by F. G. Cottam
Then his tone changed and in high pitched, frightened words he begged and implored I supposed in the voices of his recent female victims forlornly for him to spare their lives. He giggled between each episode in this series of hopeless pleas.
I had the suspicion then that he was young. He would remain cruel and puerile in his basic nature always. But he was immature and would gain in wisdom and the headstrong petulance of which I had taken advantage would be tempered by the years of experience and reflection. He could bide his time. His life was not measured by a human span. He would outlive his mortal custodians I was sure. That was one reason I thought for the contempt that emanated hostilely from him. He would outlive them and me.
‘You will go with these men,’ I said to him. ‘You will get dressed and they will enjoy your obedience. You lost the wager fairly. You are bound to honour my request.’
He looked at me. The look was more curious than hateful. It was detached, uninvolved because I did not figure in his future. It was a trial to engage his eyes. Shaped so, they should have shown only reptilian cunning, but there were levels of complexity in them that seemed depthless. He did not appear defeated in his expression. He looked ambitious and willful.
I was reminded of Milton’s description then of Lucifer in Paradise Lost, how the defeated archangel took nine days to descend to hell after The Fall and how when he arrived in that terrible domain, though vanquished, he was still in possession of dauntless courage and considerate pride, awaiting revenge.
He rose slowly and began to do as I had commanded him.
I looked for Anderson, who was no longer there. I walked outside, into the ceaseless rain, the enduring darkness. It was about midnight by then, what in the old country they often refer to only half-amused as the witching hour.
He was in the Hansom on the other side of Hercules Road, the driver at the reins a huddle of oilcloth and resignation dark and indistinct, the police detective smoking a Havana sheltered in the leathery refuge beneath him.
I joined him. I closed the door behind me and let the jouncing springs settle on my weight. I said nothing for a moment, gathering my thoughts, still struggling to accommodate the pain of my broken ribs and tooth-denuded gums. My torn breast throbbed cruelly. My mouth had stopped bleeding, which was something. I have always been a quick healer and had never required this fortunate quality to such an uncomfortable extent as I did that cold, damp night in Lambeth.
I was about to speak when I heard the snort of tethered horses and the weary trundle of some vehicle a burden on the cobbles to its wheels. I raised the window flap and looked and saw a roofed coach similar to the sort used to transport bullion or ordnance in the American West, where such cargoes need to be protected against raids from lawless men in the wilderness.
In the scant gas light it looked made from timber beams as thick as railway sleepers. They were iron-bound. There was a driver and a driver’s mate and the whole huge construction was pulled by a team of eight with gleaming flanks and the bunched muscle and nervous skitter of thoroughbreds.
‘Who are they?’
He puffed on his cigar and then exhaled through his nostrils and examined its glowing tip. He said, ‘This is an interlude in your life you can share with no one. The original fee reflected the fact that we consider your silence on the matter guaranteed.’
‘And if I grow careless in a bar and my tongue grows loose as a consequence of drink, I’ll wake up dead in a Dublin gutter?’
He smiled at that, but the implication was clear. He was a man well connected, with ruthless superiors.
‘They are the Most Holy Order of the Gospel of St. John,’ he said. ‘They are the Sacred Keepers of the Gate.’
‘And who is Edmund Caul?’
‘That, Mr. Barry, you’re a bright enough fellow to work out for yourself.’
‘I may have to write an account of all this,’ I told him. Of course, that account, already begun, lacked by then only its conclusion.
‘Why would you wish to do that?’
‘It would be my way of coming to terms with events, Mr. Anderson. Some men can forget an experience entirely. Some men can close their minds around an experience as easily as they might clench their fist. I would like to write an account of this adventure. It would help me put things to bed, you might say.’
‘You’d recount the ordeal on paper in order that you can get a sound night’s sleep?’
‘Just so,’ I said. This insight didn’t surprise me. All good detectives are students of human nature. Besides, he’d shared sufficient of the ordeal to have an inkling of how I felt.
‘What will you do with the written document?’
‘When I’m satisfied it’s complete, commit it to the flames of the handiest stove. Once the ink’s dry, I believe it will have served its purpose.’
‘When you’ve written your account, Mr. Barry, when you’re satisfied it’s complete, don’t burn the pages. I’d be obliged instead if you’d send it to me.’
Over the road, a horse whinnied and hooves clattered and there was the grind of weighted iron on wet cobbles. We both peered through the flap. They were going, the Sacred Keepers of the Gate, they were taking their inhuman charge with them to wherever they would keep him incarcerated. You could only wonder at their fortitude, at the implacable nature of their faith and the burden of their secrecy.
‘They’re God’s gaolers,’ I said.
But Anderson said nothing to me in reply.
Two changes in my life are firmly resolved upon. The first is that I will never fight in a prize ring again as long as I live. The second is that I will attend mass faithfully every Sunday. Who knows? I might even ride my horse to church of a Sabbath morning.
I have been given ample cause, you see, to believe in the Devil. Hell exists. He came damn close to sending me there. And if there is a Devil, I am gratefully inclined to believe there is also a God. And it does a cautious man no harm at all to honour Him.
