Department 18 [04] A Plague of Echoes

by Maynard Sims

  Further thoughts on the matter were interrupted by a young, smartly dressed man, who entered his office and extended his hand. “You must be John McKinley,” he said with a smile. “Paul Lucas. Home Office.” His face was open, almost ingenuous, given some sense of gravitas by the rimless glasses he wore. The sandy hair was parted meticulously on the left and cut neatly just above the collar of his crisp, pale blue shirt.

  McKinley regarded him for a moment and then took the proffered hand and shook it.

  “You’re probably curious, wondering why I’m here,” Lucas said.

  “Mildly. Obviously the Home Secretary sent you here, but I understood that Harry Bailey acted as Crozier’s deputy.”

  “Ah,” Lucas said. “Then you haven’t heard.”

  “Heard what.”

  “I’m afraid that, at the moment, Harry Bailey is languishing in a cell at Waterloo Street police station.”

  A stunned expression appeared on McKinley’s face. “Why? What’s he done?”

  “The details are a little unclear at the moment, but I think the charge will be attempted murder.”

  “And who did he attempt to murder?” McKinley said, feeling a knot of anger twisting in the pit of his stomach.

  “Your boss. Simon Crozier.”

  Anger gave way to confusion and disbelief. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Lucas said. “Now, if you could show me to Mr. Crozier’s office, I’d like to get settled in. I’ll be overseeing things at the Department, until Mr. Crozier’s return to work, or until we get this Bailey business sorted out.”

  McKinley stared at the young man as his mind flooded with questions, but he had a feeling that he’d be wasting his time asking any of them. He rose from the desk. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you the way.”

  Trudy made her way down to the upper basement of the building that stored the archives, fighting hard to stop her body from trembling. The encounter with McKinley was unexpected and unwelcome. She’d counted on the building being empty at this time of the morning and had got that totally wrong, but she pressed on with her plan. It was only just six thirty and so she should have a good ninety minutes before the rest of the staff trooped in.

  As expected the door to the archive room was locked but, before she took the elevator down here, she’d stopped off at Simon Crozier’s office and picked up the bunch of keys from his safe. The bunch had a key to every room in the building and she just hoped it wouldn’t take too long finding the one that fitted the lock to the archive room. Labels for the keys would have helped but Crozier refused to consider such a convenience, preferring to keep them unmarked as a security measure.

  The elevator doors opened and Trudy stepped out into a brightly lit corridor. There were a couple of doors halfway along, one leading to a small kitchenette, the other to a restroom, but she was focused on the door at the end of the corridor. Half-glazed, with tired, dark green paint, it was unmarked, but behind it was an area the size of a small aircraft hangar, stacked from floor to ceiling with file boxes on shelves, large wire containers filled with artifacts and row upon row of metal filing cabinets.

  Closing the door she locked it behind her and took a deep breath. She’d been down here just twice before and had been impressed that, despite the sheer volume of material, Eddie Vinton, the curator of the archive, had it organized and catalogued beautifully and logically. She didn’t think it would take her long to find what she was looking for.

  Chapter Ten

  O’Brien woke suddenly and sat bolt upright. Something was wrong. He’d slept soundly and dreamlessly for four hours, his body sucking in energy, renewing his batteries. By rights, he should be feeling relaxed and refreshed. So why were his tendons taut, his sinews singing? Why was his breath coming in short, labored gasps?

  He hauled himself from the bed, almost overcome by a life-sucking feeling of fatigue, and crossed to the mirror hanging on the bedroom wall. He was expecting a pale ghost to stare back at him from the glass. Instead he looked totally normal, healthy even. It made no sense.

  He went back to the bed, sat on the edge and closed his eyes, freeing his mind and letting it soar, homing in on Trudy Banks, expecting her to be at her flat, tucked up in bed, but her bedroom was deserted, as was every other room. Work then. Whitehall.

  He threw his head back and roamed across London.

  As he drew close to Department 18’s headquarters, a mild feeling of nausea started to roll in his stomach. Closer still and the nausea increased. And as the feeling of sickness increased, his vision started to dim until he was almost flying blind.

  He could sense Trudy but couldn’t yet see her.

  This was wrong. All wrong.

  When his mind finally entered Trudy’s office his vision failed completely and he reeled back, bringing his mind to heel.

  The blackness was a void, a huge empty space filled with nothing, with no boundaries or limits. As he tried to make sense of where he was and what was happening to him he caught something out of the corner of his eye, something spindly, metallic, skittering around on the periphery of his vision.

  A charm, he thought. It has to be a charm.

  Forcing his mind forward, he searched the blackness for some crack, some weakness, but all the while the charm danced and twisted like a demented spider, blocking him, forcing him farther and farther out of the void.

  With a cry of frustration and rage O’Brien pulled back.

  He opened his eyes and stared at the room, a dull ache grinding behind his eyes. He slammed his fist against the iron bedpost, the pain bringing him back to the here and now. Crossing to the bathroom he ran the tap and splashed cold water on his face.

  This was unexpected. His plan to hover at the back of Trudy’s mind, watching as she found and destroyed the files, had hit the rocks and he needed a new plan, and quickly.

