Blood & Magic

by George Barlow

  “I could… give you a visitor pass I suppose and a… temporary key fob to get around the building,” she paused, “although, that is against policy. I should check with Dr. Calder.”

  “You really don’t want to bother him, do you? This is official business and I don’t think he will appreciate you wasting his time. After all, you know why I am here and I know you want to do the right thing and assist me in, what is, a very serious matter. I’d hate for there to be complaints raised about obstruction from your department. Anyway, it is not for me to tell you what to do, I am sure you will make the right decision,” Meyer said.

  He wasn’t sure if he’d over egged it, but he supposed he would find out the result of his suggestions soon enough. The mousy girl reached across the desk towards the phone and paused, inches from the handset. There was conflict in her eyes, she didn’t want to be wasting anybody’s time, or obstructing a very serious investigation. She knew what Dr Calder would say, that they should do the right thing and cooperate with any official investigation.

  “Here is your visitor’s pass and a temporary key fob, Harry is in the prep room. Take the elevator through those doors to the basement and it’s the third door on the right,” she said.

  “Thank you, you have been most helpful,” Meyer said.

  He turned and headed towards the double doors that lay between the reception desk and the inside of the morgue. Reaching the security entrance, Meyer swiped the access key fob and with a click, the doors in front of him unlocked.

  “Wait!” the mousy girl said, suddenly coming to her senses. “I don’t think this is right, I should let Dr Calder know you here.”

  She reached again for the phone. Meyer needed to do something quickly or the whole situation was about to get a lot more complicated. He reached out with his thoughts and stole the one piece of information he knew might do the trick.

  “Katie,” he said. “Stop.”

  She stopped momentarily, the mixture of the use of her name, the pressure from Meyer’s power and the command to stop temporarily freezing her.

  “Katie, you have done everything right and I will be making a recommendation to Dr Calder about how efficient you have been. There is nothing to worry about, you can trust me,” Meyer said.

  There was a pause while she processed this and Meyer felt the distinct moment when she buckled under the weight of his suggestions. Magus was wonderful sometimes, especially for the simpler things such as retrieving a name, a trick he always used at parties.

  “You’re right, sorry Dr. Drake,” she said.

  Meyer continued in.

  The thing about clinical environments like morgues, hospitals and labs, is that they all have the same distinctive smell. Disinfectant. It fills the air and burns the senses, the reassurance that everything is clean and germ free, with the constant undertone of why that needs to be the case. Meyer shuddered at the thought, squirting some hand sanitiser from a dispenser on the wall and rubbing it vigorously through his fingers.

  He followed the receptionist's instructions and found himself in a small lab filled with medical equipment being prepared for use in some part of the facility. In the corner of the room, huddled over a tray of what looked like scalpels, stood a stocky man with a balding head. He must have only been about 5ft tall, although that may have been an exaggeration.

  “Who are you?” he said, turning as Meyer entered the lab.

  “I am looking for Harry Watson,” Meyer said.

  The man put down the scalpel he held in his short fingered hands. “You’ve found him, what do you want?”

  As he spoke, the man met Meyer’s gaze. A subtle approach wasn’t going to work here, he was far too suspicious.

  “Differas personalitatem.”

  Meyer reached out with his thoughts and entered the man’s mind. Full on interrogation seemed unnecessary, Meyer needed something quick, yet powerful. A personality spike should do the trick, everyone always had at least one persona that was helpful.

  First, he needed to set the scene in Harry Watson’s mind, that was inevitably the first step in any mental attack. For the personality spike, Meyer went traditional. One massive room, fading into a blur at the horizon. In the middle, stood Harry Watson, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt beneath a lab coat. Meyer stood across from him, wearing a rather fetching tweed suit, a mirror image of the clothes he was wearing in reality.

  Like cells undergoing mitosis, Harry Watson’s personalities began to multiply. First there were two of him, then four, then eight. The process continued, parts stopping splitting early as that aspect of the personality was unable to be divided any further, until Meyer stood before twenty versions of him. Immediately, his personalities starting talking amongst themselves and the white room erupted with noise.

  “I would like to talk about the 15th,” Meyer said, with an exaggerated cough. The conversations trickled to a stop, all attention focused on him.

  “Who the hell are you, I’ll give you the 15th,” One of Harry Watson’s personalities shouted, charging towards Meyer.

  This was the personality representing anger and Meyer was glad to sort this one out early on. As the personality got close, Meyer raised his walking stick and swung it with all his strength like a golf club. It hit the personality side on, sending him flying across the room with an impossible force, completely disproportionate to the effort Meyer had injected. The personality disappeared into the whiteness and the others turned to Meyer with a mix of expressions to match their corresponding personalities. As no other personality made an immediate charge for Meyer, he took that as an indicator to continue.

  “Back to the evening when the body disappeared,” Meyer said.

  All of the personalities began to shake their heads.

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Didn’t see a thing.”

  “What you on about?”

  “The 15th?”

  They all spoke in jumbled synchronicity.

  “So the body just disappeared?” Meyer said.

  “We didn’t see anything,” they all said in chorus.

