Sinistrari

by Giles Ekins

  Collingwood turned and banged on the cell door to be let out, ignoring the blustering obscenities heaped upon his head by Portman. Flanagan gave the banker one last derisive grin before following Collingwood as he hurried down the passage, anxious to get to Pritchard-James as soon as possible, before Sir Montague could despatch another note cancelling his instructions to provide them with the information on Sinistrari’s riverside property. ‘Patterson,’ he called to the duty sergeant, ‘please make sure that he communicates with no one else, that he has no other visitors or sends no letters.’

  ‘Of course, sir, nothing easier, I think I feel a spell of deafness coming on.’.’

  Collingwood hurried on out of the station, convinced that the riverside property must be where Lucy would be held; it fitted the pattern of Blackwater House absolutely.

  SLOWLY LUCY TOOK HOLD OF THE DOORHANDLE turned it and eased the door open, holding her breath in case it creaked or groaned. Cautiously she put her head around the door and looked around. A single gas globe illuminated an empty basement corridor.

  At the far end of the corridor, she could see another door. The way out! She picked up the lamp at the base and still holding her picklock in case she needed it for other doors, made her way slowly toward the door, tension knotting her stomach like a vice. Other doors were off to the right, but these were only other storerooms similar to the one in which she had been incarcerated. She could hear the pounding of her heart, the swishing rush of blood to her head, the scrape of her footsteps ringing loudly in her ears and she feared that the sounds must echo throughout the house to give warning of her escape.

  Scarcely daring to breathe, she reached the door. She bent her ear to it, listening for sounds beyond. Slowly she reached for the handle. As she did so, the door suddenly opened and she almost fell through. Sinistrari stood at the other side, slowly clapping his hands in congratulation for her ingenuity and resourcefulness.

  ‘Good evening Miss Lucy. Once again I have good reason to congratulate the fortitude and resolution of the Collingwood clan.’

  Overcome with despair, Lucy sank to her knees and began to sob; all the tears of fear and apprehension that she had steeled herself to hold back now came flooding out. Sinistrari stood over her, strangely moved by her tears; many a victim had sobbed and cried in mortal terror before him, leaving him indifferent; not one had ever stirred his emotions, apart it seems, from Lucy Collingwood. Sadly he shook his head, his admiration tempered with the sure knowledge of what must be.

  ‘I really do wish it could be otherwise, Miss Lucy, believe me I do. If it were not too late, I really would be tempted to find another, but alas, I cannot, the Lord Satanachia demands it thus.’ He bent down, took her arm, and lifted the sobbing girl to her feet. Vainly she hammered her fists onto his chest, dragging her feet as he pulled her back towards her cell. As gently as he could he forced her back inside; she became even more hysterical with dread and frustration, desolated that all her efforts had come to nothing. Sinistrari quickly looked around the cell; picking up and pocketing Lucy’s lock picks and any other bits and pieces from the broken lamp handle.

  ‘You will appreciate, Lucy, that I cannot return the lamp to you.’

  Lucy said nothing, wracked with her tears and terror; she barely heard what was said.

  ‘I promise Lucy,’ he said softly, ‘that when the time comes, within the confines of the rituals for the Dark Lord; I will do all that I can to hasten the end, to release you from the greatest torments. Your courage and resolution demands no less.’

  With that, he closed and locked the door on, rattling it heavily to ensure it was secure. With an unaccustomed heavy heart of inevitability, he made his way back through the cellars to oversee the preparations for the nights Sabbat – Hallowe’en, second only in importance behind Walpurgis Night in the profane calendar of Satanic festivals.

  ‘CARFAX HOUSE,’ COLLINGWOOD SAID, studying the large scale map of West London. ‘Carfax House,’ he said again, tracing out the roads of Richmond with this finger, trying to locate the address of the property that Sir Montague Portman’s manager, Pritchard-James, had confirmed as having been bought by Edward Sinistrari some months before his arrest. ‘Can you see it, Flanagan, if Portman or Pritchard-James have played us false?’

  ‘Here sir, on the west side of the river, Flanagan said, pointing the location with his pencil, ‘just by the bridge, Richmond Bridge, here. Richmond Road, the bend in the road by St. Stephens Church, Cambridge House, Cambridge Park and between them, Carfax House, fronting on to the river.

