Killing Time

by Mark Roberts

  Carmel looked at Doctor Ellington.

  ‘They’re as real to him as you are to me and I am to you.’

  Raymond started laughing. ‘That’s the best one yet, CJ.’ He got the words out in fits and starts of laughter. He laughed and he laughed, tears rolling down his cheeks, and then fell into a puzzled silence. ‘I can hear him. I can hear him coming. Jack’s on his way here, right now. You’d better go. I’ll call you when he’s gone.’

  107

  6.31 pm

  Father Aaron Bell drew the shape of a cross with his eyes down the central aisle of the crypt chapel of the Metropolitan Cathedral and uncapped the petrol can in his right hand. He turned to the altar, genuflected and then raised the petrol can towards the Lord with his right arm and the Magnum Research Eagle semi-automatic with his left.

  ‘By my right red hand, by my left, Lord, by my straight and narrow left!’

  He turned and, walking down the aisle, splashed a continuous line of petrol onto the wooden flooring, fuel kicking up from the ground. Past pew after pew he headed for the top of the chapel, the weight of the can decreasing with each step forward.

  Beneath the candles, he heard Desmond’s inarticulate moan of pain and despair.

  ‘Don’t complain, Desmond. It was your grandparents who decided to leave Jamaica way back when. If they’d stayed where God placed them you wouldn’t be in the position you’re in now. This isn’t my fault.’

  Father Aaron stopped at the last aisle and looked back at what he had just done.

  ‘Almost perfect,’ he whispered. ‘One more line.’ He estimated how many steps it would take to reach a third of the vertical lines, and took four strides. He moved to the wall at the end of the left pew and released petrol onto the floor, moving in a straight line to the wall beyond the right-hand pew.

  Behind him, Desmond wept and chattered on the floor.

  ‘I am not in the mood for this. Shut up!’

  Desmond’s noise grew louder.

  In the borrowed light of a host of candles, Father Aaron made out the shape of a petroleum cross down the central aisle and across a pair of neighbouring pews. He walked to the left of it, to the wooden relief Stations of the Cross, and focused on Jesus dying on the cross.

  He moved towards Desmond and stood over him near the devotional candles. ‘Obedient! Obedient! Obedient to the will of God, and such is the obedience of those who act as his hands and feet.’

  Father Aaron placed the sole of his right foot on Desmond’s chest and pressed down, extracting a weak but definitive cry of pain that announced the sudden escalation of his victim’s suffering.

  ‘How could this pain become more agonising? Is that what you’re thinking?’ Father Aaron knelt down and pressed his face close to Desmond’s, drank in the astonishment in his traumatised eyes. ‘You’re worth more to me alive than dead at the moment, so let’s find out just how good things are for you right now, and just how bad things could get?’

  Father Aaron stood up and called Detective Chief Inspector Eve Clay on his mobile phone. She connected the call but said nothing for a moment.

  ‘Clay?’

  ‘Where are you, Aaron?’

  ‘We need to talk, Clay.’

  ‘Tell me where you are.’

  ‘Listen.’ He stomped on Desmond’s abdomen. ‘Can you hear those cries of pain?’

  ‘Who have you got with you?’

  ‘A hostage.’

  ‘A man or a woman?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I want you to release them right now.’

  ‘They’re unable to move.’

  ‘Tell me where you are so I can get medical assistance to them immediately.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary. I’ll call you back.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Guess. If you want the hostage to have any chance of surviving you come alone and, let me stress, you come unarmed.’

  ‘Even though you’ve got a loaded gun, Aaron?’

  ‘I have nothing to lose, Clay. Nothing. I am liberated. Tonight I will sit at the Lord’s table.’ He ended the call.

  Desmond’s sobbing was filled with fresh despair and, for a moment, it was sweeter than music to Father Aaron’s ears, but then it sparked a memory of Kelly-Ann Carter that turned the noise sour.

