The Sixth Soul

by Mark Roberts

  The priest laughed and looked at Brother Aidan, who said, ‘Why not?’

  Rosen typed in ‘Father Sebastian’ and within a second an ocean of matches came up but none, it seemed, immediately to match Father + Sebastian + Flint. He scrolled. Nothing. He turned to page two. In the middle, a page of obituaries for Roman Catholic priests. The priest’s name was there.

  Rosen opened the site and scrolled through the brief nutshells of the lives of dead priests.

  ‘Well, it can’t be you, obviously,’ said Rosen. ‘There are other people who share the same name, of course.’

  ‘Let me see . . .’ said the priest. He read out, ‘Father Sebastian, born Bolton, England, 1969, missionary to Kenya, died near Lake Victoria in a road traffic accident, 1998.’

  Rosen watched the priest closely.

  He looked back at the police officer.

  ‘You can’t believe everything you see on the internet, I guess,’ said Father Sebastian.

  From Rosen’s laptop, two loud sudden notes. Aidan dropped his glass, shards scattering across the stone floor, water spreading across the smooth surface. Sebastian didn’t seem to notice the accident, his attention fixed on the laptop.

  ‘What was that?’ Sebastian asked, then added, ‘Here, Aidan, let me help you.’

  ‘I’ve got an email,’ Rosen replied, but Sebastian was busy on his hands and knees, picking up pieces of jagged glass.

  Rosen opened it.

  From: Carol Bellwood

  Subject: Urgent!

  David, I’ve tried your phone several times. Get back asap. Call me as soon as you can. Development! Carol

  Rosen thanked the priests for their time and apologized for the suddenness of his departure.

  ‘God bless you, David Rosen!’ Father Sebastian’s voice followed Rosen as he swept out of the kitchen.

  Aidan turned to Sebastian.

  ‘You said you’d tell me why you wanted to speak to the police officer.’

  ‘Detective Rosen’s arrival reminded me of something. Of what the world does and doesn’t do, Aidan. It just doesn’t do faith. You saw the way he looked when he was searching out that information about Capaneus. He was humouring me, almost as if I’d committed an act of indecent exposure of the spirit. I wanted to help, that was all. But the world doesn’t believe in what it cannot see, own, eat or fornicate with. You know that. I know that.’

  Father Sebastian fell silent. Brother Aidan drew breath to speak but said nothing as the priest held up his index finger.

  ‘Aidan, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to rack my brain, and I’m going to pray for inspiration, and I’m going to sit in quiet contemplation of what those poor women and children have suffered and what their families are suffering. Is that good enough for you?’

  Sebastian stood up and dropped broken glass into the bin. He spread his fingers and stared into the lines on his hands.

  ‘You always try to make me feel that I’m not quite good enough,’ said the priest. Something faceless, yet with a strong pulse, raced along Aidan’s spine.

  ‘You think essentially that I’m a bad man, Aidan; you think I’m a bad man and a bad priest, don’t you?’

  He moved to the door.

  ‘Sebastian, please—’

  ‘I’m glad, Brother Aidan,’ said Sebastian, without turning, ‘that you haven’t lived through my life, my suffering. That’s all.’

  As Father Sebastian walked out, Brother Aidan stooped to pick up the finer shards of glass from the cold stone floor.

  ——

  SIX MISSED MESSAGES. All from Carol Bellwood. Rosen returned the call as he turned on the ignition.

  ‘Hello, David, where are you?’ She was outdoors and in a hurry.

  ‘St Mark’s, Faversham, Kent.’

  ‘You’ve got to get back here.’

  ‘I got your email . . . what’s the development?’

  ‘The old lady from 24 Brantwood Road. The pathologist says—’

  ‘Which pathologist?’

  ‘Dr Sweeney.’

  She said something else but the line wasn’t good and her voice broke up. ‘I missed that, Carol. Again?’

  ‘The old lady was murdered. Eighteen months ago.’

  13

  In life, the old lady at 24 Brantwood Road had the name Isobel Swift. In the fluorescent glare of the mortuary, there was something birdlike about her skeleton, a lightness and vulnerability that reminded Rosen – if a reminder was needed – how fragile life was.

