The Lazarus Prophecy

by F. G. Cottam

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘I’m entertaining three possibilities,’ the Home Secretary said. ‘The first is that this is a killing committed by the Scholar, or by Dan Luce, since they appear to be one and the same. The second possibility is that Joan Fairchild is the victim of a political assassination carried out by a Muslim extremist deliberately in the manner of the Scholar.’

  Jane took this in. She said, ‘The third theory?’

  ‘Her own people did it.’

  ‘It was a sort of Night of the Long Knives?’

  ‘You can tell me whether he used a long knife.’

  ‘He used several. The knife that killed her with his opening stroke was long. Others were used for the mutilations that followed.’

  They were at Chequers. London was still as secure as the heavily deployed police presence could make it. But the Prime Minister was at pains to keep his cabinet members out of public view and away from the possibility of physical attack.

  If that happened he would be forced to declare a State of Emergency, something he wanted to avoid. There was a risk those factions skirmishing at various crisis points in the more ethnically diverse boroughs would view that as provocation. Declaring a State of Emergency, putting troops on the streets and imposing a curfew, could escalate the violence into full scale revolt. Minorities would claim they were being victimized. The Knights of Excalibur would call it an attack not just on the rights of the individual but on freedom itself.

  Jane had been helicoptered to the meeting. The weather was clear and the patchwork of fields unfolding beneath her on the flight had looked fertile and serene. In some ways the country followed a rhythm long established and unchanging. In others it was changing at alarming speed and she honestly feared that socially and politically they weren’t far now off a tipping point.

  ‘In a way it doesn’t matter,’ the Home Secretary said. ‘People will believe what they want to believe regardless of the facts. The Knights have their martyr and she couldn’t really have been better picked. If there was an election today on the basis of the polls they’d win by a landslide.’

  ‘They couldn’t field the candidates, could they?’ Jane asked.

  ‘I don’t think they have any intention of letting it come to the vote. The ballot box isn’t really their style. Insurrection’s quicker and more straightforward, when the force is with you the way it is with them.’

  ‘It was him,’ Jane said. ‘It was the Scholar or Dan Luce, which isn’t his real name. He’s someone who doesn’t register on security cameras, which is as infuriating as it’s inexplicable. He doesn’t leave fingerprints. He doesn’t shed hair or sweat. We think he might lick them.’

  ‘He might what?’

  ‘He washes their skin afterwards. He hasn’t so far left a trace of his saliva.’

  ‘Then how do you know it was him?’

  ‘The message written in Fairchild’s blood at the scene is in his handwriting. It’s neat and distinctive and provides compelling physical evidence. And when he tried to deliver his note last night telling us about the killing, he was spotted.’

  ‘But not apprehended.’

  ‘He was recognized by two Tactical Support Group officers who approached, challenged and attempted to Taser him.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They’re in hospital. They’re both off the critical list, but their injuries are described as life-changing.’

  Susan Lassiter put her head in her hands. Then she let them fall and smiled. ‘How many more do you think he will kill?’

  ‘It’s an impossible question to answer. If we catch him, then obviously there’ll be no further victims. I spoke to our theologian this morning and he seems to believe he’ll stop at nine. Apparently nine has numerological significance in demonology.’

  ‘There were nine circles in Dante’s hell,’ the Home Secretary said.

  ‘He went so far as to predict the likeliest candidates.’

  ‘That’s a game being played at every dinner party in England.’

  ‘When they aren’t busy boarding up their windows.’

  ‘I suppose you and I are obvious targets.’

  ‘If he can get to us, yes we are. And then finally he will return to his unfinished business with Charlotte Reynard.’

  ‘He sounds a clever chap, your theologian.’

  ‘He isn’t that clever. He didn’t predict Joan Fairchild.’

