by James Oswald
Something about the way she said it suggested to McLean that it hadn’t been an accidental death.
‘They killed him?’
‘You keep saying “They” as if you want to label them, identify them. Track them down and punish them. But it’s not like that, Tony. This isn’t some secret society of perverts doing unspeakable things. It’s bigger than that, not so much organised as organic.’
McLean couldn’t help but hear the echoes of Jo Dalgliesh’s words, her mad theories. ‘But there are connections, links between people. And someone has to own places like this house, Headland House.’
‘Oh, there are organisations, yes. There are little groups and less formal networks everywhere. It’s the nature of the beast.’ Marchmont looked him straight in the eye as she said the last word. ‘You went to boarding school, right? You’ll know the things the boys get up to. The initiations, the stupid little ceremonies. You had to do them, or nobody would talk to you. Right?’
It was a long time ago. He’d been painfully young, not really over losing his parents when his grandmother had packed him off to his father’s old prep school. A draughty old country mansion in rural Hertfordshire, surrounded by too much emptiness to ever think of running away, no matter how miserable he had felt there. The regime was brutal, bewildering, the teachers one minute sympathetic the next unaccountable rage. He remembered the little traditions, though, the things that formed a bond between you and your fellow pupils. The shared depravities endured because the alternative, to refuse, was both unthinkable and to court humiliation. They’d seemed innocuous at six, but later, at the big school? Not something he was all that proud of. And by the time he reached university he’d developed the outsider’s mentality, no longer wanted to be part of that club. Many others had, though.
‘That’s how it starts.’ Marchmont seemed able to read his thoughts. ‘It’s part privilege, part a coping strategy. Those bonds you form in childhood mark you. If you’re lucky or brave or strong, you can say no. But deep down everyone wants to be part of the team. Everyone wants to be loved. And once you’ve joined in it can be very hard to stop. Some people don’t even want to.’
‘I’m not sure how this links into what’s happening here,’ McLean said, although deep down he was pretty sure he understood.
‘You’re not part of this, Tony. You never were, I can see that now. But so many successful men and women are. Their success is bred from a mixture of hard work and opportunity, greased by the oil of those connections made in childhood, at school and university, and all held together by the mutual fear of what they have all done together, of it ever coming to light. You look for secret societies running things, pulling strings, letting people commit terrible atrocities, but the truth of it is it’s much more passive than that. It’s a framework within which atrocity can breed as easily as charity. Self-perpetuating and with highly evolved strategies for defending itself when threatened.’
McLean leaned back on his stool, not quite sure how to take in what Marchmont was saying. ‘So how do you fit into this, then?’
‘She’s one of those highly evolved strategies. At least she was, for a while.’
He turned too swiftly, knocking over his stool and almost falling to the floor as he tried to see who had spoken. She stood in the doorway, dressed in an outfit that could have come from the wardrobe in Stacey Craig’s master bedroom. At first he didn’t recognise her, the shiny black material all too distracting as it revealed everything that it hid. Then she stepped forward into the room and he remembered the surly waitress who had served him coffee and cake in the cafe around the corner. Cake that Jo Dalgliesh had eaten rather than him. Behind her, ex-Detective Superintendent Duguid stumbled into the room, pushed forward by a man who could only be the woman’s twin.
‘Alice.’ Marchmont spat the word out like an angry cat. ‘You said you were done here. You were leaving.’
‘What can I say, Heather? I lied.’ The woman nodded once, then turned her gaze on McLean. ‘And this must be the fabled Tony McLean. If it isn’t the very man I’ve been looking for.’
54
McLean stood motionless, unsure whether he couldn’t move or had just forgotten how. He hadn’t noticed the scent before, but now it grew stronger, filling the room with that heady musk. It coated the back of his throat, squeezed his lungs until breathing was almost impossible. The kitchen, the table, Heather Marchmont, all faded from his vision until all he could see was the woman with the dirty-blonde hair.
‘Help me.’ Duguid struggled past her, tried to get to McLean but stumbled sideways into the table, knocking more chairs over in the process. His voice was slurred like a man who’s had a couple of whiskies too many. Or a man in the throes of a seizure. The movement and sound broke partially through his stupor, and McLean was able to take a step back, shaking his head to rid himself of the fog.
‘What have you done to him?’ His voice was distant, like somebody else talking. The woman – Alice, wasn’t that what Marchmont had called her? – stepped lightly across the room, her hips swaying in a parody of provocation. She crossed over to where Duguid was thrashing around on the floor, and McLean could only watch as she knelt down, took hold of the ex-detective superintendent’s chin and pulled him around to face her.
‘Poor little old man. Looks like something he ate didn’t agree with him.’ She pouted as she slipped one finger into her mouth, pulling it out glistening with saliva, then ran it over Duguid’s lips as if she were a weary mother silencing an unruly child. He struggled for a moment longer, then went limp. When she stood up, releasing her hold of him, he slumped motionless to the floor.
