by Max Hardy
‘Surprisingly it does. It’s called a Wenis. Wenis is another name for our dead pharaoh Unas. Do you know who told me that was a Wenis?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘George Darrie. The same George Darrie that we saw last night. The same George Darrie that was with Eve when we met her. I think she was there to target the next person in the Unas cult and I think that person is Darrie.’
‘Okay, so what do we do next?’
‘At this point in time, Gabriel and Eve are hopefully preoccupied with Jacob. We get to Darrie before they do. We interrogate him to find out everything he knows about Gabriel.’
‘Stop, stop, one step back. We interrogate him? Interrogation suggests capture. Capture suggests hunting. Are you seriously suggesting we go on the hunt for a potential serial killer for the second time in two days?’
‘I am suggesting that, yes. I’m also suggesting that we do everything we possibly can to make him talk. Even violent persuasion. But we don’t need to go hunting him. I know where he lives.’
Chapter 27
The babbling stream chattered a whispering meander through the dense coppice, cold tanned leaves already falling from the tall verdant trees, adding a covering of copper to the effusion of woodland greenery sprouting from the ground. Broken branches, withered and dry, littered the foot worn pathway through the trees, which headed off in the direction of a white painted house just visible through the shimmering leaves.
Dry branches snapped underfoot as Saul stealthily moved between the trees. He was dressed in a black Armed Response Officers uniform, with a mask over his face, only the white rims of his eyes breaking the solidity of the colour. Rebecca was a stride behind him, dressed the same, carrying a small black backpack. They slowed down on approaching the edge of the wood, using the trees as cover until they were a few feet from the large expanse of lawn surrounding the white house.
Saul hunkered down behind a tree, Rebecca repeating the same stance right beside him, both of them scanning the perimeter of the grounds to the large white house in front.
‘The whole of this back border opens directly into the woods. There isn’t a separating fence, so if we do have to run, head this way and back to the car the way we came in. If we get separated and you get to the car first, just go. Don’t wait on me.’ Saul instructed as he reached over to the backpack and took out three slim metal canisters. He threw one five metres to his left and one five metres to his right, dropping the third at his feet.
‘Smoke flares which are Infra Red activated. You’ve got a key fob with the button to active them on your utility belt. If you need to activate the flares, count to ten when you pass by, and then set them off. There’s only one road up to the property with fields either side, and a single entrance. I’ve set a trip wire on the gate. If it trips, the same key fob will vibrate. If the police come, they will enter from the front and then jump in the fields to circle around the back. So head out of the conservatory and directly across the middle of the grass. Remember the plan. Understand?’ Saul questioned, looking over to Rebecca sternly.
‘Affirmative Sir. Would you like a broom to stick up that stiff arse of yours?’ Rebecca responded sarcastically.
‘We aren’t in a position to joke Rebecca. This is the world I know about, so you have to take my lead. Darrie is potentially a killer. He may be overweight and unfit, but don’t underestimate what he could be capable of. We can’t assume the police don’t know about Darrie either, so we have to keep a watchful eye out for them. Okay. Are you ready?’ Saul reproached.
Her face wore worried. ‘It’s just bravado John. I’m nervous, but I’m ready.’ Rebecca answered. Saul leant over and kissed her full on the lips, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and pulling her in tight.
‘Me too.’ he answered as he broke the embrace and looked back out over the lawn once more. He quickly rummaged around in the backpack once more and pulled out a pair of binoculars, and raised them to his eyes, scanning the windows of the house.
‘I can’t see any movement at the back windows. The conservatory looks like it has red blinds which are shut. That’s good. If we can’t see in, he can’t see out. There’s two bushes on the way up to the conservatory doors. We head to the first, pause, recce, then head to the second, pause, recce, then up to the doors. Okay?’ Saul asked, tenderness entering the tirade of orders.
‘Affirmative Sir.’ Rebecca answered, smiling nervously this time, her voice echoing the smile.
