Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (37 page)

Good. Move, fast.

“We’re not done yet, doctor. Sit down.”

“No. We’re done.”

Alix stood, as did Cargil and for a moment they eyed each other uncertainly. She was too late to react before she felt
stalwart hands clasp down on her shoulders. She was dragged away from the desk, the chair she was sat on was sent spinning across the room, she was sent spinning the opposite way. Then she was falling, hard on to the wooden floor, her veins swelled with adrenalin and she scrambled to try and get to her feet, ready for the next attack. The room seemed blurry all of a sudden, two shapes moving around the desk, one must be Cargil she thought.

He’s here!
She heard Azrael hiss urgently in her ear.
Need to get out. Now!

Disorientated, she looked up. A window on the opposite side of the room, heading down to the river. Must jump, must survive. But the Essence had seized her and the feeling of living returned, the instinct to lash out, to maim, to kill. Anger and rage drove her forward.
Cargil had lied to her. He knew everything. She saw him against the desk and the Essence overcame her. She threw herself at him, at his eyes, but powerful hands pulled her down to the ground, hard. She had been caught in mid air, somehow. How? What was more powerful than the Essence? And then a sudden panic of realising that she couldn’t move. A man’s heavy bulk sat on top of her, his hand pushing hard against her neck, forcing her head back to look away from her body so she couldn’t see his face. But she felt all of his weight crushing down on her.

“Give me the
Wyrm,” she heard a muffled and distant voice say. The pressure on her windpipe and lungs was agony. She tried to cry out but couldn’t find the breath, felt her neck might snap off with the force of the hold, felt her arms pinned to her sides, completely disabled.

More hands on her now, moving up over her body, helping the man on top of her to keep her still.
The smell of aftershave. Hands on her breasts, pinching the skin. Her body was not hers anymore. It belonged to them. Then Cargil’s face, grinning and sneering, close to hers, minty breath feeding itself down her throat, making her want to gag. He took her by the hair and turned her face sideways so that her eyes were aligned with something. Glass. Cylinder. A jar. Then the noise, drowning out Azrael’s screams in her ear.

Get that evil thing away from us!

The moth fluttered stupidly against the side of the jar, trying to find a way out. She could hear it above everything else, above the noises of the struggle, of the sound of her wheezing, of her straining breath. Every beat of its little furry wings was excruciating, like they were tapping directly on to her ear drum.

Vile
creature! Don’t...

Cargil
was holding the moth now, pinching its body with his thumb and middle finger, its wings still humming frenziedly, the screaming noise deafening. Hands on her face, holding her nose, denying oxygen to her lungs and as she opened her mouth Cargil fed the insect to her, pushed it to the back of her throat and for a moment everything clogged up completely and she realised with horror that she couldn’t breathe at all. Her body convulsed aggressively, trying to clear the airways but it was useless. She felt the little moth force its way down her gullet.

She tried to puke but she couldn’t.

She could only wretch and quiver with pain.

Into
darkness she fell. slowly; like Alice down the rabbit hole.

Chapter 78

“No, I’m afraid I cannot allow that.” The Asian doctor had an off-putting habit of fiddling with his thick rimmed glasses when he spoke.

“No,” said Ash firmly. “This is my fault. I’ll tell her.”

“I appreciate that you want to be involved but she’s my patient. Do you know who the next of kin is?”

Ash felt a flush of shame that he wasn’t sure what the answer was but Keera was such a private person. What he had picked up was from canteen gossip and not her.

“She has no one. Only her work. Which is why I’ll tell her.”

The doctor made a strange noise as he exhaled through his teeth which suggested he found Ash amusing.

“
Inspector... what was it now?”

“Fielding.”

“Indeed. Inspector Fielding, there’s a vending machine down the hall, if you would just let me do my job I’d really appreciate it.”

He felt a large arm cup around his shoulder. Mystified, he tried to look round but
the size of arm prevented him from turning his neck properly.

“Good evening, doctor Fanucci,” said Baron. “Perhaps you and I can check out that vending machine you mentioned and let my DI speak to his sergeant.”

Baron met Ash’s eye as he passed him, the protesting doctor Fanucci caught in an awkward headlock under his arm, but Ash couldn’t decipher what was said.

*

Ash stood uncertainly over the hospital bed. Keera was laid flat, arms rigid and uncomfortable, a bandage wrapped around her head covering her eyes. Her blood pressure was high but her breathing steady. They said her body had gone into shock. She was still convulsing when the paramedics arrived.

