Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (19 page)

Ash put the text down and sat back in his chair, hands behind his head, deep in thought. The Harbinger. Something tangib
le at last. A manipulator. Someone playing a game, managing to turn the village to the belief that death was somehow important. Like Alix had said. Like Jonestown. But how? How had this man bent the minds of those people so far they were prepared to die for his cause? And what
was
his cause?

It was getting late. He thought about going home but the worry that Penny might be there
put him off. He needed to deal with that somehow. He thought about telling Alix about it. She’d probably know what to do. After she’d finished laughing of course.

No. He wouldn’t tell Alix about Penny.

Chapter 3
8

Despite the stinging in his eyes, he managed to smile when she poked her head ar
ound his door. He watched her wander in casually and take the chair in front of him. She wore jeans and a maroon woollen tunic with a grey scarf round the neck, a stark contrast to the power suits and six inch heels that the other women wore at the office. Nothing flashy but she did looking good effortlessly.

“What are you doing?” she asked, looking over the desk.
Ash’s room was a tip but his desk quite immaculate. He suffered from the paradoxical traits of hating mess but having no interest whatsoever in tidying up. He had systems, sort of, which were occasionally used but generally his way of coping was to neglect his room but keep his desk fairly clear.

“You were right. Maybe.” He tossed Jacob Lightfoot’s blog across the table. A
lix picked it up and thumbed through the pages. He talked her through it but he could tell she was reading it and not listening to him. After a while, she put it down and looked up.

“Okay. So this is the point where we all agree that I’m right?”

“No. This is the point where we agree that maybe you’re right.”

“Same thing, isn’t it?”

He smiled but she could see how exhausted he was. There were bags under his eyes and the empty coffee cup on the side was heavily stained from repeatedly being topped up.

“You could use some sleep,” she offered but in truth she felt equally tired.

“And per chance to dream,” he muttered. “But I have more evidential gems to show you.” He moved the mouse a little and the blank computer screen lit up. It took their eyes a few moments to adjust. “Drink?”

She was looking at the screen and hadn’t noticed he had turned round and produced a dark green bottle of something from under the desk.

“Port?” she scoffed. “You drink port? What are you, seventy-five?”

He ignored her and filled a glass, pushing it towards her. He didn’t have another one so poured the rest of the bottle into his coffee cup. She examined the purple liquid uncertainly then, feeling his eyes watch her and not wishing to be rude, she took a sip. It tasted like cough medicine but she managed to hide her dislike of it.

“We’ll find her,” she said suddenly but she felt foolish almost immediately. She should feel just as under pressure as he was to find Megan Laicey. He nodded sadly.

“We’re going to need to find her, quickly.”

It seemed such a pointless and self-evident exchange of words but Alix nodded back anyway.

“How do you manage,” he began, swivelling his cup around as if trying to find the words, “to remain so...”

“Calm?” she offered. Unemotional, was what he probably wanted to say. She’d been asking the same question for a while now.

“I was going to go for
completely detached
but calm is just as good.”

Now it was her turn to smile, although a little part of her was annoyed at the insinuation. It wasn’t that she didn’t care. She cared a great deal. She just had a different way of showing it.

“Go to a place where I’m in control,” she said finally.

“Blue-sky,” he said.

“Yes. My blue-sky.” She took another sip of cough medicine and looked at him. Something bothered her about what he had said but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

“How did you get
on with – what was that guy’s name? – Doctor Crow?” she asked.

“Ah, yes. Not amazingly illuminating save that he reckoned Anwick was gay. I guess he was trying to say that, because he was gay
, his marriage was just a sham but, more importantly, he can’t have been having it off with the maid so-”

“So why did his wife try to kill her?”

“Something like that. This whole thing stinks. From top to bottom, Alix. And I can’t even interview my main suspect because he’s being held in an institute that doesn’t even exist officially.”

After a while, Ash sat back in the chair with his leg crossed over his knee.

“I can offer you a theory,” he said, although in a tone that suggested he doubted she would like it.

“Offer away.”

“Keera found out that the land around Innsmouth is extensive. It runs to about seventy acres and is owned by none other than Walter Cargil M.P.”

“The Home Secretary?”

“The very same. Last seen, I gather, fighting off more allegations of sexual harassment from the staff.”

“From the staff or
with his
staff?”

“Very good but I think
Private Eye
have already used that pun. Anyway, the point is it’s owned personally by a very greedy politician and its prime development land, or least it would be-”

“- If it wasn’t nestled up to a mental home.”

“Exactly. Although there are examples of housing developments near secure mental institutes, the house prices are generally lousy and developers are nervous of investing. Not the place to bring up kids if they have to hide in the basement every time one of the nutters goes missing. Which happens a lot, so I’m told.”

“Unless everyone thinks it’s decommissioned.”

