Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  Tom knew what Mr Mehta was thinking now.

  Next door again, at number 17, was an old lady. Mrs Bradford. ‘Let me do more of the talking,’ said Fillide as they waited on the doorstep.

  He was astonished at her impudence.

  ‘Is that a rebuke?’

  ‘You talk too much.’

  ‘I get people to open up.’

  ‘All we want is evidence. Not touchy-feely.’

  ‘We have different ideas of detective work.’

  ‘You, testa di merde, just stay quiet and learn,’ Fillide told him strictly.

  Mrs Bradford was eighty-seven years old and mistrustful. Her eyes were rheumy and she wore an exterior hearing aid that whined horrendously with feedback from time to time. Her hands were knotted with veins but her gaze was fiercely intent. Tom wanted to ask her all about her long life, but once he’d made the introductions, he dutifully let Fillide run with it.

  ‘Tell me what you can about your neighbour Mr Bishop, signora,’ Fillide said, in her low husky voice.

  ‘Can I see your identification again?’ Fillide showed it again. Mrs Bradford looked at it again. The print was too small, she couldn’t see what it said.

  ‘Are you one of those?’ Mrs Bradford asked, in a hostile tone.

  Fillide considered the question.

  ‘I am, indeed, “one of those”,’ she admitted. ‘It says so on my warrant card. RDC. That’s a qualified detective rank.’

  ‘You’re dead,’ Mrs Bradford pointed out, brutally.

  ‘Technically no,’ said Fillide, barely hiding her irritation. ‘I was. Now, no. Here I am. As alive as you and he.’

  ‘You died and then you rose.’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  Mrs Bradford’s hate was a tangible thing. Tom felt uneasy.

  ‘I’m a citizen now,’ Fillide pointed out.

  ‘You were damned then resurrected.’

  ‘That’s the way it happened. Not of my choosing.’

  ‘And now you live again.’

  ‘We’re getting nowhere, Mrs Bradford,’ Tom intercepted. But neither woman was paying any attention to him.

  ‘I’ve lived in this street all my life,’ said Mrs Bradford. ‘My father was a fire-watcher in the war. I saw them come and go. The Jews, the Indians, the Pakistanis, the Bengalis, the yuppies. And now you - you - you - your kind.’

  ‘Are you a bigot, Mrs Bradford?’ Fillide asked.

  ‘Taking our jobs!’

  ‘That’s a cliché,’ Tom said. ‘It doesn’t work that way.’

  ‘Taking our homes.’

  Tom rolled his eyes. He nodded at Fillide: ready to go? But she seemed surprisingly unperturbed.

  ‘Tell me about it, Mrs Bradford,’ Fillide said.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘What you did. Or didn’t do.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Why you hate me.’

  ‘I hate you because you’re a foul infernal creature from the pits of Hell,’ said Mrs Bradford, vengefully.

  ‘Cheated on your boyfriend, three in a bed, baby, wanted to fuck a girl, what?’

  Mrs Bradford’s jowls rolled with anger. The contempt in her eyes was so intense it made Tom quail. But to her credit, she answered honestly.

  ‘I was pregnant,’ the old woman conceded. ‘I was eighteen. I could have got rid of it, but I didn’t. That would have been a sin. This was a long time ago, remember, it was different then. So I had the child. Gave up the idea of doctoring. That had always been my dream, gone, poof, just like that. Scrimped and saved. Damn thing died when she was seven. Can you believe that? Heart defect. I never got married. Never had another child. Never got to be a doctor. But I did what I did because it was right. To have done otherwise would have been a heinous sin. That was the phrase we used back then. Heinous. Sin.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Fillide, and seemed to mean it.

  ‘Are you?’ said Mrs Bradford accusingly. ‘What did you do? What was your sin?’

  Fillide laughed. Tom loved her for the candour of that laugh.

  ‘Lust,’ said Fillide. ‘I was a whore. In Rome. Many years ago. In the days when we thought the Pope was next to God, and we spat in God’s eye on a daily basis.’

  ‘And you rose again.’

  ‘Not of my choosing, as I say.’

