by Peter James
He shut the door and moved on, passing doors to toilets, a water dispenser, a yellow rubbish can on wheels and several notice-boards. He came to a lift, wondering where it went to. Then he saw another door ahead.
He opened it.
A blast of cold air greeted him, thick and heavy with the cloying reek of decaying flesh. The lights were on. It was a vast cold store with the feel of a warehouse. A grid of strip lights hung beneath a corrugated roof. Rows of corpses were laid on tiered metal shelves, five high, and stretching away into the distance. Dozens of steel gurneys, most of them also containing a body, stood seemingly randomly placed around the room. Each cadaver was wrapped in plastic sheeting, some clear see-through, others opaque white. Two tags hung from a toe of each cadaver, one orange, the other buff.
Over five hundred, he thought, remembering the words of Mark Johnson.
One of them was Mike Delaney.
The lights flickered. Almost instantly, he heard a crash of thunder. It echoed through the room, a deep metallic boom.
Closing the door behind him, he stepped forward quickly to a gurney a short distance in front of him, on which lay a figure wrapped in white plastic sheeting. He checked behind him, but the door was still closed. He looked at the toe tags, but all they had were file numbers, no name. He lifted the cover over the head and stared down at a black man with the top half of his skull blown away, his brains exposed.
Swallowing in revulsion, he replaced the sheet and moved on. He had to find Delaney. Grab some of his hair and get the man’s DNA.
Had to!
The lights flickered again. There was another clap of thunder. Followed by a second. Then a third, even louder, shaking the ground, booming as if he was inside a massive drum.
He looked at several more cadavers beneath clear sheeting. An enormously fat white woman. A thin young man. A beautiful young blonde. Then he approached another figure wrapped in white sheeting. He raised it, to expose the head, and looked down at the open, startled eyes of a black girl with a blood-crusted hole in the centre of her forehead.
Where are you, Delaney? Where in this hellhole are you?
The lights flickered again, went out totally, and after a few seconds came back on. Then an explosion like a bomb, directly above him, shook the entire building.
Feeling increasingly uneasy, he passed several more bodies in clear wrapping, none of them looking like the image of Mike Delaney he had imprinted in his mind. Then another body in white wrapping. As he reached it, the lights flickered again. Then they went out.
There was a crash of thunder so loud and so close he could feel the entire building shake once more.
He pulled out his phone and switched on the torch app and checked the face of the cadaver.
Thunder crashed again.
He approached another body wrapped in white. Lifted the cover to look at the head. A Chinese woman.
Then an angry voice, right behind him, a voice he recognized, Mark Johnson called out. ‘Hey! Hey, you! Mister!’
He turned in blind panic.
‘What the hell do you think you—’
At that moment, he heard a crackle of electricity. The whole room lit up in a blue haze. He saw jagged blue spikes of lightning dancing around the ceiling, then across the metal racks, like the peaks and troughs on an ECG display. He glimpsed the furious face of the man in the purple shirt behind him. Then he heard a massive explosion above him.
He looked up and the whole ceiling was ablaze.
He ran past the man, pushing him aside so hard he fell over backwards, reached the door, yanked it open and ran out along the corridor.
Above him he heard another crash of thunder.
Then realized he was running the wrong way.
The ceiling above him exploded into searing flames.
He turned and ran, blindly, desperately, in the opposite direction. Sprinklers were spraying water down on him. He reached the reception desk and turned towards the door. Pushed it. Pulled it. Nothing happened.
There was another crash of thunder.
Part of the burning ceiling fell in behind him.
He saw a green button beside the door. Pressed it. Nothing happened. He ran back over to the reception desk, picked up the swivel chair and hurled it with all his strength at the glass door. It shattered open. He climbed through, then sprinted across towards the limousine, yanked open the rear door and climbed in.
‘You OK?’ Helmsley said, anxiously.
‘Get out of here!’ he screamed at the driver.
