‘Hello, Fillide.’
She stopped and turned and saw Roy Hall. In his best Savile Row suit. Grinning like a child who has broken his baby sister’s favourite toy. Next to him, in a three-piece suit with a waistcoat and watch fob, looking like an Edwardian gentleman with his bushy side whiskers and moustaches, was Magnus. He too was grinning like a loon.
The Viking’s ghastly grin was confirmation that she had well and truly been ‘had’. Fillide had already guessed this of course. She might be stupid; but she wasn’t always stupid.
‘Hello, my darling Fillide,’ Magnus said cheerfully. ‘And tell me, how did your escape fare? I’m so glad I could be of some small assistance.’ And he laughed, with as much relish as if he had been splitting his foeman’s skull in half with an axe.
Fillide groaned.
Chapter 5
Skip forward. To the morning after the Ildminster Square Breach, and the subsequent Battle of Whitechapel.
Dougie walked through the ruins of the police station where he had worked for nearly fourteen years in all. He’d always felt a great loyalty to this place, for all its faults. It was a barn of a building with a classic blue lamp on a brass pedestal outside. A divisional nick which had also become a home to SCO19 and Number Five Murder Squad.
The reception area of the Leman Street divisional nick had coloured tiles, like a butcher’s shop. The cells were like dungeons. The windows didn’t open properly. But there were three cracking major incident interview rooms. And it was a good place to be; it had history.
But now the tiled reception area was blackened and burned from a casually hurled fireball that had cut a swathe through the entire nick. The front doors had been blown off. Chalk marks in the corridors and public areas eulogised the last locations of the thirteen officers and four members of the public who had perished in the midst of that hurtling tornado of flame.
Dougie followed the trail of destruction along the corridors, into the custody area, and arrived at the unburned patch of stone floor in the custody suite from which the fireball had been flung. It was like standing inside a volcano that had spewed its last remnants of lava. The brick walls had been seared by heat, and had the sheen of glass. The custody sergeant’s desk was black and charred: a blasted tree in a petrified forest. The computer terminal was a pond of melted plastic and glass fragments. And the roof was gone, and winds gusted down from a troubled sky. Once there had been four entire floors above this spot. But all had been swept away in a single explosive moment as the demon blew a hole in the roof and escaped.
Dougie stared up at the clouds, and cursed silently.
He had declined a hard hat, despite the insistence of the two anxious Health and Safety Inspectors. Workmen were now propping up the roof with Acpo poles. There was a good chance the entire building would have to be demolished.
Around him some of these workmen were removing the last of the organic debris in bags and stretchers. Few intact corpses had been retrieved from the blast zone because of the sheer intensity of the heat, which had turned flesh into charred sludge. And the damage had been compounded when the SCO19 team had launched a mortar shell into the custody suite before commencing their attack. The liquid and solid remnants of the bodies from this central part of the station – between eighteen and twenty, including the admin staff in Crime Analysis - had already been moved to a temporary mortuary in the canteen.
Lunch was no longer on the menu.
Four Home Office pathologists were on duty today, and three more had been called back during their annual holiday to cope with this glut of fatalities. They had a separate mortuary in the snooker room where the intact bodies – those killed by the blast not the hell fire – could be examined.
Gina joined Dougie in the former custody area, wearing a hands-free to keep in touch with the final act of the Ildminster Square demon invasion. A decisive victory had been achieved by now; but a few straggler demons had escaped. Hunting was taking place in the East End again.
‘What’s the latest tally?’ Dougie asked.
‘Four rogues, we think,’ Gina said. ‘Maybe five. And a snake demon that vanished down the sewers.’
‘We’ll never see that again.’
‘Unless it pops out next time you’re having a shit.’
Dougie laughed. Gina laughed too.
Graveyard humour. It didn’t help.
‘One truly fucked up day,’ said Dougie. It wasn’t his worst ever admittedly, but it was certainly up there. A Dimensional Breach and a jail break within minutes of each other. And ‘Gogarty’ was the connecting factor.
