Séance Infernale

by Jonathan Skariton

  The loud tone echoed around the flat but fell silent. Only a slight breeze from underneath the building’s main door stirred the wind chimes he had left hanging above his door so that he would know when Angela and her daughter had returned. He realized he would not need those anymore.

  When the doorbell rang again, he considered the possibility that whoever was on the other side of the door was not about to leave until he made them.

  As soon as he sensed her energy dwindle, he let her out of his sight and put the fire out with water from a bucket. He didn’t want to, of course, as the sight was stirring his insides with all the vile, unspeakable things he would do to her.

  He tiptoed through the hall and leaned forward to the peephole. On the other side was the unfamiliar face of a man holding a briefcase. He had a dimple on his right cheek, Elliot could see. The man had moved on and was rapping his knuckles for good measure on the door of the flat across the hall. There would be no reply, of course; neither Angela nor her daughter was there.

  After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, the man with the dimple let out a grunt and began to ascend the stairs in search of other customers.

  Eye pressed to the peephole, Elliot smiled. They were safe. The man was not looking for them. Elliot turned back to the room where Angela was held.

  After he was done beating her, she said, “Kill me.” She had the gag on, of course; but even if he had heard it, Elliot would have known she didn’t really mean it. They were destined to be together. He would be as gentle with her body as he had been with her heart. Even if that meant they should die together.

  35

  Heart pounding, Whitman drew back from the man who had hired him to find Sekuler’s film in the first place. Valdano’s eyes looked sunken and evil in the receding haze hovering around the tombstones.

  “Hello, Mr. Whitman.” With his free hand, Valdano frisked Whitman’s pockets, relieving him of his mobile phone.

  Five figures stepped through the iron entrance of the Covenanters’ Prison. First, Charlie and Elena, then Unibrow, and finally McBride and the second goon. Broken Nose was MIA; maybe a busted kneecap had been enough to make him quit.

  For a moment, no one said anything.

  Valdano shattered the silence. “Toss the notebook, McBride.” A sharp taunt.

  Whitman saw McBride’s eyes flicking sideways. Valdano noticed it, too.

  “Don’t even think about it, Detective McBride.” Simmering.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Whitman could see Valdano’s finger caressing the edge of the trigger. The air reeked of cleaning oil and gunpowder.

  “The cops will be here any minute,” McBride lied.

  Valdano laughed. “Then we’re going to have to finish this off, aren’t we?” Words boiling under the surface.

  “You’ll never get away with this, Valdano.”

  The cold bore of the gun dug into Whitman’s jaw. “Let’s see you bet your friend’s life on it.” Whitman felt his blood throbbing against the core of cold steel.

  “The fucking notes!” Valdano sputtered the words like rapid gunfire.

  “Why don’t we all just calm down.” McBride held the notebook by its spine, then tossed it in Valdano’s direction.

  “Slowly,” he said, ramming his fist on Whitman’s ribs.

  Whitman bent and picked up the notebook. As he handed it over to Valdano he could smell sandalwood and cologne mixed with musty sweat. Valdano took the notebook.

  “Mr. Ericsson,” he ordered the unibrowed limo driver. “The rope.”

  Ericsson did as he was told.

  “Now the mobile, Detective McBride.”

  McBride tossed her phone. It landed between Whitman’s feet. Again Whitman was made to pick it up and hand it to Valdano, who placed it in his jacket pocket. Valdano made a motion to McBride.

  “Toward me. Hands where I can see them.”

  McBride raised her arms and slowly placed them on the top of her head. She began dragging her feet in their direction.

  “Come on.”

  Whitman could see anger simmering in McBride’s eyes. Valdano saw it, too.

  “Don’t fuck with me, you cunt.”

  Whitman heard the movement. Charlie’s breath was caught in his mouth. A flash discharged in Whitman’s brain.

  Then the hard hush of silence.

  With a shock, successive flares of pain attacked his whole body. A pounding in his head. A strain on his back.

  Smells, firing his nostrils, burning all the way to his temples; damp, wet soil intermixed with…gasoline?

