Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (13 page)

Chapter 29

The snow around Parkview Abbey’s grounds had drifted in the storm so that it lay in great mounds against the stone walls which marked the ancient boundaries. Dewdrops on the greenery glistened in the morning light like fireflies. The gravel crunched under the wheels of a black Mercedes as it pulled up in the courtyard in front of the entrance. A murder of crows, startled by the noisy, mechanical visitor, took flight from a nearby willow.

A uniformed police constable hurried down the stairs towards the car. He stumbled slightly as he reached it in his haste, b
ut the doors were already open and the two people he had been waiting for were gliding towards him.

“Good morning, sir,” he stuttered, wondering whether he should be offering his hand or just showing them inside.

DSI John Baron nodded curtly and turned to the woman who accompanied him. The PC gawped up at her: she was taller than Baron by a good three or four inches. Her white beehive added another head above that.

“I want it on record that I was displeased with your choice of safe house, Amanda,” Baron spoke quietly to the giant woman as they trudged over the courtyard toward the front entrance.

“If you’re going to try and push the blame for this on me, John, you can think again,” she spat back.

“
You
took responsibility, in circumstances when arguably it was not your place to do so, for Megan Laicey’s safety,” he reminded her.

They got to the front entrance. The
PC opened the doors nervously and ushered them through to the grand entrance hall. Harker brushed past Baron to get inside first. As she moved past him she whispered something in his ear, just loud enough so that only he could hear her.

“Fuck you, John.”

*

Alix drove back from the Governess toward the station in silence. Not even the radio could bring her any comfort. The traffic was murder, backed up in the centre with nothing moving and with no obvious reason why. Everything ground to a halt in snow. It was as if the soft white powder was an excuse for everyone to suddenly start driving like a complete moron. The roads were gritted. What the Hell was the problem?

She looked across past the Hippodrome and up the Marriott. Not far till she passed There and Back Again Street, which was, by far, her favourite street name ever. She had always liked this part of Bristol: a clutter of little clothes stores, kebab houses, students lettings shops and pubs. The city’s true persona, she had always thought.

In the central space under the CD slot (which was occupied by the greatest hits of Lenny Kravitz), there was a can of full fat coke. As the traffic was stationary she thought long and hard about that full fat coke. How long had it been there? It was Wednesday. She’d noticed it yesterday and been shopping – when? – Sunday? Three days, four max. Would it be ok? 

Phone rang. She checked for police and then laughed. They were colleagues now. Not that that would probably stop them booking her. She answered and heard Ash’s voice.

“Alix?”

“Sleep well?” s
he asked. Alone? she wondered, although why the Hell that was any of her business she had no idea. But she still wondered anyway.

“Megan Laicey’s gone. Katelyn Laicey’s body is missing,” he replied.

“What?”

“I just got a ca
ll from Baron. He’s on his way up to Parkview Abbey, the safe house where Megan was being kept until the media interest in her died down and we could re-house her. They can’t find her.”

“What do you mean about Katelyn?” She felt as though she was struggling to assimilate what she was being told, as if only half of it was English and the other
half some foreign language she only knew a few words of.

“The body’s
gone. A guy in the morgue apparently opened up the bag and found a dead dog.”

“What
? What about whoever was looking after Megan?”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone.

“Ash?”

“It’s complicated,” he said.

*

The grand entrance hall to Parkview Abbey was dominated by a marble stairway t
hat led to the upper floors which curled round the walls like the horns of a ram. The floor was a mosaic of white, red and black tile. Every surface was covered with vases, relics, ornaments and clocks. On the walls, musty oil paintings with golden frames filled almost every space. They were mainly portraits and, standing in the middle of the room, the PC felt like a hundred pairs of eyes were watching him.

“Is there any sign of Megan,”
Baron said to him.

“Nothing, sir.
She’s not here. We’re searched twice.”

“
Search again. Children hide when they’re scared. Road blocks?” he asked, glancing at an old grandfather clock to his left at the bottom of the stairs. The pendulum was still, the hands stuck on the hour of three.

“Posted on every route out of the Wolds, sir, but this could have happened at any point last night.”

“Were there not systems in place for this sort of thing?” he shot at Harker, who frowned at the question. She was ill-used to being cross examined.

“Of course there were systems,” she replied
abruptly. She didn’t feel obliged to give Baron anymore explanation than that so they followed the uniform through a set of double doors in silence.

“He’s just through here,”
he said. “In the library.”

“With the candlestick, no doubt,” Baron
muttered under his breath.

On the other side of the room another set of double doors opened but the angle made it difficult to see what was going on. They heard talking
; there were three or four people there, and the sound of equipment clanking on the floor. Maurice Reid, the pathologist, appeared in the frame of the door, as if from nowhere. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand and smiled weakly as he saw Baron.

“Hello, John,” he said. “Every time we meet some guy ends up dead. You think one day they’ll start suspecting us?”

