by James Oswald
The steps from the crypt bring me up into a small vestry to the side of the altar. I’m surprised to see pale daylight filtering in through the grimy stained-glass windows as I emerge into the main hall. How long have I been here?
It’s clearly been a while since anyone worshipped in this church. Half the pews are missing, and of the ones that remain, most are on their back, broken. I know how they feel. St Martin’s is similar to dozens I’ve been in down the years, a central nave, big stained-glass window over the altar, pulpit accessed by a narrow wooden stair. I can even see the wooden plaque with its slots for the hymn numbers, although what 146, 246a and 42 are, I’ve no idea. Singing was about the only thing I enjoyed about going to church, but I’ve managed to live without it for a good few years now.
The pain in my chest has been joined by a deep ache in my legs now. I push through it, limping to the main doors even though I know they’ll be locked. Unlike a normal person’s house, God’s is kept secure with a heavy key that the vicar takes away with him. No lifting the latch from the inside here.
I work my way around to the side door but it’s just the same. No easy way out, I might as well still be stuck inside the sarcophagus. I search through the vestry in the vain hope there might be a key hidden in some cupboard, or something as sophisticated as a phone. All I get is the chance to look up those hymns in the New English Hymnal. ‘Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God Almighty!’, ‘Holy Father, cheer our way’, and – my favourite – ‘While shepherds watched their flocks by night’. Or, as we used to sing it at St Humbert’s, ‘While shepherds washed their socks by night’.
No closer to escape, but with the image of a bar of Sunlight soap in my mind, I’m searching around the altar and pulpit when I hear a shout. It takes a second one for me to realise it’s coming from the stairs down to the crypt. The third sends a chill through me that has nothing to do with my exhaustion.
‘Where is she? Find her and bring her to me!’
Masters. Angry.
I look around the dilapidated church, desperate for escape or at the very least somewhere to hide. There is only one other door, leading to the tower and steeple and hanging half open. I don’t want to go there, don’t want to be trapped, but the noise of the gate to the crypt being unlocked spurs me on. I make it just in time, slipping through the gap and pulling the door silently closed as the first acolyte appears from the vestry. At least the steps upwards are stone, so my feet make no sounds as I climb. I’m all too aware that I’m dead if they find me though.
And then I see it. The windows are leaded panes coated with years of city grime and coal smoke. In the body of the church they were too high to reach, but here the steps climb past them. I remember now, looking from the outside when I was here with Karen yesterday. One window broken, some of the glass missing, the lead twisted and bent. Where was that window?
Noises from the hall filter up to me. They’re searching methodically, trying the obvious exits first to make sure I’ve not escaped. It won’t take them long to realise I couldn’t have opened either of the church doors. I climb higher, racking my aching brain for any small details from yesterday. That window has to be somewhere near, surely?
I see it at the same time as I hear the door below being pushed open. No time to think, or worry about the consequences. The gap is big enough to fit my head through, and pushing at the leaded glasswork makes it bigger. I’m too high off the ground, but there’s an old drainpipe I’d trust far more with my life than the Church of the Coming Light. I raise a small prayer of thanks to whoever designed this place, and the men who built it, as the pipe wobbles under my sudden weight, but stays put. Adrenaline lends me strength and makes the screaming pain in my chest and hands bearable as I inch my way down the tower. I drop the last metre, rolling as I hit the ground. Looking up, I can see faces in the broken window staring back. Then they disappear, indistinct cries coming from within the church.
Climbing the railings almost defeats me. My strength is running out fast, the pain threatening to overwhelm me. Somehow I manage, spurred on by the sound of hands pounding on the locked front door. I stumble on the pavement, hobble across the road towards the line of empty shops and houses. Do I try the pub down the road, call for help there? Will there be anyone about at this early hour? How long will it take my kidnappers to realise it’s quicker to go back through the tunnel to the nightclub, come out the way they went in? What chance have I got if they see me and give chase?