‘I like an older man, but just for starters.’ She stalked towards McLean with that slow, exaggerated, predatory walk. He took a step back and found himself pressed up against something. His eyes darted to the door where the man had been standing. Somehow he’d managed to cross the kitchen without McLean noticing, and now stood directly behind him. Strong hands grabbed his arms, pinned them behind his back. He struggled then, couldn’t quite understand why he hadn’t before. His thoughts were slow, as if they waded through deep water, his hearing muffled.
‘Don’t fight. It only makes things worse.’ Whether it was Alice who spoke, her brother or Heather, McLean couldn’t have said. The effect was the reverse of its intention, though, and he fought all the harder. Dropping his chin to his chest, he hurled his head backwards as hard as he could. The crunch of breaking nose was satisfyingly meaty, but the lock on his arms held strong. If anything the man gripped him tighter, letting out the slightest of grunts as if pain meant nothing to him.
‘Tony, Tony, Tony. Calm yourself.’ The young woman stood directly in front of him now, reaching for his face with a well-manicured hand. He flinched at her touch, but it was soft, caressing his cheek like a mother with a newborn child. The smell of her was overpowering; a mixture of flowers and wine and darker, earthy tones that seemed to bypass his nose and connect directly with his hindbrain.
‘Who …?’
‘Shhh.’ The woman pressed an unlicked finger to his lips and the taste of her made it almost impossible to breathe.
‘You know who I am,’ she said. ‘You of all people. I am Aphrodite, Goddess of Love. I am the spirit of the forest in spring. I am the sap that rises in the trees, the birds that sing in the air. I am life itself.’
Her scent was everywhere, filling his lungs, overwhelming his senses. It was crushed grass, flowers freshly picked on a summer morning, loam disturbed by sporulating fungi. It was the stench of decay, of dead things rotting in the dark.
‘What … What have you done to Duguid?’ McLean struggled against the iron grip h
olding him fast, tried to drag his eyes away from the young woman’s face to the prone form behind her.
‘What do you care about him? He hates you, doesn’t he?’ She pinched his cheeks together, forcing his gaze back to her. ‘You hate him.’
‘Not … Hate …’ McLean forced out the words with the last of his strength. He could hardly breathe for the stench filling the room, drowning him in a miasma of filth. How could this have happened so quickly? How could they have overpowered him and Duguid both?
‘No?’ Alice raised a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘It’s no matter. I’m going to enjoy this. You should too. Everyone should die happy.’
She pulled him forward towards her, leaning in with a slow inevitability. McLean was powerless to resist as those shiny red lips parted to reveal perfect white teeth, a darting, flicking tongue.
‘You can’t have him. He’s mine!’
The words cut through his stupor like a bucket of ice-cold water to the face. Still slow, he couldn’t work out where the knife handle had come from that jutted out of the young woman’s chest. A dark red stain oozed out and she let go of his face, looking down as if she too couldn’t quite understand what was happening. And then McLean felt the grip on his arms release, so suddenly he lurched on unsteady legs.
‘Alice! No!’
The young man caught his sister as she started to fall forwards, and only then did McLean notice Heather Marchmont standing just to his side. There was a look on her face of utter horror, and she held her right hand up by her head, fist clenched where she had gripped the knife. The knife she had stabbed into the young woman’s heart.
It took long moments for McLean to recover his sense of balance, longer still to realise that the cloying scent had faded almost entirely. The young man had lowered his sister gently to the floor and was fussing about her head and neck. She was so pale as to be almost white, face, neck and hands stark against the black rubber of her skin-tight outfit. Blood slicked around the wound, the tip of the knife protruding from her shoulder blade like an ugly wart.
‘No, no, no, no, no.’ His voice was quiet, desperate, echoed by the sobs escaping from Marchmont as she too sunk to her knees. McLean staggered back, bumping into the stool he had been sitting on just moments earlier. It felt like a lifetime had passed since they had been talking, since Duguid had gone to answer the door expecting Ritchie and Grumpy Bob. Where the hell were they?
Duguid.
As he remembered the ex-detective superintendent, McLean looked across the kitchen to the dining table, saw him sprawled on the floor, chairs toppled all around him. He staggered over, knelt down beside the prone figure. Duguid’s face was dark red and swollen, his lips slightly parted as if he was trying to breathe but couldn’t. His eyes were open, and he stared up at McLean with a look of terror, tried to say something but failed.
McLean fumbled at Duguid’s neck, loosening his tie and undoing the top two buttons of his shirt with one hand while he scrabbled at his jacket pocket with the other. His brain was still not working properly, but he could remember just an hour or so earlier. He’d taken it out while he was talking to Marchmont, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember if he’d put it back again, or left it on his desk. His hand closed around the slim plastic tube and he let out a short laugh of relief. Pulled out the EpiPen and whipped off the lid. A swift jab to Duguid’s leg, hold for a count of ten like they’d shown him in the training session. He chucked the used syringe away, rubbed at the spot where he’d just injected, hoped to hell that his hunch was right.
‘Oh my dear, sweet Heather. You really shouldn’t have done that.’
The words sent a chill through McLean as cold as the person who spoke them. He looked up to see the impossible. Alice stood slowly, helped to her feet by her brother. Blood smeared the front of her bodysuit, slicked the floor where she had lain. There was no way she could stand, no way she could still be alive. Unless she hadn’t truly been alive to start with. The room began to fill with her scent again, the odour of decay, the unemptied bins, the dead badger rotting at the verge. Death in all its many forms.
