The Sixth Soul

by Mark Roberts

  ‘She’s not in touch with Dwyer now. But she knew what was going on with him until round about the mid-eighties. His mother was being counselled through Unlock. She was on a combination of all kinds of prescription medication because of the hammering she’d given her body when she was a junkie. She died suddenly; the coroner’s verdict was misadventure, as she’d taken too many pills within the space of twenty-four hours. I’ll follow that one up first thing tomorrow. Anyway, Paul Dwyer was drummed off a medical degree course at around the same time as Mummy died. He’d done two years training as a doctor at UCL Medical School, but this is where the trail goes stone-cold. After his mother died, Paul goes out of Jane’s sights but she did make one interesting observation. His mother was loaded; she’d inherited a small fortune. Paul in turn, no doubt, inherited all that cash. Do you want me to follow up his career as a medical student, or are you going to pass that one over to Bellwood or Corrigan?’

  ‘You’ve done excellent work here, Robert. Why should I take it away from you after you’ve done so much?’

  ‘You don’t trust me, sir.’

  ‘Haven’t we been here before, Robert?’ Rosen pointed at Baxter’s door. ‘He’s trying to find failure in me and you’re feeding him; that’s why I don’t trust you.’

  ‘I didn’t set out to become a snitch when I joined the Met.’

  ‘So what changed?’

  ‘Baxter. He made it very clear to me that if I didn’t act as his “eyes and ears”, he’d make sure my career didn’t progress. If I acted as his spy in the camp, he wouldn’t get in my way. I just want you to know, it’s not personal. None of it’s been personal.’

  It sounded like vintage Baxter, exploiting the vulnerability of those weaker than himself to further his own political ends.

  ‘Why didn’t you come and tell me this at the time it happened?’

  ‘With respect, what could you have done about it? Baxter’s in the process of giving you a public spanking. But I’d like to be a part of this team, I’d like to feel like I belong here.’

  ‘Leave it with me, Robert.’

  Harrison stood up and extended his hand. ‘No hard feelings,’ he said.

  Rosen shook Harrison’s hand and released it as quickly as possible.

  ‘One other thing,’ said Harrison. ‘I earwigged some of the guys talking about a missing page in a book of poetry in Father Sebastian’s bedroom. William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. I spoke to Eleanor Willis and got the details from her of the edition, publisher – Everyman Classics – year of publication 1973; missing pages twenty-three and twenty-four. I tracked it down on Abebooks and spoke to a book dealer. The two missing poems were “The Tyger” and “The Sick Rose”. I printed off a copy of “The Sick Rose” from the internet.’

  Harrison placed a copy of the poem face down on Rosen’s desk.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning, sir. No hard feelings.’

  ‘Good work, well done.’

  Harrison smiled and walked out of the incident room. When he had gone, Rosen turned the page over and read quietly to himself.

  The Sick Rose

  O Rose ! thou art sick!

  The invisible worm,

  That flies in the night,

  In the howling storm,

  Has found out thy bed

  Of crimson joy;

  And his dark secret love

  Does thy life destroy.

  In the silence of the incident room, Rosen imagined the sound of Father Sebastian laughing quietly yet insistently into his face. He pictured Flint in the darkest corner of a windowless room, laughing into its pitch-black emptiness, dreaming up his next mind-bending trick, fuelled with the pleasure of his last escapade in causing human misery.

  He pushed the poem as far away as possible and tried to contain the unease that made his spine tingle in a cold eruption of goose bumps.

  He rubbed his eyes, grateful for the fact that he had an alternative document to look at. He started to read the transcript of Harrison’s interview with Jane Rice. It was single spaced and highlighted neatly with orange marker pen. He flicked forwards to the account of Paul Dwyer’s failed medical career. Rosen’s pulse quickened: Paul Dwyer had medical know-how. It was enough, more than enough.

  48

  There was no good time to experience morning sickness and the first lesson with 10M on a cold, wet spring morning was proof of this. The class’s collective heads were bent over multiple copies of the GCSE RE textbook Faith and Action. Sarah took out the DVD that went with the textbook, her stomach lurching violently. She gripped the edges of the table and fought down the urge to throw up, but it was a losing battle.

