Raven's Gate

wasn’t expected for another half an hour. Maybe Tom Burgess was still asleep. That was what he told himself. But somehow he didn’t believe it.
    The stairs led to a landing with three doors. Gently, he opened the one nearest to him.
    It led into a bedroom, and this was worse than anything Matt had seen downstairs. The room looked as though a whirlwind had hit it. The bedclothes were crumpled and torn, spread out over the carpet. The curtains had been ripped down and one of the window panes was smashed. A bedside table lay on its side, with a lamp, an alarm clock and a pile of paperbacks thrown on to the floor. The wardrobe doors were open and all the clothes were in a heap in one corner. A tin of green paint had toppled over, spilling its contents into the middle of the mess.
    Then Matt saw Tom Burgess.
    The farmer was lying on the floor on the other side of the bed, partly covered by a sheet. He was obviously dead. Something – some sort of animal – had torn into his face and neck. There were hideous red gashes in his skin and his fair hair was matted with blood. His eyes were bulging, staring vacantly, and his mouth was forced open in a last attempt at a scream. His hands were stiff and twisted in a frantic effort to ward something off. One of them was smeared with green paint, which had glued his fingers together. His legs were bent underneath him in such a way that Matt knew the bones must be broken.
    Matt backed away, gasping. He thought he was going to be sick. Somehow he forced his eyes away and then he saw it, painted on the wall behind the door. In the last moments of his life, the farmer had managed to scrawl two words, using his own hand smeared with paint:
    RAVEN'S GATE
    Matt read it as he backed out of the room. He shut the door behind him and reeled down the stairs. He remembered seeing a phone in the kitchen. He snatched up the receiver and dialled 999 with a finger that wouldn’t stop shaking. But there was no dialling tone. The phone had been disconnected.
    He threw down the receiver and staggered out of the house. The moment he reached the yard, he threw up. He had never seen a dead body before, let alone one as twisted and tortured as that of Tom Burgess… He hoped he would never see one again. He found that he was shivering. As soon as he felt strong enough, he began to run. He had forgotten the bicycle. He just wanted to get out of there.
    Matt ran back up the drive and on to the main road, heading in the direction of Greater Malling. He must have run for at least half a mile before he collapsed on to a bed of grass and lay there, the breath rasping in his throat. He didn’t have the strength to go on. And what was the point? He had no parents and no friends. He was going to die in Lesser Malling and nobody would care.
    He didn’t know how long he’d been lying there, but at last the sound of an approaching car reached his ears and he sat up and looked down the road. The car was white, a four-wheel drive with a sign attached to the roof. Matt breathed a sigh of relief. It was a police car. For the first time in his life, it was something he actually wanted to see.
    He pulled himself to his feet and walked into the centre of the road with his arms raised. The police car slowed down and stopped. Two officers got out and walked over to him.
    “You all right?” the first one asked. He was middle-aged and plump, with a high forehead and thinning black hair.
    “Shouldn’t you be at school?” the other asked. He was the younger of the two, thin and boyish with cropped brown hair.
    “There’s been a murder,” Matt said.
    “What? What are you talking about?”
    “A man called Tom Burgess. He’s a farmer. He lives at Glendale Farm. I’ve just come from there.” The sentences came out short and staccato. Matt was finding it hard to stitch the words together.
    The two policemen looked doubtful.
    “You saw him?” the senior man asked.
    Matt nodded. “He was in the bedroom.”
    “What were you doing there?”
    “I was meant to meet him.”
    “What’s your name?”
    Matt felt the impatience rising inside him. What was wrong with these men? He had just found a dead body. What did it matter what his name was? He forced himself to calm down. “I’m Matt,” he said. “I’m staying with Jayne Deverill at Hive Hall. I met Tom Burgess. He asked me to visit him. I was there just now. And he’s dead.”
    The older policeman looked more suspicious than ever, but his partner shrugged.