by James Oswald
‘Get away from me, you bastards. Leave me alone.’
It’s probably just bad luck, or maybe karma, but my hand catches something as I swing around. Vision coming back in a blurred and starry mess, I realise it’s Wentworth’s camera, and once more something cracks as I tug hard.
‘Hey. That’s—’
Expensive, by the sound it makes hitting the pavement. I push through the gathering crowd, knocking the nearest reporter aside in my haste to get away from them. I’m really not in the mood for this.
‘Fuck’s sake.’
‘Hang on. It’s her, isn’t it.’
‘Bloody—’
More reporters appear from the concrete steps leading up to my flat, no doubt alerted by the commotion. I’m stuck between two groups of them, a parked van blocking my escape route to the street.
‘Is it true you were with Stokes when he had his heart attack?’
‘Did you want him dead? Maybe slipped something in his tea?’
‘Why are you trying to hide from us, Connie? Something you don’t want us to find out?’
They’re everywhere, surrounding me, shoving cameras and microphones in my face. Grabbing hands pluck at my coat, and for a moment I fear for my life.
‘Get the fuck away from me.’ I push through a tiny gap between two reporters with such force they both tumble to the ground. It’s a lucky move, because their tangled limbs make it difficult for the rest to give immediate chase. Their blood is up though, and now I know how the fox must feel when the hunting horn sounds. Nothing else I can do, I put my head down and run.
My first thought is to get back to Charlotte’s as quickly as possible, lock the door and hide. I can hear footsteps behind me though, and the last thing I want to do is lead them to where I’m staying. Where Izzy’s staying too, and where my mother’s due to arrive soon. I’ve an advantage over the reporters in that I’ve lived here for years, know my way around the back streets and alleys. With luck I can lose them.
A quick glance over my shoulder shows at least some of them following. There’s a car keeping pace with me along the street too, even though the traffic is clear for once. They’ll have a hard time following me in that as I turn down a short passage that runs along the back of the shops on the high street. Halfway along it, another even narrower passage winds past wheelie bins and rubbish before opening up into a quiet close. The first of my pursuers appears as I am ducking down the lane opposite, and his cry of ‘Over there!’ makes me speed up. It’s dark at the far end, so they won’t be able to see which way I go next.
I’m in pretty good shape after a few months of living in the wilds of Perthshire, but I’m not running fit any more. Luckily for me, my pursuers are more given to the beer and fags exercise regime, and one by one they give up the chase. I’ve cut a zig-zag path across this part of town, and I’m further away from Charlotte’s place than when I started, but finally I feel safe to pause.
Still keeping to the shadows, I gulp down breaths of cool night air for a few moments, then start to take in my surroundings. I shouldn’t be surprised to see where my feet have brought me; I knew where I was running, after all. And yet somehow the sight of the boarded-up Ritzy’s nightclub and St Martin’s abandoned, derelict church give me pause. Was there more to coming here than simply getting away from the press?
Running and adrenaline have made me sweaty, and I start to shiver in the chill night air. There’s a pub a hundred metres down the road I could go to, but if memory serves it’s not the sort of place a lone woman would be wise to enter after dark. Or indeed at all. Too close to the Danes Estate, and frequented by its more unsavoury residents. Glancing up over the church spire, I can see the four towers, lights speckling their sides in random patterns.
A noise close by grabs my attention. Light spills across the street from an open doorway, voices raised in angry shouts. Two men tumble out of the pub, their argument threatening to turn violent. I shrink further back into the shadows, hold my breath for a moment, hoping they’ll go the other way. One of them shouts a stream of abuse, then stumbles away down the street. The other lurches towards the church and nightclub, then swings around and stares at his companion’s retreating back. For a moment I think he’s going to run at him, attack from behind unsuspected. In the end he simply yells ‘Fuck you!’, and then goes back into the pub.
