Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) (6 page)

Alix looked quizzically at Baron and then at Ash, who shrugged.
There was something she didn’t like about the way that Baron said: “before you set out what is expected of us.” As if he knew what was coming was somehow unpalatable.

“What’s the
full
version?” she asked.

Harker looked at Baron and something passed between them, some invisible message
. It was difficult to tell which of them would back down first and for a moment it looked like there might be deadlock and they would remain staring at each other for the rest of time, until Harker spoke.

“Fine, b
ut the
full
version remains within these four walls. Absolutely and exclusively. Understand?”

Chapter 1
4

Particles of dust sparkled in the waves of light that shone through the windows around the musty church. A galaxy of tiny stars orbiting an invisible sun.

Jacob’s hand trembled as he examined the knife in his hand. A tiny fragment of his mind fought to prevent the darkness overpowering him completely. But it was a futile effort and he could already feel the energy crackle down his arm and to the tip of the blade.

He glanced nervously at the man in the black robe, unsure of how to proceed.
In front of him, facing away, head bowed low, was a man he once knew but could no longer remember; knelt as if in prayer.

“One quick cut across the throat, Jacob, deep and long, and it is done. If you feel the knife stick, pull your arm around and over the shoulder hard.”

Unsure, Jacob took the hair of the man in his hand and pulled it back. He felt the blood course through the veins around the neck. Felt the life in his hands. Took the knife and delicately lined it up.

Felt the hand on his shoulder holding him back.

“The words, Jacob. Remember the words.”

He couldn’t remember who this man was he was about to destroy. But he remembered the words the man in the black robe had taught him.

“In the name of Cronos, I sacrifice this b
ody to make this Portal.”

One quick cut across the throat, deep and long, and it was done.

Chapter 1
5

“Professor Eugene Anwick was a physicist working on projects funded by Cambridge University, of which he was
a don. His particular field was what you and I may call quantum physics. By all accounts, he was a leader of his field. Shy, determined, intellectually brilliant. His colleagues nicknamed him Little Newton. As far as everyone was concerned he led a quiet, simple life with his wife, Sasha Anwick, in a large country house five miles outside of Cambridge.”

Arms folded,
Alix eyed Harker suspiciously. She could swear that the temperature dropped a few degrees every time she spoke; she pulled her coat tightly around her neck, cursing her knee length skirt decision. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Ash steal another glance at her legs before fishing a pen out to make notes with.

“Anwick’s distressing demise occurred two years ago,” Harker continued
with the air of a bored teacher reading to a class of imbeciles. “It would seem that whilst Anwick was a fairly normal and uninteresting individual, save for his extraordinary intellect, his wife, Sasha, was an unstable tyrant. She controlled Anwick’s every movements. She was insanely jealous of Anwick’s relationship with his work and illogically paranoid about her husband. She was convinced he was having an affair with one of the cleaners. So one day she went downstairs, took a meat cleaver from the kitchen, went back upstairs and tried to hack off the cleaner’s breasts. She didn’t do a very good job. There was a lot of blood, as one might imagine, and the cleaner went into arrest. She died shortly after from the trauma. Eugene watched the whole thing from the bathroom. When Sasha came after him there was a struggle. It’s not clear what happened but somehow Anwick and his wife found themselves on the landing and at some point Sasha ended up falling down the stairs backwards, breaking her neck as she fell.

“Having not turned up for an important lecture, Anwick was found by a colleague later that
day. He found Anwick sat in his car, parked inside a garage. The carbon monoxide readings in his blood were off the chart. But nonetheless and, miraculously it would seem, he was alive.”

“This all happened when exactly?”
asked Ash.

“Four weeks ago.”

“Was Anwick arrested?”

Harker scoffed, as if somehow that was a silly question although to Ash it seemed perfectly logical. Man gets caught having an affair, wife attacks man’s lover, man pushes wife downstairs and tries to kill himself. More than worthy of investigation.

“It would seem,” said Baron, who was choosing his words carefully, “that
that
is the point at which Professor Anwick is placed in the Innsmouth Institute.”

“So he wasn’t arrested?”

“Technically,” said Baron, “he was sectioned.”

“That would be fairly unusual, wouldn’t it,” said Alix carefully, her eyes on Harker. “How did you get a court order that quickly?”

“In fact,” said Harker, “one doesn’t need a court order to confine someone to the Innsmouth Institute. That system is... different from the system you know.”

