Blind Instinct

by Robert W. Walker

  Jessica asked in tandem, “The canals?”

  “London is littered with canals. The maps're dotted with them, and many—most, actually—are no longer serviceable. Others are put in use only in times of storm, as runoff. I'm curious to know where this one, on your display, originates.”

  “Perhaps if I had the original notes on the project. They will surface, of course. If you took one peek into my office, you'd understand the ... the disarray. I know the research is somewhere at hand, but this particular canal stuck out for me. I recall it from my research and the building of the replica.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Associated with it, the canal, that is, is an ancient bridge, a clapper bridge.”

  “Really? And why hasn't it become an archaeological dig then?” asked Sharpe. 'Too far from downtown to bother tear­ing up the streets to get at?”

  Tatham gave a nervous laugh at Sharpe's joke. “Funding dictates everything in the archaeological and historical spheres, Inspector.”

  “All right, then, about your notes.”

  “Yes, well, when I can—”

  “Locate them and fax a copy to Scotland Yard to my at­tention. The number is here on my card.” Sharpe pushed the card at Tatham. “No unnecessary delays, man. This is of vital importance to the Crown, you realize. You could be saving a life, and in doing so, perhaps currying a bit of favor with the Royal Family could save your dark little concern here.” Rich­ard's eyes roved the room as he threw Tatham this suggestive bone.

  Jessica only half listened, still wondering precisely what a clapper bridge might be.

  “If you're actually onto his game, the Crucifier's that is,” replied Tatham, his wheels within wheels behind his eyes now turning. “I suppose my helping you out couldn't hurt my ca­reer.”

  Sharpe breathed inward, taking a deep sigh with his inhal­ing.

  “Can you get us back up to street level and out. Dr. Tatham?” asked Jessica.

  “Of course, back this way.”

  Jessica, following in single file behind Tatham, Richard at her back, felt as if they were stumbling about in a confusing, crisscrossing, tuming-in-on-itself maze, not only here in the pit of the ancient museum with its ancient artifacts and dis­plays, but outside, in the real world above, on this bizarre case that she had signed onto; she feared that somehow Luc Sante, his church, the strange-sounding Marylebone Ceme­tery, the Roman mine, the canal, something called a clapper bridge, Father Strand, Richard Sharpe, and Jessica Coran had all come to this place and time in a preordained fashion, that somehow they must do batde against evil, to force it into the light of the millennium in order to see the true face of evil in all its ugliest manifestation.

  They finally found ground level and sunlight from the wan­ing day. Outside, they both breathed deeply of the sweeter air. They stood talking on the steps of the RIBA, feeling small below giant columns on either side.

  “You keep coming back to this Marylebone Cemetery and St. Albans, Richard. That whole area.”

  “Aye, things appear pointed in this direction, yes.”

  “You can't seriously believe that Father Luc Sante is con­ducting some sort of bizarre cult ritual involving the crucifix­ion of men and women below the streets of London in an ancient mine shaft somehow connected to St. Albans, can you?” she asked Richard as they climbed into his car.

  “All the dirty little cow paths keep returning us to the man's neighborhood, you must agree. Despite all that we know about the man—his cloth, his rational nature, his reputation. I keep finding St. Albans in the bitter mix of this atrocious stew. We all know appearances are often deceiving, and those who have their houses in order are often the messiest of be­ings in private.”

  “I can't believe it of Luc Sante. I simply can't.”

  “What then about Strand?”

  “Yes, how much do we know about Luc Sante's appren­tice?”

  “Actually, I've done a deeper background check on Strand,” Richard informed her even as he started down the stairs.

  She fought to keep up, asking, “Really?”

  “Didn't care for him when I met him at the church the other day. Don't know precisely why, but I gained an ill feel­ing just being in his presence. Too—I don't know—solicitous, asking about the case, seeking some sort of picture as to where we are on it. A bit too crowding.”

  Jessica knew the familiar cop thinking, that if someone— particularly a civilian—showed too much ready interest in the specific details of a case, suspicion bloomed.

