Free Scaring Crows by Priscilla Masters Page B

years since she had taken up her post in the quiet, moorland town. Then Mike had been antagonistic, resentful, difficult. And now? Even to herself she was reluctant to admit it. Now she relied on him. They worked well together, her ideas with his practicality, her intuition with his stolid progression, ox like, moving forward. Between them they had gained results. Mike had shed his difficult reputation. But now? She peered at him suspiciously. She wasn’t sure. There was something intangibly different about him. He was a bit more edgy, slightly quicker to take offence. It had been there for three, maybe four weeks. And it hadn’t made him an easier person to work with.
    Her musings were brought abruptly to a halt by
    Mike shining a beam to the left of the path. ‘What the hell?’
    The trees were gnarled and old, bent into curious shapes by neglect and the elements. With very little imagination Joanna could have convinced herself that the wood was peopled with strange beings. She gave a nervous little laugh. Trees. That was all. Misshapen, lumpy trees. The evening was all black now with a seed of red faintly visible on the horizon. They ignored the shapes and carried on along the rough path then stopped.
    In front of them stood a sentinel, a man, twelve feet high with arms outstretched as though to grab them. Mike let out a sharp breath.
    â€˜What the ...?’
    â€˜Shine the torch on it.’
    It was a tree. Again just a tree, initially conveniently human shaped before being formed into a person by someone, presumably the ‘Art Person’. Twigs at its head were unruly hair. The trunk formed a body, split at the base into two legs that ended in blackened roots. And the branches that reached down towards the path had been extended with twigs to form skinny fingers.
    Joanna shivered. It was monstrously lifelike.
    Mike broke the silence. ‘The face,’ he said. ‘Joanna. Look at the face.’
    She shone her torch upwards and was both shocked and impressed. With rough carving the sculptor had achieved a reality and expression which altered as she shifted the beam of the torch. And the strange shadows and lighting effects gave the hollow eyes a malevolent gleam. Glass, varnish? Something shone, looking evil, and yet at the same time indifferent; powerful without being conscious of its own power.
    She had to admit, the man’s work was good. No – not good, brilliant. Brilliant and original and despite the primary reason for interviewing Titus Mothershaw – that he was a murder suspect – she was curious to meet the man behind this creation.
    Mike was not so appreciative. ‘What does he call this?’
    She laughed. Mike could be as bovine as some of Aaron Summers’ herd and yet ... It did her good. ‘I believe,’ she said, ‘that it’s a form of art.’
    Mike had views of his own. ‘Why the hell can’t he leave the trees alone?’ He touched one. ‘It’s just silly, this.’
    In the darkness Joanna smiled and knew that however fascinating she might find the Tree Man’s creator Mike would have nothing in common with him.
    â€˜We’d better get a move on.’ She teased Mike further. ‘Who knows what happens to monsters like these after dark.’
    As they wandered along the track they flashed their torches to the left and right, picking out strange carvings in almost all of the trees. The wood carver had been busy. Some were faces so human it would have been no surprise to her to see their lips open, their eyes blink. Some were carvings in stumps, fauns, wood nymphs, grotesque animals and one round stump had been carefully carved to form a pillar box. The whole was like a children’s story of some fantastic wood where everything was alive and full of character, and for the time it took them to approach the Owl Hole Joanna almost forgot about the deaths. She wondered whether the wood could hold so much