THE UNWILLING SON an absolutely gripping mystery thriller that will take your breath away

by Jane Adams

  ‘You could have trusted me,’ he said to Ray, his voice soft and rather sad.

  ‘And why should I do that?’

  He felt the young man shrug. Even though his eyes were getting used to the darkness, the black-clad figure blended into the surrounding gloom so well that he could barely discern his outline.

  The young man moved, bent to lift something from the floor. The door opened, revealing a ramp leading down, and he gestured for Ray to precede him, pausing to relock the doors behind them before moving down the ramp to yet another set of doors.

  Inside, Ray let his gaze travel over the paintings on the walls. The sheer size of this crypt, hidden beneath the streets, astounded him. And there was Katie, sitting on what looked like a raised dais, an altar almost, at one end of the room, beneath the image of a massive winged figure, hands outstretched as if in greeting.

  ‘Ray!’

  Katie sounded delighted. She ran to him and threw her arms around his neck. ‘I didn’t think he’d really fetch you. He said he would but I didn’t believe him.’

  Still irritated by the entire affair, Ray detached her and held her by the hands. ‘Do you know how many people are out looking for you?’ he demanded. ‘Do you know how your parents feel right now? I took a copy of your note to them and your mother just couldn’t stop crying. Your dad looks ten years older.’ He turned from her to face the man who stood quietly as though waiting his turn. ‘Just what the hell is going on?’

  For the next hour Ray listened as they talked to him about the dead boys and the ‘other one’ that Nathan felt was so close by. He had heard nothing about Morgan’s son and so all of this was new to him. He listened, feeling the patterns falling into place and a new set of questions forming in his mind.

  ‘Nathan,’ he said. ‘Nathan was the name of Lee’s final victim.’

  ‘It’s a name. I use it.’

  ‘And what is your name? Your given name?’

  Nathan shook his head slowly as though he didn’t know.

  Ray sighed, very tired and deeply frustrated. ‘You said you’re keeping her here for her safety,’ he said, gesturing towards Katie. ‘And yet you know that you can’t. I will allow that your motives were good enough, but your methods are all wrong. Why not come to us, tell us what you know and ask for help?’

  He shook his head. ‘You would have locked me away,’ he said.

  ‘Who told you that? Who fed your mind with so much crap?’ Receiving no answer, Ray carried on, speaking slowly and carefully, knowing how important it was that his words got through. ‘There’s a child out there, dead or waiting to die, and a young woman here who doesn’t know what’s going to happen to her or if you can stop it. I think you’ve seen enough death. I don’t believe you want any of this to happen.’

  ‘I can’t save him. It will be too late.’

  ‘Where did Lee kill the boys?’

  ‘At the Markham house. Down in the cellar. It collapsed after the explosion.’

  ‘The Markham house!’ Ray was genuinely shocked. ‘The ones who lived there, did they know?’

  Nathan shook his head. ‘Some of them, I think. Others did not want to know. Lee never wanted me talking to them. I lived there, but he kept me separate. Me and James.’

  ‘The cellar. You’re sure it can’t be accessed now?’

  ‘Certain. I went there after I heard that Harrison Lee had died. I knew . . . I was afraid it might all start again. That Morgan would come back. I thought that Harrison might have sent his soul to him, but it wasn’t Morgan. It was Morgan’s son.’

  Nathan stopped abruptly, and for a while no one spoke. Then Katie looked long and hard at him and said, ‘Tell him everything, Nathan. Tell him the rest.’

  ‘I wasn’t the only one. I mean the only one they thought might be the avatar. Lee . . . He was my father, at least that’s what he said. Lee wanted it to be me, but for a long time Morgan argued that it was James, and then something happened. I think they might have tried the ritual or done something and it went wrong, and they changed their minds about the other one. About James Morgan.’

  ‘Tell me about him. What do you know about him now?’

  ‘He’s older than me. Taller than me. Stronger. And he moves like smoke and sometimes, sometimes I can hear his thoughts. He saw what I saw back then, he sees what I see now, like we’re the same mind, and I know that Lee did not send his soul to Morgan. He called out to Morgan’s son and I believe he found him.’

