by James Hazel
Priest was no longer in control. What he said next might keep him alive.
‘You were watching the house,’ Priest said.
‘Yes.’
‘And you saw me come in.’
‘That was your misfortune, Mr Priest.’
‘Where’s Hayley?’
The Bagman chuckled. ‘Safe. For now. At our special house. Please don’t worry about her, Mr Priest. I’m afraid your involvement in this pursuit is now over. You have only one task left to perform.’
Priest was taking in more oxygen than his brain could cope with. ‘Which is?’
‘To open that envelope.’
The Bagman motioned to the stack of envelopes on the counter. The top one bore Priest’s name. Priest recognised the writing. He reached for it. It was padded, sealed with parcel tape and with an unmistakable bulge in the middle.
Without taking his eyes off the gun, Priest opened the envelope and reached in to pull out a flash drive.
‘Ah. Good. Would you mind throwing it to me?’ the Bagman asked.
‘What is it?’
‘Does it matter? The data is important to me. What else do you need to know?’
Priest tossed the flash drive over and the Bagman caught it neatly.
‘It’s nothing personal, Priest,’ said the Bagman, a hint of amusement in his voice.
‘It feels that way to me,’ Priest murmured.
‘Then you will have to die with that thought and let it follow you all the way to Hell.’ The Bagman laughed, a ringing, haunting sound. ‘Hell. Isn’t that where all lawyers go?’
‘Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,’ Priest whispered. He was standing on the edge of a giant precipice. He felt a great weight lifting.
‘Milton,’ the Bagman said. He sounded impressed.
‘Yes.’
Priest heard the hammer snap back. He waited, wondering if he would hear the sound of the bullet from this range. He hoped not. He hoped death would be silent.
The gun exploded and Charlie Priest found out that death was anything but silent.
36
Hayley gasped for breath. Her lungs felt as if they were on fire and she could taste blood, lots of blood.
She was alive.
She didn’t want to be alive.
Hayley remembered the pain. The unspeakable pain. The pain of Hell itself. She couldn’t go through that again. She would rather die. Yes – she would kill herself rather than face the prospect of the evil the hooded man had injected into her.
She crawled to the corner of the room. Every inch of her progress was agony. She couldn’t use her right arm, the arm in which he had injected the poison. It wouldn’t respond and when she had dared to look at it she couldn’t see any flesh she recognised as her own. Just a withered black stump – more like the branch of a tree than an arm.
‘A taster,’ the man with the hood had explained. ‘A small dose to allow immunity to build. Nothing to worry about.’
I want to die.
She collapsed in the corner of the room where she curled up as tightly as her naked body would allow.
He was gone, for now.
She thought about her father and his warning to her. A warning she had ignored. She had known something was wrong for weeks and she had ignored him. But it had been obvious, hadn’t it? Her father had hardly seemed to know she existed when she was growing up, but then, all of sudden, he wanted to see her.
He had taken her to a cafe a mile or so away from her house. A small, dingy place, partially underground where the coffee tasted burnt. He had talked about his work, his obsession. He was involved in something secret, something complicated. He had mentioned something called the House of Mayfly. She wouldn’t understand the details, but she needed to know about it.
‘I’m just saying, Hayley, there’s a lot going on right now and we may not see much of each other,’ he had said, although that was hardly anything new. ‘I just want you to look after yourself. Find a friend to move in with; I hate you living alone.’
She had protested. She enjoyed not having someone else to worry about. But there was more advice.
‘Take a different route home each time. Don’t be predictable. Have your phone on you at all times. Call me if you feel that you need to. Any time.’
None of it had registered. Not his words, not his tone. Her head was buried too deeply in the sand. Even his final warning failed to hit home.
‘If I call you, you must answer straight away.’
If only she had listened.
Above her, a ceiling fan rotated unsteadily, just like the thoughts in her scrambled mind endlessly spinning, never quite coming together.
