Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (14 page)

Chapter 31

The Harbinger was content
ed. So far, he had carried out his duties perfectly.

The fifth Law of the Ether:
Should any place bear witness to a forbidden act, then that place shall have a particular connection with the Inter-World and shall be called a Portal.

Now the Portal had been created.

The Hollow One drew near. He could feel it. The final stages were now underway.

Disposing of the traitor Ephraim Speck had felt satisfying, albeit that the
Harbinger had wished his opponent had put up a better fight. The conflict had been short and one sided. The Harbinger had hoped for a more worthy adversary. Perhaps that would be yet to come. Nonetheless, the image of Speck nailed to the wall of his own home, arms spread out wide and neck broken, had been pleasing.

In a dingy basement, the
Harbinger took the dead body of Katelyn Laicey in his arms and gently placed her onto a wooden table. Acquiring the body had been easy. The Harbinger had many assistants; some voluntarily, some unwittingly. Finding corruption within the hospital had not been hard.

He brushed a straggle of hair from the child’s eyes and, with the tenderness of a lover’s touch, brushed her
bruised cheeks. The body had started to decompose but the process was not too far advanced. Patches of black, dried blood covered her face and arms but things had been slowed by the treatment she had received when she first arrived at the hospital. The switch had taken place after that process was complete but before the body was sent downstairs for storage and to await a post mortem.

The
Harbinger appraised his catch dotingly. Her neck was broken and the life had ebbed away from her now. He admired the way her pretty little head was snapped to the side, distorting her features and making her look like a rag doll cast aside by an uncaring child. It was beautiful.

The
Harbinger turned and looked at Megan. She sat in the corner of the room on a small wooden chair. She looked at the Harbinger absently; the same painstakingly expressionless look etched on her face. He stared at her but he could see nothing in her eyes. They were a deep chasm; an empty, blue ocean.

“It won’t be long now, Megan,” said the
Harbinger softly.

She didn’t respond.

He turned back to Katelyn, walked round the back of the table slowly, carefully, and placed his hands lightly on the sides of her temples so that her body lay outstretched away from him. She was naked save for a white cloth that the Harbinger had placed over her, covering the lower half of her torso and the tops of her legs. The Harbinger knew that he was not to disrespect or interfere with one of Cronos’ Children and had no desire to in any event.

With his fingers tenderly feeling the sides of her head
, the Harbinger closed his eyes. He spoke to his inner self and began to unlock the power that slumbered within him. He could feel it start to flow through him, like a drug working its way through his bloodstream. The sensation was like nothing he had experienced whist he was just Man.

Had he looked round, he would have looked into Megan’s eyes; across the two blue oceans and to the horizon beyond where the grey sky kissed the water and the colours blurred into one. Had he done so, had he looked intimately enough, he would have seen a lacuna in that place
between sky and water and he would have wondered what was missing. But as the Harbinger drove deeper into his mind and his awareness of the physical world around him dissipated, Megan stood to get a closer look at the strange union this giant man had with her sister. And as she looked, something filled the lacuna in her eyes and for a brief moment Megan Laicey felt alive again.

Hung limp by the table, Katelyn
Laicey’s right hand twitched.

Chapter 32

Ash and Keera sat in a windowless interview room watching the strange specimen of a human being they had brought in for questioning squirm uncomfortably in his chair. His name was Ernst Stranger. He worked at the hospital morgue and a few hours ago he had called Amanda Harker on her personal mobile number and told her that he had found her dog. As it happened, Harker didn’t have a dog and the mutilated beast that Ernst had found in the bag that should have contained Katelyn’s body was probably a stray.

Things were being done at speed. Keera had only had a brief conversation with Ernst’s superior over the telephone. She had learnt a lot about him in that time though and had hurriedly passed on the information to Ash before they had sat down. Ernst was an odd character. He was practically a hermit. He had few friends and no one knew him at the hospital well at all. He kept himself to himself. They suspected he was a self-harmer and they knew he had a history of being bullied at school. Both
his parents had died at a young age in a car accident and Ernst had been brought up by his grandmother; a vile, pig of a woman who would beat him regularly.

The hospital was investigating a complaint made by a nurse a month ago that she had found two of the bodies taken from the morgue to have a post mortem to have been touched by Ernst. They
were concerned but couldn’t prove anything. But as an upshot Ernst was being closely monitored.

