by Daniel Cole
They were talking about her. She could tell because Marshall kept looking back and smiling. Presumably intended nicely, it was a rather sinister look on her pale, Bride of Dracula, Halloween costume of a face.
Smiling back sweetly, Eloise noticed a man who seemed overly interested in her distracted entourage as he approached from the opposite direction. Dressed in earthy colours and carrying a rucksack, something about him felt vaguely familiar: not his walk … nor his hair … not even what she could make out of his face – but something.
As the gap between them continued to close, Eloise made eye contact with the stranger and then audibly gasped, recognising him instantly, Coates looking equally stunned to see her there behind the wall of detectives, his stride faltering as Marshall glanced back to check on her.
She couldn’t breathe. She opened her mouth but no words came, Coates now only a few metres away. But he didn’t stop, instead, he continued walking right at them – a show of his utter trust in her as he subtly extended his left hand away from his side.
Marshall frowned: ‘Eloise? Everything OK?’
She felt as though she were being ripped in two, still unable to take a breath as their group unknowingly drew level with Coates, Marshall’s earlier words repeating in her head:
When push comes to shove and you have to choose, which side is going to win out?
Honestly, I don’t know.
Remaining silent, she nodded, Marshall turning back just as Eloise mirrored Coates’s gesture, opening her hand, their fingers brushing for the most fleeting of moments … and then he was gone.
Heart racing, she forced herself not to look back, wanting to so badly she thought she might burst, an invigorated smile on her face the entire way out.
Because now she knew.
‘I want that gate locked, someone in that window there, another in the building opposite,’ barked Chambers, a tideline of dust climbing his shoes the longer he paced over the ash-covered earth.
He and Marshall had left Eloise with Wainwright back at the hospital before speeding across the city to Birkbeck College in order to assess the location while they still had the light.
Like a fresh stem growing from a damaged plant, the new extension had found its own path, wrapping itself around the existing structure, only its shadow tumbling into the building site that the fire had left behind.
The School of Arts premises in Gordon Square had been able to accommodate the vast majority of displaced classes, negating the urgency for redevelopment. The area now consisted of little more than metal fences, brightly coloured health and safety signage, and skips overflowing with debris. The ash had turned the ground underfoot black, a long-departed digger pushing the excess filth into three large mounds in the centre. Chambers had to count his blessings that it hadn’t rained in the previous couple of days, the site no doubt an inaccessible quagmire the vast majority of the time. A large fence separated the university premises from an identical scene on the other side, to which the fire had spread like a contagion.
‘Find out how we gain access to this floodlight,’ he ordered one of the officers, pointing to the sealed control box that several thick wires retreated into.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I want all personnel and vehicles in position and out of sight in half an hour!’ he shouted to the rest of the team. ‘And you … Yes, you!’ he called someone over. ‘It looks like an army’s been through here. When everybody’s out, grab a broom and cover our tracks as best you can. We can’t risk spooking him.’ Spotting Marshall by the gates, he made his way over: ‘You all right?’
‘One way in. One way out,’ she informed him, the other two entrances now secured.
‘Good,’ he said, regarding the scene in satisfaction, which now less resembled a worksite in his eyes – more a giant cage. ‘But you didn’t answer my question. Are you all right?’
‘It’s just …’
‘Just what?’
‘This is all well and good but—’
‘But someone else is still going to die,’ he finished on her behalf.
She nodded:
‘And there’s nothing we can or are doing to prevent it. Doesn’t feel right somehow … I know. I know,’ she added before he could say anything. ‘There’s no way of knowing who he’ll target next. It just doesn’t feel very good. But it’s like you said back at the hospital “we can’t save the dead”.’
Chambers leaned against the wall beside her: ‘We’ve got the whole country looking for him, officers interviewing everyone he’s ever known.’
‘They won’t find him.’
‘No … No, they won’t,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But, this is it. This is where it ends after all these years … Thank you.’ Marshall looked confused. ‘I’d walked away from this,’ he explained, ‘… from him. But now here we are, and for the first time ever, we have the upper hand. Coates is coming; he can’t help himself. And when he does, we’ll be waiting. So … thank you.’
Appreciating the sentiment, Marshall patted his arm affection-
ately:
‘Thank me when it’s over.’
‘Detective!’ called the officer crouched beside the floodlight control box. ‘Think they’re trying to reach you!’ he said, gesturing to his radio.
Frowning down at his own, Chambers turned the volume up to catch the end of a distorted transmission:
‘… is now requesting your attendance. Over.’
He took it off his belt: ‘This is Chambers. Was that for me? Over.’
‘Affirmative. We’ve had a call from a council worker at some allotments in Putney,’ started the dispatcher, Chambers holding the radio up for Marshall to listen in as well. ‘He says they’ve uncovered some bones that he believes to be human. Over.’
He and Marshall shared a look.
‘Received. Advise caller to cease activity at the site immediately, and please request a forensics team meet me there. Over.’
‘Wilco. Out.’
‘No rest for the wicked,’ yawned Chambers. ‘We’ve got a long night ahead of us,’ he told Marshall. ‘Don’t feel you have to—’
‘I’m coming with you,’ she cut him off.
