Trick or Treat

by Jackson Sharp

  The half-burned rope seemed to yield thread by thread.

  Rose struggled, grimacing as she fought to drag her trembling, scorched hands through the nooses of rough-fibred rope.

  She half heard Brask gasp: ‘No.’

  The rope fell away.

  Rose spun, lurched upwards into a smear of light and a fog of pain. Luka stood before Brask, face to face to fire the killing shot; bow poised, arrow notched, he was a dark shape, a blurred target. The arrow point was a bead of silver light. It was pointed at Brask’s throat.

  Rose’s ankles were still tightly bound, her senses dulled with pain, but she flung herself forwards through the shining wall of candles.

  Luka – absorbed in his grim ritual – was late to react. He threw up his right hand and the arrow clattered to the tiles. His knuckles crashed against Rose’s cheekbone. She grunted, threw a blind punch, connected with nothing.

  As they tumbled together to the floor, Luka’s bow tangled between his arm and his falling body. Rose fell across the tightly drawn bowstring. She felt it bite into the flesh of her neck and the sharp sting of it as it snapped.

  Luka gaped at the ruined bow and then wailed like a lost child. He shrieked something in Croat.

  Rose noticed before he did – a split second before – that the fallen arrow was resting on the tiles within reach of Luka’s left hand. She grabbed for it.

  Luka dropped his elbow hard on to her outstretched forearm, driving between muscle and bone. Rose screamed – then rolled, jerking back her head as Luka swiped the arrow past her face. With a snarl, he shifted his grip and stabbed downwards. She was able to twist aside just in time. The keen edge of the arrowhead scored a line down the side of her neck.

  Rose was scrambling to get back to her feet when Luka’s knee landed heavily on her chest. Her head knocked hard against the tiled floor.

  ‘You broke it,’ Luka sobbed. ‘You – you ruined it. You ruined everything.’

  The arrow was still clenched in his fist.

  ‘No, Luka.’ Rose shook her head, disoriented. ‘No.’

  ‘You did, you did.’

  The man’s knuckles whitened on the arrow’s shaft. Lauren raised her hands, turned her face away and braced herself.

  This was how it had ended for all the others, for Katerina, David, Caroline. Luka’s face was the last thing they saw. Luka’s voice was the last thing they heard – save for the sound of their own screams. When Lauren was gone it would be Brask’s turn …

  As Luka’s arm swung down, his weight shifted; the pressure on her chest lifted, just a fraction – but enough.

  With a scream of effort, Rose wrenched her body to the left. The arrow point ripped into her shirt, scraped painfully through the flesh of her armpit. Reflexively she slammed her arm down, sideways, and felt her elbow strike bone. The bone shifted horribly under the impact.

  Luka fell away, wailing, clutching at his right cheek. As Rose struggled to rise, he rolled and staggered unsteadily to his feet – then he bolted, hared to the door, the soles of his bare feet slapping on the tiles.

  Rose started to struggle with the ropes binding her ankles, her copper’s instincts kicking in, adrenaline spiking, ready to run, to chase –

  Then she saw Brask. His pale body sagged motionless, lifeless, in the ropes binding him to the pillar. Bloodied arrows jutted horribly from his upper breast, his thigh, his hip. From the chest downwards his pale body was awash with blood.

  Rose felt empty – hollowed-out inside.

  Dead, she thought, for a second, her mind reeling. Lost.

  Like all the others. Only this was worse, so much harder to bear.

  With raw-red fingers she finally ripped loose the hard knots in the old rope. Kicked her feet free. Stumbled into the ring of candlelight. She reached for the pulse in Brask’s throat.

  Nothing.

  Then something – almost too faint to feel, but yes, something under her numb fingertips, the weak, insistent kick of a heartbeat.

  Brask stirred, tried to lift his head.

  ‘Go … go after him.’

  ‘Don’t try to speak. Don’t try to do anything.’

  Every second counted now. Rose tore loose Brask’s ropes from the wooden pillar, lowered him carefully – her every muscle protesting – to the cold floor. She tore off her sweater and pressed it to the wound bleeding most heavily, where a shaft jutted from his hip.