  Jessica stared back at the Royal Institute as Richard climbed into his squad car. Surprised, she saw that embedded within its ancient niches, high above them, gargoyles again looked down on her movements.

  “Let's get out of here. See if we can't locate the terminus of that canal and an entry point,” he suggested as Jessica climbed into the passenger seat. They sped away, carrying the map of the underground passageways, canals, and mine shafts of the Marylebone area with them, locked away in Jessica's camera. Richard had mentioned someone at the Yard, expert in handling photographic evidence, who would develop and enlarge the photos for them. But before returning to the Yard, they would have a look to determine just how difficult it would be to get inside that ancient mine shaft below Mary­lebone.

  Richard drove for the area where Luc Sante's church seemed a focal point. A few blocks from the RIBA, Richard pointed out a cemetery nearly hidden by the urban streets and said, “There is Marylebone Cemetery. Odd that the Crucifier, if he is working out of this district, doesn't simply dump his bodies there, but then ...”

  “Then it would break with his ritualistic obsession. If he is attempting to resurrect his own victims, he needs to follow a strict regimen, which obviously includes a clean body of wa­ter.”

  Richard laughed. “Just try to find a clean body of water in this city.”

  “Pull over,” she suddenly asked.

  “What for?” he asked.

  “I want to see the cemetery, up close. I love old cemeteries, and this one looks ancient.”

  “That much is true.” Richard pulled the car to a stop, and Jessica climbed out, peering now through the gates of Maryle­bone. Richard trailed after with the map of the area in his hands. “Look here,” he said, pointing at the opened map.

  She did so, and Richard continued, “This cemetery stands as close to our Royal Institute as it does to St. Albans.”

  “It's a fantastic find, this place.” Her voice took on the tone of a schoolgirl with a crush. “I love it.”

  Richard merely shrugged and Jessica began strolling among the headstones, many green with lichen and age, and she men­ tally read off the names and dates of the people housed in this city of the dead. While she did so, Richard continued on about Martin Strand. “I ran a second check on our choirboy, Strand, but he came back as polished as a schoolboy's apple.”

  “Which only makes you even more suspicious, no doubt,” she replied, pulling her eyes from the grand old cemetery.”

  “Actually, he looks more suspicious by the moment, Jes­sica.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He worked his way through various jobs to gain enough money to go to seminary at Westminster Seminary for the Clergy.”

  “And?”

  “One of his jobs was as a lengthsman.”

  “A lengthsman? And what is a—”

  “A caretaker around damns, canals, regulating water flow. That sort of thing. He would have had keys made up. He would know where every canal and clapper bridge in the city lies.”

  “Clapper bridge?”

  “They're bloody prehistoric bridges, built before recorded time some of them. The Romans often built over them, or rather demolished them and built new structures over them.”

  “Are there many in London?”

  “Oh, no one knows for sure. Not so many in London as you will find in the West Country, actually. They're normally something in the area of six feet long by four or five feet wide and a foot th
ick, but only the carefully placed stone masonry remains, you see. The bridges were laid over boulders spaced two or three feet apart to get across streams and some remain here and there over canal junctures.” She seemed more intent on reading headstones than listen­ing to him. He pushed the map of the area again into her face, making her halt, ending her stroll, and saying, “Look here at these areas I've circled.”

  Jessica stared now at the marked map, at the circled areas, indicating coal mines which once thrived in and around Lon­don. In her ear, Richard said, “Most will have associated with them canals for transporting the coal out. There is an ex­haustive number, but I intend to put a surveillance team at every single one, to watch for unusual activity. That is, if I can sell this whole notion, half-baked as it sounds, to Boulte, of course.”

  “So Strand's job, the job that got him through seminary, would have been enough to make him intimate with the wa­terways here? He would know every body of water in the city.”

  “And the system of underground canals, like the one we saw in the replica of Marylebone Mine. He would know of the shortest and simplest routes to and from the mine.”

  Her mouth agape, her eyes staring out at the traffic and the world outside the cemetery gates, Jessica concluded, “Then it must be Strand. We have him. We have the nails to crucify the Crucifier.”

