Blood Mist (Eve Clay)

by Mark Roberts

  ‘You still have faith?’

  ‘I’ve clung on.’ Eric looked deep inside himself. ‘No. No.’

  A picture started forming in Hendricks’s head.

  ‘Eric, forgive me. I’m going to jump from A to X here and, believe me, I am not being judgemental, but did you...?’

  ‘Yes, I slept with Karisa. But I wasn’t alone in receiving her favours. Most of the adults did. Men and women. And many of the older boys and girls. My wife’s not a lesbian, but she turned into one when she was around Karisa.’

  ‘Was she especially beautiful?’

  ‘No. She was ordinary. But everybody thought she was... this goddess. It was like this collective madness around her. She took everyone in. We all thought we were the only person sleeping with her. We all thought we were the one. She was brilliant at building walls of silence within the group. We knew little or nothing about each other because she swore us to secrecy. The only person we could speak to was Karisa. And by the time I’d slept with her three times, she knew everything about me. All the dark things, the secrets, little details that should never see the light of day. I was completely and utterly in love with her and when I got to that point, that’s when she started pushing me away. That’s when she started demanding tithes for the church. That was when the walls of silence started to crumble. When ten per cent of my net income wasn’t enough and she wanted twenty per cent, that’s when husbands started to confess to their wives and when wives turned back to husbands and said, Me too.’

  ‘Did you ever speak to, say, Hanif Patel about this?’

  ‘Apart from my wife, Daniel Tanner was the first member of the group I spoke with. But that was only because of a coincidence.’

  Hendricks wrote down: Karisa Aden. ‘Was that her real name?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘How come you confessed to Daniel Tanner?’

  ‘I didn’t confess. I had genital herpes. I went to the STD Clinic at the Royal Hospital where Daniel works. I was waiting to be seen by the medics when Daniel walked in. I nearly died. He sat next to me and said, ‘Karisa? I’ve had to go privately. People know me here.’ That was the big moment. We had a meeting, on the Friday night, the seven sets of parents and the three single parents. Everything came out. Karisa knew nothing about the meeting, so we thought. We made a plan. We were going to confront her at the Sunday morning service. It was February 2010. We were going to demand all our money back and threaten her with the police. We showed up on the Sunday morning, and so did the Patels and the Tanners, along with Cynthia Highsmith and Pete and Jenny Williams. No one else showed, including Karisa. She wasn’t physically at that meeting, but she was there all right. She had spies in the camp, people still loyal to her in spite of everything. When I phoned the bank to cancel the standing order to the Christian Grace Foundation, the man in the call centre told me there was no need. The Christian Grace Foundation had shut up shop on the Saturday morning and transferred all its funds out of the account.’

  ‘You didn’t see or hear from Karisa again?’

  ‘I received a phone call from an undisclosed number on the Monday afternoon. She said, “Always remember, Eric, I know you conspired to pervert the course of justice. I know enough to get you struck off and sent to jail. Don’t even think of involving the police.”’

  He looked Hendricks in the eye.

  ‘I have nothing to hide and I have nothing to lose now. I want to confess...’

  Hendricks switched record off on his phone.

  ‘...to perverting the course of justice.’

  ‘You’re talking nonsense now, Eric. Do you want us to catch the killers?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then stop wasting my time repeating idle threats from some lowlife prostitute and con artist.

  ‘If you take me... home... I’ll be able to give you all the contact details for the other people involved, so you can warn them.’

  Hendricks had the worst kind of sinking feeling and, guessing what was coming next, said, ‘We did try to track down everyone else from the Christian Grace Foundation.’ He remembered seeing Eric and Mary Watson’s names in the Tanners’ address book and their 2009 address being in the Albert Dock. The family that emigrated.

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ he said.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Moving away to Australia for a new start. But what brought you back to Liverpool?’

  ‘We were there for three years. We woke up one bright, sunny morning and looked at each other. It was as if we had a moment of pure telepathy. Why should we let that woman drive us from our home?’ A tear rolled down his left cheek. ‘I said to Mary, I miss the rain. She said, Me too. We came home because we wanted to live life with our children on our terms not hers. So that’s what we did. We came home. But she hadn’t gone away, had she?’

