by LJ Ross
Then his arm fell away again, the syringe clattering to the floor so that he had to stumble around and pick it up.
The bed was empty.
Confused, disappointed, Rick stared at the bed. He spun around to check that Gregson was not hiding in the bathroom but the little en-suite was empty too. Sweating now, Rick threw the covers back over the bunched-up pillows and slipped out of the room to make his way back to the service stairs.
In the empty stairwell, he looked down at his hands, which were trembling. Adrenaline, he thought automatically. He wondered how he would ever face them, and how long it would be before the Circle found out that Gregson had escaped. It wasn’t his fault, he thought, he couldn’t be blamed for that. He had been there, right on time, ready to kill the man.
It wasn’t his fault.
But his palms sweated and his bowels loosened as he recalled the warnings he had been given of the consequences of failure, no matter how unavoidable. There would be no sympathetic nod of understanding because, in his new unforgiving circle of friends, there was always somebody else waiting to step into his shoes.
Doctor Rick Upton slid down to the floor and dropped his head into his hands.
CHAPTER 25
“In Paradise Lost, Satan is a very seductive character.”
Sixteen miles further south of where Rick Upton sobbed in an empty stairwell, Ryan leaned back against the plump pillows of his hospital bed and considered Anna’s statement.
“He’s portrayed as a great orator,” he agreed. “By the end of the poem, you almost feel sorry for him.”
Anna nodded.
“That’s just it. He has a kind of infectious rhetoric, a way of making his followers believe that God is really some kind of despot, whose power is arbitrary.”
“A lot like Steve Walker,” Ryan remarked. He didn’t bother to point out the similar traits in Anna’s father, or in Mark Bowers. Some things didn’t need spelling out.
“Yes, a criminal profiler might say that the men who have led the Circle had naturally similar traits to Satan, in Milton’s poem.” She laughed shortly, then added, “I’m sure he had no idea that his poem would spark such a following.”
“Wouldn’t be the first piece of prose to be used for unscrupulous ends,” Ryan pointed out. “Nietzsche is probably fairly pissed off, for example, as he turns in his grave.”
“Interesting that the leader is always a man. Why does Satan have to be male?”
“Well, nobody ever said that misogyny was confined to normal society. It happens amongst the crackpot elements, too.”
Anna covered her face with her hand but couldn’t hold back the laugh. Crackpot? Her beloved had such an elegant turn of phrase.
“Do you think the new leader is a man, too?”
“I thought for a while that it was Gregson,” Ryan answered seriously. “He has—or had,” he smiled unkindly as he made the distinction, “unparalleled access to case files, personal data on almost anybody. He’s well connected and had a force of police staff at his fingertips. It made sense that he would be a contender.
“I still think he’s involved, but I can’t see the Circle attacking their leader and not finishing the job. Their outlook is very black and white; they either offer unstinting support, or they kill without mercy. There aren’t shades in between, which is why Gregson being allowed to live and recover in hospital makes no sense to me.”
“Somebody else, then?”
Ryan huffed out a breath but despite the nagging pain and the mountain they still had to climb before they found the answers, he was enjoying himself. Brain work was better than being forced to watch daytime television any day of the week.
“Let’s work on the basis that the Circle’s new leader is male, for now. They’re a traditional group and they like their old sources, like Milton. Getting back to that,” he shuffled to make himself more comfortable. “And assuming I suspend my disbelief to imagine the existence of God, or any of these characters, let me see if I’ve got this right: according to Paradise Lost, Satan started out as one of the most important angels in Heaven. Turns out, Satan had beef with God. That beef was jealousy at the fact God is the boss of the universe. He started bitching about God and rounding up a bunch of other angels who felt the same way. Satan started a war in Heaven, angels against angels, which he ultimately lost. As punishment for being such an almighty pain in the arse, God consigned him to Hell, hence Satan’s famous ‘fuck you’ quote, ‘better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.’ ”
Anna laughed appreciatively.