‘Suit yourself.’
‘It wasn’t buried anywhere near as deep as the others,’ the bearded council worker co-ordinating the excavation told them.
The oasis of green was unrecognisable: uprooted sheds stood in crooked clusters beyond the work lines, the vast majority of the plots now either tossed soil or exploratory pits. The man led the way. Just past where one of the mini diggers was parked, the three of them spread out around the edge of a shallow grave, a partially exposed corpse at its centre – almost skeletal, being in the advanced stages of decomposition. A stone sword lay atop the body, reminiscent of the knights of old, and tattered pieces of clothing still hung over the pale bones, the grave itself perhaps three feet deep at most – clearly dug in a hurry.
‘Think I can guess where that sword’s from,’ said Chambers. ‘This has been here for years. It’s not going to be easy to get an ID.’
‘Christopher Ryan,’ their bearded guide informed them.
Chambers shot the man a strange look:
‘Do you … recognise him?’ he asked dryly, glancing again at the Iron Maiden album cover at their feet.
The council worker handed him a laminated badge covered in dirt:
‘We found it before they told us to stop work,’ he explained. ‘It was sticking out from beneath him. I guess it must’ve been in his back pocket or something.’
The fact that Coates had missed it further supported the theory that he had disposed of the body in haste.
Chambers nodded in thanks, the man going to re-join his colleagues, leaving them in the company of the hollow-eyed corpse.
‘It’s not like Coates to waste a dead body,’ said Marshall, deciding there and then that she wanted to be cremated. ‘What do you think?’
‘That without his Medusa, he no longer had any use
for a Perseus,’ replied Chambers, feeling the scar tissue on the back of his neck pull taut. He looked up at the November sun hanging low in the sky. Feeling the warmth on his face, he took a deep breath and smiled: ‘It’s going to be a lovely sunset,’ he commented, Marshall frowning at the non sequitur as he turned his back on the grave and ambled off in the direction of the car.
CHAPTER 27
The last patch of sky burned orange and pink against the encroaching night, the dark clouds bringing with them a predator on the hunt, an undignified and violent end for his prey.
Chambers watched the fire above go out, replaced by his own exhausted reflection in the window. He’d still been a young man when this had all begun, not the greying, pill-popping mess he now saw staring back at him. Where he had once been a formidable presence, he now stood tall but unimposing. Where he used to be able to stay awake for two days straight and still function, he now looked perpetually drained. And where his mind had always been razor-sharp, he could feel himself slowing down …
He knew he was missing something.
‘Oh, good! You’re here,’ someone exclaimed, making their way down the corridor towards him.
He turned to see Doctor Drew Sykes approaching. Having always got on with his mother, he’d had high hopes when the young man assumed her position. Unfortunately, the cocky and abrasive medical examiner had inherited scarce few of the retired doctor’s personable qualities. He seemed to like Chambers well enough though, who tended to encounter less problems with him than most.
They started walking towards the doors at the far end.
‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ Sykes asked him.
‘Good.’
‘That girl I told you about, Fiona? Third date tonight. And you know what that means!’
Pretending not to see his invitation for a high-five, Chambers asked patiently:
‘Regarding the bodies?’
‘Oh, God, no. No. That’s all bad news.’
‘Fantastic.’
They entered the forensic lab, where the victims from the hospital were already lying out on metal gurneys. Beside them, a table had been dragged from the wall to display the two heaps of blood-
spattered feathers. In revulsion, Chambers recalled something Eloise had said in her summation of Robert Coates – him being like a child picking the wings off a crane fly.
‘He’s getting sicker,’ said Sykes, puffing out his cheeks. ‘Both were heavily sedated anyway, so no puncture marks. The chick—’
‘Audrey Fairchild,’ Chambers enlightened him, irritated by his unprofessionalism.
‘OK; Audrey Fairchild then. She’s a clear-cut case of asphyxiation. He just switched off her ventilator and … game over. The male however …’ They moved over to the other gurney. ‘His wings were attached while he was still alive … Unconscious, but alive.’
Chambers glanced over at the pile of white feathers, a long broken bone protruding off the edge of the table like a blade: ‘Jesus.’
‘I know, right? The wings punctured his lungs either side from behind, hence the blood-spotting over the feathers, causing a catastrophic hemopneumothorax.’ Chambers looked blank. ‘He basically drowned in his own blood,’ explained Sykes, the thought even appearing to shake his arrogant façade.
‘Asphyxiation and drowning the day after a lung transplant,’ Chambers pondered out loud. ‘I suppose there’s some twisted poetry in there somewhere.’
He checked his watch.
‘You look terrible. How are you holding up?’ asked Sykes, in what actually sounded like genuine concern.
Things must be bad.
‘I’m fine. Just got somewhere to be. What about the kettle?’ he asked, noticing the evidence they had confiscated from the hospital next to the piles of feathers.
‘Absolute genius,’ replied Sykes, glancing over at the innocent-
looking appliance.
‘So, that is how he drugged all those people at once?’
‘Oh, definitely,’ nodded the medical examiner. ‘No doubt about it … It’s not a kettle though.’