  ‘I see it, Flanagan.’

  Collingwood felt a frisson of excitement; this was it! He could feel it, his policeman’s instinct sure and certain.

  ‘Please God we are not too late.’

  ‘It must be eight or nine miles as the crow flies to Richmond, sir. Maybe closer to twelve or thirteen allowing for the way the river bends,’ Flanagan said, scaling off the map between his finger and thumb. ‘That will take a good two hours or more, likely best part of three hours to get there.’

  ‘We could catch the train from Waterloo, change at Clapham Common to St. Margaret’s Station, here,’ mused Collingwood, pointing at the location on the map ‘we can take a cab from there; it’s barely a mile at most.’

  ‘We can’t go alone, sir, surely not? We know how dangerous Sinistrari can be.’

  ‘You are right as usual, I’ll send a telegram to Richmond police, I know the Chief Inspector, Inspector Rayburn, he can supply us with some bodies to meet us at the station and Miggs can come with us as well, it’s about time he did some real police work.’

  ‘One other thing sir, how do we tackle Sinistrari if he is there? I’ mean if he’s supposed to be impervious to bullets?’

  ‘Oh, he is impervious, no doubt about that, I saw that with my own eyes, don’t forget. As to how we fight him, we fight him with fire. We destroy him with fire’.

  ‘Fire?’

  ‘In times past, how were witches and wizards, the practitioners of the dark arts put to death? They were burned at the stake. We will do the same, in principle at least.’ Collingwood pulled open his desk drawer and pulled out a heavy cloth covered bundle that made a heavy metallic chunk as he laid it on the desk. He un -wrapped the bundle and pulled out a blunt nosed pistol with a large calibre barrel. ‘A flare gun,’ he said, ‘made in Austria in 1871, it fires phosphorous cartridges and will set him ablaze, of that I’m sure.’

  ‘You just happened to have this lying in your desk, sir?’

  ‘No, no, of course not, but I have been giving the matter of Sinistrari some considerable thought; as you say, he has proved impervious to bullets and so I began to think how else he might be tackled. Fire is the obvious answer, which in turn led to the question of how to set the monster on fire. He is not going to stand meekly by as we pile the faggots around him; so we have to take the fire to him. Hence the flare pistols, I bought them at Mercer and Mercer, the gunsmiths in Berkeley Square.’ Further unwrapping the bundle, Collingwood picked up another pistol and passed it to Flanagan, who turned it in his hands before breaking open the breech to inspect the mechanism. Also in the package were a number of blunt cartridges, three inches in length and one and half in diameter. Collingwood picked up a handful of the cartridges and put them into his jacket pocket, nodding at Flanagan to do the same.

  ‘I have another thought, sir, if we took a bottle of oil with us, a small beer bottle maybe, filled with oil, or paraffin, after we ignite Sinistrari, we could throw the flammables on him as well, that would really help to get him incinerating.’

  ‘Excellent idea, you organise that as quickly as you can, we don’t have much time, we must set off for Richmond within the half hour. Somewhere in the office here there is a Bradshaw’s time table, I will check the train time to St .Margaret’s and send the telegram to Rayburn.’

  Chapter 33

  NIGHT. OCTOBER 31st, 1888

  THE SPEEDING TRAIN ROCKETED THROUGH the station, much too quickl
y for Collingwood to read the name on the dimly lit platform signboard. A sudden lurching fear, irrational and illogical, that the train would drive on past St Margaret’s without stopping, that the train would not stop until it reached the far distant foam-wracked shores of Cornwall and so too late to prevent the vile atrocity about to be perpetrated on the body of his only daughter. This bright -bursting fear arced through his panicked brain, a bilious spasm searing his wrought stomach like acid.

  ‘Are we on the right train?’ he asked in sudden panic.

  Yes sir, the 9.35.’

  ‘Stopping at St. Margaret’s?’ ’

  You are certain of that?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ responded Flanagan, calmly, well aware of the torment that his chief was going through. ‘Yes, you checked yourself when we bought the tickets and again with the guard as we boarded.

