Trick or Treat

by Jackson Sharp

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Great.’

  Rose pointed.

  ‘The red cross he’s marked on the map, here – that’s All Souls, the chapel of All Souls.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘God, religion, the Church – it’s at the centre of Luka’s delusion. Always has been.’

  This was true all the way back to St Quintus. Back to Croatia, where he killed Olga Matić and the reclusive priest. Back to France, where he murdered four people, just as he aimed to do here.

  France. Rose dug into her briefcase and pulled out a sheaf of notes and an A3 map of the middle-sized market town where the bodies of the French victims had been found.

  ‘Wouldn’t say this is the time to plan a holiday, Rose.’

  ‘All Souls is important to Luka,’ Rose said as she scoured the map. ‘He marked the chapel with a red cross and he’s planning to kill Brask on the second of November, All Souls’ Day. But it’s not just a murder for him, it’s a ritual, it’s a –’ She stopped and stared at the map.

  ‘Église Toussaints,’ she said, reading words off a label on the map.

  ‘You mean Église Toussaints.’ Phillips rolled the French syllables pretentiously round his mouth. ‘Translates as “Church of All Saints”, of course.’

  ‘All Saints and All Souls,’ Rose said. ‘What are the chances?’ But she already knew. Chance had nothing to do with it.

  Phillips made an unconvinced noise.

  She checked her notebook and began to mark the map with biro circles in the four places where the French bodies had been found. To the south, in a factory, to the west, in a derelict library, to the east –

  How could she not have seen it?

  ‘Rose, your hand is shaking,’ Phillips remarked. ‘I can’t read the bloody map.’

  Her eyes snapped back to the plan of Oxford on the wall.

  To the north, the meadow in which Katerina Zrinski’s body had been found, decapitated and pinned to the timber of a broken wheel. To the south, the grove of grey-barked trees where a dog-walker had stumbled across David Norfolk’s skinned corpse. To the east, the stretch of field where they’d found all that Luka had left of poor Caroline Chaudry.

  ‘A cross,’ she breathed. She was faintly conscious of a flickering feeling of elation, of hope. Hope was dangerous; she stamped it down. Focus. She jabbed the French map with her forefinger. ‘He’s drawing a cross, look, four miles out to the library, four miles out to the factory, four miles to the north, where the woodland was, and six miles out to the last one –’

  Phillips was ahead of her.

  He slapped his hand on to the left side of Luka’s map of Oxford.

  ‘We go west,’ he said decisively. ‘That’s where the bastard’s taking him.’

  Rose looked up. Again that weak surge of hope, low in her chest.

  Hope was for amateurs. Look at the facts, Rose.

  ‘Or that’s where he’s taking his body,’ she said.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  ‘I – I thought we were friends.’

  ‘We are friends, Professor Brask.’ Luka’s pale face loomed out of the darkness. ‘That is why I do you this service. That is why I deliver you to your true destiny.’ The man’s bloodless lips curved in a childlike smile. ‘You do not see it yet. You will, in time.’

  Brask closed his eyes.

  He ached inside, felt hollowed-out by hunger. His head throbbed unceasingly. Fear stirred the nausea that roiled in his lower belly.

  He didn’t know where he was. He remembered the fight in the bedroom – Luka’s unrelenting strength, the clatter of the furniture going over, the jagged pain of his elbow crashing through the bedroom window as he tried to wrench himself from Luka’s grip. The last sensation he recalled was that of suffocating, chemical-stinking darkness.

  He’d woken up here. A featureless place, from what he could see. Hard-edged and utilitarian. An institution of some kind. It smelled stale.

  He couldn’t move.

  By now the skin of his wrists and ankles was raw from the unkind pressure of the manacles that bound him. When he moved, he smelled the old-iron odours of blood and rust. He no longer bothered to struggle – the pain was too great, and his energy was too low.

  Twined with his hunger, his pain, his fear, was his guilt. Luka. Kind of an oddball in the church group. Kind of an oddball at the college, too – though they said he was handy in the kitchen. But Brask had taken the time to get to know him. Treated him, for Christ’s sake, like a friend …

  And all along he was the very killer they’d been hunting.

  How could he have been so blind?

