White Corridor

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘This is no time for playing games, Arthur. If you don’t tell me what you know, we’ll lose the unit.’

  ‘All right, I’ll give you one last clue. Go to my office and look on the shelves behind my desk. Take down the volume called Sumerian Religious Beliefs and Legends. You’ll find what you need about half a dozen chapters in, if memory serves, which it usually doesn’t. Read it over carefully with Giles Kershaw, then do what you have to do.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Longbright. ‘Why can’t you just tell me? Am I supposed to make an arrest?’

  ‘There’s no arrest to be made. Look at the names, Janice. The moment you understand, take everyone out of house arrest and get the unit up to scratch in time for inspection. I have to go now.’

  He closed the mobile and leaned back against a tree trunk. He would not finish the job for her whatever happened, he decided. There would come a day when he would no longer be there to sort out the unit’s problems. It was time Longbright and the rest of the staff started using his methods to think for themselves. Only then would the unit have a secure future after his death.

  He turned and squinted up at the hill ahead. Tugging his scarf tighter around his ears so that he looked like an exhausted elderly rabbit, he trudged on, following the tracks onto the dazzling white slope of the mount.

  John May had never welcomed meetings with North London’s mystic coven leader, but for once he was glad to see her toiling through the snowdrifts towards him. As she approached, wrapped in red shamanistic folk blankets and looking for all the world like a Russian doll come to life, Maggie Armitage waved her arms frantically towards the valley of stranded vehicles.

  ‘I left the safety of our truck to bring you a warning, John,’ she called. ‘Arthur’s not in the van. He told me to tell you he was going after the mother and her son, says they’ve been taken up towards the railway line. There’s a rescue train on its way. But there’s something else, another sensation I’m getting that his crisis moment is about to arrive. He is in terrible danger, Mr May, because of something he knows, or perhaps is about to find out. I see him lying helpless in total darkness.’

  ‘Thank you, Maggie. Here, take my arm.’

  ‘I’m very much obliged,’ puffed the white witch. ‘This kind of elemental turbulence is tricky to negotiate.’ She was carrying a round walnut box that she now stopped to consult.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, irritated.

  ‘It’s a spirit tracer,’ she explained, hitching up her blankets and peering over the top of her roll-neck. ‘Inside there’s a chased silver ball containing variously treated herbal extracts and seeds, some of them more than a century old, a few of which are even extinct. The item is a great rarity these days, and of enormous talismanic value. I’ve been worried about Arthur lately, so I had him keep the ball in his pocket for a month. It picks up a sort of spiritual imprint that can be used to find someone. The ball starts to shift in its casket when we come within range of its human marker, so we can use it to locate him.’

  ‘You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?’ said May. ‘I can’t even get him to wear a pager, and yet he happily spends a month leaving his spiritual imprint on some kind of mystical GPS device. Even by your extreme standards, such a thing is patently absurd.’ He peered over her shoulder. ‘Is he within range?’

  ‘I thought you weren’t a believer, Mr May.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said May, ‘but I have no better way of finding him.’

  The pair trudged on around the iridescent blocks of snow and ice that had dammed the valley, looking down at the shunted cars and trucks, hoping to see signs of life. ‘I told him to stay put, but no, he had to go off on his own. The simplest instruction always becomes a challenge.’

  ‘You care about him very much, don’t you?’ said Maggie. ‘When I think of the arrests you two have made over the years, it’s amazing—’

  ‘We’ve certainly had our share of excitement,’ May admitted.

  ‘I was going to say it’s amazing nobody’s had you both shot.’

  May narrowed his eyes at her, unable to decide if she was being honest or merely rude. ‘Are we near him?’

  She peered into the box. ‘Nothing yet. He shouldn’t be out in this. When are the pair of you going to retire?’

  ‘We’ve some unfinished business to deal with before we think about that,’ May said testily.