“I would have loved to see you in your student days,” she muttered, and Ryan wriggled his eyebrows suggestively.
“That can be arranged.”
She threw him a mocking look, then turned firmly back to the point.
“In simple terms, yes, that’s the basis of the poem. We know that the Circle used it, otherwise they wouldn’t have listed their leaders on the inside of that early edition you took from Mark’s house.”
“Agreed.”
“Well, what you may not know is that there’s a related legend around Holy Island. Locals believed that when God knocked Satan’s battle axe out of his hand during the battle in Heaven, the axe fell to the Earth where it hit the North Sea and became the island of Lindisfarne—Holy Island. If you look at the shape of the island, it looks a bit like an axe.”
Interested, Ryan leaned forward and then winced as pain flashed from the wound at his side.
“Don’t get too excited,” Anna chided him, pushing him gently back against the pillows.
“It all feeds into their warped thinking,” he said. “It helps them to believe that they’re special or that there’s a higher cause. What else?”
“Well, there are so many different historical sources which could be read in different ways. If you’re looking to find support for your own crazy mission, a lot of the old texts could be misread. Take the War Scroll, from the Dead Sea Scrolls,” she shrugged a shoulder.
Ryan waited for more but apparently she had made the mistake of assuming he knew the first thing about…well, anything historical.
“Ah, you’re going to have to spell that out for me.”
“Oh, sorry. Um, well the War Scroll was one of the texts found amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the caves on the West Bank. It describes a war between the ‘Sons of Light’ and the ‘Sons of Darkness,’ who are part of the army of ‘Belial.’ That’s an old Hebrew word for the Devil.”
“Another bit of text describing a war between good and evil?”
“Exactly. The Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness are representatives of either side of the battle on Earth,” she said slowly. “They’re a human army. It strikes me that, if I supported Satan, if I genuinely convinced myself that there was a higher purpose for why I liked killing innocent people, I might imagine that I were a Son of Darkness fighting on Earth.”
Ryan sighed and looked up at the plain white ceiling of his hospital bedroom.
“I found references to old pagan gods, which have since been appropriated by Christianity, or Judaism,” Anna added. “Wherever you look in pagan history, you’ll find a harmless old ceremonial ground now has a church built over it, or it’s been otherwise claimed by an ‘orthodox’ religion.”
“I think I’m following you,” Ryan’s eyes flickered. “Paganism might have formed the basis for the cult, in the early days. In more recent times, they’ve veered into more dangerous territory after deciding that their allegiance should be to a more powerful master?”
Anna said nothing, only listened with darkened eyes.
“Maybe they’re angry that their old pagan sites have been taken over and they want to take them back,” Ryan concluded.
“Which would explain why bad things keep happening on sites of religious significance,” Anna agreed. “Holy Island, Heavenfield...”
“There must be hundreds of sites like that.”
“Yes,” Anna said, imagining what could be uncovered ove
r the following months, or years. “But I’ve been asking myself—why Heavenfield? Why not another church, or somewhere bigger or flashier, like Durham Cathedral?”
Ryan waited for the answer.
“These sites are all part of ‘St. Oswald’s Way,’ ” she provided. “The pilgrimage starts at Holy Island and takes people along the coast past Bamburgh Castle, over the fields via Rothbury. Eventually you end up at Heavenfield. It’s where Oswald defeated the ‘pagan’ Mercian army, which is why it’s particularly significant.”
“To put it another way,” Ryan said dryly, “if you want to give orthodox religion the finger by killing in the name of Satan, the best place to do it would be at a site of a famous Christian victory? Even better if you manage to kill someone on the one day of the year dedicated to St. Oswald.” Bowers had died on St. Oswald’s Tide, after all.
“Yup.”
There was a momentary pause while they took a synchronised sip from cans of sugary soft drinks, most definitely not sanctioned by the hospital.
