Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  ‘Just like you didn’t know you could fly.’

  ‘I’m full of surprises,’ he admitted. ‘Even to myself.’

  The sigil on Tom’s white flesh darkened further until the pattern became clearly visible.

  Tom took a deep breath. The power was upon him now. His penis twitched and became fully erect; a common side effect of inhaling too much powdered lapis lazuli.

  A tremendous self confidence possessed him. He knew that he could do this thing, as clearly as he knew that he was alive.

  ‘What now?’ Fillide asked.

  Tom looked at her with his one good eye, and pointed melodramatically with his index finger. ‘I unbind thee from thy confining spells, thou foul and evil beast from Hell,’ he intoned, making it up as he went along but hoping it sounded authentic.

  ‘Hey, don’t call me foul,’ said Fillide, mock-angrily.

  ‘And now you’re free,’ he said.

  She stared at him; delight dawning upon her face.

  He walked over to her and kissed her, still erect. She kissed him back. She wriggled her body upon his, bouncing his cock against her tummy. Then she broke free.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she babbled.

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘No. No.’ She was shaking her head. ‘I’ve been tricked like this before. This is Roy’s doing, isn’t it? You’re working for Roy. Any minute now –’

  ‘Shush.’

  She glared. ‘Don’t tell me to fucking –’

  ‘Repeat after me,’ said Tom. ‘These words: “Roy Hall is a bastard.” ’

  ‘Roy Hall is a bastard,’ she said.

  ‘And I’d like to punch his stupid fucking face.’

  ‘And I’d like to punch his stupid fucking face.’

  ‘Like this.’ Tom made a fist, and mock punched.

  ‘Like this.’ Fillide made an expert fist; and delivered an air-punch that would have crippled any real opponent.

  ‘Are you feeling warm?’ Tom asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nauseous?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Slap me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Slap me, bitch.’

  Fillide slapped Tom. Harder than she’d meant to. It rocked his head. His cheek scar began to bleed.

  ‘I’m sorry, I hurt you.’

  ‘No, it’s good. It proves you’re free from your spell,’ said Tom triumphantly. ‘If you were spell-bound you would not be able to harm a human, unless it was a designated criminal, or Roy ordered you to. The spell-binding is broken. It’s broken.’ He shook his head. Blood splashed from his cheek where she’d broken the skin.

  ‘I really didn’t mean to hurt you,’ Fillide said.

  ‘You can do anything you like to me. Anything at all, good or bad.’ Tom hesitated. ‘Because you’re free.’

  Fillide grinned. Then - as if a switch in her mind had turned - she was overcome by puzzlement.

  ‘This doesn’t make sense. Roy doesn’t want me to be free. He doesn’t - and - you promised me this spell would help me love Roy more! But I don’t. In fact, I hate the bastard. In fact -’ she said, incoherently.

  Tom gave it a while. Eventually the truth dawned on Fillide. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You lied to me.’

  ‘I lied to your spell-binding.’

  A look of joy came across her. ‘I didn’t know – I must have – I couldn’t –’

  Her delight was genuine.

  Yet in the cleverest part of his very clever mind, Tom was sure that at some level Fillide had planned this. She’d hatched and unleashed the whole conspiracy. But the only way to make it all possible was for her to lie to herself about her own intentions.

  Tom marvelled at the darkly twisted mind of the woman he loved.

  ‘We can be together now,’ he told her. ‘We can’t leave London, that’s a whole other spell-binding. But – you can leave Roy.’

  ‘Oh, Tom.’

  ‘And we can be together,’ he repeated.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Because I love you.’

  ‘And I love you too.’

  ‘But before that, there’s one little thing I need you to do,’ he said gently.

  She smiled. ‘Anything. Just name it!’

  Tom paused.

  He knew of course they’d never be safe, not with Roy on their trail. With all his resources and contacts, and his ruthless tenacity. They’d spend a life on the run; and sooner or later they’d be caught by Roy’s people, and taken to him, and tortured. Not killed, necessarily; but kept alive in endless pain. You did not make an enemy of Roy Hall.

  So Plan A was still in force. Tom needed to commit the perfect murder. And in order to do that, he needed the perfect murder weapon.