Baron managed a laugh and turned to Harker.

“It’s good to see you, Maurice. This is Amanda Harker. She’s prosecuting the Anwick case.”

“Pleased to meet you, Miss,” Maurice said. “I’m sorry we couldn’t meet under better circumstances.”

“I’m sure that meeting people under difficult circumstances is your forte,
Doctor Reid,” she replied. He smiled a little broader this time showing three gold teeth at the back of his mouth and let his hands fall by his sides.

“I gather Mr Speck was a friend of yours,” he said to her.

“An associate of the vaguest acquaintance. Nothing more.”

“An associate. Of course.” Maurice turned to Baron. “You better come and see.”

*

Alix shut the phone and pocketed it.
The traffic started to crawl a little but not quick enough. She hit the horn. Nothing moved any faster but a few people turned their heads to look at her. She tried to make sense of it all. Somebody had killed Katelyn Laicey and now her sister had been kidnapped. But the number one suspect for Katelyn’s murder had been inside Innsmouth at the time of Megan’s kidnapping. At the same time someone, or someone else, had broken into the city morgue and taken Katelyn Laicey’s dead body. What sick pervert were they dealing with?

Meanwhile, twenty miles outside of the city, an entire village had been massacred, or
possibly had committed suicide.

“It’ll be a fantastic opportunity for a new challenge,” Baron had said.

Jeez, he’d been right.

             
*

“How long has he been there?” a
sked Baron.

Maurice scratched his
bald head. He watched a techie take some photos of the body before answering. “I’d say between eight and ten hours.”

“Who found him?”

“I did, sir,” the PC took a tentative step forward. He wasn’t sure whether finding the body was an honour or a burden.

“After I receive
d the call from the gentleman at the city morgue who told me that he had a bag containing a dead dog with my name on it,” explained Harker, “I called Ephraim Speck to check he and Megan were all right. There was no response on any of the numbers I had for him. I was concerned by this and in consequence I asked the local police to attend Parkview Abbey and report back.”

“I got the call about four hours ago,” chipped in the uniform, wondering whether that information was helpful in
any way. By Baron’s unchanged grimace, he surmised that it was not and resolved to keep quiet from this point onwards.

“What’s the cause of death?” asked Baron, walking round the side of the room to change the angle of his view. It looked gruesome whichever way he looked at it.

“Not sure what actually killed him till I get to take a look inside,” said Reid. “Could have been loss of blood or just hypovolemic shock. He was an old fellow. In fact some think that the cause of death in cases like this is asphyxiation. The weight of the body created by the arms being outstretched is driven downwards congesting the throat and lungs. I can’t think of a more painful way to die.”

The nails that fastened Eph Speck to the wall had been driven through his wrists. His feet sat on a single nail driven into the wall beneath him to support his weight. His head was slumped to one side. Black blood trickled down and had clotted at the tip of his nose. His eyes were open.

“Do you want to revise your opinion of Eugene Anwick?” Baron asked Harker.

“Why?”

“Because Megan’s kidnapping and this murder are clearly connected with Katelyn’s death. Anwick was not working alone, and working in conjunction with people is rather inconsistent with the notion of insanity, wouldn’t you say? It seems to me, Amanda, that your decision to rid yourself of the services of Fielding and Franchot should perhaps be reviewed.”

Harker said nothing. After a moment longer soaking up the horror of the scene in the library, she turned on her hee
l and walked out without a word.

Chapter 30

Nobody noticed Alix squeeze in through the glass door and take a seat at the back of the incident room. There were seven or eight officers huddled in groups looking earnestly towards a translucent board at the front on which various scribbles and pictures had been posted. Alix could make out the photographs of the Laicey twins from two years ago, enlarged versions of the pictures the press were printing every day. When there was no new news, the media just ran the same story from different angles over and over again. Sadly, nothing sells papers like a dead child.

Ash stood at the front checking some notes, preparing to address his team. His jacket was crumpled over a chair and he wore a waistcoat and no tie. He looked more like a slightly eccentric art teacher than a detective. She recognised some people in the room: Eran Green, the fat, sick-looking
detective who was one of the first at the White Helmsley scene, and Keera Julian, who she would try and ignore if she got the chance. There were others that she hadn’t met before. She wondered where Baron was. A few had noticed her and were busy nudging each other and nodding towards her. She felt self-conscious all of a sudden. The new girl in class.

Ash looked around before taking a sip from the polyester cup that held his chemical based coffee. He planned to drink about three quarters of it.
Anymore and he risked coming into contact with the enigmatic sediments at the bottom of the cup that reminded him his coffee was made by a machine that cost less than his kettle at home.

There was a nervous silence in the room, the significance of which was not lost on him. Normally he enjoyed this room. It buzzed. There was an energy to it. People pitched in, threw their ideas at him; the people in this room would lay their hearts in front of their leader if they thought it would help. But not today. Today they just looked tired and confused.