  Father Aaron took a pair of linen handkerchiefs from his pocket and stuffed them into Desmond’s mouth. ‘How close to Jesus do you feel right now?’

  108

  6.35 pm

  When the landline phone on Barney Cole’s desk rang out and he saw the +1 prefix on the display, he guessed the call was from Quantico, Virginia, USA.

  ‘Eve? It’s the FBI.’ Clay walked towards Cole’s desk as he picked up the receiver and hit speakerphone. ‘Detective Constable Barney Cole, Merseyside Constabulary.’

  There was a series of clicks and then the voice of a young woman.

  ‘Hello, Barney, my name’s Cara Davis, FBI, and your request for information was passed on to me.’

  ‘I’m handing you over to DCI Eve Clay. Thank you for getting back to us.’

  ‘Hello, Cara. Christopher Darwin, leader of South Carolina’s Black Sun group. Can we talk about him?’

  ‘Do you have him in custody?’

  ‘I’m sorry, no.’

  ‘We have an extradition order for him. He’s wanted in connection with multiple murders in South Carolina dating back to the 1980s. How’s he on your radar?’

  ‘I’m convinced he’s reinvented himself as Aaron Bell. We’ve had a string of racially motivated murders in Liverpool. He’s on the run and armed.’

  ‘What do you want to know about Christopher Darwin?’

  ‘Do you know how he got out of America?’

  ‘No one’s certain, but it’s believed he made it over the Mexican border and bought his way out from there. He was a spoiled rich kid with a Messianic complex, and a pure hatred for anyone who wasn’t white. He also hated white people who didn’t share his religious fundamental ideals and political views. When Black Sun hit destruct, he had enough personal wealth to make sure that he could go anywhere and become anything he wanted to be. What’s he doing in Liverpool, Eve?’

  ‘He’s a Roman Catholic priest.’

  For a few moments, there was a puzzled silence, and the line crackled. ‘Why should that surprise me? It’s a perfect disguise.’

  ‘Can you tell me how Black Sun operated?’

  ‘Sure can. There was a lot of rotation in the organisation, but the constant factor was Christopher Darwin, Aaron Bell, whatever he’s called. When they went out to murder people from ethnic groups, Darwin went every time to control the killings. To begin with he took two disciples with him, different disciples every time in the first three instances.’

  ‘Disciples?’

  ‘Black Sun revolved around Christopher Darwin and everyone else in the organisation was a disciple. It took us a long time to put this picture together, but Darwin truly believed he was on a level with Jesus. When the Black Sun disciples were first pulled in, they said nothing about him. Two or three years in they realised they’d been left to rot while Darwin walked free, so they started talking. The instructions he was giving out – from what was for breakfast to which house and family they were going to target that night – was the voice of God in his head telling him to tell them what to do. It was a fascist cult that behaved with impunity, because it was acting out the will of God. Those who didn’t kill turned down plea bargains to protect Christopher Darwin, such was their loyalty to him.’

  ‘What was the Black Sun MO when it came to murder?’ asked Clay.

  ‘Towards the end, we had two agents infiltrate Black Sun, but the murders had dried up. In the initial instances, they’d wait outside a house and when the family went out, they’d break in through the back and wait for them to return, help themselves to food, money, jewellery. Sometimes, they’d wait for hours. They’d spray their graffiti on the walls—’

  ‘What was
the graffiti of?’

  ‘Killing Time Is Here Embrace It, and a weird occult Nazi globe, the Black Sun. When the families returned, they’d order them to lie face down in a line, and shoot them in the back of their heads at point-blank range. Then they’d set their heads and faces on fire.

  ‘Kelly-Ann Carter claims she changed the MO. After the time-wasting waiting around of the first murder sprees, she started talking her way into the targets’ homes. Once inside, she’d let Aaron and the third person in and the killings would happen.

