Her Moons Denouement (Fallen Angels Book 2)

by Max Hardy

  Le Fenwick’s face lost all of its colour, his complexion becoming ashen as he gagged at the image.

  ‘He is one sick son of a bitch.’ said Bentley, flicking over to another photograph of a small, intricately carved wooden box. The same style of wooden box that was on the ground in front of the cabinet. He reached down and picked up the nearest one. He undid a small gold clasp on the front of the box and opened the lid.

  Inside was a scroll, a red wax seal with the words ‘Vade retro satana’ embossed into it. The scroll was covered in very fine hand drawn calligraphy, the first word in bold, centred on the paper: ‘Amdusias’. A clear plastic bag trimmed with a blue masking tape poked out of the scroll.

  Bentley looked up at Le Fenwick.

  ‘Vade retro satana. Go back Satan. The words used during an Exorcism. Amdusias was a demon, body of a human, head of a unicorn with claws for hands and feet. Said to control the cacophonous music of Hell. This sick bastard has been carrying out some warped kind of Exorcism, sodomising and asphyxiating those girls to get at their demons. Demons he thinks he has trapped inside those plastic bags.’

  Chapter 4

  The last time I walked down this street I discovered my lover, Jessica, was seriously implicated in the murder I was investigating. I discovered a lot that day. I lost a lot that day. That day was only two weeks ago. I am on Grey Street in Newcastle and I stop outside Iguanas, the café where I am meeting Allie and look over the busy road toward the buildings opposite. It’s a sunny day: it shouldn’t be. It should be dull and oppressive, the sky should be smeared with swathes of broiling grey storm clouds rumbling overhead, threatening thunder. Every day should be like that. Instead the sun glistens off the darkened windows of what were Jessica’s offices, catching reflections of people going about their business behind them. Life carries on, even as you carry the desolation of everything that has gone.

  The clicking of high heels sinks into my mind, the odd click heavier than the even, Allie’s signature walk. She has a raised arch on her left foot and really shouldn’t wear high heels, especially not six inch high heels, but you can’t tell her that. Flat shoes just wouldn’t go with her image. Today the image is classically styled and still very respectful. A black shift dress with a black Bolero over the top, a deep red rose pinned to the lapel, matching the lipstick on her always heavily made up face. She reaches out her arms as she approaches me.

  ‘John, darling!’ she says, in an aching voice. If it wasn’t for the Botox, her face may have creased in the brow and around the cheeks in concern. As it was, only her eyes and voice manage to convey that emotion as she hugs me tightly. It was enough.

  Enough for the remorse and guilt to overwhelm me, to escape from the rickety rooms I am trying hard to contain them in so I can at least function. I feel her comforting, warm embrace, I smell the delicate sweet scent of woman and it just engulfs me in images of Sarah, images of Jessica. Loving images that scream in my mind.

  ‘I’m sorry Allie, I truly am.’ is all I can say through quivering lips.

  She hugs me even tighter, gently rubbing my back for a moment before she releases the embrace, takes one step back and then slaps me hard across the face with venom, anger instantly flashing through her eyes.

  ‘You utter bastard. How could you do that to her. How could you hurt my baby girl like that?’

  The sting of the slap reverberates around my head and I clench my toes and ball my fists, straining the injuries, the nail holes in those areas to pain, adding to the intensity of the slap. I deserve it, all of it. It helps to cut through the emotion, making enough of a gap to remind me of why I wanted to meet Allie.

  ‘I know I am. I am sorry. Let’s grab a coffee and talk.’

  There are tears in her eyes as she looks at me, still partly in anger, partly in sorrow. She shakes her head.

  ‘I want to hate you John, I really do. But I can’t. You are the only thing I have left of Sarah and Jacob and I know you are suffering. But don’t think I forgive you for what you’ve done. Don’t you ever think that.’ she reproaches as she comes alongside, takes my arm and supports me as we walk into the café.