“I appreciate that some of you – some of
us
– didn’t get much sleep last night. I reckon it’s going to be one of those weeks,” announced Ash, not looking up from his notes. He took another sip of coffee and put the papers down. “There have been developments,” he said grimly.

Alix shuffled a little in her seat. She caught Ash’s eye and for a moment he held her gaze from across the room.
For one horrible moment she thought he might say something to her in front of everyone but he walked to the incident board. She breathed out heavily.

“The Laicey case was meant to be open and shut. But now I’m afraid it’s rather more complicated,” he said quietly. He was choosing his words carefully. “Professor Eugene Anwick was found with the dead child in his arms and so far has omitted to actually say he
didn’t
kill her which made him a pretty good starting point. Except it’s now not that simple. As you know, Katelyn was one part of twins. Her sister, Megan, is believed to have witnessed Katelyn’s killing and was taken to a registered safe house in Lincolnshire where she was put in the care of one Ephraim Speck. The place is called Parkview Abbey. Speck is a German national. Last night he was found strung up on a wall in his own library. He had been crucified.”

There was a low murmur in the room and a lot of shuffling uncomfortably in seats.
Ash paused before turning his back to his audience and producing a picture from the file he had placed on the desk. He pinned it to the board. Alix leaned forward to look closer. It appeared to show the distorted figure of an old man, his arms spread-eagle, feet clamped together, head slumped to one side.

“
Megan Laicey is gone. We have no sign of forced entry, no broken windows, no trace whatsoever of any intruder and the front door was locked from the inside.”

“So somebody broke in without making a mess, strung this guy up like Jesus and kidnapp
ed Megan,” said Keera. There was a level of detachment to everything she said that annoyed Alix, like it didn’t mean anything to her.

“Yes,” replied Ash, not looking at her. His gaze fell upon Alix again for a
moment. “But your day,” he said louder, “is about to get even more complicated, people.”

Ash turned back to his papers and picked out another photo. He pinned it to the incident board and once again everyone craned their necks forward to see. More murmuring. Just in front of Alix she could hear
someone exclaim: “what the fuck is that?”

“Two hours ago,”
said Ash, “Amanda Harker Q.C., the prosecution counsel in the Anwick case, advised us that she had received a call from a guy at the city morgue. He’d taken charge of a bag that should have contained the body of Katelyn Laicey. What it actually contained was the mangled corpse of a dog that looked as though it had been in a fight with a bear. The dog had a tag round its hind leg with Harker’s personal mobile number on it.”

“So we’ve lost both Megan Laicey and Katelyn
Laicey’s body?” The voice was from the young detective in front of Ash. He looked a little over thirteen, Alix thought. He had thick, sandy hair and freckles. He might be quite cute in a few years time, she thought. In fact his name was Jeff Eldridge.

“That’s exactly what we’ve done,” conceded Ash.

“And that means Anwick wasn’t working alone,” said Keera. “I take it he’s not accountable for either disappearance.”

“He’s accounted for,” replied Ash. He stopped there, hoping he wouldn’t get many more questions. Frankly, he didn’t have many more answers.

“But if someone wanted Megan dead and that person was working with Anwick, how did Megan get away the first time around?” Jeff looked puzzled. They were all making the assumption that Anwick had killed Katelyn in the first place, thought Alix. But the revelation that Katelyn’s body and Megan were gone simply crystallised what she already suspected: Anwick hadn’t killed anyone.

“I have no idea. But the priority at the moment is finding Megan Laicey,” said Ash.

“What about the massacre at White Helmsley?” asked Eran Green.

“That for now
isn’t our problem,” replied Ash. “South Glos are dealing with that for now.” There was no hiding the resentment in Ash’s voice.

“But guv,” someone protested from the front row, “it’s on our patch.”

“Listen, I don’t call the shots,” Ash said. “People with larger pay cheques than me do that. We don’t have the resources to deal with all four incidents. Finding Megan Laicey is priority one. There’s no link between what happened at White Helmsley and the Laiceys, other than that everything appears to have happened in the same week. Besides, the media are all over White Helmsley now. They’re going crazy – the investigation team’ll be hounded for the next three months over this.”

“How the Hell did the paps find out so soon?”
asked Keera.

“Because I told them.” This time, Ash looked directly at Keera, daring her to challenge him. But she didn’t. In fact, she gave a small smile back.

“To take the pressure of us,” she said.

“Yes. So we don’t have any interference with our efforts to find Megan Laicey.” Ash leant over a desk in front of everything and stared intimately at his team. “The next five hours will be critical. The media don’t know that we let a little girl in a safe house get herself kidnapped but when they find out – and they will – they’ll hang us out to dry. We have to find Megan quickly and bring her home safe. For now, nothing else matters.”