A Declaration of War (God and Satan's Talks Book 1)

by Matthew Paisley

  You sit in Bath, a Roman town, but though the name was not given to the town by its occupiers, they gave it something else.

  Now with her computer rebooted, she quickly searched the Romans’ name for Bath—it was Aquae Sulis. She tapped her nose with her pen for a minute, thinking through what the Romans had given the town, and scribbled the answer down on the paper in front of her.

  The Roman Baths building.

  She quickly looked up the old Roman Baths location, which was a mile away from where she sat in the police building, in the centre of town. The heritage structure was dominated by yellow stone columns, with a square pool of water filled from a natural spring at its very heart, and a rabbit warren of chambers surrounding the courtyard. A popular tourist sight in the day, it would have lines of queues ready to explore the building’s history and exhibitions that would snake through the centre of the town.

  At this time of night, it would be locked tightly, probably patrolled by security guards.

  She returned her gaze to the clue, letting her eyes dance across the surface of each inked word.

  Inside, you’ll find the woman of art, wisdom, and battle too. The lady of creation and destruction who carries a branch to atone for sins.

  Her gaze focused on the last phrase of this sentence, feeling there was something familiar about the image it was pertaining to.

  “A branch… a branch… like an olive branch?” she mumbled aloud. “We offer olive branches when we apologise.” She suddenly nodded; certain this was what the clue meant.

  She returned to the computer and typed in:

  Olive branch, art, wisdom, lady.

  The second picture to come up on her search was a Botticelli picture of the Greek goddess, Athena, adorned in olive leaves.

  “Right, but we want Roman, not Greek.” Esther’s eyes moved to the clock on her computer—fifteen minutes had passed already.

  Her time was already running out. With no true idea of where to look in the baths, she couldn’t really text Dakota, and part of her didn’t want to. She grabbed the post-it note from the bin and shoved it in her pocket.

  She leapt to her feet and pulled her coat snugly around her body, flicking up the fur collar to mask her neck and chin from the cold wind, then she ran from the building, tucking the crossword with her heavily scribbled clue into her pocket and strapping her backpack across her shoulders as she hurried.

  When she reached the outside air, the cold struck her as though made of tiny pins that battered her cheeks. She broke into a sharp run, fighting off the cold and the fear that was pooling in her stomach with each step. Every time her boots hit the ground, she grew more and more certain that the call was genuine.

  Despite Dakota’s warning that it was just another prank call, Esther knew she could not take the risk. Even if she was wrong, there was no harm in checking her theory. If she reached the baths and found nothing, then Dakota never needed to hear of the matter. Had she summoned a patrol car out to check a prank call, it could damage Dakota’s opinion of Esther forever. It was low enough as it was, so Esther wasn’t fond of the idea of making the opinion a worse one.

  As she ran, trying to dodge people walking through the city, she grabbed her phone from her pocket, quickly performing another search by tapping the microphone button and bringing the phone to her mouth.

  “Roman equivalent of Athena.”

  The answer on the screen said ‘Minerva’.

  Esther collided with a stranger.

  “Hey! Watch it.”

  “Oops.” She didn’t apologise, she was too distracted.

  She just pushed on, running past the person who continued to shout after her in annoyance. She sprinted around the sharp angular corners of the Georgian yellow-stone buildings, completely focused on her goal.

  Her eyes barely registered her surroundings—each building towered above the people milling to and fro between their dinners and evening drinks. She dodged all the people, dancing around those dressed formally and rushing past beggars on the street. Her gaze was much more fixed on the pattern of buildings. Each Georgian structure showed she was moving closer to her destination.

  As the effort to run burned her lungs, she hurried through the centre of town, using the spire of Bath Abbey to direct her steps ever closer to the Roman Baths that rested in its shadow.

  As she turned under pillared arches, appearing in the square where Bath Abbey and the baths were sat, an evening busker stood in the centre of the square, bordered by evening visitors watching on. He was playing the violin, creating a mournful tune that almost hypnotised his crowd. He had his hat pulled low, delighting the audience around him.

  Esther ignored the song. She was more bothered by the audience’s presence, which blocked her access to the door.

  She looked back down at her phone, changing the search to Minerva.

  Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom, art and war. Her symbols include the owl and an olive branch.

  “That’s it!” she mumbled as she hurried through the crowd.

  Each person called out their frustration, and some attempted to move out of her way but she pushed on regardless, ignoring any comments, yet aware that the busker continued to play his tune, drawing back his audience.

  Her feet soon found the steps of the Roman Baths where she came to a stop, breathless from sprinting. The muscles of her legs stung with the build-up of lactic acid, having pushed her body to the extreme.

  By the double door entrance, there was a list of doorbells. Seeing none labelled for emergencies, she rang them all, pressing each one simultaneously.

  She waited a minute, checking her watch in agitation as she jumped between her feet. Her gaze turned back to the busker and his audience. They were all clapping as the man took his bow, brandishing his flat cap in delight.

