The Thirteen Hallows

by Michael Scott; Colette Freedman

  It would seem like an open-and-shut case,” Victoria Heath said tiredly, heels clicking as she walked along the tiled morgue floor. It was just after ten and she’d been on her feet for nearly sixteen hours.

  “There’s a but in your voice…,” Tony Fowler said.

  “I don’t believe she had the time. It’s almost impossible.”

  “I agree.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure.” Tony Fowler fished in his pockets and produced the coffee-impregnated handkerchief he kept for visits to the morgue. “I think Miller had help. A friend or friends who started the proceedings, as it were.”

  “And you think this corpse was one of those friends?”

  “I’ll lay money on it. The witnesses on the train said they knew each other. Maybe this friend was trying to blackmail Miller…and Miller killed him.”

  “But why? None of this makes any sense.”

  Tony Fowler grinned sourly. “After a while you’ll realize that there’s a lot of police work that will make very little sense: the killings, the muggings, the rapes, the robberies. Sometimes there’s a pattern; however, usually it’s just a mess.”

  Victoria Heath shook her head. “I don’t want to believe that.”

  “When you’ve been on the force as long as I have,” Fowler said, pushing open the heavy swinging doors, “you will.”

  “THE SUBJECT is a white male, early twenties, twenty-two, twenty-three, six feet in height, a hundred and forty pounds…which is underweight for this height,” the pathologist added, glancing across at the two police officers. Fowler was staring at the pathologist, deliberately avoiding the naked body on the metal tray; Heath stared fixedly at the headless corpse.

  “The subject shows extensive puncture marks along both arms, indicating systematic drug usage—”

  “Mac,” Fowler said suddenly, “we’ve both had an incredibly long day. Do we have to stand here while you do the full routine? Just give us the highlights, eh? In layman’s terms.”

  “Sure.” Gavin Mackintosh grinned. He reached up and turned off the dangling microphone. The enormous Scotsman proceeded more informally. “What you have here is a wasted junkie. He’s been shooting up for two, maybe three years.”

  He turned the arms, showing the track marks, some healed to black spots, others still scabbed and crusted. “When he ran out of veins on one arm, he moved over to the other. And if you check between his toes, you’ll see he tried shooting up there too. He’s underweight, as I noted, jaundiced, hepatitis, maybe even HIV positive.”

  “I don’t want his medical history. I want to know how he died.”

  The Scotsman grinned again. “Someone cut his head off—that’s how he died.”

  “That was the glass in the train window…,” Sergeant Heath said tightly.

  Mackintosh shook his head. He lifted the young man’s broken head off a metal tray on a side table and held it aloft. Victoria Heath felt her stomach flip.

  “He was struck three times, here…here on the face, and”—Mackintosh turned the head easily, almost like a basketball—“here at the back of the neck. These two blows were struck by a flat, blunt object, the third blow was from an edged weapon. This blow severed his head and drove him forward and into the window. Falling glass severed flesh and tendons on the body, but the youth was already dead by that time. We excavated the wound and discovered slivers and flakes of oxidized metal. Rust to you and me. In my opinion, this young man was killed by a sword. A rusty sword.”

  “A sword!” Fowler snapped. “None of the witnesses reported seeing a sword.”

  “They said it was an iron bar,” Victoria added.

  “A sword is an iron bar…with an edge,” Mackintosh said. “The two blows here were caused by the flat of the sword. The killing stroke was with the edge of the sword. I’ll bet my pension that your murder weapon is a rusting sword.”

  “This is getting too weird,” Victoria whispered.

  “We haven’t even come close to the weird part.” Mackintosh moved his hands down the corpse’s torso. “Look at our young friend. Can you tell me what’s missing? Besides his head, I mean,” he added with a grin.

  Tony Fowler looked at the body and shook his head.

  Victoria Heath swallowed hard and forced herself to look at the body. “Blood,” she said finally. “I would have thought there’d be more blood.”

  “Bravo. There are eight pints of blood in the human body. In a traumatic wound such as this, you would expect to lose quite a lot, until the heart stopped beating and circulation ceased. But there would still be some blood left in the corpse.”