  ‘I know, it’s just that I cannot bear to think of what might be happening to Lucy as we speak,’ Collingwood said. Vivid tableaux of blood and agony and crucifixions flared through his febrile imagination.

  Once again, Flanagan tried to reassure the tormented Collingwood, speaking calmly and assured. ‘I seriously believe that whatever is to take place will not occur until 3am.

  ‘3am? Why for all reason?’

  ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ is presumed to have died on the Cross at 3pm on the day of his Crucifixion. The followers of the Anti-Christ do everything the antithesis of Christian belief, black against white, darkness against light, evil the reverse of good, 3am as opposed to 3pm. I do believe, with all my soul that we shall be in time to save Lucy.’

  The train began to slow down, another lurch of sick dread spread through Collingwood. ‘What’s happening,’ he cried, almost stricken with panic. ‘Has the train broken down, why, why are we stopping.’

  ‘We’re just entering a station,’ PC Miggs reported.

  ‘St. Margaret’s?’ although Collingwood knew well enough that they had not yet travelled that far.

  ‘No sir,’ answered Miggs as calmly as he could, ‘Barnes, we passed Wandsworth and Putney.’

  ‘St Margaret’s, St Margaret’s is next?’ Collingwood said, although he knew from the Bradshaw’s it was not, but the fears for Lucy were driving rational thought from his mind.

  ‘Not yet sir, but soon. Very soon.’

  It seemed an age before the train set off again, maddeningly slowly as it pulled out from the station. Collingwood slumped back into his seat, his nerves stretched beyond all endurance, sudden nausea swept over him, he dry heaved into his handkerchief as Flanagan and Miggs looked discreetly away. Collingwood wiped his mouth, the nauseous volcano in his stomach churning and roiling, compounded by stale whisky, dread, hunger and overwhelming guilt; guilt that he had been so negligent , so remiss as to allow his precious daughter to fall into the hands of Sinistrari.

  ‘If anything should happen,’ he mumbled to himself, knowing he could never face himself again. What if Portman had played him false as a revenge for the embarrassment caused? Gave him the wrong information, or despite his request to Sergeant. Patterson that Portman be kept incommunicado he had been able to send warning to Sinistrari so that he could relocate Lucy elsewhere for his abominable rituals; his sacrifice to Satan.

  What, indeed, if Portman were part of Sinistrari’s vile Satanic cult and had given deliberate false information? The endless doubts and fears tormented him as though he were on the rack. ‘If anything should happen,’ he muttered again, louder this time.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Are you sure, sure about 3am? That we have time?’

  ‘As sure as I can be.’ Flanagan answered with far more confidence than he felt, knowing that he could not be sure, could not be sure at all. That for all he knew Lucy was about to be nailed to the obscene inverted cross at that very moment but he knew that Collingwood was near to breakdown and needed all the reassurance, however tenuous, that he, Flanagan could offer.

  ‘I hope to God you are right. I hope to God …’

  A KEY RATTLED MENACINGLY AT THE cell door lock and the wave of fear cascaded over Lucy like a black shroud, the dread knotting her stomach, her heart pounding with terror, her legs quivering as though chilled.

  She took a deep breath and got to her feet. Whatever she was to face she would face it with her head held high.

  Thin light spilled across the stone-flagged floor as the door opened. Sinistrari, clad in a long black hooded cloak embroidered in gold with satanic symbols stood before her, the lamp held high in one hand, a white shift lay across the forearm of the other.

  ‘Miss Collingwood, please, you will remove your clothing and don this robe.’

  ‘And if I refuse?’

  ‘Regretfully, I shall be forced to seek assistance from my…associates, it would be…degrading.’

  ‘Am I not degraded enough, sir?’ she answered, struggling to keep control of her voice, the need to use the bucket in the corner almost overwhelming but she was determined not to show her fear to this … thing. ‘A lady, sir, cannot robe or disrobe without the assistance of her maid. As a gentleman,’ she said, endowing the word with all the scorn she could muster, ‘you must be aware of this.’

  ‘I am aware, Miss Lucy, that you are not corseted, and that ladies can and do disrobe with the aid of such as this,’ waving a button hook, enabling the unbuttoning and unhooking of clothing without the need for a lady’s maid. ‘Or else,’ he said, his words thick with menace. ‘If you insist, then assistance can be obtained, but it will not be that of a ladies maid, please. Miss Lucy, do not make it harder for yourself than it need be.’

