by Ted Bell
“Yes, I’m here,” the policeman said.
“Put the lab technician on the line, please.”
“Certainly.”
When the police tech picked up, Nell said, “I need to know one thing from you right now. Is this child in any danger, ANY danger, from radioactive poisoning based on your lab results? Do I need to get him to hospital right this second? I need an answer to that question, please.”
“Has there been any vomiting at all?”
“No, thank God.”
“That’s good. Primary symptom of radioactive poisoning. Although it’s not urgent, I think you should definitely take him to the hospital for observation immediately, Sergeant Spooner. But, at the very least I can assure you that he is not in any imminent danger. Based on the evidence, any amount he may have ingested would have been negligible.”
“What exactly did you find?”
“Traces of radioactive polonium-210. Minuscule traces that I almost missed. Any symptoms of minor radiation sickness he’s displaying now should begin to disappear within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. However, had you not discovered the presence of poison this early, it would have been very bad indeed.”
“How bad?”
“Assassination attempts involving polonium-210 usually begin with extremely low dosages like this and increase gradually over time until they reach a lethal level. In order to avoid detection of course. The Soviet dissident Litvinenko was a classic case in point. He didn’t learn of the presence of polonium in his body until it was too late. Polonium is an almost perfect poison from a sophisticated assassin’s point of view.”
“Is that it, then?”
“Your young charge has had a very close brush this evening. Do you have any idea at all who might be behind this?”
“I have a very good idea.”
“Well, then, good hunting, Sergeant.”
HALF AN HOUR LATER, NELL had checked Alexei into the Private Children’s Ward on the uppermost floor at St. John’s Hospital. A room at the end of a closed hallway. His vitals were good and the attending physician said he could probably be released the next afternoon. There were two discreetly armed policeman sitting in the hallway to either side of the door to the child’s room. No one was allowed into the hall except the night nurse.
“Is Daddy coming?” Alexei said.
“We’re going to see Daddy soon,” she said.
She bent to kiss Alexei on his forehead and left his room. The Rover was right where she’d left it at the hospital entrance.
“Home, Sergeant?” her Met driver said as she settled into the backseat of the black sedan. She was exhausted. She wanted nothing more than a few hours of sleep and a pot of steaming black coffee to get her moving next morning. At first light, she and the two armed detectives would drive to Hyde Park Zoo. There they would identify the man suspected of attempted murder and place him under arrest.
She yawned deeply and put her head back against the cushion. Could she even sleep on a night like this? She looked at the haggard reflection of her troubled eyes in the rearview mirror. There’d be no sleep for her this night. Not while the man who’d tried to kill her darling was out there somewhere.
She suddenly leaned forward and tapped the driver on the shoulder.
“I’m sorry. Change of plans. Do you mind taking me to my office? I’ve got some work to do, I’m afraid.”
“Scotland Yard, ma’am?”
“That would be lovely, thanks. The underground entrance in the parking garage if you don’t mind. Near the elevator.”
“No problem at all, ma’am.”
She sat back and gazed out the rain-streaked windows at the nearly empty streets. In two hours, dawn would begin to break over the ancient city. She couldn’t shake the feeling that only the purest of luck had saved her Alexei this night. A nightmare had saved him, not Nell Spooner. How long would their luck prevail? Could she beat these odds forever? Could Alexei?
She closed her eyes.
“Here we are, Sergeant,” the Met driver said and she realized they’d arrived at Scotland Yard.
“Oh, sorry. I must have dozed off.”
“Will there be anything else this evening? Shall I wait?”
“No, no. I’ll be fine. I’ll get a car from the motor pool if I need one. Thanks so much, officer. Deeply appreciated . . . good night.”
She climbed out of the rear of the car and headed for the elevator. After the warmth of the interior, the wet night air caught her full in the face, startling but refreshing.
Her troubled mind was suddenly pierced with a clarity that brought her life into sharp focus. She heard Alex Hawke’s voice in her head.
