Trick or Treat

by Jackson Sharp

  Munro’s FR team. Finally.

  A hissing noise broke from Luka’s throat. He, too, was staring into the darkness beyond the rail, at the probing flashlights. His grip on her arms grew tighter.

  There wasn’t going to be another chance.

  Rose braced her back against the piercing iron and, grimacing at the pain, forced one foot forwards. She gripped the rail with one grasping hand and drove the full weight of her body against Luka, turning as she did so and bringing up a hand as Luka’s grip loosened to seize the sackcloth collar of his vestment –

  And now it was she who held him fast, by his collar and his left wrist, against the rail.

  And now, bloodied, tearful, he looked like a broken boy again.

  ‘Don’t move,’ she said, emphasizing the words with a tug on his collar. ‘Don’t even try.’

  Luka shook his head dully. His eyes were blank.

  There was more shouting and then the noise of boots on metal. The mezzanine shook with heavy footsteps. Someone was coming up the spiral staircase.

  ‘I’m okay,’ Rose called over her shoulder.

  Another reassuring lie.

  Luka mumbled something and glanced backwards at the drop.

  She looked at him. ‘What?’ she asked.

  ‘One more.’

  She let her bitterness surface. ‘One more stolen fragment of flesh, Luka? One more mouldy bone?’

  His eyes gleamed.

  Oh Christ.

  ‘One more soul,’ he said.

  She braced herself for one last, desperate lunge from Luka. She prepared herself to counter the force of his shoulder driven into her chest. She was ready to heave him back – but instead of a fresh assault Luka’s body suddenly went limp. The balance between them lurched, like a game of tug-of-war when one side suddenly lets go. He stumbled like a drunkard back into the rail, his centre of gravity at a tipping point.

  Rose snatched for his wrist. Her fingers grazed his sweaty skin and felt it slip away.

  Luka fell.

  Rose heard a shout from below. An alarmed clatter of boots. Then this noise …

  It sounded, she thought in confusion, like the noise of Luka’s arrow entering Brask’s body. A thick, raw noise, a stomach-turning crunch of bone, flesh and iron.

  She darted to the rail and looked down. Saw him, lit by groping flashlights and the sputtering candles.

  She looked away. In the last few weeks she’d seen enough blood to last her a lifetime.

  But as she stared, trembling, into the darkness of the church’s roof space, the image of him lingered before her eyes. Luka’s arms and legs had been thrown out, as if in celebration or release, his body a pale star glowing against the dimness. His robes had been torn away. His eyes were open, his mouth agape in something like a smile. The iron cross of the altar jutted from his chest in a bloody wreckage of smashed ribs and spilling guts. His lips had been moving, saying something, something she couldn’t make out, over and over.

  It was Munro she’d heard climbing the stairs. He moved towards her uncertainly.

  ‘You okay, ma’am?’

  Rose stared at the sergeant.

  ‘Fucking hell, no,’ she said.

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  She grimaced.

  ‘Nothing that won’t mend.’ She looked at the grim-faced Scot. ‘Is he dead?’

  Munro peered over the railing and made a grimace of his own. He nodded. ‘He is.’

  Rose returned the nod, not knowing quite what she meant by it.

  ‘What – what was he saying? Did they hear what he was saying?’

  Munro frowned. ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘His lips were moving. As he was – after he landed.’

  Munro touched his earpiece. Muttered the question: ‘Were there any last words?’

  The reply buzzed promptly back; Rose didn’t catch it.

  ‘What was that, Sergeant?’

  Munro cleared his throat softly.

  ‘He said, “Father.” ’ He looked at her curiously. ‘Does it mean something?’

  ‘Does anything?’

  ‘Ma’am?’

  She sighed, rubbed her eyes.

  ‘Never mind. No – I don’t know. Was that all he said?’

  ‘Aye. I don’t suppose he had time for much more.’

  Some people, Rose thought, would say that Luka was free now – free from his madness and his hurt. Some would say that, at last, he was with his lost father, the abbot, and with his murdered brothers of the Order of St Quintus.

  Some would say he’d cheated justice.

  Some would say he’d burn in hell.