  Brask groaned in pain.

  ‘Shush,’ she said briskly. ‘It’s okay. You’re going to be all right.’

  His body was slick with blood and pungent with balsam oil. That stubborn pulse just about kept going, kept fluttering. He struggled to keep his eyes open.

  And still he found the strength to urge her to leave him, to go after Luka.

  ‘He’ll … do it –’ Brask broke off, swallowed painfully. ‘He’ll do it again. Someone … someone else.’ His hand momentarily tightened on her wrist. ‘Lauren. Stop him. Go.’

  She looked down at him. His face was slack, his skin waxy. Was he going to make it? Had he already lost too much blood? Christ, how was she meant to know?

  This was the copper’s life. One impossible call after another. She thought of Phillips, Hume and the rest camped out over at the copse. All that effort, all those resources – to save how many lives?

  The human mind just wasn’t built to make those decisions, Rose thought bitterly. She smoothed Brask’s sweat-damp hair, muttered something reassuring and meaningless. Never mind the human heart.

  Through clenched teeth Brask again said: ‘Go!’

  Rose went.

  The door Luka had gone through led to an unlit flight of stairs. Luka had carried her – or dragged her – all the way down here, Rose realized uneasily. A disturbing thought: she’d been so powerless, so vulnerable.

  It made her think of all the other limp, dead-weight bodies Luka had hauled through fields and ditches, in and out of his meat van, up dark stairwells and through shadowed backstreets. Of the things he might have done to her – if only she’d been worthy.

  She took the stairs two at a time. Her body felt stretched, punished, warped out of shape; her scorched wrists seethed with pain, but at least the adrenaline had blunted the edges of it.

  Upstairs was another suite of starkly functional rooms, probably used for parish meetings or as a place to feed the needy. There was nothing here but the stagnant stink of neglected washing-up and a loose coil of rope on the floor. She crashed through the outer door and into the car park.

  It was dark now. Faint light from the street picked out the outline of Luka’s parked van. Rose could hear the distant skirl of a police siren or two, maybe three. Finally. But they’d be too late to do anything but pick up the pieces.

  She whirled and swore to herself. The back wall, out into the road, through the gardens of the adjoining houses, Christ, he could have gone anywhere …

  The church was an angular black shape against the violet city sky.

  He’s in there.

  Rose knew it, as surely as she knew anything. This was what Luka did when he was frightened, panicked, lost. This was where he went. He ran home to his God.

  She went in the front way, through the heavy, iron-studded door and into the entrance hall with its fluttering posters for community days out and free English lessons. The sickly-sweet smell of Father Florian’s incense lingered in the church.

  It was darker in here than outside. Almost pitch-dark, save for the candles that flickered by the altar rail.

  She crept down the left-hand side of the nave. Running had been easy; moving steadily, keeping control, reawoke the bone-deep pain in her arms and legs. Her head still pounded from the priest’s blow.

  Luka was on his knees before the altar. His stringy white arms were outstretched and his forehead was pressed to the floor.

  As Rose moved forwards, she could hear him, praying, begging, in helpless tears. She couldn’t make out what he was saying; he seemed to slur from one language to another, Cr
oatian, English, Latin. The odd word registered: sorry … forgive … sinner … saints …

  And one word more than any other, repeated over and over: Why?

  Rose took another step towards him.

  Luka stopped praying and swallowed down a sob.

  Slowly he turned his head towards her.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  ‘You.’ His voice was steeped in hatred and hoarse with grief. ‘You.’

  ‘Luka Savić, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murders of Caroline Chaudry, David Norfolk and Katerina Zrinski, of the kidnap and attempted murder of Professor Matthew Brask, and –’

  It all sounded so inadequate, so weak, in this place, beside the horror of Luka’s crimes.

  Luka was already on his feet and backing away as Rose spoke, holding up his hands, shaking his head.

  ‘Not now, not here,’ he said. ‘Sanctuary. I must not be stopped. I am so close. House of God. Sanctuary.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Luka.’ Rose moved forwards, maintaining the distance between them at six, seven feet. ‘You have to answer for Katerina. For David. For Caroline. It’s called justice.’