  Ray frowned. He wasn’t happy with all of this talk of possession, though he had to admit that there had been times in his life when he had seen and experienced things he could not easily explain. And, as he’d told Beckett, often it didn’t seem to matter what you believed, you were just an observer, not an actor.

  ‘You have to come with me,’ he said to Nathan at last. ‘You have to release me and let me take Katie to Beckett. Come with us, tell him what you’ve told me. He’s been talking to Martyn Shaw and I think if the two of you meet we might be able to get somewhere. Save more lives.’

  Nathan gazed down at the floor as if the answer was to be found there. Then he nodded slowly. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll come. In a little while.’

  * * *

  It was after two a.m. by the time Dignan called back. The incident room was as crowded as if it were eight o’clock in the morning just before the early briefing.

  Beckett had left most of his team to get a night’s sleep. There was nothing they could usefully be doing that wasn’t being done by uniform and tomorrow would be a busy day, sifting through the information that the past few hours had generated. Interviewing Farrant and his people.

  George and Martyn Shaw had arrived back just after one. Beckett wondered what speed George must have been doing to achieve that but thought it better not to ask. Dignan had worked wonders in the brief time, but then, Beckett thought, he probably had the resources and didn’t seem to have anyone telling him what he couldn’t do.

  ‘James Morgan was committed as a voluntary patient at the age of seventeen,’ Dignan told them. ‘His father told the doctors that James had a drug problem but that he knew nothing more. The doctor who had care of James, a Dr Carpenter, wrote in his notes that he believed the father knew more than he was letting on but commented that it was not unusual for parents to be in denial. James was psychotic and delusional. He told doctors that he believed himself to be some kind of messiah who was going to save the world. His tox results revealed cocaine, amphetamine and possibly heroin, though as you know that metabolizes in something like forty-eight hours, so the results were inconclusive.

  ‘There was an initial diagnosis of latent schizophrenia. He heard voices, was deeply paranoid, but the tox results cast doubt on that. His symptoms were as consistent with a mind screwed up by chemicals as they were with schizophrenia.’

  ‘Was the schizophrenia diagnosis ever confirmed?’ George asked.

  ‘No. In fact later in James’s mental health career no fewer than three doctors cast doubt upon the analysis. James was destroyed by the drugs his father and Lee administered and by their . . . well, brainwashing is probably as good a term as any. They took an already vulnerable young man and systematically took him apart.’

  ‘And what happened to him, after Friar’s Retreat?’

  ‘Half a dozen other hospitals. He was finally admitted back to Briargate and treated in their drug-dependency unit. He’d been through treatment before but always on release got back on the stuff. This time though, something seemed to stick. He came off and stayed off. Eventually he went back to live in the community and they even found him a job. His delusions hadn’t completely left him, he was still excessively religious, but he seemed peaceful. Content, even. Until about six weeks ago.’

  ‘And what happened then?’

  ‘One day, the 18th as it happens, a month before Lee’s death, James didn’t show up at work and no one’s seen him since.’

  ‘What turned things around for him?’ Beckett asked.
>
  ‘He learned to paint. It seemed to be the answer for him. He didn’t have much talent by all accounts, but as therapy it did have its merits. Before that he made collages. He used the wings of moths. He’d lure them into his room by leaving his curtains open and having the light switched on, then he’d pull off their wings when they came crashing down. He called them his angels.’

  * * *

  They were all silent for a time when Dignan had signed off, then Shaw spoke softly. ‘Not delusional. Indoctrinated. Brainwashed and drugged. Then when he broke down they shifted their attention to the other one, the boy Lee called his angel.’ He grimaced. ‘I hear voices, see visions and they call me a prophet. James Morgan—’

  ‘You still function in the real world,’ George interrupted harshly. ‘You have control over what you do. Question it. And you don’t demand the death of children to satisfy your need for power.’

  ‘So James Morgan becomes prime suspect,’ Beckett said slowly. ‘You think he has Katie and Ray?’

