by Peter Laws
‘Maybe. Or I could just read some books about it. You know. Get a few tips on healthy living. Sleeping well. That sort of thing.’
‘Hmmm.’ Her voice was quiet. She turned away from the window, and was now tapping the dash, filling the car with music. He saw four windows against the wall of the police building. All but one of them had their blinds wide open.
CHAPTER FOUR
It took him forty minutes to get there, chugging along the motorway at a steady clip. The automatic wipers slid every few minutes, trying to catch what only ever amounted to a tease of indecisive rain. After an idle flick through the radio channels, he stopped on Radio 4. A technology doc was asking if we should be more polite to our digital assistants, lest we wind up as a nation of hopelessly boorish and rude slave drivers.
‘Hey, Siri. Play me some funk … ya scumbag.’ He went to add the word ‘please’ but he was too late. Isaac Hayes boomed through the stereo at full blast. ‘Thank you ever so kindly.’
He pulled off the motorway, drumming his fingers to the wacka-wacka guitar sounds of Shaft, and followed the signs through Watford city centre. The traffic lights made the journey a constant flow of stop and start, but when he finally pulled up into the hospital car park, he was ten minutes early.
He clicked the horn section off and hopped out, dragging his heavy backpack from the back seat. When he slung it over his shoulder, the weight made him stagger to the side. A passer-by laughed at that, so Matt laughed right back, and loudly too, with Shakespearean levels of sarcasm. He heaved the bag through the car park, squinting up at a fat sun that now hung over the hospital building. He slowed down, pulled out his phone and read his text.
Meet DS Martin Fenn at Mendip Wing, Block B. TO THE LEFT OF A&E. Officer Marriot waiting to collect you.
He weaved through a few more cars and saw an older-looking uniformed officer. She was standing stock-straight in front of a small, rectangular building, which stood separate from the rest of the hospital. She had her arms folded and was utterly still apart from a permed blonde mane that shivered to the left in the breeze. As he approached her, she clocked his face. She pulled out her phone and looked down at it. Then up again. She did this twice in a swift snap. ‘Name, please?’
‘Professor Matt Hunter.’
‘And you’re here to meet?’
‘DS Fenn. And you’re PC Marriot.’
‘Bingo, he’s expecting you inside.’ She smiled and held out a hand. Matt saw the hint of a bird tattoo on her wrist. ‘Now, can I just have a quick looksie in your bag? Make sure it’s not loaded with illegals, eh?’
‘It’s just books.’ He dumped it on the bench next to her, and she started to rummage. He winced as she dragged out tome after tome, watching on nervous tiptoes. ‘If you could be careful with the covers. Couple of those editions are pretty hard to find.’
‘Oh, I see. Sorry.’ With an instant delicateness she turned an old book in her hand. ‘These look a bit creepy … is this one Latin?’
‘It is indeed.’
She whistled, pleased with herself. Then she zipped the bag up again and hoisted it towards him. ‘Get a Kindle. It’ll save your spine.’
He steadied it on his shoulder while she swished a black key fob across a panel in the door. ‘This way.’
There was a second set of secure doors inside. She typed a code into this panel, then they stepped into what looked like any other hospital corridor, lined with a few chairs, a drinking fountain and a coffee machine at the far end. What felt different were the CCTV cameras. They were in every corner, buzzing and turning, red lights blinking in a constant flash.
‘What is this place, anyway?’
‘It’s the secure unit. Some hospitals have them. It’s where they look after patients who might be a danger to themselves and others. Naturally, it’s used for a lot of violent, mental health cases. And offenders come here too, of course. If we arrest a murderer with a stab wound, he still needs stitching up – if only to stand trial.’ She laughed and paused at another door. ‘Right … here we are …’
She knocked. Three hard raps with a single knuckle. While they waited Matt heard a mechanical drone of a CCTV camera twist on its hinge. He looked up and watched it stop on him. He stared into the twitching lens, then the door clicked open.
‘Heeeeyyy!’ A large, happy fella in a grey suit filled the gap. Everything about him was round. His body, his face, the frame of his glasses. His yellow spotted tie was as loose as a lounge-singer, so he yanked it into place before thrusting out his hand. His smile was filled with little teeth and his hair looked like a rat had died while crossing a beach ball. But gosh, was he jolly-looking. ‘You’re the demon guy, I take it?’
