by Mark Morris
She laughed.”Okay, okay,you’ve worn me down. Jeez, I thought you English guys were supposed to be shy, retiring types.”
“Don’t believe everything you read,” he said.
He parked close to Embankment, and they dined on a boat permanently moored on the Thames, which had been converted into a tapas restaurant. Once the coffee and petit fours were out of the way, they took a turn around the deck, collars turned up against the drizzle. Less than half a mile away, the vast, glowing clock face of Big Ben resembled a numbered moon on the glittering pedestal of its tower.
“I always find it weird,” Liz said, gesturing with her cigarette.
“What?”
“Seeing stuff like Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. I mean, I’ve been here before, but you see that damn clock in so many movies it’s like London is some giant film set.”
Richard laughed. “I suppose that’s how we Brits think of New York.”
“Hell, it’s how I think of New York,” replied Liz. “I hardly ever go there.”
She took a drag on her cigarette and watched the reflection of lights dancing on the river. She liked the young lecturer. He was laid back, intelligent, and he had a good sense of humor. During dinner they had talked mostly about their work and the current investigation.
“Nightcap?” he said to her now.
“What, here?”
“I was thinking my place. It’s not far away. In fact, it’s pretty much on the route back to your hotel... in a roundabout sort of way.”
She grinned. “That’s a lousy chat-up line.”
Richard blushed. “It’s not ... I mean ...”
“Relax,” she said, punching his arm. “I’m kidding. Come on then, Casanova. Back to your place.”
Richard’s house was just south of Notting Hill, close to Holland Park tube station. The building was one of a row of similar houses, narrow and Victorian. It had a bay window, a slate roof, and a blue door.
“Here we are,” he said, squeezing into a parking space. “‘Tis a humble dwelling, but mine own ... well, a quarter of it anyway.”
“You share?” said Liz.
“The house is divided into four flats. Mine’s on the top floor.”
They walked up the short path to the front door, the rain hissing in the long grass of the tiny, square lawn. Richard produced his key and let them into a high-ceilinged hallway with a parquet floor. The house smelled as though someone had been cooking with exotic spices. It was a nice smell, but a little cloying.
“I live at the top,” Richard told her.
“Yeah,” said Liz dryly, “you’ve already said.”
“So I have,” he muttered. He seemed a little ill at ease. Liz wondered whether he was hoping this might turn into a romantic assignation. If so she was going to have to let him down gently.
They started up the stairs, Richard in the lead. When he reached the top-floor landing he suddenly stopped dead. Liz glanced up and saw shock on his face.
“What is it?”
He turned to her, reaching out to the banister rail as though to steady himself. “Someone’s...” he said, then his voice trailed off and he shook his head.
She was beside him in a couple of seconds. Now she could see the door to his flat.
A dead chicken had been hammered to it, a thick steel nail protruding from its scrawny pink neck. Its head hung down, beak open, resting on the bag of brown feathers that was its body. Its clawed feet were rigid, as though it had died while desperately trying to scrabble for a perch that wasn’t there. Blackening blood formed rivulets through the feathers, turning to a half-dozen pencil-thin streams of bright red where it had run down the wooden door and pooled on the beige-patterned carpet beneath. Some of the chicken’s blood had been used to finger-paint a crude symbol above the sagging body: an eye with a squiggle below that looked Arabic, or maybe Egyptian.
“I prefer mine oven ready,” muttered Liz, then realized this was probably more upsetting for him than it was for her. She was used to far worse sights than this. She put a hand on his arm. “Sorry.”
He licked his lips and made a valiant attempt to pull himself together. “It’s a warning,” he said.
She nodded, though she didn’t feel unduly concerned. If people really meant business, they killed you. They didn’t bother warning you first.
“What does the eye symbol mean?” she asked.
“I think it means they’re watching us,” said Richard.
———
It was an odd one this, Sergeant Wormley thought as he stood in the rain, sipping tea from a plastic cup. Odd and disturbing.
