other end chuckled.

"Having trouble with your back swing as usual."

I felt too shocked to respond.

"No, a bit more serious."

"Well?" Roome sounded puzzled by my reticence.

"I have just discovered a body of a woman -- in the trees to the right of the seventh hole."

A fractional silence followed, and then the voice, now hard and professional, came back.

"I hope you've touched nothing?"

"Only the absolute minimum. I floundered around looking for my ball you understand."

"Anybody we know?"

"I have never seen her before and something you should understand."

"Well?"

I took a deep breath.

"The poor thing has been savagely assaulted -- torn to pieces. The head is missing. It's as bad as that."