Acid Lullaby

by Ed O'Connor

  ‘17th November. Cut myself. First time in years. Totally alone. Petrified. Doctor told me baby due on May 20th. It’s real. It’s going to happen. Despair.

  ‘18th November. It’s a girl. I can feel it. There’s a little girl growing inside me. Bought a book of baby names at lunchtime. Must be going mad. I think I like “Zoe”.

  ‘20th November. Spoke to Mark. He admitted he’s fucking Otham amongst others. Whole station knows. Couldn’t tell him about baby. Wanted to kill the bastard. I’m a fucking laughing stock. Told Gillian though. She says get rid of it.’

  Willis nodded, he remembered DS Gillian Read. She was eminently sensible.

  ‘Good advice, Gillian,’ he said quietly.

  ‘21st November. Mum called. Had to tell her. She cried. Told me to have abortion. Said she didn’t want me ending up like her. Can’t bear it. Cut myself.

  ‘28th November. Appointment booked. I’m terrified. Rather kill myself. Need to go into hospital.

  ‘1st December. Done. Horrible. Hardly slept. Dreamed of a baby crying: crying because she’s alone, crying because she’ll never know her name. Feel ashamed.’

  Willis sat back on the bed and tried to absorb what he had just read. Alison had been pregnant with his baby in 1994 and not told him. Alison had wanted to have his baby. Alison had an abortion. He looked deep into himself to try and identify what he was feeling. Was it anger? Resentment? Betrayal? After a moment, he decided it was relief.

  Mark Willis finally understood where Dexter’s hatred of him came from. But did it really change anything? He considered his situation. The basic facts remained the same. If he didn’t produce one hundred grand quickly he was a dead man. Alison Dexter had stopped him retrieving the drugs that would have saved his neck. She knew what had happened to them.

  He opened the 2002 diary, turning to the current date: 5th May. He needed to get her alone. Now he had the information about the baby it could work to his advantage, force her to drop her guard. There was no entry. He had two choices: wait for her to return to her flat or try to intercept her at New Bolden Police Station. He elected for the former option, at least until the beers in the fridge ran out. Then, on instinct, Willis turned forward two pages in her diary to 20th May.

  There was a two-word entry:

  ‘Zoe’s birthday.’

  57

  Underwood retrieved the steel box containing evidence gathered from the crime scene at Jack Harvey’s house. He took the box into Dexter’s office, clearing a space for it on her desk. Each evidence bag had been labelled with the location it had been discovered and the number of the Scene of Crime Officer that had logged it. Underwood considered each bag in turn.

  The first contained a group of envelopes found in a metal box next to Jack’s desk. Underwood put on a pair of sterile gloves and removed them from their clear plastic container. There were two white envelopes from the County Police Headquarters in Huntingdon. They each contained a pay slip: one for March and one for April. Underwood wasn’t surprised to learn that Jack had earned more than him. Still, he reasoned, after some mental arithmetic it didn’t explain how Jack had managed to afford his relatively extravagant lifestyle.

  He flicked through the next group of envelopes: there was a warranty agreement for Jack’s new computer, an advertisement for a credit card, some fliers for forthcoming medical books. It was all fairly uninspiring stuff. Then at the bottom of the pile, Underwood found Jack’s bank statements. He read back through the itemized list of transactions, noting that, like his, Jack’s police salary had been paid on the last Friday of each month.

  Underwood quickly found what he had been looking for: two substantial deposits. The first had been made on the 7th of February: a cash deposit of ten thousand pounds. Exactly the same amount had been deposited on the 8th of March. Underwood whistled softly.

  ‘What were you up to, Jackie boy?’ he asked the empty room.

  It was an unsettling amount of money. Jack had clearly become entangled in something serious. Underwood tried to work out a logic underpinning the information he had discovered. Twenty thousand pounds paid in two instalments in the space of four weeks. To Underwood, it seemed like payment for services. No other explanation seemed to fit the evidence. Underwood confirmed that both payments fell into the two-month gap between the first and second victims. Assuming Jack had been hired by the killer or, as Underwood was coming to believe, an associate or relative of the killer, it was clear that they were seeking someone with access to considerable wealth.

