Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  Even so, she couldn’t ignore the call. That could be used by the defence as evidence of police oppression. So she levered herself up from her desk and sauntered across to the far side of the custody suite. She put her thumb against the scanner, and the heavy metal doors that led to the cell block slid open.

  She pressed the icon to log her time of entry: this would trigger a camera that would take a dated and timed photograph of her. More cameras would then monitor her progress towards the cell at every stage. Help would be on its way swiftly if shit connected with fan.

  Ella preferred patrolling in a response vehicle or walking the beat to being station gaoler. She liked to be out there, on the streets. They weren’t exciting streets, by and large; they certainly weren’t mean streets. But even so, it was the buzz for her. She’d spent six years doing an office job before joining the Met; she liked to be able to see the sky when she was at work. However the guvnors liked to mix things up. And so twice a month, Ella served her stint as gaoler.

  There were six cells in all. All with armoured doors. A panic strip ran the length of the corridor walls, on both sides, at hip and calf level, just in case the cameras failed. Ella wore body armour, as additional security, but she didn’t carry a gun.

  She stopped outside Gogarty’s cell, where the slate was marked up in erasable pen: Gogarty, B. Murder x 8, manslaughter x 1 kidnap x 10; charged 18.00 13/7. Then she opened the wicket and peered through into the cell. She saw Gogarty sitting in the lotus position on his bunk, staring with unblinking eyes. With all the eerie calm of a bat roosting.

  ‘What’s your problem?’ Ella snapped, more harshly than she had intended.

  Gogarty stared up at her, with haunted eyes.

  ‘If there is a problem, please state it now, sir,’ repeated Ella, with elaborate courtesy, for the benefit of the camera.

  ‘I’m not feeling well,’ said Gogarty, in feeble whining tones.

  ‘You’ve already been seen by the doctor.’

  ‘I feel nauseous. I feel – something’s really wrong. I don’t know what.’

  Gogarty’s head flew to one side. As if listening to a voice. Then it flew to the other side.

  ‘Oh dear Lord,’ said Gogarty. ‘Not now not now not – LET ME OUT! I have to go home.’

  ‘Your home is a crime scene,’ Ella said snidely. ‘Your home is the House of Horror. Now shut up.’ She slammed the wicket and bolted it and began walking down the corridor.

  A drumming sound filled the corridor. Gogarty was banging the metal door. Wearily, Ella turned back. She opened the wicket again. She saw Gogarty up close, peering through the wicket, wild-eyed.

  ‘Step back please,’ Ella said calmly. ‘Go back to your bunk. Or I’ll have you sedated.’

  ‘No, no no, please, don’t do that. Gaoler, I implore you,’ Gogarty said. ‘Let me out. Open the cell door. Please, Ella, I know your name is Ella, don’t deny it, please! And you know that you want to help me. Open the door. Open. The. Door.’

  And he beamed. The smile wrapping its way slowly around his big fat ugly bald head.

  Ella took out her keys and opened the manual lock of the cell door. She punched the keypad to open the electronic lock. She stepped inside the cell. Gogarty hopped off the bed. He gave her a kiss and hugged her, and she stirred at his touch.

  ‘You are such a sweetie,’ he said kindly.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Call me Brian.’

  ‘Thank you, Brian.’

  As she spoke, it occurred to her she was releasing a dangerous prisoner. She wondered why she was doing that.

  Gogarty kissed her again, slipping his tongue inside her mouth this time, at the same time gripping her tightly in his arms so she couldn’t wriggle away. Ella felt the wet touch of the prisoner’s tongue jabbing at the inside of her cheeks, like a dog’s head inside a badger hole, and she wanted to choke.

  He continued to grip her tightly, and rubbed his arousal up against her. It disgusted her but she felt powerless to push him away, or to protest in any way. It occurred to Ella that she had been spellbound and as a consequence, a prisoner was escaping.

  Eventually Gogarty pushed her off, and nodded approvingly.

  ‘What’s the time, my sweet?’ he asked.

  She looked at her watch. ‘Four twenty five.’

  He frowned.

  ‘Ella, I must depart this place,’ he said. ‘For it’s going to happen soon. Very soon. Not at all what I -’ His head flew to one side. He listened. ‘Damn damn damn.’

