“Washing the wounds, yes?”
“So to speak, what with disposing of the bodies in water. Wouldn't you say?”
“That just makes him all the more oddly weird, if that's his intention.”
“His or theirs, either way, we're bloody sure to spend out that budget given us for calling international help. In any case, to whom do we turn now? How best to spend our money on this situation, Stuart? You know if we don't spend it, they'll find another use for the funds elsewhere.”
“Interpol, the French, yes… If anybody's had any experience with something so gruesome as this, it'd have to be the French, French law enforcement, right?”
“Coran will do, Coppers. I've read her casebooks. And if the bulletins can be believed, and they generally don't go in for hyperbole, she's just the sort we need on this case.”
“You're sure it's not just another way to piss off the boss, Sharpie?”
“That, too, of course,” joked Sharpe.
“Then we've done well to get her this far.”
“She has a great investigative mind. She'll do as Sherlock to my Holmes, what? Whatever the cost to the division, these dreadful murders can't continue…”
“I suspect Boulte will see the wisdom of it in the end,” suggested Copperwaite. “Else the gentlemen of the Times' 11 have us all for breakfast, my friend, but if they see we've taken the extreme step of calling Coran on board, why then…”
“Now you're thinking like a bureaucrat, Coppers.”
Jessica only half heard their conversation. Long hours in the lab, the excitement of the evening, and a bout with insomnia had taken their toll. She fell asleep beside Sharpe.
Two figments of Jessica's imagination now gathered fog-laden air into their “land of nod” lungs. The sun had as yet to show itself, and the darkness clutched their shoulders where they knelt over Jessica's body, her dream self, which had been laid out at a kind of watery crossroads here-below a trellis train-track bridge, a sign reading Grosvenor Bridge, someone saying it wasn't far to Battersea Park from here. Jessica's body, snatched now from the water, lay in a dirty sand beach that saw little to no traffic save for young teens in search of a place to drink, shoot up, and neck.
“I wager we know what the M.E.'s going to say. It'll be like the rest,” moaned Copperwaite's dream personae.
Sharpe's soothing voice took hold again, lulling her back to dream, a silly dream actually, in which they examined her dead body, dead by the hand of the Crucifier.
“We can't overlook anything, Stuart. Suppose this isn't a fourth victim but a first, a copycat killing? Toxicology tests have to be made to rule out every contingency.”
“Wretched business… So, what do we do? Wait for results until a fifth victim bobs up at yet another body of water somewhere?”
“We're in a rather awkward position, which often dictates a man do nothing. But I rather fancy we must act and act now.”
“How so?”
“We go find this Dr. Coran, and we bring her back to England with us. We begin with her superiors.”
“We've a problem with that, Sharpie.”
“Oh? And what's that?”
“Dr. Jessica Coran is already here. This is her body, Richard! Don't you recognize her?”
Suddenly, Jessica started at the full sight of her face at their feet, and she instantly felt the weight of Holcraft's book on her lap back here in the plane, in the real world. Her dream was instantly replaced when she opened her eyes and focused on the pages opened to asphyxia deaths.
Jessica couldn't recall having opened the book to these pages, only marking them for later reading. But she also realized that she had been lulled into sleep by the sound of wind over a wing at her ear; an airplane-induced sleep on one side, Richard Sharpe's voice on the other.
She felt awful, having fallen asleep to the sound of Sharpe's tale. She'd been battling and failing miserably, with an ongoing case of insomnia using every cure known to modem science.
Now she wondered how much of her dream of Copperwaite and Sharpe had come of their words and how much her imagination. Either way, they had a most fascinating case on their hands, and she hoped to play a major role in its resolution.
“So, Doctor, you're back with us,” Sharpe said matter-of-factly.
“Please, accept my sincerest apology. I haven't had much sleep lately, and the plane hum and your voices conspired to lull me to sleep. I do feel awful.”
“Not at all.”
