The Sixth Soul (4 page)

She recalled a name: Alison Todd, the second mother to go missing just over seven months ago, the discovery of her body filling the news headlines on the day Julia had learned that she was
pregnant.

Of the four murdered mothers, Alison’s case had affected Julia most deeply, the thought of her mutilated body casting a long shadow over their celebratory supper.

Phillip had tried to dismiss Julia’s fears, but they had remained all through her pregnancy, sometimes singing loudly, sometimes muttering darkly, but always there.

There were sides to the thing that they were locked inside. Her fears took a collective breath and started screaming inside her head.

‘Oh my Jesus!’

Julia could feel the blood draining from her limbs, the lightness in her brain.

A stressed mother stresses an unborn baby!

A received wisdom from the antenatal clinic she’d attended came back to her like a radio signal from deep space, a message from a distant world that she and her baby were now no longer a
part of.

A stressed mother . . . stresses . . . an unborn . . . baby.

She couldn’t get her breath.

She heard her heart beat against her ribs, picking up pace by the second, and felt it as a pulse behind her eyeballs.

Instinctively, she folded her arms across her middle, covering her baby with the armour of flesh and bone.

Phillip had tried to talk over television news broadcasts that had reported the discovery of Alison Todd’s body and the growing details that were released by the media. But Phillip
wasn’t around all the time, as when he was asleep in the pit of night and she had wandered downstairs and come across the BBC twenty-four-hour news channel.

Footage from the scene of the discovery of a body: blue and white tape cordoning off an area around Lambeth Bridge; the grimness of the reporter’s face as she recounted from the place
where
a second body, believed to be that of Mrs Todd, was found by a man walking his dog at dawn.

The police were refusing to reveal whether the mother was dead or alive when the killer performed a forced Caesarean section to remove the baby, along with pieces of the womb. The precise cause
of Alison Todd’s death was unknown; there had been a media blackout on the detail, to weed out crank confessions.

Rather her than me
.

Her own words burned a hole in her memory.

She wept in the darkness, using all the strength in her diaphragm to still the scream, the cry from her heart and her throat. When her baby gave a sudden sharp kick, her willpower collapsed.

The lid was low and her scream bounced back into her face. She drew in another breath and cried out for her mother, plummeting into hysterical tears as the word died on the lid inches from her
face.

K
now Your Enemy . . . London’s Drug Dealers and Addicts
.

The bank of faces on the wall of the open-plan office of Isaac Street Police Station gazed into the fluorescent silence. In contrast with the faceless Herod, they looked like a reasonable bunch
of boys and girls. As with budgets, space was tight and the office doubled up as the incident room for the ongoing murder investigation.

It was nine o’clock at night and DCI David Rosen had been on duty for just over fifteen hours. Reaching the point of fatigue that should have sent him home for food and sleep, he remained
in the office, held there by an uneasy instinct. He’d phoned his wife Sarah, apologized for his absence. It was nothing new to her, and she was up to her eyes in marking her pupils’
exercise books.

Spread across Rosen’s desk was a colour map of London, on which abduction points were marked with red crosses and numbers. The body drops-offs, the blue crosses, seemed to form no
discernible pattern. Jenny Maguire, victim one, in the lake at St James’s Park. Alison Todd, victim two, under Lambeth Bridge. Jane Wise, victim three, at the corner of Victoria Street and
Vauxhall Bridge Road. Sylvia Green, victim four, outside the Oval cricket ground. Where would Julia surface? Rosen pored over the map, hoping for inspiration.

He opened Outlook Express. There was one potentially meaningful email, with an attachment, from Carol Bellwood.

HOLMES contained all the recorded data for every reported crime, solved and unsolved, in the United Kingdom. If Bellwood, the best HOLMES reader Rosen knew, couldn’t squeeze something
useful out of the database that cross-matched details from all crime recorded in the UK, then no one could. It was a blow and he swore sourly as he breathed out.

