The Mayfly: The chilling thriller that will get under your skin

by James Hazel

  Priest wandered back to the reception desk and leant on the counter. Maureen looked at him sternly.

  ‘What have you got yourself into this time, Charlie?’

  ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’ When she looked at him incredulously he added, ‘It’s fine, Maureen. Honest.’

  ‘You’re an awful liar,’ she said, turning back to her typing.

  *

  Disappointingly, Evans won the race. He not so much entered as fell through the door to reception clutching a bundle of papers in his hand. He was out of breath and red-faced but still managed to thrust the papers into Priest’s hand.

  ‘Enjoy brushing up,’ he wheezed.

  McEwen rose from his seat. ‘Don’t think we can be that tidy now, Priest. Not now we’ve been made to wait.’

  ‘Where are your files kept?’ Evans demanded. He was annoyed, clearly, but the tremble in his voice was still evident.

  Priest hadn’t heard from Okoro and it was looking like he might have to give over to McEwen. He thought about Solly not allowing anyone to open his door more than forty-five degrees. He was up there now, probably sterilising the seat Priest had used. Solly wasn’t going to cope with this. Priest needed to stall some more but his head had emptied itself of ideas.

  ‘Which one of you is Evans?’ Maureen shouted from behind the front desk.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Phone call for you.’ Without looking up, Maureen offered the receiver. Priest raised an eyebrow.

  Evans looked baffled. McEwen halted his troops for a second time.

  The CPS lawyer took the phone and placed it to his ear. ‘This is Evans. Who . . .? Yes . . . Yes, sir. Good morning . . . Yes . . . As you know, I represent the Crown . . . yes. Yes. The order was granted earlier by District Judge Fearnly in circumstances where . . . yes? Yes, I see, sir. Indeed . . . Good morning, sir.’

  He handed the receiver back to Maureen. The colour had drained from his face and he seemed to have aged ten years. He glanced at Priest, appeared to think about saying something but then sidled over to McEwen instead.

  ‘That was District Judge Burrows,’ Evans said weakly. ‘The search warrant has been rescinded.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ growled McEwen.

  ‘It means we go home. The basis for the warrant was establishing a solicitor–client relationship between Charlie Priest and Jessica or Kenneth Ellinder. That is apparently factually inaccurate –’

  Evans never got to finish his explanation. McEwen was already out of the door.

  22

  Slowly, excruciatingly, Hayley Wren opened her eyes. For a moment, all she could see was intense white light.

  She was lying down on a firm table, arms by her side. A breeze gently caressed her down one side. She might have been on a beach, somewhere warm, with the sea lapping at her feet and the gulls squawking overhead.

  She closed her eyes again. The impression of the beach drifted away and was replaced by the terrifying image of a hooded face coming for her, tearing through the darkness, screaming her name.

  She opened her eyes. The figure vanished. A slowly turning ceiling fan came into view. Her mouth felt hot and acidy – she guessed she had been sick at one point.

  She tried to lift her arm to touch her face, make sure everything was intact, but her arm didn’t move. She was strapped down to the table. She shifted from one side to the other. Her arms and legs were held fast, and a strap was across her midriff, too.

  Panic seized her. Where am I? She remembered the hooded figure taking hold of her from behind. She had tried to break free but he had overpowered her easily and had held a handkerchief over her face that stank of . . . she wasn’t sure. Fuel?

  She had fought with all her strength. She had prayed, too. She remembered praying to Jesus to help her. Why did He not come?

  A room came into focus. White-washed walls and a naked bulb swinging over her head, underneath the ceiling fan. The table was raised, maybe four feet off the floor. She couldn’t turn her head all the way round but the room appeared to be windowless and the only form of light came from the harsh bulb above her.

  Maybe I’m already dead. Maybe this is Purgatory and I am awaiting judgement.

  She looked down her body to her feet. She was naked, covered only by a thin white sheet from shoulders to knees.