Ash watched the interviewee with interest. He was constantly moving. Touching himself, reaching round the back of
his neck and scratching, looking around. Like a rat trapped in a cage.

“Hello, Ern
st,” Ash began brightly. He looked as though he was barely out of adolescence and regarded Ash anxiously before grunting a response.

“I want a lawyer,” he said.
“Yes, a lawyer. Get me a lawyer.”

“Ah,” sighed Ash, sitting back in his chair an
d folding his arms. “Unfortunately, Ernst, you can’t have a lawyer.”

Ernst looked shocked and dug deep into the wound on the back of his neck. As he did so, the pain caused him to grimace and for an odd moment he
looked even more rat like.

“I am,” h
e countered. “I know my rights. Yes. And I want a lawyer.”

“Isn’t it funny,
Sergeant Julian,” Ash turned to Keera with a smile, “how everyone who sits in that chair knows their rights?”

“It’s very amusing,” Keera
said but her face remained resolute and she did not for one instance take her penetrating glare off Ernst who wriggled and squirmed in his chair even more.

“You see,” continued Ash, “we haven’t arrested you, Ernst. Therefore, you’re not entitled to a lawyer. You’re just here helping us voluntarily with our routine enquiries, for which
sergeant Julian and I are grateful.”

“So I’m free to leave if I want to?” asked Ernst, delightedly getting up from the chair, knocking his knee against the desk in his hurry.

“Oh course. Right after you answer a few questions,” replied Ash pleasantly, motioning for Ernst to sit down. He knew he was on dangerous ground but they hadn’t got time to be messing around with the duty solicitor. In any event, he could say that with Megan Laicey gone and this enquiry clearly linked, the circumstances were exceptional enough to interview Ernst without a lawyer present if he needed to. But in all likelihood, Ernst would sit down and talk, which he did.

“I didn’t do nothing,” he protested angrily. “Supposed to check
the bodies in the bag, aren’t I? So I did and found that... that thing. That’s all I know.”

“But you didn’t follow your own protocol, did you Ernst,” Ash pointed out. “You didn’t tell anyone at the hospi
tal. Instead, you wrapped your skimpy little hand round the tag on the dog and phoned the number. Why? Why did you do that, Ernst?”

The rat face re-materialised as he stuck his nose in the air and made a strange whining noise, as if the question itself caused him pain.

“Now wait,” he said, “who would do that to a dog? Not me. Not me. Oh, no, I’d never hurt any animal, detective. Never hurt an animal. Where’s my lawyer?”

“I told you Ernst, no lawyer unless we charge you but you haven’t done anything wrong so I can’t do that, can I?”

“No lawyer so he says? No lawyer. No phone call neither I’ll wager.” He snorted loudly, a sort of a cross between a sneer and a cackle.

“You ever seen this guy
, Ernst?”

Ash pushed across a picture of Anwick, which Ernst glanced at momentarily before throwing his head back in his seat and twitching his nose.

“No, certainly not, sir. No. Never seen him. Don’t know who he is and I never seen him.”

“You’ve never seen him?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“What about this guy?”

Ash pushed another picture across the table. Again, Ernst looked at it quickly and then away again.

“Same as the first, same as the first. Never seen him.”

“But this is a picture of
you
.”

Ernst flapped his mouth open and shut a few times, which was a disturbing sight, and leant right over the table to look at the photo. It
was
him; his picture from the hospital intranet.

“Oh, well, yes, now you come to-”

Ash leant across to meet his gaze, their noses almost touching, “Ernst,” he said dangerously. “You’re not looking at the goddamn pictures very well are you? Look again.” He pushed the picture of Anwick right in his face. “Do you know this man?”

Ernst opened his mouth but shut it again abruptly when he heard the knock at the door.

“What?”

Baron’s head appeared and he motioned for Ash and Keera to leave the room. They did so reluctantly.

“This half-wit knows nothing,” said Baron.

“Guv-”

Baron raised his hand and Ash stopped. “I’ve found a friend of Anwick’s I want you two to interview. It’ll bear more fruit for you than talking to simpletons like this. I’ll finish the interview but I want you two at this address now.”

“Guv-”

“That’s what’s happening, detective. End of.”