Matt laughed. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’
His grip was hard, and Matt felt his own wedding ring being pressed painfully into the next knuckle. Then before he could move, he felt himself tugged quickly into a forward step.
‘Come on in. I’m DS Martin Fenn.’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘Park your bum.’ Fenn nodded to the empty chair at the desk, then waddled to the other side where open blinds let the sun flood in. An open laptop sat on the desk, speckled with shiny dust, but Matt couldn’t see the screen. Fenn had his eyes on it though, as he went to sit. His hefty rear made an audible creak of plastic and chrome.
PC Marriot appeared with two machine coffees in plastic cups. She rummaged in her pocket and carefully set a sealed custard cream in front of each of them.
Fenn’s mouth dropped, ‘Awww … out of Bourbons, Pamela?’
‘’Fraid so, sir. NHS, sir.’
They shared a sad, nodding glance, and she left.
Fenn tore his biscuit packet open. ‘Hey, thanks for coming out.’
‘No problem. How can I help?’
‘Well, like I said on the phone, we have a man in custody. No ID, nobody recognises him. No fingerprints on file, either.’ He dipped his biscuit so deep into his coffee that his fingers got wet. He shoved the sodden lump into his mouth and wiped his hands on his trousers. He spoke through food. ‘Chap’s a mystery.’
‘Where was he found?’
‘In a domestic greenhouse this morning. In Totternhoe.’ He must have caught Matt’s blank face. ‘That’s a small-ish village, just out of Dunstable. We have no idea how he got there and neither do the homeowners.’
‘Who found him?’
‘A milkman called Phil Pepper. It’s why we’re calling our mystery man Ernie for now.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘You know … the fastest milkman in the west?’ Fenn dropped his jaw, horrified. ‘Benny Hill?’
Matt grabbed his biscuit. ‘That’s a bit before my time. Sorry.’
‘Well, that just about makes me want to kill myself. Anyway, Pepper was out on his rounds when he heard …’ Fenn held up finger quotes, ‘creepy laughing from a greenhouse on Pendle Street. He goes inside and finds Ernie totally naked and wailing for help. But he’s aggressive too. He’s reaching out, trying to grab. Like this …’ Fenn started stretching his arms out across the desk, demonstrating.
Matt pulled back. ‘All right, all right. I get the picture.’ He lifted the biscuit to his mouth.
‘Oh, and he was drenched in blood.’
He set the biscuit back down. ‘You definitely didn’t mention that on the phone. Whose blood was it?’
‘We think it’s his, but we’re looking into it. Still, though, we’re pretty eager to find out what our Ernie was up to last night. We doubt he’s from Totternhoe and it doesn’t look like he got there by car either …’ Fenn leant forward, his gut spilling over the desk. ‘Why are you frowning?’
‘I’m just curious how a butt-naked bloke gets himself to Totternhoe without being spotted by someone. Or by CCTV, at least. Unless he just dumped his clothes on the way, I guess.’
‘Pendle Street backs onto fourteen square miles of fields and woodland. Plus, Ernie’s feet were absolutely shredded by twigs. Like, in ribb
ons, I mean.’
‘So he walked through the fields?’
‘Crawled too from the looks of his hands. Probably did it all night. Which means the cows and sheep may well have seen Ernie’s wang a-wavin’ but he could have easily skipped past human folk for miles.’ Fenn sighed, and that small-toothed smile faded with it. ‘He could literally have come from at least three to maybe five different villages or towns. So as you can imagine, tracking him down is getting on my wick … which means it’s annoying me, by the way.’
‘I know that phrase. So … I take it he’s on that screen?’ Matt nodded to the laptop. ‘You keep looking at it.’
‘Correct. This is the feed from next door. Here …’ Fenn spun the laptop round to show a grey CCTV image. The camera was looking down on a man in hospital pyjamas. He had long, straggled black-looking hair, which hung ragged around his jawline. It covered his face. He was handcuffed to a metal bar in the centre of the desk, bandaged hands clasped together.
Matt tugged his chair a little closer and frowned. ‘Why just a still image?’
