Omphalos

by Gerald Lynch

  The biggest trooper, unmasked, stepped through the human cordon and took the machete from Kevin in a forensics clamp. He spoke with a hint of taunting: “Wonder what we’ll find on this, Detective Inspector Beldon?” Then shouted, “Eyes front everybody! Gentle handling, chief’s orders!”

  Kevin felt chest pain at the face on Ertelle a few feet away. “It’s Monty Parizeau, isn’t it? Big Ot’s nephew?”

  The machete dipped. “I…well, oui…Mon oncle Otto…”

  Kevin strongly suspected that nephew had the new implants enabling limited connection to MYCROFT. Frank had told him that a few ambitious recruits were risking it. Kevin saw it in the ocular response to the unexpected — an arrest subject claiming familiarity? — the eyeballs jigged like stutter, the inappropriate winking looked imbecilic. Good. Kevin wondered what MYCROFT must make of Monty.

  He grinned round at the black reflectors ringing him. “Good work, guys and gals.” And there was a sense of relieved exhalation under the protective padding. “Keep it up, Monty, and one day you might be promoted to le guard SWISS.”

  That got muffled laughter, the loudest of it female tittering. Kevin thought: Women are just no good at this macho shit.

  “Marche!”

  Ertelle was escorted out first, and passing she flashed such a smile as thrilled him. They were partners forever, whether they worked together again or not, even if they never saw each other again: partners.

  Could such a woman not conceive? Could nature be so contrary?… Yes, it could, because we are not nature, remember? The rule of law is not nature. Nor is the love of nature nature, nor love itself, of course. And what he was now forced to think was inconceivable to his nature.

  Chapter 23

  Kevin was taken to HQ, kept apart from Ertelle, left alone. Which helped him sort his thoughts. He was released with shows of respect but no apology. Where was Frank?… There’s Frank, Kevin thought, in that respectful treatment. And, sad to think, perhaps in what that consideration said of Frank’s apprehension of recrimination.

  He requested Constable Ali to drive him back to Omphalos. Ali assured him that he personally had looked after Detective Ertelle, but that she’d not accepted a ride and had requisitioned her own car. Constable Ali asked after Ms. Beldon: Was there anything he could do? Even if it was just to park outside her house? It occurred to Kevin that solicitous Ali had been smitten with Kelly at first sight. But then, who wouldn’t be? Or perhaps out at Dow’s Lake he’d been watching her from the back.

  At Omphalos Frank was still nowhere, or again present only in the absence of orders to bar Kevin from the building. Or perhaps the guards were preparing to “mistakenly” kill him for security breach; or if he took the elevator to seventeen, the doors would open and the SWISS would greet him mortally. But the skeleton security at the underground garage had no problem with his passing through.

  On foot he headed farther down a concrete ramp to the sub-basement. He found his way through the maze without pause, following his instincts, down shorter stairs and runs of dank cementy corridors. At long last, moving closer to what he wanted and did not want, to what he knew already but needed to see confirmed: material evidence, the rule of law. Undoubtedly doubting Detective Beldon, still hopelessly hoping Kevin.

  On final approach he navigated short straight runs of rubberized floor; with closed eyes he loped along the shrinking tunnels, needlessly ducking his head, trusting his instincts for guidance, turning corners without looking, looking and suppressing the urge to turn around and run.

  If he’d known then what he knew now — that this Jake Shercock had secret surveillance tapes — he’d not have been waved off that first time he’d mistakenly come this way. Randome’s suspicions of surveillance were not cryptovidaphobic. An ancient spy-cam had shown up on MYCROFT’s scan of the room divider. He’d not been thinking: too late at every twist and turn of this his terminal case.

  One more right turn and he should be at the top of the sloping hallway to the black-and-silver double doors that swung both ways. And there they were, stuck slightly open inwards, as if he were expected. The long low-ceilinged last hallway ran downward at a significant pitch, and a trick of perspective made him catch his breath — the doorway looked Lilliputian. As unreasonably, at first he slid his feet tentatively, crouching and actually retracting his shoulders needlessly; but responding to gravity his pace quickened and he was all but flung through the heavy sheet-metal-clad doors into the sub-basement power plant.