The answer to that last one’s easy enough. In my current state, fuck all.
Time to get the hell out of here.
48
I’ve no idea what time it is, or indeed what day. I can only tell it’s early by the dawn light and the fact nothing is open.
The half hour it takes me to limp, stumble, fall and crawl back to my apartment block is the longest of my life. Every moment I’m certain the cry’s going to go up, the hounds will fall on me and rip me to pieces. Each breath is an agony, ribs screaming at me to stop moving, rest, sleep. My hands are raw and bloody, and my head is at once sharp with fear and fogged with pain.
It’s only as I stumble into the alley where I found Dan Jones lying amid the bin bags that I start to regret my decision to come here. I couldn’t go back to Charlotte’s, it’s true. Izzy’s there, and the last thing I want to do is lead anyone to her. I can’t get into my own flat because they took my keys along with everything else, but there must be someone I can turn to, even at this hour.
There are no reporters or paparazzi photographers anywhere to be seen when I limp the last few dozen metres to the front of my apartment block. Even the cars parked either side of the street are empty, which is a shame. For once I’d have welcomed Chet Wentworth and his broken camera. Angry as he no doubt would have been, I don’t think he’d have sold me out to the Church of the Coming Light. And he’d have had a working mobile phone to call the police, too. Where is everyone?
I knock lightly on Mrs Feltham’s door, praying for a swift answer. I’d knock more loudly, but it takes all the strength I have left just to stay standing up, leaning heavily on the doorframe for support. No answer, no sound from inside that I can hear. Not that I can hear much over the noise in my head. How long I stand there waiting is anyone’s guess, but it’s obvious she’s either fast asleep at the back of the flat or not in.
Struggling away from my support, I look around the street that’s been my home for years. It was never the busiest of places, but now it’s as if I’ve strayed into a movie about the apocalypse. There’s nobody anywhere, no welcoming lights in any windows. Nothing.
And then I spot it, so far away the hundred-metre walk will almost certainly kill me. The corner shop is open, same as it was when Karen and I came here two days ago. I have no idea what I look like, but judging by the expression on the face of the old woman behind the counter it’s not pretty. She stares at me for perhaps two seconds before turning without a word and disappearing through the bead curtain into the back room. Moments later her son appears. He has a napkin tucked into his collar, the stain of his breakfast marking the white cotton like blood. Suddenly I feel both faint and sick.
‘Detective. What has happened?’
‘Please. Call 999.’ I don’t recognise my voice. It sounds hoarse, alien, the words of another person. ‘Tell them Detective Constable Fairchild has been attacked.’
His eyes go wide, but I see him take out his mobile phone. Then the world turns upside down and I’m crashing to the floor.
The first thing I see when I wake is a dark face looming over me. For a moment I think it’s Masters, and I’m captured, done for. Then my eyes focus, see the different shape to the face, the hair that tumbles to the shoulders in curls more grey than black, the look of genuine concern.
‘Con, girl. What happen to you?’
More awake now, I struggle to sit up and take in my surroundings. Mrs Feltham crouches in front of me, and b
ehind her I can see the shopkeeper and his mother. I appear to be lying in a pile of cheap DVDs, and a tiny part of my brain remembers the cardboard promotion stand by the counter.
‘Police?’ It’s all I can manage to say.
‘Mr Patel has called them, like you asked. They’re on their way. But come, let’s get you up, child.’
Mrs Feltham holds out a hand, and when I don’t move to take it she leans in and grabs me under both arms. I let out a little-girl squeak of pain as she hauls me upright.
‘Ribs. Think I’ve cracked some.’ Despite the agony, it feels better standing than lying on the floor. I look at the shopkeeper. Mr Patel. How many years have I been buying emergency supplies in here and never knew his name? ‘Sorry about the mess. I’ll pay for any damage.’
