Trick or Treat

by Jackson Sharp

  No, this was not the man he now called Father.

  As soon as the figure spoke he knew it was the abbot – the murdered Abbot Cerbonius restored, by a miracle!

  ‘There is no need,’ the abbot said, ‘for you to be afraid. I am with you, as I was before, as I always have been.’ His familiar voice soothed the edges of Little Mouse’s mind. It was a balm on his aching body and made his spirit soar.

  ‘I am not afraid,’ Little Mouse told the abbot. The sight of the beloved figure filled his heart to bursting.

  ‘There is hope,’ the abbot said. ‘Hope will always drive out fear. The treasures of the monastery, my dear child, Little Mouse – do you remember them?’

  Little Mouse saw them before him as though they were as solid and real as his grubby pillow and stump of candle.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Were they not beautiful, Little Mouse?’

  ‘They were,’ Little Mouse sobbed. ‘But they were taken. They were taken. Desecrated. And we, their guardians, were butchered.’

  ‘But you were restored,’ the abbot said.

  ‘But I have such pain. There is a bullet in my head. I do not see well. I am weak, and my bones hurt.’

  ‘In time, you will be restored,’ the abbot said. ‘Through that same power shall we all be restored. Our treasures, Little Mouse, and our friends, my brothers – all can be made whole. With faith, all will be redeemed. You must trust in that, my dear child. You must,’ the abbot said, ‘trust in that.’

  The figure reached out a glowing hand and pressed its palm to Little Mouse’s heart. Love and joy surged fiercely through his body. Hot tears sprang to his eyes.

  Chapter Four

  Police tape snapped noisily and the SOCO’s wide tent of plastic sheeting billowed and boomed in the fierce east wind. The blue-green grass of the field bowed low. Rose shielded her eyes with her hand. She would hardly have known it as the field she’d driven away from less than twelve hours before.

  At dawn this had been a terribly, fearsomely lonely place. Now it was crawling with people.

  ‘Christ,’ said Hume, banging the car door and pulling on a shapeless woolly hat. ‘It’s like fucking Piccadilly Circus.’

  He stomped off down the slope.

  Rose waited by the car, blinking in the wind. Taking soundings.

  There were uniform around the place, and SOC officers, eerie in their face masks and white hazard suits. One or two plainclothes – you could spot them a mile off, if you knew what you were looking for.

  But there were others, too. Dozens of them.

  Rose started down the slope. Felt a chill at the bristly touch of the tall grass on her wrists and hands. It was a reminder, one she could do without: that this field, for all its apparent transformation, held at its heart the ruined body of Katerina Zrinski.

  And once again the field felt like a terribly, fearsomely lonely place.

  Between where she stood and the police cordon the grass had been trodden flat in wide swathes. There were maybe fifty, sixty people gathered there. Some walked, moving in agitation or uncertainty from group to group – others stood – others knelt.

  Rose could hear shouting. And – singing? Or was it that damn wind playing tricks? She turned her head. Yes, singing – an untutored choir of voices, more women than men; a tune she thought she knew, from long-ago school assemblies, though the words were lost in the wind. She guessed the words would be different, anyway, from the ones she remembered.

  From here she had a clearer view of the crowd. Most were familiar from the housing-block fifth floor earlier that day; maybe not the same individuals, but the same in dress and manner – they were mourners, quiet and bowed with sorrow, heavy with grief.

  Rose automatically sought out the outliers. Coppers, of course. Hume was over by the cordon, talking to a harassed-looking sergeant in uniform. And a familiar face: Stevenage, Olly Stevenage, the camera-happy student journo. He was bundled up in a pricey-looking coat and cashmere scarf, drifting on the fringes of the crowd, digi-recorder in hand, camera-bag slung over his shoulder. Looking for a rent-a-quote to hand you your front-page headline, are we? Rose thought sourly.

  She noted with satisfaction that Stevenage didn’t seem to be having much success.

