Mersey Dark

by Michael Whitehead

  Something moved behind Danny, he whirled but the hallway was empty. Heart beating hard in his chest, he turned back to the red setter on the floor. A dark figure hit him hard in the chest. He twisted at the last possible moment, deflecting some of the shock of the blow, but still found himself thrown back across the corridor and ending up leaning against the far wall.

  Whoever had hit him, leaped past Danny and toward the stairs. Reacting on instinct Danny whipped the shotgun round and fired both barrels. The narrow corridor filled with smoke, obscuring his vision. He got to his feet and took a few steps toward his target, hoping to get a better view.

  The figure that lay beside the two maids was covered in dark fur. One arm was twisted beneath it, the other hung limply over the top step of the stairs. A large open wound was gently smoking in the middle of its back, through it he could see the curve of its spine. Small, dark eyes looked up at Danny from a monstrous, fur-covered face. Its mouth opened and closed in gasping breathes, much like the dog’s had.

  Danny stood over the thing before him, and then at the shotgun in his hand. He realised as the life went out of the thing’s eyes that he had killed something bigger than a bird for the first time in his life, and he had no idea what it was.

  The screams from outside did not start immediately. Danny stood looking at the dead creature at his feet for a few moments before the air was rent by the cries of many voices.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Tanner leaned out of the window of the carriage and looked up toward the driver, “Stop!” he shouted.

  The driver called an instruction to the horses, and both passengers were thrown forward by inertia. Tanner opened the door and leaned out, using the extra height of the carriage step to look out at the grounds of Sir Thomas Richmond’s estate.

  “Look, over there,” he said to Templeton as the taller man leaned out to join him. Across the lawn that ran alongside the drive, a number of black shapes were bounding toward the house. They looked like every rat Tanner had ever seen scuttering in the shadows and dark places of the town.

  These were however, the same monstrous hulking beasts that had attacked them on the ship. They were running in formation, like ships sailing into battle. A single animal led the line and four more ran back from him, almost like an arrow head.

  “Quickly, man! To the house with as much haste as you can muster,” Templeton ordered the driver, and the man obeyed without question. The horses kicked up gravel as the carriage lurched into life.

  The driveway seemed interminably long as the two men watched the creatures race up the lawn. As the carriage pulled up, they saw what must have been the entire household milling about around a large fountain. Templeton stepped from the vehicle almost before it had stopped, Tanner was half a step behind him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid you may be in grave danger. If you could all enter the house and lock all of the doors and windows,” Tanner heard Templeton say as he stepped to the edge of the lawn, looking toward the running rats. They were mere seconds away from the gathered people.

  “There’s a murderer inside,” one of the gathered men said in answer to Templeton. At the same time, one of the women must have been watching Tanner and had seen where he was looking. She began to scream. The rats were running up the last shallow slope of the lawn, Templeton watched them and calmly unscrewed the top of his cane. He withdrew his blade and waited.

  The first rat attacked Tanner, as he was the nearest person to their charge. The detective tried to turn his body and deflect some of the force of its attack. The creature was just too big however, he was bundled over backward and barely managed to keep hold of his sword as he tumbled to the gravel. By chance, the rat was foiled by Tanner’s fall and rolled over the top of him instead of landing any meaningful attack.

  Tanner jumped to his feet to meet the rat, as it came back for a second charge. This time Tanner timed his manoeuvre with more precision, sidestepping and swinging the sabre up toward the rats neck. The blow landed under the creatures chin and cut deep into its mouth, causing a shriek of pain.

  Behind him, the world was erupting into screams and chaos. A man cried out in obvious agony and Tanner caught sight of a body lying on the grass to his right, before the wounded rat came at him for a third time.

  This time, it attacked without the ferocity of its previous assaults. Tanner stepped forward to meet it and sliced his blade across its eyes. It dropped to the ground, blood pouring from its wounds. Tanner drove his weapon into the area behind its elongated skull and the thing stilled.