Marchmont backed away, but the stool McLean had knocked over stopped her and she was pinned against the counter. Alice reached up to the handle in her chest, gripped it firmly and pulled out the knife with a horrible sucking sound. It should have been excruciating, but she just smiled as it slid out, a drop of deepest red blood hanging from the tip. McLean knew he needed to move, but his legs were tree trunks, rooted to the floor.
‘Here, cousin. Let me give you this back.’ Slowly, oh so slowly, she twisted the knife around in her hand. Then, swifter than any snake, she jabbed it forward, hitting the exact same spot on Marchmont’s chest as it had pierced her own. It sunk in up to the hilt, driven with such force that Marchmont fell to her knees, letting out a dreadful shriek of pain that quickly turned to a bubbly cough. She looked down at the knife, up at the young woman, then across the room to where McLean still crouched. And then the light seemed to fade from her eyes as she toppled forward to the floor.
Where the rage came from, he couldn’t say. One moment he was crouching beside Duguid, head still thick with the fug that filled the room like a haar on the Forth. The next, he was on his feet, one of the dining chairs in his hand, launching himself across the room with a scream that echoed throughout the house. He brought the chair crashing down on the young man’s back and shoulder, catching his head as he turned to defend himself. It shattered into a dozen pieces, jarred McLean’s arms right up to his shoulders, but the young man merely shrugged it off as if he’d been hit with a feather pillow. He pivoted on one foot, reached up and grabbed the chair leg that was all that was left in McLean’s hand. McLean twisted around, holding on with all his strength, stuck a foot out and used his opponent’s momentum to bring him crashing down. He fell awkwardly, grabbing at the nearest stool, clipped his forehead on the breakfast bar. The noise of him hitting the floor was out of all proportion to his size and bulk, but then so was his strength. McLean stood over him, waiting for him to push himself back up. Too late he remembered the woman.
‘You really shouldn’t try to hurt my brother. It only makes him angry.’
He turned on the spot, foot slipping in something that might well have been blood. She was so close it was no stretch at all for her to reach out, grab his lapels and steady him. He put his hands out to fend her off, felt the front of her outfit wet and warm. She shuddered at his touch, closing her eyes for a moment and breathing in deeply. McLean could smell the aroma oozing off her in waves, mixed with an earthy, copper tang and something darker, more menacing. He tried to step backwards, get away, but the wall was immediately behind him. And then the wall grabbed his arms, twisted them around and up behind his back until he couldn’t move at all. He risked a sideways glance and saw the young man’s face, impassive, close. A gash across his forehead leaked red into his eyes, down his nose. A drop pooled on the tip and then fell, splashing on the dark tweed of McLean’s jacket.
‘I think he likes you, though.’ Alice reached up with a hand smeared red. Whose blood it was, her own or Heather’s, McLean couldn’t say. He tried to shy away from it, but it felt like he was being held in place by a mountain. Her touch was soft, slippery as she gently stroked his cheek, gazed into his eyes with a half-smile on her face as if plunging a dagger into Marchmont’s breast were some kind of joke.
‘You won’t get away,’ McLean said, even though he knew it was a lie. ‘Back-up’s on its way.’
The woman frowned. ‘Shame. I would have liked to have spent some more time with you. Got to know you better. There’s so much about you that is fascinating.’ She leaned towards him, the musk rising as she cam
e closer, crushing her body against his. Her breath was like cut grass heaped into a pile and slowly decaying on a summer’s day, her lips cool as they brushed his.
The kiss was long and intimate. McLean tried to struggle, but he was overpowered by her scent, by the warmth of her body, and by the strong arms pinning him tight. Her tongue pushed past his lips, exploring his mouth in tiny, hesitant jabs. The taste of her was at once intoxicating and abhorrent, the pressure building in his head as he fought to get away, fought to have ever more. He knew then what had put Stacey Craig in a coma. Knew how Eric Parker had died, John Smith too. Even Eileen Prendergast, old and on the verge of senility. They had all succumbed to this heady pleasure. Now he would die too. It would all be for nothing. It would all be over.
And then she was gone, pulling away from him, releasing her hold on his face. Everything felt distant, muffled. Behind him, the young man released his hold and McLean slumped to the floor, his legs unable to take his weight. He struggled to lift his head, saw Heather Marchmont lying on her back, the knife sticking out of her chest, blood seeping into the light oak polished floorboards. Her eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling and she wasn’t breathing.
‘We’re done here. Come, Iain. It’s time to go home.’
McLean forced himself up on to his knees. The room swayed about him as he reached out, tried to stop the twins from leaving. The young woman, Alice, stopped at the kitchen door, turned back to him and winked. ‘It was fun. We should do it again some time.’
And then she was gone.
Duguid’s groan woke him from his stupor. McLean shook his head, trying to get rid of the scent clinging to him like cheap aftershave, spat out the taste in his mouth. Looking over, he saw the ex-detective superintendent lying on his back, taking deep breaths as if he’d just finished a marathon. At least he was alive.