  Sounds: banging, crushing. Bumping noises around him, voices snarling at each other.

  He tried to lift his eyelids. Blurry figures and muffled dialogue. Nausea overcame him.

  He closed his eyes. Swallowed.

  Someone was searching his pockets.

  Another flash of pain came, simultaneous with a jolt.

  Whitman opened his eyes and realized he was inside the Black Mausoleum—George “Bluidy” Mackenzie’s vault. He couldn’t have been out for more than a few minutes; McBride, Elena, and Charlie were standing next to him, while Valdano and the two thugs towered before the mausoleum door, blocking the exit and impeding streaks of moonlight from the sky outside. Ericsson was holding a plastic container and pouring some kind of liquid around the crypt.

  Fear shot through Whitman as he realized what they were planning to do.

  “Welcome back,” Ericsson said with a malign smile.

  Valdano, gun still in hand, peered at Whitman. Behind him, the grilles in the wall cast rectangles of moonlight on the stonework. McBride’s purse and Charlie’s bag were lying on the ground outside, contents scattered like windblown leaves on the grass.

  “You don’t have to do this.” Charlie’s voice. He was all right. They were alive. For now.

  “On the contrary, my dear fellow.” Valdano’s eyes glimmered in the darkness. “It seems I have no other choice.”

  “You sick bastard,” McBride said. “You burnt up that film archive, didn’t you? How long do you think you have before the police find you and put you behind bars?” Her voice was ragged from exertion and rage.

  “If that were true, what would I have to lose with a few more bodies?” He turned to Whitman, eyes burning with malice. “Nobody’s going to miss you. Now…tell me what you know.”

  They stared at him blankly.

  “The riddle! What do you know about the final riddle?”

  They were silent. McBride spoke first. “You’re going to kill us anyway. Why should we tell you?”

  “If you’ve been right about one thing, it is this, Detective. But it seems you do not have a choice here: I can arrange it so that your friends”—he gestured to the gasoline container—“will burn slowly.”

  He moved the muzzle of the gun to Charlie’s face. “What do you say now, Mr. Carmichael?”

  Charlie looked at him, his chin resting on Valdano’s Glock.

  —

  You missed your mark, Johnson.

  He had lost her.

  A few hours earlier, D.I. Guy Johnson had seen the three men enter Mary King’s Close after McBride and the others. He had been a cop long enough to know the men meant trouble.

  But the more he waited, the more uncertain he became that anyone would come out of there.

  He eyed the mobile phone, then pressed a few buttons, scrolling up and down his outgoing messages. He had sent her eight text messages. “WHERE ARE YOU TALK TO ME” had been the most recent one. Fifty-four minutes ago. There had been no reply.

  It took him the better part of two hours to realize that McBride’s pals and the trio of men had used another exit from the close. Even before he went in to investigate, he knew he was too late.

  He spent most of the time after that walking around, before ending up at the King’s Wark, on the Shore, with two sets of his old drinking pals. He couldn’t recall any of their conversations.

  After last call, he headed out, not sure where to go. H
e knew he wouldn’t be able to get to sleep. Then there was that raging thirst ravaging his throat and lungs, never leaving him.

  There was a flash on the mobile’s screen. Low battery.

  He peered out at the moonlight filtering through the window drapes. The first time he’d been late after a night out with his fellow officers, his wife had scolded him. “I’ll never be one of the old-timers,” he’d told her. But times had changed.

  The screen flashed again in warning.

  The opportunity for a stealth approach had long since passed. He’d missed the mark. Now his partner had vanished into thin air. Maybe she was d—

  He couldn’t finish the thought.

  He finally made his decision.

  Redial.

  The phone rang, and rang, and with every ring he kept thinking she would pick up and he would hear her voice.

  The familiar greeting of McBride’s voicemail.

  With the sound of the ringing still echoing in his ears, Johnson shut his eyes.

  —

  “I’ll tell you if you agree not to kill my friends,” Charlie said in a trembling voice.

  “Let me hear it and I shall consider your proposition.”

