Blood Mist (Eve Clay)

by Mark Roberts

  She shut the back door.

  ‘I’m going home,’ she said and closed down the call.

  On the pavement outside the Patels’ house, Clay watched a pair of headlights approaching. The car stopped, a man stepped out and walked towards her.

  She gripped the card folder in her hands and hugged it into her body.

  As he stepped into the streetlight, she saw DC Cole, fresh from trawling through The Matriarch, and he looked solemn.

  ‘Have you got something to tell me?’ she asked.

  92

  5.13 am

  The closer Cole came, the more troubled he looked. Although her heart filled with fresh heaviness, she smiled but it did nothing to alleviate the serious stamp on his face.

  He handed her a brown envelope.

  ‘The code you cracked – Eve is the child of the one who reigns in darkness – keeps repeating over and over at various points in the text. But there’s another piece of information, another message, that keeps coming up through the first and seventh syllable system.’

  He looked around. They were alone.

  ‘I’ve written it out for you, Eve. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. You’ve done a good job. See what else you can come up with after you’ve been home and slept.’

  As he turned his back and walked away, the smile fell from Clay’s face.

  She moved into the glow of a streetlight, took two pieces of folded A4 paper from the envelope.

  She waited for DC Cole to pull away and pass her.

  In silence, she read the top sheet.

  Chapter eleven, verses one to three.

  The yes star rise city fruit of air blood man run earth your womb fire flame city red will alert cloud earth red blood ways be yes dim star fire air long to rise city blood fire your famine earth run air other till yes rise no rise yes all time earth run blood yes star ends.

  As she read the words, the voice inside her head turned into Adrian White’s. The music and mockery of his speech filled her with bitter coldness and, as she pieced together the hidden meaning of his writing, the coldness turned to red hot anger.

  She turned to the bottom sheet and confirmed what she’d just worked out.

  1

  7

  The

  yes star rise cityf

  ruit

  of

  air blood man run earth

  your

  womb

  fire flame city red

  will

  al

  ert cloud earth red blood

  ways

  be

  yes dim star fire air

  long

  to

  rise city blood fire

  your

  fa

  mine earth run air o

  ther

  till

  yes rise no rise yes

  all

  time

  earth run blood yes star

  ends

  Her life flashed through her mind: pictures of her mother fornicating with the Satanic dragon on the Drake’s altar, the moment of her birth, sitting on Philomena’s knee in front of the fire, Philomena’s death, St Michael’s, school, university, passing out from police training school, standing across a wall of fire from Adrian White and running through those flames, Thomas’s sky-blue eyes and the first time she held Philip in her arms, the fruit of her womb.

  Never, she thought. And defiance flooded her.

  She pictured Philip’s face, asleep under the blue glow of the night light.

  Ever.

  In her mind, she stared into Adrian White’s dead eyes across the wall of fire, held onto his cold gaze as she walked calmly into the flames. She drilled her eyes into his as the fire danced around her and The Baptist, and his curses on her past and future, dissolved into thin air before her.

  Philip, I would walk through fire for you and I will become that fire, thought Clay. I will stand in front of you. I will stand behind you and I will stand around you and nothing will get through that inferno.

  On the cold pavement, she turned her eyes to the clear sky, the Moon and the stars, the approach of dawn and a new morning. And I will never stop loving and sheltering you, Philip.

  Never.

  Ever.

  Ever.

  93

  5.25 am

  As Clay stepped over the threshold of her house in Mersey Road, the landline in the hall rang out. She turned on the main light and saw the digits 0151 709 6010, Merseyside Police central switchboard, on the display. She picked up the phone with black expectation.’

  ‘I’ve got a call for you from Maghull police station. There’s been an incident at Ashworth Psychiatric Hospital. The caller wants to be connected to you. I have to warn you—’

  ‘I know,’ said Clay. ‘I know who it is.’

  ‘Shall I connect you, DCI Clay, or do you want me to divert the call to another officer?’

  She looked around at the hallway of her home, the last place she wanted to have a conversation with White, and weighed up her options. There weren’t any.

  ‘Connect the call.’

  Silence.

  The background noise of a normally quiet police station on red alert.

  ‘Eve?’

  White sounded in a great mood, pleased with himself and wanting nothing more than to share the vinegar that raised his buckled spirit.

  ‘George, psychiatric nurse, remember him? I’ve liberated his soul from his body and sent him off to a much better place.’

  She hung onto the silence.

  ‘We’re going to share the headlines again, Eve, but this time you’re going to become known worldwide for what you really are. And I’ll be there, a supporting player, moving around in the margins of your greatness. They failed, of course, the Red Cloud. How could they succeed against you? Little Faith, though, who’d have thought it of her? Matricide.’

  She said nothing but pictured the scene in the basement in Edge Hill. Faith and Coral Drake in the presence of the mutilated corpse of their mother. She walked inside the Baptist’s mind.

  ‘You’re in police custody on a horrible night. You’ve overheard officers speaking as the news breaks.’

  ‘Oh ye of little faith.’ She could feel an ice-cold smile in his words.