  It was all the same to Rose. To her, all that mattered now was that he was dead and gone – it was time to worry about those left behind.

  ‘The annexe,’ she said quickly to Munro, moving towards the stairs. ‘In the basement – Matt, Professor Brask, he’s …’

  She trailed off at the sight of Munro’s face. Grave, sombre. A face with bad news behind it, a face that went with ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you …’ or ‘There’s no easy way to say this …’

  ‘I know, ma’am,’ Munro said. ‘We already found him.’

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  A scattering of dull stars showed over Oxford. SOCO’s high-intensity lighting rigs cast long, sharp shadows on the concrete.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ the paramedic had asked.

  She’d wanted to reply, Compared to what?

  ‘Not really,’ Rose had lied. She’d flexed her hand, testing the soreness of her bandaged wrist. It had still felt raw, scorched, damaged. The burns would leave scars, she knew. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ The medic was young, female, with thoughtful eyes and gentle fingers. Maggie she’d said her name was. She’d been sitting beside Rose on the church steps when the ambulance crew had brought Brask out of the annexe.

  Rose had tried to see beyond the hi-vis bodies crowded round the rattling gurney, through the urgent chaos of blankets, drips, tubes. She’d caught only glimpses: Brask’s bloodied skin, Brask’s wild dark hair.

  Then he was gone, hoisted briskly into the back of the ambulance.

  ‘They’ll do everything they can,’ Maggie had said. ‘I know we always say that. But it’s true, they will. All these horrible deaths … they’ve made us as sick as anyone. The guys’ll do whatever it takes to prevent another one.’

  Rose had nodded moodily.

  Now, alone on the steps, she tugged her blanket around her shoulders and thought about Professor Matt Brask.

  Brask was a man of God. Okay, he was more complex – subtler, deeper, more curious, more troubled – than your usual parish priest. But he was a man who looked for meaning.

  Would he find any meaning in this? Rose wondered. In all this pain, all this suffering, all these wrecked lives?

  Or would he go to his grave asking why?

  She thought back to her first visit here, to the Church of the Queen of Peace. Thought of the garishly gruesome painted Christ suspended over the altar: the red of the blood, the dark-pink of the scarified skin, the terrible grief in the down-tilted face.

  If they can find meaning in that, Rose thought bitterly, they can find meaning in anything.

  She ran a hand through her hair and blew out a sigh. How could anyone make sense of what Luka had done?

  There’d be an investigation, of course. A senior Thames Valley officer throws an immigrant off a balcony – how could there not be? And the press’d be all over it like blowflies. She’d come through it all right, she supposed.

  Aside from anything else, it seemed so surreal: this case – tortured saints, medieval paintings, ancient monasteries and all – being soberly dissected by men in suits in a wood-panelled committee room … it felt wrong.

  At first glance it seemed that Luka’s crimes didn’t belong in our time. Didn’t belong to our world. It’d be nice to think so, Rose thought. But take a look at the court reports. Read through the 999 call logs. Pick up a bl
oody newspaper. Who are you trying to kid?

  A tall figure moved out of the darkness.

  ‘Word from the hospital,’ said Leland Phillips.

  Rose looked up sharply and tried to kill the shoot of hope that sprang up in her chest.

  ‘Go on.’

  Phillips adjusted the sit of his trousers and settled himself on the step beside her.

  ‘He lost a lot of blood in there,’ he said. ‘But there was no damage to anything important. The arrows missed all the vital organs.’ He gave Rose a nudge. ‘Your professor’s a lucky boy. Damn lucky. It’ll be a hell of a recovery, but he’s going to be okay.’

  She wanted to weep. She wanted to hug Phillips. Christ, she could have kissed the supercilious bastard.

  Instead, through a knackered half-smile, she said: ‘Not lucky.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘He wasn’t lucky. Luka knew what he was doing. If he’d wanted to kill Brask, he knew where to aim.’

  ‘So he was, what, just tickling him for fun?’

  ‘He was keeping him alive, Phillips. He needed Matt to suffer. He’d have killed him in the end, of course – but the suffering was the main thing.’

  There was a silence.