  ‘And here you are. Young. Alive. Immortal. And I’ll be dead soon, lost for all eternity to fuck only knows where, with not a blot on my conscience.’ Mrs Bradford looked upwards, at the supposed location of the heaven of the Christian faith, and spat. ‘I should have had the abortion, then I would have been justly damned to Hell like you, you evil bitch.’

  ‘Being a damnèd soul is not,’ said Fillide, gently, ‘all it’s cracked up to be.’

  Tom nodded. To his own utter astonishment, he realised that his heart was breaking.

  ‘Did you know Mr Bishop well?’ he asked, breaking the mood with one of his stock questions.

  Mrs Bradford turned her rheumy eyes on him. She nodded.

  ‘Oh yes. He lived here when I was a girl, you see. Then he came back. He thought I didn’t recognise him, he’d got fatter and lost all his hair, but I knew him at once. He was my priest, you see,’ said Mrs Bradford, with hate in her eyes. ‘He’s the one who advised me to – well.’ She shrugged. A gesture that said everything, and nothing.

  Tom sighed. A deep terrible exhalation that marked his coming of age in this, his new career and vocation.

  ‘That’s not possible,’ explained Fillide patiently. ‘Gogarty, I mean Bishop, is only –’

  ‘It’s possible,’ said Tom, full with foreboding and dread. ‘It all makes sense, finally.’ His intuition was burning; suddenly he knew the truth. About Gogarty; about everything.

  ‘How does it make sense?’ Fillide taunted.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. We haven’t got time. Fillide, we have to call this in,’ Tom said. ‘Now. And we’d better get back to the house. Before -’

  She interrupted him to sniff. She sniffed again. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re right. We -’

  They stood, almost in unison. They stared at each other.

  ‘What? What is it?’ Tom asked.

  ‘It is the stench,’ she said, ‘of Hell.’

  Dougie parked up at Limehouse. It was the HQ of all the East London Murder Squads, including Three Squad and One Squad which he directly managed. This had become Dougie and Gina’s main base, after the reorganisation of 2019. Only Five Squad remained at Whitechapel.

  He turned off the ignition but didn’t get out. He was silent at the wheel of the car for a few moments.

  Gina knew this mood. It was his dark and melancholic mood. It was the mood in which her beloved boss came to resemble the elderly relative who always turns up for Christmas and who never speaks and no one likes, but who you can’t get rid of.

  ‘It gets stranger,’ Gina observed, just to break the silence.

  ‘It’s been strange for a long while,’ Dougie said.

  She let him be. She knew he was lost in memories. For almost sixty seconds and without the aid of telepathy she could read his thoughts, as images of the past flashed across his face. That little smile - he was thinking about his wife Angela, as she was in life. The haunted stare; he was remembered her terrible death, and that fucking imp. The grim horror that washed across his face; that was him recalling all his years of bottled-up rage; Daniel’s tantrums; Jessica’s meningitis scare. Then the haunted stare again...

  The reverie ended, in a blink. He was Dougie once more.

  ‘Well? What are we fucking waiting for?’ he said.

  ‘You, you useless fucking plank,’ she told him bluntly.

  He grinned. He looked sheepish, almost schoolboyish. He brushed some loose hairs away from her face. She pretended not to notice. But she liked the touch of his fingers upon her skin.

  Marco stroked Emilia’s hand with his palm for a long instant that left her breathless. Then he pressed her fingers
to his lips, and he kissed them, and smiled. ‘Tonight then?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah yeah. Yeah. Yeah,’ she said. ‘I guess so, yeah!’

  He took that as a ‘yeah’ and grinned. Then he was gone, sauntering back over to the other side of the garden again.

  Emilia couldn’t believe her luck.

  She and Marco had eaten a late lunch, as promised, side by side, sitting near the garden fence by the biggest of the earth mountains. He’d had a big bacon sarnie in white doorstopper slices. She’d had a humus sandwich, which he’d thought was a very funny thing to eat, though it was her favourite. They’d shared a packet of crisps. Salt and vinegar.

  And then, when they’d finished their lunch, they both got up. But she’d stumbled, one of her legs had gone to sleep, so he’d reached out and grabbed her, and helped her to her feet. And the helpful holding of her had turned into a kind of hug. And he’d whispered to her: ‘Fancy a drink tonight, King’s Arms?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she’d grudgingly replied.

