by Mark Roberts
The Crusades, Palestine, the Spanish Inquisition, Biafra, suicide bombers, the World Trade Centre...
‘They killed with such brutality in the name of something they call divine.’
‘And they only took the eyes from the mother?’ asked Hendricks.
‘Yes. But there was another mother there. The grandmother?’ said Clay. ‘She can’t have been that significant to them. But the mother was. The mother mattered enough for them to take her eyes.’
Clay looked into the hollow mess of Mrs Patel’s eye sockets and heard herself speak out loud. ‘I never looked into my own mother’s eyes.’
‘My mother never stopped looking at me,’ replied Hendricks.
Go. ‘Thank you, Dr Lamb.’ Look. ‘DS Hendricks will stay with you as you proceed with your work.’ Now.
Within seconds, she was out of the dressing room. Within a minute, she was running over the icy tarmac to the multi-storey car park.
9
1.35 am
In the driver’s seat of her car, as Clay breathed warm air onto her hands and fingers, she realised how cold and wet they felt.
She took out her phone and picked up the message from Thomas. As she pressed play, a smile rose on her face.
Philip’s face was bathed in the soft blue glow of the night-light beside his bed. From the camera angle, Thomas was standing at the bottom of their son’s bed, filming.
‘Hey, Eve,’ whispered Thomas. It was like being stroked. ‘I’ve just come off the phone with you.’ He moved slowly down the side of the bed and Philip let out a contented sigh. ‘As you can see, he’s absolutely fine. Safe and sound and sleeping... Don’t worry. He’s fine.’
Slowly, Thomas started to zoom in on Philip, the light mixing with the shadows that lay across his face. He lifted a bunched hand and rubbed his nose. The image of Philip’s face dominated her iPhone screen.
‘I’m going to leave my phone on vibrate by my bedside. If you want or need to ring me at any time, call my mobile. I’m going to stop speaking now and give you some time to look at Philip and see who’s going to be waiting for you when you get home.’
Philip turned his face towards the light and Clay could see herself and Thomas in her son’s features. Her chin and the shape of her eyes, with Thomas’s nose and brow. His hair was dark, like hers, and fell in soft curls around his ears.
He opened his mouth and let out a cross between a sigh and a yawn, his small white teeth perfectly formed in his pink gums.
As his lips came together, the smile on her face froze a little and she concentrated on the shape of his mouth. It was the one feature she couldn’t call. When he was a newborn, she’d seen her lips in his, but as time passed, his lips had come to look more and more like Thomas’s. She’d joked how Thomas, an expert kisser, had given their son his best feature. At eighteen months, their shape changed again, became more rounded, more like hers, perhaps helped by the amount of exercise they got with his non-stop chatter.
For the first time ever, as she watched him in his bedroom from the distance of a frozen hospital car park, his mouth looked like neither hers nor Thomas’s. She pictured Philip’s doting grandparents, Thomas’s mother and father. Her little boy’s mouth was nothing like Mona or Clive’s.
A tingle started on her scalp, at her crown, and soon her spine had picked up the cold heat of the sensation that was spreading across her skin.
She hadn’t been much older than Philip when, sitting on Sister Philomena’s knee in front of the fire in the big sitting room at St Claire’s, she had asked her loving protector a question. A man and woman had recently arrived at St Claire’s to pick up their daughter, Helen, who was a little older than Eve.
She recalled her child-like logic.
‘In a month or so, will my mum or dad come to pick me up?’
Philomena had held onto her a little tighter, as if she was suddenly cold in front of the big blaze into which they stared, making pictures and weaving daydreams from the glowing coals. She looked into Eve’s eyes with a fondness that gave the little girl a physical glow.
‘No, Eve. Your mother and father will not be collecting you from me.’
‘Where are they?’
‘They’ve passed over to the other side.’
‘To Jesus? Where Sister Catharine went when she died?’
‘They’ve gone where they belong, where they wanted to go, as we all do.’
‘Do you have a picture of them?’
Sister Philomena shook her head. ‘How do you feel about that, Eve?’