  Gogarty stepped out of the cell and Ella followed him. As she walked, her body jerked and twitched as she tried to regain control of her limbs.

  Her eyes were drawn towards the panic strip. She started to move sideways towards it, arms clenched by her side as if she were doing Irish dancing.

  Casually, Gogarty picked her up by the throat and threw her the length of the corridor. She bounced against the wall and that momentarily broke the spell. She lunged fast and punched the panic strip and screamed, ‘Prisoner escaping!’

  Gogarty laughed and then his spirit was inside her.

  Behind her, the bolts on the cellblock door that led to the custody area slammed shut, of their own accord. An alarm siren in the corridor wailed; then abruptly shut itself off.

  Ella opened the other occupied cells. ‘Out, out,’ she shouted and the four prisoners shuffled into the corridor. A GBH. A pub blagger. A mortgage fraudster. And a drunk driver who’d killed a little girl.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ said Jacko McGill. He was the pub blagger, a recidivist felon with a major incense jones.

  ‘Say nothing,’ Ella told him.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Toby Harrington, who had been arrested for the GBH of the man who had stolen his fighting dog, and was waiting to be charged. ‘There’s fucking four of us, one of her. Let’s make a fucking go of it.’

  ‘Do not attempt to do so,’ Ella told him.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Len Collier, the fraudster. ‘I’m not scrapping with a copper. Let me back in the cell, eh?’

  ‘I agree. This is – foolish. I can’t be part of this,’ said Martin Cripton, the drunk driver: sober now.

  ‘What the fuck, I was only kidding,’ said Toby, looking at Ella, laughing. ‘Look, what’s this about, love? Are we being ghosted to another station nick or something?’

  Ella stared at him blankly.

  ‘Maybe it’s a fire drill,’ suggested Len.

  ‘I feel sick,’ admitted Jacko, who was coming down from a cocktail of crack and dark incense.

  ‘You’re the fucking psycho killer, ain’t you’? said Toby to Gogarty, who was strangely impassive, almost as if he were asleep on his feet.

  ‘I feel sick, and I’m awfae thirsty,’ said Jacko.

  ‘Are we going then?’ said Toby. ‘Lead on, sweetheart.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Ella.

  ‘For what?’ Toby said.

  ‘Synchrony,’ said Ella. She smiled. ‘What can I say? I’m a showman at heart.’

  ‘Daft bitch,’ Len muttered.

  ‘Something’s nae right here, lads,’ said Jacko.

  “What’s the problem, lads? I’m letting you free,” said Gogarty.

  Gogarty raised his hand. He touched two fingers together, and stroked them.

  Then he clicked his fingers. SNAP.

  At that same moment, a quarter of a mile away in the gardens of Gogarty’s East End home, Emilia screamed, and Marco stared in horror; and Hell erupted.

  Less than a minute later:

  ‘Bravo Tango receiving, is this a drill, repeat is this a drill, over?’ said Agatha Attwell.

  ‘No,’ came the voice of Fillide Melandroni. ‘Trust me, this is really happening. Another Gate ’twixt Hell and Earth has been breached. Here, look.’

  On her screen, Agatha saw the image from the detective’s e-berry camera: the awesome sight of an East End street drenched in blood.

  ‘And can I have a grid reference for that please, over?’ s
aid Agatha, typing.

  The windows and walls of the CAD office blew in.

  ‘For the love of Lucifer!’ snapped Fillide. And to her astonishment, she found herself put on hold.

  ‘Bitch bitch bitch!’ Fillide screamed into her e-berry.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Tom said. They were across the road from the Gogarty house now. The pavements were damp with scarlet hells’ blood.

  ‘Bitch!’ Fillide said, still focusing on the handset in her hands; talking to it as if it were the person.

  Tom glanced up, at the clouds. The sun dimmed. Then he looked back at Number 13.

  ‘Wait!’ he screamed. ‘Stop!’

  He ran towards the Gogarty house. The front door was opening and a white-garbed CSI appeared, clearly ready to make a run for it. ‘Wait!’ Tom screamed again, and backed it up with a series of desperate ‘wait’ gestures. The CSI paused. Tom backed away again swiftly, behind the line of parked cars.

  They waited in a daytime that was dark as night.