  She flung open the door of the classroom.

  ‘Mrs Rosen?’ a pupil called after her.

  She hurried to the pupils’ toilet at the end of the corridor, clenching her teeth and holding her breath in an effort to keep control. She made it to the nearest cubicle before being violently ill.

  Sarah rinsed out her mouth with water and splashed her face, which was drawn and red with exertion. In a mirror that normally reflected girls on the cusp of womanhood, she saw a woman in middle life, but smiled and said to her reflection, ‘So, you’re not too old to have a baby after all.’ And she didn’t care if 10M were walking on the ceiling. She stroked her belly and laughed out loud.

  Her head throbbed. Still not knowing if she was going to be sick again, she stared into the mirror and smiled again.

  The memory of Hannah drifted to the front of her mind, a memory she both cherished and had to fight off every day. Hannah, six weeks old, feeding from her breast at four o’clock in the morning, moonlight spilling into the otherwise dark bedroom, the moon caught like two points of light in her baby’s eyes. It had been a difficult pregnancy and birth, but Hannah had been such a good baby and had grown into a bright and loving toddler. And then she had died. Two fragments of moonlight, gone.

  Sarah imagined the density of her womb filling with life above her pubic bone. She stroked her belly with the flat of her hand, as if reading the landscape of a life waiting to be lived.

  Then she heard them. It was the distant hum of a dreadful din. Even in a private moment, the mass will of 10M prevailed.

  She hurried back down the corridor where a sixth-form prefect stood at the open doorway of the classroom she’d abandoned, attempting to steady the growing anarchy inside the room.

  Teachers from nearby classrooms appeared at their doors.

  ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ Sarah pronounced, sweeping past and taking up her place again.

  She stared in a manufactured cold rage at the ringleaders, a skill she’d picked up from a pitbull sergeant major she’d served under in her TA days, and which she had mastered over many years in school. She then picked off the sheep with glances, some of sorrow and some of anger. Silence descended. Then, in barely more than a whisper, she said, ‘Could you close the door please, Jenny?’

  The entire class was looking at her, something she was used to, but today it suddenly felt so strange.

  And she had to think: what were they studying?

  ‘Close your books,’ she said.

  ‘Mrs Rosen, can we watch the DVD?’

  ‘Yes . . . Jenny, overhead projector, please.’ She placed the DVD into the laptop and heard the whirr of the overhead projector as the SmartBoard came to life. ‘Where is God,’ Sarah asked 10M, ‘in the face of evil?’

  Ten long minutes later, the bell rang for the end of the lesson and the start of morning break. As the first of the students headed out, Sarah turned on her phone to call Rosen.

  ‘You have one voicemail message; message one sent today at nine-forty-five.’

  The mechanical voice gave way to a human one.

  ‘Hi, I’m leaving a message for Mrs Sarah Rosen. This is Dr Brian Reid calling from the Haematology department at St Thomas’s. Your notes have been passed on to me by Dr Tom Dempsey from Gynaecology, who I believe you saw yesterday. I was wondering if you
could give me a ring, please. There’s a complication on your blood sample. Erm . . . yes, if you call me back on my mobile, that might be easier than going through the switchboard.’ He reeled off the number and closed with, ‘Please call me as soon as you can.’

  She tapped in the numbers, feeling a rising unease that bordered on panic. A voice said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is that Dr Reid?’

  ‘Yes, yes, it is.’

  ‘It’s Sarah Rosen.’

  ‘Oh, thanks for getting back to me so quickly, Mrs Rosen, that’s really helpful of you.’

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘Ah, well, that’s why I’m calling.’

  ‘Could you tell me what’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s the blood test you provided at your antenatal appointment.’ He fell silent.

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘It could be a number of things. There’s nothing wrong with you as such, but we are a little concerned about your baby, particularly given the . . . your maturity.’

  ‘Dr Reid, why don’t you stop talking in generalizations and start spelling out the specific problem?’