“So, do I need to get myself some kind of magic battle axe?” he said eventually.
Anna grinned.
“Get yourself well again,” she said quietly. “That’s enough for now.”
* * *
While Anna left Ryan to rest and made her way back to Durham to look after his parents, whom she had convinced to stay at her cottage rather than smothering their irritable son with well-meaning affection, Arthur Gregson stepped onto a northbound bus. The rickety pale green double-decker was occupied almost exclusively by dour-faced pensioners returning home after a day out in the Big City and equally dour-faced young teenagers who returned to their village homes in time for curfew. The appealing lights of the cinemas and fast food restaurants in the city centre were a distant blur and, as a light rain began to fall, the only sound was the trundle of the wheels against the tarmac and the swish of oversized windscreen wipers. Now and again, a crackling advert came to life on the LED screen touting the benefits of herbal remedies during the onset of menopause.
Gregson rested his head against the grimy window, eyes open but red-rimmed after days without proper sleep. He had salvaged a filthy woollen hat bearing the logo of a local football team, which mostly hid the bandage at the back of his head. He still wore his pyjama shirt, tucked into grey jogging bottoms. Now and then, the bus swerved wildly around the zigzagging road towards Bamburgh and his head cracked against the glass. Passively, he ignored it and continued to watch the drizzle from haunted eyes in an ashen face.
“Next stop, Shilbottle!”
The bus driver bleated out the name of the next village and Gregson looked up briefly, then hunkered down again in his seat. Still a way to go yet, until he reached his destination.
Soon, he thought, soon he would reach the promised land. There would be plenty of supplies and money; lots and lots of cash money. Enough to get him out of the country, enough to buy a false passport and passage across the sea, if necessary. Freeman could consider it severance pay if she liked but he was damn well taking it. She could rouse up Hell’s Fury, for all he cared, he wasn’t leaving that sodding castle without a bagful of fifties and an apology for all the pain and hardship he had been through.
He enjoyed his newfound bravery but the better part of him knew that he had absolutely no intention of facing down Jane Freeman. He was as weak as a kitten and she wouldn’t need to call upon any of her minions to chuck him over the battlements at Bamburgh, she could probably manage it herself.
No, it would be much safer to just slip in and out as quickly and quietly as possible. The bandage on his head needed changing, he needed fresh clothes, food and water, not to mention a good night’s sleep. But he didn’t yet have the means. Perhaps he would splash out on a cheap hotel before making his escape across the water, he relented, thinking of blissful white sheets and a warm meal.
His eyelids closed and his head continued to drum against the window pane. The ancient green bus continued its painstaking journey through the countryside and the sky began to dim from an overcast grey to a deepening charcoal as the sun began its slow descent.
* * *
Further ahead on the same road, DI MacKenzie and DS Phillips headed towards Bamburgh with considerably more speed than the regional bus service. A brief telephone conversation assured Phillips that Ryan was still resting, safe and sound at the University Hospital in Durham and recovering better than ninety-nine per cent of similar victims of knife crime. Phillips put that down entirely to Ryan’s refusal to show any kind of weakness, even following a near-death experience.
Stubborn as a mule, he thought proudly.
Another telephone call to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle told him that their other charge, DCS Arthur Gregson, was sleeping peacefully and should be well enough to answer questions at their earliest convenience. It was a sad thing not to harbour any real sympathy for a man he had known for decades, had served under and admired, but that was life, he supposed. People weren’t always who you believed them to be.
He glanced across at MacKenzie, who was driving with the kind of ability which came from certification in advanced police driving skills. For his part, he liked getting from A to B with his remaining hair still intact and he didn’t feel the need to drive at anything other than his own pace. As the music shifted to the next acoustic version of something moody from the late nineties, Phillips was reminded that perhaps the biggest downside to riding shotgun was not having first dibs on the radio.
“Doctor says that Gregson’ll be ready to talk whenever we are,” he said.