  “Hold on. We have nothing but a packet of speculative conjectures ... Strands, if you will, strands of loose circum­stantial facts, none of which the Crown prosecutor would take into a courtroom, I assure you.”

  “Then we've got to get the evidence we need against Strand.”

  “You're assuming Father Luc Sante innocent in this, but remember, we early on agreed that no one could be working this hideous circus alone.”

  Jessica tried to imagine the old man who spoke so elo­quently on the subject of evil, who had devoted a lifetime to the scrutiny of evil, who wished to create a psychotherapy of treatment in cases of evil and demonic possession. She tried to imagine how Luc Sante himself might be taken over by the evil he combated. He had warned her of this very real danger. Yes, the possibility existed, but she resisted finding Luc Sante guilty. “It... it simply cannot be. Look, Luc Sante is an old man. This horror could be going on about and around him, and he might not know,” she submitted for Sharpe's consideration.

  “Perhaps, perhaps,” he replied noncommittally.

  “How do we get the evidence we need?”

  “We could take what we have at this point to Boulte, and do a surveillance of the area, or better yet have a full-out mucking of this canal and approach it from all sides.”

  She readily agreed. “Every passage we can locate beneath the city that might converge on this canal running between here and St. Albans needs to be cut off.”

  “Definitely dme we mounted an all-out effort, but we can't have this leaking out. The gossipmongers get hold of this news, and the Crucifiers are forewarned, and we'll find 'zip,' as you Yanks say.”

  “Perhaps we can enlist Copperwaite? Inform a few trusted others?” she suggested.

  “Copperwaite can no longer be trusted.”

  “I suspected as much.” She came onto a stone bench and sat, Richard joining her where bushes and tree branches reached out to them among the headstones.

  “Stuart has his eyes on a prize extended before his nose. Boulte's filing a charge with our internal monitors to look into my recent conduct, as when I stepped off from the scene the other night. 'Fraid young Coppers got caught up when trying to cover for me. Boulte's known for turning his people against one another. Too many eyes on a crime scene to man­age secrets, really. My fault really.”

  “Are you sure that Copperwaite is a part of this witch-hunt against you?”

  “ 'Fraid so. Can't blame him, really. It's his career on the line, too, and I put it there. He did at first try to cover for me. It's been a long time coming between Boulte and me, really. Not any worry of yours.”

  “Really?” she replied, offended, but he took no nodce of her emotions.

  “The public prosecutor's involved to her nipples as well. Pardon, but it's the truth. She's a spumed woman since...”

  “Since you slept with her?”

  “I made that mistake, yes, at a particularly low point in my life, I'm afraid.”

  “And that reporter who's so interested in you? How many women have you had since your divorce?”

  “We call it grazing, but—”

  “And is that what we've been doing—grazing?”

  “No, never!” She challenged him, asking, “Then what?”

  “What we have is altogether new to me, beautiful and lovely. Please, you must trust me. 1 hold you in the highest regard, Jessica.”

  She managed a smile and a shake of the head, and then she asked, “All right, so how do we break this case and restore you to prominence at the Yard in the bargain?”

  “To find a cult that is conducting the bizarre 'business' of crucifying people in some sort of warped sacrifice to God. Yes, Doctor, where to look? The million-pound question.”

  “We both saw those huge cross-tie beams in the old photos of the Marylebone Mine; wouldn't be difficult to fashion them into an old wooden cross.... And since coal dust was found embedded in the wounds of the dead, this mine shaft direction we've taken, it does make sense.”

  He nodded appreciatively, adding, “Yes, even the cross might be made of coal-shaft beams, in which case, they'd have long before become coated with the ancient coal dust that might have shared space with a Roman beetle.”

  “I fear any delay and we could have another crucified vic­tim on our hands tomorrow. I fear they are going for seven victims.”

  “Quite right.” He looked at the darkening sky, clouds having rolled in, his watch now telling him the time. “My Lord, it's already 5 p.m. We don't have much light left. Let's have out of here.”