  ‘Not only wealth,’ Underwood told himself, ‘but also liquid wealth. Cash.’

  He replaced the envelopes into the evidence bag and continued to sift through the contents of the box. Most of the other paperwork that had been salvaged from the fire had been burned almost beyond the point of usefulness. Underwood could decipher occasional fragments of typed text or handwriting that suggested he was reading a patient report but it was a hopeless task. Besides, he was aware that Dexter’s team had already checked up on all Jack’s official patient referrals. The bank statement underlined that whatever he had been up to was very much on an unofficial basis. Underwood knew Jack was too canny to mix up his records.

  Jack’s computer had been destroyed in the fire and the floppy discs that had survived had yielded nothing of interest. Underwood was gradually coming around to the belief that Jack had kept records of his unofficial activities secured elsewhere. He removed Jack’s wallet from an evidence bag. It had been discovered in the inside pocket of his sports jacket which had been hanging in the hallway outside his office. Underwood removed each of Jack’s credit cards one by one and smiled softly when he saw the unflattering photograph on Jack’s driving licence. He could find nothing of value.

  The final bag in the evidence box contained Jack’s keys. Underwood looked at them briefly: he recognized the remote electronic lock and keys for Jack’s new BMW. There was a Yale key that he guessed opened Jack’s front door, a window key, what looked like an old shed key and two smaller keys which Underwood guessed opened a garage door or a padlock.

  He dropped the keys back on the table with an irritated ‘clonk’. He was beginning to lose hope that they would find Rowena Harvey alive. They had built a vague chronology of events and Underwood was starting to understand the killer’s modus operandi but there were still too many missing links. He reminded himself bitterly that they had turned up virtually no insights at all without the prompting that Mary Colson’s dream had provided. His encounters with the old lady had been profoundly disturbing. She had shaken his long held belief that death was simply oblivion. The idea that the human spirit continued in some other form after life ceased was not one he found attractive. Mary Colson had scared him witless with her quiet assertion that Jack Harvey’s ghost had been standing directly behind him.

  Underwood looked around the CID department. He could see Farrell and Sauerwine discussing the best way to tackle the Toyota car dealerships, and there were a couple of uniformed WPC’s on telephones following up on information derived from house to house enquiries. He found their presence comforting.

  He looked back at Jack Harvey’s keys and remembered the last drink he had enjoyed with Jack a week previously. Underwood had been ambushed by the strength of his whisky and had slipped into a near drunken state very quickly. He’d even managed to leave his own keys on the table in the pub. Jack had reminded him about them: ‘don’t forget your keys’, he had called out.

  Underwood distractedly bit down on a fingernail as he picked up Harvey’s key ring again.

  ‘Don’t forget your keys!’ He could still hear Jack’s voice as it rung out across the crowded pub.

  He remembered that Mary Colson had uttered the phrase in their first meeting. She said that Jack’s spirit had asked about Underwood’s keys. It had freaked him out. A few hours previously she had repeated the exact same sentence as she emerged from the fog of her tranquillized night’s sleep. Underwood suddenly corrected himself. She hadn’t repeate
d the exact phrase. She had said, ‘Did you remember the keys?’

  He wondered for a second if the difference was important. Mary had also said that Jack wanted him to ‘open the box’. That was something new. She had not referred to a box in their previous conversations. His box of bad memories had been Jack’s idea, Underwood had assumed that she had been referring to that.

  The keys clinked as Underwood shifted them between his fingers. Gradually, a cold realization swept over him as if iced water had been poured down the back of his neck. Jack Harvey had been with him: screaming noiselessly at him all the time. Underwood had finally heard him.

  58

  Max Fallon stood on the flat roof of the crumbling, old house marvelling at the cold beauty of the universe he had created. Nor was its beauty random or chaotic like the mess of human ideas. It was mathematical and exact: expanding mathematically, contracting mathematically. Just as the human form developed in life and receded in death. He only had a matter of hours to wait now. At 11.27 that evening he would inseminate Rowena Harvey with the seed of the Soma and the lunar race would be born on earth.