  A draught from the door rippled the low candlelight in the room and Brask shivered. Even that hurt. He’d awoken to find himself stripped naked, save for a few bolts of untreated cloth about his hips and shoulders. Had he ever felt so vulnerable before? Or so alone?

  He had. Just once. After Hester.

  That had been in another bleakly lit institution: Fremont Memorial Hospital. A cloying antiseptic smell, a curtained-off cubicle. He remembered the doctor’s voice, low, regretful, but still matter-of-fact, still businesslike – telling him that Hester wasn’t going to pull through.

  He’d felt stripped bare, as if by a raging wind; utterly exposed and completely abandoned. There had been fear then, too. Doubt. Dread. He hadn’t known how to go on. He hadn’t known how to survive.

  Back then, Brask had prayed to be saved. Rescued. Redeemed. But there had been no miracle. The healing that came had been slow and painful – and was still, he knew, not yet done. Perhaps it never would be.

  Brask prayed again now.

  He prayed to the God that had deserted him after Hester’s death. The God that had stood by and watched Katerina, David and Caroline die at the hands of a maniac.

  Brask prayed for a miracle.

  He cried out at the touch of a punishing cold on the skin of his chest and heard Luka’s soft laugh. Opened his eyes to see the man holding a pail and cloth.

  ‘Do not fear, Professor. It is time for the cleansing of the outer flesh. With this blessed water’ – he dipped his fingers into the pail, rubbed his wet fingertips together – ‘I shall rinse away the dust and filth of the world.’ Dunking the cloth, he added: ‘A necessary first step, most necessary.’

  Brask swallowed painfully. First step? And what were the second, the third?

  What was the last?

  The iron chair. The flaying knife. The breaking wheel. Who knew what awaited him? Only Luka.

  He gasped as Luka washed the ice-cold water across his ribs and belly. His chest heaved, his back arched and the skin of his wrists screamed. He pulled in an aching breath and bit down on his dry lower lip.

  Luka’s cloth moved relentlessly over his body, stripping away his body heat. The man was murmuring to himself – in Latin, Brask made out after a moment.

  ‘Luka – talk to me. Tell me … tell me why.’

  Luka thoughtfully wrung the cloth out over the pail.

  ‘For nearly twenty-five years,’ he said softly, ‘I have wandered. An exile, Professor. Outcast. A seeker – a seeker after Truth.’

  ‘And you think you’ve found it in me?’ Brask shook his head grimly. ‘I don’t have the truth, Luka. I don’t have any answers.’

  ‘I have found the answer. You, Professor, are only a part of it.’

  Brask tried to ignore his own pain and nausea. He tried to think.

  ‘We’re all a part of it, Luka. God’s plan includes us all, doesn’t it? God judges all our actions – yours, too.’

  Luka smiled, ran a hand over his shaven head.

  ‘I am such a small thing,’ he said. ‘A tool only. I do the work I must do, but I am not so important. Not like you, Professor.’ He showed his tea-coloured teeth in a grin. ‘Not like you.’

  Brask let his head fall back on to the hard bed, closed his eyes. Despair swelled in his throat. How could he negotiate with such insanity? How could he find a wa
y in?

  But finding a way in to Luka’s madness, he knew, was his only hope of finding a way out of these chains. It was the only way out of this room. His only escape from the fate Luka had in store for him.

  Luka muttered, as if to himself: ‘The relics are almost ready.’

  Brask looked at him. Luka returned the look. Though middle-aged, the man seemed like a boy. There was shyness in his eyes, but a sort of pride, too. Like an embarrassed schoolchild who wants to show you the good marks he’s gotten for his homework, Brask thought.

  ‘Relics?’

  ‘Of the worthy ones.’ Luka nodded. ‘They are needed, you see, to restore the order. Restore the brothers and’ – he smiled, tapped his temple – ‘the abbot.’

  ‘Worthy ones? And you yourself judge who is worthy?’

  Luka looked shocked.

  ‘No!’ He crossed himself jerkily. ‘I would not, Professor, I would never presume. Only the Lord God may judge the worthy ones.’

  ‘You speak with Him?’

  ‘He talks to me,’ Luka said, ‘through the holy abbot.’ Again he made the odd gesture towards his temple and then to his left eye. Then, leaning hopefully forwards, he said: ‘Would you like to see?’