  “He’s lying,” McBride said.

  Valdano made a quick movement with the gun, hitting McBride across the nose. She held her face in pain.

  Charlie played the only card he had. “We’ve found the names. The people he mentions are all buried here.” He exhaled deeply. “Sekuler…He seems to want us to use something about these people. My guess is”—he swallowed—“it’s their year of death.”

  Valdano flashed him one of his conspiratorial smiles. “And how did you surmise this?”

  “He talks about counting grains in his letter—some hourglass of life.”

  “Close, Mr. Carmichael. So close.” He gave a wicked smile. “But it’s their age, not when they died.” He laughed. “I suppose you would have figured it out sooner or later. Too bad it’s too late now.”

  He stepped back and nodded. Ericsson aimed his gun at Charlie. Charlie squeezed his eyes shut.

  The seconds froze.

  Valdano’s pocket began to sing.

  Someone was calling McBride’s phone. There was a split second while they registered where the out-of-context sound was coming from, and another as Valdano took out the mobile and stared at it, confirming it was the source.

  McBride grasped the second goon by the collar and swung his body in front of her, using him as a human shield, then forcibly guided his gun in the direction of Unibrow and fired it.

  Unibrow got a few rounds off, which landed in McBride’s human shield. He was hit almost simultaneously. The light coming through the door increased as his body dropped to the floor.

  Valdano turned around and located the source of the shooting. McBride pointed the gun at him.

  “Drop it,” McBride said. “Drop it n—”

  But Valdano had already fired his shot. The bullet connected with Ericsson’s body before McBride’s shot knocked the gun out of Valdano’s hands and onto the ground.

  Valdano went down and lay still for several seconds. Whitman scanned the scene: Unibrow’s face lay connected to the ground, in a pool of blood; McBride had let the second goon’s dead body drop and was shifting her gaze to Valdano, who had not been hit; and Valdano’s gun…

  Valdano’s gun had landed at Elena Genhagger’s feet.

  She picked it up and everybody stared at her. Seconds felt like centuries.

  She began to hand the gun to Whitman.

  Valdano rose from the ground and flew toward her, knocking her sideways with an elbow to the face. Her head ricocheted off the stonework. His left hand grasped her hair from behind and jerked her head up, using her body as a fail-safe. Vertebrae crunched in her upper spine and neck. His other hand held the gun. He was in charge again. He could now take care of his competitors and go after the film’s secret—by himself.

  McBride dropped the weapon even before Valdano ordered her to. “Good girl. Now back away,” he said, “or I blow her head off.”

  McBride stared at Unibrow’s body; his breath was fading fast. She then looked up at Valdano. “He’s still alive. He needs a doctor.”

  “Then his death will be on your conscience. Get in there.”

  Valdano retreated outside, still using Elena as his shield. McBride paced into the mausoleum.

  “Now. If you move, she dies. Call the cops, she dies. Come after me…and you all die. Do you understand?”

  Valdano and his hostage retreated farther until they were out of sight.

  —

  McBride scooped Ericsson’s gun and her mobile from the stone floor. She called 999 and told the dispatcher that two men had been shot inside Covenanters’ Prison.

  She knelt beside Ericsson and felt his pulse. Weak, but there. She placed her hand on his forehead. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Paramedics are on the way.”

  She felt someone behind her and turned to see Whitman and Charlie. “Elena’s car is probably still outside,” she said, and when they faced her, she got up. “Well, are we going after that son of a bitch or not?”

  —

  Valdano and Elena reached a car parked outside the kirkyard. Valdano placed the gun inside his jacket and warned Elena not to try anything. He opened the door and shoved her inside.

  —

  As he approached the Forth Road Bridge, Valdano glanced away from the deserted road; Elena Genhagger was bound in the passenger seat. Even in the poor light, he could see she had strained at her bonds. Her wrists were chafed and beginning to bleed. If she had hopes of escaping or striking out—however unlikely that was—she didn’t show it. In fact, her face was calm.

