The Grotesques

by Tia Reed

  “Who delivered the note?” Rob asked.

  Ace raised his eyes and started chewing. “This bat got in the pub, distracted us. Then it disappeared and the note was just there.” He smirked. “Like it delivered it or somethin’.”

  Ella momentarily closed her eyes. A week ago she would have thrown her notepad down and walked away, convinced this young offender was high on drugs for talking about message-bearing bats.

  “You know something about that?” Doer said.

  “I’ve had my fair share of bat post,” she replied.

  “You look into what we discussed?”

  “Oh yes. It’s how Genord dumps the bodies.”

  “So why is the bastard still free?”

  “I’m standing here. Unharmed. My word against his. A loophole you should be familiar with.”

  “You should blame the detective here, not me.”

  “My word might be worth a lot more if it weren’t for you.”

  “What business did Brodie have at the church?” Rob’s raised voice was unusual enough to warn her off.

  “Dunno. The note didn’t say. But he wanted to snoop around and impress Doer.”

  “The pair of you will impress me when you start doing what you’re told.”

  “We’re better than the mindless lackey work you give us.”

  Rob cleared his throat. From the way his lips were pursed it was obvious his patience was wearing thin. “After the publicity that area has been getting, why did you let him go in alone?”

  “He can take care of himself.”

  For troublemakers like these that meant one thing. She was surprised Rob even had to ask.

  “Did he have a weapon?”

  Ace flicked his hair back and stared Rob in the eye.

  “You want to impress me, you tell them everything,” Doer said, with a light clout to the back of Ace’s head.

  “Yeah,” the youth admitted. “He had a piece.”

  Doer relaxed. Ella thought about the ineffectual shots Rob and Danes had fired. And that did not even take Genord, who had been intent on murder and in possession of weird explosives, into account. With Romain out of the church, the boy was probably dead.

  “Right. Now tell me how the pair of you got past the police surveillance.”

  Ace shrugged. “They had a little distraction.”

  Rob was rarely in the mood for games. It had been one of those opposite traits that was supposed to attract. Right now, trying to convince him that Genord was his man, she appreciated his lack of humour. Thankfully, the Chief Inspector was of a similar meld.

  “You fired a gun and forced them to chase you,” said Roan.

  “My bike backfired.”

  “The patrol officers lodged their report. They chased you down the road.”

  Ace shrugged again.

  Rob pressed on with the disappearance. “So you didn’t actually see Brodie enter the church?”

  “No, but that’s where he was going.”

  “You didn’t see me enter either, but I was there, and Genord tried to kill me,” Ella butted in.

  Chief Inspector Roan yanked the door handle. “We have no evidence of anyone entering that church. Nobody actually saw any of the victims enter the building.”

  “That’s not true,” Ace and Ella said simultaneously.

  Roan looked from one to the other, deciding who to tackle first. “You,” he said to her, “are not a victim. And you’d better watch what accusations you make or Genord will have you back in court for libel. As for you—”

  Doer nudged Ace. The youth blurted, “Brodie and me saw the first chick enter.” He slumped in his chair, sticking out his chest. “We wolf-whistled and revved the bikes. She got nervy and went inside,” he smirked.

  “Ella knew that girl went in the church,” Doer said.

  “This one?” Rob held up a photo of Cecily Williams. Ace shrugged one shoulder.

  “Something else you forgot to mention,” Rob said, avoiding her eyes. She dropped her head. Hurting him had not been her intention. She had figured he understood that about her because in all their time together, Ella had never been forthcoming. Rob had always had to pry what information he could out of her.

  Chief Inspector Roan narrowed his gaze. “Did you or your buddy have anything at all to do with Cecily Williams’ disappearance?”

  “Nup.”

  Roan approached the table, pretending he was about to get heavy-handed, and Ace immediately became more sincere.

  “No, I swear.”

  “She’d be here if you hadn’t driven her into the church,” Ella said. Not that Ace was ever going to care.

  “Weren’t us that did anything to her.” He sank further down, folded his arms, and glared at her.

  Rob closed his pad. “Do not go down to the church or have any of your men go down there. Quite apart from legalities, we have enough missing people to deal with.”

  The advice was probably futile. In fact, Ella was counting on it. “Call me around midday,” she said, as Rob stood and beckoned her out. She fished inside a forgotten compartment of her purse for a card with the Informer and her name printed on the same side. She passed the first one she had ever handed out to Doer. “I think we can help each other.”

  Doer gave her a slow nod. “You got it.”

  Rob ushered her out, leaving Rhymes to take down details of the shooting. “That man is dangerous. You have no reason to associate with him,” he said.

  “Business,” she lied. “An interview. What are you going to do about Brodie?”

  “We can hardly search the church again,” a furious Inspector said as they walked toward his office. “I want round the clock surveillance on the premises by a team who is not to leave the area for any reason. Get a tail on Genord and Romain, get together that team of experts, and get me some answers.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  29th October. Late Morning.

  ELLA STIFLED AN inward groan. Debbie, her perpetual gum-chewing, nail-painting habits on display, had noticed her as soon as she walked into the Informer. The few hours of sleep she had managed to snatch after the blood test Rob insisted on had not endowed her with anywhere near enough resilience to face the tribulations of petty rivalry.