He clicked on the attachment, opened it and muttered, ‘Jeez!’ at the picture on his screen. It was a stock image of a foetus preserved in a specimen jar, the whiteness of its perfect
skin patterned with an elaborate network of veins. The world around him fell away. There was something unbearable about the picture.

He shut the image down. Exhausted and disturbed by what he had seen, he left the office to make coffee in the small, adjoining kitchen.

When he came back to his desk, the red light of the answering machine on his desk blinked continuously. He filled his cheeks with air and blew out.

There was a message. Rosen pressed play. There was a lengthy silence at the beginning of the message and then a voice.

‘My name’s Brother Aidan Walsh. I’m the abbot of St Mark’s, a Dominican community near Faversham in Kent. One of our community, Father Sebastian, thinks he can help you
with your current investigation into the abducted women. Perhaps you could ring me.’

Brother Aidan Walsh left a number and the blessings of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Faversham in Kent. Rosen knew the countryside around there well and was intrigued by the message. He dialled the number he’d jotted down on a spiral pad and waited.

The phone rang. He lost count of how many times. They’d probably all be in bed by eight o’clock, rising in the dead of night to pray, no doubt. He decided to give it a few more rings
and then he’d hang up. He could try again in the morning.

The phone stopped ringing as the receiver at the other end was lifted. Silence. And then, ‘Yes?’

‘Is that Brother Aidan?’

‘No. I’m afraid he’s just gone to evening prayers.’

‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Rosen, London Met. I’m returning Brother Aidan’s call. Who am I speaking to, please?’

As the man at the other end replied, the line crackled.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Rosen. ‘It’s a poor line, can you speak up?’

‘I’m Father Sebastian’

‘Brother Aidan mentioned you on the message he left.’

‘Could you play the message back for me?’

Rosen ignored the request.

‘Technology’s a big thing when you live a simple life as we do.’

Rosen looked at the scowling faces of London’s drug dealers and addicts, and said, ‘Brother Aidan said you could help.’

‘Yes, perhaps I can.’

From his desk, Rosen had a view of the closed door of Chief Superintendent Baxter’s office; it was a door he disliked, to the room he loathed, of a man he hated.

‘Fire away.’

‘I think I might have some information for you.’

‘Regarding?’

‘Could you come to St Mark’s?’

‘ To St Mark’s? Brother Aidan mentioned you’re near Faversham . . .’

‘Do you know the area?’ asked the priest.

‘Indeed I do,’ replied Rosen, scenes from his childhood tumbling in the back of his mind. ‘When would you like me to come to see you?’

‘Time’s not on your side, Detective Rosen.’

‘It’s normal for people assisting an inquiry to come here to Isaac Street.’

‘There’s nothing normal about this . . . situation. I gather you need help,’ said Father Sebastian. ‘Herod accessed the Catons’ house through the adjoining
property. Didn’t he, Mr Rosen?’

In a single movement, Rosen sat up and shifted his weight, hooked by the detail Flint had so casually supplied. It had been withheld from media reports of the fifth abduction. First thing in the
morning, Rosen decided, he would be at St Mark’s.

‘What else do you know, Father Sebastian?’

‘A motive, a concrete motive for doing these appalling . . . acts.’

A motive? A concrete motive? He’d have walked naked down Oxford Street for a concrete motive, upside down on his hands if necessary. But there was a glitch with this information and offer
of help.

‘Father Sebastian, the only person who knows the killer’s motive is the killer himself or someone who knows the killer, is a trusted confidant of the killer and . . . and is
shielding him.’

‘I disagree. We don’t live in a vacuum, sealed off from each other, unaware of the wider concerns of the world in which we live and the universe in general.’

‘I’ve got some time tomorrow. Is eight o’clock good for you?’ asked Rosen.

‘Oh, you know, I’m not so busy.’

‘I have to ask you, how do you know what his motivation is?’

‘Some years ago, in the mid-nineties I was based at the Vatican. I was the pope’s key adviser on all matters relating to the occult.’

So far, three forensic psychologists had independently ruled out the occult motive. Four of them agreed that Herod was the emperor of woman-hatred, with a
Christian
string to his
bow.

