Darkfall

by Stephen Laws

  “Bloody hell.”

  Cardiff turned to look at Pearce. He was leaning over the shoulder of one of the policewomen who had linked up a computer terminal and was collating initial information.

  “We’ve got a linkup here, sir. We’re getting this direct . . . it says here . . . because they couldn’t telephone it through. Well of course they bloody couldn’t, could they! The phones are off! And the . . . hang on . . .” Pearce stubbed out his cigarette and asked the policewoman to copy the information. Again, something else was appearing on screen as the computer printer began to chatter and the information printed out. Pearce’s breath hissed through clenched teeth, a familiar habit when it was obvious that something really peculiar was happening.

  “What is it?”

  “One for Sherlock Holmes I think.”

  “Come on then, Pearce. Be my Dr Watson.”

  Pearce tore the print-out sheet from the printer and read out loud as he walked over to join Cardiff.

  “Craig’s report on the hand is through. He fingerprinted it and he came up trumps. The owner’s prints were on record for a drink driving offence in 1988. ‘Very handy’ it says here.”

  “Sick, Craig. Sick. And the name?”

  “Vincent Saville. An administration and finance officer for Magnus Inc.—that’s the shipping firm.”

  “On Floor Fourteen. Where we found the hand.”

  “That’s not the end of it. They’ve found the body.”

  “He’s dead . . . ?”

  “. . . and bloody how. We’ve got a separate report tied in from Jarrow division. Fell through a greenhouse roof in somebody’s back garden and . . . this just gets more idiotic . . . it says here the injuries of the body were ‘consistent with a fall from a great height, perhaps three or four thousand feet’. They’ve been checking the local and regional airports for flights passing overhead. But there’ve been none.”

  “What the bloody hell is going on here?”

  “He loses his hand upstairs. Then he runs out, gets a plane somewhere, jumps out and . . .”

  “What time was the Jarrow incident reported?”

  “Not sure.” Pearce nodded to the policewoman, who began immediately to access information on the computer keyboard.

  “What I want is the time of the 999 call. I presume that first notification was a police response to an emergency call?”

  “Yes sir,” said the policewoman. “6.15 p.m. Call received and logged.”

  “I thought so,” said Cardiff. “More impossibilities.”

  “Sir?” Parker lit up another cigarette.

  “Not possible. Beaton—our caretaker. His 999 call was logged in at 6.32 p.m. How can Victor Saville lose a hand here in Newcastle at—let’s say 6.00 p.m.—and crash through a greenhouse fifteen minutes later in Jarrow which Dr Watson, as you know, is . . .”

  “More than ten miles away . . .” The match burned Pearce’s hand and he hastily shook it out.

  “Know what?” said Cardiff.

  “What?”

  “This is more like Hallowe’en than Christmas Eve.”

  Pearce moved back to the policewoman operating the computer terminal. She was nervous. And Cardiff could see that tension in the others. It was more than having to cancel shifts, bring in people who’d thought they were going home for Christmas Eve with their families. The disappearances were . . . simply put . . . unnerving. Even for the professionals. What should have been treated as a great big stupid Christmas Eve joke was being treated seriously by the people at the top.

  Eighty-four people did not just suddenly go missing.

  Not tonight.

  Not here.

  Already, the staff on the ground knew that a first search party of seven policemen suddenly weren’t around anymore and that no one was talking about it.

  Thunder grumbled in the sky and a brilliant blue-white flash fizzled at the windows, making the panes rattle. Overhead, the strobe lights began to flicker. Cardiff exchanged a glance with Pearce, and then cursed himself silently when he saw that the policewoman had seen their own tension.

  No one wanted to be in this office block.

  “Getting scrambled again here, sir,” said the policewoman.

  “Storm interference?”

  “Yeah but the input is clogging up on file with family requests, asking where their people have gone.”

  Pearce shrugged, sitting on the desk and looking out into the storm. “Haven’t we got a Bureau for Missing Persons? Maybe we could just let them have all the bumph on the case and bugger off down to the boozer.”

  “New one coming in, sir,” said the policewoman in a voice which was so calm that it betrayed how nervous she was feeling.

  “On line over here, boss,” said one of the other uniformed men from behind her. They had successfully connected their equipment; another direct feed-line on computer, assessing the data being relayed from other national offices. This second model was much more sophisticated than the one which they had so far been using.

  “Over to you,” said the policewoman, and Cardiff couldn’t help but think that the whole thing was like some small combo orchestra, with each instrumentalist allowed their own “solo” input to some bizarre musical piece.

  “So long as we get it!” said Pearce sarcastically and moved to the man on the newly connected relay.

  Cardiff turned back to the window again; feeling less in control than he wanted to be. He looked at his face again. The rain on the window outside was trying to tell him that he was crying. But it was a trick with which he was familiar. He listened to the buzzing and clattering of the word processors and computers behind him. He didn’t trust computers. He didn’t trust what they told him.

  It was much better to talk to people face to face; be it subordinates, victims or criminals. Because when he could see their faces he could use his own instincts, could see subtle things that a machine could never, ever see. But once again, he was in an isolated situation and relying on what the computer told him without being able to look at the faces of the people supplying that information.