  Marco had grinned at that. As if he’d become accustomed to her ways; her trademark brusqueness. And then he’d reached out and stroked her hand with his palm, and he had kissed her fingers. And then he’d confirmed the date. Their date!

  And he’d kissed her fingers!

  But maybe, she wondered, she should try and play it cool? Yeah, good idea! Guys responded well to that, didn’t they? The haughty approach - maybe she should -

  Emilia coughed.

  A moment later she smelled that unpleasant smell again. But it was much stronger this time, more pungent. A dark stench that banished all her memories of Marco’s own soft scent.

  It was a whiff of something noxious that clawed its way down her throat and made her want to vomit. It was like – what? Rotten eggs?

  What was happening?

  Fillide was out of the door and ran at an effortless sprint. Tom was seconds behind her, puffing but almost as fast.

  Fillide had her radio out and spoke as she ran without any tremor in her voice: ‘All units, all units, evacuate Thirteen Ildminster Square, don’t ask why, just evacuate now, Out.’

  They ran fast along the pavement and towards the Gogarty house. Then they stopped. Fillide sniffed.

  ‘Too late,’ she said.

  ‘Are you feeling okay?’ Professor Denton asked Emilia, anxiously.

  She knew she must look terrible. She was gasping appallingly, like a cat choking on a furball.

  ‘Can’t you smell it?’ she whimpered.

  He sniffed. He shook his head.

  Then his face contorted. He gagged. He spat out yellow vomit.

  The hot sun felt hotter. Emilia’s forehead was flaking. Her breath hurt, as if there was glass in her lungs. It dawned on her that this was potentially very bad. Rotten eggs was - wasn’t it? Yes it was. She remembered her checklist. It wasn’t rotten eggs, she realised with horror, it was brimstone. She could smell brimstone.

  She ran over to the pit and peered down. It was clear of bones now. But the excavator was in position, at the side of the pit, poised and ready to dip its long beak and rummage for the two more deeply buried skeletons they’d tracked on the ultrasound.

  ‘Stop!’ Emilia screamed. ‘Stop!’

  But the cab driver didn’t hear her. The yellow metal beak of the excavator dipped and cracked the soil. The hammer attachment shot out and gouged. Emilia stared down as the dry soil was ripped apart, and earth and London clay were sucked up by pipes into the belly of the excavator. The stench in her nostrils got worse. Brimstone filled her lungs.

  Emilia tried to scream and failed; and finally she screamed.

  Marco hurried over to help the Professor, who was spewing and weeping both at the same time. The poor man was on his knees and his vomit stained the earth, the colour of egg yolks.

  Then Emilia screamed her scream, and Marco turned around and saw her, in front of the pit, glowing with an eerie light. It was an eye-hurtingly intense tableau of terror: a black-haired, shy, sweet young woman shrieking like a crazed banshee as an eerie yellow light rose out of the ground and lit her like a halo, turning her body into a living sunbeam.

  Marco couldn’t help himself. He held up his phone and took a photograph of the scream. It was a shocking and terrible image, yet his first instinct was to capture it on film.

  As he took the photograph of Emilia, capturing the moment of her agonised wail, a thick geyser of boiling air erupted out of the soil behind her. The yellow excavator was rocked on its tracks and toppled and fell slowly into the pit, like a dinosaur spilled over by an ant.

  The pillar of burning air turned bright scarlet in the air. Like blood boiling; except that it was blood, boiling. The pillar of steaming blood soared upwards fast, then slowed; then it paused, as if freeze-framed.

  Then it fell like rain.

  The spatter of burning blood landed upon Emilia in a torrent, catching her in the midst of her anguished screaming. She was drenched by the hot scarlet hail. Within moments the flesh began to peel off her face and body. An instant later she fell to the ground: unskinned and dead.

  Marco captured that image too, the moment when the scalding blood landed upon Emilia, and he Saved it, and emailed it to his home email address. He wasn’t being cynical or prurient by this point. But he knew, shrewdly, that his family could live like warlocks from the proceeds of this one image. It was his gift to them: precious almost beyond measure in these days of internet death-porn, though it was costing him his life. For Marco knew by now that he would not survive this day.