  More worrying than the snot-nosed student were the young men she saw moving among the mourners, tough-looking, purposeful. They were the ones doing the shouting – exactly what they were shouting she didn’t know, though she heard the name ‘Katerina’. She fished out her phone, made out like she was sending a text and managed a few decent full-face snaps of some of the men. Was it likely that one of them was the killer? She knew she couldn’t rule it out. A murder like this, the guy’s not happy with just killing the poor woman – he has to go back, remind himself of his achievement, see the damage he’s done, not just to the poor girl but to everyone who loved her. It wasn’t just the killing itself that got guys like this off, it was the power that comes with it. Had the killer been beaten by his father? Spurned by girls? Humiliated by his peers? What darkness did his past hold that explained this urge to prove his ‘superiority’ in such a gruesome way?

  Rose shook her head at the profile she’d conjured. She thought of Katerina’s fine hair woven around her fingers and the black stump at the base of her pearly neck. Nothing can explain this. Not a hundred beatings or a thousand insults.

  Rose tucked the phone away and started to move through the crowd. The young men, she saw, weren’t just surly, naturally aggressive – there was real anger here. Christ. It wouldn’t take much for this to turn very ugly, very quickly.

  She saw another familiar face, over at the far end of the cordon – keeping out of trouble, it looked like. The puking PC from earlier – Ganley, was it?

  A sickly look appeared on his face as she approached. He touched his hand dutifully to the peak of his helmet.

  ‘Ma’am.’

  ‘What’s the story, Constable? Who are the goons?’

  ‘Rakić’s lads, I’m told, ma’am.’ He shook his head gravely. ‘They’re not happy.’

  Well, why would they be? Rose thought. First we blow their Leys operation wide open, and now this –

  ‘Have we got warrants out on any of these men?’ she asked.

  Ganley eyed her warily.

  ‘We have, ma’am,’ he nodded. ‘In the circumstances, however –’

  Rose smiled sharply. That made sense: no point stirring things up here. A full-blown riot wasn’t what anyone wanted – except maybe the bloody press.

  ‘Discretion’s the better part of valour, right? Okay.’ She looked out at the crowd. ‘Is Rakić here?’

  ‘The younger one, yes, ma’am.’ The constable gave a barely-there nod towards a man near the centre of the crowd. ‘See him? Sleeve tattoos and a face like thunder.’

  ‘Got him.’

  There was a fair bit less of him than she’d expected. He was maybe five-nine, five-ten, fit-looking but not stocky, crop-haired and severe in his facial features but obviously no meathead. He was in animated conversation with a hulking squaddie-type who was twice his size across and had a good half-foot on him in height.

  Heavy silver crucifix round his neck. Bold Latin cross worked into his right-arm tattoo.

  Rose was sloppy and he caught her looking. She turned her face quickly away but it was too late – he was coming her way, blue eyes burning.

  In the car on the way over DCI Hume had told her a couple of stories about Dmitry Rakić. About how he’d had a guy’s hand cut off at the wrist for trying to stiff him on a heroin deal. How he’d gone nine bare-knuckle rounds in an underground car park with the Croatian national welterweight champ. How a pub landlord in Swindon had called him a fucking gyppo prick, and Rakić had burned his pub to the ground.

  ‘Of course,’ Hume had said, ‘half of it’s a load of bullshit.’

  ‘Which half?’

  He’d given her a look.

  ‘Now that, Rose,’ he’d smiled, ‘is the six-million
-dollar fucking question.’

  Now as Rakić moved determinedly towards her she sensed PC Ganley at her side, drawing himself up to his full six-two. Saw his hand move to the butt of his baton. Somehow she didn’t feel reassured.

  Rakić stopped a foot in front of her. It was hard not to take a backward step – hard, but necessary. He spat into the trodden-down grass, cracked his knuckles. Unleashed a fierce burst of Serbo-Croat.

  Rose kept her poker face up. Ignored the smell of his breath, the flecks of his spittle on her skin.

  ‘You should go home, Mr Rakić,’ she said.

  ‘Bastards,’ Rakić hissed.

  ‘This isn’t the place for causing trouble,’ Rose said levelly. ‘Start anything here, anything at all, and we’ll take you in.’

  Rakić jabbed his finger at her, then at Ganley.

  ‘Police,’ he sneered, showing white teeth, sharp canines. ‘Fucking scum.’

  Ganley shifted his weight.

  ‘That’s enough from you, pal,’ he said. ‘Pack it in.’

  With a sharp glance, Rakić took in the constable’s clean cuffs and freshly pressed uniform, his uncertain stare, his pale hand on the baton butt. Rose couldn’t know what he saw in them, what these things signified to a Zagreb ex-con, but it quickly became clear that it was enough to turn up the flame under his simmering temper.

