Trick or Treat

by Jackson Sharp

  It was there.

  The hair on her neck prickled.

  She called through a PNC check on the van.

  Registered, the operator told her, with Oxford University Contract Services.

  She felt her heart rate quicken, but checked herself. It could be nothing. Twenty-two thousand students kept those guys busy. Throw half a brick anywhere in Oxford and you’ll hit someone who works for the university.

  Leng answered his mobile on her third attempt.

  ‘We’re at full tilt here, ma’am,’ the tech lead said with a hint of impatience.

  ‘This is – might be – important. I’ll clear it with the DCI, okay? I need you to run another sweep through the plate-recognition log.’

  ‘Another? We were very thorough, ma’am. That car wasn’t out there.’

  ‘Not that car. Another one.’ She read off the van’s reg. ‘I don’t need a full report, I just need to know when and where it was last seen. Can you do that?’

  Leng sounded reluctant.

  ‘We can try. But DCI Hume –’

  ‘Thanks, Leng. I’ll be waiting for your call.’

  Rang off. Dug out a number for University Contract Services.

  A surly-sounding man answered her call. They’d already had police all over the ruddy place, he told her, resentfully. Causing bother. Upsetting the students. Luka hadn’t been in for a couple of days – he’d already told three different coppers that.

  Rose tried to keep her tone civil. Fairly civil.

  ‘This is a murder investigation, sir. I’m sorry that the Thames Valley Police isn’t prepared to cut corners for your convenience. Now the quicker you give me the answers we need, the quicker we can let you get back to your very important work.’ She took a breath. Easy. ‘What vehicles did Luka have access to out of hours? University vehicles?’

  After a sullen pause the man said: ‘Well, most of ’em. He’d only a standard licence, of course – if you can call it a licence, what they get given out there in Poland or wherever – but he could drive any of the transits, Hiluxes, fridge vans, whatever.’

  ‘At all hours?’

  ‘He was kitchens. Kitchens work funny times.’

  Something he’d said had snagged in Rose’s mind. She rewound.

  ‘Fridge vans?’

  ‘Refrigerated vans.’ He said it slowly, like Rose was an idiot. ‘For fetching veg and meat from the suppliers. Now, if you’ve no more questions –’

  No more questions, and no time for this. Rose hung up.

  Katerina’s core temperature had been way down, hadn’t it? She’d been severely chilled.

  Refrigerated.

  Her phone buzzed in her hand. Voicemail. Leng had called back with the data from the logs while she’d been talking. Fast work.

  ‘There’s a recent spot, Inspector.’ The tech lead sounded harassed. Hume must’ve been running them ragged out there. ‘A petrol station in the east of the city – here’s the postcode. Hope it helps.’

  Rose ran a quick check.

  Yes – yes, it helped.

  It pulled everything into focus, narrowed the weird geography of this case to a single point.

  It meant that for the first time Rose was one step ahead.

  It meant that she could save Brask’s life.

  The petrol station was on the same street as the Church of the Queen of Peace. Where Luka went to Mass. Where Katerina went. Where Brask went.

  And ten cross-town miles from where Hume, Phillips and the best part of the Thames Valley Police were waiting for their man.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Her heart was thumping as she walked cautiously past the lichen-green stone gateposts of the church; she’d left her car further up the road. If Luka was there, she had no intention of giving him advance warning. Night was already falling – no, it was rising, swelling from the ground, gathering in the shadows and corners of the car park. Above, the sky was clear, a deep bruise-indigo.

  She wished she had an idea of what to expect. If he was here, would she have to give chase? Would she have to fight?

  Or was she going to be that just-too-late copper again, with nothing to do but pick up the pieces, file the report and identify the corpse? Yeah, and then sit back and wait for the next one to show up.

  She moved closer to the square-bodied red-brick church.

  Light showed behind the stained glass. Someone was here.

  There was a white Citroën van in the car park.

  Luka.

  Swiftly she dialled through for backup. Everything they could spare. She’d tangled with this guy once, at Brask’s place, and come off the worse; she wasn’t keen on a rematch. But who knew how long it’d take uniform to get across town?