‘Go on three. One, two, three!’ Saul hissed in a loud whisper, and the two of them sprinted out from the overhanging branches and headed directly to the first bush, crouching down behind it. Saul scanned the windows of the building through the binoculars as Rebecca surveyed the perimeter. ‘Clear.’ they whispered in tandem, immediately sprinting off to the next bush, ducking down as they reached it. Rebecca looked around the perimeter once more, Saul observing the windows. ‘Clear.’ she whispered. Saul didn’t respond. The binoculars were trained on the conservatory doors.
‘John, what is it?’ Rebecca asked, her voice full of concern.
‘I don’t think that’s red blinds in the conservatory. I think that’s blood. They may have beaten us to him. Keep your wits about you. They could still be in there.’ Saul responded as he put the binoculars into the backpack, his anxious gaze not leaving the conservatory.
Rebecca shot out a hand and grabbed his knee tightly for reassurance, her heartbeat so heavy it rode down her arm and pulsed through her tightly gripping fingers straight into Saul’s leg. He turned from the conservatory and saw her concern, his features filling with confidence as he reached out a hand and cupped her quivering chin. ‘If we see anybody, just kick them in the privates like you did to me earlier, and you’ll be just fine. Anyone who sees your foot heading towards them should worry.’ he cajoled, with a calming candour.
‘Now, on three, up to the doors. One, two, three.’ Saul whispered firmly. They both shot up together and sprinted the last ten metres to the conservatory. Saul slid to the left of the door, Rebecca to the right, crouching down in front of the brick base, below the level of the windows.
Saul raised his head and tried to peer through the window, but his view was blurred by rivulets of blood spatter slowly meandering down the inside of it. He shuffled across to the French doors and tried to see through the small panes of glass, but they were covered in dripping trails of blood as well. He put his ear up to the glass and listened intently. Silence. He raised a hand and slowly turned the brass door handle. It turned freely, clicking open. With deliberate precision, he opened the door, a millimetre at a time, focused entirely on listening for the slightest noise from the room. Still silence. Rebecca watched Saul nervously from the opposite side of the opening door as he cautiously slid his head into the widening gap and looked inside.
Inside was a bloodbath, the inside of the windows, right the way up to the apex of the conservatory were covered in multiple criss-crossing trails of spatter, slowly oozing down to the sills. Below the sills, the trails continued onto the brickwork and over the rattan seats at the edges of the room, and on the periphery of the terracotta tiles covering the floor. The trails stopped abruptly and a circle of floor tiles around four metres in diameter were clear of any spatter. In the centre of the circle however, was a bulbous mound of glistening bodily innards sitting on top of a spread-eagled body. At the top of the mound the start of the large intestine, chewed and bitten, snaked down the steaming entrails and started to weave a tapestry of words around the body. They sidled over outstretched flesh flayed arms that had row upon row of feathers stapled directly into the exposed broken bones. They rounded a faceless head, every piece of skin stripped from it, the skull poking through, with gobbets of muscle and sinew still attached, lipless teeth wearing a macabre rictus grin. Eyes dangled down the cheeks, ripped from their sockets, the thinly stretched shining strands of optic nerve the only thing stopping them from dropping to the floor.
Saul started to rise slowl
y, his body sliding through the conservatory door, his face contorted in horror as his gaze devoured the grotesque scene in front of him. ‘Jesus H Christ. Prepare your mind for carnage Becca. They got here before us. Darrie has been mutilated. Follow me in slowly, step where I step.’ Saul instructed, his voice wavering with disgust as he took a stride over the spatter at the edge of the room and stepped onto the blood free tiles. Rebecca took position behind him, for the first time seeing the floor of the Conservatory.
‘Fuck John. What have they done?’ she whelped in terror, her emerald eyes widening with morbid curiosity, her mouth agape. She mirrored Saul’s footfalls and stepped into the middle of the room, standing beside him.
‘Even Fallen Angels Have Wings’. Saul read, his eyes following the trail of intestines around the body, taking in the mutilation at the same time. ‘It’s the same as what they did to McFetrich and Ettrick. Every bone in his body broken, the flesh ripped from the muscle, the innards exposed, the intestines bitten and chewed and a message screaming louder than a klaxon that the Angels were responsible. Somewhere on that body will be traces of you and me. This clear circular area suggests they had plastic or some covering down while dissecting him to keep any of their forensics contained, so they could easily remove any traces of them. The house is deathly quiet, so I don’t think they are still here, but be on your guard. The trail of flayed skin heading out into the main house will undoubtedly lead to where Darrie kept his trophies. We won’t find anything out from him now, but we might find something there. Let’s go and check.’ Saul suggested, still staring down at the body, beguiled by the barbarity.