  “The train carriage looked like an abattoir,” Tony observed.

  “A little blood goes a long way.” Mackintosh jabbed a finger at the corpse on the table. “We estimated he lost about two pints in the carriage. However, our friend here has no blood in his body. None,” he mused. “It’s as if he’s been sucked dry.”

  34

  This time Elliot was taking no chances.

  Although his employer hadn’t threatened him explicitly, Elliot had heard the implicit threat in his voice, understood it, and known that this time he couldn’t afford to fail. He still didn’t know how the man had gotten his number or how he knew that Miller had given the sword to Judith Walker’s nephew. He had the feeling that it was time he started thinking about a holiday, a nice long holiday, far away. Australia was nice at this time of year.

  He had driven to Scarsdale Villas in Skinner’s van; Elliot wasn’t going to risk having someone see his car in the vicinity of what could turn out to be a murder site. He was dressed in army surplus fatigues and cheap sneakers, and he’d pulled on a pair of surgical gloves before he had climbed into the van. Even if anything should go wrong and he was spotted, he had a cast-iron alibi: He was playing Texas hold ’em with his buddies in Chelsea; three solid citizens would vouch for the fact that he won the pot that evening and sprang for a bottle of seventeen-year-old bourbon to celebrate.

  Robert Elliot was a man who did not believe in taking chances.

  The only people who’d know he was there were his two companions, Skinner and a blank-eyed mulatto youth named Karl, whom Elliot suspected was Skinner’s slave or lover or possibly both. If necessary, Elliot would dispose of them both without hesitation: a lover’s suicide pact. The police wouldn’t even investigate.

  “You’re in good form, Mr. Elliot,” Skinner said, watching the small man’s thin lips curl in a smile.

  “This should be an amusing evening,” he murmured as he glanced along the row of houses, checking the numbers.

  This was a quiet street; they would not be able to let the boy scream. “Get in quick, and get him under control,” he ordered as they strolled down the street, taking their time, drawing no attention to themselves. “We want the bag Miller gave him and the sword. And then let’s see what other information we can get out of him.”

  “How do you know Miller was here, Mr. Elliot?” Skinner asked quietly.

  Robert Elliot grinned. “I have my sources.”

  35

  Owen Walker stood in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, sipping the Earl Grey tea he had just made, looking at the bag the wild-eyed stranger had given him. It was still on the floor where she’d left it. He’d been half tempted to contact the police but dismissed the idea as ridiculous. What was he going to tell them: An exhausted girl brought me a message from my aunt? He had tried phoning Aunt Judith, but the phone had been engaged, which was a little odd given the lateness of the hour. But he knew his aunt often worked through the night. A cursory glance through the contents of the bag revealed that it was filled with manuscript papers and some old letters. Why would his aunt send him a bag of papers? And why didn’t she use the regular post? It all felt rather covert. Maybe his aunt was beginning to lose it. She spent her days and nights living in a fantasy world; it was only a matter of time before she lost contact with reality.

  Owen put his cup on the table and sank into the bat
tered, balding fireside chair, feeling a vague twinge of guilt. When was the last time he had visited his aunt?

  Owen reached for the telephone and hit the redial button. The busy tone cut in immediately. He frowned. On the off chance that he might be phoning the wrong number, he checked it in his BlackBerry, then dialed again. It was still busy.

  He glanced at the clock, tapping the phone against his bottom lip. Ten forty-five. He dialed the number again. Still busy, but now he was beginning to think that it was out of order. She had a cell phone, but he knew there was no point in calling it: She rarely turned it on.

  Owen looked at the clock again. He’d call her in the morning, and if it was still busy, he’d take the first train to Bath.

  He was reaching for his aunt’s bag when he heard footsteps on the stairs leading down to his basement flat. A shadow passed his window and then a second and a third.