  67

  8.45 pm

  In the lift ascending from the ground floor of Alder Hey in the Park, a text arrived on Clay’s iPhone. She looked at the screen.

  Hendricks

  Christian Grace Foundation Leader Karisa Aden

  Clay stepped out of the lift onto the third floor of the hospital onto a state of the art glass corridor. Riley was at the end of the corridor next to an armed police officer.

  ‘She’s in here, Eve. She’s fighting to stay conscious, keeps drifting in and out.’

  There was a hum of electrical energy in the air.

  Clay walked past glass walled en suite wards, glanced at the sick children in various stages of getting ready to settle down for the night and wondered what she was going to encounter when she reached the end of the corridor.

  ‘Savage?’ asked Clay.

  ‘She bit the phlebotomist’s ear off, chewed it, swallowed it down,’ said Riley as Clay stopped outside the single bed ward.

  She looked through the glass and saw the girl lying still on the surface of the bed, dressed in a sky blue gown.

  Clay entered and approached the girl on the bed. Her body was limp like a rag doll and her eyes were open but glazed. There was a rim of red around her lips, as if she’d been playing with her mother’s lipstick. Her bloodless face was death-like.

  She turned to the woman at the foot of the bed and asked, ‘Sergeant Cowans?’

  Cowans nodded.

  ‘Can I ask you to step out of the room for a moment, please?’

  When Cowans closed the glass door behind her, Clay stooped to put her face directly in the girl’s eye line. Somewhere in the girl’s eyes, remote awareness. Her muddled consciousness seemed to reach out to Clay and, for a moment, she looked like a drowning infant pleading silently for her life.

  ‘Look at me,’ said Clay.

  She could see the struggle in the child’s face as she tried to follow Clay’s instruction and cling to consciousness.

  ‘Listen to me.’

  The ghost of a frown formed on the girl’s forehead.

  ‘I’m going to help you.’

  Clay took the girl’s limp hands and rubbed her fingers.

  ‘And I want you to help me. Do you understand?’

  The girl’s lips parted as if she was forming a sound and a thin string of blood-streaked saliva fell from her lower lip.

  ‘You feel very sleepy right now, as if you’re in a dream.’

  Her head lolled slightly, to one side.

  ‘I’m going to tell you my name.’

  The girl’s hold on reality was slipping fast.

  ‘My name is Eve Clay.’

  ‘M.’ Under her breath, a single sound, the beginning of a word she didn’t have the energy to complete.

  ‘I think I know your name.’

  The girl forced her sinking lids apart and looked at Clay through a haze of tears. Her eyes closed, she forced them wide open again, her willpower wrestling with the chemical haze.

  ‘You should be out for the count,’ whispered Clay. ‘For a little girl you’ve got some strength.’

  Clay looked down at the girl’s bare feet. They
looked like a size 2. She pictured them in Converse, one foot stomping down on Kate Patel.

  ‘Is your name Drake?’

  Clay sat on the edge of the bed and stroked the girl’s head and face.

  Tears fell from her eyes onto the back of Clay’s hand. As the girl’s eyes closed, a look of pure joy flashed through the deadness of her face, a shooting star flying through a pitch-black sky.

  The girl’s head turned slightly and her lips connected with Clay’s fingers. She stilled her hands. Clay felt the soft puckering of the girl’s lips as she kissed her fingers like a pilgrim at a holy statue.

  She turned to look out onto the corridor outside and beckoned Riley to come inside.

  Clay stood up and, as Riley entered the room, she scooped up the child from the bed and held her. She nodded at the bed and Riley pulled back the covers.

  She laid the child down on her back, arranged the pillow under her head and covered her with the sheet and blankets. Just like Sister Philomena had done for her every night when she was a child. But Clay had no prayer to say over the child, no heaven to plead with for the child’s safety and protection.