  ‘I am to die, am I not? To die in some perverted ritual to sate your foul master.’

  ‘I wish it were not so.’

  ‘Weasel words,’ she snapped back. ‘Hand me the robe.’ She snatched it from his hand. ‘I trust that you will behave like gentleman and turn your back, or is it part of your obscene ritual to further humiliate me thus?’

  ‘I will give you privacy. I will place the lamp by the door and the door will remain open but I give my word, that unless you misbehave in some typically outrageous Collingwood manner, I shall not enter the room.’

  MORTLAKE STATION, RICHMOND AND THEN FINALLY, after a journey which had seemed endless, the train pulled into St. Margaret’s Station. The train had barely slowed before Collingwood slipped the leather strap which held the carriage window closed from the brass restraining stud and let the window drop down fully open and reached outside for the carriage door handle and leapt out, his momentum carrying him alongside the train in a run.

  Smoke and steam from the engine enveloped him in thick grey cloud, disorientating him, gritty coal smut lodging briefly in his eye. He blinked it away, the smoke withered away in the October breeze and he turned to find Flanagan and Miggs behind him.

  ‘This way,’ and he hurried towards the exit, up the stairs to the bridge across the rails, boots clattering across the wooden treads like a tattoo, brushing other passengers aside and out onto the station forecourt, looking wildly around for the promised support from the local force.

  ‘Collingwood, here.’ He heard a shout and he turned to see Rayburn beckoning him from a carriage drawn up further down the road.

  ‘Where are your men?’ he demanded.

  ‘At the station, we need a briefing before we charge into Carfax House. We have no warrant to enter, you realise that?’

  ‘Of course, but if you do not wish to join me, I understand. I have to go, Lucy … Lucy’. He could not continue.

  ‘I did not say that we would not join you. I do not say we will not assist you but we need to assess the situation and decide upon our tactics.’

  ‘The time … time.’

  ‘We must Collingwood, if you need my assistance it must be done this way.’

  ‘Hurry then, man, for God’s sake hurry.’

  THE ROBE OF THIN WHITE COTTON WAS SO SHEER it clung to Lucy’s body like a second skin, highlighting the thrust of her young breasts, nipples taut wit
h cold, clinging to her thighs and pudenda no matter how she tried to arrange the folds of cloth. Virtually transparent, it concealed nothing; making her feel more naked than if she had actually been naked. She sobbed quietly, the terror growing in her like a core of glacial ice.

  COLLINGWOOD, FLANAGAN, MIGGS, RAYBURN and a dozen constables, all of them burley, chosen for their size and strength, crowded into the briefing room of the station, located on the corner of Richmond Road and Orleans Road. It smelled like every other police station Collingwood had ever been to, a stale mixture of sweat and fear, old tobacco, vomit, urine and hopelessness. A large scale map of Richmond and surrounds was attached to the wall in a timber frame.

  ‘Men,’ Rayburn said, calling the briefing to order, ‘Chief Inspector Collingwood from Scotland Yard. He needs our assistance and we will give it. His daughter is kidnapped and believed to be held at Carfax House. We will raid Carfax House as soon as this briefing is over and rescue her. We have no warrant for this action but this is an emergency. If any officer feels he cannot participate because of that irregularity, he can leave now and no criticism or opprobrium will consequence.’ He looked about the room, from face to face to face.

  Nobody left and Collingwood nodded his thanks. Rayburn gave him the floor.

  ‘As Mister Rayburn says, my daughter Lucy is taken … kidnapped for vile and profane purpose. Lucy is eighteen, my only daughter, my only child. I, we have certain intelligence that the kidnapper, who is known to me, has taken her to Carfax House. There will be other participants in the vile ritual for which she has been taken. Tonight is All Hallows Even, Hallowe’en, and I ask only you keep an open mind about that fact.’ He paused. ‘I do not know Carfax House. Or anything about it, can any of you local constables help me on this. The size of the house, access? Escape routes, anything that can give me … us … a better indication as to where she might be held?