  “You saw nobody here that night?”

  “Nobody,” they all said together again.

  The word reverberated around the white space but, as it finished, there was another sound echoing across the room. Laughter. It was faint and came from the back of the group. Meyer walked into the crowd, pushing the other personas aside until he found the source. It belonged to a version of Harry Watson who stood coyly, a massive smile across his face. Meyer knew what emotion he represented immediately.

  “Why are you laughing?” Meyer said.

  “No reason, just happy,” the personality said.

  “You are happy when you think about the night of the 15th?”

  “You are going to ask what I saw and I know that I didn’t see anything.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I know it.”

  “And you didn’t see anyone?”

  The personality smiled and laughed again. To this persona’s right stood another and, judging by the expression that reminded Meyer of a portly child eyeing a chocolate bar, Meyer took him to be lust.

  “Nobody, we know to say that,” the personalities of happiness and lust said together.

  “We are all friends here. What are you so happy about?”

  “Perfection,” they said, before realising it and quickly rushing to correct themselves. “Nothing, we saw nothing.”

  The two began to squabble like deer fighting, each blaming the other for the outburst.

  “Perfection? Can I take it we are we talking about a woman? Can’t imagine she was perfect,” Meyer said.

  They both stopped fighting and stared at Meyer intensely.

  “She was perfect, absolute perfection. Her hair, her lips, her body…” they said, as lust began to drool.

  “What was her name?”

  “No name, she didn’t have a name. She said to say she had no name… we saw nothing.�
�

  The other personalities started to flicker in and out of existence as the conversation turned to this woman.

  “No name? Well, I suppose it can’t have been that nice a name then. Probably something horrible, no doubt?” Meyer said.

  “It was not, it was a lovely name. The best name. The only name,” lust said.

  “Ah, it was perfection, told to us in a whisper,” happiness said.

  “Liars,” Meyer said.

  “I’m not a liar, she was perfection. Sabrina will love me for ever, and I will love her,” lust said.

  Meyer smiled, “Thank you.”

  - Chapter 34 -

  Like the night

  “Somebody has got to have good news for me,” Alex said.

  The room fell silent.

  Alex had spent her Monday researching Byron. Apart from being a ‘person of interest,’ he had no criminal convictions, although his name popped up with regards blackmail cases, robberies, murders, fraud, the list went on and on. She had even tried talking to detectives who had investigated him, but all gave her the same story. There was no evidence that Byron had any knowledge or involvement in the illegal acts, but every single one believed he had actually orchestrated them in some way or another. Byron was exactly that, the puppet master and he would not have set up the dinner between Charlie and her without reason. It had been a trap and Alex had gleefully walked into it.

  “Well, I found something,” Dimitri said.

  There was a quiet again across the room, but this time for a different reason.

  “Would you like to share?” Alex said.

  “Well, instead of waiting for the rehab reports to come over, I followed them up myself at the clinic. Turned out that this Ben Morris character had a record. I said that on our systems, he ain’t got any criminal record, but this guy showed me paper copies of Met case reports, regarding two arrests for dealing. Apparently our victim had quite a drug problem, so much so, that his girlfriend ends up dead and he is accused of giving her an OD. Problem was, when we showed up to arrest him, he was high as a kite and claimed not to remember anything. The case fell apart, we had no witnesses and the evidence wasn’t good enough to prove he had actually done anything,” Dimitri said.

  “But this went to court? How can we have no record of any of this?” Alex said.

  “I’m not sure, every case file is available through the Police National Computer Database. I did a search, but this just doesn’t show up,” Drew said.

  “How is that possible?” Alex said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Anyway, case falls apart and he goes into rehab. Guy at the centre said he was completely crazed, that this Ben bloke had near enough admitted to drugging up the girlfriend while talking in his therapy sessions,” Dimitri said.

  “We need to go through all the records and check we haven’t missed anything,” Alex said. “I’m talking about heading to the archives and sifting through what they have. They’ll be paper records of any of these incidents, but I don’t think we should just be looking for cases involving the victims. We need to check case files for each police division where the victims lived at any point in the past few years. Trawl through everything, talk to the archivists and see if the names come up anywhere.”

  “And when did you become the boss?” Minerva said.

  “Alex is right, this is our lead,” Drew said.

  “But that’s thousands of records across tens of police boroughs,” Dimitri said.

  “I know,” Alex said.

  “It will take months,” Minerva said.

  “In which case, we should get started. I want everyone on this. We need to get the tech guys to find out where that record went.”

  “Should I talk to Nick?” Alex said.

  “I can handle it,” Drew said.

  The room descended into noise and Alex left the protests, returning to desk. One unread message sat in her inbox, the sender listed as ‘Unknown’ and the subject ‘Favour’. Alex double clicked the message and a window popped up on screen.

  She walks in beauty, like the night

  Of cloudless climes and starry skies

  If Alex wasn’t mistaken, they were lines were from the poem ‘She Walks in Beauty’ by Lord Byron. Beneath it, were two attachments labelled ‘catch_1’ and ‘catch_2’.

  “Dimitri,” Alex called to him and he took a seat beside her.

