by Nick Brown
“Ok, can’t put this off any longer, I need to see these last Dee papers you’ve found.”
“Do you think that’s wise, you seemed distressed enough as it is?”
She gave him a long look, it seemed affectionate, and answered:
“I can’t really explain why but I need to see them because.....”
She faltered, he gave her time.
“Because I think that my name being the same as the skryer Dee didn’t trust, and who was operating in the vicinity of our community, is more than a coincidence, and I think - no that’s not right - more like I feel I’ll recognise something in them.”
“Recognise what?”
“I don’t know, Ed, but I’ll know it when I find it.”
He took her into the library and installed her in one of the book lined alcoves on the mezzanine at an aged table of dark wood, then went to collect the papers from the archive desk. Once he’d delivered them he wondered if he should stay but she thanked him and waved him away. Outside the light was fading and fog threatened; it was cold and he set off at a brisk pace for the car park. Somewhere above him in the roof line he thought he heard a bird calling and he suddenly thought: what if the birds left the mound, not because it’s safe, but because we got it wrong and failed? It’s moved on, it’s still out there and it’s growing stronger.
*******
She knew it when she saw it alright; it took away her breath. She felt blind panic building somewhere inside, wished she’d asked Ed to stay. She hadn’t felt this bad since her first night in prison. Automatically she switched onto the self control exercises she’d learnt back then. They took some time to work but when they had she’d decided what to do. She’d keep this to herself until she knew how to use it. With an effort of willpower she reopened the book and forced herself to copy out the passage that had shaken her up so badly. By the time she finished she felt drained and unclean, could feel sweat trickling down her back and under her armpits.
She couldn’t stay here. The library felt empty, the silence threatening. She thought she could detect a flickering and dimming of the lights. She couldn’t bring herself to touch the manuscript and return it, so instead gathered her things and got out of there as quick as she could leaving it on the desk. It was only when she’d got outside that she realised what a mistake that had been. After thinking on this for a while she threw down her cigarette butt and forced herself to go back in. She was sure that the place was darker now but she could see the light from her workspace dimly flickering and headed for it.
The table was bare and the surface was dusty, that was odd. She looked under it, nothing there. Maybe this wasn’t her desk. She checked the others, nothing. They must have found it and put it back. She went back downstairs and almost bumped into what she took to be a librarian: an oldish, thin man in black wearing some kind of hat with its brim pulled down, shadowing his face.
“Excuse me, have you taken some papers from a second floor table?”
“No.”
“Well maybe one of your colleagues?”
“No, there’s been no one in here.”
He paused and she felt that he was amused at something. She could only discern the bottom half of his face, in this light it looked grey.
“No, there hasn’t been anyone here at all, save you and me. I was coming to tell you we’re closed and you have to go.”
There was something so unpalatable about the man that she forgot about the papers; just wanted to get out to the street and breathe untainted air. For a second time she found herself lighting up outside the plate glass doors of the cafe foyer that clashed so badly with the neogothic of the library itself. Then a thought wriggled into her consciousness. Chethams College, where Dee had been master, was only a short walk away from here. On an impulse she set off through the murky light towards it.
The area to the far side of the cathedral wasn’t a place she visited often. Largely because Victoria station, which lay behind it, had been her original gateway into Manchester and she didn’t care to be reminded of those times. Once she’d passed through the late medieval buildings which the planners had relocated to make room for the Arndale Centre at the end of the 1960s, she recognised another reason for not wanting to be here.
This was a strange few acres of ground. Something about it seemed out of joint, something which the spreading fog did little to alleviate. It was a peculiar mix in what, with the exception of the Roman fort, was the oldest part of the city. In this medieval core, ancient buildings, new buildings and patches of waste ground awaiting development, co-existed cheek by jowl.
The waste ground, particularly that abutting the station, was feral and unwelcoming, lying like the ghost of Manchester past. Hovering in the midst of this lay the old Manchester College, presided over by Dr John Dee, reputedly Queen Elisabeth the first’s necromancer. It came to Olga that the custodian in the library she’d questioned resembled the portrait of Dee on the cover of a book she owned.
She turned her attention to Chethams now, a respected but troubled school of music, and stood facing it aware of the desolation of the wasteland and the lack of lighting in the civic buildings. The new football museum was just a stone’s throw away, but in this light it may as well have well been in another universe.
It was beginning to freeze as she cautiously picked her way through the murk towards the Chethams buildings, then she stood for a moment staring at the blacked out windows. It was unnaturally quiet here, no sound, not even from the station. Dee had hated it here; hated it for several reasons: its distance from London and the court, and its lack of society. It had marked the end of his ambitions. But most of all, according to what she’d just read, he hated it because it precipitated him into what was happening at Skendleby.
