The Charnel House in Copperfield Street

by Tim Ellis

  ‘Hurry, Sir.’

  ‘I’m coming, Duffy.’

  He was just about to start the car when he remembered the message on Aryana’s postcard:

  Don’t gaze upon the Gorgon’s face.

  Beware! Evil walks again.

  The missionary’s daughter is the answer.

  He had no idea who the Gorgon was, but maybe Rummage could be of use at Copperfield Street.

  He called her.

  ‘Yes, Sir?’

  ‘Meet me at 66 Copperfield Street, Rummage.’

  ‘I still have interviews and a ton of paperwork to do . . .’

  ‘It’s not a request. I know you’re on intimate terms with the sex cult, but they aren’t going anywhere, they’ll still be there when you get back.’

  ‘Okay, Sir.’

  ‘And bring your bible.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘you’ll find out when you get there.’

  ‘I don’t need to bring a bible anyway, I remember it all.’

  ‘All! Don’t be ridiculous, Rummage. The bible has over a million pages.’

  ‘One thousand two hundred to be nearly exact.’

  ‘How can you be nearly exact? ’

  ‘Because it depends on what books have been included, the format used, which version you’re referring to, so on average there are one thousand two hundred pages. The Old Testament has 929 chapters; it has 23,214 verses, which comprise roughly 622,700 words; the New Testament consists of 260 chapters, divided into 7,959 verses or roughly 184,600 words. A typical bible therefore has 1,189 chapters. These are made up of 31,173 verses with a rough word count of 807,370 words.’

  ‘Well, all that mumbo-jumbo apart, how can you possibly remember it all?’

  ‘My father would make me stand for hours with a bible balanced on the back of each hand and one on my head while I recited it word-for-word. If I dropped a bible, or made a mistake, I had to go back to the beginning and start again.’

  ‘If I believe you, that’s monstrous.’

  ‘He thought he had his reasons.’

  ‘All right, tell me what’s on page eight hundred and thirty then?’

  ‘It is the book of Jeremiah verse 12:10: Many rulers have destroyed my vineyard; they have trodden my portion underfoot; they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness . . .’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Page 1116?’

  ‘The Book of Ecclesiasticus 19:16: There is one that slippeth in his speech, but not from his heart, and who is he that hath not offended with his tongue? . . .’

  ‘Your father has a lot to answer for, Rummage. Anyway, enough of these party games. Drive over to Southwark, and don’t spare the four horsemen of the apocalypse.’

  ‘If I must?’

  ‘You must.’

  He ended the call and set off towards Copperfield Street in Southwark.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Ruth was editing the confessions and working on her next interview when Steve the guard from Halycon Security knocked on her bedroom door.

  ‘There’s a man outside to see you.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say, but he looks reasonably important.’

  She wondered who it could be. Maybe they’d sent someone to kill her. She followed Steve out to the front door.

  The man standing there was approximately six feet tall, had dark hair with touches of grey at the temples and an easy smile. He wore a dark-grey suit, white shirt and blue tie.

  ‘Hello, Ruth.’

  ‘I have not seen you for some time,’ she said to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Rowan.

  ‘I’ve been busy.’

  ‘And I think busier over the last couple of days.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve certainly put the cat among the pigeons.’

  ‘Have you come to ask me to stop for old times’ sake?’

  ‘No, I’ve come to make you an offer.’

  ‘You had better come in then.’ She led him into the living room. ‘Can I offer you a tea or coffee? I have nothing stronger. Quigg doesn’t drink.’

  ‘Ah yes, Quigg! One of my success stories. I have a soft spot for him.’

  ‘He is a good man as well as a good detective, unlike some of your other police officers.’

  ‘Yes. They say the wife and the boss are always the last to know, which is true in this case. I’m the boss, by the way.’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘As I said, to make you an offer.’

  ‘I am prepared to listen to your offer, but do not get your hopes up.’

  ‘Come and work for me as my Director of Communications?’

  She laughed. ‘You are crazy. And for this wonderful job, you would like me to forget all about my investigation into police corruption?’

  ‘No. Here’s what I know. I know that ex-SAS Sergeant Jack Neilson – who was missing in action and believed to be dead – colluded with his daughter Lucy . . .’

  Her eyes narrowed.

  ‘We’re not completely in the dark at New Scotland Yard, you know. There was already a covert team investigating Wyatt, Thackeray and the others. You’ve simply reached the end before us.’

  ‘I do not believe that.’

  ‘Have I ever lied to you, Ruth?’

  ‘I do not know, have you?’

  ‘No. I also know that all the officers who were abducted by Jack Neilson are now missing and probably dead, so I could go after Mister Neilson and his daughter Lucy for murder. Of course, proving it would no doubt be slightly troublesome, but here’s something else I know. If those two abducted my officers, then they also subjected them to torture before making them confess and then murdering them. Then, the natural conclusion to be drawn from what we’ve discovered so far is that you and Quigg were also in on it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. No one would believe that neither of you knew nothing about any of it, especially when Lucy Neilson lives in the same house, Jack Neilson has been seen visiting this house and you’re using the confessions to prop up your investigation.’