‘Lightning,’ Helmsley said. ‘The building got two direct hits in a row.’
As they drove back out through the open gates, Bloor turned and stared back at the mortuary. The entire building was engulfed in flames.
In the distance, he heard sirens and the brutal honking of approaching fire trucks.
133
Tuesday, 21 March
After a restless night, kept awake by the thunder and his turbulent thoughts, at 5 a.m. Ross finally gave up trying to sleep. Sally had invited him back to her hotel for a nightcap, after dinner, but he had declined. He was drawn more and more to her each time he saw her. He felt something with her that he had never felt with Imogen. He could not put a finger on what that was. A connection at some very deep level.
Thoughts of Imogen went round and round in his mind. What was she doing here? What was her game? It didn’t make sense that she was here. But at this moment, what did make sense?
He reached over, grabbed his phone and peered at the display, hopefully.
Hoping for a message from Imogen to explain what she was doing in LA.
But there was only one and it was from Sally, sent at 11.30 p.m. last night.
Sleep tight, you saver of the world, you! XX
He texted back.
It’s spelled ‘saviour’. XX
The reply came straight back. Presumably, like him, she’d been having a sleepless night.
Now, now, don’t get too big-headed ☺ XX
He grinned, his dark mood momentarily lightened.
His eyes felt like they had been rubbed with sandpaper. He picked up the remote, switched on the television and channel-surfed. An old episode of ER. A documentary on the melting Arctic. Then a local news channel, showing a blazing building with a mass of fire engines and emergency vehicles in front of it. Hosepipes. Firefighters. A mediagenic newscaster clutching a radio mic.
‘. . . working through the night on a blaze started by a lightning strike on the offices of the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner and Coroner. I have with me Mark Johnson, who has responsibility for the entire building. How is it looking?’
Johnson, a sombre-looking, moustached man in a purple shirt, said, ‘It’s looking pretty bad. The principal strike appears to have occurred directly above the room we call the Crypt. It’s where over five hundred bodies awaiting autopsy were stored. It’s too soon to assess the damage, but what I hear from the firefighters is that this whole part of the building has been pretty much destroyed.’
Ross sat up. For the next hour, he was glued to the television, surfing between stations for news updates. Then his phone rang.
It was Sally.
‘Hey, have you seen the news?’ she asked.
‘I’m watching it now.’
‘Weird?’
‘You could say that.’
‘It was good seeing you yesterday.’
‘You too.’
‘Even though you fell asleep on me at the dinner table.’
‘I did? Oh shit, no, I’m sorry!’
‘I’ll forgive you – on one condition.’
‘Which is?’
‘We have dinner again tonight.’
He smiled. He still hadn’t totally figured her out, but he felt increasingly sure that she could be trusted. ‘I’ll try to keep awake.’
‘I’ll take it personally if you don’t!’
Moments after he ended the call, his phone rang again.
It was Imogen.
134
Tuesday, 21 March
‘What are you doing in LA?’ Ross asked his wife.
‘I can’t talk about it on the phone. Could you meet me at 10 a.m. in the foyer of the Serena Hotel on Sunset?’
Her voice had a steely tone. She sounded like a stranger.
‘Yes. But tell me – what—?’
There was a click.
She had hung up.
He called her back. It went to voicemail.
He didn’t leave a message. Instead he lay in bed, wondering just what was going on. What game she was playing. Then he switched his thoughts back to the events of last night. He opened the Voice Memos app and played the recording of his encounter with Mike Delaney. Listening to the nuances in his voice. The sincerity.
‘It’s written also in Matthew 24: “The sun will be darkened, the moon will lose its brightness, the stars will fall from the sky and the powers of heaven will be shaken. And then the Sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven.”’