  A waiter shows us to a table in the window and we sit down. Allie becomes Allie, instantly flirting with the young lad, thrusting her ample fake chest out as she orders herself a skinny caramel macchiato and a double espresso for me. That irreverent glint returns to her eye for a second and to be honest, I feel it dent the glacier that is my heart. It’s the contradiction that is Allie. Everything that you see of her is fake, everything she says, everything she feels is real and she can ground you and make you feel real in an instant.

  ‘I was expecting you to look like a drunken bum, if I’m honest. I didn’t expect you to be suited, booted and clean shaven.’ Allie says, smiling as she reaches out and takes my hands, turning them palm up and staring at the clean bandages around them. ‘Do they still hurt?’

  ‘Allie, if I had come here looking like a bum, you would have slapped me twice. You should see the studio though, it looks like someone has emptied a rubbish truck into it. The wounds are starting to heal, but they still hurt.’

  ‘Do you know how the investigation is going? I hear on the news that they are no further forward in finding out who was responsible for the explosion and that they are still sifting through all the rubble for evidence?’

  I could tell there was an unasked question in her words, so I place a comforting hand over hers and answer it.

  ‘They have what is left of their bodies but they can’t release them yet. It’s going to be a while before we can lay them to rest.’

  Her eyes whisper disappointment as she looks down towards my hands again, running her slender manicured fingers over my bandages. ‘And they really don’t know who did it?’

  ‘I check in with the team every day but there is not much more to tell other than what you have heard on the news. They are still exploring all leads but so far nothing has come up. We know there is a man who has assumed multiple identities but all investigations as to his real identity have turned up blanks so far. We still can’t find Rebecca Angus. She seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. And Jessica, well, I just don’t know. That’s something I want to ask you about. Sarah had a Private Investigator follow Jessica and I. Did she tell you who it was?’

  The waiter arrives with our drinks and winks at Allie as he places them on the table. She smiles lewdly at him, her eyes following his tight arse as he leaves. I guess my face must have reflected the weary indignation I felt, that she could so easily be distracted from something so serious, to something so base with one wink.

  ‘What!’ she responds in playful innocence, ‘I don’t control my libido, it controls me! Know me, know that truth. You should know that too. After all, it was you shagging around with another woman that made Sarah hire a Private Investigator.’ she finishes, the playfulness disappearing, replaced by admonishment.

  ‘Point taken. Did she say who it was?’ I reiterate.

  ‘It was a guy from Newcastle, has an office on Dacre Street. He was called something Massah, something, something: Harry Massah. He was called Harry Massah. Why did you cheat on her John?’

  Good old Allie. Keeping it real. For a second I thought about spinning her a line, something like I just didn’t love her any more, anything really to drop the subject so I could get out of here and go and talk to Harry Massah. Go and talk to Harry Massah about Jessica. See if I could figure out who the hell she was. For a second I thought that. Allie is a bit like me though, she’s got a bullshit sensor. But more than that, as one of my oldest friends, she deserved the truth, no matter how hard that truth was for me to tell.

  ‘I could tell you it was about the sex: and the sex was good. I am a bloke after all and it’s our dicks that do the thinking. But it wasn’t. She understood my grief. I couldn’t talk to Sarah about that, I couldn’t burden her with my pain when she was carrying so much of her own.’

  ‘Your grief?’ Allie asks me softly
as I pause, collecting my thoughts, opening doors in rickety rooms.

  ‘Allie, you know how hard it was for us to have Jacob. Three lots of fertility treatment in this country, then all those trips to experts in Europe: to France, to Spain, to Italy. Five years trying. You know the elation, the relief we felt when she eventually fell pregnant and the utter joy that consumed us when he was born.’

  ‘I do. I will always feel blessed that you asked me to be there and will always be privileged that I was his Godmother.’ she says as she cups both of my hands encouragingly.

  ‘You also know how devastated we were when we found out about his condition. It broke me Allie. Seeing Jacob, day in, day out, growing up and not moving, not speaking: feeling the emptiness emanating from his eyes, it broke me. I felt like he was dead. Every single day I was grieving and it broke me. I found it harder and harder to be there with them and I know that was wrong, but I couldn’t cope with the grief, I couldn’t cope with the sheer guilt that Sarah bore. I know she felt it was her fault.’