‘You’re the second person to say that, but no. This isn’t a still. It’s video, right now. He just hasn’t moved a single muscle for hours.’
Matt stared at the motionless man on the screen. ‘What’s the psychology report say?’
‘Total mental collapse. He’s shut down like an off switch. So, as you can see, we have very little to go on apart from this weird word that he wrote. The one I mentioned on the phone.’
‘Ah yes …’ Matt said. ‘And did he scrawl this name on the greenhouse itself? On paper? If I could see it and check the spelling …’
‘No mate, he wrote it on his body.’
‘Oh, I see. Where on his body?’
‘On the stomach area.’
‘Wrote it, how?’
‘With a razor blade.’
Matt winced.
‘Brace yourself. Picture coming …’ Fenn pulled a photograph from his desk drawer, but he paused midway. ‘You’re okay with cuts and stuff, right? It’s a bit grim, but they tell me you’re a tough little bugger.’
‘They do?’ Matt laughed. ‘Slide it over.’
‘Good lad … just haven’t got the time for a fainter right now. It’s a bit messy, but you’ll get the idea.’
Matt saw a midriff drenched in blood, and a navel filled with it. Like he’d done a belly flop into an entire pool of the stuff. Amongst it, he saw the source of the flow. A furious set of jet-black lines, slashed at angles, and along the bottom of the shot, a tufted line of dark pubic hair, sticky with clotted gunk. ‘What’s wrong with Post-it notes, eh?’ Matt said. It was all he could think of.
These were letters, gouged deep, and at an angle too, so that they could be read the right way around to an onlooker. No curves at all, just sharp lines slashed against sharp lines. If Ernie did this himself, he had a shockingly steady grip. He pictured the utterly still man on the screen, reaching for a razor blade, patiently slicing his own skin as calmly as cutting through sandwich ham.
In the picture, the coagulating blood had stuck and gathered, making the letters harder to read – but it wasn’t impossible. Especially when a cloud outside decided to open a pathway in the sky. The entire room suddenly lit up with sun.
The word was there, carved amongst the blood.
And the word was Baal-Berith.
CHAPTER SIX
Fenn took a slow sip of his coffee. ‘So, I typed this Baal-whatnot into Google but I just got reams of academia back and I can’t make head nor tail of it. All I know is that it’s supposed to be some sort of God, which isn’t my strong suit, to be honest. So I called for this famous Matt Hunter I keep reading about.’
‘Famous. That’s hilarious.’
‘Well, Mr Professor …’ With his fingers woven behind his head, Fenn leant back. ‘Please fill my life with enlightenment. Who the holy hell is Baal-bloody-Berith?’
Matt grabbed his backpack from the floor and hoisted it onto the desk. It landed with a deep thud. ‘Come round my side.’
Fenn didn’t stand. He just wheeled his squeaky chair in jerks, all the way around. Matt made some room.
‘Okay, so I’m not surprised Google confused you because the history of Baal is really complex. Especially because Judaism and Christianity really muddied the waters for him. There’s a lot of theories, as you’ll see …’ Matt started pulling each book out, setting them on the desk, side by side. The Malleus Maleficarum; The Praestigiis Daemonum; The Key of Solomon and more.
‘Erm …’ Fenn looked at the growing book pile. ‘I’d appreciate just the bullet points.’
‘Bullet points. Sure. Then we start here … the Bible.’ Matt picked a hefty King James Version up and flicked through its pages. ‘Forget Baal-Berith for a second, and just focus on Baal. The Bible says he’s an ancient Caananite God who was worshipped back in Old Testament times. He had cults, temples, priests, prophets, the whole shebang. Quite the established religious system, by all accounts.’
‘Goodie or baddie?’
‘Depends on who you ask,’ Matt set his finger on a thin journal. ‘I could show you ancient Ugaritic texts calling Baal a mighty hero, a good guy. But the Hebrew Bible − what Christians call the Old Testament, and the New Testament − they present Baal as a false God, an arch-rival to God himself. You could say the Bible demonised Baal.’
Fenn turned it over in his mouth. ‘And the Berith part?’