  ‘So, I forget all about police corruption and you give me a well-paid job. Is that the offer on the table?’

  ‘No. Nobody is forgetting about police corruption. You give me access to the confessions and anything else you’ve discovered; we marry it up with what my covert team have already found out; and we take them out in one fell swoop.’

  ‘Without anybody ever knowing about it?’

  ‘I know you’d like to make your name off the back of this, but a lot of innocent people will be destroyed in the conflagration. You’ll bring the government down. The Prime Minister has already spoken to me and told me to make it go away. By that, she means out of the public eye. Nobody is willing to tolerate police corruption at any level. I would also have to resign, as will many of my good officers . . . Believe me, the casualties would be far-reaching.’

  ‘All right, so I leave you to deal with it in your own way, and I get a well-paid job?’

  ‘Not that either. You get a well-paid job not just as my Director of Communications, but as head of the internal investigation into police corruption. Help me change things, but do it from the inside. From what I’ve heard, you’ve already made significant inroads into the structure of the criminal organisation. If you go public with everything you’ve found out before we can move; people, money and evidence will disappear. We have one shot at this and we need to do it right, Ruth.’

  ‘It is already in the public domain.’

  ‘I’m sure we can smooth that over. So far, you’ve not caused irreparable damage, but if you continue . . .’

  She sat there thinking about what he’d said. It made a lot of sense, but was it simply a ruse to make her back off? He obviously knew about Jack and Lucy, which meant that he could establish a link between them and her. Duffy and Quigg would also be drawn into it because no one would believe that they didn’t know what was going on. And then there was Denni
s and Nate as well. Maybe dealing with the corruption from the inside was the answer. In the end, she had to ask herself if the investigation was all about her and what it would mean for her career, or whether it was about stopping police corruption.

  ‘I need to think about what you are offering.’

  ‘You’ve made this a fairly urgent topic, so I’ll give you until midday tomorrow. It’s a risky strategy, because Lucy Neilson is a hacker of extraordinary talents and could quite easily make the confessions go viral, so I’m putting my faith in you. I don’t want to resort to threats, but after midday tomorrow I’ll have to stop those confessions coming out by whatever means I have at my disposal. It will immediately result in the arrest of you, Dennis Ford, Nate Cullen, Mavourneen Duffy, Jack Neilson, Lucy Neilson and Inspector Quigg. Don’t you also have a number of children living here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They will be taken into care by Social Services.’

  ‘All right. I think you have made your point, Charles. I will call you first thing in the morning with my answer.’

  He stood up and passed her a business card. ‘It was wonderful seeing you again, Ruth. I’ll be waiting for your call.’ He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. ‘Give my regards to DI Quigg.’ He turned on his heel and made his way out.

  ***

  ‘Hello!’ Nick the builder called up the stairs.

  She walked down to find out what he wanted. Suddenly, she felt decidedly ill. ‘Yes, Nick?’

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’ve seen, to be honest.’

  ‘Anyway, I’ve knocked an eighteen-inch square hole through the wall and you were right, there’s a room behind there with stuff inside it.’

  ‘Show me?’

  She followed him down the basement steps to the hole in the wall.

  He passed her a torch.

  She switched it on and peered through the hole. Skulls were embedded in the opposite wall. They weren’t resting on shelves, or hanging from hooks – they’d been cemented into the wall like some form of decoration. Altogether, she counted eighteen skulls. And from what little she knew about anatomy, they looked small enough to be female skulls. On the right-hand walls were a series of drawings, not dissimilar to what Regina had drawn and Henry Grey had drawn in his journals. Against the left-hand wall stood an apothecary cabinet above which were shelves containing medical equipment instruments; a small desk with a lamp and books; and a chair. In the centre of the room was a wooden dissecting table with a stool next to it.

  ‘Take the whole wall down, but don’t damage what’s in that room and I don’t want a layer of dust on it either.’

  ‘I’ll have to call my boss. We’ll probably need some specialist equipment.’

  ‘All right, but don’t take all day about it.’

  Knocking came from upstairs.

  ‘You’ve got visitors,’ Nick said.

  She hurried up the stairs and opened the door.

  ***

  ‘Are you all right, Duffy,’ Quigg said as he walked inside. ‘You look a bit peaky. You’re not coming down with something, are you?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  He stepped aside and said, ‘You’ve not met my new partner, have you? This is DC Jezebel Rummage. Came all the way from Kent to join me in Hammersmith.’

  Duffy nodded said, ‘Hi,’ and then turned back to Quigg. ‘Mister Humblin has taken the three children to his mother’s house. He said he couldn’t allow them to stay here with his wife the way she was. Before we go upstairs though, you’d better come down to the basement and see what the builder found.’

  She led them into the basement, passed Quigg the torch and said, ‘Take a look through the hole.’

  He bent at the waist. ‘What in God’s name is that?’

