“Then you are naive. And your acceptance is irrelevant anyway. You’ve seen the Innsmouth Institute. You have been trusted with government secrets. Now is the time to grow up.” Harker let the silence that followed linger for a while before she continued. “As you will have gathered, there are certain institutes in this country that are maintained outside of the general public acknowledgement. This is something which, I must stress, is highly sensitive and subject to the full consequences of the Official Secrets Act lest one of you decide to be careless with the information you are privileged enough to have shared with you today.”
Harker looked round the room dangerously and, to Alix’s surprise, her gaze fell most deliberately on Baron who curled his nose up and looked away, obviously displeased at the insinuation. The tension in the room was oppressive. Alix felt an urge to kick up a fuss but the part of her that wanted to hear what Harker had to say was too powerful to ignore.
“The Innsmouth Institution operates in secret. It is not part of an NHS Trust. It is not subject to Department of Health regulation and doesn’t appear in any budget anywhere. Its operations are only known to those few in the highest levels of government and, generally, it is not necessary to involve anyone else in its existence. However, there are occasions when those that work tirelessly to keep these things from the public are caught off guard and from time to time a little of the broth spills over and out of the pan. It is our job to wipe it away. Quickly. As you may have gathered, places at the Innsmouth Institute are reserved for a very select number of individuals. Professor Eugene Anwick is one of these individuals.”
“Why?” Alix interjected. “What makes Anwick different from any other person suffering trauma?”
This time Harker ignored her outright: “After he was pulled from the fume filled garage and life pumped back into him, Anwick was taken to Innsmouth and detained. He should have stayed there. No one of any significance knew of Sasha’s death or the Anwick cleaner’s murder and those that did know were convincingly silenced.
“But orders were sent for Anwick’s transfer from Innsmouth to Rampton. An unprecedented situation but, perhaps the problem with keeping things so secret is that the chain of command sometimes experiences problems verifying the information it receives. I believe that the orders were falsified but that’s another story. At any rate, the directions were carried out and a secure van dispatched immediately. Anwick was accompanied by four minders. Two in the front and two in the back either side of him. What happened next is unclear. The van was found on its side approximately a mile from where Katelyn and Megan were found. The four guards had been killed, their necks broken, not by any crash or impact but most likely by Anwick, although how he managed to break free and why the van crashed in any event is unknown.
“Anwick was found shortly afterwards, Katelyn’s dead body in his arms, Megan sat in the corner of the barn, fear having all but destroyed her.”
Ash chewed his tongue thoughtfully. He could feel his phone vibrating in his pocket but he ignored it. It was probably his stalker anyway.
“But what makes Anwick different?” asked Alix. “He’s not untreatable. Where’s the section statement?”
“I told you: there isn’t one.” Harker looked at her sternly. The sort of look that ended most conversations. But Alix wasn’t the sort of woman to engage in ‘most conversations’.
“Can we be clear on one thing, Mrs Harker,” she said. “Is the reason why you’re not telling us the truth about Innsmouth because you choose not to or because you don’t know?”
For what seemed like an age the two women stared at each other. Ash broke the silence.
“What happens when Anwick goes before the Magistrates to enter a plea?”
“Eugene Anwick will not appear before the Magistrates,” said Harker. “He will not stand trial. He will not be convicted. He will not need to. He will never leave Innsmouth.”
Alix opened her mouth to speak but said nothing. Her brain ticked over as she assimilated this new information. But what intrigued her most was Baron’s reaction. The twitch of his mouth which he tried to conceal by rubbing his chin. He was as in the dark as they were.
Alix leaned forward a little across the table, her eyes fixing back on Harker.
“Which begs the question: why are you here, Mrs Harker?”
“Excuse me?”
“If there’s no trial then there’s no need for a prosecutor.”
“I’m here in my capacity as the Attorney-General’s representative,” Harker said through gritted teeth. Then, when no one reacted: “I act for the government.”
