‘Wicked, huh?’ said Leanne.
‘That is pretty amazing. Listen I've got to do some work for tomorrow,’ said Rachel who could barely contain her excitement as inspiration hit.
‘Yeah sure. By the way Graham rang. Asked when are you coming home?’
But Rachel was already halfway up the stairs excitedly lost in her thoughts.
Rachel fired up her laptop and then lay on the bed. She had the PDF of Tomas’ file that she had obtained from the Echo’s crime correspondent who was frankly a dirty old lech prepared to do anything for a pretty young girl who smiled at him. She checked it again. The official version stated that Tomas had been working on the Everlong with the boys and then had disappeared into the woods at approximately 2 p.m.
Father Michael's witness statement stated that they had looked for Tomas until 3 a.m. before calling it a night and then resuming at 9 a.m.
A call to the police wasn't made until 5 p.m. the next day. A search was carried out for twenty-four hours but in the absence of any evidence of foul play and given Tomas’ recent history of petty crime and truancy the police had eventually listed it as a Missing Persons case until Frank Burns had unexpectedly confessed to the crime a year later.
Burns had told the police that he had been driving through the woods when Tomas had tried to hitch a ride. He had obliged but then pretended his van had a puncture and asked for Tomas’ help in fixing it, pleading a bad back prevented him from removing the tyre. Tomas had obliged and while kneeling down to inspect the tyre Burns had knocked him unconscious with a tyre iron. He had bound him, tortured him for hours before removing his eyes and then killing him. Burns had disposed of the body in the Irish Sea and it had never been found. With the prevailing currents at that time the theory was that the body would have floated into the shipping lanes and was likely torn apart by the propeller of one of the large container ships that ploughed the route between Liverpool and the States.
But the fact remained that Stephen knew something. He had called Kirk Bovind ‘evil’, and now he had disappeared, and the boys pictured with the Everlong were being murdered.
Rachel scrolled to Stephen's witness statement. It was very brief. They had brought the boat to Formby beach for its launch after they had renovated it. Father Michael had borrowed a 4X4 from a member of his congregation and they brought the boat from St Mary's to the beach.
Rachel called up Google Earth on her laptop. She typed in ‘Formby Beach’. Rachel could see clearly two beach tracks that led from the main highway to the beach snaking through the dunes. Assuming they that had come from the city in the south that meant they would have taken the first beach track.
She found the first lane, zoomed in and started to scroll slowly along the beach track. The track ended where it met the beach. On the day this picture was taken, some twelve months previously, the Google cameras had captured a number of vehicles on the beach. The beach was wide and long and the sand firm and vehicles reaching the beach didn't just stop there they drove for miles north and south, tracks spinning off in both directions on the image. She focused in on the lane. It was tarmac and led to a picnic area.
Rachel checked Father Michael's statement again. He described the Everlong as laying in a drained saltwater pool. The pool flooded once a month when there was a spring tide. The idea was that they would float the Everlong in the pool when it flooded and then take the boat out to sea. That never happened.
He had told the police that some vandals had started a fire later the same night that destroyed the boat. That didn't sit right with Rachel. She zoomed out, getting a bird's-eye view of the stretch of beach.
There was nothing that looked like a saltwater pool in the image she was looking at. She dragged the image south. After a mile she saw it. A clearing tucked away between two large sand dunes, dark and marked with a lighter ring. She left clicked the mouse and slowly zoomed in. In the long sea grass she could make out parallel lines running towards the pool. It was an overgrown path.
She focused on the pool moving in slowly. She zoomed in closer, nothing. She zoomed out, the details disappeared. She swore aloud, she had been so sure that she was right. Reaching for the file again she knocked her empty coffee cup off her desk. She bent down to pick it up and as she came back up she looked at the screen. And then there it was, visible only from an angle.
There in the middle of the clearing, slightly darker grass outlined the unmistakable dark outline of a boat was the Everlong.