  As he turned Tanner saw Templeton wielding a long thin blade, attacking first one and then a second of the rats. The first fell to a single blow. With obvious skill the older man drove the length of steel into one of the monster’s eyes, it fell to the ground instantly, twitching.

  The second rat attacked him from the side. Templeton raised a hand in a halting gesture and the creature was bowled backward as if hit by an invisible wave. The moment was brief in the midst of the fighting, but Tanner saw it plainly.

  A woman fell to the ground, her neck twisted like a damp cloth and her head lolling at an obtuse angle. Her uniform suggested that she was a maid, she had worked her last day. Off to one side of the fight, three men in black uniforms were trying to wrestle one of the rats bare-handed. They were out matched and Tanner saw one of them sustain a large wound to his shoulder that sent him to the ground with blood spraying across his face.

  Everywhere people fought or ran. Two red setters had joined the chaos and were standing side by side, barking at the nearest rat. They did not attack but stood their ground, and created more noise than any of the people.

  In the center of the tumult was an ancient gentleman in a wheeled chair. He had a blanket over his legs and was waving a cane about his head like he was wielding a sword. He shouted constantly, and pointed out the creatures as if the other people hadn’t seen them.

  No general in any battle of ancient Rome was as busy as the old man was right now. He shouted instructions to troops who did not exist and cheered their victories.

  The largest of the monsters saw the old man and focused its attention on him. Tanner saw its head whip in his direction like a dog who, while sleeping, hears a noise that rips it from a dream.

  Tanner saw the space between the monster and its prey, he knew he couldn’t make up the distance. Templeton was busy fighting another of the creatures, and nobody else had the weapon or the skill to protect their master. He saw the rat tear into the man in the wheelchair, who died shouting for his troops to protect him. Or he would have done had a young man not stepped out of the front door of the grand house and shot the rat twice where it stood.

  The creature flinched backward with the impact of the first shot. It struck just above the breast, high up in the junction of shoulder and neck. Its head flew to the left as it tried to identify where the pain it now suffered had come from.

  The second shot destroyed half of its elongated nose, driving backwards into its face and dropping it to the ground like so much dead meat. Sir Thomas Richmond did not even see the two shots that saved his life, he was busy directing his imaginary army into battle.

  Templeton had finished the last of the remaining rats by the time the two shots saved the lord of the manor. He stood among the bodies of three creatures and four people. His suit was unstained and immaculate as always.

  Two of the maids now lay dead, the one whose fall Tanner had witnessed and a second whose uniform was now soaked in her own blood. Off to one side two men lay side by side, they had fought one of the creatures and paid with their lives.

  Among the dead, the living looked about them and understood that they had survived the fight. Shock held them in place, surrounded by death and blood. Tears fell and soaked into the hungry ground like the blood of their friends.

  “Good show! Good show!” Sir Thomas shouted as he sat in the middle of the carnage. He had placed his cane across his lap and was signalling for a tall, th
in man to push him toward the house. They were halfway across the gravelled space before Tanner caught them and stepped in front of the chair.

  “Sir Thomas Richmond?” Tanner asked. It was more a form of introduction than a question in need of an answer.

  “Who wants to know?” the old man asked, looking up at Tanner. His neck was bent with age, so that he had to turn his head sideways in order to make eye contact.

  “Sir Thomas, I am DC Tanner of the Liverpool police force,” Tanner began but was cut off by Sir Thomas.

  “Well detective, I thank you for your help. If you ask at the kitchen, I’m sure the cook can fix you a plate and a drink before you go on your way.” He spoke as if half of his staff did not at this moment lie dead in front of his house. The fact that there were man sized rats sprawled among them had simply passed him by.

  “Actually Sir, I was wondering if I might have a moment of your time,” Tanner asked, as Templeton joined him.