  He had started this night in the hope that its complexities would take his mind away from something that had been encroaching on him for four years. Something that every policeman was trained to keep in perspective. But this was a perspective he had lost when Lisa and Jamie . . . had been . . .

  Murdered! his mind screamed, and he turned back again to the windows, which were still trying to convince him that he was crying. Already he could dimly see that three cars had been stopped at the police cordon and knew instinctively that the media hounds and the newspapermen had finally got the scent. Even on Christmas Eve. Even on a stinking night like tonight. They can still smell the potential blood of. . .

  Victims, he thought.

  Victims and murderers.

  It was the policeman’s job, whatever the grade, never to allow contact with either to affect him personally or to interfere with the sacrosanct job. Now he didn’t know whether the job was helping to keep him alive or helping to kill him. Because after Lisa and Jamie’s death, the plight of each victim with whom he came into contact had affected him—profoundly. His professional distance was lost, and he could feel each case he dealt with killing him inside. Each contact with grief also became his grief; eating away at his soul, destroying him inside. And then there were the others: those who preyed on others, those who killed . . . and Cardiff ‘s dealings with them were also destroying something else inside, his faith in humanity, and any sense of meaning to life.

  He thought again of Lisa and Jamie . . . of the man without a face who had killed them . . . and then of the potential answer to his problem in the top right-hand drawer of his desk.

  “We’re getting scrambled on this one, sir,” said Pearce again. “But it seems we’ve picked up one of the missing people. Mrs Eleanor Parkins. Employed by . . .”

  “Found where?”

  “Hang on. Employed by ‘Johnson and . . .’ Shit!” The woman operator sighed
in exasperation and sat back. “We’ve lost it. Lost the whole screen.”

  “This bloody storm,” said the operator. “Let’s try again. Anything on line?” she asked the other operator behind her.

  “Garbage. But we’re still trying. We keep getting it and losing it.”

  Overhead, the strobe lights flickered again and thunder rolled outside.

  “Sir?”

  Cardiff turned back to the male operator. “Yes?”

  “There’s something else coming through here now. I think you should see it.”

  Cardiff crossed to the VDU and watched as bright-green lettering grew on the screen before his eyes:

  Cardiff. Re Fernley House.

  Divisional Commander has met with Head of CID. Police Conference pending: Assistant Chief Constable (Crime), Divisional Commanders of Newcastle and Sunderland, Sub Divisional Commanders of above Divisions, Detective Superintendents and Police Press Officer.

  Cardiff had expected as much: a conference to collate and evaluate the information received so far, followed by speculation and theory with plans for strategy and action.

  “Okay,” said Cardiff. “But we need to have these computer links sorted out if we’re going to be of any use here. What’s the latest on British Telecom, Parker? Any news on when we can expect the telephones to be working again . . .”

  “There’s more here, sir,” said the operator.

  Cardiff looked back at the screen.

  Incident Squad en route. Code: Darkfall. Restate: Darkfall. To assist in forensic and other scientific investigation. Overall hands-on responsibility to remain . . . And then the words dissolved into a jumbled, meaningless tapestry.

  “Storm again, sir.”

  “Incident Squad?” said Cardiff, realising now with some irritation that Pearce had been standing behind him, reading the message on the screen from over his shoulder. “What the hell’s that about?”

  “Darkfall?” echoed Pearce.

  “Mean nothing to you?” asked Cardiff.

  “No, sir.”

  “Even less to me.”

  “What the bloody hell is going on here? I’m either in charge of this investigation or not. Get me a message through.”

  “I’ll try, sir. But the storm . . .”

  “Hell, I’ll use one of the car radios outside. Bloody modern technology.”

  “Yes, sir,” grimaced the operator, returning to his VDU.

  “Car radio’s no good,” said Pearce. “Just static. I tried again five minutes back. We’ll have to reply on the computer for the time being—or send courier back by car.”

  “Keep on trying, then.”

  The operator nodded and continued stabbing his fingers at the console keyboard.

  “Darkfall,” said Cardiff again, and Walked back to the window. “What in hell is that supposed to be?”

  Thunder cracked and lightning sizzled across the sky, making the strobe lights in the ceiling flicker again.

  “Darkfall . . .”

  THIRTY TWO

  She sat alone in the police cell on a scarred and battered plastic chair. She was looking at the palms of her hands, shoulders hunched and staring down at them—and had been doing so for the past twenty-five minutes. There had been blood on those hands when they’d first brought her to the police station, but she had licked her hands clean since then. The taste was a pleasant memory. Soon, she knew, she would be hungry again.

  She looked up at the tiled walls of the cell. There was felt-tip pen graffiti on those walls, and some deep part of her knew that they were words, but she did not know what they meant; did not know what words were anymore. The echoes of some unfocused anger behind the meaningless scrawl reflected back to her new-born instincts. She scanned the walls, her gaze resting only briefly on the spare cell bed. The mattress was torn and shredded; plastic foam rubber and tattered fluff lay scattered on the floor. There had been blood on the floor, too . . . but she had licked that up as well when she’d been hungry.