  The entire trip to where the mine had been, Jessica tried to recall a single word, a single clue that might actually have been given her as to Luc Sante's possible involvement in murder, and while she recalled the entire picture of the man as a saint who fought against evil his entire life, she could not recall any single word or phrase he used that would im­plicate him in any such depraved and hideous wrongdoing as staking men and women to a cross to watch them die their slow deaths. She could not imagine the old man plotting with such depraved indifference to human life.

  No, she simply could not accept the notion of Father Luc Sante as the leader of a cult bent on murder in the name of Christ, the Second Coming, or the True Millennium. They might just as well indict his elderly secretary, Miss Janet Eeadna. Still, strands of their last conversation, all about the group mind, began to insinuate itself upon her like some night creature, like an incubi come creeping over her to take her breath away. Had she been asleep throughout the investigation here? Had she been blinded by Luc Sante's apparent benev­olence? She recalled the sensation of having been drugged on the tea Strand had served her.

  When they arrived at where the mine once stood, they found nothing but paved streets and the Crown's End Bazaar, a place crowded with merchants and tourists who'd been brought in by the busload. Not a single sign of the old mine remained. “According to the map we saw at the RIBA, it was here.”

  “Richard, the operative word is was ... was here.”

  “But no more,” he conceded.

  She gripped him by the arm, sighed, and asked, “What now?”

  'To the terminus of the canal. It spills out into a reservoir not far from here.”

  They drove to this destination, and once again located dis­appointment. If there once had been a thriving canal, like the mine, it had disappeared. Richard, frustrated, climbed from the car and began a foot search for any remaining sign of the canal. After scouring the ditches around the reservoir, he fi­nally located a rusted over, weeded over grate, buried in the brush, a grate large enough for a man to pass through, but it hadn't been opened, he estimated, in forty or fifty years
.

  “No one going in and out of here,” he resignedly said.

  “Let's go back to the Yard, Richard, get the photos devel­oped, have a closer look. Perhaps we overlooked something in the replica.”

  “This case leads from one dead end to another.”

  She attempted a hug to soothe his anger and disappoint­ment, but he pulled away, saying it had grown late. “Let's be out of here, Jessica.”

  Across the city in the operations room of Scodand Yard, Chief Inspector Boulte had long before ordered Copperwaite to set up surveillance teams at every entry road to the Thames embankment, and every pond and lake in the city parks, using as many city patrolmen as required. Inspector Boulte, angry that his plan to prove Periwinkle and Hawkins the Crucifiers had failed, now determined to catch the killers as they dis­posed of their next victim. Meanwhile investigation into the copycat killing proceeded separately.

  “Where the hell are Sharpe and that woman from Amer­ica?” Boulte exploded at Stuart Copperwaite.

  Copperwaite threw up his arms in defeat, explaining, “I've left messages all over the city for both to call in, but they've remained silent. Frankly, sir,” Copperwaite said, “I'm some­what worried about them. It's not like Inspector Sharpe to simply disappear and not—”

  “Find them. Send them to me when you do.”

  Boulte strode purposefully from the ops room and down the long corridor to his office, his footfalls like clapping hands against the smooth surface of the floor, his face like a lantern smoldering in a haystack.

  Copperwaite, when sure his superior had closed his door and was out of earshot, muttered, “Sharpie tried to tell you we had the wrong men in custody, you fart-bag, but you wouldn't listen, now would you? And that bitch prosecutor Sturgeon, she simply wants to embarrass Richard. Maybe now you'll pay more attention to the postmortem evidence at hand.”

  Copperwaite noticed other investigators staring at him, one jokingly calling out, “So, Coppers, it's finally come to this? You're talking to yourself, man.”

  Copperwaite ignored the jibe, grabbed up his phone, and eased into his chair. The Crucifier had stepped up the schedule of sacrifices he or they intended, and the Yard must be ready for the bastard this dme. It would prove a long night, and he must amass an army of eyes, enlist them all in the hunt for the maniacs behind all this madness.