  “Is this what I think it is?” Dimitri said.

  “Just came in.”

  She passed him one of her headphones and plugged the jack into the computer. Clicking on the first video link, it opened to a black screen before starting to play. The video overlooked the house on Bedford row, where the Greys Inn victim was first attacked. The time stamp in the lower right corner read ’21:05’ and the date, the 15th - the night of the murder. They watched for a moment as the street remained empty, until a man in a long black coat walked along the road. He moved freely, his steps measured, pausing at the door to the house. The man turned to look across the street and Alex paused the video. The details of his face had been etched into her mind as he lay dead just nights before and there he was, the Greys Inn victim.

  He entered the house and the video continued on for a while, Dimitri and Alex staying perfectly still as they waited for what it would reveal. Ten minutes in, a black shadow appeared at the corner of the screen, before it moved swiftly toward the camera, almost gliding across the street. Alex and Dimitri leant in, scanning the screen for it with no avail, when a pair of bright blue eyes overtook the screen. The camera jerked and the picture turned to static as they both jumped out of her skin.

  “What the hell was that?” Dimitri said.

  “I don’t know, a man?” Alex said.

  “It was more like a ghost.”

  “There is no such thing, for God’s sake get a grip.”

  “How could someone climb up to the camera that fast and were they… eyes?”

  He was right. The camera was at a height of three stories and whoever this shadow was, they had climbed it in an instant.

  “Maybe he is an acrobat or one of those, what do you call them?” Alex said.

  “Street runners?”

  “There has to be some explanation.”

  Alex closed the video and opened the second file. The video showed the back of the morgue, the time signature 3am. A man walked out of the far door, a black bag slumped over his shoulder. A woman walked with him, a hood covering her face, but he was not as careful. Just before they moved out of sight, he adjusted the weight of the body bag on his shoulder and Alex paused the video, printing the screen. This was her killer, the man who had taken the body of the Greys Inn victim.

  The video window closed to reveal the email, the messaging transforming slowly before them.

  And all that's best of dark and bright

  Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

  Thus mellow'd to that tender light

  Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

  With a flicker of the screen, the email was gone from Alex's inbox. Frantic, Alex clicked on the Trash icon, but it wasn’t there.

  “Damn!” Alex said.

  “It self-deleted, just the kind of trick Byron would play,” Dimitri said.

  “You saw what the video showed.”

  “I did, but now it’s gone. I told you we couldn’t tryst him.”

  “What other options have we had?”

  “Let me call the tech guys, maybe they can-”

  “No, it won’t do any good. At least we have this,” Alex said, pushing her chair across to the printer. She placed the single sheet of paper in front of Dimitri, printed upon it a blurred photograph of their killer.

  “Result,” Dimitri said, taking it from her hand and waving it like a winning lottery ticket, “I’ll get a search out on this guy immediately.”

  Alex left Dimitri to sort out a search for the man and climbed the stairs to Superintendent Stroud’s office. This time, unlike the last, she waited for th
e secretary to alert Nick to her presence. Before Alex could speak to her however, Alice appeared from Nick’s office, a wad of files tucked against her bosom.

  “Hello Alex,” Alice said.

  Alex looked her up and down. Damn her and her really expensive business suit. She had an amazing figure to match, naturally, and probably a team of hair and makeup artists to get her ready every day. Alex suddenly felt incredibly self-conscious, which was ridiculous, why the hell did she care?

  “Hello, Alice isn’t it?”

  “How goes your investigation?”

  “It is on-going. What are you doing here?”

  “I handle prosecution on a lot of cases for your unit. It means I often work very closely with your father which is, I imagine, why you are so frosty towards me?”

  How direct was she? She had a point, Alex didn’t like the idea of this Alice woman being near her father at all, but to call her out on it?

  “Your relationship with my father is none of my concern,” Alex said.

  “Our relationship is strictly professional. There is no need to worry.”

  “Who said I was worried?”

  “One word of warning Alex, be careful who you mix with. Some people are better at playing the game than you think,” Alice said. With a sad smile, she readjusted the papers and walked past her, out of the office.

  Alex stood perfectly still for a moment. Did Alice know about Byron? Was that what her comment had been about? But how could she?

  “Detective Stroud, the Superintendent will see you now,” the secretary said.

  Was Alice involved somehow and, if she was, where did that leave her father in all this?

  The secretary cleared her throat, “Detective Stroud?”

  - Chapter 35 -

  Life is a balancing act

  Meyer had provided Henry with a host of books to read, their covers bound in varying shades of crimson, cobalt, emerald and black leather. All of which were unfortunately written in Latin. Even the modern ones, and by modern that meant from the 1930s, were both concealed by the secret hand of his family, which Henry instinctively knew how to translate, and by the fact they were written in the dead language. Henry found the Latin dictionary did not leave his side from one paragraph to the next, despite the fact Meyer had insisted his genetic memory would make the task trivial. The books belonged to the Fellows of eras past, and were, as far as Henry could tell, a guide to how to cope with being an Inquisitor in a world that was beyond understanding. The advice he had read so far was simple: survive.