  Rakić lurched forwards, went nose to nose with the young constable, baring his teeth, bunching his fists, letting rip with a torrent of fierce broken English and rattling Serbo-Croat. Rose didn’t catch much of it: ‘bastard’, ‘fuck’, ‘Katerina’, ‘murder’.

  She was about to step in when, over Rakić’s shoulder, she saw Olly Stevenage step from the crowd, strike a theatrical photographer’s pose and raise his camera.

  From behind him, the big squaddie-type folded a thick hand around his neck. Olly squawked, dropped the camera. Rakić turned – Rose heard Ganley’s suppressed sigh of relief. She moved swiftly, going after Rakić as he plunged hawk-like towards Stevenage. She wasn’t quick enough to keep him from tearing the camera from its strap around Stevenage’s neck – Stevenage yelped, threw up a hand, wailed something about the freedom of the press and how much his new camera had cost – but she was there in time to stop Rakić kicking seven shades out of the kid, which was clearly what he had in mind.

  She took hold of Rakić’s hard-muscled left arm, swung her body between him and Stevenage. Disregarded the bump of his elbow against her bruised ribs. It was no time for armlocks, cuffs, batons. Instead she leaned in, hissed in his ear: ‘Go. Go now. Be smart. Or I promise you, we will take you down.’ She couldn’t be sure how much he understood. The only hope was that the message of her words was clear.

  Moved back, looked in his eyes. Their damaged intensity frightened her.

  Rakić’s throat rippled with the effort of containing his emotion.

  ‘Katerina,’ he said in a strangled undertone.

  Hard to read, this guy. He must have cared for her, she supposed, maybe even loved her. In a violent guy, that can be dangerous. What had been done to Katerina didn’t look like a crime of passion – but then, maybe what had been done to Katerina wasn’t quite what it seemed.

  Rose gave nothing away.

  ‘We are investigating,’ she said firmly. ‘You can help by letting us get on with our job.’

  Rakić spat again into the mud. The crowd’s focus was on him. Rose could see him thinking fast, calculating, casing the situation. She hoped he’d seen the uniforms moving into position behind him. She hoped he was as smart as she thought he was. Violence here would cause a mess for everyone.

  He snarled out a word in Croat: brask. Meant nothing to her. Then he was away, moving fast, shoulders hunched, back towards the lane. The crowd stirred as Rakić’s heavies – more than she’d realized, maybe ten, fifteen – followed after him.

  She was about to turn away when she heard Rakić yell something. Whatever it was, it sounded like he meant it.

  There was a group of young women standing nearby, looking cold, unhappy and – when Rose took a step towards them – decidedly unfriendly.

  She asked them if they’d understood, if they could translate what Rakić had shouted. One, perhaps the eldest, stern-faced but beakily handsome, nodded.

  ‘ “I will kill the murdering bastard,” ’ she said stonily. ‘And: “If he loves God so much, I will give him an introduction.” ’

  Rose thanked them, turned away. With her hands in her pockets, hair whipping in the wind, she looked at the walls of plastic sheeting that hid Katerina’s body.

  Too many meanings within meanings here, she thought. Too many secrets. Too many mysteries.

  She sighed. Too many bruises. Too little sleep.

  ‘Well, this was a fucking waste of my afternoon,’ said Hume, ducking under the police tape. He took a slurp from a coffee cup. ‘You fuck off home, Rose. Get some rest. Come and talk to me tomorrow.’ He waved a hand curtly as he moved off. ‘Don’t have nightmares.’

  A woman from the village brought food – sausage, bread, thick root-vegetable soup. The woman’s name was Olga. Little Mouse watched from the netted window of the priest’s hut. He saw the priest smile – he had never seen the priest smile – and take the basket from her.

  The woman was smiling, too. A kind smile. Little Mouse heard the priest ask her: ‘Why did God become man?’

  He couldn’t hear the woman’s answer. The right answer was ‘That man might become God’ – Little Mouse knew that. He was a good Christian. He was such a good Christian that God himself had delivered him from death.

  The priest asked the woman if she feared Sheol, and if she knew of the Great Mysteries. Little Mouse could not hear her answers. He could see the priest smiling, though. He felt a pang of jealousy.