  Owen Walker peered through the curtains. Three men were standing outside his window. A skinhead, a younger man with a tight-cropped haircut, and a short, bulky man. He saw the bulky man reach up to press the doorbell and noted the signet ring on his little finger…and then realized that it was indistinct, the pattern blurred, and he recognized the effect: He had watched enough episodes of Law & Order. The short man was wearing flesh-colored surgical gloves.

  The bell rang.

  Owen jerked back from the window, but not before the short man had turned and looked directly at him and smiled. From inside his pocket he pulled out a pair of pliers. The look on his face was terrifying.

  Heart thundering, Owen scrambled for his jacket. He had to get his phone.

  And all the while the doorbell rang continuously.

  ELLIOT KEPT his finger on the bell while Skinner worked on the lock. Most people never expected to be mugged, never thought they’d be attacked in their homes or that they’d be burgled. That sort of thing always happened to someone else, so when it did happen, they were completely unprepared. Right now Mr. Walker was probably rigid with fear. The constant jangling of the bell would set his nerves on edge. Maybe he was looking for a weapon, a kitchen knife or a poker; Elliot hoped so. He always made a point of using their weapons against them.

  Skinner grunted with satisfaction as the lock clicked open.

  And the three men stepped into the hall.

  “I’VE CALLED the police.” Owen attempted to slow his ragged breathing and think clearly. His heart was thumping so hard in his chest that his entire body was vibrating. The adrenaline racing through his system made his fingers tremble, and he was having trouble turning on his phone. He punched in 999. He would just have to hold off the intruders until the police arrived. “They’re on the way.”

  He caught the edge of the table and pushed it up against the door, then snatched up a poker from the grate. There was no escape through the back; the basement flat gave onto a tiny walled garden. There was no way out through the barred windows, and he knew the old woman who lived in the flat directly above his was half-deaf, so even if he screamed for help, no one would hear.

  There was movement in the hall, floorboards creaking but no other sounds, and he found that even more frightening.

  Suddenly the sitting room door moved, banging against the table he’d pushed up against it. Then the door was suddenly flung back, moving the table a couple of feet. Gripping the poker in one hand as he tried to grip the phone in the other, Owen Walker swung it at the window, shattering the glass, slivers nicking his forehead, biting into his cheek. Pressing his mouth to the opening, he started to scream, “Help!…I need some help!…”

  “Hello, emergency services, how may I help you?…”

  Heart pounding, Owen shrieked into the phone, “There’s a break-in. My address is Scarsdale Vil—”

  The foul-smelling rubber-gloved hand pressed over his mouth while other hands grabbed his shoulders and dragged him, kicking and struggling, away from the window. The phone dropped to the floor, the back falling off, spilling the battery onto the carpet, ending the call.

  “You should not have screamed,” the short, bulky man said softly. He brought his face so close to Owen’s that his hair brushed his skin. Owen recoiled from the touch, twisting his head away from the minty sweetness on the man’s breath. He was shoved into a chair, and two youths—the skinhead and his companion with the close-cropped hair—pressed down on his shoulders, ensuring that he couldn’t move.

  “No, you should not have screamed,” the man repeated. “Nor should you have called the police,” he added, grinding his heel into the BlackBerry, destroying it. Standing back, he watched dispassionately as his colleagues tied and gagged Owen. The cloth they jammed into his mouth tore the soft skin on either side of his lips, and the young man kept fighting the urge to throw up. If he did, he could easily choke on his own vomit.

  The small, cold-eyed man stooped to lift the poker off the floor. “And what were you going to use this for, eh? To start a fire?” In the reflected streetlights, his lips shone wetly. He licked them suddenly, a quick flickering movement, then leaned forward to wrap iron-hard fingers around Owen’s jaw, biting into the flesh of his cheeks. “I’d like to start a fire with a pretty boy like you. I really would. We could have…such a good time together.” He allowed his hand to trail along the line of Owen’s throat, down his chest toward his groin. “But time is a luxury I don’t have. So I’ll be brief. Tell me what I want to know, and we’ll leave you alone. Lie to me, and I’ll hurt you. Badly. Do you understand me?…Do you?” he suddenly snarled.