  Brask hesitated. What new horrors would Luka show him? Could he bear it? He was so tired. So scared. He didn’t know if he could take it.

  He forced a smile.

  ‘Yes, I would, Luka.’ He nodded. ‘I’d like that very much.’

  And in the end it was such a small thing, a mundane thing – a tray of seven or eight mismatched glass jars, scrubbed clean of their labels, each with a small surgical specimen inside, bobbing gently in a preserving solution –

  Still it was the most horrible thing Brask had ever seen.

  An ear. A small bone. A finger. There was no blood, no gore, but Brask felt his face pale as he looked at them. Stolen things, things taken from others’ bodies. One of these … these relics had been taken from Katerina. He thought of her living body, the softness of her skin, the strength in her slender limbs.

  He looked at the things in the glass jars and bit down hard on his revulsion.

  Why? For what? For what had these things been done, these horrors perpetrated, these sufferings inflicted? A maniac’s dogma? One man’s iron-hard certainty that he, he alone, knew the truth – that he alone had heard the eternal word of God?

  It wasn’t a new story. Brask had read of it, and even seen it himself, time after time: Caesars, suicide bombers, cult leaders, Pharisees, inquisitors, hate-preachers –

  Whatever they called themselves, they’d always sickened him. Now they outraged him.

  ‘They are very beautiful. Do you like them?’

  Luka was looking at him with a hopeful expression. Brask swallowed. Jesus, he was tired. The despair thickened in his throat.

  So much of the world’s pain was caused by people who thought like Luka. There was so much pointless bloodshed. So much joy snuffed out.

  He met Luka’s eye.

  ‘No, Luka, I don’t,’ he said. ‘I don’t like them at all.’ Again he let his eyes close, let his head fall heavily to the bed. ‘Get them out of my goddamn sight,’ he said.

  The silence that followed was as smooth and cold as ice.

  He’s not a schoolboy, Brask told himself. He’s not a sick child. He’s a grown man. He’s a murderer, a cruel, cold-hearted murderer, and he killed Katerina.

  In a taut voice Luka said: ‘It is time for us to pray.’

  Brask mustered the energy to open one of his eyes a slit. Just enough to meet Luka’s gaze.

  ‘Go fuck yourself,’ he said.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  A good day to be a crook in Oxford. Looked like Hume had pulled in every copper in the Thames Valley.

  Rose had said as much to the rumpled DCI.

  ‘Bad day to be a fucking serial killer,’ he’d growled back.

  Rose had never seen the nick so busy, so buzzing with purpose. Uniform swarmed downstairs, crowded the corridors. There was a strident racket of phones and printers. Bulletins came in every half-hour from the SOCO guys at Luka’s place. Team by team, officer by officer, Hume laid out his trap.

  The force was targeting a district of Oxford four miles west of All Souls. A high-impact, rapid-response, low-noise strike on the suspect: that was the plan. Plainclothes were out in force, unmarked surveillance vans covering all approaches to the area. Munro’s FR unit were on standby.

  ‘A fucking rat couldn’t sneak through the cordon we’ve set up,’ Hume had said with bleak satisfaction.

  ‘He’s going to be twitchy, guv,’ Phillips had warned.

  ‘Nah. That sort don’t get twitchy. Too busy wanking over the Book of fucking Deuteronomy or whatever it is he does. Rubbing himself down with chicken blood.’ Hume had looked at Phillips, then at Rose. ‘Everything we can do, we’ve done,’ he’d said. ‘It’s all in place.’

  ‘We’ll nail him,’ Phillips had agreed.

  Rose had nodded, vaguely, unconvinced. She’d envied them their confidence – and it worried her, too. A rat couldn’t sneak through, Hume had said. But the thing was, a rat wouldn’t try. Rats are smarter than you think.

  And even if Luka did fall for it, it still might be too late for Matt Brask. David and Katerina had both been killed before they’d been moved to where they’d been found, to their point of the cross. Rose didn’t care whether they took Luka alive or if one of Munro’s boys shot him down in the street; she didn’t give a damn.

  But if they lost Matt … she didn’t know what she’d do.