  ‘I don’t know about Ray,’ Shaw told him, ‘but Katie, no. I think she’s with the angel.’

  ‘Angel!’ Beckett couldn’t help but be contemptuous. ‘OK, so there are two of them out there, maybe equally dangerous.’ He turned angrily to Shaw. ‘What kind of an organization is this? How do you live with yourself?’

  ‘Was this?’ Shaw retorted. He sighed. ‘When I took over what was left. . . . All that was left really was a group of frightened people looking for direction. Those who had somewhere else to go mostly did and tried to forget they’d ever been a part of all this. The ones who were left were shell-shocked. They’d given their lives to Morgan. Their money too. Many had cut themselves off from family and had nothing to go back to.

  ‘Farrant is right about one thing. I did throw away Morgan and Lee’s teachings. I did wipe the slate clean and turn the Eyes of God into something unrecognizable to the likes of him. And I have not one single regret about that.’ He turned to Mitch. ‘I am so sorry about Irene and Bryn. I truly thought they’d be able to put the past behind them.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mitch said sadly. ‘I don’t believe they wanted Morgan back in the end. And I know they didn’t want what’s happening now. I think they killed themselves because they couldn’t deal with the guilt. If they’d talked about what they knew earlier, the children might not have died . . .’

  At that point the phone began to ring and it brought the first good news they’d heard in a long time. Ray was on the line and he had Katie with him.

  Chapter Forty

  Ray looked exhausted when he and Katie walked into the incident room, but all eyes were on Katie. It was Beckett who spoke first.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  Katie nodded briefly, then strode across the room to where Martyn Shaw was standing. She was clearly furious about something. Her blue eyes flashed coldly and even Shaw had the grace to look perturbed.

  Anger had lent her more fluency than usual, though she still stumbled over the words. ‘Nathan said you helped him but I don’t think you did. I think you just gave him money and hoped he’d go away. You turned Nathan into just another down-and-out. He might have had money, but that was all he had. No one to care about him, no family, nothing. It wasn’t his fault, what happened, but you just thought out of sight, out of mind, instead of dealing with him like he mattered.’

  Everyone fell silent, shocked by her outburst, but Shaw just nodded.

  ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know what I could do with Nathan. That way I’m guilty as the rest.’

  ‘Nathan?’ Beckett questioned.

  ‘The kid on the bike,’ Ray told him.

  ‘Harrison Lee’s angel,’ Shaw said.

  Ray finally broke the silence that followed this announcement. ‘I thought I’d persuaded him to come with us, but when we left the basement he disappeared. Slipped off into the darkness and that was it. We heard the bike roar away.’

  ‘He’s gone looking for the other one,’ Katie said.

  ‘Katie says he confessed to killing Morgan. He thought that if he did that it would make it all stop. He’s spent night after night trying to second-guess Morgan and his son. I wanted to bring him here. I thought if I could persuade him to come back with us we might get somewhere.’

  ‘What we all need now,’ George said, ‘is sleep, and we need to get Katie back to her parents. I take it you’ve been in touch with them?’

  ‘Of course. Katie talked to them. But, George, I don’t want them left at the hotel. We need a safe house,’ Ray said.

  George nodded. ‘Looks as though you’ll have someone sharing your accommodation,’ he said to Shaw. ‘I think that might be best.’

  ‘I’ve told the Fellowses to expect you. Forgive me, George, but I don’t think I can handle much more just now.’ He looked across at Beckett. ‘Any objections to this?’

  ‘Got enough on my hands. And I think you’re right about the hotel and,’ he said, turning to George, ‘about needing sleep. We’ll speak in the morning. George, I’m going to need a statement from Katie and from you and Martyn. Make arrangements, will you? You’ve got Emma Thorn’s number. I think she can deal with it.’

  George nodded.

  Ray was gazing out of the window into the deserted street, wondering where Nathan was. He was angry with himself for being fooled again.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Mid-afternoon and the rain had been falling steadily for over an hour. Nathan could feel the other one. He was close by, the feel of him as strong as any scent, feral and pungent in Nathan’s consciousness.