The doorbell rang.
From downstairs Rachel heard Leanne get off the sofa and answer the door.
There was some mumbling.
‘Rachel, it's Graham! Can you come down, please!’
Rachel saved the Google Earth image and then quickly sent a copy containing all the Geodata to Erasmus’ phone. She slammed her laptop shut and ran downstairs to be confronted by a tearful Graham holding a bouquet of forecourt flowers.
CHAPTER 38
Hours, and many drinks later, Erasmus and Pete stood outside the pub. Pete lit a roll up and suggested they walk.
Erasmus followed Pete but stayed half a step back. Pete, as he knew he would, led Erasmus towards the Grapes. They turned off the main road and were soon walking along the dark alleyways that twisted and turned, labyrinthine through this part of the city.
Pete was chuckling to himself and he turned to face Erasmus. ‘Do you think that I should get some cosmetic surgery like your friend Bovind? I could do with a nip and a tuck.’
Pete stopped laughing when he saw Erasmus’ face.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Who did you tell about my time in Afghanistan?’
Pete stopped laughing. ‘I don't know what you are on about. You're drunk. Come on, let's go.’
Pete turned to leave but Erasmus stepped forward and grabbed hold of his arm. Pete looked at Erasmus’ head, grinned and then looked at Erasmus. The grin disappeared when he saw the look on Erasmus’ face.
‘You better remove your hand or we have a problem!’
Erasmus left his hand where it was and instead increased the pressure of his hold.
‘You are the only person I ever told about what happened but someone else knows. They left a pig's head in my apartment. Either you have been speaking out of turn or you did it. How much did they pay you?’
Pete smashed Erasmus’ hand to one side with his arm and stepped backwards. Both of them tensed, ready to fight.
‘You are losing the plot! A five-year-old with a PC could access your Army records!’
‘My Army records don't record the incident. I didn't tell the Army, I only told you and my doctor and yet Bovind knows. Did you set the fire?’
Pete shook his head and a look of sadness replaced the anger. ‘You are getting paranoid. I'm going and you can forget about any more help, from now on you are on your own!’
Pete turned and walked away.
Erasmus watched him go and was filled with a sense of loss and despair. Could it be the case that someone could access his medical files? Maybe the psychiatrist he had seen after his discharge had talked? Wasn't it more likely that Pete had just let his secret slip in the drunken manner that Erasmus had told Pete?
‘Fuck it!’ He smashed his fist into a corrugated iron hoarding that covered a doorway to an abandoned terraced house. When he pulled his fist back the skin was hanging from his knuckles.
Erasmus decided to walk back to his apartment as it could help to clear his head. He began to walk and soon he felt warm wrapped in his coat and with the booze flowing through his veins. It was pretty much downhill all the way to the waterfront.
He made his way down Hardman Street, dodging inebriated students weaving from side to side, and then crossed the road to avoid the queue outside the Magnet nightclub that blocked the pavement.
It was a busy night, post-pub and pre-nightclub traffic creating a boozy, druggy jollity. Yet he decided to get off the busy street and take a shortcut through the back alleys of the Georgian ter
races that ran like dark capillaries off the main street.
One of these alleys was slightly wider than the rest and it ran past another of Pete's favourite pubs, the Pilgrim, a dark subterranean place reached by descending iron stairs. It was closed now and there were only one or two people ahead of Erasmus at the far end of the alley where it joined onto Upper Parliament Street, which ran down to the docks and Atlantic Way.
Erasmus liked walking this way at night because at the end of the alley was the looming silhouette of the gothic Anglican cathedral lit like some majestic, brooding beast carved from sandstone. The sight of it never failed to rouse a feeling of awe in Erasmus and he was so busy looking at the cathedral that he bumped into a man who was standing by a parked van trying to light a cigarette.
He apologised to the man whose face was hidden by a dark hooded jacket before stepping to one side to let him pass.
