by Mark Morris
You better treat her right, Varley, he thought, or you’ll have me to deal with.
Lulled by the murmur of the Daimler’s engine and the drone of conversation from the back seat, he drifted into sleep ...
———
Now that it appeared he’d gotten away with it, Proctor’s mind was whirring again. He was no longer merely thinking about getting back to London and delivering his story before his nine p.m. deadline, he was now starting to wonder how he might make the story even better.
An interview, he thought. An interview with Hellboy at his hotel. How amazing would that be? First, though, he had to find out which hotel Hellboy and his chums were staying at. And to get that information he needed to do a certain amount of reckless driving, and trust to an even greater amount of luck.
From his vantage point at the perimeter of the airfield, Proctor had observed the various officials arrive. Some time later he had seen a chauffeur-driven Daimler with tinted windows pull in to the small car park beside the aircraft hangar. No one had emerged from that vehicle, not even the chauffeur, which had led Proctor to assume that this was the car which would take Hellboy and his colleagues to London.
Even as he was making his bedraggled and desperate escape across the fields and through the woods to the layby where he had parked his car, a plan had been churning away in the back of the journalist’s mind. Almost subconsciously he sifted through the pros and cons of his scheme, and by the time he reached his scratched and battered little Astra — 85k on the clock, dodgy clutch and even dodgier brakes — and sank, mud spattered and exhausted, into the driver’s seat, he had pretty much decided to go for it. After all, he had thought, what had he got to lose?
His thinking was that there was no reason the Daimler wouldn’t take the most obvious route to the capital. That included going up the A229, on to the M20 and from there on to the M25. All Proctor had to do, therefore, was drive like crazy and follow the same route. Eventually, if the Daimler was sticking to the speed limit, as he suspected it might, he would catch up with it. Then it was simply a case of tucking himself in behind the vehicle — though not too close, of course — and trailing it into London.
The main drawback of the plan was not the Astra itself- — it might be a battered old wreck, whose engine rattled like dry peas in a tin, but it could really move — but the possibility of being pulled over by the police. However, on this particular score God turned out to be shining on him. The only cops Proctor saw were already parked behind a yellow Ferrari on the hard shoulder, gleefully giving the Ray-Ban-wearing driver a hard time. Proctor slowed down a little to cruise past them, but they didn’t even look up from their notebooks.
Just over half an hour later, he struck lucky.
There it was! The Daimler! Cruising along in the slow lane at a modest sixty-five. Proctor eased off on his accelerator, then indicated left, and tucked himself nicely in, a couple of cars behind.
As the heater slowly dried his wet, filthy clothes, he smiled in satisfaction. The warm air circulating in the car might stink of the cow dung he had waded through earlier, but that no longer mattered one bit. As far as he was concerned, everything was coming up roses.
———
Hellboy had been to London many times, but it never failed to give him that now-familiar rush. He could almost hear the vibrant echoes of its terrible, exhilarating history reverberating through the centuries, each year merely adding another skin, another layer, to an ever-expanding past. Like a kid in a sweet shop, he pressed his face to the Daimler’s tinted window, the sawn-off stumps of his horns clunking gently against the glass each time the car bumped over a patch of uneven road. In many ways the city was a mess — dirty, sprawling, congested, patched-up, a mishmash of styles and cultures — but that was also kind of what made it beautiful. It was like some impossibly old man, whose unbelievable, event-filled existence was etched into every deep groove on his gnarled and wrinkled face.
Hellboy had woken the instant they left the M25, the ever-busy motorway that encircled central London like a noose. It was as if he had a built-in sensor that informed him when the journey was about to get interesting. They approached central London from the east, bypassing Canning Town and Limehouse — once a center for shipbuilding, notorious in Victorian times for its gambling and drug dens, and a frequent haunt of Charles Dickens — and cruising through the much-renovated Isle of Dogs. Abe pointed out the glittering, rocket-like splendor of Canary Wharf, the tallest building in the UK, as it drifted by on the right, and then they were driving through Whitechapel, Jack the Ripper’s old haunt, and on from there into the city.
