by Helen Harper
‘Good evening,’ I said, managing a sunny smile. ‘Have been out enjoying yourself?’
From the range of emotions that flitted across his face, I could tell that Will wanted to tell me to piss off. Despite his slightly inebriated state, however, his inner public schoolboy won out and he forced himself to give me a polite nod. ‘Just having a drink or two with some buddies from work.’ He gave me a pointed look. ‘Are you leaving now?’ He made a show of raising his wrist to check the time. ‘At this hour?’
‘Unfortunately stopping crime isn’t a nine-to-five kind of job.’ I injected a wistful air into my voice. ‘Perhaps I went into the wrong profession, but someone has to keep the streets safe.’
‘They’d be a darned sight safer if there weren’t supes around,’ he muttered. The man couldn’t help himself.
I deliberately pretended to mishear him. ‘You’re absolutely right, Will. You’re a clever man, you know. We’re very fortunate that the crime rates here are lower because of the supes in our community.’
He frowned. ‘That’s not what I—’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Whatever.’
Selective hearing, Emma, I reminded myself. ‘I’m glad I bumped into you,’ I told him. ‘I wanted to say thank you and I never really got the chance before. You were very understanding over the whole mess with Tony—’
‘You told me you were his niece.’ His nose wrinkled with distaste. ‘You lied.’
‘I did,’ I said honestly. ‘And look at how well you dealt with that. You’re a better man than most. And that’s not to mention how well you dealt with bumping into Lord Horvath the other night.’
Will blinked. He hadn’t realised who Lukas was when he’d created that song and dance about not inviting him inside.
‘You know,’ I continued, ‘a lot of people would be scared of him. Not you. A lot of people would be tongue-tied but that wasn’t you either. You know your own heart, and you don’t take any shit from anyone, regardless of who they are. That takes guts and fortitude. I’m lucky to have you as my neighbour.’
Will’s chest puffed out. He was far more mollified by my compliments than I’d expected. ‘Well,’ he said, in an attempt at modesty, ‘I deal with important people day in and day out in my job. I’m used to having to stand up to people.’
I offered him a small, admiring smile. ‘Maybe one day I’ll have your confident attitude.’
He pursed his lips as if that were doubtful. ‘Maybe.’ He dipped his head. ‘Have a good night, Emma. And stay safe out there.’
‘I will. Thank you.’ I grinned to myself as I walked past him. That hadn’t been so hard. If play-acting with Will would make my home life easier to manage, I’d do it more often.
As I jogged down the stairs, I paused briefly. What I’d done was turn on the charm to improve my circumstances – in much the same manner as I’d all but accused Lukas of doing. Hypocrisy, thy name is Emma.
***
Tallulah grumbled all the way, creaking and sighing at being forced out again in the dead of night. I drove slowly, easing up on the clutch with exaggerated care every time I changed gear, but it didn’t seem to make much difference to the car. When I pulled up, her engine coughed and spluttered and I caught a belch of black smoke in the rear-view mirror.
‘If you’re having trouble with your exhaust again,’ I told her, ‘maybe we should schedule another trip to the garage.’ She immediately subsided. I grinned, aware that any ideas of Tallulah’s sentience were pure imagination on my part but enjoying them nonetheless.
I turned off her engine and pocketed the keys. A porch light in the grand house beside me flicked on and the door opened to reveal Albert Finnegan, dressed in the same dapper fashion that he’d been previously. I appreciated his consistency, even if I wasn’t a fan of tweed.
I clambered ungracefully out of Tallulah and hailed him. ‘Good evening!’
‘Good evening, Detective,’ he called. ‘I’m surprised to see you here again. Are you about to take me into custody? Have you decided that we’re breaking the law after all?’ He eyed the crossbow but his expression remained friendly.
‘Not at all, Mr Finnegan.’ I walked up to him. ‘I have a follow-up question that I was hoping you could help me to answer.’
He bowed. ‘By all means. What would you like to know?’
‘How old are you?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s your follow-up question?’