“Keera,” he said. “I-”

“Boss,” she said, “I can’t fucking see.” Her voice was quiet but laced with the same gruffness he was familiar with. Anger exhumed from every part of her.

“They’ve wrapped your eyes to stop you from opening them. You took half a can of pepper spray. Can you remember what happened?”

Keera winced with pain, shook her head. Everything was a blur.

“I got
to your home. There was... someone there, with you. It was... fucked up... she-”

“Her name’s Penny. She’s my stalker. I think she attacked you.”

“I’m not sure. I don’t remember... but she wasn’t...” she hesitated; it sounded so stupid. She desperately wanted to look at him, gauge his reaction. What if he thought she wasn’t sane? He might not want her back on the team. The thought terrified her. “She had a syringe in you, boss.”

“I know. I’d started to come round. At the point she tried to stick me I deflected her arm. She injected half a shot of Potassium Chloride into herself. It must
have hurt like hell but the shrinks said it might not have been enough to kill her.”

“She got away?” She turned to him suddenly. It was a strange thing watching her look at him like that, as if she was trying to burn through the bandages to see him. He swallowed hard,
the guilt was crippling.

“Yes. She got away.”

She turned her head back in disgust.

“What the Hell is wrong with her?”

“I don’t know. She’s a little weird, but I hadn’t got her down as a killer.”

“When can I get back to work?”

Ash shifted his weight ineptly.

“Keera, it’s... it’s not that straightforward.”

“What?”

He hesitated.
He
had done this. This was
his
fault. Telling her was the start of his punishment.

“Boss, what is it?”

“You’ve lost sight in both eyes. The inflammation caused by the spray was too great and they... they couldn’t do much.”

“What are you saying?” There was panic in her voice. It was
one of the few times in their relationship that Ash had seen the human side to her.

“
You’ll never get the sight in your right eye back. Your left is touch and go.”

Ash held his breath and started to count in his head. He didn’t know why but he needed to fill the silence that followed at least in his own mind with something. She turned away from him slowly, the pain had been numbed but the morphine couldn’t extinguish it altogether. He thought about saying something. Finding some words of hope or comfort. Commending her bravery o
r something. She’d saved his life for God’s sake and he was just stood here like a dumb animal about to be slaughtered.

He got to a hundred and stopped. She still hadn’t spoken. He put his hand on her shoulder. She reacted, turned her head to meet his hand. He felt her skin. It was surprisingly warm. He had always thought of her as cold blooded, an android, but now he saw something else: a woman in pain, vulnerable and scared, but still he couldn’t find the right words.

She opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. He took his hand away and her face fell back into the look of rage that he had been met with when he first entered the room.

“We’ll find her,” he said eventually. It seemed lame compensation in the circumstances but perhaps that was what she wanted to hear. In truth, he had no idea. A tear formed at the crust of his eye. He wiped it away roughly, cursed himself and left the room, closing the door softly behind him.

“No,” she whispered when he was gone. “
I’ll
find her.”

Chapter 79

Ash sat with his hands on the Outlander st
eering wheel taking deep breaths, the conversation he had just had with Baron re-playing in his mind. Extra officers had been drafted in from surrounding counties, including a couple of DIs from South Wales. They hadn’t got the resources to deal with the situation, Baron had said. But Ash knew that pulling in senior officers, officers equivalent to his rank, meant his competency to deal with things had been made an issue.

And why the Hell shouldn’t it be? He’d let the only suspect drive away with the Home Secretary without so much as batting an eyelid, he’d
let a madwoman into his house and put Keera in a situation that may have left her permanently blind, he hadn’t got a single lead on Megan’s kidnapper, on George Bricken’s killer, on the people who crucified Eph Speck, on the person who took Katelyn’s body, on the murders at White Helmsley. And now he’d lost Alix.

After he’d spoken to Keera he had found Baron smoking a menthol in the car park. They’d talked about lack of resources. Baron had reeled off names of some experienced officers coming in to help out. Ash couldn’t remember one of them.

“What about Alix?” he had asked.

“The priority is children and madmen,” Baron had explained, looking at Ash dangerously. “Doctor Franchot is a big girl. Megan Laicey isn’t. There are killers out there. Finding
the child is the priority.”

“She’s been missing for over twenty-four hours, guv.”

“This isn’t a negotiation and this part of the conversation is over. I’m dividing everyone into teams. You’ll take Eran Green and Jeff Eldridge. All teams will report to me every hour without fail. Teams communicate findings and ideas to each other regularly. Complete transparency. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing.”

“And what do we get?”

Baron had taken a couple of drags before answering. “George Bricken.”