As the moment passes, I force myself to relax a little. I slip out my phone, thinking about calling the police. It would be simple enough to ask someone to go and remove the reporters from my front door, but the request would come back to haunt me in more ways than one. From my short but painful experience, I’ve learned that the paparazzi take exception to having the cops called on them. And my fellow officers in uniform are not all as friendly and helpful as the young constable who’s been driving me and Karen around for the past couple of days.
I could call her, of course. Get her to sort out my problems. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea, Con. I tuck my phone away and tip my head back until it bumps gently against the door behind me.
Which is when I see the light shining out of the church window.
For a moment I think it must be street lamps reflecting on the stained glass. Or maybe the lights from the Danes Estate towers shining right through the building. But it’s too bright for that, and gently flickering as if it were fire somewhere inside.
I sniff for any scent of smoke, but I’m too far away. There’s no chance I’d hear anything over the dull roar of the city either. I check the road, seeing nothing at this end where it’s all boarded up and ready for demolition. Is this someone taking a shortcut with the planning department? Are they torching the church so they can get on with building expensive executive homes here?
It’s not hard to keep to the shadows as I cross the road to the church. Closer in, I still can’t hear anything crackling away, and the air is unusually crisp and clean for a change. The padlock and chain on the front gates don’t look any different to yesterday, the door at the top of the steps the same. I make a slow circuit of the building, staring up at the blank windows, but there’s no sign of any light from them this close in.
I check the three open sides before reaching the dark lane that runs between the church and Ritzy’s. The fire doors open onto here, although I can’t see in the gloom whether they’re screwed shut or not. I can just about make them out as I walk quietly past, although most of my attention is on the church. It has a side entrance here too, locked and barred as firmly as the front. The wind-blown rubbish piled up around it suggests nobody’s been this way in a long time. As I stare up at the windows to either side, I catch that light again, the faintest of flickerings. Not a roaring. A candle. Someone is inside, but I can’t see how they can have got there.
It’s nothing to do with me. I should leave well alone, head back to Charlotte’s, where my mother will surely be waiting for me by now. If I’m really bothered about it, I can just make a report in the morning. This isn’t my problem. It isn’t even all that suspicious. Churches and candles go together like Christmas and overcooked Brussels sprouts.
It’s only when I turn from the door that I see the man, standing a few metres away. There’s not enough light in the lane to make out his features, but there is enough to see his clothes. One of the acolytes of the Church of the Coming Light. Or rather, one of the hired guards who pretend to be acolytes while looking after the reverend doctor. I can’t get past him, can’t hope to overpower him, so I turn swiftly to run in the other direction.
Which is when I see he has friends.
45
I can’t work out where they’ve come from, but the lane is suddenly full of people. They surround me before I can make a run for it, boxing me in with military precision. And then I see the fire door to the nightclub swing open again, more bodies rushing out. Strong hands grab me before I can take more than a couple of steps. My arms are twisted up behind me
and the first man I saw steps up close.
‘Who are you? Why are you here?’
He doesn’t recognise me, and I’m still wearing Jennifer’s frumpy clothes and wig. I stare at him through the slightly smeared non-prescription lenses of my mother’s spectacles and say nothing.
‘Search her.’ The man steps back and a couple of his companions take his place. They frisk me, take my phone and keys out of my pocket, pull my small backpack off my shoulder and rummage through it. For about the first time since it was taken from me, I’m glad I don’t have my warrant card. There’s still a slim chance I might be able to blag my way out of this. Very slim indeed.
‘Nothing.’ One of the two men who frisked me hands what he’s found to the acolyte who seems to be in charge. He looks at my meagre possessions with a scowl of disappointment.
‘Take her inside.’
I’m frog-marched towards the nightclub fire door. There’s a female acolyte standing beside it, and she thumps hard on the metal as I come near. Someone inside pushes it open, then I’m hustled inside, along a short corridor stacked with the kind of supplies you’d expect were the place still licensed and operating, and out into the dance hall. The change in light levels hurts my eyes. It’s bright in here, unlike the dark and sweaty nightclub I remember. Blinking and squinting, I vaguely recognise it from my one bad experience here, but the floor has been filled with chairs, arranged in rows and all facing a lectern. It looks more like a church hall than a place to score cheap drugs or a knee-trembler in the bogs.
