Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1)

by James Costall

  All empty.

  No food in the fridge apart from mouldy cheese and gone-off milk. A few things in the cupboards – tea, sugar, tinned mandarins – not much at all. The house was tidy but hadn’t been cleaned in a while. No indication that anyone had actually lived here recently.

  Fenn scratched his head. He debated calling into base but he’d have to speak to that dickhead Lister again. Fenn didn’t like that idea so he decided to have a word with the neighbours. See if they knew anything, seen anything. That sort of thing. Old dear had probably gone to stay with her sisters and left the door unlocked. Or run off with a millionaire bachelor half her age. Fenn smiled at that idea.

  The nearest house was probably part of the surrounding farm. Possibly even her landlord. Had she paid her rent on time, he wondered? The house was at the end of the same track as the old lady’s. Old and shabby. Four bedroom, maybe five. One of those old detached farm houses with poky wings and shutters instead of blinds. No one had gritted the path. Unusual for farmers.

  He knocked on the door and it swung open. Like at the old lady’s, a rush of warm air hit him.

  “Hello? Police! Anyone home?”

  The wooden floorboards – original maybe – creaked underneath his feet. Inside, everything was spotless. A quick tour and he established that no one was home. In the fridge he found a few old beers and nothing much else. He contemplated taking one of the beers but thought better of it. Perhaps it would be missed.

  Out the back, he found fresh tracks leading across a field and back to the main road. Three, four people maybe. He thought about getting back into the Kuga; be quicker over the field. Crops were dead anyway. Best not. So he trudged his way in the crevasses left by the people before across the field. Here the tracks merged with others, following the main road for a short distance before cutting cross country again, this time over a low wall. The snow was disturbed on the top where people had obviously clambered over.

  “What on Earth?”

  Not really knowing what else to do, Fenn hauled himself over the wall and followed the trail. Across another frozen field, more tracks approached to join from other angles. When Fenn was in the middle of the field he looked around.

  A great uneasiness washed over him.

  Tracks from all sides converging into one where he stood, turning sharply round the field boundary, past some trees and through to where the land inclined sharply. He followed it warily, one hand on his radio. He considered calling into base again but what would he say? He didn’t actually have anything to report, other than he felt that something wasn’t right.

  At the foot of the incline, which turned out to be more of a mound, he came across another stone wall. The tracks followed the outside and eventually through a rusty iron gate creaking on its old hinges. He looked up. On the brow of the hill, he saw the Church of St Mary Our Virgin framed by the creeping branches of the dead tree. The tracks led towards it.

  Must be a service, he reasoned. They must have re-opened the church. Fenn had grown up near here. He knew the church was disused, without a pastor to tend to the flock. Knew the rumours of its dark history too. In the last hundred years, three clergymen found the church within their fold. All three died within a month of the first service. Cursed ground, the locals said. A Godless place, this.

  Fenn put his hand to his chest, felt the crucifix around his neck. Never go into the White Helmsley Church alone, they said. The Devil is waiting for you within.

  Stupid rumours and superstition.

  The Church door was already open. A small porch led to a second set of double doors. These were ajar. The porch was covered with snow, brought in from the outside, mixed with dirt and mud. A sound was seeping through the double doors. A buzzing noise. Static, maybe. Electrical. Fenn felt his chest again, ran his fingers across the crucifix. Felt his heart thumping loudly within.

  Stupid rumours and superstition.

  He pushed the door enough to squeeze through.

  William Fenn keeled over, put his hands to the back of his head and moaned softly to himself.

  Chapter 18

  “Why have you brought me here?” asked Alix.

  She was squashed into a room no bigger than a mid-terrace lounge, her legs squeezed under a table that had clearly been designed to accommodate people with very thin thighs. Or Emus, perhaps. People were packed in around her like sardines but nobody appeared to be quite as uncomfortable as she was. The smell of coffee was overpowering. There seemed to be just as much snow on the floor inside as there was out. It was freezing and Alix made a point of glaring angrily at anyone who seemed to be holding the door open for a fraction longer than was necessary to allow themselves room to manoeuvre round it.

  “I brought you here because after we were all sacked by Harker I asked you if you wanted to get a coffee. You said yes, so I brought you here. To a coffee house. Now apparently you’re complaining.” Ash smiled. He had been looking at her with a look of half disbelief and half admiration ever since Harker had told them they were no longer needed.

  The cafe was packed with people talking business; the sort of trendy place where people didn’t complain that the coffee was too strong and tasted of syrup but instead made intelligent comments about the decor and how it’s good that the beans came from Morocco and didn’t you know that they don’t even have 3G over there but the cuisine is to die for.

  “I hate Starbucks,” she said, sucking in her arms to allow a bald headed man in a pin stripe to barge past her and take an empty table no bigger than a bird bath behind them. It had been a close run thing. He had thrown the sugar, extra milk and chocolate sprinkles into his latte quite recklessly and she doubted the two or three swishes of the wooden stick he had acquired were anywhere near sufficient enough to fuse everything together but, importantly, he had beaten the two students who were picking out forks for their cheesecakes to the last table in the house.