  But more pressing was the charm. He didn’t believe for one second that Trudy had summoned the charm herself, which meant only one thing. She was being protected. And that led to only one conclusion. Somewhere out there an enemy had surfaced, someone who was going to butt heads with him whatever he tried.

  O’Brien smiled to himself.

  Suddenly the game had become complicated.

  Good. He liked complicated.

  It was more of a challenge.

  Eddie Vinton was certainly her savior. Aisle 33, row F. She’d found the files within minutes. Stuffing them into the large shoulder bag, she retraced her steps and let herself out of the archive room, locking the door behind her. Back in the elevator she punched the button for the lower basement and the boiler room, and leaned back against the steel wall of the car, letting the cold from the metal seep into her. She hadn’t realized how much she had been sweating.

  The elevator stopped, the doors opened and she stepped out into another corridor, this one much more industrial, lined with heavy water pipes and electrical conduits, and dimly lit by bare bulbs set within steel cages. There was the rattling hum of the pumps that lifted the hot water from the boilers and fed it to the various floors of the building.

  The boilers themselves dwarfed her. There were two of them, standing eight feet high and five feet wide. Modern technology had passed them by. They were coal-fired and fed from a large black pile of the stuff that sat dustily in its own caged enclosure. A large shovel leaned against the heap, but there was no sign of anyone down here to use it.

  The coal was fed into the hot boxes through a pair of steel doors measuring about a foot square. Hanging from a hook at the side of the boilers was a length of rag, streaked with coal dust. She detached it from the hook and used it to open one of the doors, stepping back and shielding her eyes as the heat rushed out to welcome her.

  Dropping the rag to the floor, she opened the bag and took out the cardboard files, resting them in the crook of her arm, a
nd then, raising her free hand to protect her face from the savage heat, she took a step forward and threw the first file into the flames.

  “Here! What are you up to? You shouldn’t be down here. Authorized personnel only.”

  Trudy spun round and saw a short, stout, balding man approaching her from the far end of the boiler room. He was wearing dark blue overalls and, as he drew closer, she saw he had a white laminate badge pinned to his chest proclaiming the name, Alec Rutherford, with an accompanying photograph that bore a pretty good likeness of him, even down to the wisps of curly white hair, stained with soot, that haloed the pink dome of his head. A pair of rimless glasses sat on a button nose, set in a round, florid face—a face that was twisted into a scowl.

  A tide of panic surged through her and she threw the remaining files into the fire. They caught almost instantly, the flames licking out towards her.

  The short man was nearly upon her. She turned and headed towards the door.

  “Hey! Not so fast. You’ve got some explaining to do.” He grabbed her arm with a pudgy hand and spun her around to face him. Peering intently at her face, he said, “I don’t recognize you. Who are you?”

  Trudy said nothing but yanked her arm away. His fingers left sooty streaks on the sleeve of her cream linen jacket.

  He made a grab for her again but she sidestepped to avoid him. Glancing to her left, she saw that the door to the boiler room was ajar. He saw where she was looking and moved quickly to put himself between her and the door.

  “You can’t just come down here and shove things into my boilers. They’re old and delicate. They don’t make them like this anymore. And God forbid they go wrong. Parts are a bugger to come by,” Rutherford said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think it would hurt.”

  He seemed more concerned about his boilers than what she had come down here to burn. “See that?” he said, pointing to the coal enclosure. “That’s what fires the boilers. Solid fuel, not bloody paper and cardboard. You have no business burning your rubbish down here.” He swooped down and grabbed the rag from the floor, twisted it around his hand and pushed the firebox door closed. “I’ll have to report this.”

  “You don’t have to,” Trudy said. “I have necessary authority.”

  The man stared at her belligerently. For a second or so it seemed as if he was going to say more, but then something shifted in his eyes and he stood there, his mouth hanging open. A second later his entire body heaved as a tremor passed through it. Another second later the misty look in his eyes faded and they became bright again. Bright but different.

  “Are you okay?” Trudy asked.

  Rutherford smiled. “Oh, I’m fine, Trudy. Now, what’s all this nonsense about the necessary authority?”

  His voice had changed. He now spoke with a softer, more cultured voice, laced with a vague Irish accent.

  “You,” she said, recognizing the voice immediately.

  “I told you I’d know if you didn’t do as I asked.”

  As shock registered on Trudy’s face, the man’s smile grew wider. “Did you get all the files on Liscombe?”

  She nodded her head dumbly. “I think so.”

  “Yes. Of course you did. That’s what I like about you, Trudy. You’re thorough, good at your job. That’s why I chose you.” He reached out and grabbed the pendant hanging around Trudy’s neck. She felt a tug as the chain bit into her skin, but then the man yelped and released the charm, blowing on the red wheal that was rising on his palm.

  “Where did you get that?” he said.

  “That’s none of your business.”

  “I can make it my business,” he said coldly. “And believe me, you don’t want me to make it my business. Did someone give it to you?”

  “Go to hell.”