‘What I really want to know,’ I said, with a faint smile, ‘is whether you’re old enough to be one of those ghouls who stole bodies from the graves at St Erbin’s.’
‘If you’re seeking to prosecute me for past crimes…’
I held up my hands. ‘Nothing of the sort, I can assure you. Anything you say will not be used against you.’
‘I should hope not.’ He regarded me calmly. ‘We were granted immunity for those deeds many decades ago. But yes, I am indeed old enough to remember those days.’
‘How did you manage it without getting caught? I understand that if you worked around weather patterns, you could manage to do most of your … work without being noticed. But how could you move the bodies? Surely all it would have taken was a single passer-by to see what you were doing and raise the alarm. And in any case, it must have taken most of the night to dig down to the graves. I already know that sunlight is your enemy. Were your Halloween disguises enough to protect you?’
Finnegan’s brow creased. I wondered if he was offended by my questions but, when he answered, I realised that was far from the truth. ‘You’re asking if we wandered around the streets carrying corpses?’
‘I am.’
‘In the centre of London?’
‘Yes. I appreciate that pollution often meant that visibility was bad, but was the pea-souper smog that terrible? Did you have to wait until there was a storm so most people were already inside, and those who weren’t couldn’t see beyond their noses?’
Finnegan’s eyes were troubled. ‘I do apologise, DC Bellamy. I assumed you already knew. I thought the vicar would have told you.’
‘Told me what?’
He watched me carefully. ‘About the tunnel.’
I breathed in through my nose and waited.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I see you didn’t know.’ He stepped back. ‘I have an old map in here somewhere. Perhaps I can show you.’
‘That would be good.’
I followed him and waited as he rummaged around in an old teak sideboard. ‘It’s here somewhere,’ he muttered. ‘Maybe … ah-ha.’ He produced a tattered sheet of paper as wide as his arm span. It was stained yellow from years of use and there were several rips across it.
Taking care not to damage it further, Finnegan took it to a table and spread it out. ‘We are here,’ he said, jabbing to a point in the top left corner.
I squinted. Most of the streets were the same then as they were now. One or two had altered as the roads had been widened to accommodate cars rather than horses and pedestrians, but I still recognised most of the area.
‘Initially,’ Finnegan continued, ‘we planned to develop a series of tunnels that would take us directly from the graveyard to this house. Such a network would have allowed us to avoid sunlight completely. There had been several unfortunate incidents where those of our kind were trapped outside when dawn broke and they were unwilling to abandon all the hard work they had undertaken at the church.’
His eyes lost focus as he remembered. ‘It didn’t end well for them,’ he said quietly. He shook himself. ‘In any case, those plans did not work out. There were proposals for a sewerage system that would have caused us considerable difficulties.’ He smiled humourlessly. ‘As it happened, the London sewers were not constructed until many years after we halted our underground tactics. The government wasn’t very keen to spend money on such a project until they were forced into it.’
‘Plus ça change,’ I murmured.
Finnegan smiled. ‘Plus c’est la meme chose. Indeed.’ He moved his finger across
the old map. ‘So we adapted. There was a single entry point.’ He pointed at a mark a street away from St Erbin’s. ‘A trapdoor that led below ground. We purchased the property above it to avoid anyone noticing any suspicious activity. The tunnel was less than eighty metres long.’ His finger traced along a slender blue line. ‘From here to here. It leads directly underneath the graveyard and emerges at the small crypt in the south-east corner. The doorway is invisible from the churchyard end, and nobody had visited that crypt to mourn for more than two centuries. No-one would know the door was there unless they were told about it. It worked perfectly for us. Once a body had been retrieved, it could be transported underground regardless of the time of day.’
I absorbed this before pressing on with my next question. ‘Why did you think the vicar at St Erbin’s would have told me about it? If you can’t stumble across the entrance in the crypt, how would he know that the tunnel exists?’
Finnegan blinked at me. ‘Because the tunnel’s entrance starts at the manse.’
‘The manse?’