  ‘I’d say it was where Surgeon Superintendent Henry Grey practised his medical skills,’ Duffy suggested.

  Quigg stared at her. ‘On whom?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Rummage took the torch and peered through the hole as well. ‘It looks like a charnel house.’

  ‘A what?’ Quigg said.

  ‘A vault where human skeletal remains are stored, or a place filled with death.’

  Duffy said, ‘I’ve asked the builder to knock down the whole wall, so that’s what he’s doing. We’ll have a better idea what Henry Grey did in there when we can get inside. In the meantime, you’d better come upstairs.’

  ‘What’s going on up there, Duffy?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  They walked up the stairs. Black slime had now reached all the way down to the lower landing.

  ‘Demonic possession,’ Rummage said.

  Quigg stared at her. ‘I’ve just come back from seeing Professor Alice Neuville – a Harley Street psychiatrist, who came here to hypnotise Regina yesterday. She said that there was another entity inside Regina who was masquerading as Henry Grey. She thought she might have woken him up.’

  Duffy’s face screwed up. ‘An entity?’

  ‘A demon,’ Rummage said.

  ‘You seem to know a lot about demons, Rummage.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  A voice slithered down the stairs from the attic studio. ‘Is that you, Jezebel Rummage? Ahab’s fucking whore. The cunt who gave head to a thousand beasts of the desert. Didn’t you have enough the last time we met? Do you want my monstrous cock inside you again? Of course you do. I’m going to tear you apart and rip your insides out this time.’

  They turned to stare at Rummage.

  Quigg said, ‘What’s going on, Rummage?’

  ‘I told you that my father was crucified in Nigeria, didn’t I?’

  ‘For his faith?’

  ‘That’s true up to a point, but what I didn’t tell you was that this very same demon – his name is Surgat – possessed me at the same time. My father saved me from the demon, but lost his own life during the exorcism.’

  ‘How did you get possessed?’

  ‘I was with my father. He took me with him when he was called upon to exorcise demons from the local population, because I could remember the bible verbatim. Of course, he’d never come across a real demon before. Possessions were simply mental illness, which he knew how to deal with, but he dressed them up like exorcisms. Unfortunately, he finally came across a real demon. I was young and didn’t fully understand how to protect myself, so the demon left the person he was in and entered me.’

  ‘And now you do know how to protect yourself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the symbols tattooed on your body?’

  ‘Are a part of that protection. They are Kabbalistic symbols rooted in the Talmud to fight against evil clinging spirits called dybbuk.’ Her eyes opened wide. ‘I hope you’re not asking me to go up against Surgat again, are you?’

  ‘If not you, then who?’

  ‘No, I can’t. I’m not strong enough.’

  ‘There’s a woman up there in dire peril, Rummage. As police officers we’ve sworn to protect and serve. If not now, then when? It’s time to step up to the plate. I’ll come with you. I can’t imagine a demon wanting to enter me under any circumstances.’

  She bit her lip and paced up and down on the landing.

  Regina’s voice came from upstairs. ‘Please help me, Jezebel.’

  ‘Yes, Jezebel,’ Surgat’s voice came to them again. ‘Come and help this pathetic bitch in peril. Come and try your little tricks on me again. Come and bring your words. Come and bring your water. Come and bring me your tattooed body, so that I can look at your nakedness and come all over you.’ Regina laughed a hideous laugh. ‘I’ll strip you naked, tear off your tattooed flesh and stick my cock into you all the way up to your black lying heart.’

  Rummage ran down the stairs.

  Duffy glanced at Quigg. ‘Has she gone?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe she was scared. Maybe she doesn
’t really know what to do. Maybe . . .’

  Rummage soon re-appeared wearing a black cassock, a white collar; a jewelled cross on a gold chain; and in her hand she clutched a clear bottle of Holy Water.

  ‘What’s this, Rummage?’

  ‘I gave up the clergy after my father died to be a police officer.’

  ‘You’re a qualified priest?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is one of your many secrets, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you just happened to have your cassock in the car in case you stumbled onto an exorcism?’

  ‘I’ve been meaning to give all of this to a charity shop, but I kept putting it off.’

  ‘So, you’re going to help Regina Humblin?’

  ‘If I can. If I’m strong enough.’

  ‘I’ll come in there with you – give you strength; back you up like a partner should.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You stay here, Duffy.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I was going to.’

  Quigg led and they made their way up the black slimy stairs to the door of the attic studio.

  ‘Yes, come to Surgat, Jezebel. Are your tits aching for me? Are you eager to have my throbbing cock inside you? You would be the perfect vessel for the Antichrist. Maybe Satan will come and fuck you as well, and then give you to all his legions. You could be the whore of Babylon. You won’t escape me this time, harlot.’

  Quigg tried the door, but it wouldn’t open.

  Rummage shoved past him, turned the handle and it opened.

  ‘Come in, Jezebel. I’m in here waiting for you.’

  She stepped inside.

  Quigg followed.