Faithfully,
Daniel Patrick Barry
Jacob phoned Peter Chadwick. He said, ‘What happened afterwards to Barry?’
‘Some stories have a happy ending, pilgrim. His was one of them. He relocated to Wicklow. He married a girl from Gorey. He fathered six children in a blissfully contented marriage. He bought a farm and it prospered. He died a relatively wealthy man.’
‘He could keep a secret.’
‘Evidently he could do lots of things.’
‘The cardinal is wrong if he thinks I have a part to play in this.’
‘You’re already playing a part.’
‘Barry was as hard as nails and as brave as a lion. I remember that cometh the hour crack of yours in the Dorchester lobby this morning. I wouldn’t be fit to tie his boot laces.’
Chadwick laughed. He said, ‘I don’t know. You’ve got humility on your side.’
‘You’re not listening to me. He’s far stronger now than he was then and much more cautious and careful. I’d be no match for him. No one would.’
‘How old are you, pilgrim?’
‘Stop calling me that.’
‘You’re older than you look.’
‘So people say.’
‘How old would that be exactly?’
‘I was born on the seventh of July. The year was 1977.’
‘That’s a lot of sevens.’
‘It’s four, all told. It signifies nothing.’
‘You’ve read the account,’ Chadwick said. ‘Now sleep on it.’
Joan Fairchild got home quite late. Home was in Kentish Town. It was still a predominantly white neighbourhood but nowhere near so white as she planned to make it in a future she saw arriving faster than she had ever dared hope in the past. She would make sure to visit so that she could see for herself the cleansing transformation brought to the streets. But by then she would be living in Hampstead, she thought, or in Primrose Hill. She would have an address that better reflected her exalted station in life.
She was attired de
murely. She had undergone a round of television and radio interviews and had been careful to reinforce this new St. Joan persona the public had created on her behalf. She could see its clear advantages. When the coup came and she replaced the Knights’ esteemed leader, the people of England would see no blood on her hands, metaphorically or otherwise. They would see not an ambitious opportunist but their natural champion fulfilling her God given destiny.
She unbuttoned the long-sleeved dress she’d worn and slipped out of it and stripped off her underwear, freeing her hair from the leather corseting of its elaborate braids. She took a shower and put on a silk dressing gown with a Chinese motif. She didn’t much care for Orientals of any persuasion but she liked the feel of silk against her skin and had a partiality to dragons. The one worn across her dressing gown’s back breathed fire from flared nostrils in an exquisitely detailed design.
She poured herself a vodka and tonic and folded herself into her leather television chair and lit a cigarette and inhaled gratefully. She positioned the glass ash tray on the table at her elbow. She switched on her flat screen and flicked through the channels. It was just after ten o’clock, only now becoming properly dark.
It was the longest day. The pagans and druids and practitioners of hippie magic would be involved with their folkloric vigil at Stonehenge. There was symbolism about the ceremony but the Knights had chosen not to exploit it. She was picturesque enough as the face of their movement. It was important to look forward rather than back. History and tradition were certainly useful image-wise but it took action of a very modern character to deliver real political power.
The great thing about the rolling format used by the news channels was the sheer amount of repetition. She was on almost as often as the adverts for personal injury solicitors punctuating the bulletins. But she wasn’t the lead item. That was a breakthrough in the Scholar investigation.
DCI Jane Sullivan had held a press conference earlier in the evening. They were looking for a professional gambler named Dan Luce. He had resided at the apartment building where Julie Longmuir had lived and there was some suggestion that the two had mingled socially. There was a computer image of a rather good looking young man with a thick head of dark hair swept straight back. He was fine-featured, with arresting eyes, and stylishly attired.
The report was slightly contradictory. Police were anxious to eliminate this fellow from their enquiries but warned members of the public who might recognize him against making any sort of approach. So their search for Luce was an investigative formality but he was potentially dangerous too.
‘That’s their man,’ Joan said aloud at the television, chinking ice cubes as she raised her glass in a salute. ‘That’s the Scholar.’
She wasn’t disappointed by this development. They’d have to catch him and there’d have to be a prosecution and court case to determine his guilt. All that would take time. And Joan would be in a position soon to see that the Scholar’s atrocities didn’t stop. She was confident that they would increase fairly substantially. They would spread to other parts of the country.
The arrest of Dan Luce would not impede this escalation in the slightest. The evidence that the real killer was Muslim would become compelling and clean-cut. The messages at the murder scenes would spell it out. Luce would become a forgotten remand prisoner awaiting his moment in the Old Bailey dock while the momentum of events overtook him and a religious war was waged between races and won.
There would be no place for the clever detective who’d caught him in the new order because she was practically the protégé of a Home Secretary shortly to be stripped of authority, rank and reputation. Wisest would be for Luce to commit suicide conveniently in prison before a trial date was even determined. His death in his cell before his guilt had been established would provide a convenient route to obscurity. In a few weeks, his name would be erased from public consciousness.