It was obvious to Dougie by now that Gogarty was not a human being. He had to be a demon in human form. How else could he have done what he did? Yet Dougie hadn’t sussed it. His famous intuition had betrayed him.
‘Phil Matthews?’ he said to Gina, wearily.
‘Confirmed as dead,’ Gina said. Twelve of the charred corpses in the hellfire zone had been identified from DNA, though the bodies themselves were entirely unrecognisable.
‘Gavin Jenkinson?’
‘He was on a call. Still alive.’
‘The gaoler? Hanson. No, Henson. She must be dead.’
‘She survived. We found her in one of the cells. It’s fortified, you could survive a bomb blast in there. Which, pretty much, is what we had here.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘We’ve commandeered the Blind Beggar. The incident room is in the saloon bar. Witnesses are upstairs in the bedrooms. Lisa is with her now.’
‘And what sort of state is she in?’
‘You need to see her, guv.’
Dougie nodded.
Dougie and Gina walked through the burned and blasted station and out on to Leman Street. The second hand carpet shop directly opposite the nick had been hit by the tumbling fireball. The tarmac in the road itself had melted. And a blackened car nestling against a lamppost consisted of just a bonnet and a boot with a yawning gap between.
They ducked under the crime scene tapes, then turned on to the Whitechapel Road. Then walked briskly along the pavement, towards the Blind Beggar pub.
Once they were away from the smell of burned flesh, Dougie’s spirits began to improve. He was angry and vengeful now, rather than bleakly depressed. He made a silent vow: Gogarty-demon would pay for this. Next time he wouldn’t bother to arrest the bastard. It was shoot on sight with silver bullets from this moment on.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Gina.
‘Save it for the incident room.’
‘How this could have happened?’
‘There’ll be a reason.’
‘The entire station is devil-gated. The demon shouldn’t have been able to -’
Dougie gestured her to shut up. She did, with good grace. Sometimes, he needed silence in which to think.
‘It’s a two minute walk to the pub, sweetheart,’ said Dougie. ‘Let me smell some petrol fumes in this toxic East End air. Let me ogle the arse on some gorgeous bint. Let me be a human being for just a few minutes more, eh? Then, we’ll solve the fucking case. All right, my love?’
‘Which gorgeous bint?’
‘I was speaking hypothetically, there is no actual bint,’ he told her mockingly.
‘My arse doesn’t serve, I take it? Not pert enough to lift your spirits?’ she taunted in return.
Dougie stopped walking, and took a peek at her backside. She let him. He nodded. They walked on.
‘So, how’s my arse, you fucking lecher?’
‘Very nice, though hardly pert you big lardy bum. But I still feel like shit.’
‘Give it time, Dougie.’
They reached the door of the Blind Beggar and walked in. George Cornell had been shot and killed in here by the East End gangster Ronnie Kray, after an ill-advised moment of sarcasm. It was a pub rich in history and memories and the ingrained taint of violent death.
The lounge bar had been cleared of drinkers. The tables had been moved against the walls. Taff, back from Ildm
inster Square, was behind the bar, stealing whisky from the optics. Catriona was at a Formica table in the middle of the bar area, with a laptop instead of her usual HOLMES console. Dougie counted fourteen murder squad detectives in the bar, including himself and Gina, but excluding Fillide and Tom and Lisa.
‘Mine’s a pint,’ said Dougie. Shai Hussain got up and went behind the bar and started pouring pints for all the team.
‘Shall I start a tab?’ Shai asked.
Dougie nodded a yes. Taff took a bottle of whisky off its optic rack and retreated to a bar stool.
‘Taff!’ warned Dougie.
‘Go fuck yourself,’ said Taff morosely. His face was ruddy. Dougie guessed he’d been crying. He’d seen more of this shit than many, and Phil Matthews had been a good pal of his. In the circumstances, he was allowed a bender; Dougie let it go.
Dougie hoiked with his arms and sat himself up on the bar, so that he loomed over everyone else. Then he sipped his pint of bitter, and reviewed his troops.
‘Lisa?’ he said.