  ‘We’re none of us getting any younger, you know. It’s different for me. I’m at the end of the line. The next generation isn’t interested in the mystic arts. They just want to keep their heads down and make money, and you don’t need any spiritual leanings to do that. Far too interested in personal growth. But someone has to take care of all our invisible needs, don’t you think? That’s what you and Arthur do. We’re the gatekeepers to the nation’s soul. What happens when there’s no-one left to heal the secret wounds we all bear? We’ll never be able to set the world upright and end all of its inequalities, but each of us can make a small difference until they add up to something more.’ She paused for breath, stretching her back. ‘You know, I’ve spent my life forcing myself to believe in the innate goodness of people, but it never gets any easier. This creature you’re after is spiritually tortured, and people like that are unpredictable. They can’t be healed by being thrown in jail. A process of understanding must first take place.’

  May knew that the white witch was as interested in psyches as she was in souls. As she fell silent and they pushed on through the drifts, he thought back over the last few hours, knowing that she, too, sensed something was not right. He had experienced this phenomenon before, when his daughter had walked into the trap that had led to her death. Arthur wanted to believe that the world possessed unseen dimensions, but paradoxically it was May who most experienced these momentary shifts.

  He was feeling it very strongly now. Maggie pointed into her spirit tracer box. The ball inside was gently rolling in an ellipse, but he could not tell whether it was really being guided by unseen forces or whether she had simply tipped it away from her.

  ‘He’s close,’ she announced, then abruptly changed direction, heading up towards the railway tracks that ran across the hill. Above them, the sky was turning an ominous shade of apocalyptic pink.

  ‘What is that?’ asked May. They watched as a muscular black shape loped through the snow searching for cover. ‘Are there wolves in Devon?’

  ‘Maybe it was just a big fox,’ said Maggie uncertainly. Overhead, a crackle of black wings batted against the white sky, as crows were shocked into flight from the glassy branches.

  ‘Something’s startled them.’ Maggie looked around, then narrowed her search to the hill ahead. ‘This way. We have to go faster. You feel it as well, don’t you?’

  ‘I think so,’ May admitted. ‘Arthur’s made some kind of misjudgement that’s put him at risk. And don’t ask me to explain, because I don’t know how to, okay?’

  Maggie kept silent, but smiled to herself as they climbed. Seemingly psychic instincts were learned through experience, habit and the passing of time. The detectives had developed a link they could not see or understand, but it was obvious to anyone with the slightest sensitivity that it existed. There was nothing supernatural about the development of such an ability; parents and children quickly grew bonds, twins inherited them genetically. People who spent a great deal of time in each other’s company became automatically adept at guessing the actions of their counterparts, in the same way that animals were attuned to tiny vibrations of movement and changes in air pressure. She had a fleeting image of a moth in a jar, fighting to free itself, then the image vanished.

  Maggie loved the idea that the detective was becoming corrupted by his latent spirituality; if someone as rational as John could succumb, it gave her hope for the rest of humankind.

  ‘Of course, having some smidgen of psychic ability doesn’t single you out as special, you know,’ she puffed. ‘Everyone has it to a greater or lesser extent. I can usually feel
it when I meet people. That lady and her son, they knocked on our truck earlier, did you know? We offered to shelter them, but she decided to head back to her own vehicle.’

  ‘She never mentioned that to Arthur and me,’ said May, surprised.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose she would have done. Why would she? She doesn’t know that you know me. She was attracted by the sign on our truck, you see. Latched onto my arm and told me she had some kind of psychic gift that allowed her to see the true nature of men, but of course I saw she didn’t.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I asked how she knew, and she gave me the name of her mentor. I clearly made her uncomfortable, because she refused our help. There are so many frauds operating in London. Often they just crave attention, but end up draining money from those who are desperate to believe, the vulnerable ones who’ve had difficulties in the past.’

  ‘The world is full of natural victims,’ said May.