“Well that’s the theory but it seems to me to be one step lower than even Cargil would be able to stoop. Anyway, it’s the best I can do at two o’clock in the morning.”

“It’s not bad,” she admitted.

“This is better.” He started messing around with the mouse again and she turned her attention to the screen. The picture had a grainy, colourless quality, like most CCTV footage but she could see a man pushing a trolley towards the camera down a narrow corridor. The trolley had a zipped up bag on it. “So here’s our man now taking Katelyn’s body to the morgue. I’ve managed to slice together his complete journey which means the switch has either already taken place or takes place in the morgue itself.”

The man with the trolley stopped and called a lift.

“He seems not too bothered about anything,” she noted. “Not looking around or checking over his shoulder. Relaxed. Like it’s just a normal day.”

“As it might well be for him but then this happens-”

After a short while of waiting at the lift, the footage suddenly jumped and distorted for a split second before dying. It jumped back a moment later to show an empty corridor.

“Spooky,” she said.

“It gets better.” He rewound a few seconds of tape and stopped just before the image broke up. “Watch what happens when I play it frame by frame.”

The image jiggered along, a few seconds for each frame; little snap shots of time only half recorded properly. He stopped at one particular frame and she let out a small gasp of air.

“Jesus.”

“Weird, isn’t? The tech guys can’t work out what happened but they say there’s nothing wrong with the system. It’s this one frame. And that’s it.”

She stared at the image. Her stomach turned.

“Oh Jesus,” she said again.

“Yeah, I know. I reckon in the blip we lose about four to five seconds of time max but-”

“No,” she interrupted. “No, it’s not that.
I know that guy.”

Chapter 39

“Make it clearer,” she said. “
Can you do that?”

Ash played the footage again, right up to the point where the image jumped. The software could enhance an image a little but it was still pretty crude. But clear enough. At the top of the screen was the figure of a man striding down the corridor.
After a while, the image changed line by line and large boxes of different shades of grey became more defined pixels and from the granular mist there emerged the unmistakable features of a thin, emaciated face in which two dark eyes had sunk making it look more like a skull than a man’s head.

“Shit,” she said. “I know this guy.” He looked at her unbelievingly. “He was at
Innsmouth,” she said at last. “Omotoso called him Ned. He was the guy who opened up Anwick’s cell. He’s a nurse. Or a guard. I’m not sure which. The lines are a little blurred over there.”

“You’re sure?”

“Totally. That’s him. That’s Ned. Check his height. He’s massive.”

More clicking and a series of green lines appeared around the guy in the corridor. Ash’s computer made a whirring noise and a few seconds later a small box popped up at the bottom of the screen.

“Six five,” he announced. “That
is
tall.”

“T
hat’s him. No doubt.”

Ash sat back in his seat thinking things through. It didn’t make sense, but then again nothing on this case made sense. And it was a link, of sorts.

“Okay,” he said, “so this guy works at Innsmouth. He’s probably had to sign the Official Secrets Act like us. But he’s a nurse, maybe, so he knows his way around a hospital. But other than that I’m not sure I get any of this.”

“Neither do I. B
ut that’s Ned.”

Ash thought about it. Someone working at
Innsmouth, the secret institute where Anwick was held, was seen at the hospital on the day that Katelyn Laicey’s body went missing. It was too big a coincidence to ignore. But then Anwick had referred to Ned in their encounter. Satan’s lapdog, he had called him.

“I need to speak to Anwick
again,” she said.

“We’re off this case,” he reminded her.

“Then why are you still up at two looking through CCTV footage?”

“Off the Anwick case but we have a child to find
. But you’re not going back to Innsmouth.”

“Why not?” She looked at him indignantly.

“Your friend Omotoso,” he said. “He’s in charge on a ground level, so you believe?”

“Think so.”

“Okay well Doctor Edwin Omotoso was struck off by a GMC Fitness to Practise Panel three years ago for serious malpractice and he hasn’t been reinstated.”

“Okay.” She thought it through. Perhaps that was why he looked so uncomfortable. “But he
is
practising.”

“Yeah. Hence why I think that place is a no go area.”

Alix shook her head. “No. We make a decision, Ash. Here and now. If we take up the reigns and ignore Her Majesty the Queen of Bee-hive Bitchyness we do it properly. We treat it like any other investigation. Yes?”

“
What would Lombroso do?”

“What’s Baron’s view? I can’t imagine he’s happy just to go along with doing what he’s been told.”

“The DCI is as unreadable as ever save that he’s mighty pissed. But whether he’d authorise going behind Harker’s back, I’m not sure. There’s some relationship there but I don’t know what.”

Alix chewed her tongue. She noticed how Ash found it difficult to hold her gaze for very long. “Are the deaths at White Helmsley connected?” she asked.

“I can’t see any connection, other than everything is very freaky.”