  Dr Sweeney hummed an improvised melody and rinsed his hands under the tap, the sound of running water reminding Rosen of Father Sebastian and his impoverished room. But instead of aromatic incense and the undertone of sweat, the mortuary smelled of chemical cold and the ultimate transience of the flesh.

  Sweeney snapped on his gloves, his fingers, much travelled into the dark spaces of the human body, flexing in the harsh overhead light. Of all the rooms and places Rosen had had to enter in his capacity as a detective, the mortuary was the one he always wanted to be out of fastest.

  ‘Detective Rosen.’

  Rosen raised his eyes from Isobel Swift to meet Sweeney’s.

  ‘Cadavers can’t bite.’ Sweeney may have sounded happy, but his face was frozen behind an impassive mask. ‘She died of asphyxiation and the person who killed her knew what he was doing. I wouldn’t even rule out an advanced knowledge of medicine or the human body. There are five separate and deliberate blows to the ribcage. The five ribs have penetrated inwards, two to the left, three to the right. Within her chest, blood had flooded both lungs. Look at the top ribs: they’re short and chunky and hardly ever break. He’s picked the middle ribs, dainty and long. Why? Because it takes a long time to die of a haemothorax. If you were speculating about her death, she drowned in the thin air around her, so to speak, her own blood filling up her lungs from within.’

  Rosen considered. In a bungled burglary, he’d once seen an old lady’s ribcage smashed in a panic of blows. But the breaks before his eyes were precise and had a sinister symmetry.

  ‘Sadistic,’ whispered Rosen. ‘Only five broken ribs, so it took the longest possible time to die. This man wanted to observe.’ He stopped thinking aloud when he saw the smile in Sweeney’s eyes evolve into a smirk.

  ‘What is it, Dr Sweeney?’

  ‘Why do you insist on tormenting yourself over the victims?’

  Rosen was lost for words. Bellwood stepped closer to the slab. She said ‘Whoever did this wanted to savour and enjoy it.’

  Sweeney’s forehead shone in the overhead light of the windowless room.

  A string of possibilities occurred to Rosen, which he kept to himself.

  The person who killed Mrs Swift, eighteen months ago, is Herod. Herod doesn’t appear to know his more recent victims, but I’d bet my last pound he knew Mrs Swift. What’s the link here? How do the pieces connect?

  ‘Anything else to add, Dr Sweeney?’

  ‘Do you mean, was there any sexual interference, Detective Rosen?’

  Rosen wished hard for a ‘no’.

  ‘It’s hard to tell from a skeleton but I’ve had an initial report from the forensics lab and there was no semen on her bedsheets and nothing alien came out of the pubic comb-through.’ Sweeney spoke to Rosen as if he was a child, and a rather stupid one at that.

  ‘Let’s go, Carol.’

  Although grateful for Sweeney’s information, Rosen resisted the urge to thank him or even say farewell to a man who thought compassion was a sign of weakness.

  ——

  ‘YOU THINK THERE’S a link between Mrs Swift’s murder and the murder of our pregnant mothers?’ he asked Bellwood.

  ‘The proximity between numbers 22 and 24 could be a coincidence. What do you think, David?’

  ‘It’s too much of a coincidence. We know Herod was in 24 Brantwood Road recently. We know there was a murder there eighteen months ago. We know he abducted a woman from number 22 in the last few days. Running parallel wit
h this is a medical background. He knew which ribs to break, he knows how to perform a Caesarean section. That’s the only certain link.’

  Rosen hung on to Flint’s connection to Alessio Capaneus, sticking to hard facts.

  ‘As a link it’s a useful one,’ said Bellwood. ‘But as a line of inquiry it’s going to be hard to progress.’

  ‘Granted.’ Rosen considered for a moment. ‘You know what we need to do, Carol?’

  He went back in his mind’s eye to Mrs Swift’s bedroom, stopped at the dresser and scanned the surface, settling on one item.

  ‘We need to meet the children in the golden locket, the little boy and the teenage girl. And the girl whose bedroom was a museum.’

  ‘But the girl in the locket was the girl in the bedroom—’

  ‘No,’ said Rosen. ‘Two different girls. There was a picture of the girl in her bedroom. The girl in the locket had dark hair. The bedroom girl was blonde. We’ll go there now. And, Carol, as soon as we’re done at Brantwood Road, I need you to dig out contact details for the Roman Catholic diocese of Southwark.’