‘The church purchased the property from us not long after we changed our ways. At the time, I suspect they were afraid that we’d continue stealing from the graves despite our promises to the contrary. They wanted to ensure the graveyard was kept safe. They converted the building into a residential base for the incumbent at St Erbin’s. The church still owns that building, DC Bellamy. And the current vicar, a Reverend Knight, I believe, lives there right now. The entry point for the tunnel is in his basement.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
I hammered on Knight’s door. When he didn’t answer immediately, I hammered some more. He kept late hours at the church in order to snag passers-by and try to dissuade them from venturing into vamp territory – but he didn’t work this late. He was home. I was sure of it.
After a good two minutes, by which point I was on the verge of breaking his damned door down, there was the sound of a lock rattling. The door swung open and Knight, looking bleary and alarmed, and dressed in a striped dressing gown with tartan slippers, stared at me. ‘DC Bellamy? What on earth do you want at this hour?’ Suddenly, he seemed to remember who, or rather what, I was, and a flash of fear crossed his face.
I didn’t care. I forced my way in and he stepped back hastily.
‘The tunnel,’ I snarled. ‘Why didn’t you mention it before?’
‘I … I…’ he stuttered, his face pale. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
I reminded myself that I was a trained police detective, not a thug here to deliver threats. I exhaled and dropped my hands to my sides in a bid to appear less intimidating. It didn’t matter that I was half the size of Knight; I was a supe – at least as far as we both knew. As far as Reverend Knight was concerned, that made me very dangerous and very threatening.
‘There is a trapdoor in your basement,’ I said. ‘It leads to a tunnel. The tunnel comes out at a crypt in your graveyard. Two hundred years ago, the ghouls used that tunnel to gain access to the graveyard so they could transport the bodies buried there without anyone noticing.’ I waited for a beat. ‘Why, in the name of all that is holy, didn’t you think to mention it before?’ I met his eyes. ‘Think very carefully before you answer.’
Knight’s jaw worked uselessly and his eyes darted from side to side. If he was expecting someone to jump out from the shadows and help him, he was sorely mistaken. ‘I haven’t been into the basement, DC Bellamy,’ he said, his voice quavering.
‘You’ve lived here for almost a year. How on earth is that possible?’
He gestured helplessly towards me. ‘It’s locked and I don’t have a key. I keep meaning to sort it out and get in a locksmith, but Reg told me there was nothing in there.’
‘Reg?’
‘Reginald Baxter. My predecessor.’ Knight drew the cord of his dressing gown tighter around his mid-section. ‘I’m telling you the truth. Why would I lie?’
‘Show me.’
‘Now? Can’t it wait until morning?’
I ground my teeth. ‘No, it can’t wait. Show me the damned door.’
I reached for the crossbow at my back and Knight flinched. I unhooked it and dropped it to the floor, where it landed with a thud. The vicar jumped and I held up my palms and softened my voice. ‘I carry the crossbow not because I’m legally entitled to as a Supernatural Squad detective, but because I am scared. In the last two months I’ve died three times. If that’s not enough to scare someone, I don’t know what is. The worst part is that my deaths are not the biggest thing I have to worry about right now. What truly worries me is that somewhere out there is a man who has killed at least twice. He’s stolen werewolf corpses because of a gruesome recipe in an old book. He’s a dangerous man. I’m scared what he might do next.’ I shook my head. ‘No. Not scared. I’m terrified. If he’s been using your basement to sneak underneath your graveyard and take the bodies of people’s loved ones, I need to know about it.’
Knight stared at me. ‘I don’t … he couldn’t … there’s no…’ His shoulders slumped. ‘It’s this way.’
He led me down the hall. It was a large house for one person, and most of the rooms appeared to be sparsely furnished. I suspected it wasn’t because Knight lived a particularly spartan life but rather because he hadn’t given himself enough time to make the manse his home.
When we reached the door at the far end of the hallway, having passed several large boxes with labels marking their contents, I finally worked out the truth. ‘You don’t think you’re going to stay here, do you? You’ve not finished unpacking, even though you’ve been here for months.’