  Suddenly the sky cleared. The sun shone. There was a huge splash. Another monsoon of boiling blood had fallen from the skies, drenching the front garden and pavement, missing Tom by yards.

  Tom noticed a gobbet in the blood lake outside the house stir, and saw bubbles break the surface. He remembered the blond-haired cop for whom he’d made a cup of tea. He must have been hit by the first geyser.

  The tower of blood in the air was now gone, but a fresh tower was starting to build, like a reverse tornado emerging out of the garden of the house.

  ‘Now, run!’ Tom shouted. The CSI ran out of the front garden, splashing through the blood, treading on the semi-dissolved remains of the dead blond copper, his arms windmilling. Tom beckoned him on. Two more CSIs came out, then three Five Squad officers who’d been in the house - Taff and Seamus and Tony Williamson. All splashed through blood to get out of the range of the intermittent blood monsoon.

  They reached a haven on the pavement opposite the house, where the paparazzi and journos cowered. All of them panting, marvelling at how close they had come to death.

  It took less than five minutes to evacuate the Gogarty house. There were six PCs and five Squad officers including himself and Fillide, plus Billy Gilroy from Whitechapel CID, plus the CSIs, ten in all, including the crime scene examiner McClintock.

  ‘There’s a school,’ said Taff, to himself as much as to anyone else.

  Fillide approached, brandishing her e-berry, after concluding her spate of calls. ‘We have backup on its way,’ she said. ‘Leman Street is under attack but the dispatcher has done her job well, and of that she should be proud. I called the head of yonder school and told him he must evacuate, we need bodies over there right now to supervise.’

  ‘Good,’ said Taff, impressed.

  ‘What’s happening at Leman Street?’ asked Ronnie.

  ‘I do not know for sure. But they have a Black Alert.’

  ‘Another Breach?’ said Seamus.

  Fillide shrugged, demonstratively.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ she said. ‘Could be – something else, just as terrible.’

  For a moment, no one spoke.

  ‘Six teams of two, one team of four,’ said Tom briskly to the CSIs and the PCs, ‘to evacuate numbers 7, 9, 11, 15 17, and 19, and also the school. There are two people in 15, a family of seven in Number 11 including small children. One person to act as spotter, the others, gets coats, capes, anything you can find to protect the kids from blood splatter.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we –’ said a bolshy uniform PC.

  ‘Do it now, don’t waste time talking.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You and you, number 7. You and you, number 9. You and you, number 11. You and you, number 15, and remember that’s where the baby and toddler are. You and you, number 17. You and you, number 19. You you and you and you, the school, what’s the head’s name, Fillide?’

  ‘David Bradley.’

  ‘Now, move, fast.’

  The teams were formed: six PCs and ten CSIs sprinted to their tasks. Tom realised he’d taken charge, without anyone giving him permission to do so. He looked at Taff with a twinge of anxiety.

  ‘Aye, lads, do all that,’ said Taff.

  ‘What guns do we have?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Just a handgun,’ said Billy Gilroy, taking out his Glock. He was in his late 20s; lean and hawk-nosed and keen as mustard. Dougie was grooming him for Murder Squad duties.

  ‘No, we need carbines,’ said Tom.

  ‘I’ve got mine,’ said Seamus.

  ‘Me too,’ said Taff.

  ‘There’s a box of automatic rifles, in the house,’ said Tony Williamson. They shrivelled him with a stare.

  Seamus and Taff ran to their CID cars to collect their weapons. Fillide had parked her bike on the kerb, and from her pannier she produced a Heckler and Koch cut down automatic rifle, then lifted the seat and revealed the hiding place for her samurai sword. The sword went into a rig upon her back. The rifle she held in front of her before her, with calm authority. Tom only had his Job pistol, with two clips of ammunition. He was wearing a stab vest beneath his uniform but not full body armour.

  ‘Get the fuck out of here!’ Billy Gilroy shouted at the paparazzi, who were dazed but still clustered on the road taking photographs of the house. But they weren’t moving.

  ‘Come on people, time to disperse,’ said Tom, trying to exude authority, and was rewarded with a flurry of camera flashes.

  Fillide drew her sword. ‘Withdraw to a safe place or you shall feel the sharpness of this steel upon thy flabby arses, good sirs and madams.’