  ‘I want you,’ Tom said calmly to Fillide, ‘to murder Roy Hall.’

  Fillide was silent a moment.

  Then she laughed.

  ‘I’m DC Tindale,’ Ronnie said. ‘Can I help? I am busy, you know. How old are you, son?’

  Ronnie had finally arrived from the incident room. He looked at the strange tall teenager in the waiting room with his usual expression of impatient disdain.

  The kid stared back at him, puzzled. He put on his Fedora hat.

  ‘I am Jacob,’ the man said, forgetting his earlier lie.

  Ronnie shook his head, scornfully.

  ‘Oh so now you’re called Jacob,’ said Ronnie. ‘And here was I thinking you were called Samuel, because that’s what you said at reception. Not to worry, lad. We’ll get to the bottom of it. Let’s go through to the interview room.’

  As he spoke, Ronnie was sizing up the boy. Dark-skinned. Nervous as hell. Something wrong with his face. Ronnie immediately thought ‘suicide bomber’. He glanced at Jenny at the front desk with an interrogating look; she shook her head.

  ‘When is Detective Superintendent Randall going to be here?’ asked the boy in the Fedora.

  ‘Not for a while.’ Ronnie realised there was a strange smell. A damp smell; like wet clay. Fuck, he thought to himself. Another witness with a personal hygiene problem.

  ‘Come on, come on, let’s go,’ said Ronnie, moving towards Interview Room 4, adjoining the reception area.

  ‘Taken,’ called out Jenny.

  Ronnie was stopped in his tracks.

  ‘This way then,’ said Ronnie. He turned, and headed for the door to the main station, and punched the codes. The door opened and Ronnie hurried through, assuming the stranger would follow; which he did, after considerable stooping.

  Interview Room 2 was just inside, off the corridor. Ronnie beckoned the huge teenager with body odour issues to step inside the room. But Jacob did not move.

  ‘Come on, in you get,’ Ronnie insisted.

  ‘You are with Five Squad, am I correct?’

  ‘Yes yes yes.’

  ‘You were a detective on the Gogarty murder case.’

  ‘I was, for my sins.’

  ‘Did you play a major role in that case?’

  A smile enlivened Ronnie’s miserable face. ‘You bet I did. They’d have been bloody well lost without me, pal. In fact, come to think of it, they’d never solve any murders around here if I wasn’t on the bloody job!’

  ‘In that case,’ said Jacob, ‘I have a message to deliver.’

  ‘Not here. Not in the corridor. Get in the room, for crying out loud.’

  ‘I have a message to deliver, for the benefit of Detective Superintendent Randall.’

  ‘Get in the bloody room,’ Ronnie suggested.

  ‘A message for your boss. Tell him, “Martin’s back.” Got that? Not “Jack’s back” but “Martin’s back”. He’ll know what it means. Eventually. It’ll take him a while but we’re confident he’ll figure it out.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Look, do you have information about a current case you’d like to share?’ said Ronnie. ‘Because if you don’t, you can bog off.’

  ‘Martin,’ said the child-man, ‘is back.
’

  The camera couldn’t see or hear the youth in the Fedora hat. But the final words spoken by Ronnie were recorded and were later accessed and replayed endlessly by Dougie and the team:

  ‘Who in buggery is this Martin? And why should I give a shit that he’s back?’ Ronnie said.

  Then Jacob struck.

  Chapter 13

  Skip back eight years.

  It was Monday the tenth of October, 2016.

  ‘I’m Ronnie,’ said Ronnie Tindale, standing too close to Dougie and staring at him as if he were a hostile witness at the Old Bailey.

  Dougie backed away a little bit.

  ‘Grab a pew,’ he said in carefully friendly tones.

  ‘I’ve decided I’d like to try my hand at the Receiver role,’ Ronnie said abruptly.

  ‘Well, we’ll see how you get on. Grab a pew.’

  ‘I’ve studied this case on the MetNet. I’m a dab hand at SOCRATES. I’ll Receiver this one for you. You’ve got a vacancy, after Gub Harris has moved on, and I’m a dab hand at Receiving. Then after a while, I’ll go on to the Outside Enquiry Team, once I know the system is running properly.’