“Perhaps, Amanda,” Baron said slowly, “you could extend the courtesy of explaining how we fit into all of this if indeed it is the case that Professor Anwick will never see the inside of a courtroom.”
Alix looked at the older woman expectantly. She crossed her legs, cocked her head to one side a little. All of these things were the signs of absolute confidence. In truth, her heart was in her mouth.
Harker spoke slowly and carefully, every syllable of every word emphasised with utter precision and care: “You are all about to participate in a cleansing process. Like it or not, there are forces at work that are greater in proportion and significance than anything you have come to understand about your jobs, about the administration, about this world and you are being asked not to question the instructions you receive, but to faithfully and diligently adhere to them so that any consequences that arise from the Laicey murder and Anwick’s alleged involvement are mitigated.”
“And these higher forces,” said Baron. “They include the rule of law?”
Harker turned to him and met his gaze. “Especially the rule of law.”
“Why are we involved?” said Ash.
“You are required to lend the legitimacy that this investigation requires so that, if there is a media frenzy, the world will believe that Professor Anwick was captured, tried and found guilty.”
“My report then,” said Alix, “is a charade. You won’t actually consider the contents. It’s just a thing you’ll throw at the media if they work out what’s happening.”
“The basis for the insanity defence, yes.”
“Insanity? But I haven’t assessed Anwick yet. I might find-”
“You’ll find, girl, what I tell you to find.” Alix felt a strong urge to jump up round the table and jam the expensive looking fountain pen down Harker’s throat. Ash looked pale, anxious, any element of amusement with Harker’s oddities having quickly evaporated. Baron remained stock still, eyes down, lips pursed. He was evidently as unhappy with what he heard as they were.
“I’m out,” said Alix.
“Don’t be so hasty, doctor Franchot,” Harker warned. “This situation-”
“No, wait.” Alix cut her off and to her surprise she stopped. “This isn’t one of those rash decisions you’ll later persuade me to change my mind about with an inspiring speech about playing my part, national security or something equally abstract. What you’re asking us to do is unethical, immoral and unprofessional and I want no part in it. I don’t give a shit about society or the bigger picture. It’s bollocks. Nothing comes above my own integrity.”
“In fact I have absolutely no intention of trying to persuade you otherwise, doctor Franchot. Quite evidently you lack the intellectual capacity to understand the significance of the task that is being handed to you and in that case you are quite the wrong person to undertake it.”
Several things crossed Alix’s mind, all of them equally inappropriate. Her lips formed a word but, for the second time, no sound came out.
“Maybe we’ve misunderstood something, Mrs Harker,” Ash said. “You’re asking quite a lot of people who’ve spent their entire careers being nothing but completely honest to ourselves and our professions-”
“What would you have me do, Inspector Fielding? Perhaps if I were to ask nicely, would that make any difference? Of course not. And what is being asked of you is not earth-shatteringly illeg
itimate. You will be named as the officer in charge of a case that will earn you a great credit for doing nothing. That is all.”
Ash turned to Baron for help but his superior was staring into space, hand over his mouth, a look that was utterly unreadable.
“Well?” said Harker impatiently.
Chapter 16
Ernst Stranger dug his nails hard in to the back of his neck and gasped at the mixture of pleasure and pain that he derived from scratching the rash that ran from the base of his skull across almost the entire breadth of his shoulder. He had been twelve when he first took a blade and cut deep into his forearm; the ecstasy he felt as the blood trickled down and dripped on his parent’s bathroom floor had instantly extinguished the fear he had felt at the hands of the school bullies. And from that moment Ernst Stranger had been hooked.
Things were better now for Ernst. He had found his first steady job, a career job if he was lucky, working in the mortuary, deep below the lowest basements where the public weren’t allowed to go at the University Hospital. Here, he spent his days bagging and tagging the dead. He felt strangely at home here, in this sanitised house of corpses, where his only living companions were those unseen entities that slowly feasted on the bodies of the unfortunate. There were no school bullies to kick him, or call him names, pull his ginger hair or steal his things.