The man didn't move, his lighter sent sparks flying as he flicked it back and forth.
Erasmus diagnosed the problem straightaway. ‘You're out of gas,’ he said to the stranger.
The man dropped the lighter on the floor. Strangely, he didn't bend down to pick it up. ‘Can I ask you a question?’ said the man. His voice was deep and mellifluous.
‘I can't help you. I'm afraid I packed them in last year. I still miss them though,’
The man shook his head. ‘That's not the question.’
There was a flurry of activity as a gaggle of drunken students poured out of the Pilgrim and onto the street they were laughing and stumbling into each other. They stood there smoking and laughing.
Erasmus turned to look at them and when he turned back the stranger had gone.
Another lonely person lost in the city, thought Erasmus. He resumed his walk lost in thoughts of opium fields, mud walls and death.
He made it back to the flat quickly and was surprised to see Rachel standing at the gate to his complex, holding a bottle of wine and her computer case.
‘Two things: I've just dumped my boyfriend so you better have a corkscrew. And I've found the Everlong.’
CHAPTER 39
Dr Chisholm hadn't meant to work so late. It was his son's birthday at the weekend, and he had meant to go shopping after the clinic closed and pick him up a present. Specifically, to pick him up a video game that he wasn't sure he approved of entirely, but which his precocious nine-year-old had been insistent that he receive.
It hadn't been an ordinary week at Allerton Womens’ Health Centre. They had, over the years, become used to the occasional protest by religious groups but normally these were, albeit upsetting for the women who had to run the gauntlet of their hateful comments, never violent or physically threatening.
All that had changed in the last week. A new group had appeared outside the clinic on Monday morning. There were more of them, perhaps thirty in total, and they carried placards with vicious slogans and pictures of aborted foetuses. Intimidating and vocal, they screamed and spat at the staff and the women who entered and exited the clinic. Matters had escalated to the point where one of the protestors had thrown a bucket of blood over two of his nurses, Sandra and Eileen, the day before and today both of them had phoned in sick. They had both been tearful and upset at letting him, and more importantly, the women down, but their families and safety came first.
He had been disappointed but he understood why they felt that they couldn't come in.
At the beginning of the week Dr Chisholm had called the police and asked for protection. They had sent a patrol car and two officers but they had a habit of disappearing just when things turned really nasty, and true to form they had been absent when the blood had been thrown.
To add to his woes, the only other clinic in south Liverpool had been similarly besieged and the director there, Dr Harnett, had taken the decision to temporarily close until the situation calmed down. This had led to more women turning up at his clinic, desperate for his help.
Chisholm had considered making the same decision as Dr Harnett. But it was his wife, Emma, who had summed up his choice. Lying in bed she had taken his hand and looked at him with those pale blue eyes that he had fallen in love with and asked him, ‘If you don't help those women, who will?’
The choice had been easy. He had gathered together his staff the day before and told them that anyone who didn't want to come in was welcome not to, and he would not think anything less of them. To their credit, apart from the two traumatised nurses, everyone had come in today. He felt immensely proud of all of them.
Tonight, he had stayed behind, escorting each of them in turn to their cars and then staying behind to wait out the protestors. It had been bad but if the week ended in just a dry cleaning bill for cleaning spittle off his jacket then maybe that was as good as he could have hoped for.
He sat in his office on the first floor and occasionally looked through the blinds. It was now 8 p.m. and dark. He was glad it was a cold night as the last protestor had packed up and left. If it had been summertime he had a feeling that he may have been waiting a long time to leave.
He packed some papers into his suitcase and got ready to leave. First he called Emma. ‘Hey honey, it's me, I'm leaving now, be home in five.’
‘Are you OK? How did it go today?’ she asked.
He paused. ‘I'm still alive. How is Josh?’
‘Let him tell you.’
Chisholm heard Emma call Josh to come to the phone.
‘Hi Dad,’ said Josh.
‘Hey son, how are you? You had a good day at School?’