  ‘Sure,’ she replied, with a mild twist of bewilderment.

  As they walked, Bellwood’s phone beeped, signalling the arrival of a text, which she opened without breaking her stride.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Rosen.

  ‘It’s good timing. Text message from Parker and Willis at the Catons’ house. They want us to get over there now. Good news and bad.’

  ‘Tell them we’re on our way.’

  14

  ‘You wanna see some dirty pictures?’ asked Parker, leading Rosen and Bellwood into Julia and Phillip Caton’s brand-new fitted kitchen.

  Sitting on a black marble-effect work surface was a laptop computer, turned on and casting a blue light onto the polished surface.

  ‘Where’s Willis?’ asked Bellwood. Parker pointed at Willis who was seated on the floor, back against the cooker, head slumped and asleep, hands folded in her lap.

  ‘We worked through the night,’ explained Parker.

  Bellwood tapped Willis on the shoulder and she got to her feet instantly.

  ‘Do you want the good news or the bad?’ asked Parker.

  ‘The bad,’ said Rosen.

  ‘The bricks that he handled in the loft,’ said Parker. ‘Not a single fingerprint on any of them. OK, disappointing to say the least, but have a look at this.’

  Parker indicated the laptop. Onscreen, there was an image of a square wooden frame. ‘What’s this?’ asked Rosen.

  ‘It’s the frame around the loft entrance,’ said Willis. ‘Watch closely.’ She moved on to the next image, a close-up of a section of the frame. ‘He’s left us a present.’

  ‘Yes!’ Rosen saw a small, wet-looking stain on the wood.

  ‘What is it?’ Bellwood peered at the image, her view distorted by standing at an oblique angle to the screen.

  ‘It’s a fresh ear print. It’s the outside edge of his right ear. When he’s been doing his peeping Tom thing through the hole in the loft door, he’s printed his ear onto the wooden frame.’ Willis moved on to the next image, a large close-up of the print. She drew her finger over the shape. It was an almost perfect outline.

  Rosen picked up the laptop and held it close to his face, his eyes digging into the shell-like image of the place where all sound entered Herod’s head, the sounds made by the mothers, their breathing, their pleas, their screams.

  ‘He’s a Satanist.’ Rosen dropped the statement casually. The power in the fridge’s motor shifted up a gear, its steady hum higher pitched.

  ‘Hang on, David,’ responded Bellwood. ‘We’ve had several forensic psychologists, some paid, some offering their advice gratis, but they all came to the same conclusion. This is not an occult thing. None of the usual supernatural gibberish – you told me this yourself when I joined the team last month.’

  ‘Let’s assume he’s a Satanist,’ Rosen repeated, slightly more quietly. ‘OK. There’s no Satanic graffiti on the victims; we’ve taken expert advice and there’s no ritualistic precedent; there’s no significance in the murder dates and try as we might we can’t detect a pattern in the body drop-offs.’

  ‘Satanism’s got something in common with Christianity, David,’ replied Bellwood. ‘It’s a social activity. The sheer lack of forensic evidence shouts out that this is the work of one man, not the collective action of a gang of counter-culture weirdos.’

  Rosen suddenly heard Harrison’s voice in another room, coming closer.

  ‘Bear with me. Put the occult idea on the back burner. What have we got here and now?’ he asked, changing the subject.

  ‘About the potential of this ear print,’ said Bellwood. ‘It’s clearly the most significant clue he’s left—’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Willis. She handed a small evidence bag to Parker, one he clearly hadn’t seen before. ‘I just went up for one more look; I had a feeling, you know.’ Parker looked back at Willis, perplexed. ‘I fell asleep while I was waiting for you to tell you about it.’

  It was short and black and looked greasy, almost wet.

  ‘Where’d you find it?’

  ‘It was jammed between the loft entrance and the flooring, right above the Catons’ bathroom. Near the ear print on the frame. He lost a hair in the process of spying on them.’

  Rosen gazed at the hair, transfixed. The ear print was one thing but the sight of Herod’s hair sent a surge of electricity through his body.

  ‘It was hard to get hold of the hair with the tweezers, as there was just a small piece poking out through the join between the entrance and the flooring. It felt coated in oil. To be honest, even though I went over and over the loft entrance, I nearly missed it. What are we going to do with it?’ Willis asked.