  Luka’s lip quivered.

  ‘I – I delivered them.’

  ‘You killed them, Luka. Doesn’t your God have something to say about that? You put them through suffering I wouldn’t wish on any living thing, and you killed them.’

  ‘I purged them of their sins,’ Luka whimpered. ‘I – I mortified their flesh, and –’

  ‘It’s over, Luka,’ she said softly.

  She’d been sizing him up, readying herself mentally for the next move. Yes, he’d overpowered her down in the kitchen basement, but she’d been in shock, in terrible pain, with her ankles bound. Now – well, now she still felt like hell.

  But at least this was face to face, on level ground.

  He wasn’t a big man, after all. Perhaps five-six, five-seven. A few years older than Rose, she guessed, but that wouldn’t count for much. He wasn’t muscular, but he wasn’t skinny either; he seemed as hard and resilient as wire. Plus, Rose thought, he’s crazy, a fanatic. There was a strength in that, she knew, that she’d be a fool to underestimate.

  Forget his child’s eyes, his tears, whatever horrors are buried in his past, she told herself. This guy took down David Norfolk, a farmer in his physical prime, a good man but tough as old boots. Caroline and Katerina were far from defenceless either.

  Whatever else he was, this man was a killer and a predator.

  She tensed, ready to make her move.

  ‘I will not fight,’ Luka said. ‘Not here. Not in this place of Christ.’

  Rose kept her guard up, held herself on the balls of her feet.

  ‘Good. Then you’ll come with me.’

  The expression on Luka’s face shifted like the surface of a sea in a storm. His mouth gaped and tears again shone in his dark eyes.

  ‘I was so close,’ he cried again. ‘Only one. I needed only one – to complete my work, the abbot’s mission …’

  He was talking about those relics again. Rose felt her temper start to stir.

  ‘Do you think your God gives a damn about a scrap of bone from a dead man?’

  The tears still came, but unforgiving iron entered into Luka’s gaze.

  ‘You understand nothing.’

  ‘So you’ve said. But I understand you well enough, Luka.’ She took a pace towards him – he didn’t back away. This was it. ‘Come with me.’

  He was almost within arm’s reach. A weeping man-child, small and pale in ill-made sackcloth, trembling in the shadow of the altar’s monumental iron cross.

  ‘Come with me,’ Rose said again. Then she lunged.

  She was expecting him to run and slip out of her grasp once again. She wasn’t expecting him to step in, pivot on his left foot and deliver a punch of crippling power to her lower ribs. As she doubled over, she cursed herself for a bloody idiot.

  He’s not a broken kid. He’s not going to run sobbing into your arms.

  He’ll do to you what he did to all the others. Remember that.

  Now that he’d thrown her off balance, Luka did run.

  The punch had given him a few seconds’ start, but Rose, quickly scoping the layout, second-guessed him and cut off the space as he veered left, towards the exit, towards escape. She drove herself forwards with a hand on the corner of a pew and swung herself into his path, forcing him to shift direction. He skidded, turned awkwardly, slipped beyond her reach –

  Feet pattering on the wooden floor, he vanished like a ghost into the darkness behind the altar.

  Rose, gulping achingly for breath, clawed her way along the altar rail and followed him into the gloom, where she found a metal spiral staircase twisting upwards to a mezzanine floor.

  At its base, one hand on the cold iron newel, she paused.

  Luka was up there, waiting, knowing that she’d follow him. He knew this place like a rabbit knew its warren. On the other hand, Rose had no damn idea what to expect. He was out of his mind, right on the brink, pushed by trauma and madness to a point where he was capable of anything.

  But she was a copper doing her job. So what choice did she have?

  She gripped the newel and began to climb.

  There was a little light up here, at least. A semicircular window of plain glass let in the dull orange glow of a nearby street lamp. Rose climbed slowly, letting her eyes adjust. This place would’ve been for what? A choir? For members of the congregation? Brask would know –

  – but Brask was downstairs, barely conscious, barely alive, hurt, alone, terrified …

  Rose couldn’t afford to think about him right now.