Ash took the piece of paper, looked at Baron. He didn’t often throw his weight around but
he knew what pressure he must be under. There’s no way he’d give them a dud lead when the stakes were so high. A quick glance at Keera and he walked away.

Inside the interview room Ernst watched the new man enter the room and sit opposite him uneasily.

“Hello, Ernst,” said Baron. “Here’s
exactly
what’s going to happen.”

Chapter 33

As Ash tossed his coins into the toll booth bucket and drove over the suspension bridge, the image of the snow covered valley momentarily distracted him. The Avon had frozen over a few weeks ago and looked like the slime trail of a giant snail curling its way through the gorge, the silver path shimmering in the sunlight. It was beautiful, but the moment was short-lived.

His mind was filled with doubt.
He was being hampered from doing his job. People were keeping things from him, possibly even Baron. And a nine year old girl was missing. It was Innsmouth. That was the piece that looked like it came from a different jigsaw. Maybe Anwick was involved, maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was mad, maybe he wasn’t. That was fine. He could deal with that. That was his job.

But the Innsmouth factor made him feel stupid. Like there was another layer to everything which was out of his reach. Like he was being used.

No, not Innsmouth. Harker.
She
was the key.
She
was the piece that didn’t fit.

“Tell me about who we’re going to see,” he said to Keera, who sat gazing out of the window in the passenger seat. She also seemed unusually lost in her
own thoughts.

“Hi
s name is Erik Crow. He’s fifty-three and he was one of Anwick’s colleagues in the Physics department at Cambridge. He lives alone. His wife left him five years ago. By all accounts, he didn’t deal with it particularly well and he became a hermit. His work is about the only thing he’s got left but he did assist Anwick in his research and he is purportedly a well respected scientist.”

“Did the CPS talk to him?”

“No. Why would they? This is pointless, anyway. Anwick killed Katelyn and someone else kidnapped Megan. We should be moving the investigation
away
from Anwick.”

“Your co
ncerns are noted, sergeant.”

She opened her mouth but thought better of it. She knew better than to argue with him.
Admittedly, he wasn’t as two dimensional as Baron but he was still a stubborn male when you stripped away the hair wax and the moisturiser. But Keera could never quite bring herself to regard Ash with the same distaste that she showed other men. Some of the time anyway.

She looke
d at him and, shuffling in her seat, made sure her skirt rode up just a little to expose another inch of her leg. Keera had learnt at a very early age that her curvy body and ample breasts had an effect on men that could be used to her advantage. She had never been a pretty girl; her face bore a residual blemish from teenage acme, small scars that never seemed to heal, and her features were sharp and angular to the point of being gaunt. But what she lacked in natural beauty she compensated for with other less subtle attractions.

“So you
and doctor Franchot...” she said.

“Sergeant, let’s not do this.”

“Do what?”

“Listen to you give me shit. Which house is it?”

“Up here on the left. Thirty one.” Keera smiled to herself. As they pulled up outside a three storey Victorian mid-terrace, she leant back in her seat and ran her hands through her hair, arching her back so her breasts pushed tightly into her shirt and her jacket fell open around them. She sighed heavily and smiled turning to her side to face him. She grunted her annoyance as the car door slammed and she watched him march towards the front door without looking back.

Erik Crow lived in a part of Bristol that looked as though, in its day, it might have been a prosperous, middle class haven. But although the houses were modestly sized, with large bay windows and intricate brickwork, they looked tired and unkempt. There were streets like this in every city in the UK: where families of professionals had moved out of the city and into the commuter villages where the driveways were big enough for two Land Rovers and the gardens big enough for a hot tub. In their place, greedy landlords had converted their homes into flats to accommodate the massive influx of students. Now the gardens were littered with old bikes, clapped out
Citroens and spliff heads and the once magnificent fireplaces were filled with empty beer cans and tin foil. In a student house, tin foil is a natural resource.

Outside number thirty one, there was an old sofa covered i
n snow and ice and a T registered Mercedes.