As much as he was a detestable little creep, Alix couldn’t help thinking about Anwick’s lawyer’s complaints about Human Rights. He was right.
Innocent until proven guilty. Sane until proven insane. These were the cornerstones of a free state, weren’t they?

“I don’t accept that we have anything other than the system I know,” said Alix, folding her arms and sitting back in her chair.

“Then you are naive. And your acceptance is irrelevant anyway. You’ve
seen
the Innsmouth Institute. You have been trusted with government secrets. Now is the time to grow up.” Harker let the silence that followed linger for a while before she continued. “As you will have gathered, there are certain institutes in this country that are maintained outside of the general public acknowledgement. This is something which, I must stress, is highly sensitive and subject to the full consequences of the Official Secrets Act lest one of you decide to be careless with the information you are privileged enough to have shared with you today.”

Harker looked round the room dangerously and, to Alix’s surprise, her gaze fell most
deliberately on Baron who curled his nose up and looked away, obviously displeased at the insinuation. The tension in the room was oppressive. Alix felt an urge to kick up a fuss but the part of her that wanted to hear what Harker had to say was too powerful to ignore.

“The
Innsmouth Institution operates in secret. It is not part of an NHS Trust. It is not subject to Department of Health regulation and doesn’t appear in any budget anywhere. Its operations are only known to those few in the highest levels of government and, generally, it is not necessary to involve anyone else in its existence. However, there are occasions when those that work tirelessly to keep these things from the public are caught off guard and from time to time a little of the broth spills over and out of the pan. It is our job to wipe it away. Quickly. As you may have gathered, places at the Innsmouth Institute are reserved for a very select number of individuals. Professor Eugene Anwick is one of these individuals.”

“Why?” Alix interjected. “What makes Anwick different from any other person suffering trauma?”

This time Harker ignored her outright: “After he was pulled from the fume filled garage and life pumped back into him, Anwick was taken to Innsmouth and detained. He should have stayed there. No one of any significance knew of Sasha’s death or the Anwick cleaner’s murder and those that did know were convincingly silenced.

“But orders were sent for Anwick’s transfer from
Innsmouth to Rampton. An unprecedented situation but, perhaps the problem with keeping things so secret is that the chain of command sometimes experiences problems verifying the information it receives. I believe that the orders were falsified but that’s another story. At any rate, the directions were carried out and a secure van dispatched immediately. Anwick was accompanied by four minders. Two in the front and two in the back either side of him. What happened next is unclear. The van was found on its side approximately a mile from where Katelyn and Megan were found. The four guards had been killed, their necks broken, not by any crash or impact but most likely by Anwick, although how he managed to break free and why the van crashed in any event is unknown.

“Anwick was found shortly afterwards, Katelyn’s dead body in his arms, Megan sat in the corner of the barn, fear having all but destroyed her.
”

Ash chewed his tongue thoughtfully. He could feel his phone vibrating in his pocket but
he ignored it. It was probably his stalker anyway.

“But what makes Anwick different?” asked Alix. “He’s not untreatable.
Where’s the section statement?”

“
I told you: there isn’t one.” Harker looked at her sternly. The sort of look that ended most conversations. But Alix wasn’t the sort of woman to engage in ‘most conversations’.

“Can we be clear on one thing, Mrs Harker,” she said. “
Is the reason why you’re not telling us the truth about Innsmouth because you choose not to or because you don’t know?”

For what seemed like an age the two women stared at each other. Ash broke the silence.

“What happens when Anwick goes before the Magistrates to enter a plea?”

“Eugene Anwick will not appear before the Magistrates,” said Harker. “He will not stand trial. He will not be convicted. He will not need to. He will never leave Innsmouth.”

Alix opened her mouth to speak but said nothing. Her brain ticked over as she assimilated this new information. But what intrigued her most was Baron’s reaction. The twitch of his mouth which he tried to conceal by rubbing his chin. He was as in the dark as they were.

Alix leaned forward a little across the table, her eyes fixing back on Harker.

“Which begs the question: why are you here, Mrs Harker?”

“Excuse me?”

“If there’s no trial then there’s no need for a prosecutor.”

“I’m here in my capacity as the Attorney-General’s representative,” Harker said through gritted teeth.
Then, when no one reacted: “I act for the government.”

“Perhaps, Amanda,” Baron said slowly, “you could extend the courtesy of explaining how we fit into all of this if indeed it is the case that Professor Anwick will never see the inside of a courtroom.”