  “You’d think some people wouldn’t have the nerve to show their face around here. Not after shirking their workload,” Debbie said as Ella slid behind her desk and rummaged in the drawers for a leftover piece of chocolate, a cake crumb, a sweet, anything that could supply a scrap of courage. The blank notepads, blue pens, and discarded chocolate wrappers, devoid of even the vestige of a flake, were a major let-down.

  “Is Phil in his office?” she asked, promising herself an entire block of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut when this was over.

  Debbie smirked. “Is he cheesed off with you! Here.” She extricated a notepad with illegible scribble from under piles of papers and dropped it on Ella’s desk. “He wants a story on the pileup on the Princes Highway, and I’ve already written a feature article.”

  Ella stood. She did not have time for this.

  Debbie’s smile faded. “Not so fast. He’s reading my masterpiece.”

  “You’re right,” she said, sinking down and turning on her ancient computer. “He’ll want hard copy.” The machine whirred to life with a few grudging, off-key beeps.

  “Well, what do you know, it’s going to work straight off today,” Debbie said. Ella shot her a mistrusting look. Debbie shrugged. “Had to use it yesterday. Mine was on the blink.”

  The Informer might not have the resources to provide reliable equipment for its staff but that didn’t mean Ella was willing to share her files. She made a mental note to change her password. When Debbie was not peering over her shoulder. Her hands flew over the keys, and within an hour she had produced a passable article. Definitely not Pulitzer material, but it had to be more coherent than whatever Debbie had written. She snatched the printout before her colleague could lay her nosey hands on it.

  “I
warned you,” Debbie said, reclining in her chair and picking up a nail polish bottle. The smirk was back on her face, and Ella felt her eyes follow her to the door, where Phil’s gruff voice answered her knock.

  “Go away unless you’ve got me a leading story.”

  Ella opened the door. Her overweight editor had his feet on a battered desk, a bitten doughnut in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. When he saw her, Phil immediately dropped his feet, tossed the papers onto the desk and the doughnut on top of them. “Where have you been? You’re late with your copy. When I said you could have time off, I didn’t mean you could have a goddamn honeymoon.”

  “I need you to print this. Front page. Tomorrow.” Ella held out the article.

  Phil waved her in and took the printout. “So your source panned out?”

  Ella felt a lump form in her throat. “He’s missing.”

  Phil did not miss a beat. “Crap.”

  She was not sure if his concern was for Adam or his story. “I think I know where he might be. I mean, I’ve got a lead so I’m on my way out again.”

  Phil finished skimming the text and blinked like he was the one suffering from hallucinations. He threw her a puzzled look and reread. “You sure you want your name to this?” he said at last.

  “I need my name to that. I need it to go to print. Tomorrow.”

  Now he really looked at her. “Do you believe it?”

  “Would you believe me if I say it’s the truth?”

  “It doesn’t matter. This isn’t going to hurt business any. An original idea like this might even drum up some new customers.”

  “You’ll get more once I chase down a few leads. In the meantime, I need some background.”

  “Debbie’s got that covered. And I expect the next instalment tomorrow.” The lights flickered. Phil tilted his head to the ceiling. “Goddammit!” As if in response to his swearing, the buzzing fluorescent tubes cackled out. While the room darkened, light still poured in from the large window behind the desk. “Those vermin are costing me a damn fortune in electrical repairs,” he said, standing.

  “What vermin?” The regrettable words were out before she could think.

  “Bats. Apparently, there’s a whole colony in the roof.” Phil walked into the main area, leaving Ella staring at his back. The creatures were stalking her. She shook her head, hoping that thought did not make her even more certifiable. Perhaps it was just that they needed a safer roost than the belfry and whatever was lurking there.

  In the main room, Debbie was pretending to fill a cup with water from the cooler next to Phil’s door. She straightened as soon as she saw Phil, leaving the cup in place. From her wary expression she had obviously heard every word.

  “I’ve got a great angle for the River Ripper story, Mr Waterman. Do you want me to interview residents around the Port Canal?”

  “No. I want you to give Ella everything you’ve got on it and finish the story on the crash.”

  Forgetting the cup by the cooler, Debbie stomped to her desk.

  “What have you uncovered about the Church of the Resurrection?” Ella asked while she brought Google up on the screen and typed the English word grotesque. Phil had remained by his door, hands on hips, obviously checking Debbie was going to do what he asked. By way of complying, she slapped a pad that contained as much doodling as text on Ella’s desk.

  “Debbie, people’s lives are at stake. Do you think we could work together for once?”

  Debbie, elbow on the edge of her desk, was resting her jaw on her palm, still chewing, and watching her intently. “Well, I’m not the one keeping my information to myself.”

  As the computer displayed a list of websites, Ella wondered rather uncharitably if she could trade her annoying colleague for Adam or Cecily. “I don’t suppose you speak French?” Romain’s last word had sounded like the English gargoyle, but she had no idea how to spell the French equivalent. She would have to try a translation dictionary as soon as she was done with grotesque.