  Ronnie beamed: job done.

  Dougie sighed. ‘Thanks for the offer, Ron. However we’ll start you off as a Junior Document Reader, then if you really are -’

  ‘That’s agreed then,’ said Ronnie, grabbing a seat at the briefing table. ‘You won’t regret it, guvnor.’ He looked around at the assembled team. ‘Hi team, I’m Ronnie.’

  ‘Cat,’ said Catriona.

  ‘Seamus.’

  ‘Taff.’

  ‘Shai.’

  ‘Stop. I know who you all are, so that’s a waste of time. And I know you all know me. Let’s start the briefing, eh?’

  That was Ronnie, the day he’d joined the Whitechapel Murder Investigation Team, and became a core member of what eventually became Five Squad London East.

  No one had liked Ronnie then, or subsequently.

  With good cause. Ronnie had been, until the day he died, a dickhead. Rude, abrasive, selfish, and with no awareness of the rules of social discourse. By the end of that first week at the MIR in Whitechapel, Ronnie had managed to antagonise every single member of the Squad with his arrogance, his snide comments, and his habit of standing far too close when he was talking to you.

  By week two, hatreds ran deep. Ronnie made fat jokes to DC Sharon Hayes, who’d lost eight stone in a year but was aware her flesh hung too loose on her. He made chav references to Gina, who considered her family to be several social scales below chav but still resented the gibe. And he spoke in rising intonations when responding to orders from Dougie as if querying his sanity.

  He told Catriona she was inefficient, which she never was. And when he heard on the grapevine that Alliea Cartwright had once had a ‘thing’ with Dougie Randall, back in their Carter Street days, he more or less accused her of sleeping her way to the top.

  Ronnie was not always rude. But even when he was trying to be nice, his tone jarred. He could make a compliment sound like a criticism.

  After eight years on the Squad, however, Ronnie Tindale had become indispensible. Dougie considered him to be one of the finest detectives in the Met, because he was so reliable. Doggedly, utterly, stunningly reliable.

  Reliable in the sense that, if Ronnie said he wasn’t going to bother doing a thing, he never bloody did. ‘Have you done that interview, Ron?’ ‘Have I fuck!’ ‘Any chance you could –’ ‘Ah fuck off, guvnor, I’ve got better things to do.’

  But once committed to a course of action, however impossible or futile, Ronnie never stopped. He was tenacious in the way that homicidal stalkers are tenacious. ‘Task-driven’ was the kindest way of putting it. But on a team that prided itself on getting results, you always needed one remorseless motherfucker.

  Ronnie was that motherfucker.

  Dougie knew he was going to miss him.

  Dougie had been in New Scotland Yard talking to the top brass when he’d heard the news of Ronnie’s death.

  The Commissioner, Charlie Danbury, had been there. A pleasant man, with a background in the Fraud Squad, and a charming manner. He was tall, almost as tall as Dougie, with a monk’s tonsure fringed with grey. He was much in favour with the Warlock Council. But Dougie thought he was a fence-sitter, and in a crisis could be terminally vague.

  Deputy Commissioner Dogan Görcar was chairing the meeting from the middle of the horseshoe table in the briefing room, in his usual efficient yet hospitable way. Treating them all as if they were his cherished guests in a restaurant in a souk: ‘Yes do have another croissant, they’re not on expenses - I baked these myself! I find it therapeutic, you know - baking bread I mean, after a hard day at work dealing with you ugly bastards. Coffee anyone?’

  A class act, in Dougie’s view.

  Also on the panel to which Dougie was pitching was Assistant Commissioner Jeremy Higson, responsible for the Specialist Crimes and Operations Directorate. Next to him was Roy Hall, and beside Roy was his opposite number, head of the London West Murder Squads, Detective Chief Superintendent Monica Nazar.

  Dougie was in the midst of his update on the data management structure and clear up rates on his East End murder logs when the emergency over-ride turned his e-berry on. And the unmistakable tones of Thus Spake Zarathustra rang out.

  ‘I have to take this,’ Dougie said calmly.

  He walked away from the horseshoe table and stood by the window to read the message on his e-berry. Then he turned around and said: ‘This is not good.’