  This is not Purgatory!

  She tried to scream but the sound stuck in her throat – she felt like her own fear was suffocating her.

  My God, what’s happening to me? What has already happened to me?

  From the corner of her eye she saw a movement. A figure was gliding around the back of her. She felt the hair on the back of her neck rise as a hand moved over her shoulder, stopping just above her breast – where her heart was threatening to explode inside her chest.

  Her throat constricted and she closed her eyes again. Tried to think of something, anything, to distract herself from what was happening. She tried to remember the beach again, and the gulls overhead, the hot sand on her back and the sun on her face, but the vision was blurred and, in the end, the sun was blotted out by a cloud. A white hood with two black eye sockets.

  A voice rumbled in her ear.

  ‘Hello, Hayley.’

  23

  The little wooden tables were covered with easy-wipe plastic sheets patterned with fading strawberries and raspberries. The cutlery was thick and heavy, the mugs were mismatching and stained slightly yellow.

  Jessica sat with her hands on her lap. She seemed to be trying to avoid touching anything. Priest was studying the menu; every now and again he glanced at her. He found her discomfort mildly amusing.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ she announced all of a sudden.

  ‘Are you sure?’ He looked up, surprised. ‘The breakfast here is like nothing you’ve ever tasted.’

  ‘I don’t normally have breakfast at one o’clock and I don’t like fry-ups.’

  Priest was disappointed. ‘There are other things. Bacon butty? Black pudding tower?’

  ‘Do they have anything vegetarian?’ Jessica asked.

  Priest mulled it over. ‘I think they replace the bacon with extra mushrooms, the black pudding with a tomato and the sausage with . . . well, I think they just remove the sausage.’

  Jessica made a face. An old woman wearing an apron hovered over them, pencil poised expectantly. She had two large front teeth that looked like playing cards jammed precariously in her gums.

  ‘Yes, duck?’ she croaked.

  Priest looked at Jessica pleasantly. She shook her head.

  ‘Two specials, please,’ he said.

  The waitress bustled off. She passed the slip of paper through a hatch on the far wall where it was collected by a very hairy hand. Priest had never seen the owner of that hairy hand. He had no desire to. He just knew that, for some reason, that hairy hand knew how to make very good scrambled egg.

  ‘The invitation to eat was kind,’ she remarked in a way that suggested otherwise.

  Priest nodded while he poured the tea. There was a ring on her middle finger today. It was understated – a simple design, but, even to Priest’s untrained eye, the stone sparkled with affluence – much like its owner.

  ‘We had a little visit this morning,’ Priest told her. ‘Our friendly neighbourhood policeman popped in to see me.’

  ‘Ah. McEwen. A pleasure for you, no doubt.’

  ‘Quite. He is working under the apprehension that you and your father are somehow involved in Miles’s death.’

  He had expected her to react violently to this but she just shrugged and added two sachets of sugar to her tea.

  ‘My father and I have already identified DI McEwen’s inadequacies. Hence our approach to you.’

  ‘That was your father’s idea, though. Not yours.’

  ‘Perhaps. But I trust his judgement.’ She stirred her tea rather too vigorously.

  ‘You intimated that you and your brother didn’t get on?’ Priest suggested.r />
  ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘Miles didn’t really get on with anyone. Daddy paid a lot of money to prevent him from destroying the business.’

  ‘He was the black sheep?’

  ‘Mr Priest, my family is one big flock of black sheep.’ She gave a thin smile.

  ‘Your father is concerned that Miles had become entangled in something dangerous.’

  She fixed him with a penetrating stare. ‘Isn’t that obvious? Someone impaled him.’

  Priest poured a drop of milk into his own cup and stirred. ‘Have you heard of Vlad the Impaler?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. I understand he was the source for Dracula.’

  ‘Do you think somebody was trying to make a point by murdering Miles in such a barbaric way?’

  ‘I have no doubt, but the point eludes me.’