  Phillips said: ‘Fu-u-uck.’

  ‘Yep.’

  The DI reached into his jacket, drew out a hip flask.

  ‘Let me guess,’ Rose said as he unscrewed the cap. ‘The finest vintage Armagnac?’

  Phillips smiled thinly.

  ‘Pisspot Scotch, actually. It’s Angler’s. I took it off him and gave him a bollocking for drinking on the job.’ He upended the flask and took a mouthful. ‘Christ. Here.’ He passed it along. ‘You look like you need it.’

  She didn’t disagree.

  ‘Steady there,’ Phillips murmured as she took a long, burning swig. ‘Don’t want you going all Prime Suspect on us.’

  Rose coughed, laughed. The noise echoed in the dark church car park.

  ‘Listen, Rose,’ Phillips said after a moment. There was the slightest note of discomfort in his voice. ‘You did what you had to do in there, all right? Killing the mad bastard. You didn’t have a choice.’

  She looked at him.

  ‘It – it was an accident.’

  Phillips tilted his head.

  ‘From your point of view, maybe. But the way I read it, he wanted it to finish that way. He needed you to do what you did.’

  ‘There was nothing else I could’ve done.’

  ‘I know that. Like I said – he didn’t give you a choice.’ He shrugged. ‘The man wanted to die. Who knows since when. Since last week? Since twenty-five years ago? Since always?’ He put a hand briefly on Rose’s shoulder. ‘He wanted to die; he’s dead – it’s over.’

  She shook her head emphatically.

  ‘No. Not over. Florian, the priest – Florian’s still out there.’

  Phillips made a dismissive gesture.

  ‘We’ve an all-points alert out across the city. He’s a seventy-year-old priest with a limp and a strong Eastern European accent. How far is he going to get?’ He sniffed, spat on the concrete. ‘It’s over, Rose. Done with. You can get on with your life.’ Gave her a smirk. ‘Such as it is.’

  He stood, smoothed his jacket.

  ‘Keep the flask. Angler drinks too much anyway.’ He frowned judiciously at the dressing on Rose’s wrist. Blood was already seeping into the off-white cotton. ‘You need to get to A&E with that. Get it sorted out properly.’ Another dry look. ‘Plus all those other injuries you’re keeping to yourself, you brave little soldier.’

  She nodded, smiled. Her head throbbed. Her ribs ached.

  ‘I’ll drive myself there,’ she said. ‘Once I’ve got my head together.’

  ‘Okay. Then fuck off home to bed. You look like you’ve not slept in six weeks.’

  ‘You’re not far wrong.’

  ‘Take it easy, Inspector.’ Phillips flipped her an ironic salute and disappeared into the gloom. A minute later she saw the headlights of his Audi flare, watched the big car purr through the gates and pull out on to the main road.

  Luka was still on her mind.

  All this to justify a decades-old death-wish? All this to find a way, a reason, to die? It was insane – but then, so was Luka.

  There was belief behind the things he did. For Christ’s sake, surely there had to be. To tear the skin from a living body, to throw a young woman in the fire and watch her burn, to butcher a woman you knew, had worked with, prayed with –

  There was something behind that stronger than madness. There was faith.

  She stood, stretched her legs, flexed her back and winced as a ripple of pain passed through her body. She kind of hoped the hospital would want to keep her in overnight. A fistful of painkillers and a long lie-down on clean white sheets – it sounded like something she could really use right now.

  Her car was parked by the road, outside the gates. She wondered, as she unlocked the door, if she’d have the strength to work the pedals.

  She started up the engine, put the car into gear, pulled away from the kerb. Left the Church of the Queen of Peace behind her.

  Didn’t look back.

  Epilogue

  Nine months later

  ‘Policija gadovi,’ the man snapped, shaking his head with a lemon-sucking expression. ‘Policija može pojesti govno.’

  Rose glanced across the makeshift office at Adrijana. Adrijana looked awkward.

  ‘He says – something about the police.’

  ‘I gathered that much, Jana. What exactly did he say?’

  ‘He said police are – bastards? And that the police can … “eat shit”.’

  Rose grinned, shook her head. Same old, same old.