  Matt could be dead already.

  She circled the church and found the rear entrance: an inconspicuous wooden door with a wire-reinforced window. It wasn’t locked.

  A trap. Had to be, didn’t it? What kind of kidnapper leaves an entrance – and, more to the point, an exit – unlocked? Unless they want company.

  But there was no way Luka could know she’d tracked him down. No way.

  She paused with her hand on the door, listening for the sound of sirens. Nothing: nothing but the mutter of traffic, the sound of the wind in the roadside poplars. The same wind she’d heard whistling through the terrible meadows Luka had made such horrors of. Christ. In her mind’s eye she saw the agonized faces of David Norfolk and Caroline Chaudry, the lifeless eyes of Katerina Zrinski.

  Not again. Never again.

  She pushed open the door.

  This was the warren of offices in which she’d spoken to the parish priest, Father Florian.

  She made her way along the fusty-smelling corridor and past the priest’s study. She walked softly and kept her breathing shallow. The heavy dark-wood door that led into the church was closed. She stood with her shoulder against the wood. Gathered herself.

  Eased open the door. It moved ajar with almost miraculous silence. She was behind the altar, to the left. Ahead of her a row of pews receded into darkness.

  No lights on. There was a reek of incense and the glimmer of candlelight. It felt a few degrees colder than in the corridor.

  Someone was speaking. Rose strained to hear. Latin?

  The door closed softly behind her. She crept forwards. As she approached, she saw that candles were lit along the floor in front of the altar rail. The balusters of the rail kept her from seeing more but there was someone there … someone kneeling.

  Again the voice, speaking in a strange language. No, not Latin. European, Rose thought, Croatian, maybe?

  She wondered what the Trick or Treat Killer was praying for. Strength? Forgiveness?

  When she moved beyond the altar rail she saw him, on his knees in the weak candlelight, hands pressed together. His voice had a curious resonance in the high-vaulted church. Before him, yellow-tinged incense smoke leaked from a burning thurible. He rocked back and forth as he prayed, his dirty grey beard brushing the parquet floor.

  Father Florian.

  Rose sucked in a breath. She remembered the priest’s hostility, his words about everyone being subject to Christ’s plan. The chrism, balsam oil, in his study.

  She stepped forwards, letting her shoe heel ring on the floor.

  The priest looked up at her sharply.

  He opened and closed his mouth, drawing out strings of saliva from his loose lips. Finally he found words: ‘No – not here, not permitted.’ The man clambered, wincing, to his feet.

  Rose held out her badge as she approached him. She was pretty sure he wouldn’t remember her: just another damned unbeliever, just another foolish woman.

  He peered short-sightedly at her credentials. Scowled.

  ‘Hm. Well.’ His watery eyes challenged her. ‘This is a very sacred time. Really you should have made an appointment, madam.’

  I thought all were supposed to be welcome in the house of God, Rose thought. But she kept her words to herself. Th
ere was no time for a philosophical discussion.

  ‘I’m looking for Luka Savić,’ she said quickly. ‘Bald man who attends your church. Has he been here?’

  ‘I know who Luka is,’ the priest replied high-handedly – as though he claimed association with a prince, Rose thought, instead of a sick-in-the-head serial murderer.

  ‘He’s wanted in connection with some very serious offences.’ She watched the priest closely as she talked. It was hard to read much in his deep-lined face and dark, pink-edged eyes – much, that was, beyond dislike, disgust and bitterness. ‘We have reason to believe that he’s been here very recently, that indeed he might still be here. We believe he’s extremely dangerous. That’s why we’re here.’

  She was sure to use we, and to put as much into it as she could, as if there was a SWAT team waiting out in the corridor and a helicopter gunship hovering overhead. Okay, this was only a decrepit priest, and not much of a threat if he turned nasty, but still, the illusion of backup was reassuring somehow.

  Made her feel less alone. Less vulnerable.

  But she’d have felt a whole lot safer if real backup had got its arse in gear.

  Florian frowned at her, his lower lip quivering within his grubby beard.