Alix looked at the older woman expectantly. She crossed her legs, cocked her head to one side a little. All of these things were the signs of absolute confidence. In truth, her heart was in her mouth.

Harker spoke slowly and carefully, every syllable of every word emphasised with utter precision and care: “You are all about to participate in
a cleansing process. Like it or not, there are forces at work that are greater in proportion and significance than anything you have come to understand about your jobs, about the administration, about this world and you are being asked not to question the instructions you receive, but to faithfully and diligently adhere to them so that any consequences that arise from the Laicey murder and Anwick’s alleged involvement are mitigated.”

“And these higher forces,” said Baron. “They include the rule of law?”

Harker turned to him and met his gaze. “
Especially
the rule of law.”

“Why are we involved?” said Ash.

“You are required to lend the legitimacy that this investigation requires so that, if there is a media frenzy, the world will believe that Professor Anwick was captured, tried and found guilty.”

“My report then,” said Alix, “is a charade. You won’t actually consider the contents. It’s just a thing you’ll
throw at the media if they work out what’s happening.”

“The basis for the insanity defence, yes.”

“Insanity? But I haven’t assessed Anwick yet. I might find-”

“You’ll find, girl, what I tell you to find.” Alix felt a strong urge to jump up round the table and jam the expensive looking fountain
pen down Harker’s throat. Ash looked pale, anxious, any element of amusement with Harker’s oddities having quickly evaporated. Baron remained stock still, eyes down, lips pursed. He was evidently as unhappy with what he heard as they were.

“I’m out,” said Alix.

“Don’t be so hasty, doctor Franchot,” Harker warned. “This situation-”

“No, wait.” Alix cut her off and to her surprise she stopped. “This isn’t one of those rash decisions you’ll later persuade me to change my mind about with a
n inspiring speech about playing my part, national security or something equally abstract. What you’re asking us to do is unethical, immoral and unprofessional and I want no part in it. I don’t give a shit about society or the bigger picture. It’s bollocks. Nothing comes above my own integrity.”

“In fact I have absolutely no intention of trying to persuade you otherwise, doctor Franchot. Quite evidently you lack the intellectual capacity to understand the significance of the task that is being handed to you and in that case you are quite the wrong person to undertake it.”

Several things crossed Alix’s mind, all of them equally inappropriate. Her lips formed a word but, for the second time, no sound came out.

“Maybe we’ve misunderstood something, Mrs Harker,” Ash said. “You’re asking quite a lot of people who’ve spent their entire careers being nothing but completely honest to ourselves and our professions-”

“What would you have me do, Inspector Fielding? Perhaps if I were to ask nicely, would that make any difference? Of course not. And what is being asked of you is not earth-shatteringly illegitimate. You will be named as the officer in charge of a case that will earn you a great credit for doing nothing. That is all.”

Ash turned to Baron for help but his superior was staring into space, hand over his mouth, a look that was utterly unreadable.

“Well?” said Harker impatiently.

Chapter 16

Ernst Stranger dug his nails hard in to the back of his neck and gasped at the mixture of pleasure and pain that he derived from scratching the rash that ran from the base of his skull across almost the entire breadth of his shoulder. He had been twelve when he first took a blade and cut deep into his forearm; the ecstasy he felt as the blood trickled down and dripped on his parent’s bathroom floor had instantly extinguished the fear he had felt at the hands of the school bullies. And from that moment Ernst Stranger had been hooked.

Things were better now for Ernst. He had found his first steady job, a career job if he was lucky, working
in the mortuary, deep below the lowest basements where the public weren’t allowed to go at the University Hospital. Here, he spent his days bagging and tagging the dead. He felt strangely at home here, in this sanitised house of corpses, where his only living companions were those unseen entities that slowly feasted on the bodies of the unfortunate. There were no school bullies to kick him, or call him names, pull his ginger hair or steal his things.

Nor could they rip his trousers down and shove pencils up his arse.

Ernst had been working at the hospital mortuary for a few months before he finally came to terms with the enjoyment he got from seeing the bodies brought in, stripped naked as the day they were born; every scar, every imperfection, every mark exposed for his eyes, and hands, to explore. He had been uncomfortable with it at first. There was something impure, unnatural,
frightening even
, about having a fetish for dead flesh. He knew that there were doctors working upstairs who suspected his job satisfaction was rather more than that which was considered healthy, but they were usually too busy or to wary of him to say anything. Down here he was safe. Down here he was free. King of the Dead.