Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  ‘I don’t use supernatural snouts,’ said Dougie.

  ‘You do now, you cunt,’ said Roy, equably. Dougie winced.

  But he nodded. Done.

  ‘Before I go, may I recapitulate my understanding of the state of play?’ said Roy smoothly. Dougie nodded.

  Roy stood. His demeanour was calm and relaxed. He did good authority.

  ‘There is a battle for good and evil taking place in this world,’ Roy said. ‘And you, my friends and colleagues, are on the side of Good. You should know that I have spoken to Chief Warlock Brannigan himself about this case, and he is greatly concerned. This monster has killed and killed again. It’s run rings around the detectives in this unit. It even escaped from a police cell. All in all, this investigation has been a fiasco.’ Dougie winced at this. ‘And the reputation of this department has taken a battering. Nevertheless, we shall prevail. We shall find the miscreant demon. And then you will kill him, for all eternity. Shoot on sight, don’t bother with a warning. If you do that, the warlocks of London will be eternally grateful. Which means whisky, malt, a bottle thereof, for anyone in the team who kills the fucker.’ Roy beamed. ‘That okay with you, Doug?’

  ‘Yes, guv,’ said Dougie wearily.

  Roy grinned at the investigation team.

  ‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ Roy said. ‘Oh, I’m borrowing your RDC.’ He winked again at Fillide and she got up. All eyes were on her, hating her.

  Fillide left.

  ‘Where to?’ she said to Roy as they walked briskly down the corridor.

  ‘Show me the treasure,’ Roy told her.

  Fillide drove Roy’s Maserati at speed from the Whitechapel nick, and across Tower Bridge. There were no speed restrictions for the car because of Roy’s Masonic status, so the journey was fast and exhilarating. Once they almost jack-knifed but Fillide recovered well.

  Fillide stopped the car abruptly – raising a squall of horns honking behind her – outside a red-brick building in Tooley Street which had formerly had been the HQ of the South London Robbery Squad.

  She drove down the ramp into the underground car park. Roy got out carefully, as he always did, looking all around. In the old days, before the Occlusion, he’d been ambushed a few times in underground car parks, and old paranoias die hard.

  The valet parker took the car away. Fillide and Roy took the lift. He was in a frisky mood, with a spring in his step that accentuated his natural elegance.

  ‘Any problems this morning?’ he asked.

  ‘None.’

  ‘Tell me more,’ he begged.

  She passed him her phone. He checked the photos of the shootings. He smiled at the sight of the carnage. ‘How much did we make?’

  ‘Plenty. I didn’t count the cash. Two hold-alls of smack. And the artefacts.’

  ‘Any innocent victims here?’

  She shrugged, meaning: Who gives a shit?

  ‘That’s my girl.’

  He deleted the photos from the phone.

  The lift stopped at the third floor. Roy and Fillide stepped out into his very own Sultan’s palace: a vast many-levelled museum of stolen goods.

  On one wall was a pair of free standing bronze Moroccan doors that were twice the height of a man, built as an entranceway for demons in the time of Solomon. On the opposite wall were rows of upright Egyptian rishi coffins containing the corpses of loyal soldiers slain so they could protect their masters in the underworld.

  On the shelves - which were from Ikea but subsequently painted gold to match their contents - were gold goblets from Assyria, gold lamps (once inhabited by djinns) from Persia, and gold bowls inlaid with mosaic from Byzantium.

  In a high and broad glass case, a Roman general’s armour, burnished so brightly it stung the eyes. Next to it, in another glass case, a Tartar sword, gleaming and curved. And as they walked further into the warehouse, the myriad other treasures in Roy’s galleries sprang into view.

  Roy had designed this showroom himself, with narrow metal stairs connecting a multiplicity of mezzanine floors to create a warren of antiquities. Treasures were tightly packed on shelves or hanging from hooks. A giant statue of jackal-headed Anubis stood on the ground floor; its grim head reaching to the roof within the high central atrium. There were statues here by the score, and rebuilt porticoes, and swords and shields, and bas-reliefs and gargoyles ripped from cathedrals by ruthless thieves with no fear of vertigo.