But the priest on the other end of the phone had an assurance that Rosen found persuasive.

The voice on the phone fell silent. Rosen nursed the silence.

‘You’ll have to trust me, Detective Rosen. I can help you. You do want me to help you, don’t you?’

There was a photograph of Sarah on his desk, smiling in the sunshine. It had been taken the summer after her nervous breakdown and hospitalization. Depression had stopped her eating and
drinking, following the winter when their daughter Hannah had died. Two years old, she had been taken from them, without warning, by cot death. Sarah had tried so hard to fight it but depression
was the stealthiest demon. He picked up the picture. It was a snapshot of love, of all he held dear, his reason to keep going. It had been a difficult birth and, after two short years, an
unbearable loss to both of them.

‘Do you know where we are?’ asked Father Sebastian.

‘I know where you are. I used to pick hops there when I was a kid.’

‘For pocket money?’

‘No. My mother was on her own with six—’ Rosen curbed the sudden and inexplicable compulsion to give personal information to a stranger. ‘See you in the morning,
then,’ he said. ‘At eight.’

He went to put down the receiver when he heard Sebastian’s voice once again. ‘Mr Rosen, just one thing.’ An afterthought.

‘Father Sebastian?’

‘After he’s finished with Julia Caton and her baby, I believe he’s going to do it one more time. One more mother, one more baby.’

‘Are you going to tell me you’re psychic?’

The priest laughed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You know as well as I do that the only entity that knows the future with certainty is God.’ Father Sebastian hung up.

‘I believe in the future,’ said Rosen to the drug dealers and addicts of London. ‘But I don’t believe in God.’

It was time to go home, to catch a few hours’ sleep before hitting the road to Faversham. In reaching for his coat, his attention was drawn to Chief Superintendent Baxter’s door;
sound was condensing behind it, two voices. The door opened.

‘Well, thank you for keeping me in the picture.’

Baxter stepped out, clearly surprised by Rosen’s presence.

‘Working late, David?’

‘Fifteen- to sixteen-hour days as per.’

Baxter moved to one side and Detective Constable Robert Harrison emerged from the office. He didn’t look at Rosen as he marched, with the overconfidence of the under-intelligent, across
the open-plan office, puckering his lips to whistle but failing to form a tune.

‘David, I think we need to talk,’ said Baxter.

Baxter went back into his office, leaving space for Rosen to follow. He hated Baxter almost as much as he hated the smell of hops.

E
very so often, a sharp hiss punctured the darkness in which Julia Caton was trapped. It happened when the vice-like tightness in her chest became
a fire.

It slowly dawned on her, as she heard the hiss and felt the rush of fresh air into her body, that Herod was throwing her scraps of oxygen, just enough to keep her alive but not enough to allow
her to think clearly.

Julia Caton was in a state of self-doubt about what was real and what was not, whether she was awake or whether she was moving through a dream.

All sense of time had disappeared, and she wondered, as she slipped off to sleep, how many days or years she’d been in the dark.

In the silence that swallowed her and the endless darkness before her eyes, Julia was jolted by the sight of a distant star.

It appeared distant at first, though it moved slowly towards her in an elegant curve. If she were asked, as she was sure the starry starry night would, she could no longer tell whether she was
awake or asleep, but she had the strangest notion that she was coming slowly to a standing position, moved by some invisible force of nature outside her physical body or mental will.

‘We three Kings of Orient are . . .’

The same line over and over, sung by a creature somewhere under the water’s edge, near her head. Or was it three creatures? Normally, she was scared of nature; creatures that lived
underwater were sometimes good to eat but never while they were still alive, and sometimes creatures under the water thought people were good to eat, but they were too busy singing, just around her
hipbones now.

‘Field and fountain, moor and mountain . . .’

And then it hit her. The singing was coming from inside her, it was her baby.
Clever boy, must’ve heard the song at Christmas and remembered the words
. Strange she’d never
noticed him singing before.