Their hotel, the Old Bloomsbury, was a renovated Georgian townhouse, tucked away down a quiet, leafy sidestreet close to the British Museum. After the bustle of central London, the abrupt quietude of the location was a little disorienting.
“Nice place,” said Liz, a delighted grin spreading over her face as she took in the hotel’s elegant facade. “Really nice place.”
The satellite phone on Hellboy’s belt started to beep and he held it to his ear.
“Yep,” he said.
They all heard the tinny voice of Rachel Turner, who had been traveling in the car behind theirs all the way to London.
“This is a quiet street, but we’ll be going in round the back. The car park there is surrounded by an eight-foot-high wall. We’ve requisitioned the hotel for as long as we need it. It’ll be run by a skeleton staff, who have all signed the Official Secrets Act. Of course, your cover will be blown as soon as you hit the streets, but at least this’ll give you all a chance to get a jump-start on the investigation before the paparazzi start trailing you. For now, go up to your rooms, settle in, and relax. You’ve got a briefing at Scotland Yard at four p.m. Your car will be waiting round the back at three thirty to pick you up.”
“Got it,” Hellboy said, and stuck his phone back in his belt. Glancing at the clock mounted in the walnut dashboard of the Daimler, he saw that it was two forty-five p.m. — breakfast time back home.
“Damn briefing,” he muttered. “It’s just dead time. What can these guys tell us that we don’t already know?”
Liz shrugged. “Maybe they’ve got new information.”
“Nah, they’re just covering their asses. Then if anything happens to us they can at least claim it wasn’t due to negligence on their part.”
Liz knew there was a lot of truth in Hellboy’s words, but she still thought it useful to get the heads-up on a situation from those directly in the firing line. Different perspectives, different insights. It was all good.
“I wonder if our luggage has arrived?” Abe mused as they pulled into the car park at the rear of the hotel.
Liz knew he was thinking of his books and music.
“Does it ever?” Hellboy snorted. “Knowing those Operations guys our stuff’ll be halfway to Karachi by now.”
Abe looked alarmed, the finlike ridges on his neck fluttering in agitation.
“Come on,” said Liz, “let’s get inside. At least if we’re quick we’ll have time for a proper English cup of tea.”
Hellboy saw their chauffeur, Christopher, unclipping his seat belt. He guessed it was part of the guy’s job to open the car doors for his clients at the end of their journey, maybe even carry their luggage for them. Personally, though, Hellboy was uncomfortable with servility, hated being treated like he was something special.
“It’s okay, pal, I got it,” he said, and pushed the passenger door open. He unfolded himself from the car, hooves clacking on the concrete as he swung his legs round and stood up. He was rotating his neck, shoulder muscles crackling, when he heard a car door clunk shut and a voice speak his name. He turned, tail swishing, expecting to see Agent Turner — even though the person who had spoken had sounded like a man. But Agent Turner was still sitting in her car, making a phone call, and instead what he saw was a vagrant, striding forward and pointing a camera at him.
No, not a vagrant. The guy was unshaven, h
is clothes crumpled and caked with mud, but the fact that he had a car, which he had parked badly just inside the car-park entrance, and a nifty-looking camera suggested that he wasn’t forced to walk the streets and sleep rough.
“Hey!” Hellboy shouted as the guy snapped him, not once but several times. Throwing up his hand in the classic “no publicity” pose, he growled, “Back off, pal.”
The man lowered the camera. Hellboy’s anger seemed not to intimidate him in the slightest. He looked like the kind of guy who encountered threats and bluster on a daily basis.
“Might I have a few words, Hellboy?” the guy asked.
“Buzz off,” Hellboy muttered.
“Please. My readers would love to know what you’re doing in London.”
“Who the hell are you?” asked Agent Turner, who had now spotted the man and catapulted out of her car.
“Abe Sapien, right?” the man said, ignoring her and pointing at Abe.