  He knew that she was fortunate. In legend, the Soma had possessed some twenty-seven wives: the daughters of Daksha. Max lay down on the hard surface of the roof, ignoring the dry crusts of bird shit that flaked against his naked skin. He blinked at the vast blue expanse above him, wondering at the possibilities posed by having twenty-seven wives. Max couldn’t remember why he hadn’t indulged the vision more regularly. He distinctly recalled dictating this aspect of the Soma myth into his tape recorder. Perhaps it was time, in the long hours before the insemination of Rowena Harvey, for him to re-familiarize himself with the details of his previous existence.

  He dusted himself down, picking small pieces of stone and mess from his skin. Fallon kept his tapes in the library of the old hall but before he retrieved the story of Daksha, he hurried down to his kitchen and selected a solution he had derived from two Amanita Muscaria mushrooms. He unscrewed the bottle and poured the mixture into a glass of water. That way Fallon hoped to ensure he could absorb the essence rapidly into his system without encountering any of the risks posed by intravenous injection.

  Returning to the library, Max eventually found the ‘Daksha’ tape from his collection and placed it into his tape recorder. He settled on to the chaise lounge, smiling as his own voice emerged from the machine.

  ‘Daksha was named as a Lord of Creation,’ said the recording, ‘he fathered several daughters by his consort Prasuti.’

  Slowly as the words washed over him, so the corners of the room seemed to soften and warp as the muscimol began to impair his perception. The tinny electronic voice became indistinguishable from the divine voice in his head. He was beginning to remember the patterns of his former existence.

  ‘Twenty-seven of Daksha’s daughters became wives of the Soma,’ said the voice. ‘Twenty-seven beautiful, virginal maidens.’

  The Soma writhed under the heat of their bodies as they crawled and slid across him: their eager, inquisitive hands exploring his nakedness, tongues painting delicate circles on his skin. He found himself struggling away from them. Surprised at his own reluctance, Max tried hard to hear his voice through their breathless incantations. It was difficult, he was being sucked down from reality and drawn into the whirlpool of bodies. As he was starting to panic, he saw Rowena Harvey’s face floating in front of him.

  ‘Soma invoked the fury of Daksha by favouring only one of his daughters, Rohini.’

  Rowena … Rohini… Rowena … Rohini.

  The name held a massive significance. It could not be coincidence. Just as Rohini had spelt the death of hope for Max Fallon the child, it now signalled the birth of beauty for Max Fallon the man.

  Max engulfed the image of Rowena Harvey, entwining his arms and legs around her to prevent her escape and to protect her from the jealous wrath of her sisters. He would make her part of himself. She would overcome her terror of the Soma. She would mother the lunar race on earth.

  ‘In his fury,’ the voice continued, ‘Daksha cursed Soma with consumption.’

  Snapped from his reveries Max began to remember why he had only played the tape on a single previous occasion.

  ‘The Soma seemed to be doomed to a terrible and protracted death: drowning in the mucus of his own lungs.’

  The suggestion was a powerful one and it worked havoc in Max’s vulnerable brain. He felt himself turning inside out; he saw his limbs and skin fold inwards and disappear. He was sliding into his own lungs, inexorably sinking into a sea of blood and mucus. He found himself unable to breath as he drew the sludge inside. It burned like larva. He tried to reach out, to tear through the mucus-soaked lung lining and pull himself out into the air.

  Max coughed violently and uncontrollably. He fell to the floor of the library and came to rest on his hands and knees, hacking mucus onto the wooden floorboards. The movement in his throat made him heave and he spewed muscimol-laced vomit, feeling its strange heat rolling down across his face. The room span in every direction. Max hauled himself to his tape recorder and threw it against the wall. The voice abruptly crashed to a halt.

  Max slowly began to relax into the light show. He needed air.

  59

  Dexter had driven with Adam Miller to Thetford Forest. She found his company and enthusiasm engaging: a pleasant relief from the scowling anxiety of Underwood and Mark Willis. It had been a straightforward journey taking only twenty minutes up the A11. Dexter had been impressed that Miller had taken a genuinely enthusiastic but not unhealthy interest in the progress of the investigation.