  ‘That wasn’t her real name, you know. She concealed her background pretty well but we’ve had some smart security services people on her case. I got the report yesterday afternoon. She was originally a Pole from Gdansk. She stole the identity of a Manchester orphan who died at the age of six. There are international warrants active on her on three continents.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘She’d been a white supremacist since adolescence. Mostly it was hate crimes. Trolling, death threats, libelous smears, some really charming fun and games. Crystal meth manufacture and transportation in Texas. There was an arson attack on a Berlin refuge for asylum seekers she was suspected of but never charged with. She had a police record in Holland for assault.’

  ‘Will you make this public knowledge?’

  ‘What do you think, Detective Chief Inspector?’

  ‘I think it would be totally counter-productive. She’s being deified by millions of people who won’t thank you for trying to shatter their illusions. They’d think it propagandist lies. You might as well desecrate her grave. You’d get the same response.’

  ‘You should go into politics. You’ve an instinct for it.’

  ‘You’re between a rock and a hard place, Home Secretary.’

  ‘Go and catch our killer, Jane.’

  ‘Will that make any difference now?’

  ‘It might save our lives. I still value mine. It might get Saint Joan off the front pages of the newspapers. And I’d like him punished. I didn’t have much time for his most recent victim but I still believe in the criminal justice system.’

  ‘I’m doing my best.’

  ‘I know you are. Why did you call your theologian, this morning?’

  ‘The message left at the Fairchild murder scene was written in an ancient Hebrew dialect. It was the usual End of Days stuff. He referred to himself as the Crimson King and the Lord of Misrule, which he’s done before. But at the end there was a sort of footnote where he alluded to a story from the Book of Genesis. You know about Jacob’s Ladder?’

  ‘Jacob was a Biblical Patriarch. He was involved in a flight from his brother, sleeping in the open air when he dreamed of a ladder ascending to heaven. In the dream, he climbed it.’

  ‘The Scholar suggested it might be missing a few rungs.’

  ‘Your theologian is called Jacob something. I remember that from Sandra Matlock’s piece on Sunday. He’s called Jacob Prior.’

  ‘It’s wordplay, a kind of punning joke.’

  ‘He’s toying with you.’

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid he is.’

  ‘Catch him, Jane. You have until the end of the week.’

  Peter Chadwick waited at a disused airfield deep in the Norfolk countryside. It was an isolated spot in a still under populated county. Driving a borrowed Land Rover there had brought back memories of his military service. Searching the sky through the powerful binoculars he wore around his neck was a ritual that prompted further reminiscences.

  He’d been thinking about soldiering anyway. He thought that Ministry of Defense budget cuts and the deployment on active service abroad of most of the nation’s strike troops made the home front rather vulnerable now. It was his opinion that Birmingham and Leeds and possibly Manchester would be better governed in the present crisis under the rule of martial law.

  London was a different case, politically and symbolically. But he had driven through the makeshift barricades of burning tyres and mattresses that morning more convinced with every block travelled that the city was quickly on the way to becoming ungovernable.

  D
riving out of Finsbury Park he recognized the faces of some of the boys manning the barricades. They were young offenders he had spent a great deal of time and patience trying to rehabilitate at what they euphemistically called the youth club where he volunteered. Their faces had possessed a look almost of rapture, as though events held them spellbound. It wasn’t really that far, he didn’t think, from being the case.

  At least they recognized him. Christian and Muslim, they harboured no hostility towards him. They let him through the smouldering barriers to the ghettoes they were intent on establishing. You had to be thankful for small mercies.

  Brixton and Tooting were ablaze. In Tehran, the British embassy had been stormed and overrun. The crisis would escalate internationally, he was gloomily sure. It was a long time since Britain had been a net exporter. You probably had to go back to the time when an Irishman called Daniel Barry had outwitted a malevolent creature called Edmund Caul in the gas-lit isolation of a Lambeth railway arch.

  But Britain would export this: this conflict of faiths turned hostile threatening to escalate into civil war. Most of Europe was ripe for it. America would inevitably follow. This would become a global crisis and the world would be irrevocably altered. This was the End of Days.