“Never mind him. My colleague asked who you were, buddy,” Hellboy said.
“My name’s Colin Proctor. I’m a reporter for the Star. I found out you were coming to London and — “
“Who told you?” asked Liz, who had followed Abe out of the car and was now standing beside him.
The man smiled — a little too smugly, Hellboy thought. He clenched his right fist, the anger rising in him.
“A good journalist never reveals his sources, Miss Sherman,” he said. “By the way, may I just say that your photographs don’t do you credit. You’re far more beautiful in the flesh.”
“Man, this guy is a piece of work,” Hellboy muttered.
“Can I tell my readers that you’re here to investigate the torso murders?” Proctor asked.
“You can tell ‘em what you like,” Hellboy said.
“In that case, can I tell them that there’s more to this case than meets the eye? That there is perhaps some supernatural element involved? Because that’s what you do, isn’t it? Investigate the strange, the unexplained?”
“No comment,” Hellboy said.
He began to stomp towards the hotel’s back entrance. Proctor dodged around Rachel Turner, who made an ineffectual effort to restrain him, and scuttled after him.
“Are the people of London under threat, Hellboy?” he asked.
“No comment.”
“Can we expect a speedy resolution to this current crisis?”
“No comment.”
“Are there likely to be further victims of the torso killer, whoever he, she, or it may be?”
“No comment.”
Richard had been last out of the Daimler and was now trailing at the rear of the group. “Look, mate, why don’t you give it up?” he said. “Can’t you see you’re not going to get anything here?”
Proctor took a photograph of Richard, then skipped nimbly out of the way as Rachel Turner made a grab for his camera.
“On the contrary,” he said with a wolfish grin, “I’ve got more than enough, thanks.”
———
Two hours later Hellboy was ready to kick some serious butt. The encounter with the sleazebag reporter had set his blood on a low boil, but the interminable briefing at Scotland Yard afterwards had really cranked up the heat. Tired and bored herself, Liz had found it difficult to stifle her yawns throughout the meeting. She had glanced over at Hellboy a few times, and from the look on his face had half expected to see steam jetting out of his ears.
By the time the briefing was over, Hellboy was certainly in no mood to broach any argument. When DCI Reynolds, one of the officers leading the murder investigation, suggested that the police were in overall charge of the operation and that the B.P.R.D. was answerable to the Met, Hellboy shook his head.
“We’re answerable to nobody,” he said. “We do this our way or not at all.”
Reynolds, a brusque, broad-shouldered man with a permanent five o’clock shadow, bristled. “With all due respect, sir — “
“With all due respect,” Hellboy interrupted in a louder voice, “we didn’t fly all the way over here just to toe the line. We’ve got vast experience of this kind of crap. You don’t. End of story.”
There were glowers all round. Liz could almost smell the testosterone. In the end a few calls were made and a compromise was reached, which, although nobody seemed particularly satisfied with it, favored the B.P.R.D.
It was agreed that the Bureau would lead the investigation, but that they would involve the local authorities, and in particular the police, every step of the way. A further argument ensued when Hellboy announced that his immediate intention was to head down to the London Underground in search of the creature which had terrorized the young couple on Sunday night. Reynolds’s response was that if Hellboy was doing that, he had to take two armed police officers down with him.
“No way,” Hellboy protested. “I’m not playing nursemaid to nobody.”
“I’m not asking you to play nursemaid,” Reynolds retorted, “and frankly, sir, I find that remark insulting. My men are highly trained officers — “
“Who break easily,” Hellboy butted in. “Unlike me.”
“Highly trained officers armed with high-carbine assault rifles.”
Hellboy snorted.
“Kids with BB guns. If that’s a demon down in those tunnels, Chief Inspector, then that’s what those guys will look like to it.”
Finally Hellboy put a call through to Tom Manning, who told him not to make a diplomatic incident out of the situation.
“It’s their country, Hellboy,” Manning said. “You know how territorial the Brits are. If they want to send their guys down with you, that’s their lookout.”