She wondered how much she had injured his pride. He pretended that nothing of consequence had happened, while she wondered what he and Copperwaite had said of her while she'd dozed.
“Coihby's and Burton's bodies were snatched from the water,” Copperwaite ventured.
Sharpe glared at his partner.
“That's where Richard left off with you,” Copperwaite explained himself.
Sharpe frowned and gave in. “Katherine O'Donahue was meant to be left in water. We surmised that the killer was interrupted, frightened off, really, before he could complete the job, you understand.”
She nodded. “I see.”
“That's when the bridgeman hit the body.”
“Poor chap thought he had killed the woman,” Copperwaite added with a bit of a snicker.
Sharpe finished with, “New Scotland Yard forensics has determined that our first victim had the same toxic level of barbiturates, and that she was long dead before the Jetta ever touched her.”
Fatigue bom of insomnia stalked Jessica.
She had once kiddingly told her psychic friend and fellow FBI agent, Dr. Kim Desinor, “I fear that I am insomnia-stalked”
Kim, quick to remind Jessica of their work together in New Orleans some years back, had replied, “Better stalked by insomnia than some human monstrosity like Mad Matthew Matisak.”
True enough, Jessica now thought. Still, as a result of her insomnia, at times when she least expected, the fatigue washed floodlike over her, and Jessica found her mind and body shutting down with her tired eyes.
It-the fatigue that wouldn't be denied-came on her again like some pixie-dust-laden gnome. The jet engines, the monotony of aircraft against air current, the battering of the hull created the same lulling sound as a ship at sea… It all conspired like shadowy alchemy to make it impossible to keep her eyes open. “I'm going to sleep on it now, gentlemen, if you don't mind,” she announced in a slurred tone before placing Holcraft's volume aside altogether and closing her eyes again. She nodded off to visions of crucifixions and tattoos.
FIVE
… he who finds a certain proportion of pain and evil inseparably woven up in the life of the very worms, will bear his own share with more courage and submission.
— Thomas H. Huxley, On Education.
Somewhere in a dark place in London
He paced before the cross. He knelt at the altar in the gloom of this place and the far deeper gloom of his soul. He stood, paced more, as if pacing might focus thought. He pondered the situation. Pondered on-had pondered for hours on end now: how to present his truth to them, and eventually to every man.
His compatriot in the crucifixions watched him, watched the emotional turmoil, and he tried to ease his friend and mentor's soul, saying, “You tear at yourself with the talons of self-recrimination and perplexity. You should not have any doubts. We are doing the right thing.”
“Self-doubt? Try self-loathing and despair, wonder and waver, ponder and stagger, vacillate and hesitate, distrust and mistrust, suspect and question every step, so unsure of the whether-or-nots, the ifs, ands, ors, nors, yets, fors, sos, and buts of self-recrimination and doubt.”
“You are the right man at the right time to perform God's work here on Earth,” replied the other. “You must not doubt yourself.”
“I doubt my ability to hold the others, to spread the word. I doubt I have any ability with fact, and whether or not I can convey God's truth.”
“Perhaps such truth cannot be conveyed to others, that truth, lik
e God and Christ, lives beyond human understanding and perception.”
“Still we must try to penetrate the obstinate others, to show them the way. Sometimes I dare ask the crucial question: Do the others even matter? Were they really a part of the grand scheme? Were they even real in the sense of reality as being truth, if indeed reality was never the truth to begin with? Perhaps the others have even less corporeal existence than the voices in my head. Perhaps the others are the voices in my head. No one, not even those who purport to understand and follow me, my dear friend, really know what lives are led inside the Crucifier's head.” He laughed and shook his head. “That's what the London press calls me now, the Crucifier. The fools could not be further from the truth.”
The friend agreed. “None of the fools of this Earth know that you were bom fated and ordained, selected as the Chosen One. Bom an archangel, really, someday to be known as both a prophet and a saint.”