Lead acolyte pushes past me, carrying my belongings to another man standing at the lectern. My eyes are adjusting now, but it still takes me a moment or two to recognise him. No idea what his name is, but he’s the one who chased me all the way from the prayer meeting to the pub in Edinburgh. The one who took my photograph through the open door as I sat at the bar. He’s wearing more fancy robes than the others, so is probably in charge.
‘Found her sneaking around the church,’ the bodyguard says. The senior acolyte looks across at me, no immediate sign of recognition on his face. I have to hope they won’t realise I’m wearing a wig.
‘And you didn’t think to just scare her away? You had to bring her in here to see what we’re doing?’
‘I thought—’
‘No, that’s the whole point. You didn’t think. And you’re supposed to be the bright one.’ He’s rifling through my things as he speaks. My phone won’t unlock for him unless I give him the pin code, but my driving licence and credit cards are in my backpack. Fuck’s sake. How could I be so stupid?
‘Oh Jesus. This is bad.’ He looks at me more carefully now, one hand holding a slim rectangle of plastic. There’s a moment where it could go one of two ways. Or at least that’s what I tell myself. Then he pulls out his mobile phone, taps the screen, swipes and swipes again. I can’t see it, but I know exactly what he’s doing. He holds the phone up so that it’s in line with my face, looks from one to the other and back again.
‘Take off her glasses,’ he says, and then does it himself when no one leaps to obey. I know what’s coming next, and even though it’s not my own hair, I still tense for the pain when he grabs the wig and pulls it off. He brings the phone up again, and lets out a quiet ‘Fuck’ as his shoulders slump. I know how he feels.
‘Shove her in the storeroom. Someone on the door at all times. I need to speak to the boss.’
At least I’m out of the cold. That’s what I tell myself as I sit in the corner of the almost empty storeroom and wait for whatever happens next. They were kind enough to leave the light on, and they’ve not tied me up, but this room has no window I can escape through. There’s a rack of industrial shelving along one wall, a few cardboard boxes stacked up in the corner. Nothing I could use as a weapon, even if I thought fighting my way out of this situation was anything other than a really stupid idea.
They took my watch, as well as my phone. Maybe someone thought it was one of those fancy smartwatches, or something out of Dick Tracy that I could use to call in reinforcements. It wasn’t. It was nothing more sophisticated than a cheap Swiss disposable my brother gave me for my sixteenth birthday. Of all the things I’ve lost, that’s probably the worst. Phones can be replaced, credit cards can be cancelled, but that watch and me have history. It keeps pretty good time, too, whereas I’ve no idea how long it’s been since I was captured, and only a vague idea of what time it was when that happened anyway.
Pacing doesn’t help, and I’ve explored everything in the room there is to explore, so I sit with my back against the wall and stare at the door, rubbing nervously at my wrists. For a while after they shoved me in here, I could hear noises. People talking in low whispers, the sound of footsteps in the hall, the occasional squeal of chair legs pushed backwards, distant chanting. That went on for quite a long time, but now I can’t hear anything. Maybe they’ve all dispersed from whatever nefarious and clandestine activity they were engaged in.
And what, exactly, was that? Being caught, bundled inside, identified, all happened swiftly, but I saw enough to know there were at least fifty chairs set out. Were there that many people? Hard to tell in the mêlée. Enough of them came out into the lane that I had no chance of escape, certainly. And there must have been more inside. But what were they doing here?
My first thought is some kind of prayer meeting, but that doesn’t make much sense. These are people from the Church of the Coming Light. There’s no need for them to meet in secret like some sinister evil society planning the overthrow of civilisation, surely?