  Rosen knew exactly what he was going to do.

  ‘You remember that guy John Mason, the forensic artist who reconstructed the head and face of the first victim in the Black Box case? He had just one section of skull to work from.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bellwood. ‘Mason Forensic Images.’

  ‘Fingers crossed he’s available. Every constabulary in the country queues up for his help. We’ll copy him in on the hair and ear print. He did the Black Box job in twenty-four hours.’

  Rosen noticed that Harrison, who had now joined them in the kitchen, was positioning himself just out of his eyeline.

  ‘Any news, Robert?’ asked Rosen. ‘On the door to door?’

  ‘Yeah, actually. The old lady at number 35, she hasn’t answered her door. Until now. Says she’s got something to tell us.’

  ‘What did she say exactly, Robert?’ Rosen turned his head to look Harrison in the eye.

  ‘She said, I want to speak to the nice young woman. She’s been watching the comings and goings and she described you, Carol. She wants to talk to you, the black girl, she said.’

  ‘OK, Robert,’ said Rosen. ‘Thanks for that. Now I’ve got a job for you.’ Rosen handed him a piece of paper on which Harrison silently read the words, ‘Alessio Capaneus’.

  ‘Internet search. Go back to Isaac Street and find out as much as you can about this guy. There won’t be much but just keep going. Go as far as two hundred pages. Print off every page. Show me you’ve been there. Go into any sites that throw up a meaningful match, print those sites off.’

  ‘Who is Alessio Capaneus?’

  ‘That’s what I want you to find out. While you’re looking, I want you to focus on any reference at all to a book or a pamphlet this Capaneus may possibly have written.’

  Rosen recalled the one detail that stood out from Harrison’s skills profile. He could speak Italian. He’d followed Sebastian’s pronunciation of the surname but Harrison had turned ‘Cap-a-nay-us’ into ‘Cap-a-knee-us’.

  ‘And make a note of this name. Father Sebastian. I want you to get in touch with the Vatican and find out what his working history was in Rome. Was he or was he not a papal adviser, mid to late nineties?’

  Harrison reiterated
, ‘Father Sebastian? The Vatican?’

  ‘Two tasks, Robert. Try to come up with the goods as quickly as you can.’

  Harrison shrugged as he walked out of the kitchen into the adjoining room. As Rosen followed him, Harrison stopped, turned.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If you see Baxter, tell him I’m coming in to see him.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Rosen stared at Harrison. Harrison looked away.

  ‘When you’ve finished on the internet and with the Vatican, leave everything you find on my desk.’ Satisfied that Harrison was aware that he was on to him, Rosen said, ‘OK, Robert, off you go.’

  Harrison left and Rosen returned to the kitchen, bringing back the sour aura of the exchange in the other room.

  Rosen smiled but said nothing. He could feel a cold twitch between his shoulder blades, a tender place for a long knife.

  ‘Where did you get this Capaneus thing?’ Parker said.

  ‘A Roman Catholic priest called Father Sebastian.’

  ‘Who’s this Capaneus? I’ve never heard of him,’ said Bellwood.

  ‘He’s pretty obscure. A thirteenth-century necromancer, who abducted and murdered six pregnant women, and cut them up for the foetuses.’

  There was a dense silence in the kitchen.

  ‘I know what you’re all thinking,’ said Rosen. ‘That this is desperate. I don’t care if it makes me look stupid.’

  He turned to Parker and Willis. ‘Call Gold or Feldman. If they can, get them to bring John Mason here to look at the hair and the print, but don’t let the originals go. If they can’t get him, we’ll have to cast around for other forensic artists.’ He smiled at Bellwood. ‘OK, Carol, let’s go and see the old lady at number 35.’

  15

  At 35 Brantwood Road, Rosen positioned himself just out of the old lady’s line of vision and pressed record on his dictaphone.

  ‘Well, I was her best friend as far as neighbours go but that was a long time ago and it was all very tragic and, well . . . it was heartbreaking.’

  In the brief journey from the front door to the living room, Rosen had learned, though Bellwood had not asked for the information, that the old lady was ninety-seven years old and that for forty years she had been a primary-school teacher.