  He pulled up short, feeling he’d made an inappropriately comical entrance.

  Bright metallic lighting, deafening noise of a gigantic harmony, and a raw heat worse even than the Dome’s. But where the Dome’s heat had been humid, here it was dry as rust, appropriate to the end of things.

  A far corner of old-fashioned (illegal, actually) tungsten lighting drew him to where the maintenance man sat at a triptych console. The area suffused an aura of antiquity in its display of levers and needle measurements and flesh-coloured balls bouncing around in the oily fluid of bulbous gauges; further relict was the bank of triple-stacked black-and-white monitors, some three dozen small screens.

  With his back to Kevin, Jake Shercock sat at the centre of things, sat far forward on the edge of a straight-back black-leather chair that was studded with brass rivets like some medieval throne. He wore only bib overalls, no shirt, and no shoes or socks on feet whose toes actually curled upwards some. His hair had greyed to a fine whiteness as uniform as a clean page of The Near Future.

  Approaching, Kevin saw that his neck was hairy too, and considerable white hair shagged his shoulders like threadbare epaulets. The sparse black hairs on his back were like daddy longlegs; even his big toes threw out dark tufts like spiders grappling him to the concrete floor.

  The maintenance man nodded without turning, said, “Ignore that man behind the curtain!” and twisted round on his chair. His voice was nasal, and though his eyes were beady his face was high-coloured, round and almost pleasant.

  Kevin rewarded him with a smile, despite his being prepared to deal physically with a demented character. For now, best to humour him.

  “The Wizard of Oz. Good, I used to watch it with my kids when they were little. We’d sing along. The Cowardly Lion’s turn outside the Wizard’s door never failed the Beldons.”

  “You’re feeling sentimental this evening, Detective Inspector Beldon. And no wonder!” He didn’t blink but widened his little eyes as if staring, like somebody with a thyroid condition, like someone who never socialized.

  “I am, Mr. Shercock. We should have continued watching Oz together, once a month, with the communicators and the computers turned off, the doors locked and the curtains drawn! That’s all.”

  “Now, now, you’ll rust yourself, Detective.” He swung back to his console.

  Kevin sniffed twice. “God, it stinks down here.”

  “My apologies. It’s this gut of mine. Anything I take in — and I’m omnivorous — comes out smelling like this. I can’t help it. I’ve tried everything: the Kitchen-Sink Diet, Inclusive Paste, Pornbeer, Western Yogurt, UberFem Beano, and a whole host of acronyms. Nothing helps: I yam what I yam. It’s not like I have a choice in the matter. Take it or leave it — voilà moi. And hey, it’s also not like I invite people down here to sniff about. In fact, Detective Beldon, you are my first visitor in a very long once-upon-a-time.”

  “Let’s cut the fairy-tale crap, Mr. Shercock. You’ve been carrying out secret surveillance since Omphalos began. You knew what was going on, yet you did nothing. I’m arresting you as accessory to multiple murders. You’ll be put away for life, if I let you out of this stinking hellhole alive. Two of those victims were mine, you know! Mine!”

  Jake Shercock squirmed some in his high-backed leather chair, if incommensurately alarmed. “An accomplice? Me? Hold your horses, Beldon: I didn’t know what you’re talking about till just the other d
ay.”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “I monitor the physical operations of Omphalos. If you were to walk over to the other side of the room there, you’d see where I live. I watch no Macro. I read discarded books, which I then burn in my old furnace, so I am fairly self-sufficient when it comes to entertainment and energy. I know the world only from what I’ve heard people say on these monitors, and the poor sound system makes me miss the half of it. DeLint sussed out the surveillance long ago and made me remove the cam from his office. Anna Kynder’s corner office was built after my equipment was installed. I was as shocked as everyone else to find stupid old Eugene beheaded and Anna poisoned. Only from monitoring your investigation these past two days has it occurred to me that what I’d been viewing in Ewan Randome’s secret office was part of the so-called Widower murders. When it dawned on me…well, I did ask you to come back just the other day, recall.”