Beauty and brains were an enviable combination and there was no question that Jane Sullivan possessed both. But the policewoman possessed neither attribute to the degree that Joan did, she didn’t think. Joan could be an analytical thinker like the DCI. She could also be a creative thinker, which gave her the edge. And her ambitions were of an order that put her on a higher echelon of womanhood altogether.
She ground out the stub of her cigarette and lit another. She got out of her chair and refreshed her drink and sat back down again.
Politically, she was a non-smoker. She was also teetotal. The service of the nation was an ascetic calling that didn’t really encourage vices. Had it been a potential vote winner, she’d have happily called herself a vegetarian too. She thought though the opposite was true. Meat and potatoes were the staple diet of the party’s ever-swelling army of Little Englanders.
She concentrated on the television. There was a full-blown riot taking place on the streets of Bristol. A Catholic church had been razed to the ground that same afternoon in York. A mass brawl between student factions on the Harrow campus had closed the University of Westminster and there was no timetable for its re-opening. In a new lead item breaking on the BBC News channel, a man wearing a suicide vest had been successfully tackled within 20 feet of the Mayor of London at an event on Kensington High Street.
There was a shot of the scene. A sandwich man now paced the pavement there, lit by shop-fronts and sodium lights. He wasn’t advertising a golf sale. The legend on his billboards, front and back, read The End is at Hand.
There was interference on the television. The sound from a channel she wasn’t tuned to was breaking through. She thought that maybe it was a music channel because the sound was of someone mellifluously whistling. Then she thought it might be an old movie because the melody was something vaguely familiar and slightly nostalgic in character. It was jaunty and spry. And she realized as the whistling clarified and grew louder that it was actually coming from behind her.
She turned. He was standing about six feet from where she sat, more or less at the centre of the room. She slid out of her chair, onto her feet. He was wearing a suit and a tie and a heavy lock of the hair combed back in his computer likeness had freed itself in life and tumbled down his forehead. In other circumstances, it would have been a fetching look.
‘How did you get in here?’
‘Without difficulty, if I’m honest.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘You were showering when I arrived.’
‘You’re Dan Luce.’
He took a step towards her. ‘Not entirely,’ he said. ‘The alternative was Luca something, probably Luca Dune.’
‘They’re anagrams of Edmund Caul.’
‘You’re very sharp. How do you know about him?’
‘I have a contact involved with the investigation.’
‘Well connected too.’
‘And now you’re Dan.’
‘Not a name I’m partial to. Better than Luca. And Dan Leno, when I saw him, was entertaining enough.’
‘They thought for a while Dan Leno might be the Whitechapel Killer.’
He smiled at that. He said, ‘I can assure you they were wrong.’
She was trying to keep him talking. She was doing quite well at it but it wasn’t getting her to the next stage. She could not think beyond the verbal sparring to a route to safety. She couldn’t die. Things were going so well. She had barely begun to live and was enjoying life fully for the first time. It couldn’t be over. It wasn’t fair.
‘You’ve been telling lies about me, Joan.’
‘It’s nothing personal.’
‘I rather approve of lies. I’m as partial as anyone to telling them. I could tell you, for example, that I have no intention of harming you. I could tell you that you’re perfectly safe. But we’re both far too grown up for fabrications of that sort. You’re going to perish. We both know it.’
She smiled. In a moment she would bolt for the kitchen and a weapon. She was not short of physical courage. She said, ‘We all owe God a death.’
<
br /> ‘That’s entirely the wrong thing to say to me, my dear.’
She ran. She was quick and steeled slightly by the two slugs of vodka she’d downed. She was almost at the door frame when he caught her and clubbed her lightly to the side of the head and she saw stars dissolve into blackness.
He’d tied her to her bed when she came to. He’d done it with strips of silk torn from her Chinese dressing gown. She was naked. He was standing beside her. She was aware of the scent he wore, slightly concussed, some of her senses dulled, others performing with an exaggerated strength. The smell was cloying. There was a chef’s cloth roll of knives, unfurled, on her bedside table. Their knurled grips glimmered in the glow of the streetlamp outside her bedroom window. He had switched off the lights.
He said, ‘Your skin was inked. That’s interesting. It’s intriguing that you chose to eradicate the designs.’
‘If you untie me, I’ll tell you all about it.’ Her voice sounded distant and muffled to her own ears, disembodied, almost.
‘It’s not that intriguing,’ he said.
‘If you spare me I’ll give you anything. I’m in a position to do that.’
He chuckled. He said, ‘The position you’re in offers scant promise.’
She turned her head. It was a gesture of despair. But she did not despair entirely until a glance in her bedroom mirror on the wall opposite the window told her Dan Luce possessed no reflection.
He pushed her from behind so her weight rested on her hip and shoulder and she gasped in terror and said, ‘What’s your real name?’ She realized she was speaking Polish. She had been since regaining consciousness. She realized he was too, as fluently as she.
His voice was guttural, an inhuman snarl, the touch of his propping hand against her back cold and scaly now, all pretense gone. ‘My name is Legion,’ he said.
She gasped again as he made the first sure, swift incision. She felt her body lighten as the innards slithered warmly out of her, spilling on the bed, the smell of her own hot blood impossibly rich and the world dimming and receding from her reach.
