We Are Toten Herzen (TotenUniverse Book 1)

by Chris Harrison

  "What the fuck has he just done?" said Wallet as he checked Wells' pulse. It was weak and he was losing too much blood. "He's gonna be dead any minute," he said to Susan whose bullet wounds were already congealing and fading.

  "Where's Pearl gone?" She ran to the door of the staffroom, but it was locked. "Terence," she banged on it.

  Wallet rushed to reception, but the night manager had beaten him to it, propelled by a state of high alarm. The police had been called and he was now demanding an ambulance. "A man with a single throat wound," he waited for Wallet's description, but he was shaking his head. "It may be fatal."

  Back in the restaurant Wells' fate was beyond doubt. He lay across the table with his eyes bulging open. The blood, still eager to take advantage of its premature release, was spreading out over the floor. "Pearl still locked away?"

  Susan nodded. "I don't want to kick the door in. He's had enough shocks already." The night manager came back, almost stepping in the blood. "You need to cover this up," Susan said, "and make sure no one comes down and sees it." The night manager paused. "Please." Off he went.

  Wallet thought about ripping down a curtain, but he could see the intensity of the darkness was giving way to morning. They only had one or two hours to sort this out and get back to their rooms. Susan knew what he was thinking.

  "This is a mess," she said.

  Wallet disagreed. "Typical day in the life of Toten Herzen, Susan. One riot, one manager mauled, a stray fan, a murder victim and a vampire locked in a staffroom. It's like a Whitehall farce."

  "Trust you not to take it seriously."

  "I don't take anything seriously anymore," said Wallet. "Life's too fucking short for that."

  -

  The first police officers to arrive did Wallet and Susan a favour by ordering them back up to their rooms until the drama was over, but the drama was only just beginning. Wallet wasn't aware of the niceties of Dutch policing, but Susan, standing in the atrium corridor listening to the increasing chaos down below knew the situation was turning critical. Turning red. Wallet listened carefully as she explained the Regional Constabulary had been replaced by the National Constabulary and that even they, with all their gung ho responsibilities, had now been turfed out by the Royal Military Police.

  "Military Police?"

  "They're not treating this like a normal killing. Not if that lot have turned up."

  "What's so special about them?" Wallet hadn't seen this kind of concern on Susan's face. So often she was the calm in the storm. She was usually the calm and the storm, but her senses now were at the razor's edge. This didn't feel right.

  "International crime, terrorism, riot, national security shit. Not localised murders. Not timid killers like Terence Pearl."

  -

  By seven thirty and with sunlight pouring into the hotel, Terence Pearl was still locked in a staff room refusing to emerge. The officer given the task of enticing him out didn't want anymore victims and was hoping for a negotiated end to the crisis. The night manager was gone, taken away as a witness with an account he wasn't sure he believed himself.

  The sound of a lock turning alerted the waiting officer. A message went to the armed unit sitting around outside the hotel entrance. Pearl crawled out of the staff room. "Mr Pearl," the officer checked to see if Pearl was armed. He wasn't, but he was distressed, shaking and looking for help.

  "Vengeance is a gift from the Lord Jesus Christ. We are his followers, we are duty bound to uphold his ministry and strike forth the demons that crawl upon the earth and prey upon God's children."

  "Okay, Mr Pearl." The officer was calm, kept his hands in front of him and did nothing as Pearl slowly crawled towards him. No one moved, the other officers entering the reception area slowed to a halt. An expectant chill enveloped everyone standing there as Pearl inched past an enormous puddle of blood covering an area ringed by police security tape. He squinted as the light level in reception increased. "I want you to come with us, Mr Pearl," said the officer carefully. "Please stand up and put your hands where I can see them."

  Pearl followed the instruction and rose awkwardly, hands hanging by his side, head bowed. His body was a walking dead weight, moving on autopilot, but still capable of a sudden and violent reaction.

