Morpho

by Philip Palmer

  Liam gave her a strange look.

  ‘No worries,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Any time. Well no – never again. You know what I mean.’

  He was towering over her, leaning down a bit to make it easier for her to talk to him.

  ‘Enjoy yourself, right? That’s an order. ‘

  ‘I’ll try.’

  And that was it: Liam was gone.

  She drained her Tetley’s. Long night ahead.

  ‘Good to see you, sir,’ said Smith.

  ‘At ease, sergeant.’

  Smith relaxed not a jot. Marlowe smiled.

  A good man. In other words, a man you would want by your side in battle. A total shit of course. But aren’t we all?

  They were in the Brewery Tap, the Upstairs Bar. Four or five other tables were occupied by groups of two or three or four; all of them working for Marlowe.

  Marlowe had had a busy few days covering up the Jane Carter abduction. Smith and his men had taken her corpse, or what remained of it, to a secure storage unit. Marlowe ordered a comprehensive set of photos of the body and sent them to Drummond and closed the case file on CARTER, JANE ALLISON NÉE LADY URSULA WARKWORTH: DECEASED.

  In fact she was still alive. Astonishingly. Her blood pumped even though her heart was in shreds. Her mind was still active, even though it was no longer supported by an organic brain. These creatures! Marlowe marvelled at their tenacity.

  Then, following orders, Marlowe packed the mess of a body into an ambulance and had her driven north to the Chief. The old man could pick the last shreds of goodness from the monster’s blood.

  Marlowe sipped a pint of ale.

  ‘Will you join me, sergeant?’

  ‘No sir. I never drink on duty, sir.’

  Ah you bloody lightweight! We always drank on duty, back in the day. When we stormed Jerusalem, there wasn’t a sober man in the regiment.

  ‘So tell me about the mortuary woman,’ instructed Marlowe.

  ‘She’s away for the weekend, as it happens. Out in the country. Wedding.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight. Now in fact.’

  ‘Do you have a team in place?’

  ‘Yes, sir. We have a disposal team on standby and two agents on surveillance duties. One posing as a guest, the other as a waiter working for the catering company.’

  ‘Good man.’

  ‘They report that Bradley is drinking heavily. Scuttlebutt suggests she has a rep for being a piss-head and also a heroin addict.’

  ‘Even better.’

  ‘Hence, our strategy will be to send a team into her room at the B&B, and persuade her to choke on her own vomit.’

  ‘Very good. Make it happen.’

  Smith sent the email. Encrypted, buried in a routine spam message; hard to trace back to his phone. A ping marked the imminent death of Hayley Bradley.

  ‘And what about Jane Carter’s husband?’ Marlowe asked. ‘William Prentis aka Billy Franco?’

  ‘No trace of him as yet, sir,’ said Smith.

  Hayley was in the Waterfront Hall at her designated table. She was pissed. Starters had been served, when the fuck did that happen? Hayley realised she’d skipped half an hour.

  Okay, here’s the challenge; I look up at the ceiling. If it moves, I’ll stop drinking.

  She looked at the ceiling. It moved.

  She drained her pint and started on the next.

  The sexy waiter was there again, standing close to her.

  ‘More wine?’

  ‘I’m on the beer,’ she said, gesturing at the cluster of pints she had assembled around her.

  ‘I’ll get you a whisky chaser, if you like.’

  ‘Can’t afford it, it’s a pay bar.’

  ‘I’ll buy you a drink. You don’t need to steal other people’s left-overs.’

  He was smiling at her.

  He’s laughing at me.

  Don’t you fucking laugh at me, you fucking prick!

  Laugh at me if you like, I don’t fucking care.

  God, you’re sexy.

  A tat of Daenerys Targaryen flowed down his bare left arm, her white hair vivid against his tanned skin.

  Fuck, I really am drunk. I’m sure that wasn’t –

  ‘We could go somewhere,’ suggested the waiter.

  ‘Speeches,’ Hayley hazarded, ‘coming soon.’

  ‘Not till after pudding. And service is crap here, it’s gonna be half an hour till your main course. Come on, I need to talk to you before you pass out.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Just come with me.’