  There was a smile on the child’s face, a definite turn on the corners of her blood-red lips.

  The rhythm of a rubber ball bouncing against an upstairs wall, onto the floor and back again built up inside Clay’s head.

  ‘I thought Faith only had one sister, Coral, and that Coral was playing with the ball. But it was you, wasn’t it?’ Trying to attract my attention, thought Clay. Letting me know you were there.

  Clay turned to Riley. ‘When she wakes, if the doctor needs to give her a sedative, ask him to give her a much reduced dose. I need her awake and talking.’

  Five words rolled around Clay’s head. A prayer of sorts, she thought. ‘If there’s a problem when she wakes up, tell her if she does as she’s told I’ll come back and see her right away. When she wakes, call me immediately. I’ll be straight over.’

  As Clay walked away, she felt the warmth of the child’s tears and the weight of her lips lingering on the backs of her hands. The words rolled around her head, over and over.

  You’re safe now, Little Darkness.

  You’re safe now.

  Little Darkness.

  68

  9.30 pm

  On the way to Barnham Drive, Clay ordered back-up officers to the Drakes’ house. When she arrived, they were there with Stone, waiting for her.

  Ram in hand at the front door, Stone asked, ‘Ready, Eve?’

  Clay stared at the plain, ordinary-looking front door and was filled with cold foreboding. Once again she felt the weight of Little Darkness’s lips on the backs of her hands.

  She looked at the door and imagined a vicious power, invisible and lingering in the shadows, waiting to snatch at her flesh and swallow her whole, wiping her physical presence from the earth, condemning her to billions of light years of oblivion.

  ‘Eve, are you ready?’ Stone repeated.

  She rocketed back into reality. ‘Ram the door!’

  The hall was dark except for a red glow on the wall.

  Clay stepped inside and saw the source of the dull light. It was the metal silhouette of the Liverpool skyline, the one she’d seen on her last visit to the Drakes’ house.

  Now it was switched on and the sky behind the black outlines of the cathedrals, the Liver Building and the Radio City Tower was blood red.

  She turned towards Stone, his face made vivid by the crimson cast. ‘Red Cloud rising,’ she said.

  Her voice echoed in the darkness. There were no signs of life in the house. ‘They’ve gone,’ she said. ‘Keep guard on the front and back entrances. Close the front door and everyone stay as quiet as possible. Just in case they return.’

  ‘You want me to turn on the lights?’ asked Stone.

  ‘No.’

  ‘They won’t come back now.’

  ‘They’re capable of anything,’ said Clay.

  As she raised her right hand to wipe the film of perspiration from her forehead, her fingers were made red with the light from the Liverpool skyline. She turned on her torch and drowned her hands in the plain yellow beam.

  The bulb flickered as she stepped forward to the front room, where she’d spoken with Faith and her mother. The sofa and armchairs, the television that Faith had so casually watched, everything was as it had been. She explored the plain walls but nothing had been daubed there, no esoteric markings. As with her first impression, it was bland, soulless.

  In the small room next to the front room she was surprised to see plain floorboards. She moved her light around the walls and into the space within.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Stone.

  ‘It’s empty. No carpet, not a stick of furniture.’ She combed the room with torchlight. ‘The walls are bare plaster and there’s a piece of hardboard nailed across the window frame.’

  She found the light switch and flicked it. Nothing. She pointed the torch at the ceiling and saw there was no light bulb, only a pair of unsheathed cables.

  Had it simply been stripped for refurbishment? In the kitchen there was a table and four chairs, and a plate and full complement of cutlery at each place. Clay wandered deeper in, the bare floorboards creaking under her weight. There was a sink with no dishes in it, a two-burner cooker that looked like it had been made in the 1950s. She turned on the gas ring but there was no release of gas. She looked at the back of the cooker. It wasn’t even connected.

  The wall units were of a similar era. She opened a cupboard door. Four small cups, cracked and without handles, stood in a neat line in a space filled only with shadows.