‘Shush.’ Rebecca interjected, grabbing Saul’s arm instinctively, ‘What’s that noise?’ Saul stood still, silently listening. A low, guttural rasp entered his ears. His eyes widened in abject incredulity as they focused on the source of the sound and saw bubbles of bile and blood dribble from Darrie’s opening teeth.
‘For the love of God, he’s still alive!’ Saul exclaimed, dropping down quickly to his side, agitatedly looking for somewhere to put a hand on the ravaged body, to offer some comfort.
‘Darrie. Can you hear me? It’s John. John Saul.’ Saul asked as he placed a hand on a sliver of skin still intact on Darrie’s shoulder. Darrie moaned in agony, the bulbous mound of entrails and blubber on top of him moving slightly. Saul removed his hand immediately.
‘She said you would come.’ The words came through stuttering teeth in a slurred watery whisper, gurgling in his throat, bloody sputum flowing between the teeth with every agonising syllable.
‘Eve?’ Saul queried.
‘Yes, Eve. His latest pretty puppet. She wants me to tell you something.’ Darrie slurred, his ravaged skull turning slightly, the dangling eyeballs rocking sickeningly.
‘Don’t you want to tell me something George? We’ve been friends for years. My wife and son visited you here for fucks sake, and you’re a bloody murderer.’ Saul hissed through mortified lips.
‘Don’t ask me to apologise John, I won’t. I am what I am, I have always told you that. She wants me to give you a name.’ Darrie gargled, his tombstone teeth blowing blood bubbles.
‘I thought you were talking about your sexuality, not your fucking murderous tendencies. Tell me the name? Is it the sixth Unas member?’ Saul seethed angrily.
‘I said she wanted to give you a name. Did you know you only need five organs intact to keep a person alive? One of those organs, the most important one of those organs, is the heart. If you want the name John, you will have to rip open my heart and take the silver phial she injected into it out. The name is inside.’
‘That would kill you. You may be one sick, twisted fuck of a monster, but I’m not going to murder you George. You are alive, and you are going to pay for your crimes. Just tell me the fucking name?’ Saul retorted incredulously.
‘Understand one thing John. I am dead. There is only a shadow of life caressing these broken bones. I will never tell you the name. You have a simple choice. Kill me and find out, or don’t, and you will never find your son.’ Darrie’s throat rattled out the words in a viscose stutter.
‘Not going to happen…’ Saul started, shock searing into his features, stopping the words dead in his throat as Rebecca pushed the mound of steaming blubber off Darrie’s chest, the flesh and entrails sliding to the floor by his side. He jerked back on his haunches.
‘What are you doing Becca?’ he stupidly asked in a high pitched panic as he watched her reach between Darrie’s broken ribs –one of them missing- and wrapped a hand around his imperceptibly beating heart.
‘Putting him out of his misery. Putting you out of your misery. Saving our son.’ Rebecca answered calmly as she twisted her hand and rived Darrie’s heart out of his ribcage. His body jerked, what was left of his spine arching his chest up slightly, before it fell back in a heap, a low guttural whisper of air escaping his lips as the last breath seeped from his lungs, carrying the shadow of life from his body. Rebecca tore the bleeding organ apart in her bare hands, blood pouring out of the ripped valves. She rummaged her finger around inside the red flesh and grabbed the end of a small bloody tube, dropping the decimated heart disdainfully back onto Darrie’s chest.
Saul looked at her hands aghast, complete consternation radiating from him, his body visibly shaking as he watched mesmerised while she unscrewed the small phial and took out a sliver of paper. Just as she did, the keyfob on her utility belt started to vibrate. They both ignored it, eyes transfixed on the paper as Rebecca unfurled it, letter after letter becoming visible, until the whole name was exposed.