  Owen nodded. He wasn’t sure if his message had gone through to the police. Even if they didn’t get his address, they must be able to track his cell phone…or they’d have heard the panic in his voice…. He had to stall for time…he had to—

  “A woman called Sarah Miller came to visit you today. What did she give you?” The short man abruptly whisked away the gag. Owen winced as blood oozed from his dry, chapped lips. “If you scream, I’ll break your fingers,” the man hissed, lifting the pliers, working the jaws inches from Owen’s eyes.

  “Miller…? I don’t…,” he began.

  The small man started shaking his head. “Don’t tell me you don’t know. That will upset me. You don’t want to see me upset, do you?” Holding Owen’s head in both hands, he moved it from side to side to side. “Good. Now, I know she was here. I know she gave you the bag. I want to know what she told you, where she is, and what you did with the bag.”

  Owen focused on the pain of his torn lips and continued to stare straight into his tormentor’s eyes. He knew what bag the small man was talking about: It was on the floor almost directly behind Elliot, where it must have fallen out of the chair. All Owen had to do was lower his head and he’d be looking at it.

  “A young woman came around a couple of hours ago,” he said quickly. “She had a bag with her. She claimed to have come from my aunt Judith. But when I spoke to my aunt, she said she’d never heard of her.”

  The small man struck Owen quickly, casually, expertly, the ring on his index finger catching him along the line of the jaw. A purplered welt appeared immediately. “I told you not to lie to me. You couldn’t have spoken to your aunt.” The small man’s grin was fixed, his forehead greasy with sweat. “Because she’s dead. My associates here killed her. Slowly. Oh, so slowly. I believe she died hard.”

  “Dead? No.”

  “Oh yes.” The skinhead standing behind Owen giggled, the sound wet with phlegm. “Dead. Very dead.”

  The small man’s fingers tightened on Owen’s jaw again, forcing his head back. “I want the bag and its contents. I want to know if the girl told you where she was staying.”

  “I don’t know,” Owen began.

  “I think you do.” The small man shoved the gag back into Owen’s mouth, caught his earlobe in the jaws of the pliers, and snapped it shut. The pain was incredible. Owen convulsed in the chair, grunting against the gag. “Answer me, or I’ll rip your ear off.” He eased the gag out of his mouth.

  �
��You can go and fu—”

  The small man closed his hands on Owen’s throat, fingers along the line of his windpipe, and squeezed. Suddenly Owen couldn’t breathe and the screams died in his chest.

  “Answer me!” the small man demanded, releasing his grip.

  Behind him, one of the youths giggled, the sound high-pitched and feminine.

  “I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you everything I know,” Owen gasped, knowing that the police would not arrive in time.

  36

  The one-eyed tramp huddled in the doorway and watched as the wild-eyed young woman appeared out of the shadows. She started across the street, then stopped, hovering indecisively, before darting back the way she had come and returning to the shadows.

  The tramp eased himself to a sitting position, and the paper bag in his lap hit the ground with a solid thump and rolled into the gutter, glass clinking and clunking. The tramp watched it, trying to remember if there had been anything left in the bottle. His memory wasn’t that good anymore. A shape loomed out of the shadows and the tramp drew back, but it was only the young woman again. Her foot hit the paper-wrapped bottle, sending it clinking farther into the gutter.

  “Who are you—what are you doing here?” the young woman whispered in alarm.

  The tramp shook his head quickly, keeping his face down, not meeting her gaze, streetlight washing half his face in yellow light and giving it an unhealthy cast. The thick bandage pasted over his left eye was filthy. “I’m nobody. I was just kipping here….”

  “How long have you been here?”

  The tramp frowned, trying to make sense of time. “A while,” he said eventually, then shook his head quickly. “A good while.”

  “Did you see some men pass by here a few moments ago?”

  The tramp nodded again. He had seen them and instinctively recognized them for what they were, survival instincts honed on the streets driving him back into the safety of the shadows. He squinted his single eye at the wild-eyed young woman. Was she with them? He didn’t think so….