  ‘Mrs Rosen, calm down. It could be something and may be nothing, but we have to be sure. That’s why you’ve been passed over to Haematology. The Haematology and Thrombosis Centre is situated on the first floor, North Wing of St Thomas’s Hospital. Could you be there at nine-forty tomorrow morning? Could you do that?’

  ‘Why not sooner?’

  ‘Because this isn’t a total emergency. You’re not in danger of losing the baby immediately. Look, it’s a precaution, it’s Dr Dempsey being “fussy” if you like. We haven’t got time to send out an appointment card, so if you just wait at the main door of the clinic, I’ll send someone to pick you up, save you having to deal with the clinic clerks. I owe him a couple of big favours, that’s why I’m pushing you through.’

  ‘Well, thanks for that, Dr Reid.’

  ‘That’s OK. Nine-forty, tomorrow morning, Haematology main entrance, first floor, North Wing, just by the lifts.’

  ‘Couldn’t it be sooner?’ Sarah asked hopefully.

  ‘I’m already bending the system to hurry you through, Mrs Rosen.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got that.’ And she told herself not to worry.

  She ended the call. It wasn’t an emergency. But if it wasn’t anything wrong with her, it must be the baby, and that wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

  Not in danger of losing the baby immediately? To conceive and then miscarry the child was worse than not conceiving. As the bell rang for the beginning of lessons again, she was haunted by savage disappointment, the old wound of loss made new once more. It simply didn’t bear thinking about but, as she gathered her things into her bag, she knew that she would be able to think of nothing else as she went through the motions of teaching Year Seven about Moses in the bulrushes.

  She walked down the corridor with one thought for company. It’s my fault if my baby dies, because I’m too old to have him.

  49

  At Isaac Street Police Station, it was a full house for the five o’clock team meeting. Rosen’s glance swept the room.

  ‘Two pieces to report to you. First off, congratulations to Robert Harrison. He’s tracked down Paul Dwyer’s last known point of contact, which goes back to the mid-eighties. Dwyer was a medical student who didn’t complete the course, but it gives him medical know-how and that, boys and girls, ties in very nicely with what we know about Herod’s methodology.’

  A ripple of approval ran around the room, with all eyes turned to Harrison, who stared directly at Rosen.

  ‘Second, I’m calling a press conference tomorrow morning, that’s Friday, nine o’clock. We’ve got two pictures of the two suspects. On Friday morning, I’m going to issue notice on one prime suspect.’

  ‘Boss, was that suspect or suspects?’ asked Harrison.

  ‘Singular, Robert. We’re issuing limited CCTV footage from the British Library.’

  ‘Dwyer or the priest?’

  ‘Dwyer. Let’s look at the pictures of Dwyer from the British Library. These are the ones we’ll release.’

  It was an absolutely clear image of Dwyer’s face as he entered the British Library, his expression unemotional. His identity was impossible to deny if you knew him by sight.

  ‘And this one.’

  A shot of Dwyer from the John Ritblat Gallery, at a moment when he had stared directly into the eye of the CCTV camera.

  ‘There’s no point in shining the spotlight on Flint. Yet. We’ll never get to Dwyer through Flint. We need Dwyer behind bars fast. It’s my theory that Flint’s been controlling him remotely, through this Capaneus website. If we publish Dwyer plus Flint, that puts Dwyer in a pair, a gang if you like, and that would give him a sense of belonging that would buoy him up. We don’t want that. If he’s wanted on his own, then he’s just that. Alone. Picked on. I want Dwyer to feel more alienated than he does at present, more alienated than he’s ever felt. For now, I want him to think there are no other suspects. Let’s assume Dwyer trusts Flint implicitly. I want to drive a wedge between them. If we issue footage from the British Library where they were both present and there’s no sign of us wanting Flint, then it’ll hit all his inferiority and victim buttons in one go.