‘Well, Baal simply means “lord”, and there’s a bunch of Baals in the Ancient world. We get Baal-Hamon, Lord of the Multitude, Baal-Shalisha, The Lord of Three, Baal-Gad, The Lord of Fortune. Some say they’re separate Gods, others say it’s just different aspects of the same God. Whatever the case, the Bible paints the Baals as an evil distraction. Heck, the Hebrew texts say that Baal is even into child sacrifice. I guess the most famous example would be Baal-Zebub.’
Fenn silently mouthed the word, then his eyebrows sprang up. ‘Oh … Beelzebub …’
‘Yup. Where Baal means lord and Zebub means flies.’
‘Lord of the flies …’ Fenn stared at the photograph of slashed skin. ‘I’m not liking where this is going, but carry on.’
‘Okay, so Baal-Berith means the Lord of the Promise. Which sounds quite sweet really, but by the Middle Ages the Christian PR machine got well and truly established. So we see the rise of Christian demonology. That’s a bunch of self-proclaimed experts mapping out the elaborate networks and hierarchies of demons. It’s all pretty whacky. And in demonology, this ancient Canaanite deity called Baal-Berith goes from an obscure, possibly benign “Lord of the Covenant”, to being thoroughly demonic. Look at this …’ Matt opened one of his Christian demonology dictionaries and flicked through to find his marker. A Starbucks receipt. ‘And I quote … Baal-Berith is the keeper of the archives of Hell and also the curator of its infernal library. He is a powerful second order demon with enough majesty to officiate at many of Hell’s key ceremonies. And according to this he’s even a co-signatory to Satan, who formally certifies pacts with the Devil.’
Fenn was folding his arms and chewing on his lip. Looking nervous.
Matt grabbed another book. ‘Then he starts cropping up in demonic possession cases. Like this one from seventeenth-century France, where a—’
‘Possession?’ Fenn groaned. ‘Oh, great.’
‘Afraid so. Look, the short answer is this. Baal was seen by many as a benign God. But the church, inspired by the Hebrew Bible, ended up categorising Baal-Berith as this arch demon who tempts humans in two specific ways …’
‘And what are they?’
‘Blasphemy, and murder.’
Fenn whispered ‘Shit’, under his breath.
‘So I might be jumping to conclusions here, but you should definitely get those blood results back. Because if he’s writing that specific name on himself, then maybe that’s not all his blood on there.’
Fenn blew out a long, weary breath. ‘Well, Professor. It’s wild, but I do th
ink this’ll help press my boss to get a few more officers deployed. Work out where he’s from.’
‘You know, I could always pop in there and speak with him.’
Fenn thought about it, then his face scrunched. ‘Nah. He’s dangerous, and besides, he’ll just stare at you in silence. He’s done that to every other officer I’ve—’
When the door crashed open they both jumped. It was Pam, stumbling through, breathless.
Fenn stared at her. ‘What on earth?’
‘It’s Ernie, sir. He’s speaking. He—’ Her eyes bulged when she saw the screen. ‘Sir!’
Matt looked back at the desk.
The silent laptop screen showed the same feed as before, but now it was different. Ernie, the fastest demon in the west, may still have been cuffed to the table. But without either he or Fenn noticing, he’d now managed to crawl up on top of it. He was crouching and … Matt leant towards the screen … swaying. Frantic bare toes wriggled through the bandages on his feet, but his hanging hair still kept him mostly faceless. Even from this angle Matt could see Ernie’s jaw was moving. Saying the same, silent thing over and over again.
‘What’s he saying?’ Matt asked.
‘He’s whispering. He keeps saying …’ Pam cleared her throat. ‘Send him in, send him in.’
Fenn grabbed something from his desk. ‘Pam? Me and you better go and have a chat.’
‘And me?’ Matt said.
‘Sir, look!’
Ernie’s head shifted on the screen. It moved in a slow upwards creak towards the camera. Like a lizard on a rock hearing a fly scuttle across a leaf. And now they were all staring straight into Ernie’s face.
‘Oh, my …’ Pam said. ‘His eyes.’
They looked like two fuzzy black scribbles, scrawled by a troubled child. Two deep, ragged black holes.
‘Jesus,’ Fenn said.
‘Relax,’ Matt said. ‘It’s just the light. The shadow from his brow.’
Ernie instantly shifted again, his head cocked so his ear was towards the lens.