Except that there is, if I allow my mind to wander down the worst corridors of conspiracy theory. If I join up the dots, link together the clues I’ve uncovered so far, then it leads to a horrific place. And if I dwell too long on what Anna told me, what happened to Jonathan Stokes, then being locked up in this empty storeroom is not good at all.
I’m on my feet again, pacing, before I know it. I need to be calm, focused, rational. All the things the police have taught me over the years. Jumping to conclusions helps no one, Con. You’re better than that. You can get out of this.
I laugh at myself, and the noise helps. It’s too quiet in here, too bare. I don’t want to be left alone with my thoughts, when they keep drifting back to Dan Jones, the young man in the park, the body in Edinburgh. Dan got lucky, if only having your tongue ripped out and your bollocks cut off can be considered lucky. If he hadn’t escaped – if Anna hadn’t helped him escape – he’d have ended up like the other two. Sacrificed. That’s the word I’ve been skirting around ever since they locked me up in here. Those are the stakes. I might take solace in the fact that all the dead bodies Bain and the team have been looking into have been young men, the kind of bullshit bush magic that takes hearts and tongues for their owners’ strength tends to look down on the weak female form. It’s not much of a silver lining.
I’m walking back to my spot opposite the door when I hear a commotion outside. Scuffing feet as someone hurries to do something, a click of a key turning in the lock. The door swings inwards, no light spilling from outside. There’s no room in the narrow corridor for it to pass the looming figure that fills the doorway, and his ominous presence draws all the shadows towards him anyway. I knew he was coming, of course. But seeing him there is still a shock. The Reverend Doctor Edward Masters is an impressive figure in public. Here he seems like the very devil himself. He has my wig in one hand, my mother’s old spectacles in the other.
‘Well, well, well.’ Even his voice is deeper, more threatening. His smile the grin of a hyena. ‘If it isn’t little Miss Jennifer Golightly.’
46
‘Take her to the crypt.’
The crypt. If one word was guaranteed to turn my knees to jelly, that would be it. There’s a crypt beneath the church in Harston Magna where generations of Fairchilds have been laid to rest. I remember sneaking down there with Ben, a dare when we were still kids. Th
ere was no electricity, no lights, so we took torches that weren’t particularly bright, stole the key from the vestry, and snuck in as the day was fading to evening. I don’t scare easily, but something about the low vaulted ceiling, the damp, the cobwebs and the utter silence got to me. Then there were the coffins, stacked one atop another in alcoves that had maybe been intended for one or two, but now were filled beyond capacity. Death doesn’t frighten me any more, I’ve seen far too much of it in my line of work. Back then, though, it looked as if the dead were trying to break out of their cracked and woodworm-infested prisons. When the first rat scuttled over my foot, I turned and ran, Ben screaming behind me.
All of these memories and more flood my mind as two men step past Masters into the room and approach me. Far from adding to my fear though, that incident from my childhood gives me a certain strength. When the men try to take my arms, I shake them away, step towards their boss.
‘I don’t need to be carried. Just show me the way.’
It’s false bravado, of course. They hold all the cards here, and I’ve no doubt they intend to kill me. I just need to find a way of stopping them.
‘Such courage.’ Masters tries to sneer. I hold his gaze, chin up, until he looks away. ‘It will not go to waste. The crypt.’
Not quite sure what else they should do, the two men usher me out of the storeroom. One leads me down the corridor, the other follows closer behind than is polite. Past the door to the dance hall, another one opens into a small office. Like everything else in this building, its window is boarded up. No clue here as to what time it is. Must be getting on for midnight though. I wonder what my mother will make of my not showing up. Most likely she’ll just put it down to my typical bad behaviour. Izzy will worry, though. But if she tries my phone it’ll go to voicemail, and she’ll probably think I’m at the pub. Or maybe gone off with Alex Fortescue. Will she try and call him if she can’t get hold of me? Does she even have his number? It’s all academic anyway. No one knows where I am. They’re not all going to come riding to my rescue any time soon.