  She followed him out of the hall. Into the corridor, paintings of blue sky all down the wall, like portholes on a ship.

  Up a set of stairs. She was sobering up, fast. She exhaled twice, three times. She wondered what was going on.

  Hey, maybe I’m in here!

  Dream on, you idiot.

  The waiter walked up to the second floor, then turned right. He tried the first door he came to. She arrived just as he raised a foot and kicked the door in.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘S’okay. Don’t sweat it.’

  She felt a twinge of panic. ‘What the – what the hell is this about?’

  ‘We have to talk.’

  She followed him into the room. It was an office, not for use by guests. The waiter turned around and raised a finger to his lips.

  ‘Are you trying to rape me or something?’’

  ‘No!’ He was shocked. ‘Of course not.’

  Nice one, Hayley.

  ‘I’m sorry, awful thing to say, I didn’t mean to –’

  ‘You desire me, don’t you?’ he said, amused. ‘I can smell it on you, the pheromones, the –’ He broke off.

  ‘No, course I don’t – You cheeky bastard! What makes you think –?’

  Course I bloody do. I fancy the fuck out of you.

  The waiter was staring at her strangely. He sniffed her. Then again, as if she had chronic BO or something.. Rude!

  He began to take his shirt off.

  What! Stop it!

  Christ he’s gorgeous.

  This is SO wrong, it’s my sister’s wedding!

  The shirt came off. He threw it on the floor. He was impressively muscular, and his upper body was as richly decorated as an oriental carpet. Interlocking tattoos of gods and mythological creatures were carved upon his naked flesh. Beautiful sirens; a white winged stallion; a blue and grey manticore; two golden griffins; a trio of black-haired shikagami. His body was a Sistine Chapel of the inker’s art.

  She felt a surge of hot, needy, liquid lust.

  ‘Look closer.’ He gestured, brusque rather than seductive.

  She stepped forward and stared at his pectorals which bore the white winged stallion, wings spanning ample breasts of pure compacted muscle. He twitched his pectorals and the wings flapped.

  ‘Are you gay?’ Hayley taunted.

  But then the wings flapped again. And the stallion moved; it slithered off its fleshly perch, then flapped down his body, along his taut abs and down to the belly button. Then it morphed and became a snake, its jaws wide open beneath its hood, baring fangs and a red bifurcated tongue.

  A moment later, and the cobra slithered back up his naked torso, undulating over the other mythological creatures. The waiter’s skin was gleaming with sweat, as if the snake were leaving a trail of slime.

  She was impressed. ‘Hell of a trick, I’ll grant you that,’ she informed him. ‘You should go on the –’

  The snake vanished; leaving smoke in the air. The other tats swirled, as if hit by a typhoon of soot, then once more formed a shape. The shape was a face. A woman’s face. A beautiful woman’s face with raven-black hair. The face of Jane Carter, who had died twice in the last week; the first time in a car crash, the second time when her brain and skull were smashed to pieces by Hayley.

  ‘Remember her?’

  ‘Not sure.’

  Oh no.

  ‘Don’t lie to me. This is my wife, Jane
Carter. Do you know her?’ he said again.

  Hayley was too confused to lie. ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She came to my mortuary. I work – in a mortuary.’

  ‘Was she dead when she came to your mortuary?’

  ‘Yes. No. She –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Spoke to me?’

  His expression darkened, forebodingly.

  ‘Show me your tattoo. That one there.’

  He was pointing at the large Celtic Cross on the arm that didn’t have the map of Terra Incognita. In memory of her Nan who was Irish.

  Hayley looked at the Cross. It was understated, by her standards, but she was fond of it.

  ‘Make it into a flower.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Visualise a flower. Think it. Be it. Then make the Cross a flower.’

  ‘This is – what, are you like Dynamo? He’s a Northerner too, isn’t he?’

  ‘I’m not a conjurer. Look at the tat. Think flower.’

  Hayley stared at the Celtic Cross inked on the skin of her arm.

  A flower. What sort of flower?