There was a scuttling sound behind like rats in a cellar. Olga turned her head and saw something indistinct growing out of the fog. As it drew nearer she knew it mustn’t catch her. It had lured her here and now it would harvest her. She turned and ran. At this stage, logic was still guiding her actions so she headed for Urbis and the football museum, there’d be other people there. But it realised this and moved to cut her off. It moved in a strange irregular way, but quickly, much more quickly than she could, even though it barely seemed to be trying. She changed direction; maybe she could reach Market Street. But she couldn’t so she swerved to the left and felt something skitter across her shoulder. It had never been in her nature to scream for help but she did now, only to hear the noise evaporate weakly into the fog.
It was toying with her, driving her where it wanted her. She was running faster, her breath drawn in agonising gasps; she couldn’t last long. Every way she ran it was there before her - until she found herself in the filthy alley, Blackpool Fold.
How’d she got here? But she was spent, couldn’t go another step. She leaned against the wall and tried to suck in gulps of air. Behind her something reached out almost tenderly for her neck. The touch was imperceptible at first but then she felt it, softly leprous, a mix of hair and skin and rotten fruit. The jolt of repulsion sent a last course of energy through her, enough to send her crashing into something solid and throw her senseless to the ground.
Chapter 20: Makes no Sense
It wasn’t as quiet as she’d expected. She’d wondered how it would feel to be the only resident in a large empty block. It wasn’t anything like she’d imagined. There was an unsettling amount of background noise rather than the silence she’d anticipated. Not road noise, nor from the metro line. The noise was internal, came from the apartments themselves: the empty apartments. It was ceaseless, a mixture of creaks and scratches underpinned by a strange, unsettling and continuous chattering. There was probably an explanation in the laws of physics but she couldn’t think of it. So going to bed early had proved a pyrrhic exercise, a deeply frustrating one as now, in the small hours, having first been unnerved by it then frustrated, she was fully awake.
Awake, isolated and lonely. It had been her birthday a
nd the first she’d spent away from her family. They’d rung and texted but it wasn’t the same. She hadn’t even any friends up here and no one had seemed to know about it at work. However, at one point, when she was walking back from the upmarket deli with the ingredients for her evening meal, she thought she’d seen Jimmy across the road. For an instant she’d wondered if he knew about it and was bringing her a card or something. But when she looked again he wasn’t there and it would have been inappropriate and embarrassing anyway.
The noises ceased as if someone had suddenly flicked a switch. The silence that followed was worse as she lay in the dark waiting for them to recommence. Her mind was racing. Knowing that sleep was now beyond her she got up and shuffled in her PJs and fluffy slippers to the unfamiliar kitchen to make a pot of tea.
Sitting sipping at the mug, she thought of her friends and family in London. She was missing them. She thought about her failed relationship and the lack of intimacy in her life. It wasn’t the sex, although she did miss that, more the companionship and contact, having someone to talk to. Social messaging: Facebook, Skype, just didn’t do it.
Maybe she wasn’t cut out for this job. Maybe she should have told her bosses in the Met how much the last case had got to her and that up here alone she was leaching confidence. Then the noises started again. After the silence it was almost a relief. She went back to bed, pulled the duvet over her head and eventually drifted uneasily into a restless doze.
The noise followed her into whatever level of sleep she attained. One sound in particular was cutting through the others, and she tried to claw her way back to the surface to deal with it. Gradually, as she pulled up through the levels of sleep, she recognised the tones of her mobile. Saw the time; shit, she’d overslept. But when she managed to answer the phone what she was told pushed everything else to the back of her mind.
Twenty minutes later she rushed into the incident room hoping no one would notice that she was wearing the same clothes as yesterday. She hadn’t had time to look out anything else, or shower for that matter, hence the lavish application of body spray. She was relieved to see that Anderson didn’t look any better. The performance indicators of a heavy night were all over him. He handed her a coffee and they sat down to hear what twists and turns the case was about to make as a consequence of the evidence gleaned from the body of Ken Trescothic.
The unappealing pathologist took a long time to begin, and Viv thought she was milking the moment to maximise her importance. She looked round the table at her team, trying to see from their faces if they respected her. It wasn’t a conclusive survey either way, and most of them looked tired and anxious with no trace of the gallows humour usually employed to lighten the evidence of such grotesque and savage atrocities.
She understood why the humour had vanished: this was the second time round for most of them. The first time they’d thought they’d cracked it, now they knew they hadn’t. All they had left were the known, and increasingly, unknown knowns of this case and they, like Viv, were expecting further confusion from what they were about to learn. She suspected they’d blame her for this as after all, she was the wonder kid brought up from the capital to show the local wooden tops how it should be done. They needed leadership but she felt too dislocated to lead.
With a clearing of the throat that brought everyone to attention, the forensic feedback kicked off.
“Just for starters, and I’m not sure how helpful this is going be, one of the outcomes from the autopsy and lab tests strongly suggests that Ken Trescothic was the killer of the girl murdered at Skendleby Hall: the DNA found on her is a direct match with his.”
She paused for effect and in the silence the implications of this hit Viv like a blow to the solar plexus. She heard herself blurt out:
“But…”
The pathologist favoured her with a wintery smile before saying smugly:
“Yes, inconvenient, isn’t it?”