  “This isn’t a Starbucks,” said Ash. “It’s called The Coffee Lounge.”

  “It should be called The Coffee Broom Cupboard,” Alix said through gritted teeth.

  Ash smirked, more at Alix’s obvious aversion to her surroundings than what she had said. He cradled his hands around his cup. Alix had a cup of tea, having protested at the counter that the coffee would be too strong and, indeed, taste of syrup.

  “Un-believable,” she remarked.

  “Yes. You managed to piss off one of the most fundamental sources of work you’re going to get down here. Welcome back.”

  “You were just as rebellious as I recall. And I didn’t mean that.”

  She was gazing up at the burnt orange wall, trying to work out the abstract painting of what appeared to be a donkey in an overcoat. Finally, her eyes fell back down on him and he became conscious of her, shifting in his seat uncertainly.

  “This tea cost me two pound sixty.”

  “No. This tea cost me two pound sixty because you claim not to have any cash on you.”

  She grinned and looked down at the cup in her hands. It was nice to see Ash again, although she didn’t actually miss him as such, just missed someone-like-Ash-but-not-actually-Ash-being-around-her.

  “So, we were all just invited to participate in a government conspiracy on a moderately interesting scale, not quite Michael Moore territory but a decent episode of Panorama,” she said, looking over at Pin Stripe, who sat cross legged reading the Financial Times and looking very important. The students were standing around dumbly looking for a place to sit.

  “Yeah, it’s good to be working with you again, doctor Franchot.” He raised his glass in mock celebration.

  “What do you think is really going on?”

  “I don’t know, and I doubt we’ll ever know.”

  “So that’s it then? We walk away? Forget it?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “It’s what you meant.”

  He sighed heavily. She hadn’t taken her eyes off him the whole time.

  “What really made you t
ake the job?” He asked, trying to change the subject. She pushed the hair from her face and finally broke his gaze. It had been sixteen years since Zara had disappeared. She had all but given up looking for Zara herself, but she had never given up looking for an answer.

  She shrugged. “Couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work full time with you?”

  “I have mild to moderate OCD, people at the office hate me and I fired your predecessor on a whim,” he said. “Why would you choose to work with me?”

  She laughed, although he was only half joking.

  “Tell me about Katelyn and Megan Laicey,” she said.

  “Katelyn and Megan Laicey are twins, although they’re not identical. They’ve both just turned nine. Megan’s the older by two and a half minutes and has long blond hair. Katelyn has short darker hair. They both have green eyes. The rest we’re working on. The records of their biological parents have been lost. They were in temporary foster care at the time of Katelyn’s murder, living in with a relatively normal middle class family in a house close to the field where Katelyn was killed. Both were dumped on the door step of St Clair’s when they were babies.”

  “St Clair’s?”

  “It’s a small orphanage in Easton run by someone called Marie Harriette who was, so I am told, madder than a frog wearing a large, eighties knitted jumper. She’s known as Sister Marie Harriette but she’s not actually a nun. I don’t really get it but the point is she obsessed over the kids. Thought they were her own. Didn’t do the paperwork properly. God knows how she got away with it but the regulators left her alone and to be fair the kids were well looked after. A little too well perhaps. She fed them pork pie for breakfast and sweets for lunch, that sort of thing.”

  Alix nodded her head although quite frankly she had no idea what Ash meant by “that sort of thing”. The door opened again and another draft of freezing air stung her face. Pin Stripe snorted loudly as he turned the page of the FT. The students had given up trying to find a seat and were stood making their way through their cheesecakes huddled in a corner.

  “Anyway, she died about a year ago. Took a tumble down three flights of steps. Coroner recorded a narrative verdict, just reciting the facts, skirting neatly round the issues and coming to no particular conclusion. Another well spent wad of public money. Baron and I looked into it because there was some suggestion that one of the kids might have given her a little help down the stairs but we couldn’t get anything out of anyone. I remember interviewing Megan, or trying to. She didn’t say a word. Social told me to lay off her because she was troubled and without a complainant, that was that.”

  “Do you think she was pushed?” Alix asked.

  “I don’t know. There was one kid there. Real nasty. He was eleven but built like a twenty five year old. I’m not sure. Maybe he didn’t like pork pie. Either way we never took it any further so Megan and Katelyn Laicey, along with seven other unwanted urchins, were sent out to various foster homes. The twins were lucky to get somewhere close by.” Ash tailed off, realising his mistake. “Well, maybe not so lucky,” he murmured but he was drowned out by the noise of everyone around him.

  “What about the foster parents?” Alix looked at him meaningfully.

  “They were more bothered about whether or not the next allowance would arrive than Katelyn’s death but, listen, they’re just ordinary middle class people trying to cash in on the system, Alix. I know where you’re going with this.”

  “Have you any idea how many murders are committed by ordinary middle class people with desires to cash in per year?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Plenty I’m sure but they gained nothing from Katelyn’s death. In fact Megan has been taken off them.”

  “I’d like to speak to her.”

