The old woman ran a hand along the back of her shotgun like she was stroking a pet cat, then gave in with a shrug and a grunt. “Fine. If you must know, it’s Kathryn.”
“Kathryn what?” Logan asked.
“Chegwin. Yes, before you ask, like that smirking little loudmouthed bastard off the telly. Date of birth, twelfth of January, nineteen thirty-eight. You want my bleedin’ address? It’s there,” she said, pointing to a ramshackle old croft house set back from the track a few hundred yards past the end of the field, on the opposite side of the road. “Figure it out yourself. Alright? Alright.”
She gestured past them with the end of the gun, to where Taggart was sniffing around the sealed entrance of one of the smaller tents.
“I knew you filth were getting younger and younger, but I didn’t realise it applied to your bleedin’ dogs, too. That one’s barely got its mothers teat out of his mouth, and you’ve got it sniffing around, looking for clues. Another mindless bleedin’ drone of the state. Just what we need. And he won’t find nothin’， neither.”
“Why not?” asked Sinead.
“Well, because there’s no bugger there, is there? It’s obvious. You can tell just by looking at the place.” Kathryn shook her head. “Bunch of weirdo bastards, the lot of them, mind you. God, if I have to listen to any more chanting at all the bleedin’ hours, I don’t know what I’ll do. But I wouldn’t like to be on the receiving end of whatever it is, I’ll tell you that much for free.”
“Chanting?” Logan asked.
“Chanting, if you bloody well please!” Kathryn confirmed. “Hippies, they are. Humming and bleedin’ hawing, dancing around in their skimpies with their arses hanging out for all the world to see.” She rolled her eyes. “And the sex. Oh, Lord Jesus and Mary, the sex. Like fucking rabbits, some of them. In their tents. Two together. Three on one. Swapping around, and all sorts. Orgies. That’s what they’re up to. Orgies of all bleedin’ things.”
“And you’ve seen this?” Sinead asked.
“Well, I don’t have to see it, do I, dear? Not for want of trying sometimes, mind you. They’ve had some big strapping lads in there I wouldn’t mind getting a right good rogering off. I’d have a right good bleedin’ go on some of them, if I had my way, let me tell you. Great big meaty fellas, so’s they are. Big, healthy lads.”
“Jesus,” Logan muttered, pushing that unwelcome mental image away.
“But I hears them, don’t I? Hammering away. Pawing and pounding on each other. Moaning, and groaning. ‘Yes, yes, yes. Ooh, do it like that! Careful, or you’ll have me bleedin’ eye out,’ and all sorts. You don’t need to see it when you’ve got it going on in surround sound at all hours of the day and night.” She sniffed and shrugged her rounded shoulders. “I mean, give me that over the chanting, right enough. I’ll take the shagging over the chanting any day of the week, and that’s not a word of a lie.”
Logan and Sinead stood in stunned silence for several seconds. Even Taggart, who had been busily exploring the tents, now just sat on the grass like he needed a moment to come to terms with everything he’d just heard.
“But anyway, they’re not there at the moment, obviously,” Kathryn said. “Any fool could’ve seen that from the road.”
“Do you know where they are?” Logan asked.
“Of course I bleedin’ know where they are. It’s heading for sunset, isn’t it?”
Logan glanced up at the darkening sky. Over on the left, the clouds were being painted in purples and reds. “So?”
“So, they’re going to be where they always are at this time. They’ll be up at the lighthouse, won’t they? Getting up to whatever the fuck it is they get up to up there, the dirty hippie bastards that they are.”
“The lighthouse?” Logan asked. He looked off in the direction of the setting sun. “How far away is that?”
“About six miles,” Kathryn said. “Though I should warn you, from here on in, the road gets pretty rough…”
CHAPTER TEN
The caravan was… upsetting. That was the best way that Tyler could think to describe it. Even from the outside, there was something depressing about it, like the land it stood on had been afflicted by some low-key witch’s curse that just made you feel a bit down in the dumps whenever you got too close.
Down in the dumps, coincidentally, was where he felt the caravan probably belonged. It looked like something from the Seventies, all clunky angles and brown trim. Someone—possibly the owner himself, but it could also have been some random passerby—had scrawled the words, ‘The Beacon,’ in a particularly dense dirty area, the marks revealing the yellowing paintwork beneath.