This will never stop, Nell. These old men in Moscow won’t quit until he’s dead. I’ll be next. But I won’t stop either. I’ll not sit and fret, waiting for the next attack. No. I will not stop moving. Not until I find them. And eliminate them. Because that is the only course of action that will end this nightmare of Alexei’s.
She stepped into the elevator and pressed her floor number.
The weariness was gone.
It had been replaced by an adrenaline shot of sheer determination.
Nell marched down the long corridor, opened the door to her tiny workstation, and booted up her Metropolitan Police computer.
She typed in: “City of London. Vendor licenses, current, Hyde Park Zoo.” She clicked “View” and isolated the ice cream vendors licensed to work in the park. It didn’t take her long. Her “snow king” spoke only in monotones to her, deep and guttural. It came to her now that he was hiding his tongue, not wanting to betray his origins. She remembered hearing him in Hyde Park one day . . . yes . . . He was Eastern European, she knew that.
Czech, maybe, Polish or Hungarian . . . , she thought, scrolling madly down the screen.
Or . . . Russian.
A name floated up at her and disappeared.
She knew that name.
A name she thought she’d heard during one of their brief exchanges as she paid for Alexei’s ice cream . . .
Her fingers flying on the keyboard, she retraced her steps.
There it was! She clicked on it, and his pathetic little file popped up.
Szell.
Jules Szell. Age seventy-five. Place of birth, Kiev. Emigrated to the U.K. from East Berlin in the late 1970s. Disgraced police officer. Political refugee from Soviet domination. Same address since arrival. No arrests. No political activity. A clean sheet.
The murdering bastard, yes, it had to be him.
There was an ID photo. Grainy black-and-white but it was him all right; Nell couldn’t see it in the photo but she knew he was hugely round, five and a half feet tall, with a head the size of a medium-sized melon. His long grey-flecked hair resembled a writhing mass of black snakes—no wonder this guy caused nightmares—and an involuntary droop of his lower lip showed the blackened teeth that had so repelled her that day in the park. In the photo his skin had the texture of dimpled whale hide and—enough.
She removed her iPad from her purse and took a picture of the screenshot. As a precaution, she wrote his address down in her notepad. He lived in Whitechapel, of course, that lovely neighborhood celebrated down through history as the former happy hunting ground of Jack the Ripper. It was not a place Nell would normally visit with the sun not yet up. She stood and gathered her belongings and went to the motor pool. She got an official vehicle checked out and picked up the keys from the desk sergeant.
Her favorite was available and she had grabbed it. A forest green MINI-Cooper S with the high-performance engine. A good steed. It suited her and made her feel better about where she was going and what she had to do when she got there.
She dug the ignition key out of her big leather handbag, inserted it, and twisted . . .
“Oh, come on!” she said under her breath as the MINI’s engine labored to start. She twisted the key again and again and on the third time, it finally caught. Thank you! She thought for a second of going back
to the motor pool to switch out the MINI for something a bit more reliable, but there was no time.
She needed darkness for what she had to do.
And the sky was getting lighter in the east.
CHAPTER 22
Nell took the A11 and veered off the exit at New Road just before she reached the massive complex of the Royal London Hospital. She was looking for a nasty little neck of the woods called Durward Street. Both sides of the street were lined with blank-faced and empty terrace houses, shuttered warehouses and factories, a place that had hardly changed since the Ripper’s day. Dingy, grey, sad little windows looking out onto nothing at all . . . the streetlights fizzled and popped in the fog, the pale orange light reflected in the standing puddles on the greasy pavement below.
She caught a number over a door and glanced over at her notepad. She’d scrawled the address in large readable letters: DURWARD STREET, 117–118. She slowed to a crawl. It had to be coming up soon, she was nearly at the end of the road. A road, she noted, that ended in a cul-de-sac. Meaning there was only one way out of here.
There!