It was all there to see but you had to bury your head like you always do. Now you’ll die. Alone, in this cold room.
Tears ran down her cheeks. She tasted blood in her mouth.
‘Blessed are the merciful,’ said Jesus. ‘For they shall receive mercy.’ When I die, I can forgive you, Father, if the Lord gives me the strength.
Hayley looked down at her arm. Whatever had been injected in her had taken root. The black, oily substance had spread through her body, desecrating it and defiling her mind, filling her head with filth and evil.
It was a demonic creature, she realised. Not a chemical. A Demon. Inside her.
She saw things. Images of unmentionable suffering.
What am I thinking?
She understood what was happening. She was going to be the spectacle that men paid to watch. She was in the House of Mayfly, with the Devil, and the poison was already working its magic, already taking hold. A taster. A small dose. Nothing to worry about.
Hayley closed her eyes and thought of God. I’m sorry I looked.
37
The crack of the gun catapulted Priest back to his early twenties. After four years on the beat he had been eligible to join a firearms unit and had signed up for training at the National Police Firearms Training Centre in Kent. He’d spent six weeks firing a Glock 17 at targets of ever decreasing size until one day, just as his skill with a gun had begun to be noticed, he had taken a call from Scotland Yard. There was an opening for a new detective constable. Priest had not fired a gun since.
In the fraction of a second it took for Priest to jerk himself back to the present he understood something else.
He was still alive.
The gun had fired but the bullet had lodged itself in the wall to Priest’s right, missing him by several feet. The weapon itself had been sent skittering across the kitchen floor by a large figure who was attacking the Bagman with wild anger, beating him with a large wooden staff.
‘What’re you doin’ here? Eh? What’re you doin’ here?’ he roared.
‘Fagin?’
It took Priest a few moments to recognise the Vyre’s gardener. Fagin was a pensioner but forty years of working outdoors in all weathers had chiselled out a muscular frame and, with surprise on his side, he had managed to gain an advantage over the Bagman, who was frantically kicking at him with feral alarm.
The Bagman parried the first couple of blows from the staff with his arms. Another strike downward and with more luck than judgement, he jumped aside, narrowly avoiding his skull being crushed. The miss wrong-footed Fagin and tipped him off balance and the Bagman was able to use his weight to topple the gardener over into Priest. They fell backwards, Priest taking the brunt of the fall on his back and shoulder.
‘Fucking hell!’ Priest wheezed as the air shot from his lungs. ‘Fagin, the gun!’
The gardener righted himself with surprising agility and dived for the weapon. But his lunge had been unnecessary. With defeat inevitable, the Bagman had made his exit. By the time they had both picked themselves up, he had vanished.
*
Fagin was not his real name. His real name was Brian. His weathered features, heavy long coat and his insistence on carrying a thick wooden staff with him everywhere had earned him the Dickensian nickname, which he did nothing to disassociate hims
elf from. Sarah had despised him as a creepy old man with a Victorian sense of status and discipline. But Priest had always had a soft spot for Fagin. He didn’t exactly like him, but he accorded him a certain sense of respect, which, on the whole, was reciprocated.
Priest had kept Fagin on to look after the Vyre after he had taken over the house. He just couldn’t bear seeing the place completely fall apart, nor put the old man who tended to the conifers and kept the grass short out of a job. It had turned out to be a wise investment, despite Sarah’s reservations.
‘What the blazes are you doing here, Charlie? And who the hell was that?’ Fagin demanded.
‘It’s a long story,’ Priest murmured.
‘I don’t doubt it. You back in the old kitchen with a dead man at your feet and a gun to your head doesn’t sound like a short one.’
Priest was struggling for breath; his body was still electrified with adrenaline. Fagin was standing between him and the door, the staff at his side. Waiting.
‘I’m in trouble, Fagin,’ Priest said.
‘Really? Could’ve fooled me.’ Fagin grunted.