‘Yeah OK. Did you get my game?’
Kids, always cutting to the chase, thought the doctor.
‘Hey, it's not your birthday yet!’
‘Dad, I gotta go, I'm playing Call of Duty with Mike. Mum!’
He heard Josh running off and then Emma was back on the line.
‘Dinner's in the oven and I have got a lovely bottle of Pinot Noir waiting here for you.’
‘I love you, honey,’ he said.
‘I love you too. Hurry home.’
He heard Josh shout for Emma in the background.
‘Got to go,’ she said and the line went dead.
The doctor checked the blinds. No protestors. Just some placards and empty cans marking where they had been.
He picked up his briefcase and took his mac down from the peg on the back of the door. He turned the light off and opened his office door, coming face to face with a tall, thin man with grey eyes. His head was bowed slightly and his long limbs and bony features brought to mind some hideous oversized insect from the darkest corners of the rainforest. Chisholm shuddered involuntarily.
‘Hello Dr Chisholm,’ said the man.
‘Who are you? How did you get in here?’ Dr Chisholm began to edge back towards his desk. There was an emergency call button under the desk that would set an alarm ringing at the local police station.
The man followed him into his office.
‘I am the Pastor, and I let myself in with a key provided to me by a friend of the church. Any other questions?’
The Pastor carried on walking forward slowly shrinking the space available for the doctor.
Dr Chisholm moved around his desk, never taking his eyes off the stranger. He hadn't tuned the lamp back on and the only light was the glare from a street lamp that shone through the blinds. It gave an eerie orange glow to the Pastor's milky skin.
‘What do you want?’
The Pastor took a seat in front of the desk. Dr Chisholm sank into his own chair and felt for the button under the desk. His fingers searched, without luck, for the button.
‘What do I want? I want for nothing for I have the Lord's guidance and love. You, on the other hand, want for everything.’
The Pastor's eyes narrowed giving him the appearance of a bird of prey.
The doctor's index finger found the small metal housing of the emergency button. He inched his finger forward and pressed the button. He kept pressure on the button.
‘T
he Lord's guidance tells me that I should save souls. I have harvested many souls. It is my burden and I gladly accept it.’
A look of fervour, trancelike, similar to those he had seen on the protestors outside the clinic, had appeared on the Pastor's face.
Dr Chisholm was afraid. He was clearly dealing with a psychopath. He pressed the button again.
‘A member of our congregation mans the office you are trying to alert. She will be taking coffee right about now. You are alone, without friends, without God's love.’
The Pastor stood up and he was now taking something out of his jacket pocket. Chisholm recognised what it was and his insides froze.
The Pastor was gently running his fingers along a shiny black object with a mother of pearl crucifix inlaid. He clicked a button and a long steel blade snapped out of the handle.
‘This knife is Azazel. It is named after one the fallen angels who taught mankind how to make knives and weapons of war. The angel Rapheal punished Azazel for giving this knowledge to man by binding him hand and foot, and strapping him to a rock in the darkness to await Judgement Day when he will be hurled into the fire. I call this knife Azazel because it casts souls unto the fire. Are you ready for the fire, doctor?’
The Pastor's cold, grey eyes fixed on the doctor's.
‘Now listen here, this is an outrage!’
Dr Chisholm raised his right hand just in time for the knife to pass through it and from there into his eye.
CHAPTER 40
Erasmus awoke to the sounds of running water. He rolled over in his bed and came face to face with Midori's yellow eyes. She licked her lips and purred softly.
At the same time, Rachel stepped back into the bedroom, she was wearing a towel wrapped tightly around her slim curves.
Erasmus cursed inwardly.
One of the many, but perhaps the key, symptom of his marriage breakdown following his return from active service was the womanising. It was something completely new to his personality, something dark and compulsive. He had felt compelled to seek out sexual encounters whereas before he had never even contemplated cheating on Miranda.
The Silent Pool Page 24