Hell on Earth

by Philip Palmer

  ‘It’s a murder,’ said Andy Homerton.

  ‘A beating.’

  ‘Looks like a murder to me.’

  ‘Is it connected to our case?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dougie, bleakly. ‘Put it on the wall.’

  Catriona clicked and the video image filled the projector wall.

  ‘Rewind.’

  ‘It’s rewound.’

  They watched the clip. Shot on an old-style video camera, without 3D. It showed their boss, Roy Hall, kicking and punching a man, together with two accomplices: a burly man with a big nose who was hitting the victim with a lead pipe, and a red-haired woman in a brown jacket, who was banging the poor bastard’s head on the concrete.

  ‘Who’s the victim?’

  ‘Don’t know?’

  ‘Who’s the guy next to Roy?’

  ‘That’s Mickey Dolan. Used to run Carter Street nick. Roy’s ex-boss.’

  ‘He’s dead now, so the scuttlebutt has it. Killed by an assassin, they reckon, but the body was never found. The red-haired bint?’

  ‘That’s former DS Angela Ferris,’ said Dougie coldly. ‘My wife Angela.’

  The silence wounded him. It was full of startlement mingled with kindness. Dougie couldn’t endure it.

  ‘Shit,’ said Catriona eventually

  ‘Boss, I -’ said Gina, but had nowhere to go.

  ‘She’s dead too,’ someone pointed out.

  ‘Yeah. Boss I didn’t -’

  ‘So - look, there’s no need for the world to see this tape, eh? Not since everyone involved is dead.’ Shai argued.

  ‘Apart from Roy, that is! I mean, that’s Roy Hall! Committing GBH, at the very least, and probably murder!’

  ‘Yes but even so. No good will come of sending this to whatever. The world. Not when our guvnor’s late missus is, you know. Boss?’ Shai opened his palms, asking for guidance.

  Dougie’s heart broke.

  ‘I’m getting a message from the Commissioner,’ said Catriona, off her screen. ‘Querying the video attachment he’s just been sent. He wants us to issue a warrant for the arrest of Roy Hall.’

  Dougie gave it up. He sat down. It was over.

  ‘My God.’

  ‘Who the hell sent this film?’

  ‘Roy did,’ said Dougie wearily. ‘Or rather, one of his proxies did. Roy always said if anything ever happened to him, this tape would go public. And now it has. That’s how I know that he -’

  ‘I’ve got a shout,’ said Andy Homerton. ‘Gangland hit, the Mall. Victim killed by a ninja female, no ID. Victim is -’

  Dougie already knew.

  ‘- Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Hall.’

  A long silence permeated the room.

  Tom smiled.

  Chapter 15

  Fillide was in the shower, washing off the blood. She had the water on Hot. As hot as it could go. Hot enough to burn human skin. It was agonising, but she found it comforting. This was her way of reminding herself she would never again feel burning pain for disobeying her spell binder.

  She was happy.

  She tried to remember the last time she’d felt so happy. And she realised that all her happiest memories were of the distant past. Her home town of Siena when she was a little child. Playing with Anna Bianchini in the road outside her house. The glories of Rome when she was a girl, and as a woman. The days when she was alive.

  She thought about Tom.

  She knew Tom had risked everything for her. He’d jeopardised his career, broken the law, and cast aside his own strict moral code, all in the hope of winning her love.

  She smiled at the thought of his stupidity. He was such a fool. A pathetic ugly annoying fool.

  In fairness, though, she conceded, Tom had a good heart. And he was undeniably loyal, and devoted to her. He had done everything she had, deep down, wanted him to do, and he’d been smart enough to read the clues she’d left for him.

  But she could never love one such as him. For he was a child, not a man. Callow. Graceless. And what’s more, he was a freak. Even before he was deformed he was an affront to the eyes. Now, he was a monster.

  She remembered Michel Agnolo Cerisi of Caravaggio; his beauty, his grace, his ineffable charisma. The last and perhaps the only man she had ever loved. To think that Tom believed he could compete with that!