  ‘And natural predators,’ replied Maggie. ‘I’m afraid Kate Summerton is rather well known in South London. She’s been jailed a couple of times and isn’t legally allowed to practise anymore, not that it stops her. The odd thing is, I think she genuinely means well. But it’s unethical to use a refuge for battered women to recruit clients for spiritualism courses.’

  ‘God, I forgot,’ said May suddenly. ‘I have to go back down there.’ He pointed to the buried road that lay below them.

  ‘Back? What are you talking about? We’re past the worst part of the fallen snow.’

  ‘Exactly. We were passing near Madeline Gilby’s hired car. I promised to collect something from it. Stay under the shelter of the trees. I can see the blue Toyota from here. It’ll only take a minute.’

  John May half ran, half tumbled towards the inundated vehicle. Snow had covered the wheel arches and half of the bonnet. He looked around for something to dig with, settling on a broken branch. After a minute or two he was able to reach under the vehicle’s front wing. He forced his arm deep into the snow and groped around, closing frozen fingers over the envelope. It had stayed dry within the impacted drift. He wanted to stop and open it, but there was no time to waste. He began cutting back in Maggie’s direction. The witch was standing with her hands cupped about her eyes, watching for trouble.

  A burning sensation in his heart caused him to stop and regain his breath. He took advantage of the respite to call the unit from his mobile. ‘Hello?’ He could barely hear against the buffeting wind. ‘Who’s that? Meera? I need you to check something out for me. Quick as you can.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Maggie when he finally reached her side. ‘You look like someone just walked over your grave.’

  ‘It’s been preying on my mind ever since I saw the list of victims Madeline Gilby showed me,’ said May. ‘The names on it were vaguely familiar, but I didn’t know why.’ He turned his attention to the phone.

  ‘I can see someone,’ said Maggie, pointing to a figure standing on the railway tracks ahead. ‘We must get up there as quickly as possible. I think Arthur is about to face his moment of truth.’

  45

  ENGAGEMENT

  Arthur Bryant could see the faint impression of the double railway track indented through fallen snow; no train had been able to pass here since the blizzard began, but now the gale had blown the top layers clear, and with the thaw setting in it appeared that the line might become passable.

  The black tracks wound over the hill towards the dark mouth of a tunnel. The cut was still inundated beyond this, so the rescue train would have to back up the line after collecting stranded travellers.

  As he forced himself to concentrate on the fading footmarks in the white expanse of the hill, he could not help but wonder if his own tracks would disappear like snow prints from London’s history.

  I’ve dedicated my life to something that now seems less tangible and more pointless than wood-carving, he thought, the resolution of criminal mysteries that pass entirely unnoticed by the general public. It was hardly surprising that the Home Office no longer wished to fund such a division when they gained no benefit to themselves. The PCU acted as a magnet for embarrassing publicity, and Bryant knew that his own irascibility made matters worse.

  In a world where so few people are willing to become involved, we have to set an example, he thought. And so we will pass the way of censorship bodies and experimental science labs, in the same manner that Bletchley Park, the Propaganda Unit and the Mass Observation Society were no longer needed after the war. And May and I will pass, too, becoming just another quirky footnote to the capital’s strange history, along with other abandoned ideas like the GLC’s Regent Street Monorail and the 1796 plan to straighten out the Thames, and therefore perhaps that is how it should be. But for now, and until we are all ejected from our premises in Mornington Crescent, I still have a public duty to perform.

  Any further musing on the past was stopped when he saw the boy.

  Why is he standing there? Bryant wondered, before spotting the red handkerchief that tied his wrist to the briars of a hawthorn bush covered in icicles like cracked prisms. He lowered himself beside Ryan, whose tear-streaked cheeks were already starting to freeze. His jacket had been pulled down over his shoulders to impede his movement. ‘What happened?’ Bryant asked, shielding him from the bitter wind as he tried to unscramble the knot with numb fingers.

  ‘He came for us and took my mum away,’ said the boy tonelessly. ‘He’s going to kill her on the railway line because he hates ladies.’