  ‘No vampires in the family, then?’

  She took a sip of tea, glancing at him from behind the mug. He couldn’t help thinking that somewhere deep down she had a sense of humour. At least he hoped so. If there wasn’t, then he had genuinely offended her several times already and they hadn’t even started the food.

  ‘They tell me you’re a horror film buff, Mr Priest,’ she said shortly.

  ‘I wasn’t aware that your research on me extended to my personal habits.’

  ‘You think we would entrust a matter that threatens my family’s survival without first finding out everything we can about our preferred champion?’

  Priest smiled. So she does have a sense of humour.

  When he didn’t say anything further, she went on. ‘Can you tell me who the creator of the modern vampire myth is?’

  ‘That’s easy. Some people attribute it to Lord Byron but in fact it was his personal physician, John Polidori. Byron may have been Polidori’s original source, but he was not the begetter of the creature who would later be refined by Stoker.’

  ‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘How fascinating that literature’s two greatest monsters – the vampire and Shelley’s reanimated fiend – were conceived at the same time, in the same house, no less.’ She paused.

  ‘Some still say it was Byron,’ Priest pointed out.

  ‘What do you like about horror films?’

  Priest hesitated before he replied. He was used to conducting the cross-examination, not being the witness. ‘Connection, I guess. In other film genres, you generally laugh at funny things, cry at sad things, but you’re detached, an observer. In horror, you feel the fear that the character feels. You are connected to the story in a completely different way. You’re part of the production.’ He might have added that feeling a connection to anything when you have disassociation disorder was an achievement.

  The waitress returned with two plates of prime English breakfast dripping with grease, and deposited them on the table.

  Priest cleared his throat. ‘We need to find Hayley,’ he said.

  Jessica looked up from her inspection of the plate. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she’s been missing for a week and no one else cares.’

  ‘No, that’s why you have to find her. I’m asking, why do we have to find her?’

  Priest started to cut up a very thick sausage. It had the diameter of the truncheon Miles Ellinder had used to cosh him. ‘Her father has most likely just been murdered and now she’s missing. Maybe that’s a coincidence, maybe it isn’t.’

  ‘Is this your way of saying that you would now like to reconsider my father’s commission?’

  Priest examined the sausage. There had probably been more meat in the truncheon.

  ‘We have a common goal, Jessica,’ Priest said gravely. ‘Might as well work together.’

  ‘Apparently, we don’t. My goal is to find my brother’s killer and put this nasty business to bed. Yours seems to be to find the Attorney General’s daughter and have someone keep the police off your back while you look.’

  ‘They’re connected, inescapably. Wren wrote to me saying that he had sent me a flash drive containing computer data. Your brother turns up at my flat looking for – lo and behold – a flash drive containing computer data. Chances are, they were referring to the same flash drive which, incidentally, I haven’t found.’

  ‘That’s highly inconvenient.’

  It was clear she didn’t believe him. He didn’t blame her – it wasn’t the first time he would have held back information from her.

  ‘It’s a fact that rather underlines the limitations of our investigatory routes,’ he pointed out.

  ‘And finding Hayley helps us how?’

  ‘I don’t know until we find her.’

  Jessica continued her examination of the breakfast, prodding the beans with her fork. She looked as if she was making sure it wasn’t alive.

  ‘You going to eat that black pudding?’ Priest asked, his mouth full.

  Without speaking, she slid the black pudding on to his plate, making an obvious effort to keep her hands as far away from the food as possible. He mixed everything up. It dawned on Priest that this was the first proper meal he had eaten since Miles had visited him.

  ‘Tell your father I’ll take the job,’ he said.

  Jessica got up. She picked up a Radley handbag and put on a pair of large sunglasses. It was still cold outside, but the rain had relented and the sun was streaming in through the cafe window.

  ‘I’ll see if the offer is still open for acceptance,’ she announced before leaving.