  Fillide stepped out of the shower and rubbed her lobster-red skin dry with a towel, so vigorously that some of her skin came away. No matter, it would grow back. She padded into the living room and turned on Roy’s hi-fi system. The speakers were embedded in the wall; Roy really had loved his music. She chose an Italian opera, to remind herself of the taverns of home where men with falsetto voices would sing while drenched in drink.

  Then she went into the bedroom to choose the clothes she was going to wear for her escape. Her wardrobe here was smaller than in the police house, but she had more than a few Gaultier outfits and a Dior dress. The music followed her into every room. She saw her scalded naked self in the mirror and regretted the shower, but then she smiled.

  She chose a muted outfit: grey jacket, black skirt, a fur trim. She chose shoes with low heels in case she had to run for it. When she was dressed she inspected herself and was pleased. Restrained, but still eye-catching.

  For a moment, she idly wondered if she should kill Tom too. And thereby make a clean sweep of it, by destroying all the men on Earth who thought that they could control her. And who had believed they were allowed to love her.

  For Roy Hall, despite all the evidence to the contrary, had in fact loved her. Yes, it was true: the woman he had enslaved, he also loved. With all his heart and soul, with the kind of passion that burns for all eternity. She knew that for a fact. However hard he’d tried to conceal it, she could smell it on him. His obsession. His infatuation.

  His love.

  It was Roy’s one weakness. It was why he had made the mistake of keeping her close for so many years, even though he knew she was a skilled assassin who loathed him with all her heart. Even when he’d taunted her that time, by pretending to let her escape to Damnedville, it was love that had prompted him to test her. Else, why fucking bother? A slave is just a slave; yet Fillide was clearly much more to him. That’s why he’d needed to be reassured about her loyalty. That’s why he’d asked Magnus to sound out whether she did truly want to escape.

  But that’s all she ever had wanted: freedom from him. And she had seen the desperate hurt in Roy’s eyes when he’d picked up her smouldering body on the street outside the Ghetto. To know she would endure all that, to get away from him, was shattering to his self-confidence. That was when he had learned he could never command her heart; just her body and her voice.

  If he’d been smarter, and less in love, Roy would have ditched her after that fiasco. Or even extirpated her. Well that was his stupid mistake.

  She decided not to bother killing Tom. He was a nobody. Not worth the bother.

  She was dressed now, and she went back into the dining room. She turned the music up to full volume. That meant loud. Very loud indeed. Fillide’s body trembled as she listened to the aria. It was Puccini, a modern composer but one who honoured the spirit of the songs of the streets. She didn’t know the name of this particular tune but it was sublime. A girl sang about her tiny frozen hand; and Fillide's black heart melted at the pathos of the image.

  She opened the small door in the hallway that led to the climate-controlled box room where Roy kept his wine. She hunted among the dusty bottles for the best vintages he owned, but she didn’t know enough about wine to be sure. Eventually she decided she couldn’t choose and she opened every single bottle. By the time the cops found out about this place - which had been bought with cash and did not appear on any of Roy’s official documents - the wine would have turned to vinegar.

  This wine collection was Roy’s pride and joy. She revelled in destroying it all.

  In less than ten minutes she drank two bottles of Roy’s oldest Riojas, the ’57 and the �
��72. Then she vomited them up again, Lucretius style, all over Roy’s favourite armchair. She smashed every single one of his wine glasses by hurling them at the walls. Some of them Murano, some worth thousands of pounds each. She trashed them all. She punched numerous holes in his plasma screen TV with her bare fist, leaving dead woman’s blood all over the shards and on the carpet, and a few bloody fingerprints on the walls. Though she’d already left enough clues for the forensics people to pick up on, including the knife she’d abandoned at the murder scene, which had her fingerprints on it.

  Why bother to hide her guilt? When she was proud of her guilt?

  She also smashed his treasured collection of Sèvres china plates and bowls and cups, tossing them in the air then punching them, like clays being shattered by a shotgun. And she poured liquid accelerant over his big double bed and lit it. The whoosh of flame delighted her, and as the fire danced upon the mattress it made the gleaming gold of the ormolu gleam even brighter. The flames wouldn’t spread because all Roy’s furniture was enchanted. But her conflagration of the sheets and mattress would burn for hours or days, and possibly even weeks. So there was a chance the bed would still be aflame when the Murder Squad found this, Roy’s secret hideaway.