He had never known a day quite like it. He was not a superstitious man, nor given to flights of fancy, but he couldn’t deny there was something about the little house behind him. Something bad. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
Just thinking about the place gave him a crawly feeling up his back. And glancing at it over his shoulder elicited a shudder that, try as he might, he couldn’t suppress. The house was well lit and cordoned off. There were crime-team members going in and out at regular intervals, despite the late hour. There was an uneasy-looking PC standing guard outside to deter bolshy journalists and over-inquisitive onlookers ...
And yet, in spite of all the activity, the house somehow still looked ... creepy. Almost watchful.
He shook his head and told himself not to be so bloody daft. But, despite the rain, the fact remained that at the first opportunity he had once again chosen to come out here to drink his tea. And he was not the only one to have been affected by the strange ambience of the place. Both yesterday and today he had noted that fellow officers and even hardened members of the forensics team had been finding excuses to vacate the premises, even if only for short intervals. Of course, for those working on the case, the house was a natural rendezvous, a refuge from prying eyes, somewhere to compare notes and relay information. However, it was as if no one could stay inside the building for long, as if there were something seeping from its walls, that not only made it impossible to think clearly, but that also affected emotions, making whoever was exposed to it anxious and tetchy.
If there was something — and it was a bloody ridiculous idea — then it must be a recent phenomenon. After all, the owner of the house, a “sweet and harmless” old widow (according to her neighbors) named Patricia Court, had lived here, formerly with her husband and children, and latterly alone, for nigh on forty years with no apparent problems whatsoever.
Today, though, she had flipped. And not just flipped as in allowed the stress and upset of the past couple of days to get to her, but flipped as in gone totally psycho. After finding the dismembered torso in her flower bed, she had yesterday been visited by her doctor, who had prescribed a mild sedative to help her sleep. She had spent most of the day zonked out, and then this afternoon, having spent the morning supplying the investigative team with tea and biscuits, she had once again toddled off to bed for a little nap. She had snoozed for four hours, then had got up, gone out to the garden shed, selected a large pair of shears, and walked back into the house.
PC Mike Firth had been in the kitchen at the time, washing up coffee mugs. The old lady had walked up behind him, and with no provocation whatsoever had stabbed him in the shoulder blade. The subsequent attack had been so vicious and unexpected that she had managed to slash and stab the young constable at least a dozen times before she had been very forcibly restrained. Now both she and Mike were in the hospital — Mike with a punctured lung, internal injuries, and gashes to his stomach, arms, and back, and Patricia Court with a broken right arm and three cracked ribs.
Of more concern than the old lady’s physical injuries, however, was her mental state. According to reports from the hospital, she had now regressed into an almost catatonic trance, a kind of waking coma which had nothing to do with the fact that she had been slammed to the floor by three hefty PCs and a female member of the forensics team. Latest news was that she was staring into space,
occasionally twitching, occasionally snarling. She had apparently also been restrained because she was considered a danger both to herself and others.
If that had been the only violent incident at the house over the past thirty-six hours, Wormley might have explained it away as a one-off, an aberration. But it had not been the only incident. There had been others — none, thankfully, as serious as the attack on Mike Firth, but still alarming enough to constitute a pattern, a sequence, a very real sense that something unusual and sinister was going on.
Two of the forensics team — dedicated and sensible professionals — had that morning come to blows over a minor disagreement and had had to be pulled apart. At lunchtime an experienced police constable, who had been standing at the gate monitoring the crowd of onlookers, had used his truncheon to break the nose of a neighbor who he claimed had been pestering him with questions, and had subsequently been sent home in disgrace. Plus there had been stand-up rows aplenty, people jumping down one another’s throats at the slightest provocation. In fact, the wave of ill feeling had been so widespread that Wormley couldn’t think of anyone who hadn’t snapped at somebody else at least once that day — himself included.