Wishing he’d thought to pack his trainers, so he could have used the hotel’s gym, Ross got dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, boots and his leather jacket, and went out for a walk. The wind was even stronger than yesterday, and after the torrential rain that had come with the thunder, the air felt fresh. He made a random right turn into a quiet, tree-lined street and passed several swanky, secluded houses, then came across a small park. It was already busy with joggers and dog walkers at this hour and he did two brisk circuits.
Returning to his hotel, he ordered a room-service breakfast of a three-egg omelette, sourdough toast, a bowl of berries and coffee, showered and shaved, and ordered a taxi to take him to the Serena Hotel, fifteen minutes away, the concierge informed him, at 9.45 a.m.
135
Tuesday, 21 March
It was coming up to 6 p.m. and Brother Pete cursed. He’d boarded the wrong train up from Sussex; he should have taken the Victoria train but instead, as a helpful passenger had told him, he was going to a different station, London Bridge. Unless he got off and changed.
Spats of rain slid down the carriage window and a cold draught blew on his face. They were travelling through a grey, urban landscape. Everything was confusing right at this moment. He was feeling a deep depression. A while ago his plan had seemed the right thing, but now he was experiencing doubts. His Bible sat on his lap, unopened during the journey.
He had intended not to return to Mount Athos. Not for a while, anyhow. He wanted to see some more of the world and test his faith. To see if his faith drew him back. He needed to understand something deep within his soul. Was it his faith that kept him at the monastery or just the way of life? A way of life which enabled him to be left alone by the world, which was all he had ever really wanted?
It was something his cousin, Brother Angus, had told him. Angus said it had taken him over forty years to understand his purpose in life, which was to serve the Lord alone, in solitude. Pete had helped carry his coffin earlier this afternoon into the peaceful, simple graveyard with the rows of plain wooden crosses.
He felt sad for the old man, but happy for him, too, because unlike so many people, Angus seemed to have found peace and contentment in his simple life. But now, as Pete sat on a seat in the train carriage, clutching the bag to his side, he was uncertain about what he should do. Inside the bag was the package the Prior had handed him for safekeeping. Items that Angus was anxious should be kept safe for eternity. On Mount Athos, they would be safe.
Inside his heart he was riddled with doubts.
If he returned to Athos, he might never be allowed to leave again. There was no way off the peninsula other than by boat, and only the Abbot could give you a ticket for it.
A drained-looking woman sat opposite him with a bawling baby, snot running from its nose. A little scrap of humanity. Next to him was a hunched youth playing music through his headset, far too loud. Pete could hear the constant, irritating tsh-tsh-tsh-tsh-tsh as the gormless-looking creature nodded his head to the beat. An elderly couple sat across the aisle in the facing seats. Both stared ahead, not out of the window, not at anything. The man held a walking stick in his bony hand, the woman was plump, with overlapping chins.
‘I’m bored,’ the man.
‘I’m bored, too,’ the woman replied.
‘How much longer?’ he asked.
‘Dunno,’ she replied.
The train was pulling into a station. Brother Pete saw a sign saying EAST CROYDON. The station where he could change trains to Victoria.
He stood up as the train halted and stepped out through the doors, relieved to be away from the claustrophobic environment. Back at Mount Athos he had space. He didn’t have to look at babies with runny noses or endure someone else’s ghastly music. He was missing the solitude, he realized, for the first time since he had left.
Navigating his way around the maze of platforms, through pelting rain, he eventually found the correct one for Victoria. An electronic sign indicated the next train would be along in fourteen minutes. He sat on an empty bench, beneath a shelter, took his Bible back out of his bag and began to read.
Moments later, it seemed, he sensed a group of people around him, crowding in on him. He smelled alcohol and cigarette smoke. A jeering voice said, ‘What you fucking reading then, that the Qur’an?’
He looked up. There were four youths, all tattooed, two of them with shaven heads, one with a Mohican, one with nose and lip rings and spiky green hair. They were dressed in hoodies, tracksuit bottoms and trainers and were all holding beer cans. Three of them were smoking.