  She relished the sight of the bed on fire. She had many dark memories of what had happened on that mattress; she couldn’t bear for it to survive.

  She packed a few more clothes in a suitcase and took the lift down to the underground car park. Then she stole Roy’s Maserati. He’d been driving the Lamborghini when she killed him; the Maserati was only used for social events, and she doubted any of the investigating cops would know of its existence.

  She drove towards Albert Bridge and once again savoured the view of the river as she approached the checkpoint. She stopped and wound down her window, and showed the guard her warrant card. It was an Asian guard today - but like the white guard she’d seen that night all those years ago, the night of her failed escape, he had appallingly bad skin. Must be to do with the river, she mused.

  It was sunny. The waters of the Thames glinted beautifully. It felt good to be alive; so to speak. She felt playful.

  She drove along Battersea Bridge Road. Then left, past Battersea Park with the birds cawing and singing in the trees. Over the roundabout, past the Power Station with its upturned legs. Then up and across to Nine Elms, past the furniture shops. And on to Lambeth Road, to the junction by St Anne’s Church sat, next to the Lambeth Bordello where Roy had taken her so many times. She drove on as far as Tooley Street and parked in the underground warehouse. Above her was Roy’s treasury, full of gold, silver, jewellery, ingots, vases, and countless priceless artefacts. She had an empty sports bag and a rucksack and intended to take all she could carry.

  An hour later, resplendent in a gold necklace and gold bangles and a golden hip chain, with two bags full of ancient bling, she got back in the car and drove towards Walworth.

  She took a left, and drove along Lambeth Road as far as the vast pit with a sad propped-up façade in front of it that used to be the Imperial War Museum. She was retracing her exact journey of the night of her failed escape. But this time she was filled with triumph, for there was nothing to prevent her from reaching her blessed bourne.

  When she was in sight of the Ghetto, she parked the car and walked up to the tall wooden door set in the high palisade. There was no bell or knocker. She rapped the wood with her knuckles, as loudly as she could manage.

  There was no response. Eventually, she began slapping the wood with the flat of her hand and shouting out curses loudly in angry Italian; some phrases were too imaginatively obscene for her translation spell to render into English. After a long delay, the door slowly opened. A demon’s head peeped out. He was red-scaled, with three horns, and three tiny eyes, and a goatee beard. A Threshold Demon.

  Fillide smiled.

  ‘I would like to obtain entry to this place of sanctuary,’ she said courteously.

  ‘You have gold?’

  ‘I have gold.’

  ‘Much gold?’

  ‘Much gold.’ The sports bag was bulging; no human being would have been able to carry it. The rucksack was even heavier.

  The demon sniffed the gold, approvingly. The door opened wider, a large enough gap for her to enter. Invitation enough.

  Fillide stepped inside.

  ‘Roy Hall,’ said Magnus, ‘is, or rather was, a prick. A craven poltroon. An oaf. A toad. I would spit on him, if he were alive, and assuming of course that he was not controlling me with his fucking spells. But, fortunately, he is dead, and the spells are no more. And for this I rejoice.’

  Magnus savoured the joy of being able to speak so very ill of his former master.

  ‘You served him well,’ said the man in the grey suit, mildly.

  They were in the Spice of Life pub in Cambridge Circus. It was a busy place in the heart of Soho, close to some of Magnus’s favourite clubs and brothels. Magnus was enjoying a venison burger and chips, and also a plate of sausage and mash. He generally ate two meals at the same time; he took a dim view of the modern fad for portion control.

  A few minutes ago this man had told Magnus his name was Armitage. He also hinted he was something to do with the government, by which he clearly meant the Warlock Council, not the ineffectual London Parliament. He had appeared at Magnus’s table in his favourite boozer without notice. He’d simply sat down with two pints in his hand and began talking.

  Magnus wondered if this man had been following him earlier in the day. If so, Magnus hadn’t seen him. That told him something.