  ‘From then on Darwin took Kelly-Ann on every spree, her and another Black Sun disciple. Get this, Darwin never fired a shot. He just reeled out the order of death. Then the method changed again. It was just Darwin and Kelly-Ann in the end. He called the shots. She fired them. When she was first arrested, she completely denied Darwin’s involvement in any of the murders or other criminal activity. It was her work and the work of other renegade members of Black Sun.

  ‘They’d mixed and matched their biblical justification for the way they carried on. Sexually, the men rotated the women because biblical big hitters didn’t practise monogamy. The women had no choice who they slept with. Obedience was all. But there was one exception. Kelly-Ann Carter. She was exclusively for Darwin’s bed. And it so happened that she turned out to be the brains behind him.’

  ‘That really adds up, Cara. Did they target specific ethnic groups?’

  ‘A lot of their victims were new to the country, but they weren’t fussy. Anyone not American, anyone not white. Where are you up to with him?’

  ‘I’m waiting for Aaron Bell to call me. He wants me to meet up with him,’ said Clay, something dark turning at the centre of her brain.

  ‘Be careful, Eve. He drew out two law enforcement officers on the pretext that he was going to surrender. Neither of them came back alive.’

  109

  6.59 pm

  Lucy Bell sat next to her solicitor Louise Jackson facing Clay and Hendricks. On the table between them was Kate Thorpe’s artwork, face down, and a set of photographs in a card file. The bruising on Lucy’s forehead crept beyond the gauze bandage that covered the wound.

  Clay showed her the photocopied picture of the seven core American Black Sun activists.

  ‘The man in the middle of the group is your father, Lucy. He’s clean-shaven and a lot younger, and his real name is Christopher Darwin.’

  ‘You’re insane.’

  ‘Did you know your father was going to do a runner, Lucy?’ asked Clay. ‘Do you know where he might be?’

  Lucy played with the ends of her hair and looked in between Clay and Hendricks.

  ‘You and your father are part of an organisation called Black Sun, Lucy, operating right here in Liverpool. What do you say to that? Are you going to reply?’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense and asking nonsensical questions. Why should I answer nonsensical questions posed by a nonsensical detective?’

  ‘You should answer my questions because it’s a chance for you to defend yourself. Maybe when your twenty-four hours in custody is up, maybe if you’ve given a convincing account of yourself, I can release you uncharged. But if you can’t or won’t help me to help you, then I doubt that’s going to happen. You’re looking at serious charges here, Lucy. The kidnap of a child. Murder.’ She turned to Hendricks. ‘DS Hendricks, show Lucy Kate Thorpe’s paintings.’

  ‘Kate Thorpe was a deluded old lady who thought she saw Jesus and the Virgin Mary every day. You can’t possibly think of her as a reliable witness on any level.’

  ‘Just look at her paintings and let me be the judge of her state of mind.’

  ‘Between the head wound that my client has sustained, the large amounts of painkillers she has taken and the stress caused by the disappearance of her father,’ said Lucy’s solicitor, ‘I want to go on record and state that her answers are prone to be unreliable to say the least.’

  ‘Thank you, that’s on record.’

  ‘Lucy, I’m advising you again to go no comment.’

  Hendricks turned over the first painting, of Marta Ondřej and Lucy Bell in the Wavertree Mystery from Kate Thorpe’s parlour window.

  ‘This is you running away from Marta Ondřej, Lucy.’

  Lucy mouthed a four-word question.

  ‘For the sake of the audio recording, when DS Hendricks showed Lucy this painting, she mouthed the words, How can this be? Miss Thorpe must have known she was in danger, Lucy. She made two copies of the same painting and gave one set to Mr Rotherham to give to me. That’s the forward thinking of a lucid old lady, not the ramblings of an old woman who has difficulty differentiating between what is real and what isn’t. Back to the painting. You walked Marta into the Mystery, then you panicked and ran away, but you ran away towards Grant Avenue, where there were dozens of potential witnesses including Kate Thorpe. What do you say to that, Lucy?’