  ‘Here’s the upside. When we warn the public about Dwyer, we’re showing Dwyer that we know who he is. Once his image is out there, experience tells us, forty-eight hours after the press conference the pressure will start to bite and he’ll make a mistake.’ He paused. ‘Here’s the downside of the ticking clock. According to Flint, he’s got one more mother to abduct and he’ll have to do it quickly. So, say farewell to your loved ones for the time being, because we’re all on board 24/7. Any questions?’

  ‘Are you going to show us what Flint looks like?’

  ‘When are we publishing the priest’s picture?’

  ‘Monday morning, nine o’clock, second press conference. The images we have of Flint, from the Charing Cross CCTV at rush hour. On the subject of pictures of Father Sebastian, I received these three from Cardinal McPhee within the last two hours. I intend to issue the third, most recent, image on Monday morning.’

  Cardinal McPhee had sent the three pictures on a pen drive.

  ‘OK, this is Father Sebastian.’

  A professionally posed picture of the priest at his ordination appeared on the SmartBoard.

  ‘This one looks most like him now, though he’s older-looking.’

  Rosen then clicked through to another photo – this one less recent, and taken at an odd angle.

  It looked like a corpse at the side of a broken road, the hot sun beating down, flies congregating around the bloodied head. But the eyes were open.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘This was taken by one of the tourists on the bus that came across him after the beating in Kenya. Look at the next picture. We’re releasing a cropped image of his face.’

  Sebastian, cleaned up and wide awake, on a white sheet in a hospital bed, wearing white shorts, his body marked by healing wounds.

  There was complete understanding in the silence that greeted the image, but for one small sound. Next to Bellwood, Harrison made a noise in his throat as if something was stuck there, choking him.

  Rosen showed the cropped image of Flint looking directly at the camera. Bellwood took a sideways glance at Harrison who stared at the screen, looked away and then back at the screen again.

  ‘How’d he survive?’ someone asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Rosen. ‘In the meantime, I’ve already issued an all-ports on Flint and alerted Europol. If Flint makes it out of Britain, it’s the least we can do to warn our neighbours. They’re distributing the information and pictures of Flint direct from The Hague. We’ve spread his face across the constabularies at home, particularly Greater Manchester. That is where he comes from. And Cambridgeshire, where he studied.

  ‘Back to Dwyer now. Someone somewhere must
know Dwyer. We’re urging all pregnant women in the London area, if it’s possible, not to be alone. Particularly after his picture’s published. Any more questions?’

  There were none.

  ‘The usual health warning, folks, but with absolute rigour. None of this goes out of the room.’

  Rosen eyeballed each and every officer there, pausing only at Harrison, who had turned pale, as if he was about to throw up on the spot.

  ——

  BELLWOOD STAYED WHERE she was as people drifted away but kept her eyes pinned on Harrison.

  He sat at his shared desk, staring into space, allowing the phone to ring and eventually fall silent. Slowly, she moved into the space behind him, out of his eyeline, and walked up to his seat.

  ‘Good work, Robert, tracking Dwyer back to the eighties, making that medical link!’ He didn’t move from his seat, nor turn his head. Instead, he just tensed up, as if someone had given him a huge fright rather than an evenly worded compliment. ‘Are you OK, Robert?’ she asked.

  He turned, offering her the most forced of smiles.

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied.

  ‘You don’t look well.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  He got up from his desk and walked out of the incident room as if it were on fire but didn’t want to appear too distressed about it.

  On the other side of the incident room the phone on Rosen’s desk rang. Rosen picked up and Steve Lewis from PeCU introduced himself.

  ‘What’s happening, Steve?’

  ‘The software’s thrown up a password, but the Capaneus site’s been shredded. There’s nothing behind the door of the New Testament – the entire site’s been erased. Someone must have guessed we were on to them. The good news is I’ve got a location for where the site’s been run from.’

  ‘Canterbury,’ said Rosen. ‘Just east of.’

  ‘How did you know?’ Lewis sounded amazed, as if his unique gem of wisdom had been suddenly devalued to that of a message inside a fortune cookie.

  ‘Lucky guess. Thanks for trying, Steve. I appreciate all your efforts.’