‘Happy. I don’t want anyone to take me away from you. No one.’
Sister Philomena leant in and whispered, ‘That’s my girl.’
‘Eve.’ She was tugged back to the present by Thomas’s voice coming from her iPhone. ‘I’m going to say goodnight now, and love you.’
‘Goodnight. Love you more,’ she replied into the cold air of her car, watching her son’s mouth and understanding that its cast could have come from her own mother and father, of whom only three things were certain. They had existed. They had brought her into the world. They had abandoned her. The film sequence ended on a frozen shot of Philip’s face. She closed it down and as soon as she did, her phone rang out.
Clay picked up the call. ‘Stone’ on the display panel.
‘Eve?’
‘Have you been through the CCTV footage from the Patels’?’ she replied.
Stone was calling from a car. The pitch of the engine and the noise of the tyres against the snow and ice told Clay that he was driving faster than he should have been.
‘I’ve edited together three pieces of film.’
‘And?’
‘They’re not on it. Something weird’s happened. The pen drive. The CCTV. I don’t know. We need to send the whole system to be analysed. The CCTV stopped probably minutes before the killers arrived.’
He sounded confused and frustrated, like he’d just been hammered with inexplicable bad news. She turned on her engine and was in first gear.
‘You didn’t see them?’ she asked, thinking, Were they human? She buried the thought.
‘I didn’t see them, Eve, but I’ve tracked down the owner of the mobile on the Patels’ answer machine.’
‘I’ll meet you there. Where?’
‘224 Booker Avenue.’
A fifteen-minute drive from where she was – in good weather conditions.
She was in second gear, her senses flaring.
‘Who’s the owner?’ she asked, in third gear now and hoping there would be no traffic to swerve round as she burned any red lights.
‘Mrs Cara Harry. Fifty-four. Primary-school teacher. She hasn’t reported her phone as stolen.’
‘Wait for me, Karl.’ Fourth gear. Forty miles per hour and rising fast. ‘I’ll be there as fast as I can.’
10
2.05 am
The temperature began to drop steeply and Clay shivered as she watched the lights go on inside 224 Booker Avenue.
Stone rang the bell of the 1930s semi for the third time.
When Mrs Harry opened the door and Stone showed her his warrant card, sleepy confusion gave way to panic.
Stone glanced at Clay. In a silent, knowing look there was agreement. It was possible that the disorientated woman in the doorway was a bridge to the bloodbath in The Serpentine, but she was almost certainly not a part of it.
‘It’s about your phone.’ Stone oozed gruff charm and slowly pushed the woman’s door wider.
‘My phone? At this hour?’ The tall, thin woman with long, grey hair could barely get her words out.
‘Mrs Harry, we’re in a hurry here, please!’ Clay pointed inside the house and the bewildered teacher stepped aside.
‘This way.’ She shut the door and led them inside. They passed a metal Jesus on a wooden cross on the hall wall.
In the shipshape front room, Mrs Harry indicated a beige three-piece suite that looked like it had just come out of its plastic wrapping. Clay and Stone remain
ed on their feet.
Clay weighed up Mrs Harry by the spick-and-span room. Primary-school teacher, knows what she has in the bank down to the last bean, irons her knickers...
‘07700 934763,’ said Stone. ‘I was looking for the owner of a mobile phone with that number, and your service provider came up with your name and address. I then found out you teach the Year Five class at St Bernard’s RC Primary School, right down the road from Belle Vale police station. Right?’
‘Yes.’ She sounded amazed at his insight.
Clay watched the seconds pass on the mantelpiece clock.
Mrs Harry closed her eyes. ‘It went missing on Friday morning, just before the snow arrived.’ She opened her eyes and looked consumed with stress. ‘It was probably stolen.’
‘Why didn’t you report it stolen to your service provider?’ asked Stone. ‘Why didn’t you call Belle Vale police station?’
‘Friday morning was a nightmare,’ said Mrs Harry.
‘Cara?’ Clay spoke softly, smiled. The teacher looked at Clay, her eyes dithering with the onset of tears. ‘Tell me what happened on Friday morning?’