  I look directly at Allie as I speak, seeing anger flash into her eyes just as she squeezes my hands hard, pain searing through them. ‘And Jessica, that fuckhole that you wallowed in, how did she understand your grief? How was she in a better position than your wife to help you cope?’

  Allie’s reaction perplexed me. I expected a little frustration when I started to talk about Jessica. After all, she was the woman who hurt her best friend, but there was something more in the rising anger. I continue.

  ‘She had lost a child as well. She had an abortion. We talked about our grief, about our loss. I could talk to her about Jacob, how I felt about Jacob, the grief I felt. We talked about the stigma, the alienation of abortion, of having a child with Jacob’s condition. I could talk to her and she understood, because she felt it too.’

  Allie releases my hands and as she swipes her arms up in the air, she knocks her skinny caramel macchiato and the liquid spills over the table. She glares at me furiously, ignoring the drink dripping off the table edge onto her pristine dress.

  ‘First off, your son wasn’t dead. ‘B’, she had an abortion, the baby didn’t die and thirdly, did you ever stop to give a second thought to why Sarah felt so guilty about Jacob’s condition. Did you ever stop and wonder why it was so hard for you to conceive. Did you ever stop and think about talking to her. No I bet you fucking didn’t! Typical bloody bloke. Much easier to find a tramp and fuck your misery away!’

  Allie prods her finger into the table as she fumes at me, spatter of macchiato spraying up with every indignant poke. I was dumbfounded, the vitriol seemed way out of proportion to what I was telling her.

  ‘Did you ever talk to Sarah, I mean, ever really talk! Did you ever talk to her about your childhood?’

  Other rickety rooms started to burgeon in my mind, doors rattling in their frames. Why was she asking that? What did she know?

  ‘No you didn’t. She told me you didn’t. You just clammed up. Just like you did when she tried to talk to you about Jacob. And she was just as bad because she didn’t talk to you either. Perhaps if you had talked to each other, shared your sordid little secrets, you would have realised she was the one woman in the world who would have absolutely understood your grief.’

  Sordid little secrets, what sordid little secrets did Sarah have? What did she know about my secrets? What was she talking about?

  ‘The reason you couldn’t conceive naturally, the reason that Sarah felt so absolutely guilt ridden about Jacob’s condition is because when Sarah was thirteen, she had an abortion. She was forced to have an abortion when she was twenty seven weeks pregnant. Do you know what that meant! It meant she had to go through a full delivery. She held her dead baby girl in her arms before they took it away from her. She felt that was the cause of Jacob’s condition. And do you know what happened two days after she had the abortion? The man she loved, the man whose baby it was, the man who had been locked up as a paedophile, hung himself in jail. So if you wanted to talk to someone who understood grief, who understood loss, who understood the pain of stigma and alienation: you should have talked to your wife.’

  Chapter 5

  Liam O’Driscoll sat calmly at an innocuous grey table, his wrists handcuffed to metal rings on the side of it. He sat in an innocuous grey chair at one side of the table, looking intermittently between the palms of his upturned hands, where the weeping, open wounded stigmata was visible, to his reflection in a large mirror that filled one wall of the police interview room. He smiled knowingly at his reflection, then looked back down at the stigmata.

  The drab grey door to the interview room opened and DI Bentley, a large pile of manila folders in one hand, a steaming cup of black coffee in a chipped, stained Celtic mug in the other, entered. Following a pace or so behind him was DC Tait wearing straight grey trousers, a white blouse and an equally lifeless grey jacket. The only semblance of colour about her was the deep blue of her eyes shining from a face without any makeup, framed by blonde hair pulled tightly backward into a pony tail held in place by an elastic band.

  DI Bentley stomped over the short distance to the two chairs on the opposite side of the table to Liam O’Driscoll and slouched into the one closest to the two recording decks, slurping coffee as he did. He banged the manila files with some force onto the table top, glaring at the calmly smiling Liam O’Driscoll as he pressed the record button on one of the decks.

