The Two

by Will Carver

  Hospitals and churches are the key. In no other places will you see such high levels of desperation and questioning. It is simple to pick out those who are willing to fight to the end, and those who are on the verge of giving in or have already lost the will to live.

  I sensed it immediately today as I jogged past Graham White.

  Calculated randomness.

  My Lord merely requires a number of souls.

  I get to decide whose vitality I will gift.

  It isn’t murder if the person wants it all to end.

  I am not a killer.

  Beltane

  May 2009

  Celeste

  TODAY IS THE last time that I am free of the one who now refers to himself only as V. After saving Graham White, I have managed to weave my own story into his diabolical scheme. The next victim is planned for today, Beltane, but he knows I am coming. He understands my intentions and he wants me here now. He needs to see me. To digest everything about Celeste Varrick as he watches me from the shadows.

  So that he can capture and devour me at Litha.

  For the one known as V, the killing must be the easiest part. Now he has to think ahead of his next murder.

  I think that somehow I know this. That I am attuned to this inevitable peril. I am beginning to understand this killer. I know him. I feel maleficence as I enter the heath; it draws me to another girl’s death I am too late to prevent; it is then masked by fear and heightened sexuality.

  He only presents himself in the image of a demon to me, yet he will know my true face. Maybe that is why I will end the Beltane celebration with a simple act of selfish gratification. My only act of pleasure.

  In some way, without me even knowing or understanding, V forces me to a climax.

  This is really the end of my quest.

  *

  From the time I decided to help Lily Kane, all paths were going to lead to this moment. The time when V would come to know me. This very instant where he is now in complete control of my destiny. When his Lord will give him the green light to capture and keep me.

  To use Brooke Derry as bait.

  Litha

  June 2009

  V

  I EXPECT THEM to find Annabel first. So that they will be distracted by her while I take Brooke Derry. That is my plan; that is the Lord’s wish.

  It doesn’t happen this way, because the police are too busy waiting for something to happen rather than preventing anything.

  Reactive detectives; I’ll have to remember that.

  After I grab Brooke from behind and render her unconscious, it is just a case of riding the lift to the top floor, tying her up, lighting the kindle and leaving her to be found. The scheme was never meant to cause her real harm; she was supposed to be found alive. I just needed her to look dead for Celeste.

  She knew this. It was role-play for her. Sexual, almost.

  I finish the preparation and leave. Exploiting my training, I run down the stairs, out the building, across the road and up the many flights of stairs that lead to my flat. I can see Brooke’s front door from my living-room window.

  And it isn’t too long before I recognise the eager impishness I witnessed of Celeste at Beltane in the woods of Hampstead. Her hair flails dramatically behind her as she thrusts her elfin frame through an opening in the door.

  I’m unaware of how she knows where to find me, but it doesn’t matter any more.

  I have her now.

  Thank you for allowing this, Lord.

  I will not let you down.

  I reverse the process, this time speeding down the stairs of my building, jumping the last three steps of each flight. I launch myself out onto the pavement and across the road, ignoring the use of the traffic lights. My heart beats faster than Talitha Palladino’s. Soon I am at the top of the stairs and I can hear her voice as she acts out her pathetic rituals, interfering with my plan.

  Getting in the way of my family’s rightful destiny.

  Her mistake is her blind faith. Thinking she has been sent to help these poor victims. She doesn’t even check to see whether Brooke is alive. She assumes that Brooke is already dead, that her body cannot be saved, only her soul. Celeste simply launches straight into her mumbo-jumbo routine, lighting a candle, chanting at the walls. Brooke will be able to hear all of this and I want that. She will remember as much of the woman as she can. I will be too quick taking Celeste for any kind of meaningful identification. The police will put down any vague recollection of a man in the room as confusion – if she even remembers me, that is.

  Watching her from the doorway, I feel a similar arousal to that which I experienced on Beltane as I stalked her from the shadows of the undergrowth. There is something stimulating about looking at someone who doesn’t know you are there. Part of it is excitement that the Lord has decreed that this should now be her fate after months of begging.

  Celeste is my only victim I take real pleasure from.

  I now know her and she knows me.

  But I haven’t been told to make her into a monster yet.

  I haven’t been told that I must kill her.

  That, on the evening of Mabon, I will have one final test.

  January

  ALTHOUGH THE DEATH of this victim, Annabel, seems more brutal and the ritualism somewhat diluted in comparison to the other five, it is not a copycat killing. There are elements that only the police and the killer know.

  Not everything is shown on the map.

  Lily Kane was slain in full view of the St Dionis Church on Parsons Green. Previously that day she had attended the Parsons Green Health Centre for biopsy results. It’s such a small building that it doesn’t show on the map. Our investigation led us to this information anyway, but it wasn’t until all the crime scene photos were placed side by side that a picture began to form.

  Talitha was killed at Speaker’s Corner, Hyde Park. We know of her life-long struggle with a heart condition, but what we didn’t see was her vicinity to St Mary’s Hospital to the north-west, and the six churches and one synagogue over to the east of the spot she was murdered.