  ‘Luka?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Have you seen him? He’s a dangerous man and lives are at stake.’

  There was a pause. Then the old priest laughed.

  ‘Luka! Dangerous!’

  Rose’s fists clenched. Priest or no priest, this old bastard was asking for a smack in the mouth. A holy man, a so-called man of God. The kind of man, she sourly supposed, who claimed to be concerned with higher things.

  ‘I didn’t ask you for your opinion,’ she said. ‘I asked you if he was here. Has he been using this place?’

  ‘Luka uses the kitchens of this church, madam, to prepare food for the poor. Luka gives much of his time to supplying our soup kitchens. For the needy, you see.’ Florian spread his hands and smiled unpleasantly. His palms, Rose saw, were slick with oil. ‘He is a good man, a most holy soul.’

  ‘Where are the kitchens?’

  ‘A separate block.’ The priest made a vague gesture. ‘Outside, out at the back.’

  ‘Tell me where exactly.’

  He lifted his whiskery chin.

  ‘I will lead you there,’ he said.

  You won’t lead me anywhere.

  ‘Sir, you’re in great danger,’ Rose said insistently. The priest gave her a belligerent look – because she hadn’t called him ‘father’, she guessed.

  ‘I am quite safe, madam. This is my church, my responsibility,’ he said. ‘Besides, the kitchens are locked.’

  ‘This is police business, sir. Urgent police business. We’ve no time to waste. Please give me the keys.’

  ‘My business is Christ’s busi–’

  ‘For God’s sake, this is important,’ Rose shouted.

  Florian tottered backwards, grabbed at the altar rail for support. Blinked at her in disbelief.

  It was as though she’d slapped him. Hell, she almost had.

  ‘Give me the keys,’ she repeated. She felt her hands curl into fists, her cheeks hot. Whatever fear she’d had was gone, burned away by her fury. She held the priest’s damp gaze. ‘Now.’

  Florian tried to straighten his crooked back.

  ‘I go,’ he said stiffly, ‘to get the keys.’

  He moved unsteadily off towards the door Rose had come through.

  ‘Please hurry,’ Rose shouted after him.

  It made no difference: Florian shuffled arthritically to the door, pulled it open with difficulty and disappeared into the back rooms.

  Left alone in the dark church, in the dying light of Florian’s candles and with the sickly smoke of the smouldering incense curling about her feet, DI Lauren Rose prayed.

  For the foul priest to come back quickly.

  For backup to get there so that she wouldn’t have to confront Luka alone.

  For Matt to be alive. For Matt to be okay.

  She felt like a damn fool praying, she who’d never prayed to anyone or anything in her life before, but she prayed anyway.

  She spun around sharply at a soft noise from the door. There was Florian, shuffling forwards, holding a bunch of silver keys. Instinctive, gut-level dislike rose up in her again. This priest … She took a second, as he came towards her, to rationalize her loathing of the man. Christ, he embodied everything she hated: unearned privilege, misogyny, dogma and superstition, authority based on nothing but a silver cross, a mouthful of Latin and a set of grimy vestments.

  He shook the keys.

  ‘For kitchen,’ he wheezed. The old man seemed to be getting older and slower before her eyes.

  ‘Which way?’

  He pointed along the nave, towards the most distant corner of the church.

  ‘Side door.’

  ‘Give me the keys.’

  Florian glowered from beneath his unkempt brows.

  ‘My responsibility,’ he said.

  A man’s death is going to be your responsibility, Father, Rose seethed silently.

  ‘Quickly, then.’ She stalked impatiently up the aisle, cut right, ducked into the gloom of an anteroom. She came up against a door washed pale green with peeling paint. It was bolted. She slammed the flat of her hand against the wall in frustration.

  Doors she couldn’t open, languages she couldn’t understand, codes she couldn’t crack.

  But no one else was going to put an end to this, she knew. No one else was going to stop Luka in time to save Brask. Besides, she’d made a promise, to Katerina, or Katerina’s memory – and, for Christ’s sake, this was her job.

  What the hell was keeping that bloody priest?