Erik Crow turned out to be Doctor Erik Crow and Doctor Erik Crow turned out to be one of the largest men that Ash had ever met. He sat spanning the enti
rety of a two-seater sofa, his massive body drooping and bulging in unpleasant places. He wore a scruffy mustard coloured t-shirt that was perhaps once white and a pair of joggers that could have been gainfully employed as a tent for a good half a dozen boy scouts were it not clinging on desperately to his enormous thighs. The fat under his arms was folded over his torso like wings and it seemed inconceivable that he would have the strength to move his gigantic frame if he needed to. It was an altogether unpleasant sight.

Ash and Keera sat perched as delicately as possible on two rickety chairs that Crow had put out for his guests opposite him. Separating them was a small coffee table, the surface of which was entirely covered by various china ornaments of birds. Their delicate bodies and pretty colours seemed out of place in the shadow of the swollen mountain of fat behind them.

There was a disagreeable smell in the room, which Ash put down to the assumption that a man of Crow’s size only washed infrequently, such was the effort of doing so and the cost of the water involved. Hopefully, he wasn’t on a meter.

“Tell me, Doctor Crow, what exactly are you a doctor of?
” asked Ash, shuffling uncomfortably in his seat.

“Particle physics,” he replied
gruffly, as if the answer had been obvious.

“Do you know why we’re here?” a
sked Keera.

“Eugene,” he said. “I guess you’ve come about Eugene.” He looked at the floor sadly when he said Anwick’s name revealing another three or four chins.
Ash noticed that he secreted a small amount of saliva from his thick lips every time he spoke. It was a nice touch.

“Yes,” said Ash. “You were a colleague of Professor Anwick.”

“Yes I was and never worked with a more brilliant scientist. He was wasted with me. Should’ve gone to CERN like I told him. I saw on the news what you think he’s done but listen: Eugene Anwick didn’t have a violent bone in his body. He was a good man. He drove a fucking Prius for God’s sake.”

“We tend not to discount suspects based on their choice of
car,” said Keera.

“Would it surprise you to know that Professor Anwick may admit to killing Katelyn Laicey?”
asked Ash. Whether it was true or not was irrelevant.

“Did he say that? Did you hear him say that?”

Ash smiled but he could see immediately the passion behind the squinting eyes of this strange man. He meant what he said, at least.

“What about his wife?” a
sked Keera. “No doubt you heard-”

“I tell you now that Eugene was a gentleman and I guarantee that he wasn’t having an affair with a housemaid.”

Ash raised an eyebrow before asking, “how can you be so sure?”

“Because Eugene Anwick didn’t have time for an affair. He only had time for his work. And also Eugene Anwick was gay. That’s common knowledge.”

Ash’s smile fell away. He exchanged a brief look with Keera and sat back in his chair.

“But he was married,” Keera pointed out.

“Oh, come on,” scoffed Crow. “Many gay men and women are married. There are lots of reasons for it: confusion, desperation to cling on to something normal; fear, denial. It happens all the time. Eugene is –
was
– homosexual. Even his wife knew and before you ask it wasn’t a reason for him to push her down the stairs. They had a mutually beneficial relationship.”

“Which was what?” Ash asked.

“He got to satisfy whatever psychological need he had to be considered
normal
and she got to live in a fucking big house and shop everyday and no doubt let into her bedroom whatever loathsome man she could find to satisfy her. Judge that against whatever moral code you subscribe to, it doesn’t make a difference. The fact is that if Eugene was gay, which he was, then your idea that his wife killed a housemaid he was sleeping with and he pushed her down the stairs afterwards is rather flawed, is it not?”

A bitter taste ha
d accumulated at the back of Ash’s throat. The smell of sweat and rot seemed to have intensified and he noticed his hands were sticky with perspiration. In the distance, he heard Keera ask Crow how he knew that Anwick was gay. Why couldn’t he have been bisexual, for example? But whilst Erik Crow may have eaten himself into a shameful epitome of ugliness and gluttony, he was sincere and resolute with what he was saying and Ash was already beginning to construct alternative theories.

“Oh for goodness sake,” he heard Crow say. “I don’t have to do your job for you. You’re the detectives. I’m just telling you what I know. But listen: Eugene didn’t kill his wife. He absolutely didn’t kill any kid either. It wasn’t in his nature.
He was a workaholic. Obsessed even, with his work I mean.”

“Tell me about Anwick’s work,” Ash prompted.

Crow looked thoughtful for a moment, clearly considering his answer carefully. Outside, there was the sound of birds singing.