  He heard before he saw the aircraft. It was a two-seater with a single engine and made an atrocious amount of noise. But the airfield had been mothballed after World War Two and then allowed to fall into dereliction in the early 1960s. Its control tower was a squat ruin with smashed widows and caved in roof. The Nissan huts in which the airmen and mechanics had quartered were almost papery with rust. Nobody ever came here.

  He looked along the runway. It was pitted in places by weather erosion but these small planes landed slowly enough to ride a few gouges and bumps. They were a hell of a lot more resilient than they looked. There were no significant obstacles to endanger the landing. There’d been a burst and shredded tyre and a few blown-down tree branches when he’d arrived, but he’d cleared them away.

  He was related by marriage to the man he was there to meet. His maternal grandmother had married a Spaniard. The Spaniard had a twin brother. The brother had not married. He had followed a clandestine family tradition and made his religious vocation and been ordained a priest and dedicated his life to a sacred duty at a remote location in the Pyrenees.

  Chadwick waited for Brother Philip, who led the Most Holy Order of the Gospel of St. John, a society founded by the fisherman apostle and first Pontiff on hearing from the man returned to life from hell itself of the terrible threat to mankind posed by the Lazarus Prophecy.

  The aircraft touched down and bounced on its wheels twice before settling and slowing on the runway. It taxied and then its engine was cut and the passenger door opened and an elderly man in an equally elderly suit climbed carefully out of it. Chadwick walked across and the two men embraced warmly. And the younger man felt the strength of the older surprising and defiant in the firm grip of his arms.

  ‘Your grace,’ Chadwick said. He bowed his head in deference.

  ‘You call me that to my face, Peter. I know you always think of me as Uncle Philip.’

  ‘Not today. Today I think we should honour you with the dignity and decorum you’ve earned over decades of sacrifice.’

  ‘Why the formality and pomp when all we have done is failed?’

  ‘Because it isn’t your failure, Uncle, and because I’ve now seen some of what you’ve spent an unselfish life preventing.’

  ‘Don’t be downhearted, Peter. Don’t be defeatist either. It isn’t in your character. Take me to the cardinal. We must use what little time is left to us to maximum effect.’

  They got into the Land Rover. Brother Philip had only a small valise as luggage which he clutched across his bony knees as though its contents were priceless. He said, ‘The cardinal is a clever politician. He might be the cleverest Rome can boast and now he is convinced completely. Does he have a strategy?’

  ‘You mean does he have a champion.’

  ‘It has happened before.’

  ‘Daniel Barry was an exceptional man.’

  ‘Exceptional men are born from time to time. The Lord sees to it.’

  ‘His preferred candidate has doubts.’

  ‘Only a fool is entirely free of doubt. I met such a fool recently. His name was James Cantrell and he died ridiculously.’

  Chadwick, at the wheel, had to stifle a snort of mirth. His uncle was not the sort who thought priests should attire themselves in Lycra to ride mountain bikes. He said, ‘I have doubts about this candidate myself.’

  ‘Will he help us? Will he willingly enter the fray?’

  ‘I don’t know. He finished the deposition in awe of Daniel Barry.’

  ‘That’s encouraging.’

  ‘Why?

  ‘Because it means he believes, Peter.’

  ‘I don’t think he’d do it for money.’

  ‘Daniel Barry didn’t do it for money. If he had, he’d have failed.’

  ‘You’re worldly, for a man’s spent a lifetime in isolation.’

  ‘A lifetime’s isolation with our recently departed guest is a rare education, Nephew. And I’ve had the luxury of time throughout my isolated life to ruminate.’

  ‘She was a woman of courage and vision. She had a nobility of spirit and purpose rare in successful people. She was marked for greatness, wore her sublime beauty unselfconsciously and was quite touchingly modest. But there were brains behind that lovely face and I sensed a steely will.