‘I’m afraid that I’ve associated myself with some unpleasant business.’
‘Hmm. Your father was just as bloody clear as mud. Chip off the old block, you. Well, whatever it is you’re into, I don’t want to know. Don’t concern me. Blokes wearin’ hoods for disguises are bad news in my book.’ Fagin stooped down and picked up the gun, examining it closely. ‘Import. Cost a lot, Charlie. A Desert Eagle. No wonder your friend here has part of his head missin’.’
‘How hard did you hit him, Fagin?’
‘Not hard enough. He’ll be back, if that’s what you mean.’
Priest shrugged. He had hoped Fagin might have done enough damage for the Bagman to check into a hospital, giving Priest a chance to track him. He knelt down and inspected the dead body oozing blood on his mother’s kitchen floor. He put his hand over his mouth – the smell was nauseating. It was different from the fetid smell of decomposition he remembered from crime scenes. This was the smell of fresh blood.
‘Think this one’s a grunt,’ Fagin remarked, prodding the body with his staff. Priest fished inside the pockets but found only smoking paraphernalia. No wallet. He guessed the man was homeless, recruited to a cause for four hundred quid.
‘But to what cause?’ Priest muttered.
‘He’s not going to tell you anything, son. Dead men and tales and all that.’
‘Mm.’
Priest got up and hovered by the window. A large oak in the distance caught his eye, its gnarled roots buried deep in the earth, anchoring the mighty trunk down. He knew that tree well. He’d married Dee under it.
‘Charlie?’ Fagin prompted.
Priest turned and the memory evaporated. ‘Sorry, what?’
‘Huh. Looks like you could use a rest. I’ll sort this mess out for you. Nice and quiet, like.’
‘Fagin, you don’t need –’
The old man held up his hand. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time I helped a Priest move a body.’
Priest hesitated. He wasn’t sure whether Fagin was being serious, but he’d hypothesised years ago that William must have had some help for one or two of the killings. Now wasn’t the time to feel guilty again.
‘That would be great,’ he heard himself saying.
Fagin nodded. ‘You OK?’
‘Fine. Pity he got away. That’s all.’
‘Did he take something of yours?’
‘Yes. Something important.’
‘A little microchip,’ Fagin suggested.
‘A bit like that.’
‘Hmm.’ Fagin nodded again, solemnly. He thrust his hand deep into his seemingly bottomless pocket, swirled it around and to Priest’s astonishment, produced a flash drive. ‘A bit like this one?’
‘Where . . .?’ Priest’s head felt like someone had poured hot oil into it.
‘Why the hell do you think they call me Fagin?’
*
Priest took the steps to the office three at a time.
He’d tried ringing Jessica four times on the way back from the Vyre but the phone just jumped straight to her answer message. Frustrated, he left another message. ‘Jessica? It’s me. Where are you? I have the flash drive. Call me as soon as you get this.’
He rushed across reception towards the stairs. Maureen opened her mouth to speak. ‘Sorry! Tell them I’m on holiday.’
On the first floor, Priest flew into his office and slammed the door shut behind him. He paused. Where the hell was she?
He turned the computer on, put the stick into a USB port and waited while a little message told him that some software was being installed. Come on! He tapped his fingers on the desk impatiently.
‘Good morning, esteemed leader.’
Priest jumped, physically pushing himself away from the desk. He hadn’t heard Okoro come in. Georgie was lurking behind him. She flashed him a smile.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘We knocked but . . .’
‘I’ve retrieved the flash drive,’ he told them. They took seats. Georgie had a pen poised over a notepad, as if she was at a lecture. ‘You’re all going on an extended holiday.’
‘What?’ Georgie said, surprised.
‘Our present circumstances . . .’ Priest began. ‘This situation is very personal to me, but it’s not your problem. It’s dangerous, far more dangerous than I had ever imagined. And you’re not paid for dangerous. Maureen will keep things ticking over here until this business is behind us.’