  Fillide had seen some glories in her time. She’d lived in Rome with its palazzi and its ruins from the time of the Caesars, and its great Colosseum. And she’d watched her best friend Michel Agnolo Cerisi from Caravaggio turn the Contarelli Chapel in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesci into a Bible narrative of heart-exalting truth. But even she was awed at the glory of Roy’s warehouse.

  ‘Back room,’ she said and took him through. The sports bag was there and she tipped out the contents on to the table. Necklaces, headdresses, Celtic crosses, bracelets from the East, and a collapsible gold tiara.

  ‘Glorious,’ said Roy, touching the gold jewellery against his face, as if rubbing off traces of its previous long-dead owners. He was aglow with desire. Sex never thrilled him so.

  ‘Pretty nice stuff,’ Fillide conceded, with laconic sullenness.

  ‘You’ve done well, Fillide.’

  ‘Thank you, guv,’ said Fillide: her ritual words of obeisance.

  All her pleasure in her day’s work melted away as she stared at Roy. Her master, spell-binder, lover, and abuser.

  She yearned with all her soul to want to slay him.

  Yet she dared not even think the thought.

  Chapter 12

  ‘Have you been here before?’

  ‘Well, you know,’ said Tom. ‘I’ve done the guided tour.’

  Gina was driving towards Fleet Street. On their right was the statue of Bomber Harris, glowering from his plinth on the oval island that split the road. All around the Bomber were shady trees.

  Behind him, rising high above the traffic, the proud outlines of St Clement Danes, its elegant steeple resting upon Wren’s artful wedding cake tower. A church built by Danes; bombed by the Germans in World War II; now a social club for the fighter pilots of the London Army.

  On their left flank loomed the medieval fantasies of the Victorian Royal Courts of Justice: petalled rose window set amidst a triangle of stone, framed by towers and half-towers and tourelles. Tom had always adored this building; especially the thin black flèche spire of the Great Hall that soared like a rocket upon a launch pad. It was an extravaganza of Victorian architecture, the chimaerical progeny of a fairy tale castle and a Gothic Cathedral.

  They drove on and soon were past the cast iron railings that fringed the Law Courts. To their right the George-in-the-Strand pub, half-timbered and boozily inviting.

  Gina slowed as the traffic started to gridlock. Tom drank in every detail of the scene, which always seemed to him like a journey through time.

  The traffic picked up. Gina drove towards the bronze statue of the dragon that marked the boundary of the ancient City of London. Tom knew that many guide books wrongly catalogued this sculpture as a griffin; but for those who had studied their lore – as Tom assuredly had - the membranous rather than feathered wings betrayed this as a true dragon. A far more ancient occult beast.

  The dragon’s demonic back was arched, its sharp wings were spread, its beak savagely open, its tail lashing with its dagger-spike. It held a shield in one paw and it was rearing, balancing upon its powerful back legs. Its red eyes glared at the cars approaching it.

  Then it blinked, and snarled, and Tom felt a sudden jolt of fear.

  ‘Get ready for the bump.’

  They hit the bump – not a speed bump but an incorporeal barrier – and Tom felt his stomach lurch. For as well as the human-built ‘ring of steel’, Demon City was now contained within a thrice-blessed magical seal to prevent hell bastards departing without authorisation. Humans could pass through the magic layering without harm; but it di
d induce tremendous nausea.

  ‘Awkward. Back there. At the briefing,’ Tom suggested.

  Gina shrugged.

  ‘The way Roy Hall taunts the guvnor. Awkward, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not really.’ Gina was deadpan. Giving nothing.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Tom decided to play a long pause. Classic interview technique: using silence to invite an indiscretion. Dougie Randall had written the manual from which Tom was cribbing.

  He was silent, for a very long time.

  Eventually it worked.

  ‘I warned you about that whore, didn’t I?’ Gina grumbled. ‘Always late. Never reads her briefing notes. Never contributes to the team debate. Dougie would love to sack her or get her demoted to traffic duties but he can’t. You know why? I’ll tell you fucking why. ’Cause she sleeps with her head up the Royboy’s fucking arse. Fucking liberty. It just ain’t fucking right!’