  ‘DI Bentley and DC Tait interviewing Archbishop Liam O’Driscoll on suspicion of the murder of seven women. Time is 13:35. Archbishop O’Driscoll has refused legal representation.’ grumbled Bentley, still glaring at O’Driscoll as DC Annie Tait sat demurely in the empty chair beside him, notebook and pen in hand.

  ‘Good afternoon DC Tait, DI Bentley.’ O’Driscoll said, his voice low and full of vibrato, with a deep powerful resonance, at odds with his slight build and bony features.

  ‘Good? Good! You are having a fucking laugh aren’t you? It’s not good for these seven women. It’s not good for their families. It’s not good for the poor stupid bastard that blew his brains out making a point this morning! It’s not good for the Catholic Church. It’s not good for me having to sit here and look at your smug, sick sadistic face. So no, it’s not good, not good for anyone!’ fumed Bentley, one fist clenched, the other white knuckled, wrapped around the coffee cup.

  O’Driscoll simply stared at him, then looked toward the mirror, the smile on his face broadening as he looked at his own reflection, then at Bentley’s reflection.

  Bentley followed his gaze, perplexed as he saw the smile broaden. ‘Something amusing you about this it there?’ he asked angrily.

  O’Driscoll looked from the reflection back to Bentley, glaring deep into the DI’s eyes, O’Driscoll’s gaze darting imperceptibly between the pupil, the iris, the white, from top to bottom and side to side continually, searching, his own expression becoming fixed, penetrating. Bentley shifted in his seat uncomfortably under the intense gaze, feeling the sharp, mesmerising eyes burn into the skull, methodically delving and digging into the recesses of every crack in his countenance, drinking in knowledge of him.

  ‘It’s not amusing DI Bentley,’ O’Driscoll began, his gaze not leaving Bentley’s eyes as he gently moved his upturned palms forward toward the DI. ‘It’s an affirmation. An acknowledgement that what we do, is his will.’ he finished, offering up the stigmata as a testament to the virtue of his suffering.

  ‘We?’ queried Bentley, the question coming out in a hoarse, dry gurgle, filled with the nervousness O’Driscoll’s continued probing stare was imbuing in him. ‘Was someone else involved in these atrocities?’

  ‘You see them as atrocities, we see them as deliverance.’ answered O’Driscoll, his eyes sparkling and his features glowing as he said the words.

  Anger invaded the hypnotic state that Bentley was succumbing to and he quickly grabbed a manila file, thrusting it down on the table in front of O’Driscoll, breaking the gaze as he looked at the name on the fr
ont.

  ‘Shelly Crabtree, seventeen years old, a sixth form student. Three weeks ago you put a plastic bag over her head and asphyxiated her to death while buggering her. We have the photographs. We have your confession signed in blood. How the hell is that Deliverance.’ spat Bentley as he opened the folder, stabbing a finger into the photograph of O’Driscoll in front of the dead girl, glaring back up at the Archbishop.

  O’Driscoll’s gaze did not break from looking at Bentley as he answered. ‘Shabnock. He had possessed her since she was six. He was a Mighty Marquis of Hell with fifty legions of demons under his command. We captured him. We freed hell, heaven and earth of his evil afflictions.’

  ‘Through exorcism? What part of the rite of exorcism directs you to bugger the person possessed, to smother the person possessed and to kill the person possessed. I’m pretty sure the rite of exorcism is meant to free the individual of the demon so they can live a happy life thereafter?’

  ‘And free the Demon into the world once more so they can spread their evil seed. We lure them, we trap them, we capture them and we imprison them.’

  ‘So you do have an accomplice? Someone who took these sick trophy photographs?’ pushed Bentley.

  O’Driscoll’s smile broadened as he once again looked toward the mirror, taking in his excitably grinning reflection.

  ‘Shall we tell him?’ O’Driscoll asked of his reflection, then answered in the same breath, ‘We should tell him. The world should know.’