He finished his tea and looked up into the night sky, watching the rain fall like silver arrows through the golden halo of the street lamps. He felt calmer out here, more clearheaded. The rain was cool and refreshing on his upturned face. All he really wanted was to go home to his wife, Alma, and his warm, cozy bed. What he didn’t want, what he would happily never do again if it were his choice, was set foot back inside that house.
“So what’s the story with the old girl?”
The voice, directly in front of him, took him unawares. Instantly Wormley was annoyed with himself. His instincts — -his sixth sense — were usually good; several times in the past his alertness had got him out of potentially nasty situations. This time, though, he had had no idea that anyone was within yards of him. Put it down to the house, he thought. Clouding his thoughts. Scrambling his mind.
The man standing before him was half a head shorter than Wormley, and scruffy. He looked around fifty at first glance, though he possessed a bloated, boozy seediness that probably meant he was five, maybe ten years younger than that.
Wormley answered the man’s question with one of his own. “And who might you be?”
The man smiled. A crafty smile. Smarmy. He’s either a reporter or afreeloader,Wormley thought. The man reached into the pocket of his grubby, knee-length jacket and produced a business card, which he handed to Wormley. The card was soggy, frayed at the edges. Wormley glanced at it, clocked the man’s name, Colin Proctor, and the name of his newspaper. He sighed.
“Press conference at nine a.m. tomorrow,” he said. “If you’re any good at your job you’ll find out where.”
The man’s smile widened into a grin. It made him look like a chubby shark.
“Oh, but I am good at my job,” he said. “Bloody great, in fact. That’s why I’m here, to get ahead of the losers who’ll all end up with exactly the same story tomorrow.”
Another sigh from Wormley. “You’ve wasted your time then, haven’t you?”
“I don’t think so,” said Proctor with another flash of his smarmy smile.
“I think so,” Wormley said, “because you won’t get anything from anyone here, off the record or otherwise.”
“Oh, I’ve already got my story,” Proctor said airily. “I just came to get a feel for the place, soak up the atmosphere. That’s why I’m so good at what I do, Sergeant. I’m thorough, you see.”
Wormley said nothing.
“Always dot the is and cross the t’s, that’s me,” Proctor continued. “So, this old girl ... Patricia Court. I hear she went nutso and sliced up one of your lot.”
Wormley tried not to wince. The ambulances screaming to a halt outside the house earlier had made it evident that something had happened, but orders had been given to those inside to remain quiet about the actual details. The gathered press had simply been told that there had been a “serious incident” and that “no further information was forthcoming at this time.”
Casually Wormley said, “Oh yeah? And who told you that?”
Proctor winked. “I have my sources, Sergeant.”
“I’m sure you do,” Wormley said, “but if I were you, I wouldn’t believe everything they tell you.”
Proctor grinned again, as if he were enjoying the game. “Ah, but I have very good sources. I doubt there’s anything you can tell me, Sergeant, that I don’t already know.”
“So why are you bothering to talk to me?” asked Wormley blandly.
“Well, the thing is,” said Proctor, “I know what the old lady did, but I don’t know why she did it. And people like a motive. It makes everything neat and tidy. And you were there, Sergeant. So I thought maybe you could shed some light. Scotch the rumors, as it were.”
“And what rumors would those be?”
“Wild rumors, Sergeant. People round here are saying that this place is cursed. They’re saying that there’s something evil here, something which affects people and sends them into a murderous frenzy.”
“That’s what they’re saying, is it?” said Wormley, deadpan.
“It is,” Proctor said.
Wormley leaned forward. “Look into my eyes, Mr. Proctor. Do I look as though I’ve been driven into a murderous frenzy?”
“I’d say you’re showing admirable restraint, Sergeant,” Proctor said.
Wormley nodded. “I think there’s only one thing that would send me into a murderous frenzy.”
Proctor held up a hand. “Is it damn fool reporters and their ridiculous questions?”
“Do you know,”Wormley said, “I think it is.”