  Totty Fahey had been to the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields before his life was taken; we know that from the programme found in his coat pocket, we see it in the background of a photo where he kneels, deceased.

  Graham White was brought to his knees inside a cathedral, never making his appointment at St Thomas’ Hospital, never finding out that his nephew would make a full recovery. It seems quite obvious that the danger grows with each victim. That whatever comment Celeste Varrick is trying to make about science or religion, her motives become clearer as her ambition grows.

  This is part of the reason I knew it would be Hampstead Heath on Beltane and not Green Park, Battersea Park or any of the other populated greeneries around the capital; it is so close to the Royal Free Hospital. There is a link between the vicinity of the hospitals to the churches; the proximity of helplessness to desperation.

  She is starting to show her hand, whether through desperation or a need to prove herself.

  A mistake has been made somewhere along the way.

  So when Paulson returns from the cinema having gleaned nothing of importance from the staff and patrons, it doesn’t matter because his travels have unearthed the biggest clue of all so far. Tucked behind Watson’s Pharmacy, on the corner of Frith Street, is the Soho Centre for Health and Care.

  A building so small it also does not show on our map.

  Annabel’s scorched remains lie crumpled between this miniature hospital and the two churches around the square.

  I feel close to Celeste now. My mind jolts to the little girl in my intuitions. The link between the two of them.

  But, just as I start to understand her, just as I begin to place myself in her mind, she is taken and, now, I have something else, something new, to battle with. As a result of her capture, I am one step back.

  I should be listening to my mother.

  With the information Paulson deli
vers, I am certain that this is the work of Celeste Varrick. It fits her modus operandi. It slots nicely into her series. So now I want to speak to Brooke Derry. I want to know everything she remembers, because she is the anomaly.

  She either holds the answers or she makes us ask the wrong questions.

  She was never supposed to die.

  There is nothing more we can do here tonight. I exit the square at the corner of Greek Street and enter Milroy’s of Soho to buy myself a bottle of their own brand expensive whisky. The cashier tells me, ‘You’re the second gentleman to buy one of these today. Usually only shift one per month.’ I nod and fake a smile to avoid any further small talk.

  It would be impossible for me to know that he was talking about Sammael Abbadon. That his security camera shows the face of the man who managed to capture Celeste Varrick before even I have. The man who has really killed all these people. The one we should be looking for on the CCTV footage rather than the invisible woman.

  In my mind I am searching for a female. Celeste Varrick. The person performing these sadistic ritual killings across London. I don’t yet realise that Annabel Wakeman was disposed of by Celeste’s captor.

  That I am no longer just searching for a single assassin.

  There are two.

  From the beginning, there has always been two.

  I need to speak with Brooke again.

  V

  WITH A BOTTLE of whisky in my left hand, I exit onto Charing Cross Road and make myself invisible in the crowd. There is no time to dwell on the thing I have just done. The ritual I have just performed. The woman I have left behind. The bottle is for later.

  To celebrate.

  And commiserate.

  In a couple of hours I will have apprehended the real harbinger of warped Pagan mysticism.

  This time, I don’t stand back and idly watch her. My Lord says that it is time.

  Finally.

  V

  I RUN UP the stairs to the top floor where Celeste is incanting something gibberish that she feels will have an effect on Brooke Derry, the girl who hangs in front of her. The altar. We have found each other.

  I reach the top without feeling out of breath; Celeste’s voice travels down the corridor, polluting my ears with her sacrilegious rambling, stirring up the anger and passion I felt on Beltane as she did the same.

  I wait outside the door, trying desperately to block out the forlorn face of Annabel, to control my legs from shaking as the adrenalin pumps through my body, strengthening me for the next struggle that lies ahead.

  The doorway has been left open because she thinks she is safe in her little circle of salt. With five victims already, she thinks she is untouchable.

  I don’t share her beliefs.

  She is not safe from me.

  Her voice taunts me closer. ‘Tomorrow the light will begin to fade as the wheel of the year turns over and over.’

  I crane my neck around the side of the door enough that my left eye can see her kneeling from the side. She looks straight ahead at Brooke Derry and continues.

  ‘Today the sun casts three rays. The light of fire upon the land, the Earth and the heavens.’

  She turns her body within her circle so that her back is now facing Brooke and proclaims, ‘The mist rolls in bringing rain and fog, the life-giving water without which we would cease to be.’

  I edge into the doorway, prepared once more for what I have to do, what has to be done. Her body turns again for the last section of her ritual.

  I stand face to face with Celeste Varrick. The woman who will soon be front page news.

  Her eyes grow large as our gazes meet, a look of surprise with a mien of recognition.

  ‘You,’ she mouths.

  ‘You,’ I snarl back through an anxious smile and take a step forwards.

  Desperately, she tries to finish her ritual, she speeds up the remaining verse, almost making it sound like one word.