“Bollocks to it, I’m going back to
Innsmouth.” There was a large part of her that was sure that that was the right thing to
say
, but not so sure it was the right thing to
do
. The thought also occurred to her that she may have said it to gauge Ash’s reaction more than because she actually intended to go back. In fact, the thought of being back inside Anwick’s cell terrified her.

“If I say you’re not going you’re going to go anyway,” Ash sighed, shrugging his shoulders and downing the rest of the port. “But I’m coming with you.”

“That won’t work. I don’t have Harker’s backing so the only way I’ll get in is by sweet-talking Omotoso.”

“I bet you sweet-talk well.”

“It’s a particular talent of mine. So, no, you stay here and drink your port. I’ll be fine.”

She got up to leave. He sat back in the chair and s
cratched his head, trying to find the right words to say to her but they eluded him.

In the end h
e settled for: “call me the moment you’re out,” which seemed so extraordinarily lame in the circumstances. She winked at him on the way out.

Chapter 40

She lay awake, regretting the second glass of wine she’d drank hurriedly after she had got back in. The heating system to her flat was complex and required a solid two-one in astro-physics to understand. So far, most days had started with a cold shower and ended with a cold bedroom, there presumably being a hefty chunk of the day in between where the flat and the water were both warm. In fact, alcohol lowers body temperature considerably and that sense of warmth it gives is entirely illusionary but there was a cheapo white on offer at the Co-op which was too tempting to ignore
. And drinking it made more room in the fridge.

But whatever the excuse, Alix knew she wouldn’t sleep. Her mind whirled and churned, recycling the events of the last few days over and over. She was convinced that Anwick hadn’t killed Kaitlyn but she couldn’t work out what the significance was of being able to put Ned at the scene moments before Kaitlyn’s body was snatched. It just didn’t make any sense.

She also couldn’t help wondering if the killings at White Helmsley were linked to Kaitlyn’s murder and Megan’s kidnapping. There had to be something, some nexus that forged them together. It was just too weird to be coincidence.

Then there was the Asher Fielding factor. She had enjoyed the evening, as odd as it was, but something was troubling her. Something just didn’t fit; something just out of reach, like the spot on your eye that moves to the periphery every time you try and look at it. She couldn’t help but notice an underlying sadness in him. Like he was... haunted by something. She thought back to those times she would escape the house when she was twelve, just after Zara was taken. Those times were precious to her in a perverse way, her secret escapism. She would do anything to stay out of her father’s way; watching his mind slip slowly away was almost as bad as watching...

She sat bolt upright, bloodshot eyes staring at the wall, clammy hands gripping the pillow.

Her blue sky. That’s what he’d said. He’d mentioned her blue sky.

How did he know about her blue sky?

It didn’t take her long to pull on some clothes before the front door slammed behind her, although even with several tops on it was still cold. At night, the lights in her apartment corridor were controlled by motion sensors. By the time she had hit the lift button, they were on.

She wasn’t entirely sure what was driving her back through the snow and across the icy paths towards the station. She felt like she had left something behind her, something important. Outside drunken students were falling out of bars and clubs, jostling and pushing each other for space and slipping on the ice. A pale faced girl – fat, goose-pimpled legs buckling under the weight of her disorientated body – stumbled out after the men screaming hysterically. Alix half noticed one of the group staring at her from across the road before his attention turned to the screaming girl. She seemed to believe one of the group – it wasn’t clear who – had cheated on her. A lot of shouting ensued but Alix was making swift progress across the street and the sound of the altercation was already fading.

“He doesn’t mean it,” her mother said to her in a distant memory.

She was twelve, thirteen maybe. Scrawny and pale. Her shoulders were still red
from where she’d tried to rub off her freckles with a loofah the night before. Her eyes were red with tears.

“He doesn’t care,” she sobbed and her mother put her arm around her. After a while, Alix realised that she was crying as well. She felt ashamed at her selfishness.

“He cares in his own way, Alix. About both of us.”

“Why can’t he just accept what he has left? Why must
everything
be about him losing Zara? We lost her too.”

“I know. I know.” Outside she remembered birds singing. And the warmth of her mother’s breath on her cheek.
What he’d done, she couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. That part of the memory was unimportant.

“She’s not coming back, mum,” she whispered. “I get that. Why can’t he?” She could hear her mother’s heart break in two.

“We... there is a place, Alix,” she choked back the salty water and took her time. “There’s a place, Alix, that we go when we’re sad, isn’t there? Do you remember? A place where we’re safe and together. Your blue sky, Alix. Your blue sky.”

Her eyes stung; a combination of the cold and fatigue, but she had to find As
h, ask him how he knew about her blue sky. It struck her that she had never really told him anything about her childhood. The whole thing was marred by what happened to Zara. Memories that she didn’t share. Memories that were too painful, too personal to belong to anyone else. Her blue sky was part of the memories that she had buried deep within her.