  “You said later, come back later, why not right then! Bill could have been saved!”

  Jake Shercock smirked and swivelled to his left, still glancing sideways at Kevin. “I only suspected then. I couldn’t be making false accusations; I needed proof, you know, Detective Beldon. It would have meant blowing my cover here prematurely.”

  “Why, you little piece of shit! I’m gonna blow your fucking head —”

  Jake flinched and threw up a protective right forearm: “Okay-okay, I should have acted more quickly, I confess! But I suffer from OCD; I had to completely complete my work first. On top of that, I was dealing with some highly sensitive materials, the reputations of some high-powered global fuck-ups who were nonetheless innocent of any involvement with the Widower.”

  “That wasn’t your decision to make!” But Kevin had already settled.

  “No? You above all should have some idea what it’s like being me way down here, the things I see, the hundred decisions I have to make daily, no one to talk to. People get a gut feeling about me, and they avoid me. I mean, look at me… That’s why I was so pleased initially to see your famous factioning self come galumphing down the ramp the other day. At long last, I thought, I dared hope: mon semblable, mon frère! But not yet, I wasn’t ready for you quite yet!” He shifted fully to face his bank of small monitors.

  Watching the delicate hairy white hands reach to the ancient knobs and buttons, Kevin knew that Shercock was telling his version of the truth. This too: Jake Shercock was as mad as a suddenly sighted bat.

  “Okay…Jake Shercock, I believe you. What do you have for me?”

  “And you’ll leave me out of it? No subpoena?”

  “I could have this place — and you — torn apart. But no subpoena, you have my word.”

  “Okay, I believe you, Kevin Beldon.”

  He retrieved an old-fashioned Bakelite videocassette from the shelf under his console, but instead of turning and handing it over, he remained with his back to Kevin and the cassette held on top of his head. “This is what I’ve feverishly been working on these past couple of days, just for you, Kevin. It’s ancient Betamax format, by the way.”

  Kevin took it, looking like he may as well have been handed a skull. “And just where the fuck am I supposed to find a machine to play this?”

  “Right here.” His open hand had waited atop his head as if it were the cassette’s slot. “Kevin, do you know the expression deus ex machina? That’s what I feel like, your —”

  “No.” Kevin couldn’t control his irritation: “Then why the fuck did you hand it to me?”

  “You don’t like to palpate the evidence? I’ve misread you.”

  Kevin slipped the cassette back into his hand and Jake fed it to a relic VCR down by his right knee, talking incessantly: “It’s a composite, there were so many relevant tapes, but if I’d had any inkling your son Bill was in danger, I’d have sounded the alarm tout de suite, aesthetics be damned.” He sniffed once. “Regrettably, I sometimes miss the obvious.”

  The little madman really cared. Kevin said, “The Widower had gone after women only, till he set up McNicol. I’d been more worried about Kelly.”

  “And with good reason, if still not what you’ve been thinking.”

  “How do you know what I’ve —”

  “Here now, watch.”

  The small centre screen showed only grey, and when figures did move across it they strobed like ghosts.

  “What is this? Where is this? Can’t you enhance?”

  Jake reached and paused the tape. “Detective Beldon: one, this tape begins with a session between Dr. Ewan Randome and a Mrs. Eva Kerwin. Two, it takes place in the secret Dome office, where you recently had your epiphany. And three, I don’t know what the hell you imply by enhance! I spent two whole days working on this compilation! The tapes are from cams I installed in this building when it was still the Department of National Defence, some half-century ago. I did it for old Major General McGahern, who had a very scary dark side.”

  Kevin fought for self-control. “Of course. Could you resume now?”

  “It was only by the grace of God that Dr. Randome never found the old camera I’d concealed as a bolt at the top of the dividers when that room was still a penthouse gym for military brass. I shut down whenever Randome had the room swept for bugs — which he did frequently — and rebooted with none too little trepidation. I caught your wave earlier, by the way. And another thing, Detective, it was I who flushed all the toilets to break the voodoo spell Dr. Randome was working on you in the men’s bathroom just above our heads here. You’re welcome.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Shercock. Resume, please.” Kevin just managed to control his impatience. To return Jake Shercock’s attention to the video, he leaned across him, hit play, and pointed:

  “That is Eva Kerwin. She was one of the two widows who visited Haiti and first gave me cause for the search warrant at Omphalos.”