  ‘And now I’m free,’ Magnus pointed out. ‘No more enchantment, no more spell bindings. I am my own master.’

  Magnus beamed and took a huge sip of beer.

  ‘For now, that’s true enough,’ said the man in the grey suit. His voice was low pitched but assured. His confident demeanour offered the gentlest of hints about the nature and extent of his authority. ‘But remember, my Viking friend. With the merest click of a finger, I could re-bind you.’

  ‘Try it and you’re dead,’ snorted Magnus.

  The man clicked his fingers.

  Magnus’s beer glass shattered.

  Within twenty minutes of the news of Roy’s demise, Five Squad had been fully briefed on the case. Eight other corpses had been found at the scene, provisionally identified as security guards employed by a company owned by Roy Hall. And a young man had been shot and wounded; all the indications were that he was a passerby who’d been the unlucky victim of a random shot. There was no CCTV footage of the killer, who was invisible to cameras hence damned. But fingerprints had been found on the body – daubed in blood upon the victim’s face. And the murder weapon, a dagger, had been found close by, also bearing prints.

  These weren’t blank like the Golem fingerprints. No, these were fully defined prints which a quick CRO check revealed as belonging to the Resurrected Detective Constable Fillide Melandroni. And three witnesses who had got a good look at the female assassin – who amazingly had not bothered to wear a hood or a mask – identified Fillide as the killer after seeing an e-berry image of a painting by the artist Caravaggio.

  It was a open and shut case; Fillide Melandroni had murdered Roy Hall. And Dougie felt like a dog with two tails and a bone in its mouth; though he didn’t dare show it.

  Roy Hall was dead! Finally! And, despite all the other shit that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, despite the public disgrace of his beloved wife Angela, Dougie felt a burden had been lifted from him.

  No one knew how it was possible, though. As a hell entity Fillide was spell bound by warlocks; Roy was a copper, and Fillide’s boss, as well as being her registered owner, and her enchantment should not have allowed her to harm him. So how could she have killed him as she did?

  Only Tom knew the truth. His plan had worked.

  But, as the squad was briefed, and as the details of the murder became known, Tom’s spirits sank. For Fillide had wilfully ignored most of the
things he’d so carefully instructed her to do. She’d wrecked the perfection of his scheme.

  The plan had been: she should have been dressed as the golem, with a long black coat and a Fedora hat that would have hidden her face, and stepped heels to make her six inches taller. She should have worn latex gloves that left fingermarks with no prints; Tom had made them for her specially. And she should have carved the word ‘dybbuk’ in Roy’s flesh. And if she’d done all that, they’d have been home and dry. Fall guy in place; virtually zero risk that Tom or Fillide would ever become a suspect. And so they could have carried on living in London as lovers, or even as man and wife, with no fear of payback.

  Instead Fillide had fucked it up and had left clues so grotesquely obvious that even Seven Squad, who dealt with Central London murders, had managed to crack the case. What in Hades was she playing at?

  Once the briefing was over Tom deleted his Actions and left the briefing room to meet Fillide at their agreed rendezvous spot, by the lovers’ statue at St Pancras Station.

  She wasn’t there.

  SWEETHEART MY LOVE WHERE ARE YOU SPEAK TO ME

  Tom pressed Send.

  He was more than three sheets to the wind, sitting in a pub fuck knew where, texting and emailing every few seconds, having lost his ability to un-press CAP LOCK or turn on his Spell Check.

  I LOVE YOU I WORSHOP YOU I’VE SACRIFICED EVERYTHING FO RY U

  Tom pressed Send.

  FILIDE MY OF PLESE ANSWE ME Y CANT DO THS TO ME

  Tom pressed Send.

  FILLIDE PLEASE I LOVEU

  Send.

  FILLLIDDE PLESE I LOVEU

  Send.

  FLIDE PLEASEILOVEU

  Send.

  FILIDEPLEASEILOVEU

  Send.

  ILOVEU

  Send.

  Y R THELOV OMY LIFF

  Send.

  It occurred to him he ought to stop.

  He waited an hour in case there was a reply from Fillide.

  There was no reply.