  The mezzanine stretched the full width of the building, a broad balcony of smooth, dusty boards that overhung the echoing space of the church to a distance of perhaps twenty feet. A decorative wrought-iron rail marked the far edge.

  Rose scanned the space. A stack of hymn books set against the wall. Three metal-framed chairs heaped on top of one another. A spatter of white bird shit from an old pigeon’s nest in the eaves.

  And Luka. He was backed into the far corner of the mezzanine. The dull light gleamed in his wide, wet eyes.

  Rose stopped dead. In the silent church she could hear his breathing: fast, shallow, panicked – that and the runaway gallop of her own heart.

  ‘There’s nowhere to go, Luka,’ she said. The words rang from the dark beams above.

  Luka’s voice came from the gloom, a gabbled incoherent whinny: ‘Jedini. The only one, only one, to redeem, to restore … blagoslovio oca, gone, lost, mrtav …’ He stuttered to a halt.

  ‘No more,’ Rose said. She did her best to sound strong, but she felt weak, so weak, inside.

  ‘One more,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ She began to cross the mezzanine. The boards bowed beneath her feet. ‘Luka? This ends here. There’s no point any more. No point in going on.’

  Luka twitched.

  ‘One more. One more and I will be with my brothers again.’ He grimaced, nodded. ‘With my blessed father.’

  For a moment she was sharply conscious of Luka’s madness. His strength. Her own pain. Keenly aware of the long, dark drop to the hard church floor and of what would happen to Matt Brask if she took on Luka and lost. And in this moment Rose hesitated.

  Luka pounced.

  He came for her throat, his sinewy white hands outstretched and a wild, desperate look in his eyes that had nothing to do with God or Christ.

  His right thumb dug deep between the tendons of her neck. The fingers of his right hand bunched to a tight, wrenching fist in her hair. She blocked the swing of his left hand and replied with a jabbing elbow that glanced off Luka’s jaw.

  He grunted and snarled something in Croatian. His free hand snaked through her flailing defence. Rose thought he groped for her throat or her face but what he found was her ear. His long fingernails dug into her skin.

  She swore fiercely and kicked out. Luka evaded her boot and tight
ened his grip. Rose felt blood running down her collar. Felt her skin about to rip like paper, like he was trying to tear her ear from her head …

  One more?

  She thought of the ghastly glass jars, the sick souvenirs looted from innocent bodies. Luka’s relics.

  Fuck that!

  She slammed her head forwards. Luka recoiled. Rose – with a splintering rush of pain – felt the left side of her forehead connect with the bridge of his nose. His blood spattered her face.

  He reeled backwards, across the groaning mezzanine boards, both hands pressed to his shattered, bleeding nose. He mouthed indistinct syllables: roaring, blood-filled noises of pain and fury. Rose went after him. She grabbed a fistful of his sackcloth garment and tried to pin him against the wrought-iron rail, but he twisted, squirmed, like a man having a fit.

  She took two hard blows to her head and shoulder from Luka’s hard-knuckled fists. These pushed Rose disorientingly backwards. She swung off balance and then felt the ornate iron edge of the rail press into the flesh of her lower back.

  She could see the dying light of the candles at the altar rail, deep in the darkness so far below.

  ‘You.’

  She turned back to Luka, whose blood-splashed face was six inches from hers, whose strong fingers dug like iron nails into her upper arms. He shook her like a dog worrying a rat.

  ‘You broke it, you spoiled –’

  ‘No, Luka.’

  ‘I was so close, so, so –’

  ‘No.’ Rose tried to shift her body and dislodge the hard point of the rail from the muscles of her back. ‘Not me, Luka.’ She thought fast and desperately. ‘He didn’t let it happen, did He? Your God – your beloved God, He saw what you were doing, and, Luka, He stopped it – didn’t He? He didn’t want you to do it. He didn’t want you to kill those people. He didn’t want you to kill Brask –’

  She gasped as Luka, with a grunt, jerked her harder against the rail; she thought of the vertiginous drop into the church just inches behind her. ‘He didn’t want you to kill me …’

  There was a crash from the front of the church that made the mezzanine shake. Flashlight beams broke the darkness of the pews below. Shouts sounded as dark figures moved down the naves and aisles.