  Clay recalled Coral’s words. ‘We’re a single-parent family.’ But it didn’t explain the poverty of the kitchen when the mother of that family worked double shifts.

  In her mind, Clay walked from the front door to the back door. She realised that the front room was only for show. Visitors who called would go no further than that room. The rest of the downstairs, Clay knew, would be an ascetic shell. Even the stair carpet stretched only as far as the turn at the head of the stairs, the furthest point visible from the front door.

  Poverty. The word echoed in Clay’s head. Why such poverty? Poverty. The word sparked another. Obedience. A concept that might explain such miserable living conditions.

  ‘What’s going on?’ The effect of Stone’s voice was strange, like he was speaking to her underwater.

  The relative affluence of the Drakes’ victims was markedly at odds with the lifestyle chosen by Anais Drake. How thin had self-denial made Coral and Faith?

  ‘They’re nuns, Anais and her daughters...’ As Clay articulated the idea that had formed in her mind, she instinctively knew she was in the presence of a bizarre truth. ‘A cell of Satanic nuns for whom poverty is an essential vow.’

  Just like Adrian White in his bare room in Ashworth Psychiatric Hospital. She pictured him there and felt increasingly convinced that there was some sort of bond between that small room and the house she found herself in, between the Baptist and the Drake family.

  The largest bedroom at the front of the house was empty except for two single beds and the pair of cheap curtains hanging in the window that said normal to anyone glancing up as they passed on the pavement outside. She guessed it was the bedroom of Anais and one of her daughters. But in the little girl’s sad gathering of garments, hung on a rail with her mother’s supermarket uniform, there was no school uniform or any hint of a life outside the family home.

  The second largest bedroom was just as drab. A metal-framed single bed with a large wooden wardrobe towering over it. Clay opened the door with trepidation and was taken aback to see just a St Bernard’s school uniform and four other sets of clothes hanging there. Clothes to be worn out in the world, perfect disguises.

  In the smallest bedroom at the back of the house, Coral’s Liverpool Blue Coat School uniform lay draped and folded over a chair.

  On the floor lay a long metal stick with a hook
at one end. Clay scanned the bedroom ceiling, took in the bare-ended electrical cables, felt herself turning inside out as she stepped outside Coral’s room and found the entrance to the loft next to the bathroom.

  Inside the bathroom a tap double dripped, echoing. The rhythm of a heartbeat. Stone was in there. Clay heard the rattle of liquid in a metal canister and the spray of an aerosol, caught the scent of deodorant.

  Click click click click click click click click click click.

  She joined Stone in the bathroom. There were four toothbrushes and a tube of Colgate, two bars of soap on dishes and a towel neatly folded next to a small stack of flannels. She looked inside a small box of make-up. Lipstick, mascara, foundation. A hairbrush and comb next to a pot of hair bobbles and metal clips. But somehow it didn’t feel like a woman’s bathroom, more like a man’s vision of one.

  ‘It’s almost normal,’ said Stone.

  Clay caught her torch-lit reflection alongside Stone’s in the narrow mirror on the wall. They both looked like half-formed ghosts.

  ‘Almost,’ she agreed. ‘But not quite. The only reason they wash is because they can’t afford to smell. It would get them noticed out there.’ Clay had the clearest sense that everything in their world was a constructed inversion of reality. ‘The only reason they use the toilet and don’t relieve their bladders and bowels on the floor is because they’d end up sick and needing medical care or the smell would have the neighbours calling social services in. Abnormal is their normal.’

  The sound of a phone ringing filtered down through the ceiling. It was coming from the loft.

  Clay retrieved the metal arm from Coral’s room. She stepped onto the cramped upstairs landing and passed her torch to Stone. He lit up the entrance to the loft and, with both hands, she guided the hook into the catch. Turning it slowly, she lowered the door on its hinges.

  A strange light poured into the darkness around them. Candles. Dozens of them. A hundred or more perhaps, all burning in the loft.

  The phone continued to ring, louder now, insistent, urging her to hurry into the space above her head, to connect with the caller.

  Clay pulled the ladder down and started up it.