“Except it isn’t,” Hellboy said. “It’s my lookout. If anything happens to those guys, I’ll feel responsible.”
“You’ll have no reason to do so. As I say, it’s their country, and — to some extent at least — we have to respect their methods and comply with their wishes.”
There was a simmering silence at the other end of the line.
“Are you waiting for a direct order, Hellboy?” Manning sighed.
“Are you going to give me one?” Hellboy said.
Two minutes later he slammed down the phone and marched back up to Reynolds.
“Okay,” he said,”your guys are in. But when the time comes to notify their next of kin, Chief Inspector, I hope you’ll have the guts to do it yourself.”
Chapter 4
“Your friend Hellboy’s a feisty fellow, isn’t he?” Richard said.
Despite her liking for the young lecturer, Liz felt herself bristling. She was fiercely protective of Hellboy, would defend him to the hilt, and — good-natured banter with Abe aside — would never dream of criticizing him behind his back.
“He’s my best friend,” she said, perhaps a little too curtly.
Richard, who was driving, glanced at her. “Hey, listen,” he said, “I didn’t mean anything. I think he’s a great bloke. I like a man who stands up for himself and says what he thinks.”
Man. Not many people called Hellboy that without hesitating first. That was one of the things Liz liked about Richard — his easy acceptance of their weirdness. Hellboy’s picture had been on enough magazine covers and TV news bulletins over the years, but when people met him they still reacted as if what they’d really been expecting was some regular guy who just donned the big red suit to fight crime. And, maybe aside from HB’s old flame, Anastasia Bransfield, she had never seen anyone not flinch from that big stone hand of his before. It was an instinctive thing, like the hand had some kind of evil aura about it. But Richard had walked right up and held his hand out for Hellboy to shake. And Hellboy, perhaps taken by surprise, had shaken it.
“Sorry,” Liz said, “I’m a little raw. Ignore me.”
“You need some sleep,” said Richard.
“Tell me about it. But I’m not going to mess my body clock up even more by conking out now. I’ll sleep with the locals.”
As soon as she realiz
ed what she had said, she arched an eyebrow and added, “In a manner of speaking.”
Richard laughed and pushed the car through a set of changing lights. It was around six p.m. now, and already dark. London was a riot of neon and car headlights. It hurt Liz’s weary eyes a little, so she closed them briefly.
“What you’ve got to realize about Hellboy,” she said, “is that he’s been in the public eye for most of his life. He’s not comfortable with it, but he can’t do anything about it. It’s not like he can slip on a pair of shades and a baseball cap and melt into the crowd. Everywhere he goes people stare at him, and just by doing that they remind him he’s different. Under the circumstances I think he’s remarkably well balanced and even tempered. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that he’s the sweetest guy I’ve ever known.”
Richard nodded. “You really love him, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do,” she said without hesitation. “He’s the best big brother a girl could wish for.”
Richard had picked Liz up from her hotel twenty minutes before. As soon as they had arrived back at the Old Bloomsbury after their briefing at Scotland Yard, Hellboy had outlined their three-pronged plan of attack for the evening. Liz was to accompany Richard, who had told them he could put them in touch with a sangoma resident in London, who might shed some light on recent events; Abe would visit the murder sites; and Hellboy himself would check out the Underground. They would rendezvous back at the hotel later and compare notes.
“So who’s this guy we’re going to see?” Liz asked now.
“His name’s Kobus Labuschagne,” said Richard. “He’s a sangoma from Johannesburg in South Africa. He was forced to flee his country eight years ago after speaking out against the dark practices used by some of his peers. Because of evidence he gave to the police, his wife and two daughters were murdered and their bodies mutilated. Despite this he continues to help the police in the UK. Three years ago the information he supplied led to the arrest of three men and two women, who were responsible for the muti murder of a four-year-old boy whose torso was found floating in the Thames close to Tower Bridge. During the trial he was under a twenty-four-hour police guard. Even today he gets threatened on a regular basis, and several times he’s been attacked.”