Nor could they rip his trousers down and shove pencils up his arse.
Ernst had been working at the hospital mortuary for a few months before he finally came to terms with the enjoyment he got from seeing the bodies brought in, stripped naked as the day they were born; every scar, every imperfection, every mark exposed for his eyes, and hands, to explore. He had been uncomfortable with it at first. There was something impure, unnatural, frightening even, about having a fetish for dead flesh. He knew that there were doctors working upstairs who suspected his job satisfaction was rather more than that which was considered healthy, but they were usually too busy or to wary of him to say anything. Down here he was safe. Down here he was free. King of the Dead.
The clank of the main door opening forced Ernst to quickly remove his hands from the rash and turn round. He was annoyed about the interruption and even more annoyed at the redness he could feel flooding his face. He was cursed with the look of the guilty irrespective of what he was doing.
“New one for ya’, Strange,” called an unenthusiastic voice.
“It’s Stranger,” Ernst muttered under his breath. His plan – as was always his plan when he came into contact with people who had a pulse – was to refrain from engaging in any small talk and get the visitor to leave as quickly as possible.
Victor wheeled in a trolley on which was laid a short, green bag which bulged and swelled with an unmistakable shape. It was more compensation than Ernst felt he deserved for having to endure a few short moments of live human contact.
“She’s prepped and ready. Just tag her and book her.”
“Thank you.” She, he thought. Most satisfactory.
Victor parked the trolley in the middle of the room and looked at Ernst. He seemed harmless enough, sat gracelessly at a desk on which sat a computer monitor displaying a half completed game of solitaire. But Victor knew the rumours and knew better than to try and talk to this strange little hermit. He decided to withdraw quickly from the room and get back up to where the people were generally a little less weird.
Ernst counted to seventeen in his head the second Victor shut the door. That was the time it would take him to enter the lift. Then, with a childish squeal, he leapt from his chair and was instantly close to the new arrival. It only took him a few seconds to realise that there was something not quite right. The bag was so short. But Ernst’s puzzlement soon disappeared and was replaced with a broad grin as the realisation of just how fortunate he was today dawned on him.
It was a child.
But then there was something else different. At first, the oddity repulsed him and he was forced to take a small step back from the body. It was the smell. It was the smell of a corpse, of course, but that was not something that Ernst was used to at all. By the time bodies reached him, they were sanitized, shaved, disinfected, washed and, most importantly, the internal organs were drained of all bio-hazardous fluids using a trocar, a cylinder inserted into the abdomen. The inside of the cavity walls were then lined with an embalming gel before the anus and vagina were stuffed with cotton.
In short, by the time the bodies reached Ernst, they smelt better than they had done whilst they were still alive.
This one didn’t. This one stank of festering rot.
Fuck, it stank of festering rot.
And it was intoxicating.
Something awoke within Ernst. He felt alive: a rare, exquisite moment of adrenaline flushed through his body and he found himself clumsily feeling for the zip of the bag. With trembling fingers he carefully split open the bag down the side closest to him and savoured the moment a short while before lifting the top of the bag. His mouth salivated, pupils expanded, his muscles flexed. Every inch of him burned with a mixture of trepidation, guilt, disgust and pleasure.
But it was smothered in a heartbeat.
He pulled his hands away sharply, as if they had been burnt. He staggered back, covering his mouth. A feeling that he might be sick clenched at his stomach. And he looked away; he looked away with bile sticking at the back of his throat. And from that moment, Ernst Stranger knew that his life was a pathetic nothingness; an empty, unfulfilled existence of shame and deprivation. He felt a surge of terror at the thought that this moment, for reasons which he could not yet work out, could be his undoing.
What lay in this bag should have been someone’s child, someone’s beloved child.
