Night Angels

by Danuta Reah

  ‘What did you write?’ Lynne asked again. This could be something or nothing.

  Rafiq shook her head. ‘I not…’ She couldn’t remember.

  ‘Where?’ Notes on paper. If Pearse hadn’t wanted things recording, he would have thrown the notes away. ‘Did you take them home?’

  ‘At centre,’ Rafiq said. Lynne’s heart sank. They hadn’t found any notes at the centre. They’d found very little. Rafiq’s voice was urgent now. ‘In book,’ she said. ‘After he say no, I write in book.’

  The textbook. The book Rafiq had been using to improve her English. Lynne could remember it now in the desk drawer with notes in the margin. It had been there when they had searched the place. Lynne breathed out hard to release the tension. Had Farnham’s team brought it in? ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll look for it and I’ll take it from there.’

  Hull, Monday evening

  Anna woke suddenly. She could feel the sweat running down her back and the chill it left behind it. She couldn’t clear her head properly. She had to do something and she couldn’t remember what it was. She needed to stand up and start moving, and the effort seemed too great and then she was standing up and her head felt light and she needed a drink. That was it. She needed to get up so that she could drink, only the trees were in her way and she was creeping through the bushes and the smell was in the air, sweet and rotten, and she woke up again to find she was still lying on the mattress shivering with the cold, and damp with the sweat that had broken out all over her body.

  She sat up and wrapped the blanket round her shoulders like a shawl. She couldn’t remember exactly when he’d gone. Her head ached and her mind was confused. She struggled to her feet. The room felt claustrophobic. What time was it? Was Matthew back? Her legs felt weak and trembling, and she knew the fever was going to return. She walked down the short passage and opened the door, carefully, quietly. It should have been dark. The little daylight there was had gone, but there was a pale, flickering light diffusing the cathedral spaces of the room, illuminating the pathway between the pillars. She walked down the aisle of light, towards the stone table that gleamed dully in the darkness. And there were more lights now, flickering points along the aisle and in the recesses on either side of the pitted door, but beyond the lights, the shadows held their secrets.

  She walked down the aisle, slowly, towards the table. Her feet were strangely reluctant now, heavy, as though the whispering darkness was pulling her back. The stone surface still glittered, the wooden frame above it sent its shadow across the floor like a cross under her feet. But on the table, among the shadows moving in the dancing light, stood a long-stemmed cup and, in front of it, a silver plate.

  Anna moved closer. Her feet brushed against the flags. The cup was filled to the brim. The lights gleamed in its surface. Another step. Now she was standing in front of the table. She put out her hand and ran her fingers over it. Bread. She hadn’t eaten since the night before, but she felt a strange reluctance to touch the bread that had appeared so silently on the table. She lifted the cup and found she was breathing in the smell of it. Wine. He’d brought her wine.

  ‘Where are you?’ Her voice whispered around the emptiness. She turned, looking behind her and the shadows looked back. And the room breathed in the silence, like a sigh from a carious mouth, a waft of decay, and she was creeping through the woods listening to the drip, drip of the water and breathing in the old smoke and that smell, that abattoir smell in the spring among the flowers and the trees and the sunlight glinting through the branches.

  ‘Matthew,’ she said, her voice dry in her throat. And like an answer to a prayer, he was there, and he was speaking, and she knew she was in the throes of another fever dream because the words he spoke had no meaning.

  Introibo ad altare Dei…

  It was almost six by the time Lynne had finished her interview with Nasim Rafiq. She tried to contact Farn-ham with the information about Pearse’s alibi, but he wasn’t in his office and he wasn’t answering his mobile. She left a message in the end, and began her search for Rafiq’s book. She needed to find it. The stuff from the centre, the stuff that had been taken away, was with Immigration, but Farnham had an inventory. She looked through it carefully. There was no mention of the book she could remember finding in the desk drawer. It must still be at the centre. She checked the time. She could go to the advice centre now, get it, have it safe.

  She went back to her office, noticing the pile of papers that had accumulated in her in-tray. As she collected the stuff she wanted from her desk, the phone rang. She hesitated for a moment, then picked it up. It was Michael Balit from the volunteer group. ‘Inspector Jordan,’ he said cheerfully, ‘I thought you might be dedi-catedly plugging away when I got your answering service at home.’