  ‘I’m going—’

  ‘...to be the magnet for every single human being who chooses the darkness over the light for the rest of your life. You need to listen. Your life will never be the same again and that’s why I’m calling you. Prepare yourself from this moment. Your life is no longer your own. Everything’s going to come out in the trial.’

  There was a silence between the two of them and then Clay spoke softly. ‘I’m going to share something with you. You need to listen, Adrian.’

  Clay took out her iPhone, selected the recording of Coral Drake and pressed play.

  Coral’s voice drifted into the receiver: ‘Are you listening?’

  ‘I’m listening,’ came Clay’s response.

  ‘Then you must be our witness.’ Silence. ‘Faith and Coral Drake have taken vows of poverty and obedience from their earliest days and Faith and Coral have kept to these vows and have never wavered. Faith and Coral Drake want Adrian White to know and understand that the vows we take, we keep. Faith and Coral Drake want Adrian White to further understand that we can make vows of our own, not just endure the ones imposed on us. Faith and Coral are no longer Drake. Faith and Coral have a plan to help them with that painted-in feeling. Faith and Coral have made an agreement. Faith and Coral will no longer communicate with the world. Faith and Coral have taken a vow of silence and these are the last words that Coral will ever speak for the rest of her life. Faith fell silent hours ago. Faith and Coral denounce Anais. Faith and Coral denounce Adrian White. Coral is silent from now.’

  Clay turned the recording off and lifted the phone to her ear.

  ‘There are some judges who’ll deem them unfit for trial because they will not or cannot communicate with th
eir legal representatives. There are judges who will make them take the stand because the girls understand why they’re in a courtroom and what a courtroom is. But whatever happens, I’m not going to be the focus of what comes next. Whatever you think I am is a figment of your imagination. This is how the world sees me. I’m the woman who put you away seven years ago. I’m the woman who cleared up the mess you left afterwards. Anyone who follows you is in awe of me because I am the end of you. My name is Eve Clay. I am a wife, a mother and a police officer. You are Adrian White. You’re insane. Lost. A disgrace to humanity. Locked up forever and waiting to die.’

  She held the receiver at a distance as the sound of a long out-breath filled the earpiece. In the silence that followed, she looked at a picture on the wall of herself with Thomas and Philip and heard a clock ticking in the heart of her home.

  ‘Eve?’ His voice, lighter than air, drifted over her. She placed the receiver closer to her ear. ‘I’ll see you again when you least expect it.’

  She waited, absorbed the background noise of Maghull police station and told him, ‘You’ll see me again if I need to see you. But do you know, Adrian, you have a problem with seeing.’

  ‘When you least expect it, Eve.’

  ‘Your eyes are dead. Just like all your dreams.’

  Clay placed the receiver down and, sitting on the bottom stair, was pierced with an insight that she would keep to herself forever.

  Coral, Faith and Adrienne were like sisters to her.

  But she was the lucky one. The one that got away.

  94

  6.05 am

  Alone in the front room of their home in Mersey Road, Clay wrapped herself in a blanket and lay on the couch with the central heating turned on full. She opened the file and found a letter dated 1984 confirming that she would start school at Our Lady Immaculate. Next was a letter from Alder Hey Hospital about MMR vaccinations. Then a letter confirming her third place in a city-wide Poetry Of Place competition.

  The disappointing thought occurred to her that it was all ephemera and wouldn’t provide any answers. After ten minutes she was nearing the end of the papers and there was nothing new. The file had merely prompted a few half-memories and part of her wanted to throw it across the room in frustration.

  A letter from Notre Dame High School confirming she could take time off to go on a weekend break to Grizedale Forest in the Lake District.

  She added the letter to the pile. Then, looking at the next sheet, she felt the colour in her face rising. She remembered Philomena’s handwriting and the address for St Claire’s at the head of the letter.

  She inspected the markings on the edge of the page. It was a photocopy of a letter from Philomena to Derek Worlock, the Archbishop of Liverpool.

  Dear Archbishop Worlock,

  Thank you for your prompt response to my letter of 24 May 1978. I will attempt as clearly as I can to address the questions in your letter regarding the abandoned newborn. I hope this will assist you in coming to a decision regarding my request.

  I gave her the Hebrew name Evette, meaning living one, but will call her Eve on a daily basis after the first woman in God’s creation. For a surname I will call her Clay to reflect the humanity she shares with all her brothers and sisters in Christ, her maternal and paternal surnames being unknown.

  I discovered the child as a direct result of the intervention of the Holy Spirit. My spiritual life has been centred on prayer and my material work has been focused on caring for children in the Liverpool diocese for over thirty years. I have been convinced, through submission of my will to the Holy Spirit, that the ultimate purpose of my work for the Lord is to take special care of one special individual with extraordinary needs. On the night I discovered Eve, I was visited in a dream by an angel who urged me to leave St Claire’s in the dead of night and who led me to the place where the child had been abandoned by her mother.