But it was not.
And it chilled Ernst to the bone.
Chapter 17
It was a long drive to the small village of White Helmsley but the marked Ford Kuga stuck to the road pretty well despite the ice.
Police Constable William Fenn was three months away from retirement. It was times like these, driving down the abandoned back lanes through the snow covered valleys, when a small part of him thought he would miss the force.
But then he thought about the pension and the feelings of nostalgia ebbed away.
The radio crackled and Sergeant Lister’s droning voice filled the car interior.
“Fenn, where are you?”
“Just coming up to Helmsley, Serg.”
“Where?”
“Helmsley.”
“Why?”
“You sent me. To, er -” he scrabbled around for his pad where he’d written the address – “to check on Blacksmith Cottage, Low Street. Mrs Something-Or-Other.”
“You took a Kuga.”
“I took a Kuga.”
“Bill, for Christ’s sake have you seen the weather? I need four-by-fours here to deal with real problems not the OAP’s day out to the coast.”
“Sorry, Serg, struggling to hear you. Must be the atmospherics.”
“Bill, don’t you dare-”
William Fenn clicked the radio and the line went dead. He smiled to himself. His final days would be taken up running pointless errands, filling out crappy paperwork and checking on old ladies who hadn’t called in on their nearest and dearest recently. And if he wanted to take a Kuga to do it, he’d take a goddamn Kuga. Firing him now would just bring about a welcome beginning to life in the slow lane.
He overshot the turning to the village.
“Bugger.”
The sign was covered in snow and the B-road hadn’t any tyre tracks so it was indistinguishable from the fields either side. Just a big, white blanket. He pulled the Kuga back and signalled to turn. There was no one there to signal to but he felt he should anyway.
The entrance to White Helmsley preceded a small humpbacked bridge over a disused railway line. The Kuga slipped a few times on the way up, the wheels clicked as the traction control kicked in but Fenn was soon over the other side and into the villag
e.
There was only one main road and a few cul-de-sacs. Low Street wasn’t difficult to find. The housing was sparse. Some small cottages amongst the odd barn conversation and larger farm houses set back in grounds covered in snow. Everything pure white. Not a track in sight.
Mrs Such-and-such – he hadn’t recorded the name but it didn’t matter – lived at the end of a small lane which, Fenn surmised, would be nothing more than a dirt track if he could actually see it. Her bungalow was newer than some of the other houses. A local farmer probably siphoning off a bit of land for development as the recession nestled in. Diversify, thought Fenn. Farmers were good at that. They had to pay for those brand new Merc trucks somehow.
The old lady’s car – a Fiesta – was covered in thick heaps of snow. It hadn’t been moved in days. Fenn wondered whether she had taken a tumble and was lying on the floor somewhere. Shit, he thought. The last thing he needed was for this to turn into anything other than a quick knock on the door and a hi-how-are-you-perhaps-you-could-give-your-son-a-quick-ring-now-and-again sort of affair.
He peered through the dull glass and made out the sort of furnishings he expected to see. Beige colours, everything patterned, heavy wallpaper. Doilies. Maybe those knitted things old people put over the spare toilet paper. Fenn wondered how long it would be before his own home started to look like this.
“Hello?” He called out and knocked at the same time. Nothing. A second knock, tried the bell. Still nothing.
He found the door unlocked. It creaked a little but the hinges were new. The warmth of the heating hit him. Winter fuel allowance gratefully received and spent here, thank you very much. The smell of an old people’s home. Maybe this is what he smelt like but everybody was too polite to tell him. The hallway led into a small kitchen and to a garden beyond. The living room was cluttered with ornaments and photographs of a young man in his thirties with an arm round a rather plump girl. Son and daughter-in-law presumably. Two bedrooms. Hers – fluffy pillows, sickly white duvet, more pictures and a pile of Ruth Rendall novels – and a spare.
Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) Page 6