  He slid from the windowsill when the priest came back into the hut. Crept back under his blanket, watched the priest as he reached up to a high shelf and took down one of his icons. Little Mouse knew it. Little Mouse had watched the priest make it. It had been made for him, he’d thought. A thigh bone hung from a thread within a cage of ribs, oiled with balsam.

  The priest took it out to the woman. Little Mouse heard him say: ‘It will preserve the purity of your soul. It will keep you in the heart of Christ.’

  When the priest came back in he did not have the relic with him. He had given it away. It had been made for Little Mouse, to preserve the purity of his own soul. Why had the priest given it to the woman?

  Little Mouse hid his tears beneath his blanket.

  Chapter Five

  5 October

  Feeling out of place was part of the job. It happened every day, for a copper. You got used to it – you got so that you didn’t even notice it any more. For Rose, though, churches were the worst. Here people didn’t just look different and talk different – here they had different ways of thinking. Of feeling, too.

  The Roses had never had much time for church. That was when her mum was alive. After she died they had no time at all. ‘Load of old cobblers,’ her dad had said – meaning church, God, religion, all of it. ‘Anyone with a bit of common sense can see that.’ He’d jovially tolerated his wife’s every-now-and-then churchgoing – joking, ‘Say one for me,’ or ‘Give Him my best,’ as she made her way out in her good hat and polished court shoes – but after …

  Far as Rose knew, he’d not set foot in a church since the funeral. Couldn’t blame him.

  She eased open the heavy door of the Queen of Peace. Katerina’s church.

  The entrance hall had a coat stand, a bench, a notice board crowded with posters – most in Polish, some in Cyrillic script, others in languages she didn’t recognize. The air was musty, tinged with the smells of incense and floor polish. Cross between a school hall and a high-street candle shop, Rose thought. She pushed open another door, stepped into the main body of the church.

  It was a newish place, red brick outside, white-rendered walls and walnut beams within. Parquet floor, pews in a doz
en rows. There were a couple of people, both elderly, gathering up prayer books. She’d timed it right – just missed morning Mass.

  She was glad she’d managed to grab a few hours’ sleep and fix herself some proper coffee before getting here. The day before, she’d arrived back at her flat at around five; she’d headed straight to bed, aching, as wrung-out as she’d ever been – but was unable to sleep. Katerina’s body. The Zrinski girls. The plummeting view of a five-storey drop. Dmitry Rakić.

  At eight, sandy-eyed and sore, she’d surrendered to the inevitable. Got up, pulled on a sweater, prepared a pot of coffee. Got to work at her kitchen table.

  She read and reread her notes. Dug into the files on Rakić, father and son, the files on their associates, their associates’ associates. Cross-checked the witness statements, the Zrinskis, Olly Stevenage, Rob Shaw (the astronomy geek), PC Ganley. Hume had emailed her the transcript of Phillips’s interview with Nitić – ‘fuck all’ was pretty much what it came to. There were inventories from the raid in the Leys, ancient photostats sent over from police HQs in Zagreb and Novi Sad, cuttings from court reports up and down the Thames Valley.

  Midnight had found her trawling the web for information on the Croatian War of Independence, the break-up of old Yugoslavia, the patterns of displacement, immigration, dispersal –

  She’d crawled back into bed at half-one. Sleep had finally arrived at around two.

  Now she suppressed a yawn as she wandered down the aisle of the church. Before her, fixed above the altar, was a luridly coloured Christ, life-sized, nailed to the cross, looking down with an expression of intolerable anguish.

  Rose didn’t know much about religion, but she’d seen this kind of thing before. Some churches, she’d noticed, liked to place the emphasis on the resurrection of Jesus, on redemption, love and hope; others seemed to want to dwell only on his suffering.

  Seemed cruel, somehow. But what did she know?

  She heard raised voices beyond a wooden door that led off the right-hand transept. A man’s voice, and a boy’s. Rose moved quickly to the door, wincing at the resonant echo of her own footsteps, and opened it a crack. Peering through, she saw a heavy-set, dark-bearded old man in priest’s garb shaking a young boy by his arm. He had what looked to be a painful hold on the kid’s biceps. He was talking angrily to the kid. Not in English.