  “I’m sorry detective, it simply isn’t a convenient time at the moment. My attention is required in far too many places. If you could make an appointment with Kennelly and let him know what it is about, I will try to free a space in my diary.” With that said, the old man signalled for his valet who pushed his chair, presumably Kennelly, to continue toward the house.

  Tanner began to lose his temper, he stepped in front of the old man and was about to open up a tirade of anger, but he saw Templeton moving toward the chair and decided to let his partner deal with this. He was after all better equipped to deal with the upper classes.

  Templeton managed to step in front of Kennelly and take control of the chair in one swift movement. Had anyone else done it, the action might have required a great deal of shoving and use of elbows, in Templeton’s case the other man simply stepped back and relinquished the space.

  “Sorry to bother you old chum,” Templeton began, as if Sir Thomas hadn’t spoken at all. “We thought we might have a word with you about this.” As he spoke he slowly turned the chair around so that Sir Thomas could see the carnage and destruction behind him.

  “Good lord! When did this happen? Be a good man and fetch Whitchurch would you? He will have this cleared up in no time. I do hope nobody was hurt.” As he spoke Sir Thomas was trying to turn in his chair in order to speak directly to Templeton. Tanner already had his partners eye, however. They had both heard the name Whitchurch and both understood the significance of the name in relation to Victoria, their first victim in Liverpool.

  “I thought we could leave the staff to clear everything up, maybe go inside and have a dram of something to steady the nerves, what do you say?” Templeton continued.

  “A splendid idea, old man. Do come in.” He looked around and his eyes lit on his valet once more, “Kennelly will fix us a drink, I’m sure.”

  Kennelly looked like he’d just been smacked in the mouth. The detective didn’t know a lot about the duties of the staff in a big house, but assumed Sir Thomas had just asked his man to perform a service far beneath his station.

  “If you wish, Sir Thomas,” the valet said, from between gritted teeth.

  As they entered the house, Tanner glanced back toward the ruin behind them. An older woman in uniform was starting to take control of the situation. A number of the staff were still sitting on the ground crying but a few were in the process of covering the bodies and caring for the injured.

  The house felt bigger on the inside than the outside had given him cause to expect. The hallway alone was large enough to have an echo with a wide set of stairs leading to the upper floor.

  “There are more bodies at the top of the stairs,” a voice said from behind Tanner. He turned to see the young man who had saved Sir Thomas’s life with his two well-aimed shots.

  “More?” Tanner asked, while watching Templeton and Sir Thomas make their way into one of the downstairs rooms.

  “Yes, two maids and another of those things. I killed it.” For a moment, he seemed to drift away, lost in memory before returning to the present. “What are they?” the young man asked, but Tanner was more interested in what was happening in the other room.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t answer that right now. You fought well out there, thank you,” Tanner replied. The man looked disappointed and shaken by everything he had been though but Tanner had no time to console him, he turned and followed Templeton into what turned out to be a front parlour.

  Kennelly handed Tanner a glass as he entered the room. It was heavy and contained a large measure of what smelled like quality whiskey. He turned the glass, examining the fine cut of the bevelled sides before draining the liquid in one swallow.

  “Bloody heathens, trying to come here and invade my home!” Sir Thomas was saying to Templeton.

  “Quite,” answered Templeton. “Tell me Sir Thomas, do you have any idea who it is who might want to see you come to harm?”

  “Foreigners, beggars, thieves, too many people in parliament, bloody anti-slave abolitionists. You name it, they’re all out to get me. Do you know they want to stop me running my plantation in St. Helena? As if an Englishman didn’t have the right to do exactly as he bloody well chooses. I blame this new queen for one, what’s her name? Victoria? She won’t last, she’ll run the empire into the ground.”

  Tanner watched Templeton as Sir Thomas let fly this unintelligible tirade. He simply sat and let the old man speak, a slight smile on his face and interest in his eyes. Tanner on the other hand was finding it difficult to follow more than one word in every three. Sir Thomas spoke so fast about things that might have happened decades ago. For a start, Victoria had been on the throne for over twenty years, yet this old man spoke as if she had just had her coronation.