  Tom acknowledged it. Gina drove on.

  ‘Did you notice that necklace?’ Tom said casually.

  ‘Which necklace?’

  ‘Fillide’s necklace.’

  ‘Roy buys her all sorts of crap. Bling. Don’t know she can afford those clothes either. They look stupid.’

  Tom felt miffed. ‘Actually I quite like –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The clothes. That she wears. They’re rather –’

  ‘What?’

  Gina’s tone was aggressive. It dawned on Tom that Gina was a woman too. And, therefore, prone to irrational jealousy of those more beautiful than she. He backtracked swiftly.

  ‘I suppose her clothes are rather, ah,’ he said. ‘Vulgar, really. Garish. She looks dead common, to be honest. You look much, um, nicer.’

  ‘Nicely arse-licked.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘That wet tongue up the anus moment, you can’t beat it.’

  ‘Um, no.’

  ‘So what about the necklace?’ Gina said.

  ‘It’s old. Antique. Afghan at a guess. I just wonder how she can afford it.’

  ‘You can tell an Afghan necklace from another kind of necklace from three rows away?’

  ‘Pretty much. I used to read a lot about ancient arts and antiquities and jewellery and the like. When I was a teenager, I mean. Pottery shards, that was another interest of mine. And coins.’

  ‘I’ll bet you had a lot of mates when you were a nipper, eh? With hobbies like that.’

  ‘Not really.’

  Gina sighed.

  ‘It’s a gift, I would guess,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The necklace. Look, it’s not rocket science. This is a woman who in a previous life was a courtesan. Do you know what that means?’

  ‘Of course I know what –’

  ‘You fuck men, they give you money. Or gifts. Get it?’

  ‘You’re saying –’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘That even now, even –’

  ‘That would be my surmise.’

  ‘Not just Roy then, but –’

  Gina nodded. Tom was silent.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘So when I said,’ Gina clarified, ‘ “She’s a whore”, I meant -’

  ‘I get it.’

  ‘What else is on your mind?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You keep putting your hand up, putting it down again. In briefings. Is there something you know that I don’t know?’

  Tom realised he shouldn’t answer that question with anything resembling a list.

  ‘Just something on my mind.’

  ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘It’s just – the theory we’re working on. The Gogarty-possessing demon-who-has-lived-on-Earth-for-centuries theory.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s wrong.’

  Gina mulled on that thought.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well,’ said Tom. ‘There are a few reasons really.’

  ‘Such as?’ she goaded.

  ‘One, and this is the main reason, and I know I’m contradicting Harwich here but he really doesn’t know what he’s talking about - demons just aren’t that powerful,’ Tom said calmly.

  ‘Bollocks. Demons are all powerful.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  Gina was puzzled. ‘I was there, you div. The Battle of London. Do you know how many people were –’

  ‘Killed by demons. Yes I do know. One hundred and forty-one thousand, two hundred and four. Six thousand and three of them were police officers or special constables. The demons from Hell, even the humaniform ones, are deadly killers with super strength, and bullets will bounce off them unless you use silver shells. In those terrible days before the warlocks turned up – well, it could easily have been the end of the world, I’m not denying any of that. But they don’t have – power. Not the kind of power that –’

  ‘What kind of power?’

  ‘I’m telling you, aren’t I? Magical power. The demon got itself into a devil-gated police station. That shouldn’t have been possible. Even if it was inside the body of a human being, it’s just not possible.’

  Gina nodded; she’d hear this one out.

  ‘Then,’ Tom continued, ‘while still inhabiting its human vessel aka Gogarty, it enchanted a police officer who, as per the manual, has been trained in hypnosis and indoctrination immunity techniques. Think about it. It enchanted a human being. And then it killed three other humans with a click of its finger. Magic spell assassination of the first order. No demon can do that. No demon can -’

  ‘ABC,’ said Gina.

  ‘Oh fuck off,’ said Tom. But she had a point.

  ‘So far as I know, no demon can do that,’ Tom qualified.

  ‘Yet this demon apparently can.’

  ‘Unless.’

  ‘Unless what?’

  Tom was silent: hugging his secret.