  ‘Mr Balit,’ she said coolly. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘Ah, well, I’ve had some rather disturbing reports,’ he said. He didn’t sound particularly disturbed. She didn’t respond to this, but waited for him to get to the point. ‘One of my volunteers, Mrs Rafiq, seems to have been arrested, and I’ve had the family on my back.’

  ‘That’s not my investigation,’ Lynne said. Let Farn-ham deal with this. ‘But Mrs Rafiq is helping with inquiries, yes.’ She let him absorb that, then said, ‘While we’re talking, maybe you can help me with a query I have.’

  There was silence on the other end of the line. He was obviously thinking fast. ‘All right, Inspector Jordan. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Who put Matthew Pearse in charge of the advice centre?’ She needed all the information she could get, now.

  ‘Ah, well, it wasn’t quite like that,’ Balit said. ‘He came to me. He’d found the property and knew it wasn’t being used. He suggested it as a furniture store.’ Lynne waited to see if he was going to add anything. ‘He knew they were short of storage.’

  ‘Who?’ Lynne wanted to know who had moved to get the premises.

  ‘Oh, the local churches. They co-operate quite a lot when they aren’t doing battle for souls,’ Balit said. ‘Pearse thought that surplus donations could be stored there.’

  ‘He works for the local churches?’ Lynne said.

  Balit laughed again. ‘I don’t know if you’d call it work,’ he said. ‘He’s a priest. RC. He’s been – what-you-call-it? de-bagged? – defrocked. Got involved with one of his parishioners, I believe.’

  Matthew Pearse, a priest.

  ‘Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come under my roof…Say but the word and my soul shall be healed.’

  Domine non sum dignus, ut intres sub tectum meum…And her fever must be worse, because he was standing there and the open door was behind him like a frame, a blackness beyond the aisle of light, and deep in the blackness something red glowed with a steady flame. He was dressed in the robes of a priest that gleamed dully as the candles guttered, sending threads of black smoke through the air. As he lifted the cup in front of him she could see its glitter in the flickering light. And he was there in front of the table, and she took the bread from his hand, and swallowed the wine as he held the cup against her mouth. He was there, and it was Matthew, but the stench was in her nose and the blackness was behind him. ‘Matthew,’ she said. His eyes looked into the darkness beyond her.

  ‘May almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you your sins and bring you to life everlasting.’

  Misereatur vestri omnipotens Deus…And she was walking towards the door, the walls were blackened and the roof had fallen in and the small foot lying so still across the threshold, and the shower curtain bulged, its pink translucence revealing and concealing the shape behind it and she didn’t want to look behind that curtain, she didn’t want to step across that threshold, but the fever pulled her away to a high and distant place and the wine swum in her head.

  And his hands on her arms were inexorable and she stumbled as she crossed the small step and he released her so she fell forward into the narrow space. And the stench was all around her and the fear mad
e her retch. It was the smell of decay and human waste and her hands were against a soft, seamless wall and she turned to the side to escape and the softness was pressing against her and at the other side the room sighed again and the air grew heavy round her chest as the glimmer of candlelight was cut off by the closing door.

  The moon was starting to rise by the time Lynne reached the advice centre. The day had reminded her of an anxiety dream, one where she knew she had an urgent appointment but kept getting held back and distracted by irrelevancies that pulled her away from the places she knew she ought to be or the things she knew she ought to be doing.

  The sense of urgency must come from the impending decision about Nasim Rafiq by the immigration authorities. But that wouldn’t be until tomorrow. If the book contained the kind of information Rafiq claimed, it might be enough to keep the authorities at bay. So why did she have this sense of time running out, this feeling that she was doing one thing when she should be doing something else?

  She unlocked the door and let herself into the now familiar room, the old shop front with the high counter, and went through to the office. Nasim’s desk was there among the shelves and filing cabinets. She pulled open the desk drawer, and felt the slight tension inside her relax as she saw the book. She picked it up and flicked through the pages. It was as she remembered it, annotated in an unfamiliar script, but there were also numbers and the occasional reference in the Roman alphabet, references that looked like names and addresses. Yes! This could be gold. She slipped it into a cover and tucked it under her arm.