It was more than inconvenient. Viv looked round at the faces of her team, registering their disbelief and disappointment. She filled the silence by stating the obvious.
“And Ken Trescothic has a rock solid alibi confirmed by prima facie evidence for the murder of Kelly Ellsworth. So we have at least two killers, and possibly three.”
To stop the murmurs and swearing round the table she ploughed on.
“I know, I know, it’s disappointing.”
Anderson broke in.
“It’s more than disappointing, we’ve nothing now. No leads, nothing. Just more information that makes no bloody sense.”
Grasping at straws, Viv asked:
“What about the DNA found on Trescothic?”
The pathologist smiled, she was enjoying her moment, and replied:
“There wasn’t any found; in that respect the killing is analogous with the murder of the first victim, Kelly Ellsworth.”
“So, are you suggesting that the killer of Kelly and Trescothic could have been the same person?”
“No, all I’m saying is there’s no DNA evidence on either of those bodies, whereas Trescothic’s was all over the Hungarian girl. There may be leads in the similarities of the method of killing in the three cases, but even there we found ambiguities. Perhaps it would be best if I gave you the full picture.”
She did and it made things even less clear, as Viv found when she tried to explain the findings to the Chief later. She could tell by his face that he already knew the news was bad, and there were no tea and biscuits this time.
“This one makes everything harder. From the condition of him, the contents of his stomach and the state of his clothing, it would appear he’d been on the run and living rough for a period of days. There are no sightings of him or records of contact for three days prior to his death.”
“And what are we supposed to deduce from that?”
“I don’t know, Sir, but it’s almost certain that he died of shock or fright, his body was moved to the scene after his death and the cutting was done somewhere else.”
“Was he cut before he died?”
“No, that’s another way this one’s different.”
“Does that mean something went wrong, or that whoever’s doing this is changing the ritual?”
“We don’t know: maybe they don’t need the bones so much, maybe they’ve got all they need, or maybe he just died of fright before they got started.”
“You keep saying they. Do you think we’re looking for more than one person? No one could be mad enough to collaborate with this.”
“I know, but for some of the things done to the two women, who were alive when they were cut, the killer would have to have superhuman strength.”
“What about a cult? There has always been a smattering of Satanists and the like in the vicinity of the Edge.”
“But have they ever got up to anything like this? I thought with them it was all role play left over from the hippy craze for Aleister Crowley.”
“So, what have you got from this?”
“Nothing, just confusion. The cutting is different in each case and forensics can’t rule out that it could mean three different killers.”
“All possessed of superhuman strength? Bloody marvellous.”
“I think so, Sir. Look, maybe you need someone else to take this case. I’m not sure I’m really up to it. Don’t you need someone with greater experience?”
“That’s meant to be you, that is, that’s why you’re here. We don’t have a special magic branch as far as I’m aware and excepting the unlikely event of Harry Potter having recently joined the force we’re not likely to get one. Anyway, Viv, you know how difficult it’d be to remove you considering the high visibility of your profile. Besides, I’ve confidence in you.”
They sat glumly in silence for a while. Outside, through the frosted glass, it was growing dark. Then the Chief made an effort to move things on.
“And you’ve got bloody Zorba, he’s dealt with a case like this, he must be able to help, you know, take some of the pres
sure off.”
She didn’t want to go there. Her last experience of Theodrakis had been enough and she couldn’t get his contribution to the forensic session out of her head. He’d sat at the back at the far end of the table, wearing a retro style raincoat unbuttoned over an elegant suite. He reminded her of a character out of a Renoir film from the 1940s, which had been briefly fashionable when she’d been a student. He’d said nothing until the end when she was closing the session down. Then, out of the blue:
“There is one sense, of course, in which this analysis can help us make progress.”
Every face, even the pathologist’s, turned to stare at him and Viv bit back on the sarcastic comment she had been about to hurl in his direction.
“Perhaps it would be useful to look beyond the evidence which is, of course, contradictory, and concentrate on the intelligence. As Matisse said in a different context, ‘when dealing with a convergence of forces a large part is down to the mysterious workings of instinct.’”
Now she couldn’t hold the sarcasm back.
“So what does the workings of your mysterious instinct infer from this, Colonel? That we visit the local art gallery?”
“No, although that would probably prove as useful as some of our current activities. I suggest we look at this from a different perspective, that we try to imagine three physical agents of the killing, but only one mind and one purpose playing a very long game.”
Viv had closed the meeting down at that point and gone to render her report to the Chief, but the words stuck in her mind. There was something way beyond the a priori about this case, a type of metaphysical mist clouding their vision.
When she got back to the incident room most of the team were still there. Anderson approached, took her to one side and whispered:
“I think it would be a good idea to take them out for a drink, Ma’am.”
“That’s not my style, Jimmy, you know that.”
“Even so, it would be a good idea, morale’s not good and you could treat it as a bonding exercise.”