‘It’s the Bible,’ he said, politely.
‘Yeah?’ said one.
He nodded.
The train was coming in. He put the book back in his bag and stood up. They were all looking at him with a kind of dumb hatred in their eyes.
Ignoring them, he walked across and entered the train, into an empty carriage. The youths, to his relief, got on further along, a different carriage. He settled into a seat, feeling shaken by the encounter. Why did there have to be such hostility in the world? Perhaps it was the way that God tested all of us, the way He’d put the anger into his own heart, Pete knew. Anger which sometimes flared up, uncontrollably.
Moments after the train pulled out, rain blew in through the open top of the window beside him. He was about to stand up and close it when he heard a door open and shut behind him. Smelled cigarette smoke again. Then a voice.
‘You a fucking terrorist or what?’
He looked up and to his dismay the four yobs stood in the aisle. One held a cigarette between his finger and thumb and sucked on it.
‘It’s no smoking in here,’ Brother Pete said before he could help himself, a flash of that uncontrollable anger rising again.
‘It’s no Muslims in here either, mate,’ said the Mohican.
‘I’m not a Muslim.’
‘What are you then, with that face fungus and your black dressing gown?’
‘I’m a Greek Orthodox monk,’ he replied, and gave them a smile, hoping that might placate them.
‘Yeah? How do we know you’re not an effing terrorist then? You carrying a bomb inside that bag?’
‘I’m a monk.’
‘All right then, show us.’ The one with the green hair lunged at the bag.
Pete swung his left arm, defensively, sending him flying. Then he grabbed the bag by the handles and swung it at them, screaming, ‘Leave me alone! I’m a monk! I’m not a terrorist!’ He swung it again, wildly, missing all of them and striking the window beside him.
The four of them looked at him.
‘You’re bloody mental,’ the Mohican said.
The one with the green spiky hair punched him on the nose. His eyes watering with the pain, he saw, blurrily, the youth grab the bag and shove it through the open top part of the window.
‘No!’ Brother Pete screamed. ‘No, no, no!’
‘At least we’re all fucking safe on this train now – we’ve chucked
the bomb away!’
Roaring with laughter, they walked off down the aisle.
Pete stood, trying to look out of the window, wind and rain hammering his face, tears streaming from his eyes, as the train continued accelerating.
136
Tuesday, 21 March
At a few minutes to ten, the taxi turned into the imposing driveway of the Serena Hotel. Of course, Ross thought, slightly angrily, wondering how much this was costing a night, Imogen wouldn’t be staying in a cheap dump, would she?
One moment she was lecturing him on their need to conserve and save money for when she stopped working to have the baby and they would be reliant on his income alone. The next she was flying to Los Angeles and larging it in one of the city’s swankiest hotels.
The taxi drove for several hundred yards up a curving, palm-lined driveway and arrived outside the columned front of the hotel, teeming with liveried staff and lined with top-of-the-range limousines, sports cars and SUVs.
Someone young, handsome and obsequiously friendly opened his door.
‘Welcome to the Serena, sir!’
Ross paid and tipped the driver then headed towards the front entrance, passing bronze statues of past Hollywood icons. He recognized John Wayne, seated on a bench. Marilyn Monroe, cigarette in hand, laughing. Rock Hudson, leaning against a wall, gave him a wry smile.
The doors parted automatically and he entered a cavernous, white, scented atrium. Dominating it was a huge circular pond, with a fountain, sculpted out of three gold angels, rising from the middle. Groups of armchairs and sofas were dotted along the water’s edge.
As he stood looking around, he saw Imogen walking towards him, dressed in a smart two-piece, as if for a business meeting.
She was flanked by two suited, middle-aged men, neither of them particularly good-looking. One was of medium height, with sleek silver hair, a trim figure and a hawk-like face bearing a smug smile. The other was tall and thin, with red-framed glasses that would have suited an art student, but just made him look a twat, Ross thought.