  ‘Beneath my feet is the Earth, soil dark and fertile.’ I step again towards her. ‘The womb in which life begins.’ Another step nearer. ‘Will later die then return anew.’ And she breathes deeply thinking she has won. She doesn’t even back away from me because she truly believes she is untouchable within that pathetic ring of condiment.

  With a one-inch thick line of white dust separating us we stand upright opposite each other. I can smell the juniper smoke vapour rising to my right, her left. She can taste the red wine on my breath from this distance. She thinks she can sense my energies.

  Misled, she looks deep into me. I see the tendons in her jaw tense before she speaks.

  ‘Leave this place.’ She talks sternly, confidently, keeping the pause between each word the perfect distance to assert some authority over me. She pushes her chin forwards ever so slightly, but noticeable enough that she is closer, deliberately more threatening, and whispers ‘You cannot win.’

  In the purest of reactions, as if her tongue stimulated the fibres of my left deltoid muscles, causing my arm to lift itself up independently of my conscious thought, my hand is now wrapped around her throat.

  Her beautiful eyes bulge in shock and she looks down, trying to comprehend why a line of salt on the floor has not prevented me from touching her. I see those eyes scanning her periphery, searching for a break in the barrier.

  There is no gap.

  I just don’t believe.

  Not in her. Or what she is doing.

  She is so afraid to leave her perceived protective haven that she doesn’t kick her feet or flail her arms or try to shake free from my grasp, she just accepts it.

  To my right, Brooke Derry swings over a growing cloud of smoke. She twitches but does not open her eyes.

  ‘I am not here to hurt you.’ I try to speak eloquently, exaggeratedly pronouncing every t so that the message is clear, but I do not loosen my grip.

  Celeste’s eyes show confusion.

  I use my other hand to bring the cloth to her face, covering her mouth and nose.

  It is seconds before she is on my shoulder, unconscious.

  I don’t even feel her weight; the epinephrine secreted throughout my body inflames my muscles with temporary superhuman strength and stamina. I even have enough to free a hand and check Brooke’s pulse.

  She will be fine.

  I’ll call it in.

  I take Celeste down in the lift and out of the building without anybody asking questions. Some people may notice something but do not enter into dialogue. They soon neglect the memory of what they have seen the instant they remember that they are the most important person in their own life.

  We are only outside for a short time before I enter another lift to take her up to my flat, to her new home.

  Two buildings down.

  Nobody sees the two of us together; I feel certain of that.

  When January David is called to the scene on my street, I already have the person he is looking for. When he combs through the crime scene, Celeste Varrick is crying out for help she will never receive.

  When he is at Soho Square, I am sitting on my sofa, emptying the contents of another bottle of wine. Avoiding Gail’s late-night knock at the door.

  And, when Detective Inspector January David sits down tonight on his own, torturing himself about how another person has died on his case, when he lifts his first tumbler of Milroy’s whisky to warm his throat and numb his brain into momentary abstraction, I will be toasting him with the same tipple and devouring it for the same reasons.

  I want this to be over now. I need it to be finished.

  I ask the Lord to fulfil his promise, so that I may stop this. So that I may have my life back.

  My Lord tells me that the hard work still lies ahead.

  I lift my glass.

  Cheers.

  Celeste

  I DON’T MOVE, at first.

  It takes a few seconds to realise that, actually, I can’t.

  I’m bound, and not just physically.

  I drip slowly through all the
emotions I should feel in this situation: confusion, denial, hysteria. I shout obscenities at the tiny rectangle of light on the door in front of me until it opens, revealing the bearded chin of the man who has taken me.

  This is the point I realise I am not in police custody.

  This is when I start to remember what happened.

  And the rectangle that only displays a mouth and chin suddenly opens out into the image of an entire face in my mind. The face of V. The man I have been trying to save these people from.

  In the darkness of my cell, more and more images light up inside my memory as V kneels outside the door uttering an Enochian Key, believing it is a way to summon his Lord and communicate on a personal level. A flash of his slender frame and dark, piercing eyes creeps into my consciousness and I recall the feeling of his hand around my throat. This dissolves into the vision of the gargoyle-like figure I witnessed in the woods at Beltane, skulking around the girl I had tried to save, creeping around in the shadows undetected. It flits further back in time, eight months ago, when I saw him in the church on Parsons Green at Samhain, lighting a candle, whispering to the ceiling.

  He’s been with me from the very beginning.

  He has no real faith.

  He is the desperate one.

  Paranoia is the next emotion to set in. Why am I still alive? Why are we linked? Question after question materialising. What does he want from me? Why am I here? What is he going to do with me? My insides go cold at the thought of my probable death, and I say my own prayer for protection and safety to counteract his, hoping I can save my own soul in the way that I have tried with every one of his victims.

  But the minutes drag into days, and weeks pass before I learn that he is continuing his killing spree in my name, and those weeks have to turn into months before he finally explains it to me. Three months must pass before my destiny is confirmed and revealed to me in the most peculiar way. Only then will I know why my capture was so important, my containment vital and my eventual conclusion inevitable.