So how did he know about it?

She flashed some ID at the old WPC at the front desk. She shrugged her shoulders, as if young women wearing scruffy clothes with messy hair wandering through the station in the early hours in the morning was perfectly normal. Apparently, it was a quiet night, save for the guy being sick in the corner.

It was on the first floor when the idea that this was incredibly stupid hit her. There weren’t many people around at this time of night. The corridor was lit only by the faint glow of lights from rooms where detectives were working late, wading through paperwork and filing. The incident room was on the right, an open plan office with four or five desks and separate offices for Keera and Ash separated by plywood partitions covered in mug shots, posters and rosters.

She felt suddenly ridiculous, angry with herself. It was coincidence, surely. She found herself in the incident room not really knowing what to do next. She guessed that if she met anyone she could always say she had forgotten something but she could see that the light was off in Ash’s room anyway.

But then again...

She slid into Ash’s office and slipped behind the desk. She moved the mouse, the tower clicked, a fan whirred and suddenly everything around her was bathed in the light from the screen. It was eerily quiet outside but she knew there were some people around. Notably, there was light coming from Keera’s office. She sat for a while looking at the screen. She was going no further without a password. She clasped her hands to her chin and leant her elbows on the desk, the screen inches from her eyes. Something fluttered inside her; a little release of adrenaline. She was momentarily taken back to the times she used to dare Zara to run into the next door neighbour’s garden and steal the laundry off the line, watching her from the bushes, quivering with excitement and anxiety.

Enter Password.

Did he have a girlfriend? She didn’t even know. She’d heard a rumour about a girl called Penny but Ash had always been such a private person. Or she was a very uninteresting, self-indulgent person. Probably a mixture of the two.

She typed in Penny but was quickly declined. She was offered another go.

Frustrated, she threw back the chair and got up, knocking the desk as she did, annoyed with herself for being stupid enough to even bother getting out of bed. Something clattered to the floor and she heard the sound of a crack.
Shit
. She bent down to retrieve whatever it was; something had fallen underneath the desk and rolled round behind the bin. She felt the floor and her hand closed round something cold: a smooth half sphere with a flat, plastic base.

She took it slowly out from underneath the desk, held it close to her chest.
It couldn’t be
. She examined it carefully, running her fingers over the top, down the sides of the smooth glass and to the chip in the corner. The picture inside was faded but the face unmistakable.
It just couldn’t be
.

Alix had bought the snow-glob
e when she was eight and given it to Zara the day she turned five. It had, until Zara had disappeared, sat dutifully on her sister’s windowsill; a prized possession and one of the few things they both agreed on was precious. The picture inside was Alix grinning insanely wearing a swimsuit and arm bands, although the sides were worn away now so that really only her face was visible.

The snow-globe belonged to Zara. Why the Hell was it here?

She turned back to the computer and closed her eyes. Images rushed by her, some faded memories of her childhood, the few lucid recollections of her sister, but also of Ash, of her mother, of her father. What was going on? She needed to find out. Nothing else mattered.

What would Lombroso do?

She knew exactly what he’d do. He’d type his name into the password box.

Her fingers fumbled at the keys, a combination of trepidation and cold. She hit the return key, the computer thought about it a while, deciding whether she was worthy of entry, and eventually the gate lifted and she was presented with the desktop. Finding what she wanted was easy. Once into the system, she found her name in hundreds of documents, realised that they all formed part of a folder
named “Alix”. The contents were voluminous. Reams of information: about
her
, her father, Zara. Her family tree traced back over five generations, extracts from her father’s journal (which might explain how he knew about her blue sky – he’d always scoffed at the idea), floor plans to her house, title deeds, wills and correspondence, her parents’ divorce papers, her mother’s death certificate. It was all here. Her life compacted into electronic form.

“You don’t look as though you ought to be looking at that.”

Alix looked up sharply, her heart rising to her throat. She recognised the gruff voice before she saw Keera standing in Ash’s doorway. She closed down the folder she’d opened and flicked off the monitor.

“Just checking the CCTV footage again,” said Alix, trying to disguise the quiver in her voice as best she could.

“At three o’clock on the morning after the DI’s gone home.”

“I’m going to Innsmouth tomorrow morning. I wanted to be sure about something.”

“You’ve got clearance from Baron to go to Innsmouth tomorrow?”

She hesitated. Not by much, but enough to show uncertainty. “Yes.”

Keera looked at her long and hard. It was as if she was trying to bore into her brain with her eyes to expose the lie. Alix stood up and picked up her coat. Keep it casual, she said to herself. Like you’re doing nothing wrong. After what seemed like an age Keera finally spoke.

“Make sure you come back with some fucking answers this time.”

Inwardly, Alix let out a gargantuan sigh of relief. As she passed Keera in the doorway, she managed a curt smile.