11
2.10 am
‘The last time I saw and touched the phone was eleven o’clock on Friday morning,’ said Mrs Harry. ‘My mother phoned me. It said on Radio Merseyside all Liverpool schools were closing because of the coming snowstorm. I told her I’d be home early. I noticed the phone was gone at ten past twelve when I went into my bag for my car keys.’
‘Did you leave your bag unattended during that time?’ asked Clay, feeling her back molars chattering. She bit down, took a deep breath.
‘I did, yes. But it was all pretty chaotic, you see...’
Clay recalled the local radio news broadcasts on Friday morning. The storm had defied the forecasts and instead of hitting north-west England at six in the evening had speeded up as it left the Arctic and was expected to arrive in Liverpool at one in the afternoon.
‘What happened in school?’ asked Clay. ‘Friday morning?’
‘Mrs Sweeney, the head teacher, decided to close the school at twelve. She told us at half past ten. Parents were told to pick up their children as soon as they could, directly from the classroom. Eleven o’clock, parents filing in and out, I took my eye off my bag on numerous occasions.’
‘So it could’ve been lifted by one of the kids in your class?’
‘No, no, no!’ Mrs Harry objected. ‘One of the children would have shouted out if another pupil had gone into my bag.’
‘A parent maybe?’
‘No.’
‘Can you remember the order in which they left? Who was first to go? Who was last?’ asked Clay.
‘I’d have to think it through.’
‘Why didn’t you report your phone stolen?’ asked Clay.
‘Because I was praying it hadn’t been stolen. I was in the school car park when I went into my bag and saw it wasn’t there. The site manager had already locked the doors and Mrs Sweeney had told us not to go back in under any circumstances.’
Clay smiled. ‘She was in a foul mood because the weather had defied her?’
‘Exactly.’ Mrs Harry zoned in on Clay. ‘I was hoping, praying the phone had slipped out of my bag and that when school reopened I’d find it. I didn’t want to bring the police to the school door.’
‘You’re going to have to call Mrs Sweeney right now,’ said Clay.
‘What?’
‘Phone her, tell her to call the site manager and open the school now. I’m sending DS Stone there to meet with them and take your register away. And I’ll need all the contact details of the children in your class. Plus details of who they live with.’
‘Their red files?’ said Mrs Harry.
‘Can you go and make that call for me now, please.’
Clay pointed to the hall, where she’d seen a landline phone on a table.
‘Phone Mrs Sweeney at this hour?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Clay. ‘Now, please.’
As she dialled, Mrs Harry looked into the room, directly at Clay, and asked, ‘What’s happened?’
‘A serious crime currently under investigation.’ Clay indicated the teacher. ‘Karl, take her to the school with you.’
‘You want her to pick the bad eggs out the basket?’
‘Jeanette,’ began Cara into the phone. She fell silent, her shoulders sagging as she absorbed Mrs Sweeney’s addled speech. ‘Well, yes, it is an emergency and I’m sorry to wake you up at this hour...’
‘I’m going back to the scene,’ said Clay to DS Stone. ‘Team meeting, seven o’clock.’
‘The police are with me right here, right now, Jeanette...’
As Clay stepped out into the cold, she found warmth in the thought that the killers could be in custody within hours. In the brief time she’d been inside Mrs Harry’s home the fog had cleared. Stars glittered and a broadening band of red rolled across the moon in the dark sky over Calderstones Park.
The warmth vanished as the vision triggered a vivid memory.
‘The Red Cloud...’ The Baptist’s parting shot to her as he’d been led down to the cells in Preston Crown Court. ‘...will rise from the belly of the city and when the Red Cloud rises...’ He’d turned his head and smiled, her last sight of him. ‘...the river will run with blood.’
She turned on the ignition and looked over her shoulder. The night clouds rolled crimson and fires raged on the surface of distant stars.
12
2.45 am
Sometimes, his soul went out. And sometimes, his soul sank deeper within the black hole inside him.