  A copper wasn’t supposed to let things get personal. Turn it on, turn it off.

  Well, maybe she couldn’t turn it off this time.

  Now she sat at her desk, rereading the logs the tech team had compiled from their CCTV sweep. Hume, Phillips and Angler had gone on ahead, out west, to the temporary command centre north of Hutchcomb’s Copse. She’d said she’d join them later – just wanted to check a couple of things.

  Rose was glad that Hume and Phillips were on board. And she was thrilled at how quickly Thames Valley had kicked into gear for this. Thing is, when you move that fast you’re likely to miss something. Some detail. And today a detail could mean the difference between Matt living and Matt having his chest lanced by a quiverful of arrows.

  The tech guys had earned their overtime on this. Rose knew they had. When she had gone down to the tech suite with Hume’s orders they’d been confident. ‘We’ll find him,’ the team leader had nodded briskly. ‘Don’t worry. We’ve got good visuals, we’ve got his car details. If he’s been out there, any time, anywhere, we’ll have him on camera.’

  Rose had been sceptical.

  ‘These are pretty rural areas,’ she’d said doubtfully. ‘Nothing much but fields, trees and the odd barn. How much CCTV coverage can there be?’

  The look the lead tech had given her had been almost pitying. She’d felt two inches tall – no, she’d felt five years old, a naive little girl.

  ‘CCTV is everywhere,’ the tech told her.

  And yet Luka still hadn’t been found.

  The tech suite was deserted now. Everyone had been seconded to surveillance, Rose guessed. They’d be rigging up their gear at Hume and Phillips’s temporary HQ out west.

  While she loaded up the video files she managed to get Leng, the tech lead, on his mobile. Interrupted him setting up shop in the command centre.

  ‘He just wasn’t there,’ Leng said, against a faint, humming backdrop of chaotic activity. ‘Simple as that. The car’s registered as on the road; it’s a knackered old blue Renault, and the cameras near his house and work picked him up a few times – we ran a couple of searches to check we weren’t on the wrong track altogether. We’ve got him filling up with petrol, even got him doing thirty-six in a built-up – but nothing in the target sites.’

  Not only had they failed to spot Luka out west, Leng told Rose, but as far as the log showed, Luka hadn’t driven anywhere near any o
f the crime scenes on the dates of the previous murders.

  ‘Was anyone spotted near the other scenes around the time of the murders?’ Rose asked. She knew she was grasping at straws but it killed her to have so many loose ends when any one of them could make a difference. ‘Any vehicles near the scenes more than you’d expect? Or hanging around at odd hours?’

  ‘Dozens,’ Leng said bluntly. ‘I’ll mail you the list. But it’s a long one.’

  She hung up, grabbed a machine coffee and cued up a few minutes of footage from near the north Oxford site, without much hope, knowing that six guys had burned up hours of overtime scrutinizing these files – she wasn’t going to find anything new.

  It was footage from the dashboard cam of a patrol car doing the rounds about closing time, the night before Katerina’s body was found. Probably Ganley and Conners. Rose whizzed forwards, watching the dark streets rush by in double-time. The odd drunk student weaving along the pavement. Pizza-delivery scooters, city taxis. The patrol car was heading out of town. Keeping out of trouble, Rose thought drily. How’d that turn out for you, lads?

  On an unlit B-road beyond Summertown, the car passed a white van coming in the other direction. A Citroën Berlingo, newish. The camera clocked it at 29 mph.

  Only one sort of van driver does 29 mph at quarter to midnight on an open road, Rose knew: one who’s too pissed to drive legally but sober enough to know he really doesn’t want to get pulled over.

  Of course, there were other reasons he might not want to get pulled over. Something dodgy about the van, say.

  Or something dodgy in the van.

  She rewound the footage. Froze it at the point where the van passed by. No decent visual on the driver: half a white face in the shadow of a low-pulled baseball cap. She made a note of the van’s registration.

  It wasn’t much of a lead. Could just’ve been some bloke half a pint over the limit, after all. Or even a decent, law-abiding motorist.

  Rose allowed herself a smile at that.

  She called up the spreadsheet Leng had sent over and opened it to find thirteen close-spaced pages of vehicle details. She Ctrl+F’ed the van’s registration number.