‘Is not a problem.’ Mr Patel waves his hands, palms towards me in a gesture I can’t quite read. ‘Would you like me to call an ambulance too?’
‘I’ll be fine. Thanks.’ I shake my head, then wish I hadn’t. The world spins around me, and only Mrs Feltham’s swift reactions stop me collapsing to the floor again.
‘Think we better get you checked over.’ She stoops low, carefully looping one arm under mine, and steers me towards the door. ‘Come with me, child.’
There are few people I’d put up with calling me child. I’m thirty years old, after all. Mrs Feltham’s as ancient as the hills though, so I let her get away with it. I’m in no fit state to object to anything at the moment. I thank Mr Patel and his mother once more, then allow myself to be led out of the shop. A few more people are about now, as if the spell that was keeping them hidden from me has broken. Some give me strange looks as I limp past, but most ignore me like they would ignore a homeless person begging for change.
‘Thought I heard a noise earlier, but when I came to the door there was nobody there.’ Mrs Feltham guides me inside her ground-floor flat, then carefully closes and locks the door behind her. She leads me through to the kitchen, sits me gently into an old wooden chair at the formica table. Before doing anything else, she goes to the stove where a pot is sitting, pours dark liquid into a mug and brings it over along with a carton of milk. There’s a bowl of sugar in the middle of the table, and although I wouldn’t normally dream of adding it to something so fine, I heap three teaspoons in before taking a sip.
The coffee is every bit as magical as I remember. It’s at the perfect temperature for drinking, and soothes my throat even as it begins to clear the fog from my mind. I don’t expect it to heal my cracked ribs, but it somehow dulls that pain too. By the time I’ve drunk half of it, Mrs Feltham has returned with a large bowl full of steaming water, a clean white flannel floating on the top. I don’t say anything as she takes first one hand, then the other. The water stings as she cleans away blood and grit.
‘What have you been doing, Con?’
‘Trying to break out of a stone sarcophagus.’ For some reason I can’t help myself telling Mrs Feltham the whole story. It takes a while, punctuated by the short breaths that are all I can take right now. At the back of my mind I wonder why it’s taking so long for anyone to arrive following Mr Patel’s 999 call, but it’s a small worry easily swamped by the relief of being somewhere warm and safe.
‘Mercy, but you find yourself in the strangest of circumstances. And that poor boy you found around the back. This is all to do with him?’
‘I reckon so. Masters. He’s been sacrificing homeless folk, runaways. People who probably won’t be missed. Taking parts of them to give himself strength.’
Mrs Feltham pours more coffee, hotter this time, and sits down opposite me. ‘Not for himself, no. This is old magic, dark magic. It is evil, but powerful. And it is others who benefit from it, not Masters. If that is even his true name.’
I drink more coffee, without sugar this time. The hot liquid is working its magic on me now, the sinus pressure in my head almost gone. I can think more clearly, but I can also feel the pain in my ribs, my hands, and the ache in my feet and shins from where I kicked my way out of the stone sarcophagus. Everything has gone from once removed to sharply focused. Even Mrs Feltham’s words.
‘You think he’s an imposter?’
‘Do I think he is not a real preacher? Well, he doesn’t worship the God he claims to. I think you know that too. You have seen what he does, have you not.’ The old lady stares at me, her eyes clear for all that she wears spectacles as thick as bottle ends. I lift a hand up to my face, but my mother’s false glasses are gone, as is the wig. I’m still wearing Jennifer Golightly’s dour clothes though.
‘There. I think it’s wearing off.’ Mrs Feltham reaches forward and snaps her fingers in front of my face. I recoil instinctively.
‘What?’
‘He worked a powerful glamour on you, child. It was eating away at your soul. Would have devoured you entirely if I’d not found you when I did. You would have been his to command, to do with as he pleases.’
‘I . . . ?’ I’m not at all sure what to say, but before I can gather my wits, there’s a knock at the door, loud enough to make me jump.