‘Upstairs with the witnesses,’ said Alliea.
‘Fillide?’
‘Still at Ildminster. So’s the new boy, Tom Derry. He fainted apparently.’
There were smiles all round at that.
‘Debrief in five minutes,’ Dougie said. ‘Get your breath back first.’
He waited five minutes. The mood of tension did not abate.
‘Let’s start,’ said Dougie. And the impromptu incident room kicked into gear.
‘Timeline,’ said Dougie.
Catriona typed, and they all studied their e-berries as they timeline appeared on their screens. The pub was quiet now, as fourteen detectives bowed their heads and read their e-berries or laptops.
TIMELINE: DIMENSIONAL BREACH AND GOGARTY ESCAPE
LONDON EAST: MURDER SQUAD 5
13th July 2023.
05.00: Forensic team and 3 OET detectives (Tindale, Davies, Malone) arrive at scene (13 Ildminster Square = IS).
05.15: Det Supt Randall arrives at IS.
05.30: 23 uniform officers arrive at IS and commence fingertip search of house, under supervision of Crime Scene Manager Henry McClintock.
06.00: PC Henson begins shift as gaoler at Leman Street Station (LSS).
06.30: Exhibit Officer Tony Williamson signs in.
07.00: Excavator lowered by helicopter at IS.
07.00: Gogarty served breakfast by PC Henson at LSS. Words exchanged.
08.15: Ultrasound scans of the back garden of IS commences.
09.00: Gogarty buzzes gaoler at LSS, complaining of stomach pains.
9.20: Excavations commence at IS.
09.30: Davies and Malone leave IS for breakfast. Henderson arrives and confers with Randall in upstairs bedroom.
0935: Floorboards in bedroom 1 aka IS Room Three taken up.
10.03: Pornography found beneath bed in bedroom 2 (IS Room Four).
11.00: Gogarty speaks to gaoler Henson at LSS. Complains of further stomach pains and invites her to ‘run away with him’. Henson declines.
10.05: Floorboards in IS Room 4 taken up.
11.45: Body 1 (IS1) is found in back garden.
12.01: Fluorescent X Ray spectrometer sweep of walls of Bedroom 1 commences.
12.12: Body 2 (IS2) is found in back garden. Some of these bones are later reclassified as IS4.
12.30: X ray spectrometer sweep of walls of IS Room 4 commences.
12.30: At LSS Gogarty begins eating his metal lunch tray and is restrained by PC Boyd and PC Henson. Bite marks are found in the tray. A doctor is summoned.
12.45: Body 3 (IS 3) is found.
13.01: Spectrogram reveals writing behind wall of IS Room 4. Wallpaper stripping authorised by Det Supt Randall.
13.35: Gogarty refuses to see the duty doctor Dr Krishnu who is sent away.
14.02: DC Derry attends scene at LS.
14.13: Maps of London and names of Ripper victims found behind wall of IS Room 4.
14.15: Ultrasound scanners reveal presence of substantial attic cavity. Ladder hatch in hall ceiling identified, painted over and replastered, but switch does not work.
14.16: Derry and Henderson join Randall in IS Room 4.
14.20: Det Supt Randall briefs Derry and Henderson on Ripper connection.
14.30: Derry leaves premises with RDC Melandroni for HtoH.
14.45: Electrician repairs ladder hatch switch and access to attic in IS is obtained by CSI team.
14.48: Randall, Henderson inspect attic, with CSI Gibson and CSI Parks
15.09: Randall, Henderson sign out of crime scene.
15.10: Williamson commences compiling Exhibit Log of attic finds.
15.15: Body 5 (IG5) found with jewellery dated to c. 1920s
16.00: Gogarty buzzes for a cup of tea. Gaoler Henson does not respond.
16.04: Gogarty buzzes. Gaoler responds.
16.15: Smell of rotten eggs detected at IS by forensic team. Three texts are sent complaining of the ‘fucking foul stench’
16.20: Gogarty buzzes and gaoler Henson responds.
16.21: Randall and Henderson arrive at Mitre Square.