Knight hesitated, his hand on the doorknob. ‘You’re not the only one who’s terrified, Detective,’ he whispered.
Shit. He was telling the truth about everything. ‘I’m sorry.’ I stopped moving. ‘You’re right. I should return in the morning. It’s not fair on you to do this now. It can wait. You’re not a criminal and you don’t deserve to be roused out of your bed in the middle of the night. This was wrong of me.’
He turned and faced me. ‘No, it wasn’t. You’re trying to protect this community and so am I, in my own way. It so happens that you’re more successful than I am.’
‘I’m not so sure about that.’ My eyes met his and we shared a glance of mutual understanding. ‘I’ll go.’
‘No.’ Knight shook his head, his mouth set into a grim line. ‘You’re here now. I won’t be able to go back to sleep after what you’ve told me. We have to do this.’
He was a stronger man than he gave himself credit for. ‘Let’s do it together.’
He managed a smile. ‘Okay, Detective. Okay.’
Reverend Knight turned and opened the door. He reached across and flicked on a light switch. It took a moment or two for the electricity to buzz into life, then revealed a rickety wooden staircase leading downwards.
I swallowed. It was the dead of night and I was venturing into a dank basement with a vicar in a dressing gown. What could possibly go wrong?
The stairs creaked all the way down and the walls seemed to close in on us the further we went. At the foot of the staircase, Knight stopped. There was another door, and this one was firmly closed.
‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘I’ve never been beyond this point.’ He reached forward and rattled the doorknob. ‘It won’t open. There’s a keyhole but,’ he grimaced at me, ‘no key.’
I stared at the door. It was made of wood and didn’t appear to be reinforced. Much like the staircase itself, it looked like it had seen better days.
‘Let me have a try,’ I said. I crouched down and examined the lock. It didn’t look particularly sturdy but I was no locksmith. Once upon a time, I’d never have dared to try something like this without the proper equipment but I was stronger now. There was a chance that I could force the door open.
‘Stand back,’ I ordered.
I stood up then, with as much as strength as I could muster, I slammed my shoulder against the door. It creaked a
nd complained but it didn’t give way. There was still hope, though. I pulled back and drew in a breath, then a moment later I tried again.
This time, the door frame started to splinter. The wood was old and rotten in places, which helped considerably. I licked my lips. Third time lucky. I threw myself at the door again. The wood split some more and the door bulged where I’d hit it, but it didn’t open. Okay, then. Fourth time lucky.
I sucked in my muscles, tensing before ramming the door yet again. Finally the rotting wood gave way. The door sprang open and I fell forward, stumbling onto stone flagstones.
I’d done it. I’d actually gone and done it.
‘Are you alright, Detective?’ Knight enquired anxiously.
I stood and dusted myself down. ‘I’m fine,’ I called. I glanced round and found another light switch on the wall. When I turned it on, it illuminated the basement – which was completely empty. There weren’t even any mouldy old boxes stacked into corners, as one might expect in a long-abandoned room. There was, however, a trapdoor in the centre of the floor. Albert Finnegan had been right.
Knight joined me and we stared at it. It gave me the creeps and, judging by the way the reverend shuddered, I wasn’t the only one.
‘You didn’t know this was here?’ I questioned him. I already knew the answer but I felt the need to ask again.
He shook his head vehemently. ‘No. I had no clue.’ He averted his gaze from the trapdoor. ‘Should we … should we open it?’
I wanted to; I wanted to see this damned tunnel with my own eyes. There was no telling what sort of clues might have been left in it. But venturing into it would only contaminate what was now a crime scene, and it would be smarter to leave it until a forensics team could investigate it properly. Besides, I suddenly had more pressing concerns.
‘Mrs Clarke,’ I said to myself.
Knight jerked. ‘Pardon?’
I met his eyes. ‘Mrs Clarke told me that Reverend Baxter was good to her. He counselled her and her husband after their son joined the werewolves. She also told me that they chose St Erbin’s as the burial site because of Baxter’s continued support.’