  The paparazzi backed up, rapidly.

  ‘When do we get help?’ said Tony to Fillide.

  Fillide checked her messages. ‘No ETA from SCO19 in Leman Street, six ARVs scrambled from various stations in London East, the first should be here in eleven minutes. Bethnal Green have no armed response vehicles but they’re sending a van with riot officers. We’re waiting for the army and it’ll take them, I would estimate, ten to fifteen minutes to get here.’

  ‘Fifteen minutes?’ said Seamus.

  ‘Maybe less,’ Fillide said, hopefully.

  Taff and Seamus arrived back and distributed the kit from their secure boots. Two Heckler and Koch automatic rifles with anointed ammunition and lots of it. One set of Kevlar body armour. Plus, they had Fillide’s rifle. Plus, they all had Glock semi-automatic handguns, and a generous supply of ammo.

  ‘Doesn’t fit me any more, I got fat,’ Taff complained, as he handed the Kevlar tunic to Tony.

  Tony put the tunic on. It was loose on him, but Seamus fastened it tightly at the back. Taff put the armoured box and greaves on himself. Some protection at least.

  ‘Here’s the guvnor,’ said Taff, as his e-berry beeped. He read the message.

  ‘What’s it say?’

  ‘What the fuck,’ Taff read, ‘is going on?’

  They laughed at that.

  Fillide took off her dress and then her shoes and tights. She was wearing nothing but blue knickers and a sleeveless under-vest that bared her muscular black-haired arms: an animal ready for the hunt.

  They waited, for whatever would come next.

  The torrents of blood had left the pavements and the front gardens crimson-splattered. Many of the plants and bushes that lay beneath the downpour had flamed in frenzy and were reduced to wispy ash. The cars and forensic vans parked in the street had lost their paintwork and were gunmetal grey. Their tyres, pools of melted rubber.

  The Mehtas were emerging from their house, with Mr Mehta in the rear, shooing on his children, carrying the baby in one arm. The long crocodile of Gujarati-Britons were led away by a CSI, with a uniformed cop running along beside. The Donningtons were a few seconds behind, visibly struggling to run away from the house they had so carefully designed. But run they did.

  Three young women emerged from number 9, on the double. Mrs Bradley, reluctantly, came out from number 15, casting a long glance a
cross at Fillide and Tom. A family of four emerged from number 7. A family of three and their dog from number 17.

  At the end of the road, a graffitied wall marked the furthest extent of the Square. Its gang sigils and WHO THE HELL OPENED THE GATES OF HELL? graffiti were occluded by garish red splashes. Beyond that wall lay the primary school, mercifully untouched. The children, Tom knew, were being evacuated via the front gates of the school. In a few minutes, there would be hundreds of armed officers on the scene. An army of trained warriors who would be well able to deal with an assault by creatures from the Pit.

  But not yet. For the moment, there were just the five of them, with three rifles, a sword, and a handgun each. Five cops protecting all of London.

  The sun shone eerily upon the pools and slicks of coagulated blood that had drenched the front gardens and the pavements and the cars and the road. Tom checked if his pistol was cocked, unnecessarily. He tried to swallow, but couldn’t.

  As they waited, their e-berries beeped and flashed up progress reports on the ETA of their back up. Not long now.

  Tom blinked. He thought he’d seen – no.

  Yes! He had seen it. A crack in the scarlet coating of the house. A shadow in the blood that indicated the brickwork beneath was sundering. Then the ground below them began to thrum. Tom felt his feet tremble beneath him. His body started vibrating, as if he’d swallowed his own mobile phone. A low roaring sound was heard, as if from far away; though actually it was very near.

  The house began to shake. Then it shook faster. Then it shook so fast it multiplied itself, like a ball becoming many balls when it is swung around upon a rope. A few roof tiles tumbled off and landed on the pavement, not breaking but splashing messily in the pools of suppurating hell’s blood. More tiles fell like branches in a hurricane, until the roof timbers were ripped bare.

  The windows of Gogarty’s house shattered, one by one, like eyes being gouged out. The trembling and the shaking of the house accelerated against the backdrop of the blue sky.

  Tom kept blinking, unable to believe his eyes, yet knowing that what he was seeing was all true.