  She thought how unnatural the view seemed. Here, there was something beautiful occurring, yet behind the door she was desperate to get through, someone could be about to die.

  “Five minutes left. Shit!” she cursed again as she checked her watch; aware it was suddenly her new favourite word of the evening.

  She rang all the buttons again and started pounding on the door. Some people from the edge of the audience were turning their heads to watch her. She stared back at them, almost in a dare to approach her. They all turned away eventually, reluctant to interfere.

  She rang all the doorbells a third time and continued to strike the wood of the door.

  “Alright, alright, I’m coming! If you’re bloody kids again, I’m calling the police.” A husky voice was moving nearer on the other side of the door.

  Esther stepped back and hurriedly pulled out her ID. As the door opened in the darkness of the night, a lonely orange lamp from the square behind her lit the face of the security guard who answered.

  “What do you want, lass?” His face was wide and plump; the bleary eyes peering at her suggested he had been taking something of a nap and sleeping on duty.

  Esther held up her police ID, still breathing heavily and trying to catch her breath. He took it from her to analyse it. He had a torch in his hand that he turned towards the paper of the ID, aiding his efforts to read the text.

  “I received a tip-off…” She struggled to breathe, gesturing to her chest by way of explaining. “I think someone might be trespassing.”

  “You mean other than you?” The security guard’s face lifted up in slight humour. “Officer Esther… Chai?”

  “Zhi,” she corrected, used to having to make the right sound as she snatched back her ID.

  “Right.” He didn’t attempt the name again. “You want to come in and look around? Is that it?”

  “Yes. It’s possible someone might die here tonight, sir.” Her dark words made his smile vanish.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. It might be a prank. We received a call earlier this evening. It suggested that someone here would be dead in exactly…” She checked her watch. “Three minutes. It
could be a hoax, but we’ve got to check it out. Have you had any trespassers? Any strange things happen at all?”

  “Well, I kind of…” he trailed off, wiping his eyes.

  “You’ve been asleep?”

  “It was just a nap, but no alarms have gone off. Nothing at all like that. You sure you got the right place?”

  “I’m certain.” She hurried to pull her phone from her other pocket again, revealing the search on Minerva for the security guard to see. “Do you have anything here relating to the Roman goddess, Minerva?”

  “We do.” The security guard nodded warily. “We have a statue of Minerva and a temple dedicated to her.”

  “Take me to them.”

  Chapter Four

  Esther could hear the blood pumping in her ears, aware she was breaching a direct order from a superior. If her hunch turned out to be wrong, she could be disciplined for this. She stamped down on the fear, turning her mind instead to what she might find in the Roman Baths, but this only brought new horrors to her imagination.

  She tried to quell the trembling of her hands as the podgy security guard led her through the labyrinth of corridors.

  “Is the statue of Minerva in the temple?” she asked as the guard raised the torch he was carrying to see down the yellow-stone corridor through the lengthy shadows.

  “No. It’s just a head now. Destroyed long ago. The head is in an exhibition down here.” He gestured to the right down another corridor. It was black, the yellow torch beam was a feeble attempt to light the cavernous path.

  The sudden loss of light in their own corridor made Esther trip on the crooked stone floor. She felt her stomach drop in fear but caught herself on the wall, collecting her calm manner quickly.

  “The temple is straight ahead, looks out over the courtyard. Which one do you want to see?”

  “I don’t know.” Esther ran her hands through her black hair in frustration, knowing it was too dark in the shadowy corridor for her to find the clue in her pocket and re-read Abner’s words. She had to take a punt.

  Her eyes settled on the far end of the corridor. It was so black and consumed by nothing that anyone could hide there. If Abner’s threat was real, he himself could be hiding there.

  Her stomach knotted at the thought.

  “Lass? Which one do you want to see?” The security guard’s sharp words called her back from her daze.

  Esther tried to see her watch in the torchlight, but it was of little use, she had to have about a minute left.

  “Is the statue closer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we’ll go there.”

  The security guard dived to the side down the other corridor. Esther’s eyes stayed glued to the darkness ahead of them for a minute through the first corridor before she followed him.

  It didn’t take long for them to appear in an exhibition space. Esther just saw the torchlight brush across some of the stone exhibits and Roman coins when it swung towards a cupboard on the wall.

  She waited, trying to control her breathing as the security guard opened the cupboard and flicked on the lights.

  She blinked madly, adjusting to the new brightness. The space was flooded with a soft amber tinge. Case after case of Roman coins, statues, plaques, and artefacts appeared. On the far wall, perched above a black suede-lined case and sat behind glass was the head of a statue.

  “That’s her?” Esther pointed towards the statue, already hurrying towards it.

  “That’s the one.”

  Esther slowed her pace to a walk, checking the floor around her for any detail or clue as she moved, but there was nothing beyond the empty marble.

  She turned her eyes back to what remained of the statue. It was just a head, apparently once decapitated from its body. It was larger than any human head.

  As Esther stood face to face with the human-like object, she became aware of how much smaller she was than the thing in front of her.