  She couldn’t think of any flowers, so Hayley just visualised a generalised flower, green stalk and yellow blossom.

  A daffodil?

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Persist.’

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Persist.’

  ‘I am persist –’ The ink on her skin swirled. The Celtic Cross on her flesh shook and crumpled and collapsed into a blob. Then it sprang up again, making the skin ripple. A new tattoo was formed. The upright bar of the Cross was now a green stalk. A splurge of yellow blossomed above it on her inner arm. Green stick, yellow blob. It wasn’t a flower it was a mess. But the point was proven.

  ‘Wow. That’s even better. To do it to me! It’s a really good trick.’

  ‘It’s not a trick,’ he said impatiently. ‘You just – it’s to do with the melanin in your body. Naturally occurring pigments, merging with the tattoo ink, becoming one. It’s about controlling your body, as we do. As we all do. As Jane did, when she spoke to you, when she begged you to help her and to save her child.’

  Hayley was stone cold sober now; improbable but true.

  ‘How did you know about that?’ she said cautiously.

  He shrugged.

  ‘I’m lost,’ Hayley said helplessly. ‘Who are you? What are you? How can you do these things?’

  ‘Jane and I, we are not – not like other people.’

  ‘Mutant, you mean?’

  ‘No. Not exactly.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Not from Earth.’

  Ah, yeah, right, that explains it.

  ‘Alien, you mean.’

  ‘If that’s what not from Earth means to you, then yes. ‘

  ‘What,’ Hayley said, in tones of withering scorn, ‘are you saying your spaceship crashed, and you couldn’t get back to your home planet?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ he said.

  Her face fell. Her sarcasm sounded, even to herself, like stupidity.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ she floundered.

  ‘It happened,’ said Billy Franco. ‘A long time ago. More than a thousand years, ago. At the dawn of the second millennium. In all that time we have lived among humans. And now –’

  ‘What?’

  What?

  ‘You don’t get it yet, do you? The tattoo. What you did. It was the same as what I did. The same – power. Don’t you see? Don’t you get it?’

  Hayley got it. ‘You’re an alien.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And so am I.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Hayley laughed. ‘Bullshit.’

  Yeah. Total bullshit. What does this wanker take me for?

  Alien?

  ‘The minute I sniffed you, I realised. Jane was pregnant. She bore an egg inside her. You carry the aroma of it with you. That means –’

  ‘Don’t go there.’

  ‘You have been fertilised.’

  ‘Do NOT go there!’ she said.

  ‘But instead of embracing her, your own beloved mother, what did you do? You smashed her face to pieces with a fire extinguisher! I saw it! I saw what you did! You are a – monster!’

  He was screaming. Spittle flecked his jaw, and sizzled on his skin. And as she stared at him, his face morphed.

  Or rather, it changed its expression, terrifyingly. The calm pleasant look gave way to a mask of pure, primal hate.

  ‘I didn’t do –’ ‘Don’t lie! I know what you did, you evil – evil –’

  Franco spat at her; a thick gob of spittle that sprayed over her face, her eyebrows, her nose. No one had ever spat at her before; Hayley was stunned.

  The spit dried on her. Like a face mask. It began to burn her skin.

  ‘Yes, I know, I know exactly what you did, you evil bitch,’ he told her.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ She was whimpering, her guilt carved on her heart.

  Franco reached into his jacket pocket and took out a knife in a scabbard. ‘Thirteenth century, her family heirloom,’ he said. He slid the knife out of the leather scabbard. He showed her the blade. It was beautiful, half a foot long, curved, impossibly sharp. He touched the tip to her neck. She felt a trickle of blood. She didn’t dare gulp.

  Alone, in an empty room, in an empty corridor, with a lunatic who has a knife to my throat. Not good, Hayley, even by your standards.

  ‘Don’t deny it, creature,’ Franco said. ‘She told me everything, you see. You stabbed her, and stabbed her again. You stabbed her brain. You cut it to pieces. You smashed her head to pieces.. She was my wife, and I loved her. And she was one of your own kind, and she reached out, she begged you for friendship, and instead you killed her.’