“Oh, come
on, boss. Give me Megan to find or the crucifixion. Bricken might not even be relevant.”

“You get George
Bricken. End of.”

He’d walked away, tossing the half finished cig into the snow.

He struck out at the dashboard. He had to vent his anger somehow. The dashboard was hard. His hand hurt. He had to dig himself out of the hole he’d made for himself: stop the self-pity and start thinking like a detective again. What made him good? What made him one of the youngest DI’s in the UK? He made connections. He analysed, thought and out-thought criminals. That’s what he was good at. He needed to be a policeman now more than ever.

Priority one: find Alix. Sod Baron. Alix could be in danger but her disappearance must be connected to her trip to
Innsmouth which must in turn be connected to Megan’s disappearance. Find Alix, find a clue to the next stage. Steady, natural progression. The rule book needed to go out of the window. His only lead was Grigori Yefimovich. He was off limits. The goddamn
Home Secretary
had said he was off limits. Off limits to Baron, maybe; but not to him.

He hit the Outlander’s start button, slammed it into drive and careered out of the hospital car park and onto the main road.

*

In a gloomy and airless basement flat Ernst Stranger sprinkled tobacco onto some rolling paper before adding a hefty dollop of fresh skunk and making a roach from the Rizla packet. He rolled the mixture into a cone and lit one end. The intoxicating fumes made him feel light headed almost immediately.

He thought about what he had to do, and what would be his if he achieved it. All he had to do was wait for instructions. On the table in front of him, his phone vibrated. He recognised the caller ID.

“Yes?”

He listened attentively as the Harbinger spoke earnestly in his ear. When and where. Alone. Stay out of sight. He noted everything down in a small book just in case.

This was his special room, his own private sanctuary.
He thought it apt that he had taken the Harbinger’s call here.

S
urrounded by walls covered from floor to ceiling in pictures of the dead.

Chapter 80

Ash sped down the fast lane of the motorway, the artery that fed into the heart of the city. He weaved in and out of traffic to the dismay of other drivers, pulled in front of a lorry to turn off before he hit the tail end of the backed up traffic to the sound of skidding rubber and angry horns. The conversation he’d had with Jeff over the phone replaying in his mind over and over again.

“Guv, forensics have given us some details about the bullets found in the eagle on Doctor Franchot’s roof.”

“And?”

“It’s from a Lugar P08 pistol. It’s German. Almost a hu
ndred years old.”

“Like an antique?”

“Practically. It’s a World War One design. I’m surprised it even works now.”

Ash thought about it
, tried to make sense of everything. Why try and kill something with an old and unpredictable gun. It wasn’t efficient. But then none of the deaths he’d seen, even the deaths at White Helmsley, had been efficient. They all had an edge of uncertainty about them.

“Ok, thanks Jeff.”

He hung up and put his phone in his inside pocket. His hand brushed against something small and cold. He fumbled around, trying to get at whatever it was before finally pulling out the bullet he’d picked up in Grigori’s flat. He dialled another number.

“Marina? It’s Ash.”

“D.I. Fielding,” responded a voice that was once perhaps feminine but had been methodically hacked at by forty cigarettes a day until it was nothing but an opaque rasp. Marina was head of the SIU’s research department. She spent her days sat in front of a computer looking through databases and her weekends at Gala Bingo. People in the office called her Delphine not because of her ability to predict the future but because of the vague way she wrote reports and responded to questions.

“Marina, how do I tell what bullet a gun came from just by looking at it?”

“You can’t. Goodbye.”

“Okay, thanks. But is there any way I could get a
possible
match?”

“No.”

“Work with me, Marina, I’m really up against it here.”

She sighed heavily and he could hear the unmistakable click of a lighter. Nobody had dared tell Marina about the change in the law on smoking in doors. “Is there a headstamp?”

“A what?”

“Markings on the butt of the bullet.
Some headstamps give a lot of information: name of manufacturer, year and month, whether it’s commercial or military, the load, case design and even the type of metal used. Others don’t give anything away at all.”

He swerved past a parked car and examined the bullet.

“Er... there’s a 14, a K, a 3 and the initials MW.”

“Wait there.” There was sound of clicking. “Does it look old?”

“Yes.”

“Fortunately there are too many nerds in this world and there’s a database on the IAA website that I can look at but I’ll warn you the headstamps aren’t unique so there’s a big margin for error.”

“I’m only working on probabilities at the moment.”

“Fine. Sounds like you have a crap case. Ah, here we are. German, military, probably World War One. Pistol. 9mm.”

“Could it be from a Lugar?”