  "Vengeance is a gift from the Lord Jesus Christ. We are his followers, we are duty bound to uphold his ministry and strike forth the demons that crawl upon the earth and prey upon God's children."

  "You just told us that, Mr Pearl," said the officer patiently.

  Without pause for breath Terence Pearl was led away from the bar and through the reception area of the Rotterdam Crown Hotel. Two more officers gently held on to both arms as Pearl offered little resistance.

  Once outside, the commanding officer became aware of his audience. Every hotel window had a face, or two faces, all transfixed by the fleet of police vehicles and the small army of armed officers filling the grounds of the hotel all the way to the entrance where a second fleet of vehicles contained the eyes and ears of the world's media. All he wanted, all he needed, was to get Pearl into a van and get him away.

  -

  "What's happening now," said Susan staying a safe distance from the sunlit glass. She had decided to keep the television turned off following the unremitting coverage of the concert and the obligatory blame game and who did what and why. Everyone was an expert in crowd control; everyone was an expert in concert management; everyone was an expert on Toten Herzen. Raven was peeking through a tiny gap in the curtains.

  "It looks like they're getting ready for something. They've brought him out and they're opening the back door of that police van."

  "Wonder what'll happen to him. You can't call him a criminal for what he's done." Susan played with the security tabard from the Ahoy. "Oh fuck, what a mess."

  "Can't you help him?" said Raven. "Pay for his lawyers or something?"

  "Maybe. We'll have to do something. We can't abandon another one. Or we could bury him next to Peter Miles. We could build our own graveyard just for our victims. Peter Miles, Patrick Wells. Fucking hell, it would go on forever."

  Raven looked back at Susan. "It's not that bad, is it? Oh hang on, there’s something happening."

  -

  The officers had formed a protective bunch around their suspect, carefully guiding him through the revolving doors of the hotel, but Pearl was agitating as he walked towards the police van. He started squirming in the keen morning sunlight that hit his face like the slap of a hand. He started crying out, pleading for the officers to get him out of the sun. They reassured him, but continued to walk at the same pace. Pearl struggled to breathe as his initial screams distorted and lowered to a tormented grumble. His clothes began to steam. One of the officers twisted uncomfortably as a sudden intense heat reflected onto him. He was forced to let go of Pearl's arm, which had become as hot as the hob of a cooker; his colleague on the other side backed away when a small flame suddenly crawled up the sleeve of his jacket.

  Panic had seized the commanding officer as Pearl writhed in unapproachable pain. The walkie talkies were overcome with static interference. Car alarms awoke in a deafening chorus of noise and mobile phone signals disappeared everywhere. In the middle of a growing panic and cacophony Pearl was now beyond help, such was the oven-like heat radiating off him; no one could get near. Officers scattered as the volcanic atmosphere pulsed towards them, singeing faces, beards, eyebrows. The commanding officer made a desperate attempt to grab Pearl and pull him towards the van, but the heat was eating into its victim and Pearl was doubling at the knees, buckling under the immensity of an invisible inferno consuming him. Few wanted to look, but no one could take their eyes off the spectacle of this unassuming man disappearing in front of them, blackening, carbonising; flakes of ash separating and drifting around his body that was becoming a formless lump, disintegrating, steaming multicoloured vapours and flashing sparks of intense light. His body popped and bubbled before finally collapsing into a dry desiccated pile
of cinders that left a spreading black smear and a thin veil of dark mist.

  -

  Raven jumped back from the window with her hands over her eyes. "Fuck."

  "Speak to me," said Susan. "I can smell burning, human flesh burning. What's just happened?"

  Raven couldn't answer. "That nearly burned my fucking eyeballs out." She turned away from the window and let her astonished expression tell the rest of the story. She ran to the bathroom and was violently sick.

  What had Wallet done? What plan had he followed to win Pearl's co-operation? Turning a man to get him to talk, turning a man for a brief period of inside knowledge and then leaving him to his fate without warning anyone. Why didn't he say, why didn't he involve the others so that they knew, so that they could deal with the risks? Another victim, another death to explain, another name in the Toten Herzen book of remembrance. The graveyard was growing again.