  “Exactement. And then we jump to — Alice Cairn, the other.”

  “Dear God, are you telling me that the secret Dome room was for Widower victims?”

  Jake Shercock again hit pause. “The video must appear amateurish to you, Detective. I had no control over the original lighting or audio levels, of course, but I’ve done my best to enhance, as you so blithely put it.”

  With fingers knitted in his lap, Jake Shercock awaited comment, as would some auteur a review. Kevin again reached across him and stubbed the big play button, and the mechanical tactility of doing so again made him mentally downgrade MYCROFT’s virtual keyboard. Jake shrugged. The video proceeded.

  Its quality varied from poor to indistinguishable. But Kevin recognized the actors, the Widower victims, as each in turn strobes into the shot and sits in the grey comfy chair: Shu Glickman, Riesa Tregabov, Donna Stich, Lydia Crosbie. The women recline and Dr. Randome stands back of each’s left shoulder, a pale wraith topped by a paler wedge of head. With Betty Kubacki a spiderlike sculpture appears on the wall behind Randome. Voodoo, thought Kevin, spider god.

  “Jesus Christ, Jake, how could you see this and not think the very worst?”

  “To repeat: I knew little about the Widower, only Omphalos gossip. I’d thought he was some sort of Don Juan.”

  “And you’ve buggered the sequence.” Big mistake.

  Pause. “Please. I was trying to give some semblance of coherence to a chaos of raw material. First I introduce the two victims who clued you to the connection amongst Haiti, Omphalos and the Widower; then each subsequent victim is chronologically brought on stage; then we flash back and I present each’s session edited for relevance to the whole story. Rising to a climax —”

  “Just play the fucking thing! Cut to what’s essential, I haven’t got time for this! Or get outta that fucking chair and I’ll do it!”

  The maintenance man raised his elbows and leaned forward in a gesture of protecting his equipment. “If you get violent I’ve rigged for a fire!… Okay then, we won’t vie
w every session.”

  Kevin inhaled deeply, exhaled. “Play.”

  Jake intervened and the vid skipped to victim eight’s, Kubacki’s, session. Poor Betty, once a friend of Cynthia, into her third failing marriage and grown rail-thin from rejection and vindictive desperation. Jake said, “We’ll watch this one, and you will then know every session’s pattern.”

  The therapy seemed tame enough at first, with Dr. Randome eliciting and echoing in the method Kevin recognized. But then he begins touching, leaning forward and cupping a shoulder reassuringly, patting a cheek with increasing force. Soon he’s clamping foreheads, covering eyes, and squeezing breasts, not salaciously but punishingly. He comes round to face Betty. Now he performs: hectoring, scolding, shouting, roaring; he cocks fist, slaps harder on cheeks and punches breasts, pulls her hair and kicks her shins. The entranced Betty looks wholly unaffected, which only provokes Randome to greater violence.

  Then the madness.

  It doesn’t take long for Randome to strip, kicking off the flip-flops, dropping the caftan, removing the white jockeys. He dances spastically in front of the emaciated middle-aged woman, his penis flipping till it stiffens like a pointing pinkie.

  Kevin expected Randome to force oral sex on her, but it got sicker than that.

  He lies on his back and Betty stands, hikes her dark tweedish skirt and straddles his head. She urinates with all the self-consciousness of a gushing cow. Randome makes comical faces and wags his head and spits and blows as if surprised by a prank hosing. The penis collapses. Then she undresses and lies down and he pisses on her, or dribbles, as it’s not much of a stream. He must use two hands to pinch his penis with thumbs and fingers. Kevin thought: He lied about its being no bigger or smaller than it should be.

  “It gets even worse, Detective. Brace yourself. Though here the quality improves, if I do say so myself.”