  *

  Priest was heading home. He had planned to go to the office after his late breakfast with Jessica but he realised that wasn’t a good idea. He studied his hand carefully. It looked like a rubber accessory attached to an animatronic arm, like something out of a puppet show. Fuck. Not now. He glanced out of the black cab window to the world beyond with a growing sense of dread, knowing that his perception was already beginning to warp. I am a ghost. A cursed ghost.

  There was still time. Time, he thought, during which he could function properly, although the boundaries were blurring quickly, quicker than usual. He’d taken a taxi – unusual but the easiest way to secure a safe arrival to his flat, but they’d been forced to take a detour because Oxford Circus was littered with hippies bearing billboards.

  ‘Bloody anti-capitalists!’ the cabbie exclaimed. ‘They stomp around London all day complaining about making money and then Tweet about it all evening on their bloody iPhones. Talk about hypocrites.’

  Priest barely heard him. His phone was ringing. Had he called someone? Okoro’s deep voice vibrated in his ear.

  ‘You OK, Priest?’

  ‘Fine,’ Priest said uncertainly.

  ‘That’s good. How can I help you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Priest?’

  Priest clicked his tongue. ‘Just popping home for an hour or so. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I see. Quite some result this morning.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This morning,’ repeated Okoro. ‘My audience with District Judge Burrows during which the learned judge made some interesting observations about the warrant. Said it should never have been granted in the first place.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Priest, detached.

  ‘I bet the CPS lawyer’s face was a picture when Burrows telephoned him.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Okoro paused. ‘Priest, are you with me?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Mm. Well, goodnight, sweetheart. I’ll send someone to come and find you if you don’t check in by the end of the day.’

  The phone went dead.

  *

  Priest stumbled towards the front door of his apartment with no recollection of exiting the taxi, or paying for it. He searched for his keys. He was vaguely aware of people walking past him, laughing and jostling for space on the busy pavement. He looked away quickly. One of them had a dog’s head with a big wet tongue flapping down the side.

  Not again . . .

  The door was moving, swaying in and out of focus. The path felt like it was a ship’s galle
y and he was struggling to fit the key into the lock. It didn’t seem the right size, or the lock was the wrong size. Or both. He couldn’t tell.

  He examined the key carefully. He recognised it, but not the hand holding it. Worried, he looked around. There was a set of steps near the door that led down to the basement area. There are bins down there. Again, it was familiar, but he had the disturbing sensation that it wasn’t his.

  He half fell down the steps.

  There was a bin, as he suspected. It was an old one – round and made of steel. Not one of those new ones on wheels that were colour-coded. The colours denoted something but he couldn’t remember what. There was a horrible distorted noise coming from inside the bin. After a moment, he realised it was the sound of his own laughter.

  He thought about Jessica Ellinder and her half-hidden eyes staring at him through waves of thick, auburn hair.

  ‘Charlie?’

  He recognised the voice. Or was it just that he recognised his name? Then there was more noise. The sound of someone else descending the stone steps quickly and rounding the corner.

  A fleeting thought entered his mind – he was trapped.

  ‘Charlie?’ The voice was soft and sweet, like silk. ‘What the fuck are you doing in my bin?’

  *

  Priest was looking through a frosty window at a scene playing out. A woman was standing at a kitchen counter, pasting butter on to toast. She seemed worried; something was bothering her. A man sat hunched over the kitchen table, head resting on an outstretched arm. Priest recognised himself and he felt a flush of shame. He was staring out of the window, not at himself looking in, but beyond, into the middle distance. The kitchen was small but neat with a matching red kettle and toaster. There was the smell of coffee in the air – a smell he thought he should like but that now seemed nauseous and oppressive.

  After a while, he felt his hand burning on the cup. It hurt and he examined it to see if it was damaged. There was no label on it to tell him how to fix it if it was damaged. He should be concerned – but he wasn’t. It didn’t matter. It was definitely his hand, just somewhat distorted.