‘It’s our problem, too, Priest,’ said Okoro.
Priest held up his hand. ‘No. Really.’
Georgie looked crestfallen. ‘I can’t not be involved in this, Charlie.’
‘Georgie, look at me. You see these white blobs on my coat?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know what they are?’
She leant forwards and inspected the jacket: ‘Calamari?’
Priest winced. ‘It’s brain, Georgie. Someone’s brain.’
‘What?’ She shot back in her seat.
‘Let’s not have this hero routine, Priest,’ Okoro said, frowning. ‘You’re stuck with us. Period. Now, what do you mean brain? Whose brain?’
Priest tried to formulate a credible response but something made him hesitate. His guilt burned fiercely. This wasn’t their fight but, then again, it wasn’t his either. Someone had made it his and he had made it theirs. Maybe his best way of protecting Georgie, Okoro and Solly was to keep them in the dark.
‘Priest?’ Okoro demanded.
Georgie’s pen was still poised, the embodiment of everything pure and innocent.
‘No,’ Priest said, shaking his head. ‘I will not be responsible for you.’ Georgie stirred in her seat, ready to protest, but he raised his hand again. ‘No, Georgie. Enough. I won’t patronise you. I know you know it’s not a game. Both of you. It’s far from it. But there’s something out there. Something so evil that people are dying to protect it, to serve it, to defy it. Whatever it is, it’s bigger than us – bigger than you. Go home and take Solly with you. We’re closed until this mess is sorted.’
He had thought she might try to persuade him otherwise but she just looked mournfully at the desktop. From underneath the table she produced a bundle of papers, which she laid out delicately in front of him.
‘What are these?’ Priest asked.
‘It’s a copy of the report I found in Philip Wren’s office and some research I’ve done for you to go with it.’
He placed his finger on the papers, hesitating again. Somehow, taking the file seemed like a concession he didn’t want to give but he took it anyway, flicking through the first few sheets. He looked at her and she smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
‘Thank you.’
She shrugged.
‘We’ll be watching your back, Priest,’ said Okoro.
‘I know you will.’
They got up solemnly. It felt like a long and awkwar
d goodbye.
‘I’ll tell Maureen to let your usual clients know we’ll be unavailable until further notice,’ said Okoro.
‘Please.’
‘Good luck, Charlie,’ said Georgie. This time the smile reached her eyes.
He stood up and shook their hands. ‘I’ll keep you informed,’ he promised.
They closed the door.
Priest leant back in his chair and closed his eyes but his respite was short-lived. The file had finished downloading. There on his desktop was a folder simply labelled ‘Mayfly’.
He double-clicked on the file and it opened as a PDF. A database. A very long list of names and addresses. He scanned them quickly, his heart racing. This is it? All of this hatred and bloodshed for a mailing list?
Most of the names meant nothing to him but occasionally one jumped out. A politician he recognised, a senior planning officer he’d dealt with, a couple of barristers from chambers he knew. No apparent connection between them. But one thing was certain. Somebody desperately wants to keep the names on this list secret.
Priest crossed the underground car park but slowed as he approached the old Volvo. A figure stood by the car, leaning back over the roof, waiting patiently. Priest stopped a few yards away, the keys held loosely by his side. The light from the high slit windows cascaded on her hair but cast her face in darkness. He couldn’t see her properly but the slender features were unmistakably those of the woman he had made love to the previous night.
He paused briefly. He wanted her to think he felt nothing. He wanted himself to think he felt nothing. Wordlessly, he clicked the key fob and they both got into the car. It was several miles down the road before she spoke.
‘Where are we going, Priest?’
‘You don’t know?’ Priest asked drily.
‘Obviously.’
He glanced at her sideways. ‘Didn’t your mother always tell you not to get into cars with strangers?’
‘My mother rarely offered advice. And your insinuation is noted, but my phone battery died.’