  As soon as I saw Eve, I understood that the purpose of my life’s work was complete. Everything I had done for more than a thousand children over decades of devoted service to the Lord was preparation for this individual child. I fell in love with her on sight and when I picked her up from the ground, human love connected with the love of Christ. The Holy Spirit spoke clearly to me as I carried her back to St Claire’s, in a voice as clear as physical speech:

  ‘This is the daughter you yearned for but could never give birth to as a bride of Christ. Cherish her, love her, protect her until your dying day.’

  At home, when I undressed Eve to bathe her, I discovered the distressing letter from her birth mother relating to the circumstances of her birth and the forces of darkness that surrounded the child. I submitted the letter directly to your office, along with the letter outlining my specific request relating to Eve. I have not divulged the contents of her mother’s letter to anyone and, as I swore on the Holy Bible, those details I will take to my grave.

  I seek your permission to become Eve’s legal guardian, to seal the bond between the spiritual urging of the Holy Spirit and the workings of the world. Eve is a gift from God and I need to protect the child I love with as much power as I can in imitation of St Joseph as he cared for the infant Jesus.

  If you have any questions, I will be more than happy to clarify the points herein.

  I look forward to your response.

  Yours obediently in Christ,

  Sr. Philomena

  Mother Superior, St Claire’s

  Eve turned to the next sheet, headed notepaper from Archbishop Worlock’s official residence, marked with the symbol of the Liverpool Diocese.

  It was an original, written with a 1970s typewriter, the page dented with the printed word.

  Dear Sr. Philomena,

  After much prayer and thought, I am convinced there is no other person better suited to caring for this child than you. The gravity of the danger to this child’s soul cannot be overstated and I agree that the Holy Spirit has led you into guardianship of her. I have instructed our legal team to proceed with making you her legal guardian and would like you to register her birth with the registrar at Brougham Terrace. I would be grateful if you could inform me of her progress and would like to assure you that both you and Eve will be at the centre of my prayers.

  Concerning the information in her mother’s letter, I have every confidence that this shocking story will remain known to you and me alone. Be vigilant in prayer and in action. She is an especially vulnerable child but also blessed to have been discovered and saved by you under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

  Thank you for taking on this responsibility.

  Yours in Christ

  Archbishop Derek Worlock

  A mother without a child, thought Clay. A child without a mother.

  She looked at the Polaroid photo salvaged from the Drakes’ loft and said, ‘Philomena, we were made for each other. We were meant to be.’

  She turned every last page in the file. The two letters were the only surviving documents from the first six years of her life. She closed the file and gazed at Philomena’s writing. The word love, repeated over and over, danced from the page, raising the dead weight from the centre of her heart and filling her with a calm certainty.

  Philomena was the guiding star, her birth parents inevitable darkness.

  She looked to the light, seized on it and knew she would never let it go.

  Eve fell into a stillness and felt a calm she remembered from her childhood. Time passed. She didn’t move. It was exactly how she used to feel when she prayed with Philomena.

  The key turned in the lock on the front door.

  ‘Eve?’

  She walked into the hall, to Thomas’s voice.

  Philip and Thomas stood, hand in hand, waiting for her.

  Eve knelt on the floor and held the photograph of herself and Philomena towards Philip.

  The little boy ran and fell into her.

  ‘What’s this?’ Thomas smiled. He looked closely. ‘Oh God, is that who I think it is?’

/>   She nodded, listened to herself laughing.

  As she held Thomas and Philip into herself, Eve Clay closed her eyes and was visited by her earliest memory. The darkness in her head exploded into bright summer sunshine. The garden of St Claire’s stretched out like an eternal meadow and she could see her knees rising and hands swinging on the edge of her vision as she ran across the grass to Philomena, youthful, smiling, arms held out, love waiting to collect its prize.

  Philomena scooped her up under the arms and twirled her round and round. The sky was blue and cloudless behind Philomena’s head and her face beamed with happiness.

  The only sound was Eve’s laughter blending with Philomena’s and, then, Philomena’s voice.

  ‘This is where you come from. This and nowhere else.’

  Clay opened her eyes, looked at Philip and Thomas.

  ‘And this is where we belong.’

  She took the Polaroid from Thomas.

  ‘Philip, look.’ Eve’s son turned his eyes to the image of his mother as a small girl sitting on her protector’s knee. ‘Philip, this is your grandmother. Her name is Philomena.’

  ~

  We hope you enjoyed this book.

  The next thrilling book in the Red River City will be released in spring 2016

  For more information, click one of the links below:

  Acknowledgements

  About Mark Roberts

  An invitation from the publisher

  Acknowledgements

  I’d like to thank Peter, Rosie and Jessica Buckman, Toby Duncan, Paul Goetzee, John Gunning, Laura Palmer and all at Head of Zeus, Lucy Ridout, Linda and Eleanor Roberts, Frank and Ben Rooney, Veronica Stallwood, Lynn Mills, Les Coe, Tom Stapledon, Chris Ilies and all Friends of the Williamson Tunnels, Dave Bridston and all at the Williamson Heritage Centre.