The short time it
took Marina to tap a few more keys seemed like a lifetime.

“Yes,” she finally. “Could be.”

Something lurched in Ash’s stomach. They’d watched the Russian walk out of the station with the Home Secretary. They let him go, and hours later he’d – he’d what? – taken Alix? Why? Had he actually got to her or was he just looking for her?

The pedal wouldn’t press any further; the Outlander’s engine screamed with objection but he didn’t care.

He took the stairs to Grigori’s flat three at a time, ran the length of the landing at full pace and put his shoulder to the door. It gave way easily. It had occurred to him that barging into a potential hostage scene with no backup or warning was fairly reckless but, if Grigori had found Alix, he wouldn’t take her here. He’d know they had found his home and it was a pretty poor sanctuary for him. He was here to find something –
anything –
that might tell him where Grigori had gone next.

He tore off the boards from the windows, flooded the flat with light, tossed the wood against the wall. He needed to see. The area that was supposed to be the living room was unhelpful: just the torture chair buckled up against th
e wall, stained with blood and God knows what else. Had Alix been forced into it? Had he hurt her? He shivered at the thought.

He tore through the flat, pulling out draw
ers, scattering clothes off from sides, emptying a bin onto the floor, sweeping pots and pans from the worktops and letting them crash to the ground. He felt possessed by a tempestuous energy which surged through him. He knew in the back of his mind it was over. He’d disregarded a direct order, abandoned his colleagues, gone against what the Home Secretary had told him and now desecrated a potential crime scene. But it was of little consequence. All that mattered was getting to her. Having her safe, in his arms, where she belonged.

There were more bullets in a draw
er in the kitchen, presumably for the Lugar. Also, a long, curved blade: a bowing knife of some description. The edge was rough and uneven, like the knife had been used to hack at something stronger than the metal it was made from. They all went to the ground. He thought he had struck gold when he unearthed a shabby looking diary from the back of another drawer. His hands shook as he flipped through the pages. Nothing but meaningless scribbles. It would take hours to decipher it. In a fury he threw the book against the wall, it cracked against the concrete, dislodging the leather cover from the paper. He stopped and stared at it, took a step closer. It was a crude picture, done in blue biro, the lines etched into the page over and over again. The unmistakable image of the crucifixion, but child-like. Christ’s head was too big and bulky, the cross crooked, hands and feet misshapen.

But that wasn’t what caught his eye.
It was the inscription underneath.

Damn the flesh that depends on the soul. Damn the soul that depends on the flesh.

He’d seen that somewhere before.

Recently.

The Church at White Helmsley. It was the inscription carved roughly into the arch that separated the nave from the apse.

What if everything
was
connected? Alix must have stumbled on something at Innsmouth. Something so important that Grigori had to remove her. But none of the murders were efficient. They were flamboyant. The killer was more concerned with drama: how everything looked. He was making a point each time. A small, glimmer of hope. If he was going to kill Alix, there must be some purpose. No motive necessarily, but context. He murdered George Bricken and Eph Speck where he found them. But not Alix, because she’d escaped. His opportunity to kill at her home had been lost so he’d take her somewhere. He wouldn’t just find her and kill her. That was too simple, too orthodox. He’d take her somewhere. Back to her flat, perhaps? But forensics were still there. It wouldn’t be safe.

He fumbled for his phone, scrolled down the contacts and hit call.

“DI Casper?”

“Yes. Ash?”

“Yeah, hi. Sorry to bother you.”

“You’re not trying to steal the White Helmsley murders back are you?” He laughed, unconvincingly. “They’re on our patch now and, by the sound of it, you’ve got your own problems, haven’t you?”

“No, not at all. They’re yours. But I’m working on a possible link between the murder of an old chap named George Bricken and what happened at the church at White Helmsley.”

“Oh, yeah?
What do you need?”

“Access to your crime scene, please.
Is it still swarming with techies?”

“Ha! No, we’re a little more efficient than you city boys give us credit for. Crime scene’s clear. We went in and out so fast no one even knows what happened. The whole village is shut off. You can’t get to the church
without my say so.”

“So everything comes through you?”

“Sure.” Ash could feel Casper’s chest swelling with pride.

“Have you admitted anyone... unusual recently?”

“Nope. The bodies are gone so there’s no interest in the church. The only visitor was a guy from the Home Secretary’s department. He’s doing a report for Walter Cargil. I guess it’s strange enough to raise a few eyebrows in Parliament.”

“Did you speak to him personally?”

“Yeah, nice chap. Pleasant enough. Russian, I think. Say, what’s this-”

Click
.