  She checked the other drawers to see if there was anything else that had been overlooked, but they were empty. She sat down at Nasim’s desk and thought. She’d missed things here twice. She’d missed the attic room when she’d first looked round, though it seemed unlikely that Anna Krleza had been there at the time – Nasim would hardly have been so relaxed about her visit. She’d missed the significance of the notes in the book that she was now holding. What else might she have missed?

  She thought about Matthew Pearse talking to her, his voice halting but his eyes steady and serious. A priest, Michael Balit had said. A priest who had blotted his copybook. That might explain why he seemed to devote his time to community work – substituting the needy in the community for the parishioners who would have been in his care before. It might also explain the conviction that would lead him to break the law when he saw people in need, that combination of faith and of being an outcast.

  She got up and went through to the back room, remembering Nasim watching her as she came down the stairs. She crossed to the small off-shot with the sink and two-ring hob. She still had that feeling of something missed, something she hadn’t noticed and should have done.

  The window off the off-shot looked out on to the yard. The rising moon was large in the sky, shining into the yard, casting its faint light across the moss-encrusted ground. She looked at the bricks of the warehouse wall, blank except for openings running in a narrow line at ground level, barred and dark. She didn’t know why she was still here. She had lost count of the number of hours of unpaid overtime she must have put in. She needed to go home. Something you’ve missed, something you’ve missed…

  She let her mind free-associate. Katya. Katya coming to the advice centre. A prostitute. ‘I thought at the time she had been working as a prostitute…’ Matthew Pearse’s voice. Escort agencies. Gemma Wishart. Angel Escorts. Mr Rafael. Now with angels and archangels…

  Now her mind was moving fast, making the connections, seeing its goal before her conscious mind could perceive it. Religion. Priests. Holy Communion, the body and the blood…. She remembered the post-mortem reports on Katya, on the Ravenscar death: ‘small amount of alcohol in the bloodstream…eaten shortly before…bread…’ Bread. Alcohol. Body and blood. Bread and wine.

  The chamber had closed around her with the sigh of an air-tight seal. She was pushed against the back and the door pressed against her like a second skin, She turned her head to one side, trying to free her mouth to breathe. Her fingers scrabbled to insert themselves into that narrowing gap, but she heard the click of the lock engaging. She tried to find some leverage, something to grip, to pull on, to force the door open, but the soft sides of the chamber pressed her arms against her sides. She couldn’t push her hands up to her face, to free her mouth to breathe. She tried to struggle, but the closeness of the chamber held her. She forced her head back, gasping at the small pocket of air above her head. Now she could see the red light that glowed above her, giving a faint illumination. It was a candle, so close she could feel the warmth of its flame, but as far out of her reach as if it had been a hundred feet away. There was a text under the candle, and now she could see it, now that the red light was burning. Out of the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord, Lord, hear my voice. She was in a box with a sealed door. Matthew had imprisoned her in a box and she couldn’t move, she couldn’t breathe. The need to move freely, the need to move beyond the confines of the space, was so compelling that she struggled, trying to fight her way through the impervious door and walls, the muffled silence making it seem like a dream, as though nothing that happened in this place impinged on the world and she was reduced to the impotence of, Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!

  The air around her face was hot and heavy. Her chest felt tight and though she was breathing her lungs felt starved. The red light was flickering now. It was going to go out and leave her in the dark in the box. It was a flame. A candle in red glass. A flame that was burning up the oxygen, but she didn’t want to snuff it out, to be alone in the smothering dark.

  Lynne spoke urgently to Roy Farnham, the cell phone infuriatingly indistinct as the surrounding buildings interfered with the signal. ‘Pearse?’ he said. ‘…Matthew Pearse is…’ His voice cut out then came back, suddenly clear. ‘Where are you, Lynne?’ The signal broke off in a buzz of interference. She moved through into the off-shot, and the signal came clear again. ‘…Lynne?’

  ‘I’m at the advice centre.’

  ‘What? Where? Lynne, listen…’ His voice faded.

  ‘The advice centre,’ she said, moving closer to the window to get the signal back.