  She began to turn, to see where Florian had got to, when a bone-cracking pain broke against the base of her skull.

  A flash of phosphorous-white.

  Her forehead smashing into the door.

  That was all.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Rose awoke and the world swam. She turned her head and vomited on the floor.

  Where? What?

  The pain in her head was unbearable. It was more, so much more than a headache. It screamed, pounded and tore at her nerves.

  Luka must have been hiding. He must have seen her arrive and been waiting for his chance to attack her. All that time he’d been lurking in the dark while she talked to the old priest and …

  The old priest. Had Luka attacked him, too? Was Father Florian yet another victim Rose was responsible for?

  Christ, her head hurt.

  And it wasn’t just the pain. She felt as though she were drowning in a dense fog of oily perfume. She gagged, coughed. The smell was all too familiar. Katerina. The bones. Balsam.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Tried to think – tried to block out the pain, block out the fear, and think.

  The floor was painfully hard under her hip, knee and elbow. She could see now that the tiles she lay on were red. She definitely wasn’t in the church. So where the hell was she? And how long had she been here?

  What light illuminated the room was faint, tremulous. In front of her there was a stained white-papered wall and a dusty skirting board. She shifted her position, to try to get a better look at her surroundings.

  Steel counters. A grease-spotted intake rising to the ceiling. A faint, bitter odour of fried onion.

  She must be in the kitchens, Luka’s kitchens, in the annexe to the church.

  She was in Luka’s kitchens.

  Panic surged in her chest.

  This was most likely where he’d beaten and decapitated Katerina and flayed David alive, and Rose couldn’t move her arms or legs.

  Her wrists were tied behind her back, her ankles bound tightly together. She struggled, jerked – felt not an inch of give, not the slightest sign of weakness. They felt like old fibre ropes, with none of the smooth feel of nylon, but they were well tied.

  She subsided. She’d seen Luka’s handi
work before, after all. The bastard was nothing if not thorough.

  Best to save what strength she had. It wasn’t much – but it was all she had.

  When she rolled on to her left side the light pushed a spike of pain through her eyes, into her head. Candles, more candles, two dozen or more. These weren’t the grubby tallow of the ones at Luka’s shrines but tall, brightly burning pillar candles of blood-red wax. Their light was agony to her pounding head. She clenched her jaw and rolled away.

  But it wasn’t just because of the bright flames …

  Beyond the candle flames she’d glimpsed a vision as from a gallery of medieval art: a man, stripped bare, bound with his arms behind him to a post, a dark-wood pillar that ran from floor to ceiling. He looked bloodlessly pale. His skin gleamed with oil and his head lolled to his chest. Lit from below, sacrificial, terrible.

  St Sebastian the martyr.

  Professor Matt Brask.

  ‘Matt!’

  Rose was surprised to find she had the breath in her lungs to call out his name. She managed to squirm on to her back. Above her, a bare grey light bulb, ancient polystyrene ceiling tiles and a wavering circle of candlelight.

  ‘Matt? Can you hear me?’ She steeled herself to turn her head back towards the light, towards Brask; again the fierce light jabbed at her and her vision blurred. All she could see of the man bound to the post was the dark spot of his head.

  It was moving.

  ‘Matt!’

  ‘Katerina?’ His voice was slurred, broken, but still Brask’s. He was trying to lift his head.

  ‘Matt, it’s Inspector Rose – it’s Lauren.’ She blinked, winced. ‘Where – where is he?’

  ‘Get out.’ Brask spoke like a man trying to make himself heard in a hurricane or a snowstorm. The words were indistinct but the terror in them rang like steel on stone. ‘Lauren, get out – it’s not safe, Katerina, my darling, it’s … it’s not safe – he’s coming …’

  Rose wondered what Luka could have done to Brask to reduce him to this state. Then, in her head, she heard Matilda Rooke’s kind, sad voice: You were hungry, weren’t you, Katerina? Hadn’t eaten …

  The man hadn’t been beaten, poisoned or drugged. Just starved half to death. Barely an ounce of strength left in his body – and he’d used it, not to cry out for help but to try and warn her. To try to save her.