  The hotel was bustling with activity as guests emerged from their rooms. The noise was hysterical; hotel staff could be heard running around trying to deal with an emergency that wasn't in any training manual. Outside police vehicles were moving, but where could they go other than back to base? They no longer had a suspect to escort, no killer to apprehend, the laws of a higher nature had dealt with the case; judge and jury, a sentence of death with no appeal.

  Susan looked in on Raven who was slumped next to the toilet, spitting and gasping for air. "I need to go and talk to the others. I'll be back as soon as I can okay?" Raven nodded. "Do not leave this room." She nodded again.

  Out on the atrium landing there were suspicious glances, the noise dropped to a whisper, people hid away, slipped back into their room, staff turned to their emergency rotas and printed instructions. Inside Wallet's room the band sat silently. They had the aroma of tragedy in their nostrils and the sounds of disbelief ringing in their ears.

  Susan squatted in front of Wallet. "Do you know what you've done?"

  "I started having suspicions this morning."

  "What does that mean? I haven't been able to look, but I think we're all aware of what just happened. Why did you turn him? Why didn't you tell us?" Her voice was rising to an alarming pitch. "You just killed an innocent man?"

  "Me? What do you mean I just killed him?" Wallet could see the same accusation on the faces of Dee, Elaine and Rene.

  "You turned Terence Pearl and you didn't say anything."

  Wallet paused to make sure he heard her right. "I turned him?" He looked at Dee and then back at Susan. "I always thought one of you did it."

  "One of us?" The confusion passed to Susan.

  "It wasn't me," said Dee.

  Elaine and Rene assured Susan it was neither of them.

  "Susan, you can call me anything you like, call me an idiot, a bullshitter, incompetent, useless, but I didn't turn Terence Pearl."

  An explanation wasn't in this room, or this hotel, or Rotterdam, or Holland, or anywhere Susan could think of. Her mind raced back in time to 1973 and every point of interest between then and now, but nothing, no clues, no insight, no tell tale sign or coincidental name, no familiar face, or suspicious happenings. Just a blur, a void, an opaque wall. She met Pearl in Ipswich, scared the life out of him, questioned him, reassured him that they didn't kill Peter Miles. Then he was left with Wallet and Wallet did the rest. Charmed him, plagued him, followed him, tempted him, finally won his trust and then . . . turned him? No, he didn't turn him, didn't touch him, never laid a finger on the man and Susan believed him. Wells didn't know: about Pearl, about her, about any one of them, otherwise he would have showed up with something more effective than an automatic pistol. How could he not know? How could Patrick Wells be so consumed with a fury and yet be so ignorant of who was tormenting him?

  "He was so slow in coming forward and telling me what I wanted to know," said Wallet, "I wasn't sure until the concert he was on our side. I still wasn't a hundred per cent certain until this morning which way he was gonna go. So what do we do now?"

  "I need to go back to Raven, she's not feeling so good."

  "Did she see what happened?" Rene asked.

  "Yeah. Everything. The whole disgusting business."

  Wallet plugged his eyes with his fists.

  "Well," said Elaine, slouching back into her chair, "that was quite a comeback. And we haven't played a note yet."

  Dee turned to Wallet. "You still think all this is liberating?"

  Daily Mail

  Calls For Toten Herzen To Be Banned

  Conservative MP demands the band's second concert planned for the UK be halted

  The Conservative MP for Bromsgrove and Kidderminster, Dianne Varly, 51, has urged the government to ban the rock band Toten Herzen from going ahead with their second comeback concert, planned for the East Midlands Arena in six days time.

  The concert which has already sold out could see a repeat of the rioting following the band's opening show at the Ahoy Arena in Rotterdam last night. Fighting broke out amongst the seventeen thousand concert goers even before the band had taken to the stage. Riot police eventually restored order after at least ninety fans had been taken to hospital suffering a range of injuries from serious burns to cuts and bruises.