16.25: Cell camera shows gaoler Henson releasing Gogarty. Picture starts to fail; red mist is observed.
16.26: CCTV coverage of entire cell block area fails entirely. Electronic locks jam shut denying access to cell block from the outside.
16.30: Demons irrupt at IS.
16.30: Gogarty transforms into a demon at LSS (inferred).
16.30: Geyser of blood sighted in garden of IS.
16.32: RDC Melandroni calls in DB to CAD operator Attwell.
16.31: Matthews in custody area LSS calls in Black Alert, on the basis of CCTV failure and the sound of screams from inside the cell block and a ‘terrible feeling in my fucking gut’. CAD operator Attwell puts Melandroni on hold to take the Black Alert call and summons support from SCO19.
16.32 – 16.38: Evacuation of IS takes place.
16.33: Leman Street police station blows up, due to fireball despatched from custody area.
16.40: At Ildminster square, 3 x ICH15 demons are sighted and contact logged. 2 are Xed, one still at large.
16.40: SCO19 officers attend scene at custody area in Leman Street. CAD dispatcher Agatha Attwell, who was holding the demon at bay, is relieved. Custody area shelled with a mortar.
16.43: Gogarty-Demon escapes from LSS through roof.
16.45: RDC Melandroni plucked from sky by demon and dropped after contact with sword and Xing of 4th hell creature, a Beelzebub’s Brood.
16.48: SCO19 skycraft arrives at IS, to relief of 5 Squad members.
16.50: Firefight in custody area between Gogarty-Demon and SCO19 officers. 1 police survivor only.
16.55: Gogarty-Demon escapes by blowing a hole in the ceiling of custody area and flying out through the roof of LSS.
‘Stop it there,’ said Dougie. ‘Back up a bit.’
‘Four thirty pm,’ said Gina.
‘Yes.’
‘Total synchrony. Gogarty becomes a demon; the Breach occurs. At one and the same moment.’
‘How is that possible?’ said Dougie.
‘We’re –’
‘I need a forensic demonologist on this case,’ Dougie said, bitterly. ‘Get me one.’
That was like eating glass for Dougie: but he ate it.
‘What about Harwich?’ said Alliea Cartwright, scrolling through her lists.
‘Too old,’ said Gina. ‘What about Lansbury?’
‘He gave up the game, Boss. Burned out.’
‘Barnaby Hopkinson? He’s the man.’
‘Media whore. I don’t trust him.’
‘Fletcher then.’
‘Not Fletcher,’ said Dougie.
‘Harwich it is, then,’ Alliea agreed.
‘What do the warlocks say?’ asked Seamus.
‘They don’t say anything,’ Dougie said. He’d spent twenty frustrating minutes sending emails to the warlock liaison department of New S
cotland Yard. All he’d received in return was a series of blandly phrased emails saying in various ways: ‘the warlocks are pondering this matter and will respond in due course.’ This utter guff he had deleted.
Emails! From warlocks! Fuck it, he thought.
He rubbed his forehead with his palms. ‘Let me see the jail break.’
Catriona replayed the CCTV, using the holo projector.
A vision appeared in the middle of the Blind Beggar pub, in the space between the chairs and the bar. A three dimensional replica of the Leman Street Police Station cell area, in the minutes before the hellfire.
Ella Henson walks down the corridor of the cell block area.
She opens the cell door and steps inside.
Gogarty gets up from his bunk and kisses her.
They step outside the cell.
‘What am I doing?’ says Henson to Gogarty.
Gogarty seizes her and throws her to the ground. A red mist fills the scene.
The red mist swallows everything.
‘That’s it?’ Dougie asked.
‘That’s it. When Gogarty turns into a demon, the cameras all fail,’ said Catriona.
‘What about footage of the massacre?’
‘None. Just eye witness accounts,’ said Andy. ‘The best is from,’ Andy checked the name. ‘Agatha Attwell, CAD operator. She held off the demon for ten minutes in the corridor with a salt gun. She’s doing a Photofit for us now.’
Hell on Earth Page 36