The number sign was hanging by its fingernails on the swing gate to a farther stable yard. She kept going about a hundred yards into the cul-de-sac, then turned the MINI around so she’d be facing outward if she had to leave in a hurry. Something she always assumed, no matter what. She cut the lights, pulled her service weapon out of the underarm holster, and placed it inside her oversized leather handbag. From here on she’d keep her finger on the trigger. She practiced firing through the bag constantly at the Yard’s range and had gotten quite proficient.
As she stepped out into the damp and dreary street an almost palpable sense of dread seemed to surround her. It wasn’t the fog and the low-hanging rain clouds either. No. All those Ripper nightmares she’d had as a child, she assumed, and she shook it off along with the cold wet air.
The gate squeaked loudly as she entered the filthy stable yard. The smell of it was awful, some beastly slop of mud and manure, dotted with rusty castaways and trash. There were gutters on all four sides of the yard, overflowing with a grey slime that bore no resemblance to fresh rainwater. Not a single light shone in the gloom back here off the street, yet she dared not turn on her flash.
Two doors were discernible beneath the overhang of the corrugated tin roof at the very rear, and she chose the one on the left to try first . . . Szell’s a bloody hard-line Communist, right? Of course he’d be lying in wait on the left . . . a poor joke, she knew, but she was trying to keep her nerve up, after all . . .
She reached out and turned the knob.
Locked.
She knelt before the knob and applied the pick. Then she rose to her feet and twisted the knob again. The door gave way. She controlled her breathing and opened it inch by inch, now, holding her breath against the inevitable horror movie screech that would surely summon the hounds of hell, gnashing their teeth and leaping for—
Silence, as she stepped forward.
Nell found herself inside Szell’s house, but house was far too solid a word. This was an enclosed space and nothing more. And it seemed to be decomposing in real time.
A small sitting room was full of dark shapes and shadows that resembled slowly collapsing furniture of different sizes and descriptions. She took small steps, the chambered round in the automatic pistol in her hand a comfort now. There were things on the floor, scurrying things, tiny teeth tugging at the shoelaces of her thick-soled boots, other things, too, things she’d rather not try to comprehend. The stench of the place was the biggest challenge, but she willed it out of her mind if not her nostrils. This was nothing new. Evil and the dead often smell bad, that’s all. You deal with it.
She clenched her teeth, felt a fierce resolve welling up inside her mind, and despite her disgust, bent to remove her boots so as to make no noise at all. She then moved deeper and deeper into the gloom.
Ahead was a narrow corridor leading to the rear of that awful house. The odor was even more powerful back here, and she had to make a huge effort to stifle a gag. What the hell did the Snow King have back here? A catacomb? A compost pile? An open grave site?
The door to the single small room at the rear was ajar.
A faint glow of light, perhaps candlelight, shone dimly and spilled onto the filthy carpet outside the room.
The scent emanating from whatever hell lay behind that door threatened to turn Nell away in disgust and horror. She moved toward the opening one step at a time, her right hand seizing the grip of her pistol as she hitched her handbag up into firing position.
She took one step back and kicked the door wide open. The first thing she saw was a huge six-tiered chandelier hung from a rafter. It was studded with guttering candles dripping wax on the scene below . . .
. . . and the sight that now fully rose up into her conscious mind made her reel backward and wretch . . .
Jules Szell, deep within his lair.
The monstrous Snow King lay atop a vast, shaggy grey bed that nearly filled the room. Twisted within the dingy sheets and blankets, churning and writhing on the bed, pale and naked and hugely fat. He stirred at her approach, acres of dead white flesh shifting and settling, twisting and moaning in a low tone that sounded like nothing human.
The monster’s eyes were two black stones of obsidian almost buried in the folds of flesh, his head pressed against a torn and ragged pillow. She noticed something shiny in the candlelight from above. It lay atop his bloated, fish-white torso, an object suspended from a leather cord around his neck. The cord itself was buried somewhere in the countless fatty folds of what would have been the neck of a normal human being. It was a gleaming barber’s straight razor.