‘That will be your friends now.’ Mrs Feltham gets to her feet and sweeps out of the room in a manner that reminds me surprisingly of Rose. For all their obvious differences, the two have exactly the same aura of all-knowingness about them. Wearily, and with much ah-ing at the pain, I get up too, follow her out into the hall, arriving just in time to see her open the door. DCI Bain stands there, Karen beside him, and behind them a pair of uniformed constables. He looks at me in much the same way I might look at something that’s been left at the back of the fridge to rot for months.
‘Jesus Christ, Fairchild. You look like shit. What the fuck have you been up to?’
49
Bain wants me to go to hospital, but I’m not having any of that nonsense. Not now. I need to see this finished, even if my whole body feels like it might simply shut down at any moment. We take a squad car to the church and Ritzy’s nightclub, while a second team heads over to the shelter. DS Latham’s in charge of that, and I could see the mixed emotions on his face as the DCI gave him his orders. He doesn’t like being sidelined, but neither does he want to be in a car with me if he can possibly avoid it.
‘What’s up with Latham?’ I ask as we get close to the church. I’m not happy about the number of trucks going that way, or the ones coming back laden with demolition waste.
‘How do you mean?’ Bain says. ‘He can be a bit prickly, but he gets the job done.’
‘He hates even having to breathe the same air as me, sir. Every time you mention my name he breaks out in hives, and I don’t even know what hives are.’
‘He has his reasons. He’ll get over them.’
I’d push the matter further, but we’ve arrived back at the church. Only now the road’s been cordoned off, and a huge caterpillar tractor is hacking away at the walls of the nightclub. A corner of it’s gone already, bent reinforcing bars poking out of broken concrete like metal bones in a fatal wound. I’m in no fit state to run anywhere, but the DCI proves himself fitter than he looks, and more spritely than I’d have given a man of his age credit for.
He’s out of the squad car before it’s completely stopped, dodges under the swinging arm of the caterpillar and leaps up to the driver’s door. There’s a moment when I think he’s going to fall off, get himself crushed under those enormous steel tracks, but the engine dies away to a slow tickover instead. I’m too far away and the noise is too loud to make out the words exchanged between the two of them. It’s clear after a tense twenty seconds or so that Bain has won. The driver kills the engine, climbs out of the cab and jumps down to the ground.
‘Reckon someone was in a hurry to cover up the evidence,’ Karen says from the other side of the squad car. I watch as the dust begins to settle, the haze that was obscuring the damage parting to reveal far less than I’d feared. Ritzy’s nightclub might have been a
dive, but it was built well enough to survive a nuclear strike.
‘Done us a favour though.’ I nod towards the corner of the building that’s been ripped away. It includes the locked front door, now lying face down in the road a good ten metres away. ‘Not going to need a big red key to get in now.’
The site foreman insists on hard hats, even though beyond the initial damage to the front corner of the building, nothing has changed in the nightclub save for a thin layer of dust over everything. My ribs still hurt like hell, but I keep my wincing to a minimum as we pick a route through to the main dance hall. It’s still laid out with chairs and a lectern, and my first thought is one of relief. Until that point I’d not been able to quell the niggling thought that I might have somehow hallucinated the entire night’s events.
Finding first the storeroom in which I was held, then the small office at the end of the corridor, helps to cement the reality of it in my mind, while at the same time reinforcing just how surreal the whole situation was, and continues to be. I can’t bend down to move the rug that’s been hastily thrown over the trapdoor, and Bain is clearly far too senior to do such menial tasks, so it’s left to Karen to reveal the stone steps and passageway through to the crypt.
There were lights the last time I came this way, but now the electricity has been cut. I stand in the dark tunnel, trying to remember all the details while we wait for torches to be brought from the squad car. The two uniform constables accompany us on the short trip to the far end of the tunnel, perhaps because they’re nosey, but just as likely because they don’t want to lose their precious torches.