  Seemingly oblivious to the heat from the firebox, he grabbed the door and pulled it open. “Take it off and throw it into the flames.”

  “What part of go to hell didn’t you understand?” Her confidence was growing. He’d tried and failed to take the charm from her and that meant she now had the strength to resist him. “You’d love me to destroy it, wouldn’t you?”

  His face twisted into a sickly smile. “I’m sure your niece would,” he said. “Me, I don’t care one way or the other.”

  The mention of Angela yanked the rug from beneath her increasing self-confidence and she sagged slightly. Her fingers went to her throat, fingering the silver charm.

  The man stood staring at her, unmoving, his face impassive.

  Reaching behind her neck she unclipped the bolt ring and removed the pendant.

  His eyes shifted to the firebox.

  Trudy made a small noise of defeat in her throat and tossed the pendant into the flames.

  As the Respark landed in the coals, a jet of bright green flame shot upwards.

  The man smiled. “That charm caused me a whole heap of trouble, both me and Fatso here. I never had the intention of using anybody else but, because you were wearing that bloody thing, you left me no choice.”

  “Will he be all right?”

  “Who…oh, Fatso, you mean. Yes, of course. He won’t remember that I’ve been inside his head. He won’t remember that you were down here, In fact, he won’t remember anything at all.”

  “Don’t hurt him,” Trudy said.

  “As if I would. Now, run along before you’re missed.”

  Trudy hesitated for a moment.

  “I mean it. Get out of here.”

  Trudy walked to the door and then glanced back.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said with a smile.

  When O’Brien heard the elevator doors open and close he poured out of the fat man’s body, but not before giving him one last instruction. And then he hovered, up by the ceiling, watching as Alec Rutherford walked shakily to the firebox. With one fluid movement Rutherford pitched himself headfirst into the flames, ignoring the pain and listening to the frying of his skin with complete detachment. Only when he died and his body collapsed under him did his charred head re-emerge from the firebox. By that time O’Brien was back in his own body, lying on the bed in his flat, secure in the knowledge that the job had been done satisfactorily.

  Chapter Eleven

  “You must be Trudy.”

  Trudy spun round as the young man stepped out of Simon Crozier’s office, the blood draining from her face. “Who are you?” she said.

  “Paul Lucas, Home Office,” the young man said, extending his hand.

  “Where’s Harry Bailey?”

  “Arrested,” Lucas said patiently. “I’ll have to call a meeting this morning of all senior staff, otherwise I’m going to spend all day explaining Mr. Bailey’s absence.”

  “Perhaps you could explain it to me,” Trudy said. She was painfully aware that she looked disheveled. The soot marks on the sleeve of her jacket were like an accusatory brand, betraying what she had been doing. Hopefully Lucas hadn’t noticed.

  She listened closely while Lucas recounted the events of the night. When he’d finished she said, “And how’s Simon?”

  “I called the hospital ten minutes ago. The surgery to repair the damage Bailey inflicted on him seems to have been successful, but he’s still unconscious. They’ll know more later.”

  Trudy sank down into her chair. “I don’t believe this,” she said. “Twenty-four hours ago everything was normal…well, at least as normal as things get around here, and now it seems that Department 18 is in crisis. The Home Secretary must think so too because he sent you here.”

  “I’m here only to oversee…”

  Trudy held up her hand to stop him. “Please don’t treat me like an idiot. I’m afraid your reputation precedes you, Mr. Lucas. I’ve heard your name mentioned before…many times in fact, and never associated with anything good. You’re the ministry’s hatchet man
. What are you really here for? To close us down?”

  Lucas’s anodyne mask slipped a little and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I was warned about you too,” he said. “The power behind the throne; I think that’s the phrase someone used about you.”

  “You flatter me. Simon is very much the boss around here,” she said.

  “But you facilitate that. You keep him organized; you run his schedule. In essence, he’d be lost without you.”

  “I don’t think so. Anyway, you’re avoiding answering my question.”

  The smile grew wider and he pulled up a chair opposite her, sitting down and crossing one leg over the other. “I don’t think I need to tell you that the Home Secretary is a big supporter of this Department.”

  “Unlike his predecessor who wanted to close us down, and unless I’m mistaken, you started your career working for him.”

  “That’s very true. But Francis Bates is my boss now. I answer to him, and therefore have to support his position. He’s asked me to come here and do a job, and I will do that job to the best of my ability.”

  “No agendas?”

  “No agendas. You have to trust me on this.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I need your help. I want you to keep me as organized as you kept Crozier.”

  Trudy regarded him for a long moment, looking for the lie. Looking for the deception in his eyes. “You’re speaking about Simon in the past tense. I don’t like that.”

  “Sorry. Nothing meant by it. I suspect he’ll be back here as soon as he’s feeling well enough.”

  “You can count on it. I’ve only known him take one sick day in all the years I’ve worked here. It’s quite a record.”

  “Enviable,” Lucas said. “Now, if you can organize that meeting…”

  “I’ll get straight on it.” She watched him head back to Crozier’s office. At the door he paused and turned back to her. “Oh. And you might want to get that jacket cleaned. You seem to have soot or something on the sleeve.”