The thing on the bed, grey and bloodless, giggled, stroked its great belly, and finally spoke. The Cockney accent was deep and guttural, tinged with street Russian.
“Well, looky-loo, Scotland Yard has come to call. Weren’t expecting company, now, was I?”
Nell now had her pistol leveled at his head.
“Put your hands up where I can see them, Szell,” she said, her voice surprisingly rock steady.
“Not bloody likely, dearie.”
“You are under arrest, Mr. Szell. Suspicion of attempted murder.”
“Are you going to arrest us all? The king and all his little princes and princesses?” he trilled in a high-pitched squeal. “They’re all quite mad, you see, liberated by me from asylums and prison hospitals. All now trained petty thieves, under my tutelage. And, the odd assortment of murderers among them, of course. Mostly the girls.”
“What are you talking about, Szell?” she said, seeing him alone in the room.
“My Imperial Guards, of course.”
“You’re obviously insane.”
“I think you’re going to have to shoot me, Sergeant Spooner. I’m not going anywhere. Besides, you’d have to shoot us all. My courtiers won’t let you touch me.”
“Don’t tempt me. How do you know my name?”
“You work for the enemy, that’s how. Ah, yes. Lord Hawke himself, that magnificent creature. It won’t be long before you’re looking for a new employer, Sergeant. First the boy, then the father. That is the plan, or so I hear from the powers that be where I come from.”
“Whose plan? Who sent you here?”
“I’m just a messenger of death, dearie. My goodness. I don’t know the names of the high and mighty. But surely you know who we are by now? This isn’t the first time we’ve come after little Alexei. It won’t be the last, either. No matter what happens to me. We like playing games with Alexei. We provide amusement for certain elderly gentlemen in Moscow. Did you know I’ve been videotaping him for weeks? At play in the park? Out and about? In Belgrave Square? No? I rather thought not.”
“What sewer did you crawl out of, Szell? Don’t tell me you’re KGB. Even they couldn’t stomach the likes of you.”
“Now, now. No need to be nasty. Would you like some ice cream? The Royal Family and I were jus
t having some.”
“Enough talk. You’re under arrest, Szell, on the charge of attempted murder. Get up. I’m taking you in.”
Szell was waving his fat white hands about his head airily, bleached white hams whirling in space, not listening to a word she said. Finally, he spoke.
“And now it’s time for you to go, Sergeant. Either on your own two feet . . . or carried out and thrown to the wolves by my little army of minions. Which would you prefer? I will warn you, they do bite, these nasty devils of mine. Some of them are even rabid. Nasty bat bites, I’m afraid. Bats, you know, can’t seem to keep them out. Look at them all hanging up there with the boys and girls up in the rafters, all their beady little eyes on you.”
“I order you to get out of that disgusting bed immediately. You are coming with me and—”
There came now a chorus of suppressed giggling from the dim gloom above. She looked up and saw the ragged horrors perched in the ancient wooden rafters that crisscrossed beneath the badly leaking roof. They appeared to be four or five older boys with filthy faces and matted hair, dressed in what could only be described as rags, sewn together slapdash by some mad seamstress. They leered down at her, two of them clutching their crotches and whispering obscene epithets.
At that moment the Snow King sat up and screamed, unleashing a torrent of filth in both Russian and English that seemed to galvanize the boys lurking above. They dropped to the floor, landing lightly on their feet, surrounding her, moving ever so slowly, never taking their eyes off her, baring their teeth, snarling like dogs. She could see it in their eyes; these savages actually wanted to rip her to pieces.
Nell turned and ran, the sound and smell of them hard on her heels as she fled out of Szell’s bedchamber.
She screamed.
A small but strong hand grabbed one of her ankles and she went down hard, slamming her forehead on the stone floor. She felt the warmth of the blood filling her eyes.
She rolled on her side and turned to face them, saw their eyes gleaming as they emerged from the shadows, and knew they smelled blood.