  ‘…in…’

  ‘What? This is hopeless. I’m coming in.’ Her foot caught on the uneven boards. It was hazardous moving around in the dark. The phone faded in again. ‘I said I’m…’

  She stopped. There was something out there, across the yard. A light. The faintest glimmer, across the black square of the yard, low down, close to the ground. A light in the shadow of the warehouse wall? Something metallic, gleaming in…in what? The clouds were covering the moon now. She moved round carefully, trying to get a better view, but the yard was in darkness. There was just that faint glimmer, no…yes, there it was again. ‘Roy,’ she said. ‘Roy?’

  ‘…Lynne?’

  The phone, the fucking phone! She was off duty and she hadn’t brought the radio. She kept her eye on the light, a faint flickering that she kept losing and finding again. She went on talking into the phone, saying it over and over again so that Roy would pick up the message in its garbled bits. ‘There’s someone, something in the yard. Of the advice centre. In the yard. There’s someone there. In the yard. The advice centre.’

  ‘…hear you, Lynne. In the…’

  She wasn’t sure how far the bad reception area stretched. She had to make a decision. She could get back to her car, drive off until she could communicate clearly, give whoever or whatever it was a chance to get away. And if she was right, if Matthew Pearse had killed Gemma Wishart, Katya and the Ravenscar woman, then Anna Krleza was in deadly danger. If she wasn’t dead already. ‘Lynne…me?’

  The light vanished. She made her decision. ‘I’m going across there,’ she said. ‘In the yard. At the advice centre. The yard. The advice centre.’

  ‘…don’t…way.’ She couldn’t tell if he’d understood or not. She switched her phone off. She didn’t want it ringing and alerting whoever it was out there. She se
nt up a quick prayer of thanks that the lights at the back of the centre hadn’t been working, and turned the handle of the back door, slowly, carefully, pulling it open as quietly as she could. It stuck for a moment, then made a small sound as it pulled away from the paintwork. She put her bag on the floor, pulled out the tiny pencil torch she always carried, and slipped into the yard, keeping her eyes focused on the place where that point of light had been. She felt with her feet, cautiously moving across the uneven surface. The high wall of the warehouse cut off the city lights, and the clouds were thick and heavy. She felt rather than saw the wall, aware of it as a solidity, a change of pressure in the air in front of her. Her hands brushed against it.

  Here. It had been here, whatever it was. She felt around, low down the wall, and her hands touched bars, the sticky feel of cobwebs. The clouds drifted and the moon shone into the empty yard, and she remembered then the spaces along the bottom of the wall, a light source for whatever was underneath the deserted warehouse. The light she had seen, it must have been shining through a gap in the boarding or a clear patch in the grime. The night darkened and went black as the moon went in. She moved along the wall, trying to catch the angle again to see if the light was still there, but there was nothing. She needed to get into that warehouse.

  She put the torch in her pocket and took her phone out, listening through the night sounds for the sound of anyone closer, anyone in the warehouse, the advice centre, the yard. Her imagination was creating noises around her: breathing in the night, surreptitious footsteps, the stealthy opening of a door. She clamped down on her imagination and made herself listen. The yard was silent. She switched the phone on, muffling its electronic beep under her coat. She was about to key in the number, when she heard the sound.

  A muffled scraping ahead of her, in the blackness where the walls of the two buildings formed a right angle. She pressed the SOS button on the phone, her fingers fumbling in her pocket for her torch. Then a light stabbed through the night, shining into her eyes and dazzling her. It was just light and dazzle and blackness and she was falling sideways as something came whistling out of the darkness and crashed against her shoulder, against the place where her head had been a second before. She heard a grunt, and a voice, oddly gentle, said, ‘Anna.’ She rolled sideways into the shadow, gripping her torch, her only weapon, not able to silence the hiss of pain as she rolled on to her injured shoulder. The circle of light swung round, and she rolled away again, knowing that she couldn’t hold him off for long, not injured, not in the dark with her eyes dazzled by his light. Her hand groped across the ground, feeling for the phone that had fallen when he hit her. She heard his voice again, ‘Anna!’ And she threw herself towards him and felt the impact as she knocked his legs out from under him, the crash of the light hitting the ground, the sound of glass, and then there was darkness.