“About time,” MacKenzie replied. “He’s been hiding behind that head injury for days but I’ll be damned if he doesn’t know what happened to his wife.”
“Aye, there’s still no sign of her,” Phillips was sad to say. Cathy Gregson might have made a questionable choice of husband but she had always been a decent woman. “The local news stations are still running the statement we gave them yesterday but they’ve been badgering me all day for something new.”
MacKenzie’s lips firmed.
“They’ll have to wait.”
“Aye, no sense in pontificating about bugger all,” he said, wisely.
“I heard from Faulkner earlier today and he tells me they’ve confirmed the blood found at Gregson’s house is a conclusive match to Cathy Gregson’s DNA type. It looks very bad,” she turned down the radio, much to Phillips’ relief.
“He’s bound to say there was a burglar, or something,” he reasoned. “No way he could have bashed the back of his own head, for one thing.”
“Fair point,” MacKenzie acknowledged. “But I’ll be interested to see what his financial statements will reveal.”
“I’ve been chasing up the bank,” Phillips unwrapped a boiled mint sweet and offered her one. “The data is slowly trickling through, but unless he’s a complete dingbat, Gregson won’t have anything dodgy going through his current account. It’ll all be laundered through something or other,” he said, dreading the prospect of trying to unravel an elaborate financial carousel. They could get some support from the financial crimes unit for that, couldn’t they?
He hoped so.
“I had a good chat with Anna, while we were waiting for Ryan to come out of surgery. She agrees with us about the geographical points being significant to the Circle. There’s all kinds of history behind it but we’re singing from the same hymn sheet,” MacKenzie told him.
“She’s a good lass,” Phillips mumbled, negotiating speech around the boiled sweet he was sucking. “If she says there’s a plausible reason behind these incident sites, we’re likely on the right track.”
MacKenzie nodded.
“Right enough.” She pressed a bit more heavily on the accelerator, then added, “It’s the funniest thing, Frank, but I’ve got a queer feeling that we’re going to find something bad waiting for us, up at Bamburgh.”
“It’s not funny at all, because I’ve got the same feeling myself.”
They looked on as the castle emerged from the murky landscape, a blurred outline behind the rain that pummelled their windscreen.
CHAPTER 26
“Denise, it’s starting to feel a bit like Cabot Cove around here.”
“I know what you mean,” MacKenzie murmured, as they looked upon the rigid body of Jane Freeman with dispassionate eyes.
She lay where she had fallen, slumped across her shiny desk, surrounded by copies of her latest book. There was an uncomfortable odour in the room which told them she had lain undetected for at least a couple of hours while the stench of blood-stained vomit fermented in the air surrounding her lifeless body.
“No signs of attack,” MacKenzie commented, in a small, detached voice. “Better call it in, Frank.”
While Phillips moved away to put a call through to the Control Room, MacKenzie sought out the young castle guide who had directed them here. She turned out to be a twenty-two-year-old work experience student named Charlotte and MacKenzie found her perched at the foot of the stairwell which led up to Freeman’s offices, biting her fingernails.
“Charlotte?”
The girl raised glassy, shocked eyes in the direction of MacKenzie’s voice.
“I-I didn’t hear anything,” she stuttered. “I didn’t see anything, either.”
MacKenzie retrieved a tissue from the depths of her tan leather bag and handed it to the girl, who blew her nose loudly.
“Let’s just take this one step at a time,” MacKenzie said, her eyes watchful. “You’ve been working with Professor Freeman?”
Charlotte swallowed.
“Yes. Yes, I’ve been doing a summer placement with National Heritage. Professor Freeman invited me to work as one of her personal aides.”
“That was kind.”
The girl swiped at her nose again.
“How long have you been helping her?” MacKenzie asked.
“Oh, since the beginning of July, when classes stopped on my Masters course. I’ve got a thesis to write but I thought I’d get some practical experience over the summer.”