Chambers looked blank: ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘It was once, but it’s been tampered with: rewired, the heating element replaced with an ultrasonic membrane and the spout narrowed, segregated and shaped to achieve greater dispersal.’
‘So …?’ started Chambers, none the wiser.
‘It’s a diffuser masquerading as a kettle. Boiling pancuronium bromide wouldn’t work. You’d end up with the water evaporating at a hundred degrees and the drug just sitting at the bottom of the container. But set the ultrasonic membrane to the correct frequency, the water and the drug vaporise into a dry mist. Apparently, there was a fan close by?’
‘I mean, maybe,’ shrugged Chambers. He’d been a little distracted by the winged corpse in the other room at the time.
‘Distributing it several metres in all directions, thus giving everyone in the vicinity a debilitating but non-lethal dose … As I said: genius.’
A little less enthused by the development, Chambers rubbed his eyes wearily:
‘So, now he doesn’t even have to inject someone to paralyse them. That’s just great. As if he wasn’t already holding all the cards.’ But then he frowned as a thought came to him: ‘There’s a treatment, right? … To reverse the effects of the paralytic?’
‘There is – a mixture of atropine and neostigmine.’
‘And do ambulances carry those drugs?’
‘The atropine perhaps, but they’d never know to give it … Why?’
‘Then, as the likely first people on scene, don’t you think we should have it?’
Sykes shuffled uncomfortably, finally catching up: ‘You’re not a doctor.’
‘That doesn’t mean I can’t save someone’s life,’ countered Chambers, ‘especially if he’s now gassing rooms full of people in one go.’
Sykes still looked unsure.
‘Come on, Drew. This could save someone’s life, maybe even one of ours.’
He huffed: ‘No promises. But I’ll look into it.’
‘Thanks.’ Knowing he had pushed the matter as far as he could, Chambers moved on: ‘Any progress with the soil yet?’
‘We’ve broken it down into its parts but are still waiting on samples.’ Chambers checked his watch for the second time in two minutes. ‘I had a thought though,’ continued Sykes. ‘We could apply the same principle to locating where this swan came from.’ He walked over to the table where the wings were piled. ‘There are still trace amounts of water all over these feathers. I could take a sample, break that down into a percentile chart of its composition, and then compare it to other samples collected from around the city.’
Without pausing for breath, he hurried over to a computer: ‘It’s labour-intensive, sure. And obviously going to take a while. But as they say, “good things come to those who …”’ He looked up from his screen to discover that he was alone. Checking beneath the gurneys in confusion, he wondered how long he’d been talking to himself: ‘“… wait.”’
‘I’m fine.’
‘And returning to the investigation after all these years hasn’t triggered dreams about the incident again?’
‘No,’ lied Winter.
The Human Resources form filler filled in her form.
‘And working alongside Detective Chambers – how has that been so far?’
‘Fine.’
‘No tensions?’
Winter remembered him walking out on them in the pub in Camden.
‘… No arguments?’
He pictured the three of them yelling at each other in the rain on the banks of the canal.
‘… No heightened emotions?’
He, Marshall, and Chambers all in tears.
Winter stuck out his bottom lip and shook his head: ‘Not that I can think of.’
‘Your doctor tells me you haven’t renewed your prescription for …’ she glanced at the fax, ‘… paroxetine in some time. You don’t
believe you need them any more?’
He could feel the container in his pocket pressing against his leg:
‘… No. Like I said: I’m fine.’
Easton had been waiting in the entrance of Thornbee’s Garden Centre for over ten minutes, watching the Christmas lights flash hypnotically from a darkened corner of the store.
‘Detective Easton?’ asked a moustached man, snapping him out of his daydream. ‘Justin Hume. I’m the manager here.’ They shook hands. ‘We’re all worried sick about Evan. I’m not just saying this because he’s missing: he is genuinely one of the nicest, most gentle human beings I have ever come across.’
He showed Easton through a doorway that led to a tatty striplit service corridor.
‘What does Evan do here?’
‘Back of house mainly,’ the man told him with just a hint of guilt. ‘That probably sounds awful, but I assure you it’s nothing to do with his size. I mean, the kids adore him, and he adores them. A real-life giant to play with! But Evan’s English isn’t up to much and he’s a little …’ He took a moment to find the appropriate word, ‘… slow,’ he explained, failing to do so.
‘And is that a common feature of gigantism?’ asked Easton, it dawning on him that as Evan’s employer, they probably held his medical history on record, which might fill in some of the blanks that his mother’s limited English could not.
‘Evan doesn’t have gigantism.’
On that bombshell, Easton stopped walking and turned to the other man:
‘He’s eight-foot-bloody-four!’
‘In the medical sense of the word, I mean,’ the manager clarified. ‘He actually has something called Sotos syndrome, which, as I understand it, involves abnormal growth in children that usually slows down by adulthood … Usually. That’s the reason for his—’
‘Learning difficulties?’ offered Easton before he could say anything else inflammatory.
‘Right.’ He opened the door to a cramped room, where a pile of videotapes had been stacked on the desk. ‘These are for you. That’s all the camera footage from this morning.’