The Relic Keeper by N David Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

buildings from the time. Four large offices stood on the far side of the complex, their sash widows and slate roofs partly missing. Built into the inner wall were a series of arched rooms, that Philip guessed had once been barracks, but were now store rooms, their doorless entrances open to the fierce south coast weather. A two-storey brick and timber building stood neglected to his left and a corrugated tin garage was slowly rusting past this. Towards the centre of the courtyard, although slightly set off from the exact middle were three sets of buildings. These were two floors tall and made from a mixture of the same red brick and grey granite and slate as the other structures. But what caught Philip’s attention was that these buildings had obviously only stopped burning recently. Smoke trickled skywards from the ruins through the openings in the roof and what remained of the windows was charred and blackened. To one side of the buildings was a hamlet of portable police huts that appeared to be the main part of the investigation. He looked for a familiar face and recognised a detective who had worked on some story or another a couple of years back. The guy was big, dwarfing Philip, and moved like some prehistoric creature across the scene. Philip sprayed a mouthwash jet between his teeth: “Let’s not smell too much like a drunken hack,” he said to himself, and approached the ursine bulk of the officer.
    “Hi. What we got?” The policeman looked at him like the piece of shit that he currently felt he was, and motioned for him to follow.
    “Whole complex burnt out,” said Detective Sergeant Renfrew. Philip remembered why he hadn't liked this man: he had only one volume to his voice and that was shouting. “Looks like it was started deliberately but we’re waiting on the arson report. They’ll be through any time now. But I’ll tell you what we’ve got so far. There’s been an explosion in the old boiler house attached to the main building over to your left, which has started a fire that’s ripped through the rest of the facility, although it looks like there’s a couple of other secondary fires started in other buildings. The main hall seems to have had about 150 to 200 people in it at the time of the fire. The doors were locked from the outside, although I reckon most of the people were either asleep or already dead, there’s very little sign of anyone trying to escape. There’s a about a dozen bodies in the other buildings and around the complex, and at least four of them were shot before they were burned.”
    “So what the hell was this place?” Philip asked.
    “Some kind of commune apparently. We have’t pieced it all together yet, but it seems to have been a sort of Christian religious cult. A couple of preachers put it together about eighteen months ago, but we’ve had no complaints from either within it or from the locals. They’ve been pretty self-sufficient; you can still see the earthworks and fences of the farming.” He motioned to the rectangular allotments that covered the area originally intended as a parade ground. He viewed Philip for some reaction, but got none and continued his analysis.
    “We’ve got probably six fires, all separate, at different locations in the site. They all seem to have started simultaneously. We don’t have any reports of anyone leaving, or any survivors. According to the records that we have, and we’re not sure yet if they’re complete, we should have about 180 people living here: oldest 63; youngest 2.”
    “What’s the movement?”
    “‘The Divine Temple of Jesus’,” said Renfrew with a cynical lift of his eyebrows as he read the name from his record. “They do a little preaching, but mostly keep themselves to themselves. We’re not sure how they recruited, or what the belief structure was. So, what’s your story angle?”
    “Fuck knows. Mind if I have a look round?” Renfrew commented that he didn't really give a rat’s fuck and Philip