  Traffic on the S103, a major road through Rotterdam, was later held up by further fighting which broke out on a coach carrying band members back to their hotel. Band Manager, Tom Scavinio, was later treated in hospital for serious injuries sustained in the scuffle.

  Mrs Varly, who managed to hold onto her seat after this year's boundary changes to local constituencies, believes the band don't do enough to discourage their fans from this kind of trouble. "Their reputation has followed them all the way from the 1970s and we're seeing it again. No doubt the fans at the British leg of the tour will want to outdo their Dutch counterparts and we can't allow that to happen."

  A spokesman for the East Midlands Arena, which has a capacity of eighteen thousand, told the Mail that extra security precautions had been arranged following the events at the Ahoy, and the concert was still planned to go ahead as scheduled. Doubts about further dates in Germany, Austria and Hungary before finishing in Geneva, Switzerland, later this month, have been raised.

  The Times

  Twelve Hours of Mayhem

  Internet blogger Terence Pearl victim of 'spontaneous human combustion' outside Rotterdam hotel

  The signs were not good as soon as fans began to arrive at the Ahoy Arena in Rotterdam for Toten Herzen's comeback concert. Eye witnesses reported a fractious atmosphere as groups from all over Holland and as far afield as Turkey and Iceland gathered around campfires outside the seventeen thousand capacity concert hall.

  Inside, one hour before the band were due to go on stage, a fan from Belgium was hit by a flare thrown from a section of the crowd and momentarily set alight. The resulting confrontation left eighty six injured, two of them seriously. Police, some in riot gear, took thirty minutes to restore order, but by then the arena had emptied and the show's organisers had no option but to cancel the concert.

  A British fan, Brian Hewson, who had travelled from Brighton described the atmosphere as the most aggressive he had ever encountered at a rock concert. "I think the band's reputation had everyone on pins. They were like coiled springs waiting to go. There was none of the good natured banter I've come across at other concerts." Hewson, who had travelled with his girlfriend and paid a total of seventy pounds for two tickets, was still hoping the concert would be rescheduled. "We still want to see them. We're just old enough to remember them the first time round, but we were too young back then to be allowed to go to any of the gigs."

  But not everyone was blaming the band. A spokesman for the Ahoy Arena, Adrian Lokeren, told The Times the band were concerned about potential trouble and were hoping to break away from the problems that had plagued them in the 1970s. "We had a lot of meetings with the band's management, label and tour organisers and time and time again they were concerned about preventing trouble. On the night security confis
cated a lot of stuff, but obviously some people still managed to smuggle flares into the hall." Lokeren denied that in spite of the concerns security levels were inadequate. "There has never been trouble on this scale before at Ahoy. You can never count it out, but we're satisfied that we were prepared."

  As if the events at the arena weren't bad enough, traffic on one of Rotterdam's busiest roads, the S103, was held up for fifteen minutes when a coach taking the band back to their hotel was forced to stop after fighting broke out amongst band members. Unconfirmed reports said that one or more passengers fell through the open door of the coach onto the carriageway, but this was denied by the band's publicist. The coach did make an unscheduled detour to Rotterdam's Erasmus medical centre to allow the band's manager, Tom Scavinio, to receive treatment for serious lacerations to the face. He left the hospital several hours later without making a statement to the waiting press.

  However, the most harrowing episode of an already event filled night was the death of Terence Pearl, the internet blogger and writer who had been following the band for several months, and the murder of Patrick Wells, a forty year old relative of Peter Miles, the musician associated with the band in their early days, who went missing in 1973. Wells was attacked by Pearl in the restaurant of the Rotterdam Crown Hotel where the band were staying. Officers called in from the specialist Royal Military Police arrested Pearl, but he died as he was being led away as a result of what one eyewitness described as spontaneous human combustion.