‘Robert Caldwell.’ Rebecca recited, her voice filled with confused dismay.
Chapter 28
A thunderous boom echoed around the conservatory, rattling the glass in the white wooden frames, slightly accelerating the drips of the spatter trails on their decent down the windows. Saul stood at one side of the slightly open French doors with Rebecca standing opposite him at the other side. Saul looked through the frosted glass of the doors from the conservatory into the main building, to the blurred outline of the front door to the house, the source of the noise. His ears were acutely listening out for sounds in the garden outside. A second boom shook the house, and through the frosted glass Saul could see the front door burst open and black shadowy shapes pour through it, an authoritative voice screaming ‘Go, Go, Go!’ over the diminishing boom.
Saul looked over to Rebecca with an unnerving calmness, holding his hand up as a signal for her not to move. He moved his head closer to the open French doors, ears concentrating on the garden as the shadows in the hallway moved closer to the frosted glass doors into the conservatory. He heard the shuffle of running feet on the grass outside and dropped his hand, signalling Rebecca to move.
Rebecca pushed open the French doors and staggered out, bending double, grabbing her chest as she retched, throwing up bile onto the lawn at her feet. Saul stepped out after her, surreptitiously scanning the perimeter, seeing the approaching ARO’s slow down in confusion at the sight of two colleagues coming out of the French doors.
‘Guys.’ Saul shouted, ‘Conservatory is clear of perpetrators, but there’s a grotesque dead body in there. It’s a bit too much for Five. Secure the doors and I’ll take her to the perimeter to get some air and calm her down.’ Saul instructed commandingly as he reached down and circled his arm around Rebecca’s back, leading her quickly across the lawn.
The two closest ARO’s nodded in acknowledgement and approached the French doors with expressions mixed with concern, confusion and curiosity, instinctively slowing down as they got closer. They peered around the edges of the doors, both turning their heads away quickly as they saw the slaughtered body inside. ‘Jesus. I can understand why she barfed.’ one said to the other.
The frosted glass doors at the far side of the conservatory burst open and gun barrels preceded the arrival of two focused ARO’s on the room’s threshold. ‘Body in the conservatory Sir.’ One of them screamed. Strange wa
s striding down the hallway behind them, walkie-talkie in hand, his face a mask of agitated concentration.
‘Why are the perimeter doors open? Your orders were to secure them, not enter!’ Strange shouted as he reached the entrance to the conservatory and stood between the two ARO’s looking down in disgust at the mutilated body on the floor.
‘We didn’t Sir, Five and Six came out, Five was barfing after seeing that and Six is keeping an eye on her.’
‘What are you talking about? This is Five and Six.’ Strange stated in frustration, pointing to the two ARO’s either side of him, his gaze looking between the two ARO’s standing in the French doors, looking towards two black garbed figures sprinting into the woods.
‘For fucks sake, that’s the bloody perpetrators. Get after them!’ Strange screamed, raising the walkie-talkie to his mouth. ‘Every ARO on the back perimeter, engage in pursuit of two perpetrators wearing ARO uniform currently running into the woods. Go, go, go!’ Strange watched as the two ARO’s in the French doors peeled around and sprinted across the lawn, followed in turn by six other officers falling in behind them. He skirted the edge of Darrie’s dead body, giving it a fleeting horrified glance, and stepped out into the garden, just as three loud reverberating explosions echoed in the still morning sunshine and a wall of thick acrid smoke engulfed the edge of the woods, billowing into the gardens.
‘Fuck. They were ready for us!’ Strange blasphemed to himself, before raising the walkie-talkie to his mouth, watching the ARO’s ahead slow down as the smoke started to surround them. ‘Focus guys, remember your training. Keep your eyes on the ground, walk at pace straight ahead. Be aware of other potential hazards. They have used smoke, so there may be trip wires. Listen for sounds. Do not shoot, repeat, do not shoot. They are dressed the same as you and they are distracting you. You do not want to shoot a colleague. Keep your ears open, keep in touch with your colleagues constantly.’ Strange instructed quickly, running a frustrated hand through his silver afro.