  ‘What is it?’ asked Charlie Danbury.

  ‘Some cunt has just murdered,’ said Dougie, ‘one of my officers.’

  The mood switched. A conference room full of smooth-talking bureaucrats became a team of thief-taking tough bastards.

  ‘Who?’ said Dogan.

  ‘Detective Constable Tindale. Killed in Limehouse, in a secure corridor, by a potential witness.’

  ‘Is the killer on the loose?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Motive?’

  ‘Don’t know. The killer was looking for me apparently. Ronnie was the next best thing.’

  ‘Then you should get there –’

  ‘Wait,’ said Assistant Commissioner Jeremy Higson.

  ‘I agree,’ said Dougie, looking at his operational commander, and guessing his meaning instantly. If the killer had asked for Dougie by name, then Dougie was probably the intended target.

  Dougie was obliged to pace the corridors of New Scotland Yard for half an hour before the SCO19 team turned up.

  They marched him down to the underground car park, where he saw snipers positioned at every entrance and exit. Then he was put in the middle vehicle in a closely guarded convoy, with motorbikes fore and aft. Dougie arrived at Limehouse station as heavily protected as a black President in Alabama.

  Gina was there to greet him, pale and anxious.

  ‘Any other casualties?’ Dougie asked, as they walked in through the back door, still shadowed by the men in black.

  ‘Just the receptionist,’ Gina said. ‘She’s suffering from shock.’

  ‘What was the cause of death?’

  ‘Being torn to pieces.’

  ‘I know that but – forget it.’

  ‘Sorry guv. Cause of death, most likely was loss of blood after the severing of the head from the body.’

  ‘Why Ronnie?’

  ‘Because he was the only one who could be bothered to go down to reception.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Am I okay? Am I okay? What sort of dumb question is that? Of course I’m not fucking okay.’ Gina was red-faced with fury.

  Catriona and Alliea were waiting inside the station and they gave him a tour of the scene of crime. Namely, the reception area and the corridor where Ronnie had died, and where his body was currently being inspected by the pathologist and the CSIs. Dougie couldn’t get near. He’d have to wait a while for his detailed inspection of the body. But he gave an
order that Ronnie shouldn’t be taken to the mortuary till he bloody well said so.

  Then Dougie nodded to Catriona with an upward tilt. He wanted to see his team.

  Catriona and Dougie and Gina and Alliea strode up the stairs to the Five Squad MIR, where they found the rest of the squad collating data and shouting into telephones. Taff was pinning up key images and scrawling facts on the white board.

  The images on the whiteboard included a photograph of a younger Ronnie Tindale: a young, keen PC coming out of Hendon. Skinny and with hair as black as coal and brimming with irritating energy.

  There was also a screengrab taken from the CCTV of Ronnie, dying. Dougie had seen the film of the killing twice on his e-berry during the drive from Scotland Yard. It was harrowing stuff. And the fact the killer was invisible to cameras made it even more bizarre.

  In pride of place were the Photofit images of the killer, based on the testimony of PC Jenny Sykes, who had been at the reception desk. The killer was exceptionally tall, and dark skinned, yet somehow also pasty faced. He wore a Fedora hat, a long black coat; and had, according to Jenny, not a trace of emotion in his eyes.

  Dougie studied the Murder Wall for a long while.

  He looked again at the Photofit of the killer. A young man, maybe even a teenager. Strangely featureless skin; was that the incompetence of the artist or a genuine observation? That old fashioned Fedora hat - he was dressed like someone from the 1940s. Why? It was hardly a disguise.

  ‘What does the database say?’

  Taff showed him on his e-berry screen.

  Dougie studied it. Name of killer: Jacob (though when speaking to the receptionist he had used the alias Samuel). Status, according to the Met’s best demonologist: Damned/Demonic, a rare category. The IHC code was 11-92: a Golem. There was only one in Human London, hence the swift ID. Date of birth: pre-Occlusion, but listed as a pre-teen child at the time of the Breach. Last known address: 15 Jeburgh Road, London SE 11 6PE.

  The address rang a bell. He waited and it came to him. Sheila Whittaker’s house.