  “I work for an English newspaper,” Debbie said as though it was an unbelievably stupid question.

  Sighing, Ella typed the words church and resurrection into the search box. She leant back as she scanned the results on grotesques so that Debbie could push her curious nose into the screen. The ploy worked. She was eager to show she knew more than Ella.

  “Did you know the Church of the Resurrection faces the wrong way?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a Christian church, right. They’re supposed to face east but that church faces west.”

  Ella struggled to bring images of churches to mind. “The modern ones don’t all face east.”

  “Yes, but everything else about this church is so completely traditional.” Debbie wrinkled her nose at the last word.

  “Genord must have had a good reason,” Ella said to keep her talking. Debbie was right. Genord had reconstructed a perfect replica of a medieval church. That fact was not going to have escaped his notice, and Ella was sure any reason he had would be to serve his own twisted purpose.

  Debbie swivelled and flipped through another notepad before she resumed painting her nails. “Remember the public furore at the time building approval was given? I’ve been doing a little digging.” Ella’s surprise must have shown. “Waterman said I had to get out of the office and do first hand research,” she put in with a shake of her head, like it was a bizarre request for a filthy task. “Anyway, seems local residents were dead opposed to the church. The council actually rejected the approval and offered another site—that’s a matter of public record. The locals weren’t happy about a private enterprise acquiring the reserve—but Genord kept insisting the church had to be built on that site. Apparently, he specifically wanted it near water. Then the council decision got overturned at state level. It was all kept very hush-hush but there are rumours a large amount of money changed hands.”

  Ella clicked on the Wikipedia entry for grotesque and scrolled down while Debbie talked. The screen flickered ominously.

  “We’re talking billions,” Debbie said when she failed to act impressed.

  “Rumours are just that.” The people who talked to Informer reporters were not known for either accuracy or honesty. She returned to the entry. It was useless.

  Debbie blew on her nails. “Yeah, but remember the sudden boost to infrastructure funding at about that time? The new hospital was planned, the southern expressway was widened to accommodate two way traffic, the extended tramline built . . .” She trailed off but Ella’s mind added that the northern expressway had been built and the buses had doubled their frequency around that time too. Ella looked at Debbie with renewed respect. What she was saying suddenly seemed credible. Debbie lowered her voice as though they were part of the conspiracy. “And then Senator Brackham retired to a mansion on Sydney Harbour and bought a holiday house in the Dandenongs.”

  “Did you find out why it was kept so quiet?” How it was kept so quiet.

  “Part of the deal on both ends. There were even a couple of deaths during construction of the church, but work was barely delayed. The cause of death was listed as heart attack in both cases, but there were accusations of sloppy work and even resignations around the coroner’s office.”

  Ella turned back to the screen. It flickered, then stabilised. “Who’s your source?” she asked. She needed facts not insinuation.

  “Are you going to name yours?” Ella had to concede that was a fair point. “Anyway, what’s bizarre is that Genord never contested the prohibition to ring the bell. And despite the expense, he still went ahead and put one in. I mean, after all the trouble he went to in order to get exactly what he wanted, he accepted that ruling without a peep. Strange, when there’s an Orthodox church with a working bell just round the corner.” Debbie was warming to the story. “Isn’t this sort of thing right up your alley? I’ll swap you digging up political dirt for investigation of the church. What does grotesque have to do with the church anyway?”
>
  “They’re the statues on the roof.”

  Lightning-like bursts of light cut across the screen.

  “You mean the gargoyles?”

  Ella looked up and blinked. Lack of sleep had made her slow. She keyed in the word. The second paragraph in Wikipedia conveniently displayed the French equivalent. Gargouille. A French speaker might match Romain in pronunciation. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she scanned the text. Saint Romain, chancellor to a king of France, had defeated a dragon called La Gargouille which had terrorised Rouen in the seventh century. The town had burned the beast, but its head had remained intact.

  Ella scraped her chair back. This sick parody of history was just not possible. A chancellor would have been an intelligent man. But if what this entry said was true, that would mean Romain and the statues were protectors after all. She had to get to the church and find a way to transform Adam and the girls back before the police and their assault team arrived. Pale and clammy, she leant forward and typed in flesh to stone. Somewhere in the vast net of misinformation there had to be reference to a cure.

  Nothing. Think, think, she told herself. What was it the pathologist had warned her about? His sarcastic voice echoed in her mind. Basilisk.

  “What do you want to know about them for?”

  “I need to find out the cure.”

  “Basil,” Debbie supplied as Ella scrolled down.

  “But there’s nothing here about turning people to stone,” she said in dismay. Flesh sloughing off bone, yes. Poison looks, yes. But stone?

  “Of course not. That was Medusa’s power.”

  Ella glanced at Debbie out the corner of her eye. “How do you know about this stuff?”

  Debbie rolled her eyes. “D’oh. It’s basic mythology 101. What we write about every day. How’d you ever get a job here?”

  “I’ll never know.”

  Frantic clicks on different sites produced everything she could ever want to know about the gorgons. Except for one thing. “What’s the cure?”

  “I don’t think there is one.”