  Clean enough to eat your dinner off the floor, Eleanor, said a voice in her head. Those voices kept coming back to her occasionally, but the meaning of those “words” was less and less clear as the minutes ticked by. She looked at the locked cell door, and then at the ceiling. She smiled when she felt an affinity there; with the tiles, and the plaster and the concrete.

  She was getting stronger all the time . . . and those outside didn’t know it.

  When she was hungry, she fed. And when she fed, it hastened the great changes that were taking place inside her. They thought she was locked up in here. Her smile spread, and she giggled. Her gaze drifted back to the hands in her lap, to her outstretched palms. The skin was white and cement hard; the top layers of skin crumbling like plaster when she flexed her fingers. With more food that crumbling would cease.

  Just one more drink, Eleanor, said the voice in her head again. It’s not as if they’re kids anymore, is it? They can look after themselves until you get back. That voice generated a pang of doubt and fear, a fleeting remembrance of another, vague life. It was quickly swamped by the reassertion of her new ‘mind’.

  She giggled again, and this time it rattled and wheezed in her rib cage. She coughed, and plaster dust curled from her lips and nostrils, settling like dandruff on her shoulders and clothes. When she shifted in her seat, her innards rustled and crackled like newspaper.

  “What is she doing now?” asked a voice, and Eleanor knew that this was not one of the voices from her head. This voice was coming from the other side of one of the cell walls. Her hearing now supernaturally enhanced, she turned with a grin to look at the wall. The grinding of her teeth sounded like sandpaper on marble.

  “Nothing, just sitting there.”

  “Let me see.”

  A pause. And then Eleanor heard the viewing hatch on the cell door open. She cocked her head sideways to watch and grinned again.

  “Bloody hell,” said the same voice.

  “Look, this is just a police station,” said a third voice. “And I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I want that . . . that thing . . . out of here into somewhere more secure. God knows how long she’ll stay quiet like that, and I can’t risk any more of my people if she suddenly . . . turns . . . again.”

  “Let’s get this straight,” said the other voice. “She attacked three of your men on the initial callout?”

  “Hospital jobs, all of them. I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t think Jackson is going to make it.”

  “And then . . . ?”

  “Look, you’ve seen the report . . .”

  “And then?”

  “We sent a squad. But she was as meek as a kitten. Just allowed herself to be led into the van. Said something about having to get home and check on the dinner. Mumbling on about how she shouldn’t have stayed for that last drink. Then when we got her back here, she turned again. Like a bloody wild animal. We just managed to get her in here and lock the door. Another two of my people . . . God . . . she’s . . . it’s not human. Just get it out of here . . .”

  “And she’s been quiet since then?”

  Eleanor heard hurried footsteps on the other side of that wall, heading towards the cell door. She smiled again. Food was on its way. A fourth man joined them.

  Breathless: “Okay, I’ve got it. And our people are standing by with the security van.”

  “Alright, let’s get ready.”

  “You mean the two of you are going in there alone?”

  “That’s the idea. We’ve got something here that should keep her quiet.”

  “Look, I’ve seen your clearances and I know I’m not supposed to ask questions . . . hell, I’ve never even heard of Darkfall . . . but you’re going to need more than just two .. .”

  “Just keep out of the way. We know what we’re doing.”

  Even from where she sat, head cocked and smiling her teeth-grinding smile, Eleanor could hear the rumpling of a bag being opened, the metallic chink of something being taken out. T
here was a pause. The bag was snapped shut again, and the viewing hatch was slid back into place.

  “Ready?”

  Someone grunted assent . . . and the cell door opened.

  Eleanor giggled: a brittle rasp. More plaster dust curled from her mouth like talcum powder.

  Two men stepped into the room. One was short and tubby, with thinning hair and a pink face. He was wearing thick-lensed spectacles which enlarged his eyes. The other man was much taller, with a dark coat and blond hair. They moved slowly into the room. The door closed behind them.

  “Food,” said Eleanor and giggled again.

  The taller man with the blond hair moved forward and smiled at her. Behind him, she could see that the man with the pink face was holding a hypodermic in one hand . . . and he looked afraid as the other continued to advance slowly all the while.

  “Mrs Parkins?” said the blond man. “Can you hear me, Mrs Parkins? The doctor and I are only here to help you. There’s no need . . .”

  Eleanor laughed this time; a braying cackle that rattled her rib cage. She raised her hands and flexed her fingers; dry white powder crackled and drifted to the floor.

  “Oh, God,” said the doctor in a dry voice.

  “. . . to be afraid,” finished the blond man. He looked behind him to check that the doctor was still following. The doctor’s face was ashen. Angrily, then: “Come on, Gilbert. You’ve seen this before . . .” The doctor’s eyes were popping, and now the blond man realised that something had begun to happen when he turned away from her. He jerked back.

  The woman had risen from her seat and was walking awkwardly towards him. Her limbs made an obscene crackling and rustling as she moved. There was white powder all around the chair she had been sitting on, and she made footprints in it as she moved towards him, raising her arms and smiling that hideous, parchment-faced smile of decay.

  “If you want to help me,” she said, “give me something to eat.”