  “I knew you wouldn’t keep your end of the deal,” Valdano said. “Trying to pin me against Whitman so you could find Sekuler’s secret.”

  She shrugged. “It’s a piece of family history.”

  “Is that right, now?” he whispered. “Now your presence only serves to ensure my safe escape.”

  “If you wanted an escape, maybe you should have stayed home and watched a nice film,” she replied.

  “Shut it.” He reached into his front pocket and took out a crumpled bit of paper.

  The names on the tombstones. Their ages of death. They had to mean something. The last piece of the puzzle.

  They were almost on the bridge when he noticed the headlights: they were being followed. On either side of them, the moon-drenched night.

  With both hands tied, Elena reached into her pocket and caressed the handle of the knife.

  36

  The cold of the winter night howled around them. Hail was slicing through the darkness. Whitman held the door handle with one hand and McBride’s arm with the other. He gazed in the rearview mirror. In the backseat, Charlie enjoyed the surge of adrenaline from the roller-coaster ride of McBride’s driving. He had placed his head between the two front seats, gripping each edge, getting the most out of the ride.

  “That bastard,” McBride said. “He’s not going to get away with this.”

  Whitman couldn’t shift his eyes from the road. Serpico was a reckless tailgater, but the darkness on either side of their car also plagued him. Maybe it was the codeine, though the dread still felt very real.

  The roads were slippery, the glazed surface beneath them lurking like the devil. When the car took the last roundabout before the bridge, Whitman felt their side wheels lose just enough contact with the asphalt to make him shrill. Rental car. Deathtrap Car Hire had probably bought it from a flea market.

  They were out of the city now. Ahead, Forth Road Bridge loomed in the backdrop of the hail. Too late for traffic. Almost no cars.

  In the distance, the slash of red taillights. They were closing in. But Valdano was the kind of nutcase who could go all the way if the pumping blood and the burning rage permitted. They were chasing him now; they were the pursuers, powered by the cut-rate tires of the Ford. But Whitman didn’t feel safe. He
looked out the passenger-side window and could see only hail slicing the black void; it was bad out there.

  “I don’t want to leave my bones in the Swiss’s shit car, Serpico. Keep it safe.”

  McBride gave him a sideways glance. “Where’s your bollocks, big man?” She jerked the wheel and zigzagged to pass a civilian’s car. “It’s called a seat belt,” McBride said. “Use it.”

  The final exit ramp was coming up. Valdano’s car accelerated past it.

  The road fanned out, bringing a row of tollbooths into focus. Beyond them, the magnificent expanse of the bridge, the “Forth Wonder,” in the night. Its immensity slanted into the distance ahead, while its overseers, towers of high-tensile steel, loomed above, their parallel catenary wire cables suspending the beast.

  There was only one place left to go now, and that was onto it.

  Whitman wondered if Valdano had exact change for the toll. He imagined the film collector’s small talk with the tollman, maybe thank—

  “Oh, shit, what’s he doing?” Charlie said.

  Mere yards separated the two cars now; they could see the Mercedes’s rear. The overhead lighting allowed them to make out one head, in the driver’s seat.

  “I can’t see her.”

  “Is he stopping?” Charlie said. “What the hell?”

  But it wasn’t that at all. Red taillights flashed. At first they thought Valdano was slowing down. But they were wrong. Two more lights flashed.

  The Mercedes was reversing, and accelerating, its engine racing, its rear end lashing toward them. They saw what was about to happen. McBride white-knuckled the steering wheel. The Mercedes pounded into the front of their car, sending it back in a pivot, and the Ford skidded and darted around in the rain. They slid to a stop in the middle of the road.

  The Mercedes careered over the corner of the curb and hit the central barrier, snapping it off and veering through. There was a massive shower of sparks. Whitman couldn’t believe it.

  “That crazy bastard! He’s out of his mind!”

  Valdano’s car had found itself in the wrong lane. It accelerated, blaring north toward the southbound traffic, past the tollbooths on the other side of the road, and onto the bridge proper. At the last second, the car swerved and managed to avoid an oncoming cab, but the inevitable loomed only yards away.