  ‘Well, we’re certainly not going to let that happen.’ The knot was too small and tight, and Bryant could not tear the cloth. ‘Can you slip your hand out for me?’

  ‘He wants to hurt ladies,’ said Ryan again, as if trying to remember something he had seen or heard elsewhere. He struggled against the material but could not pull free. His efforts seemed halfhearted, as though he had given up any thought of escape.

  He’s in shock, thought Bryant. He’s not reacting normally. ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘let me see if I have something that can help.’ He produced a bunch of keys, selected the sharpest-looking one and began sawing at the handkerchief. ‘In which direction did they go?’

  ‘Over there, into the tunnel,’ said Ryan, pointing with his free hand at the black hole cut into the side of the hill.

  Bryant’s heart sank. The subzero temperature had already slowed his mind and body. The thought of entering the hillside to look for Madeline and her captor cruelly exposed his defencelessness. If I stay here with Ryan she may die, he thought. But if I leave the boy…

  He dug out his mobile and tried May once more. This time it rang and John answered. ‘I’m up at the railway line. He’s headed into the tunnel with the mother,’ Bryant told his partner. ‘I don’t want to go in there alone. It feels like some kind of a setup. She said he only kills when he’s in a shaft of light, where God can witness his defiance.’

  ‘So he’s the third of Maggie’s four white corridors.’

  ‘Apparently so, but if he’s hidden in the darkness of the tunnel she’ll be safe, surely? It’s a contradiction.’

  ‘Arthur, I’m on my way. You’re right, it’s a trap. There is no—’

  A shrill scream, distortingly high like the shriek of an excited child, sounded from the shadowy entrance of the tunnel. Without thinking, Bryant snapped the phone shut and headed off into its mouth as Ryan shouted behind him.

  After all these years, it’s too late not to stay involved, Bryant thought, stumbling over the bared brown railway sleepers. I can’t stand on the sidelines any longer, even if it means taking my own life in my hands.

  46

  OMISSIONS

  Janice Longbright rose before Bryant’s bookcase and pulled down the dust-encrusted volume entitled Sumerian Religious Beliefs & Legends. Seating herself behind his leather-topped desk, she thumbed forward to the sixth chapter and began to read.

  In the primeval mists of Sumerian legend there first exists a heavenly
ocean called the Abyss, from which gods, the ZU, emerged. Their servants were the Abgal, seven wise demigods who emerged from this ocean.

  The detective sergeant shifted uncomfortably on her chair. I should be doing something of practical use, not sitting here wasting time, she thought. This is hopeless. But with no other course of action left than to heed Bryant’s recommendation, she read on.

  One of the most legendary night wind spirits was the benevolent Lilith, who was associated with guarding the gateway between the spiritual and physical realms. Her figure could be found on most Sumerian temple doorways. Lilith is usually represented holding the Rings of Shem, proof that she gained immortality by traversing the Underworld to gain sacred wisdom from the Tree of Knowledge. As the guardian of the Temple Mysteries, Lilith was the original ‘scarlet woman,’ the term originally referring to menstrual blood, and another symbol of divine power, fiery red hair. Ancient cultures often believed that red hair denoted one whose ancestors intermarried with fallen, i.e., demonic, angels. Because she connected two worlds, the dazzling Lilith was regarded as a goddess of transformation. Other goddesses of transformation included Hecate and Circe.

  Longbright tapped a crimson nail against her teeth. Circe, she thought, the health club that creates beautiful women. What are you getting at, Arthur? She turned the page.

  Many Sumerian traditions were inherited by the Greeks, whose legends correspond accordingly. Their divine nymphs brought about physical and spiritual regeneration in the form of sexual rites, from which we derive the term ‘nymphomania.’ Jews subsequently transformed the Sumerian Lilith into the consort of the Angel Samael.

  ‘So she was a bit of a Goth,’ said Longbright aloud. That wasn’t so unusual in Camden Town; there were so many that pubs painted with angels and demons specifically catered to them. She returned to the chapter.