“Thought so,” said Proctor. “But that still doesn’t disguise the facts, does it, Sergeant?”
“Does it not?” said Wormley. “And which facts would those be, Mr. Proctor?”
“Well, the fact that violent crime in the vicinity of all four murder sites has spiked dramatically in the space of a single day; the fact that a middle-aged secretary in BMA House stabbed a work colleague in the face with a pair of scissors this afternoon; the fact that reports of supernatural incidents across the city have increased a hundredfold in the past thirty-six hours; the fact that several top B.P.R.D. agents, including Hellboy himself, have been secretly flown to London to conduct an as-yet undisclosed investigation.”
The reporter smiled smugly and stepped back, in the manner of a man who has jabbed a tiger with a stick through the bars of its cage.
Wormley tried not to react, despite the fact that some of what Proctor had just disclosed was news to him.
“Just tell me this, Sergeant,” Proctor continued, “is anyone looking at the big picture here? Or is everyone on this case as lost and scared as you?”
Almost unconsciously Wormley felt the plastic cup crumpling in his fist. Head and heart thumping, he said, “Good night, Mr. Proctor.” Stiffly he turned back towards the house and lifted the yellow-and-black tape that marked the police cordon. He slipped underneath and forced his legs to move one in front of the other, up the path to the innocuous front door. As he reached for the handle, he realized his hand was trembling badly. He tried to tell himself that it was due to nothing but the coldness of the rain.
———
“So what do you think, HB? We all batting in the same ballpark here or what?”
Liz was sprawled on the sofa in Hellboy’s hotel suite, boots off, a large glass of Merlot within easy reach on the mahogany coffee table beside her. Hellboy, freshly showered, was reclining on his bed, wolfing down a steak sandwich.
“How should I know?” he said. “I’m just a grunt. It’s not my job to ask questions.”
“Yeah, right,” said Liz. “Because you’ve never had to use your initiative or intelligence before.”
He fixed her with his golden eyes and allowed his jaw to drop slackly open, revealing the chewed meat and bread in
his mouth. “Duh ... intelligence? Wassat?” he mumbled.
She threw a cushion at him. He caught it neatly and tucked it behind his thick neck with a sigh.
“Come on, though,” she said. “What’s your gut instinct?”
“What’s yours?” he asked.
She took a sip of her wine before replying, her brow creasing as she pondered over what she had learned that evening, both directly and after comparing notes with Hellboy when she had arrived back at the Old Bloomsbury.
It had been around midnight when a sombre and troubled Richard had dropped her off outside. Not surprisingly the two of them had foregone their proposed nightcap, the dead chicken having dampened the relaxed mood somewhat. Before getting out of the car, Liz had reached across and briefly clasped his hand. “Try not to worry,” she said. “I don’t think anything’s going to happen. Trust me, I know. I’ve been threatened by experts.”
He offered her a thin smile. “That’s very comforting. I’ll try to remember that when they’re kicking down my door at four in the morning.”
She felt a momentary flash of irritation, but managed to keep her teeth clamped over her instinctive, acerbic response. Reminding herself that most folks didn’t face Armageddon on a weekly basis, she tried to arrange her features into a look of sympathy.
“You’ll be fine,” she reassured him. “Just keep your door locked and your phone close to hand — not that you’ll need it.”
She gave his hand a final squeeze and wished him good night. As she headed across the hotel lobby to the lift, she was hailed by the night-duty receptionist, a plump girl with dyed red hair and bad skin.
“Mr. Hellboy said to let you know he’s back,” she said. She looked at Liz as if she were some curious and unknown specimen. Perhaps, Liz thought, she was trying to decide what would compel such an apparently ordinary girl to keep such fearsome company.
“Thanks,” Liz said, and went straight up to Hellboy’s room.
He answered the door in the silk dressing gown that had been presented to him by a group of Tibetan monks after he had cleared their monastery of salt demons one time. He looked oddly sweet, she thought. Almost vulnerable.