Adrian White plunged into the bottomless pit that he had cultivated from a single speck when he was four years old, on the day he came across a crippled kitten in a place where there was no one else around. He saw himself sinking, a patch of man-shaped darkness deeper than the edges of the blackness within him, his arms extended, like a diver skimming through water, his essence travelling from the material world through his body, the portal to the glory of the gates of hell.
The darkness was deeper than ever and the speed of his hurtling shadow spirit much faster than its opposite entity, light. For now was the Beginning of the End of Time, the moment he had worked and prayed and fasted for. It was almost time to open the gates of hell for billions of human souls to follow. He pictured the chaos and terror as those souls hurtled after him in his mercurial slipstream.
He stopped. Turn, a whispered command.
Clack clack clack clack. Footsteps echoed from the material world.
Return.
His soul turned inside out and began the ascent, slowly at first.
More. Blood. More. Souls.
His soul hurtled.
In his room, White’s mind shimmered, a sleeper waking from the depths of an all-consuming dream. His lips parted, forming a tight open circle at their centre.
Footsteps. Four sets of feet approaching.
Shadows darted from the friction of his speeding soul against the void that linked his body to hell, shadows like minnows in a black sea. The eye of his soul focused on the surface and he beheld a point of light, the target, his body’s parted mouth in the material world. And he accelerated so that the pinpoint of light rolled and opened like nuclear explosions on the sun.
Footsteps. Taylor. Green. Wilson. Keyes.
His soul fell through the fire as the footsteps stopped outside his door and the whispering in the corridor began.
And he was back in the material world.
Adrian White opened his eyes and, for a moment, everything in the plain room was blurred.
Bang. Bang. Bang. The knock at his door echoed and he concentrated on the slatted window, his focus sharpening on the bars.
‘Adrian? Can I come in?’ It was Taylor.
White’s senses snapped into place.
‘Come in, Mr Taylor. I need to have a word with you.’
As Green opened the door for Taylor, the quartet of nurses’ thoughts drifte
d into the room like a breeze through a window.
A risk of harm to others... A risk of harm to self... A risk of being assaulted... A risk of escaping or absconding... A risk of endangering safety or security...
Taylor stood behind him.
‘Close the door, Mr Green.’
‘Do as he asks,’ said Taylor.
Green closed the door.
‘Stand where I can see you,’ said White.
With a plate of food in his hand, Taylor made his way in front of White.
‘Why have you asked for last evening’s meal at this hour?’ asked Taylor.
‘Oh, ye of little faith, Mr Taylor. I was waiting for you to be on duty.’
‘Why? Why did you demand that I bring you your meal?’
‘Because I sensed doubt in you.’
Taylor looked at the door and then at White.
‘Doubt you? When I don’t believe in you or a word you say?’
Every muscle in White’s body clenched. Taylor watched as the definition of White’s arms and legs sharpened and the deadness in his eyes deepened in the silence of the locked room.
‘Give me my food,’ said White.
Taylor held out the plate and White took it from him. He fingered the food. ‘Pork. Carrot. Potato. Potato. Carrot. Pork. Why are we the odd ones out?’ he asked.
‘Why are who the odd ones out?’
‘Homo sapiens.’
‘Because we’re the most intelligent.’
‘Really, Mr Taylor? You’ll be telling me next that animals don’t have souls. And that little doggies aren’t allowed into heaven.’
‘Just eat your food or whatever it is you do with it.
‘That’s just it. Doubt. In a nutshell.’
‘I’ll collect your plate in twenty minutes.’
‘Stay. I want to tell you something, Mr Taylor.’
‘I don’t want to—’
‘A psychiatric nurse not wanting to hear what a patient has to say?’ White hissed a sigh and something in his throat rattled.
‘Mankind is the odd one out because it’s the only species that cooks its food with fire. And this perversion, Mr Taylor, constitutes a sin. It causes separation from the true power within the universe. And that is why I am different from the rest of you. That is why I only eat raw food. It is the righteous thing to do. But you – you, Mr Taylor – as you wolf down your McDonald’s burgers and shovel fries down your throat, don’t even consider it a moral issue.’