  ‘It’s weird,’ he observed. ‘The guy has gone to a lot of trouble. I mean, injecting people with Amanita extracts. It must mean something important to him.’

  ‘That’s something I wanted to ask you,’ Dexter said as they turned onto the B1105 at Elveden under the dark canopy of Corsican pine trees. ‘Does it take a great deal of knowledge to do what he’s done? Is it difficult to identify these things in the wild and know how to treat them?’

  ‘You’re wondering if this guy’s a mycologist like me?’ Miller seemed amused at the idea.

  ‘It’s called clutching at straws,’ Dexter replied without emotion. She meant it.

  ‘It’s hard to say. Judging from what you’ve told me and from what I’ve read in the toxicology profiles, the guy is clearly pretty smart and fairly well-informed. Is he a professional though? I doubt it. The sort of information that he’d need is easily accessible. There are hundreds of internet sites and books he could look up. There’s a huge amount of detail available on the Amanita Muscaria, for example.’

  ‘The red and white one? Why?’

  ‘It has a long history. It’s readily recognizable. It makes you hallucinate and if you treat it properly it won’t kill you.’

  ‘Have you ever taken one?’

  ‘Are you going to arrest me?’

  ‘Not unless you refuse to answer my questions.’

  Miller smiled. ‘I took one once: a few years ago in Amsterdam. It wasn’t a pleasant experience.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The hallucinogens affect different people in different ways. Your mood and outlook can affect the way your body treats the experience.’

  ‘Not my cup of tea at all,’ Dexter frowned. ‘I’d never put that shit inside me.’

  ‘Very wise.’

  ‘What about the other one,’ Dexter asked, ‘the Death Cap?’

  Miller thought for a second. ‘That’s a little trickier. There’s plenty of literature on them but they are very easy to mistake in the wild. It’s what makes them so dangerous. The killer would need to be fairly clued up about them.’

  Dexter pulled up in a layby. ‘Here we go, according to your map. Site one is along that footpath.’

  ‘Can I ask what we’re looking for exactly?’ Miller asked, ‘I mean, I can take you to the various locations where the university had recorded samples of these Amanitas but there’s no guara
ntee that you’ll find any. It’s early in May. Most of them won’t appear till later in the summer. And as I told you, it’s quite conceivable that your guy harvested the things last November and has been storing them in a freezer. The toxins are pretty stable over time.’

  ‘True enough.’ Dexter opened the car boot and took out an evidence collection kit. ‘But if we do find that some of the sites have been interfered with we might be able to turn something up: discarded litter with a fingerprint, shoe impression on the soil, dead body.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Miller looked at Thetford Forest with sudden trepidation.

  ‘If we do find anything significant, I’ll call a forensic team in anyway. Don’t worry, I’ll hold your hand.’

  Miller seemed surprised. ‘You didn’t strike me as the type.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Dexter asked.

  ‘I’m just joking.’

  The first site was on the edge of Wangford Warren. Miller pointed out a cluster of silver birch trees amongst the Corsican pines. He checked his notes.

  ‘Okay. University research student found Amanita Muscaria at the base of the central birch.’ He walked forward and checked the surrounding area. ‘Sorry, Inspector, there’s nothing here.’ Miller extended his search pattern around the immediate area and found nothing. Whilst he was mushroom hunting Dexter looked for signs of human interference. She too drew a blank.

  ‘The second site’s about a mile north east,’ Miller announced when he returned. ‘You happy to walk?’

  ‘Of course.’ Dexter was slightly affronted at the question.

  ‘Your shoes are not ideal for this terrain,’ Miller explained, pointing at Dexter’s smart black leather shoes.

  ‘They’ll do fine. You just try and keep up.’ Dexter was rather enjoying herself. The air was clean and the woods didn’t scare her in the daylight.

  The second location was around the base of a beech tree, just south of Brandon Park. Dexter pointed out a semi-circular fungus with a red-brown cap attached to the bark.