  He was weeping. The knife was trembling in his hand. Snot was dribbling out of his nose. He was battered with grief, and regret; and, Hayley suddenly realised, not dangerous at all. In fact she felt sorry for him.

  ‘Put the knife down,’ she said gently.

  His puppy dog eyes stared back at her; his grief was almost touchable.

  ‘Put the knife down.’

  He put the knife down.

  ‘Are you really what you say you are?’ she asked.

  He nodded, his beautiful face scarlet and blotchy, his cheeks and jaw damp with tears and phlegm. He was abject. Cowardice poured off him like sweat.

  This is the alien invasion?

  ‘I’m sorry for what I did,’ Hayley said cautiously. ‘But you see I was afraid. I thought she was going to kill me. I didn’t know – it was – you have to – forgive me. Please. Will you do that?’

  Franco paused a long while but could not deny her. He nodded.

  ‘I forgive you,’ he said. ‘Because you are –’

  ‘Don’t say it,’ said Hayley, finally putting the pieces together.

  ‘– my –’

  ‘Don’t!’

  ‘– daughter.’

  That did it for Hayley. Her eyes erupted; her tears began to roll.

  ‘This is Control to Echo Five, confirm position, Over,’ said Marlowe, from his belvedere office in The Calls, not far from Leeds railway station.

  ‘Approaching target destination now Control, Over.’

  Marlowe could picture the scene: The Nighthawk jets swooping low over the rolling Yorkshire hills, flying below military radar, stealthed to be invisible as shadows on a dark and moonless night. If the planes were spotted there would be a cover story to justify their presence; but they were never spotted.

  The Nighthawks took their aerial positions outside the town; they were the backstop, in case the hostiles made an attempt to flee by helicopter or car. Marlowe was taking no chances.

  Within ten minutes of sending a mass mail-out of the photograph of Jane Carter’s husband Billy Franco, at Marlowe’s order, they’d got a positive ID – and, ironically, it came from a member of the surveillance team shadowing Hayley Bradley in Hebden Bridge. A waiter had
been seen talking to Hayley, and he matched the photo and description. The agent had taken a picture and messaged it across. The ID was now confirmed by facial recognition software; it was Billy Franco.

  There was as yet no intel about the presence or otherwise of an Exter nest in Hebden Bridge with access to escape vehicles, but Marlowe had learned the hard way to be cautious. Hence, the Nighthawks.

  Marlowe was a man of firm and deeply-held principles. And in his view, Jane Carter had been a traitor to her kind. A betrayer of the sacred deal that he and Rothbury had negotiated all those years ago.

  Carter had been selected – randomly and fairly – to be the yearly Andromeda for her region. Yet she had fled rather than allow herself to be righteously drained.

  And the husband who had helped her escape was just as culpable, so Marlowe strongly believed. He had breached the accord that had preserved the peace between the two sentient species of Earth, the homeboys and the invaders, for so many centuries.

  There is always an infidel.

  And always must the infidel be slain.

  In Hebden Bridge, vans from Leeds were arriving bearing ground troops. Twenty of them in all, clad in DOH camouflage uniform aka jeans and hoodies and brown and black face paint.

  ‘This is Control to Echo Six, confirm position, Over,’ said the voice of the DOH Commander over their radio channel; they all recognised it as Marlowe.

  ‘Control this is Echo Six, just driving into Hebden Bridge now, Over.’

  ‘Thank you, Echo Six, Out.

  ‘Control to Echo Seven, confirm position, Over.’

  ‘Parked up, Control, debarking now, Over.’

  ‘Control to Echo Seven –’

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘I’ve been crying.’

  Cheyney beamed. ‘Because of me?’

  Hayley stood, awkward in the long and lovely dress she didn’t know how to wear, after half an hour of sobbing her eyes out.

  ‘Yeah, sentimental, see.’

  ‘Bless you.’

  Cheyney opened up her arms: sisterly benediction.

  ‘Don’t hug me.’

  ‘Hug.’

  They hugged.

  ‘And now the first number of the evening. The bride’s choice, so let’s see you on the dance floor, and let’s have a round of applause for Cheyney and Liam.’