“I know this much to be so. For God, and not the many other voices of doubt and dissension, has said so.”
“Perhaps in reliving the crucifixions that have gone before, in submitting each to the microscope of your keen mind, you could then explain to the others. Let them know, bring them to the same realization we hold dear-that failure is part of the process in getting from here to eternity.”
“Well said! Not one single soul has been wasted. Every single one who has gone before us to be crucified, has cleansed his or her soul in the bargain. It has been so with the O'Donahue woman and Lawrence Coibby.”
Lawrence Coibby had been given a more potent dosage of the drug, Brevital. He hadn't squirmed or moaned or whined so much as did Katherine. She'd been a big disappointment. She'd also been half conscious when the stakes were driven in, but Coibby was better about enduring the pain of it all, the drugs having dulled the sting, the suffering discomfort, the ultimate agonizing anguish that must be part of the path toward the ultimate pleasure, delight, joy, and rapture.
The drugs dulled the mind to all fearful sense of imminent danger. Coibby had died without pain, or so they all wanted to believe.
He recalled the exact moment of Coibby's passing. Coibby had simply expired, and not with his last painful breath as everyone would wish to believe. Coibby couldn't capture a last breath to have a last breath. When die man's last breath could not be taken, at the moment when one's breath became God's own breath, that was when he died.
Everyone agreed that Coibby's was a near perfect crucifixion.
Certainly, he flailed some at the end, but he never fully regained consciousness. And the inner peace brought on by the drug-and the knowledge he must go on to a better place-helped ease him over so that his spirit might imbue the dead corpse with a renewed source of power and strength, the strength that comes from knowing Jesus and the resurrection of the soul.
But again, Jesus failed to put in an appearance, and Lawrence's body had remained still and lifeless, as inert as the cross upon which he'd been sacrificed. So there was no corporeal proof of Coibby's resurrection, as there should have been, but then God tested men in mysterious ways.
Once again the all-night vigil grew long and unproductive, and the collective-they-became further disillusioned.
As director and choreographer of the Second Coming, he had much to answer for. His constituents and followers would soon abandon him if they learned the truth about him, that he hardly knew if what he searched for could ever be found in this or another millennium.
He'd been so sure with the schoolteacher.
He'd been equally sure with the car salesman, Coibby. And for a moment, he was absolutely sure it must be Coibby. But all hope failed when Coibby's corpse could not be enticed to show signs of resurrection after death, despite all prayer and all the power and life force coming from the collective.
They had simply miscalculated. All of them, including their leader. 'Too many voices in your head?” asked one follower.
“How is it possible that the Chosen One is not to be the Chosen One?” queried another.
“We must absolutely not become disillusioned,” he cautioned the others. “We must! Absolutely must continue to look elsewhere…”
“Look elsewhere?”
“Indeed.”
“For what, exactly, pray tell?” rallied the voices.
“For answers… enlightenment, of course. Holy enlightenment, indeed… exactly… pray tell…”
The Crucifier thought of that night when Coibby had gone over. He reviewed it in his head again and again, trying to get it right. Then he thought of the third Chosen One, Burton, and he again felt the doubts crowding into his mind, as he reexamined every step, every ritualistic moment of Burton's agonizing time on the cross. He heaved with the heavy burden on his shoulders and collapsed against a natural stone chair in this dark place where they must hide away their deeds until the world should come to enlightenment. His comforting friend placed an arm around his shoulders, gave him a warm hug, and said, “You must, like all the rest, be patient. The accurate millennium marks the Second Coming. We will see Christ resurrected through our combined will.”
Jessica awakened just as the plane came in sight of what appeared to be a mammoth island lying just off the coast of mainland Europe: Great Britain-England, Scotland, and Wales. From her window seat, Jessica could make out the Isle of Wight. The coastline, jagged and steep, gave the appearance of a great plateau rising from the ocean like some bloated giant's clenched fist. Small English villages rose out of the landscape as the plane descended, each looking like the small Christmas villages found in novelty shops, Jessica thought, delighting in the beauty of this place as the plane floated over moors and marshes toward the spirals of London, making her feel like a modem-day Peter Pan.