  ‘Tell him,’ she said, ‘that we’ll send an officer round to speak to him this week.’ She made a note. Then to the man: ‘We’ll get it sorted, Mr Blažević. You have my word on that.’

  Adrijana rattled off the translation. Mr Blažević scowled, shrugged, nodded.

  ‘Dobro,’ he grunted, getting rheumatically to his feet.

  Dobro, ‘good’. It was the best she’d had so far from the old bugger. She gave him a well-practised smile.

  He grumbled something as Adrijana helped him on with his anorak.

  When he was gone Rose stirred two teabags in the steel pot and asked Adrijana what he’d said. Adrijana laughed.

  ‘He said it was no use trying to flirt with him,’ she said.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Rose said drily. ‘Out of my league, I guess.’

  Mr Blažević was eighty-four. His on-going problems with a mob of local youths – empty booze bottles in his vegetable patch and, when he’d complained, a dog turd through his letterbox – were just one of a hundred issues that had been brought to Rose’s weekly sessions at the Leys. Building bridges, that was the idea. Letting the local immigrant communities know that the police were on their side.

  Some – like Mr Blažević – took more convincing than others.

  It was an eye-opener anyway. Problems with employers. Problems with asylum applications, visa applications, citizenship applications. Problems with crime, drugs, trafficking.

  Okay, she was a copper, not a social worker. There was only so much she could do. But she was there and she was listening. That was something. And it was a damn sight more than any other DCI had ever done.

  At his leaving do Morgan Hume had told her to play down the ‘soft stuff’ if by some miracle she managed to land an interview.

  ‘They don’t want airy-fucking-fairy touchy-fucking-feely bridge-building,’ he’d said, slurping at a glass of orange juice. ‘They want to hear about cracking down. They want fucking Robocop, Rose, is what they want. Law and order. Start banging on about community policing, they’ll take you for a soft touch.’ He’d given her a look of amusement tinged with respect. ‘And I know from bitter fucking experience that that’s the last thing you are.’

  She’d thanked him. Could’ve argued, but it was his leaving do a
fter all – and it didn’t seem right to start a row with a guy who was headed for a triple heart bypass.

  ‘Fucking ill health,’ he’d declared to the MCU one January morning, storming in out of the drizzle. ‘Fucking pension.’

  Then he’d shut himself in his office for the rest of the day.

  It had been hard to picture the Thames Valley Major Crimes Unit without Hume at the top. But things were changing. Leland Phillips was already gone – to the Met, a DI post in the financial crime division. Had enough of nutters, he’d said.

  Rose had wished him well. The MCU didn’t bring out the best in everyone. Phillips had done okay when the pressure was really on.

  And in the end, that had left her, Rose, staring at a nine-page application form and wondering if she really wanted to be Detective Chief Inspector Lauren Rose.

  Turned out she really did.

  Hume’s advice had made sense, in a screwed-up sort of way. Play it tough, be the hard-but-fair copper, don’t let them see any sign of weakness. ‘That goes double with you being, y’know, a woman,’ the old DCI had added. ‘They’ll be expecting a fucking wimp. Don’t give ’em one.’

  Her dad told her much the same thing.

  Knowing who she was up against didn’t make it any easier. No Phillips, true, but a Cambridge grad with five years as DI in Edinburgh, a Met DCI moving sideways, another DCI who’d been making headlines as an ‘enforcer’ in Bristol …

  It had kept her awake for a few nights before the interview. And it had taken her quite a while – longer than it should have, she thought later, exasperated with herself – to see the obvious.

  She wasn’t DCI Morgan Hume. She wasn’t DCI Keith Rose. So she went into the interview and talked about community engagement, offender rehabilitation, partnerships and problem-solving.

  They’d offered her the job on the spot.

  It was her passion, they’d told her afterwards, that had made the difference.

  Now, in the makeshift office at the bottom of a Leys housing block, she settled into one of the second-hand chairs and sipped her cheap tea.

  ‘We will see him again next week,’ Adrijana predicted, ‘Mr Blažević. I think he likes us.’

  ‘You might see him next week. I can’t make it.’