  ‘I make no apology in paraphrasing Tony Blair and saying that Joan Fairchild was the people’s politician. Except that the description doesn’t quite do her justice, because there’s no doubt in my mind that she was better than that. She wasn’t just a politician. She was a stateswoman in the making.

  ‘Mark my words when I say that her brutal passing is more than a personal tragedy. It is a profound loss to the future of a rudderless nation she could and no doubt would have steered safely into calmer waters.’

  Jacob switched off the radio. Sandra Matlock was one of those pundits with the knack of talking up themselves by praising other people. And after a morning of it, he was sick of hearing the quote.

  He walked to the gym. It was noon and an hour earlier the smog had returned. It was as thick and bitter in the throat and the lungs as before. He remembered Peter Chadwick had called it diabolical. He thought that probably true. He didn’t think that Edmund Caul had delivered it, not deliberately or specifically, anyway. But Caul had brought about the mood that made it come. The smog had answered Caul’s welcoming invitation.

  There was a police cordon on Blackfriars Bridge, as he assumed there was now on all the Thames bridges. The prosperity of recent decades had made the river less of a dividing line than it had been once. But progress could be arrested, couldn’t it? It could recede as well as advance, as the people of London were learning. The section of the city to the south of the river was now a hazardous place. Showing his I.D, answering routine questions, passing eventually through it, Jacob wondered at what stage a cordon gained the status of a border.

  His conversation of the morning with Jane Sullivan had left him feeling depressed. He had believed since finishing the Barry account that there would be nine killings. He thought the damage done, the train set in motion by the deaths already accomplished. But nine was a significant number to their perpetrator. And he was now convinced that Jane would be one of the nine. And he didn’t see how a predator as elusive and relentless as this one was could practically be stopped.

  Things were breaking down. Sections of the country were close to anarchy. It was like that Yeats poem, ‘The Second Coming’, the Scholar had quoted in her blood at the scene of Alice Cranfield’s murder when he’d still been just a serial killer with demonic delusions. Now they weren’t delusions at all. He really was demonic. He’d brought a taste of hell with him to the world.

  Smog-crippled traffic inched along Blackfriars Road. To the east of where he w
alked, he heard glass smash and an alarm erupt and human screaming. The screaming stopped. Sirens wailed, the sound weaving between buildings through thickened air from some blanketed act of violence or theft or just pointless destruction.

  He got to the gym, still open, half of its lights failing, virtually empty of clientele and strangely silent in the absence of the house or hip-hop music usually cranked loudly through its hidden speakers.

  Jacob worked out brutally. He skipped, he hit the heavy bag and speedball, he did his floor-work, toiling for two arduous hours, thinking all the while about Jane and their single shared kiss on her Lambeth doorstep and the tantalizing prospect of something more between them she’d promised when their killer was caught and this business was finished.

  An image intruded into his mind and squatted there. It was Jane on the bed in her home, naked and butchered, some archaic boast scrawled in a dead language in her blood on the wall above the little her killer had left intact of her corpse.

  He showered, scrubbing and soaping hard under scalding water, quite unable to wash away the gory picture staining his mind. He dried himself and dressed and went outside, back into the roiling gloom and dabbed headlamps of Holborn Circus, and he called Peter Chadwick.

  ‘He’s driving.’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘My name is Philip.’

  ‘You’re sitting beside him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My name is Jacob Prior, Philip. Please tell him I’ll do it. Ask him to tell the cardinal. Tell him I need to meet with them as soon as possible.’

  He met them at four in the afternoon at the cardinal’s suite at the Dorchester. The cardinal said, ‘What I know of his nature, like you, Jacob, I learned from the Barry account. He’s acquired wisdom since then but his principle characteristics seem to be vanity and pride.’

  ‘He seems to think he’s the devil himself,’ Jacob said. ‘That’s the claim made in the messages he leaves.’

  ‘But they’re quotes taken from Revelations and St. John’s Gospel. They could be viewed as generic claims, couldn’t they? He isn’t actually claiming to be Lucifer.’