  The police had found his home, as Nathan knew they would once he let Ray and Katie leave. Ray would have to tell and Nathan accepted that. He was used to travelling light and all the things in life that really mattered to him could be loaded onto his bike or stuffed into a backpack. He was above Mallingham now, sheltering beneath a galvanized water tank on the flat roof of a disused factory. From the rooftop he could see over the west side of the town, right across to where the twin rivers joined and carved through its heart, the long straight gash of captured water diminished to nothing from this high up.

  Nathan wore a long coat over his leathers, khaki green and caped, the kind an Australian stockman might favour. Its waxed surface protected his black jacket and broke his outline, grey-green against washed-out metal, moss-encrusted concrete and leaden, unforgiving sky.

  He knew that James would come back, as he had done so many times already, to where Nathan had been living. James had moved across Mallingham, settling for a night here, two nights there, a nomadic existence forced upon him by circumstance and, Nathan guessed, by Morgan. By contrast, Nathan had lived in his cellar beneath the building site for almost a year. Finding it when the demolition stopped and left the lower floor of a pub and the crypt intact.

  His stillness against the restless modification going on around him had made him so much easier to find. James had sensed him, been drawn to him by the same emotional scent that brought Nathan to this place now, overlooking the streets leading to his former home. And he knew he had one advantage over James. He, Nathan, could move across the city at any height, above the ground, upon it or below. Travelling by routes that James would never venture to use. Morgan and Lee had left him with a fear of many things — high places, confinement underground, loud noises and bright light. If he could once fix on James, see him rather than just sense his presence moving like smoke blown in the wind, then Nathan knew that he could follow. James would know he was there, but he would not know how to lose him. Since Lee and Morgan had corrupted his mind, James had never raised his eyes to look up or been able to face the monsters that bred, in his mind at least, below the solid ground.

  For an hour, Nathan barely moved, occasionally shifting his position against the wall behind the tank. His gaze scanning restlessly, from one street to the next. From one movement to another. He saw the police searching the wasteland where he had smashed Ray’s mobile phone. Saw them mo
ving in and out through the garage that led down into his cellar. Saw people open their doors to examine the activity, being forced back inside by the driving rain, and he felt James edging closer to him, street by street, shadow by shadow, as the afternoon wore on and the rain slanted in the strengthening wind. He shifted his weight slightly, turned up the collar of his coat against the cold and then settled back to wait some more.

  * * *

  Beckett had found Tina. Nathan’s skin artist was not what he had expected. She was small and slight with long dark hair and a pretty oval face. Celtic blackwork decorated her upper arms and a tiny, elaborate knot had been worked just above her cheekbone close to her left eye, like a beauty spot whose intricacies could be seen only if you moved in close.

  The walls of her workroom were decorated with photographs of her designs. More were concealed in black portfolios stacked on every available surface and despite the fact that it was an ordinary room in a terraced house, the work area itself was spotless. An autoclave took pride of place on a shelf. Sterile packs of new needles lay in a blue bowl alongside tiny pots ready for the pigment. She had a framed certificate on the wall stating that she was registered with the local council and another from the board of health and safety.

  And she was good. Even to the uninitiated, such as Beckett, who generally placed tattoos in the same category as seaside rock and kiss-me-quick hats.

  ‘I’m an artist,’ Tina had said, and, looking at her work, Beckett had to admit this was true.

  ‘Do you ever work with paint?’ he asked her. ‘On canvas or anything like that?’

  Tina smiled nervously. ‘Yeah, some. I do bike tanks too. Always wanted to do his but he wouldn’t have it. Said it was right the way it was.’

  ‘What bike is it?’ Ray asked her. ‘I know it’s a café racer, 1950s styling, but that’s all I managed to see.’

  ‘It’s a Norton. Dominator, the 650 sports model, he said. I know it was loud. Fast too and it was really old — 1960 something.’

  ‘Really old,’ Becket muttered under his breath. He made a note about the bike, its make and model.