The plane descended further, now over an area known as the Whitleyern Highlands where fertile valleys alternated with chalk and limestone hills. Jessica knew that by any standard, Great Britain's overcrowded population had begun to bulge at the seams, and that ninety percent or more of its people lived in cities and towns. She'd read somewhere that in all of Europe, only tiny Belgium had a higher percentage of people in urban areas. The lowlands, especially in southeastern, central, and northern England, by comparison remained among the most thickly populated places on the globe, and nothing bred crime and murder like overpopulation. Yet, at the same time, the cemeteries of England were filled to capacity even stacked tier upon tier and there was no more room for the dead.
Jessica's insomnia awakened her while the cabin remained dark and everyone else asleep. Her insomnia had her reading facts from guidebooks she'd shoved in her overnight bag. Now Jessica, fully “up” on the country, knew that Great Britain had 232 persons per square kilometer as opposed to France's 100 per square kilometer, the USA's 26 per square kilometer, and Australia's 2 per square kilometer.
She had found Copperwaite dozing while Sharpe, like her, sat upright, having come awake some time before her. Both of them fully awake, she engaged Sharpe in conversation, telling him bits of her recently acquired knowledge of his homeland.
He instantly wanted to hear what she'd learned, and so she plied him with the facts most tourists received every day on incoming flights. She finished with a dark twist, however, saying, “I hate to be the pessimist, but there's no doubt that England, and London in particular, will see growing crime of the heinous kind most people think reserved only for America in the coming years and through the coming decades, millennium wishes to the contrary or not…”
He nodded appreciatively. “I have no doubt of it.”
“I believe it inevitable and unavoidable, that perhaps the overwhelming crime rate of America is, after all, linked to the growing numbers who feel alienated in an increasingly technological age.”
“Hramm, interesting theory. I've heard it before, in fact.”
“Do you doubt it?” she pressed. “Not in the least, as one of many contributing factors, of course.” He then ruminated about England's growth and progress, slurring the two words as
if they were dirty, saying, “Greater London has-the last I looked at figures-a population of 6,775,000.”
“As I said, crowded, most in ghettos.”
He ignored her, going on, “Birmingham has 1,004,000, Leeds 711,000, Sheffield 534,000, Glasgow 725,000, and Scotland's capital, Edinburgh 438,000; while the capital and largest city in Wales, Cardiff, has a population of 280,000.”
“You must have a photographic memory,” she replied.“I'm good with numbers. Photographic, I'm not so sure. At any rate,” he continued, “in between these larger urban areas, a host of small towns and villages-all having one main street and one main shopping area-now flourish and grow.”
Again the emphasis on “grow,” the way it rolled bitterly from his throat, seemed a sure sign of how Sharpe felt about urban sprawl. Jessica said, “I take it, you don't care for progress as it is typically defined?”
“Look at it this way. Since the late forties, say about 1946, some twenty-one new towns were established in England, five in Scotland, and two in Wales. Some two million live in these small communities. In Great Britain alone, some six million dogs and almost as many cats also live as household pets, all with little or no room to scratch much less grow. So you can well imagine how the people feel about one another.”
Jessica was about to reiterate her fear that violent crime in England would only increase when she found herself becoming lost in his powerful, potent, green-eyed stare, so instead she turned and studied the rolling green landscape below. The airplane began passing over great expanses of wheat fields, the number one crop in all of England. She marveled at the beauty unfolding beneath them.
Jessica could just make out the small white dots along all the hillsides, the countryside peppered with sheep and cattle. The land rose up a deep, plush carpet of green, a startlingly deep, abiding green that Jessica had never before seen.
TTiey were above and to the right of Southhampton, and soon after, they reached sight of the enormous city that had begun as a Roman seaport.
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