  “No chance.” Ash laughed a little at the thought. “Listen you hardly made best friends with Amanda Harker this morning. We’re off the case, remember? She’s off to find people who are more corruptible than us.”

  “Has anyone asked her what happened?”

  “I’m told she hasn’t spoken since the attack. Not a word.”

  They let the moment linger, listening to sounds of others slurping their coffee and talking about the weather and how cold it was today. Pin stripe made a big fuss of turning the papers of the broadsheet and clearing his throat. He seemed incapable of moving without grunting or clearing his throat loudly. Alix half wondered whether he was listening to them.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. You’re the one with the PhD.”

  “I don’t have a PhD in knowing-what-to-do. But I’m not dropping it.”

  “I thought you’d say that”

  “No. You hoped I’d say that because you’re just as pissed as I am.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe.”

  He was about to say something else but the sound of the A-Team theme stopped him. He hit answer and made a series of grunts to acknowledge what was said, the sort of noises we reserve exclusively for phone calls.

  “Come on, drink up,” he said, getting up and throwing on his coat.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To church.”

  “Are we getting married? I don’t have a dress.”

  “You don’t need one. Just a pair of plastic gloves.”

  Chapter 19

  It had stopped snowing but some of the more insignificant roads hadn’t been treated and even the Outlander was struggling to retain traction on the sharper bends.

  Ash had recounted his brief conversation with Baron to Alix twice now. A local uniform had stumbled across something at a church in a small village called White Helmsley but the details that had come in were sketchy. Baron had a team on its way but the guy was so shaken and had asked for someone senior to attend. Apparently the signal was bad and whoever took the call back at the station wasn’t really sure of much more than that.

  Alix had insisted that the climate control be set at a stomach churning twenty seven degrees but despite wrapping herself up in her coat and scarf she still claimed to feel cold. Ash had removed his tie and waistcoat to cope with the heat coming through the system. He couldn’t cope with the dual controls set to different temperatures – something about mild to moderate OCD – and so he was now beginning to perspire. Outside it was minus five but he felt sure the Outlander would instantly melt all the snow and ice within twenty yards of where the car was, such was the temperature inside.

  The conversation had been sporadic: mostly precipitated by Alix blurting her thoughts out loud about Innsmouth and Anwick.

  “Why spend so much money and plough so many resources in maintaining a facility that only uses a tiny proportion of its capacity and hide it from the public?” She had asked that same question phrased in slightly different ways three times now.

  “Search me,” replied Ash, for the third time. “It makes no sense at all. But they have something to hide.” Whoever “they” were.

  She turned to him suddenly.

  “You’re telling me everything, aren’t you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You just don’t seem bothered. About all of this, I mean. You seem so relaxed.”

  Ash shrugged. “This is how I am.”

  She stared out the window. White fields stretched out on either side, disappearing into the miasma on the horizon. Stone farmhouses surrounded by trees dotting the landscape and occasional glimpses of the frozen river glinting in the sunlight. Zara was standing at the side of an old trailer, half buried in the snow. She wore a red coat, hood up, the same she had done on the day she disappeared. She saw Alix – she was sure of it – but she didn’t smile. Just kept looking straight ahead into the distance like always.

  Alix looked again and she was gone.

  She turned to look at Ash’s profile, thought about telling him what she had seen but stopped herself. She was afraid he wouldn’t understand. They had never actually spoken about it. In fact, thinking about it, did he ev
en know? She studied his profile out of the corner of her eye. She could read people like a book. It was a gift, even before she pursued her profession. But not Ash. Him, she could never quite understand. Not fully.

  And it frustrated the Hell out of her.

  “What do you mean?” He asked after a while.

  “What?”

  “What do you mean am I telling you everything?” He sounded a little annoyed.

  “I’m just asking.”

  She turned her head. They didn’t speak for the rest of the journey.

  *

  White Helmsley was more hamlet than village. No more than ten houses, a farm shop and pub that was closed and the church. One main road running through that split into two when it reached the centre. Low, stone walls, flickering street lamps, notice boards and leaflets stuck to telegraph poles, a bus shelter covered with tags and graffiti. An old, red phone box with cracked glass. The pub – The Wooden Bell – was boarded up: peeling paint and flaking fascias. A wooden picnic table upturned against the wall.

  “Does anyone actually live here?” Alix muttered as they slowed past a small row of cottages, the snow that covered the driveways perfectly undisturbed.

  White Helmsley welcomes careful drivers, read the sign.

  It was late afternoon by the time they pulled up at the foot of the hill that led to the Church of Saint Mary Our Virgin behind two marked police cars. Thick flakes had begun to fall heavily around them as they got out of the car, the sort of sticky snow that clung to you instantly. Alix had to shield her eyes to look up the hill. Dark marks littered the white canvass and it took a moment for her to realise that they were gravestones. The snow had drifted up against the stone wall surrounding the bottom of the hill and was a good foot deep in places. Leafless trees covered in snow clicked and cracked in the breeze, the ancient bones of dead sentries guarding the entrance to the churchyard.

  On the brow of the hill, the church was barely visible in the white haze; a ruinous citadel, thought Alix. Nothing more than a Hollywood set.