  The eyes were too large—empty and bearing no pupils, they stared back at her vacantly. The nose was strong, almost twice the length of Esther’s own nose. The mouth was quite small though compared to the rest of the imposing face; it was pressed into a sharp line, not betraying a hint of a smile or a grimace of disapproval.

  Esther’s eyes darted away from the imposing bronze presence. Around the neck, the stone was shattered, missing chunks that were once there. Whoever had once destroyed the statue was determined to mutilate the stone.

  Around the case, there was no sign of anyone having been in the exhibition beyond the cleaners. The marble surface had been waxed to a high sheen and the exhibition cases did not bear a single speck of dust.

  Esther turned in a frantic circle, her eyes glancing quickly up and down the floor.

  No one and nothing.

  “The temple?” the security guard asked.

  “Yes.” Esther nodded, lifting up her watch. It had gone the time Abner had stipulated.

  The security guard beckoned her forward and she hurried to follow. He left the exhibition room lights on, leaving her the opportunity to look back at the head of Minerva.

  Her mind debated Abner’s clue again for a moment as she hovered in the doorway.

  … you’ll find the woman of art, wisdom, and battle too. The lady of creation and destruction…

  Her eyes turned away from the vacant and almost ghost-like stare of Minerva as she followed the security guard down the corridor.

  Using the bobbing movement of the torchlight to direct her, Esther pulled her mobile phone back from her pocket and checked something she had read about Minerva.

  Goddess of war.

  “This way.” The security guard darted to the side, leaving her to sprint after him.

  She pocketed her phone again, feeling her breath hitch.

  They stepped out of the corridor into the central square of the Roman Baths. Without a roof, the square was dominated by a large shimmering green pool, filled from the natural spring. Each side of the pool was bordered by tall crumbling columns, yellow and vast, they held up the very edges of the roof that covered antechambers and disappeared above the pool.

  Esther’s eyes drifted down to the green water. Seeing the flicker of light in the surface, her gaze drew up to what it was reflecting—the night sky, dappled with stars and spoiled by the glare of orange streetlamps from the roads beyond the baths’ walls.

  “To the left.” The security guard used the torch to direct them down a small set of steps from the doorway that they had appeared through and hurried around to the other side of the pool. “The temple would have been back here. The only thing that remains is the steps.”

  “The steps?”

  “Yes, at the back of the pool. Wait… stop!”

  The security guard held out a hand in front of her, calling her to a halt as the torchlight found the steps at the back of the green water. Against the wall, there were three giant yellow-stone steps, but the torchlight had caught something else.

  Atop the final step was a shadowy outline. Lying flat on the floor, it was a figure, completely unmoving.

  “I’m guessing that’s not a statue?” Esther whispered into the night.

  “No.” The security guard shook his head, making no further move forward.

  Dread spread through Esther’s body.

  “Oh my God.” The security guard took a step back, the shock hitting him much harder as the torchlight swung with panicked movement.

  Esther took the torch from his hands and steered it back up to the step for a better view. It was a person, a large person at that with a round belly and one arm dangling down the steps.

  “Stay here,” she ordered the security guard and moved forward.

  Slowly, she circled the last edge of the pool and arrived at the bottom of the steps. When nerves drew her feet to a stop, reluctant to move any further forward, she swung the torch around the vast square and pool, suddenly amazed she hadn’t thought to check before.

  She searched the corners as
best as she could from her viewpoint with the pale light, but the only other person there was the security guard. There was no other shadow and no sound of a stranger with them.

  Swallowing past her nerves, she turned the torchlight back to the stairs. She rested the beam on the first step, ensuring she wouldn’t destroy any evidence with her boots, and stepped up.

  The height of each one meant she had to collect her body weight with both feet before she stepped up to the next stone. As she reached the third and final step, she rested the torchlight on the figure, listening to her blood pumping in her ears again.

  He had to be in his fifties. His round face blended into his neck. His eyes were closed and even in the torchlight, Esther could see he was pale. Tightening her body against reluctance, she reached down to his neck, trying to find a pulse. She waited for a minute, but there was nothing—not even a flutter.

  She swallowed her fear, willing desperately that she would find something or that the man would suddenly breathe. Maybe a small or even a great gasping breath. She begged for it, yet nothing happened.

  She moved her fingers to the man’s wrist. She could barely fit her fingers around the width of his arm, but after a minute, she gave up there too.

  “Is he…” the security guard called up to her, unable to finish his sentence.

  “He’s dead,” she called back, turning the torchlight back on the security guard.

  Chapter Five

  Esther stood straight and walked down the steps again, quickly collecting the mobile from her coat pocket. She stamped down on the tension pooling in her stomach at having to see a dead body so close. She knew no good could come from being emotional about the situation.

  She was pushing her fear away as quickly as it had arrived.

  “We should step back. This whole area is a crime scene now,” she urged the security guard to take a few steps back, keeping her tone business-like.

  Now her fears had been realised, she couldn’t do anything more to prevent it, only abide by the official route for the ensuing murder investigation.