  ‘What are you saying, Tom?’

  Tom hugged his secret a moment more. ‘I can’t say,’ he said.

  ‘Say,’ she said sternly.

  ‘Just a mad thought. Let it lie. Forget it.’

  Gina sighed.

  ‘Go ahead. Give me your hare-brained theory,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a warlock.’

  Gina laughed. For a very long time.

  ‘What or who is a warlock?’ she taunted.

  ‘Gogarty,’ said Tom calmly.

  ‘Gogarty?’

  ‘That’s right. He’s not a human vessel possessed by a demon. He’s a warlock controlling a demon. Binding a demon. It’s the only theory that makes sense.’

  Gina shook her head, carefully keeping her eyes on the road. Her lips were squeezed thin. Her body language exuded annoyance. Tom realised she was blanking him.

  ‘Think about it!’ Tom insisted. ‘How did the demon get in the cell? Simple: the warlock exvoked him. It’s the only credible hypothesis. Devil gates don’t work on warlock spells. I mean, how could they? Warlock spell trumps warlock spell every time. And how come Gogarty is so old? Think of Mrs Bradford. She remembered Gogarty aka Bishop as her parish priest. But humans possessed by demons don’t live any longer than other humans. There’s no lore to suggest that and trust me, I would know. So how to explain that double impossibility? Simple: forget demon. He’s a Warlock. And Warlocks, as we know, live for ever, or at least for a long long time.’

  ‘Tom, I’m sorry. This is bullshit.’

  Tom persevered. ‘What’s the Jack the Ripper connection? Simple. Jack the Ripper was a warlock. Or a black magician at least. The sigils. The mutilation. The holy candle. We found a candle with human DNA in it! Made from human fat. Fat taken from the victims of the Ripper, for use in occult rituals which require human body organs and candles made from human bodies. Hence, a warlock. Surmise: Jack the Ripper was a warlock and he’s still alive. Amazing, isn’t it! And yet, when you think about it, obvious.’

  Tom waited for
his brilliance to be applauded.

  Gina laughed again, but uneasily this time. ‘Please, you’re wasting my time. Try and focus on the job at hand.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘What you’re saying, it’s crazy talk. Warlocks can’t do evil. It’s not in their nature.’

  There was an utter unshakeable confidence in Gina’s tone that shook Tom to the core.

  Tom suddenly regretted his candour.

  ‘You should know that you’re not the first person,’ said Gina, smiling, utterly calm now: ‘to think all this.’

  Tom’s stomach lurched. Waves of self-doubt assailed him.

  ‘Am I not?’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,’ said Gina kindly. Like a mother talking to a teenage boy who’s afraid he’ll never have a girlfriend.

  ‘Who else has thought of this?’ Tom said weakly.

  ‘Who hasn’t? Dougie, me, lots of people. It’s just a phase. We all have this idea at some point or other but we grow out of it. It’s part of learning to be a detective.’

  Tom could feel the pillars of his self esteem crumble. He realised he had just made a fool of himself. He knew, with the same effortless certainty by which he knew that two numbers added up will make a larger number, that Gina was right. Warlocks can’t do evil. It’s not in their nature.

  Everyone knew that. Didn’t they?

  ‘But -’ Tom protested, in a last ditch attempt to make a point.

  ‘If it wasn’t for the warlocks,’ Gina said sweetly, ‘just think what a river of shit we’d be swimming in. Hmm? What kind of world would it be then? Horror beyond imagining barely covers it.’

  Tom thought about it.

  They drove on in silence.

  Gina slowed the car down to a crawl. Most of the shops along Fleet Street were boarded up now. But El Vino’s was thriving. It had become the most popular dark-incense den in the City, and it never got busted by the Demon City cops. Not even when those human skeletons were found in the bins outside.

  On their left, the octagonal tower of the Church of St Dunstan-in-the-West stood lonely and sad, a slimy coat of green and purple algae smearing its grey stones. Tom knew that the interior of the tower had been colonised by myriad creatures dank and mysterious. Such monsters were common now and a number of City churches had collapsed entirely, rotted away by the demonic fungal infestation.