  Lucy’s solicitor whispered in her ear.

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘This second picture that Kate Thorpe painted is of when you returned to Marta Ondřej and, probably, put in the call to the emergency services. Was it your idea or your father’s to cover your tracks?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘This picture of Kate Thorpe’s is of the moment in church when Marta Ondřej made a fleeting appearance at the door of the vestry. Look at the picture, Lucy. Do you recognise your father’s church, your father on the altar, Marta?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘We’re going to show you some photographs now, Lucy,’ said Hendricks, opening the card file.

  ‘Do you recognise this house? 131 Grant Avenue?’ asked Clay.

  ‘No comment.’

  Hendricks turned the second photograph towards Lucy.

  ‘The dead person in the photograph is Kate Thorpe. You mightn’t be able to recognise her because her head and face have been incinerated, but do you recognise her parlour?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Did you go to her house to give her Holy Communion?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Did you kill her after you’d given her Holy Communion?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Did you kill her because she knew too much?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Did you see the copies of the paintings that Miss Thorpe kept in her parlour?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Did the pictures make you panic?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Did you burn Miss Thorpe’s paintings?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Did you strangle Miss Thorpe?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Did you stick Miss Thorpe’s head in the fire?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Clay sustained silence, staring deeply into Lucy’s eyes.

  ‘What?’ asked Lucy.

  ‘Here you are in police custody, Lucy, and yet your father, who demands obedience from you, is nowhere to be seen. It follows a pattern, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘When you first came in for questioning, he was nowhere to be seen even though you begged him to come here. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘He gave you no warning that he was going to run away and leave you, did he?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, Lucy, you’re not the only woman he’s done this to. Have you ever heard of Kelly-Ann Carter?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘She was your father’s right-hand woman back in the old country in the South Carolina Black Sun. Did you know that?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Your father abandoned her and ran away. Did you know she’s on death row and is due to be executed in just over four weeks’ time?’

  ‘My father...’

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘No comment.’

  Clay’s iPhone rang out. She looked at the display screen and showed it to Lucy. She connected the call and
hit speakerphone.

  ‘Hello, Darwin. I’ve got your daughter here.’

  ‘You’re a liar, Clay, a godless, goddamned liar.’

  ‘Say hello to your father, Lucy.’

  ‘Dad, she’s saying things about you...’

  ‘Calm down, Lucy!’ ordered her father.

  ‘Don’t say another word, Miss Bell,’ said her solicitor.

  ‘That you’re abandoning me. Don’t leave me here on my own, Dad.’

  ‘You’re not on your own. Don’t tell me they haven’t got Jack...? Make sure you trigger the pact. Don’t answer the Devil’s questions.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Christopher,’ said Clay. ‘On legal advice, she’s said nothing so far.’ In the background she heard the moaning and sobbing of a man who seemed to be on the verge of death. ‘Did you set fire to him?’

  ‘I want to see you face to face, Clay.’

  She turned off speakerphone and covered the mouthpiece.

  ‘Before I go to meet your father, Lucy, I’m going to remind you that we have your laptop and your phone. Our IT specialist has them open and is exploring them. Think on that for the next interview. If there’s anything you want to confess to before we show you more evidence, I’d do it now.’

  Clay got to her feet and headed out of the interview suite towards reception.

  ‘Clay?’ asked the priest. ‘Are you still there, Clay?’

  ‘I’m still here but I’m already on my way to you. You did this in the States, didn’t you? Two law enforcement officers. Both came back in body bags. I’m not scared of you. Tell me where you are and I’ll be down there as quickly as I can.’

  As she passed the desk, she showed the phone to Sergeant Harris.

  ‘Do not bring a firearm.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of bringing a Glock 17 pistol with me.’

  Harris picked up the landline and dialled the weapons store.

  ‘You come alone or I’ll kill my hostage and then I’ll kill you.’