  The spurting of the geyser of blood prefigured a wider cracking of the soil, and a ripping of the earth. The pit trembled and shook and fragments of bone and clay were spat out angrily. The driver of the excavator was clambering out of the pit but the last spatters of the downfall of blood caught him too and he perished in bloody hail before he even had a chance to cry for help.

  Another pillar of blood rose up into the air; it was thicker, denser, hotter, surrounded by an angry fog of steam. The blood torrent rose up high and eclipsed the clouds for one brief moment, then fell back down to earth. Marco heard another terrible scream and knew it was himself. The deadly red rain was falling upon him.

  As he died, he clicked his phone-camera again and took another photograph and Sent. He could no longer see clearly through the red haze but he caught a glimpse of horns and a mouth full of fangs before he died.

  ‘Boss, take a look at this,’ Gina said quietly.

  ‘I have it already.’

  They stared at the image on their smartphones. Blurred, indistinct, but unmistakeable. A demon. Torrents of blood. Devil Light. It all added up to one thing.

  A Hell Breach.

  They both scanned the sender’s name, which they recognised, and the GPS location: the house they had just left.

  Dougie’s face said: Not Again. He didn’t speak.

  ‘I’ll call the Squad, tell them to get the fuck out of there.’

  Dougie didn’t speak.

  ‘Boss?’

  Dougie didn’t speak.

  ‘This is Gogarty, isn’t it? He set this up. Unexploded fucking bomb, right? Ambush. We walked right fucking into it.’

  Dougie didn’t speak. His face flickered: lost in memories.

  Tom and Fillide stared at the ghastly sight unfolding above the roofline of this secluded London terraced street.

  They saw a thick column of blood shooting into the air, rising like surf on a planet with zero gravity. Spreading fast; forming a scarlet storm cloud above the Gogarty house.

  Then the blood descended, in a broad monsoon. Spattering the roof tiles, smashing them like a hammer upon bone; shards of broken tiles spat out on to the street like teeth from a warrior’s bloody mouth. The façade of the terrace turned a murky crimson. The blood fell in rivulets down the pebbledashed exterior of Number 13 and the grey London bricks of Numbers 15 and 11.

  Another geyser in the garden erupted; this time it spat even higher, and floated in air long
er. The white clouds in the sky seemed to flinch at the threat of the pillar of ascending scarlet death rising up to them.

  Eventually the spout of blood halted its ascent and hovered in air, as if with malign anticipation.

  Then once again it rained hot blood. Thunder cracked like a lover’s orgasmic shout in this quiet street in a small East of London cul de sac masquerading as a square.

  The stench of blood and brimstone that followed the multiple eruptions was appalling, and Tom found himself coughing up yellow phlegm. Fillide took it more in her stride. This for her was the smell of home.

  Tom enabled his radio but couldn’t speak so Fillide called it in:

  ‘Bravo Tango from Bravo Seventeen, calling in a Dimensional Breach. Request immediate backup, armed response, protective clothing, the whole fuckin’ thing, Over.’

  A calm female voice replied: ‘Bravo Tango receiving, is this a drill, repeat is this a drill, over?’

  ‘No,’ said Fillide, with arrogant nonchalance. ‘This is really happening. Another Gate ’twixt Hell and Earth has been breached. Here, look.’

  Fillide photographed the scene of direst horror on her e-berry; and she Sent.

  Chapter 27

  A few minutes earlier.

  Ella Henson, gaoler at the divisional police station part of the Leman Street building in Whitechapel, was sat at her desk in the custody suite. The cell buzzer rang.

  Ella sighed. Gogarty was being a bloody pest. First of all, earlier this morning, he’d complained of tummy pains, which disappeared as soon as Ella offered to call a doctor. Then at lunchtime, he had attempted to eat his metal dining tray, putting serious teeth-shaped dents into it. Ella had to send two armoured officers in to restrain him. It was, in her opinion, the serial killing psychopath’s version of a kid’s attention-seeking behaviour. Ella wasn’t impressed.