  “So, nobody in particular strikes you as the sort of person that might try to kill you?” Templeton asked but before he finished Sir Thomas was shaking his head.

  “Young man,” he said, “If you have lived as long as I have, and done as many things as I have done, and not gathered about you a number of enemies that might want to do you harm, then you have not lived a full life. I stopped keeping track of my enemies a long time ago. I fear that even if I could remember their names, that it might take you a lifetime to speak to them all.”

  Templeton smiled and nodded as if the old man had been as helpful as he could possibly have hoped. He stood up and walked to the huge, dark fireplace. On the mantle was a photograph that showed a group of about thirty men, all between twenty and fifty, and all but a few were white. They were dressed for hot weather with many of them wearing light coloured linen shirts and wide-brimmed hats.

  “St. Helena?” Templeton asked.

  “Ah yes, those were the days. A man could live as he wanted in those days. None of your modern thinking about slaves and free men. A man knew his place in the world.” Sir Thomas puffed out his sunken chest in an attempt to show pride, but it turned into a fit of coughing.

  Templeton lifted the photograph from the mantle and carried over to where Sir Thomas was wiping his mouth on a cloth.

  “So tell me, which one is Whitchurch?” he asked.

  Sir Thomas scanned the photo for a moment. In the centre was a man who was obviously a younger version of himself. His junior carried much more weight than he did now, but one look at his face made it plain they were the same person. He lifted a bony finger and pointed to a man standing just to the left of his former self.

  “There,” he said. “Good man, Whitchurch. Shame he passed away when he did.

  “I’m sorry, was it recent?” Templeton asked, taking the photograph back to the fireplace.

  “Lord, no! Died not long after this photo was taken.”

  “Ah I see,” Templeton said. “So tell me, what relation to Whitchurch was Victoria? A niece?”

  “Sorry can’t help you there. As far as Whitchurch always told it he had no family. No brothers or sisters and certainly no children. It was one of the things I liked most about him, no split loyalties, you know? The man never had to think about anyo
ne but himself, and me of course.” Sir Thomas stared off into the land of the past, seemingly forgetting about his present company altogether.

  Kennelly, having stood quietly while the two visitors questioned his charge, signalled over the old man’s head that the interview was over. They all filed from the room and out into the hallway.

  “I’m sorry, but if I’m any judge you have had the best of Sir Thomas for today. It is unlikely that he will be as lucid until tomorrow at the earliest.”

  “No matter,” Templeton said, turning to Tanner, “Shall we?”

  Tanner nodded, “I will have officers here as soon as I return to Liverpool. In the meantime deal with your casualties in any way you see fit. I have everything I need and won’t need to examine the bodies. I am sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you, Detective Tanner,” Kennelly answered, but Tanner thought he might be the least affected of everyone in the house. He had an air of detachment that unnerved the detective.

  “May I suggest that Sir Thomas hire some protection until we can get to the bottom of all of this.” Templeton added.

  “What of the bodies of the...invaders?” Kennelly asked.

  Tanner thought for the moment, “Do you have anything we might use as a tarpaulin?”

  “I’m sure we could find something? Do you intend to take the bodies away with you?”

  “I think we may have to, Mr. Kennelly. I hope you understand the need for discretion in this matter?”

  “Absolutely sir, I shall have them wrapped and lashed to the roof of your carriage?” He asked with a look of relief on his face. Tanner was sure the sooner he was rid of this problem the better he would feel.

  “Thank you, that would be fine,” Templeton added.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “So, what you are telling me is that Victoria Whitchurch was killed by mistake?” Sergeant Philips asked, putting down his finished mug of tea. Biscuit crumbs clung to the front of his prodigious uniform like climbers on a rock face.