Department 18 [04] A Plague of Echoes

by Maynard Sims

“We’ve had orders from the Home Office, from the Home Secretary himself. It seems that you are important cog in the government department where you work,” Wilkins said. “And it’s been deemed that it can’t run efficiently without you,” he added slightly incredulously.

  “What about the charges?”

  Wilkins glanced down at the file. “They still stand, and at some unspecified time in the future you will have to face them. You’ll be summoned to appear at a, yet unnamed, court and face a judge and jury. In the meantime you’re free to go.”

  “I see,” Bailey said.

  “Do you?” Wilkins said. “Because I’m buggered if I do. It seems quite extraordinary to me. A remand prisoner, on a very serious charge, being able to check himself out, as if this is no more than a bloody hotel? Extraordinary!”

  Bailey could feel the anger bubbling away under the man’s outwardly calm exterior.

  “I’m sure the Home Secretary has his reasons,” Bailey said.

  “Obviously. Perhaps one day you’ll have the good grace to tell me what those reasons are.”

  “I’ll make a point of it,” Bailey said.

  Wilkins pressed a button on his desk. The door opened and one of the warders stepped into the room. “Leighton, take Bailey down to pick up his things and then escort him to the gate.”

  “Sir?”

  Wilkins simply glared at the man.

  “Very good, sir.”

  Bailey got to his feet.

  “This way,” Leighton said.

  Bailey turned to Wilkins. “There is a bigger picture here,” he said. “A much bigger picture. One day I’ll tell you what it’s a picture of.”

  Wilkins said nothing. He looked down at the file again and dismissed Harry Bailey with a wave of his pen.

  Three hours later Bailey left his car in a reserved bay of the hospital car park and crossed the tarmac to the double, glass entrance doors. Nobody tried to stop him, if they noticed him at all. He took the lift up to the fourth floor and made his way along the corridor to Crozier’s room. Two nurses passed him in the corridor but they were too involved in their conversation to question his presence there. He reached the room, paused in the corridor and then looked inside.

  The room was empty, the bed unmade, the machines and monitors switched off. He swore softly. The empty room did not augur well.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  He started and spun round.

  Maria Bridge stood in the doorway, hands on her hips. There was a bandage taped across her broken nose and dark bruises under her eyes. “If you’ve come to finish what you started, I warn you now, there are two armed policemen in the next corridor. I only have to raise my voice.”

  “I’d prefer it if you didn’t,” Bailey said. “I only came to see how Simon is doing.”

  “Not good,” she said, her eyes meeting his, the gaze fierce. “Your attack did a lot of damage. Ripped his internal stitches. It’s touch and go now. What on earth were you thinking? You said you were his friend.”

  “I was…am. It’s complicated. I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “Try me.”

  He regarded her for a moment, deciding what he should tell her.

  “I’ll know if you’re lying, so don’t even try,” she said.

  He believed her.

  “You said yesterday that you’d had dealings with Department 18 before.”

  “And I thought I made it clear that it’s not something I want to discuss. Especially now, and especially with you.”

  “I wish you would because at least then I’ll know what you are willing to accept and what is going to send you screaming to the two coppers in the next corridor.”

  “Let’s just say I have an open mind.”

  “And you’ve experienced the paranormal.”

  She nodded.

  “Was it you who contacted Department 18?”

  “My father did. Not me.”

  “But you know who we are and what we do?”

  She sighed. “Christ, you’re a persistent bugger, aren’t you? Let’s stop dancing, shall we. If what you have to tell me has supernatural overtones, I’m not going to dismiss it out of hand. I have a very open mind. I’ll listen to what you have to say and judge it on its merits.”

  Bailey sat down on the edge of the bed. “Okay,” he said. “We believe that Mae Middleton, the old lady who attacked Simon Crozier, was possessed, and I also believe the same thing happened to me, here at the hospital last night. I was tired, unprepared. I think I was vulnerable and somehow it got inside me and made me try to throttle Simon.” He stared at Maria, waiting for her reaction.

  For a while she was silent, her face inscrutable. Finally she said, “Okay, I believe you.”

  He couldn’t keep the surprise from his face. “You do? Just like that?”

  “I said I’d know if you were lying,” she said. “You’re not lying.” She crossed to the bed and sat down next to him. “When I was thirteen years old we moved to a house in Wales. A new start in a new town. My father had accepted a job as surgeon in chief at a hospital in Cardiff.” She stared off into space as if watching the memories being projected onto an invisible screen. “The house we moved into was set in three acres of land. Six bedrooms, three reception rooms, three bathrooms and so on. A massive place, much larger than we needed, but then it was more a status symbol than a home. But that was my father all over; it was all about appearances. He was a brilliant surgeon but a totally useless human being.

  “For the first two weeks things were fairly normal. I hated having to move and I missed my school, my friends. My brother fared better than me. He’d left school by then and was at university, living in halls, so he didn’t spend time at the Cardiff house. On the Monday of the third week things changed…”

  “Maria! It’s eight o’clock. You’re going to be late for school!”

  Maria mumbled in her sleep, rolled over and sank deeper into slumber. She was awoken as the duvet was ripped from the bed and hurled into the farthest corner of the room. “Ow! Not funny, Mum,” she said propping herself up on her elbows. “I was getting up.” It was a full five seconds later that she realized she was alone in the room.

  And then someone giggled.

  It was a girl’s laughter, or maybe a little boy. Shrill and annoying.

  Maria scrambled out of bed and looked frantically about, but there was no one to be seen. “I must have been dreaming,” she said to herself and then saw the duvet heaped in the corner and shook her head.

  It was cold in the room, the first teeth of winter beginning to nibble away at the central heating. Shivering, she grabbed her robe from the hook behind the door and wrapped it around her. The bathroom was two doors along the carpeted landing. It was cold out here as well and, by the time she reached the bathroom, she was shivering. Bolting the door behind her, she pulled the cord for the fan heater and stood directly under the warm blast of air, opening her robe slightly to let the air circulate around her body.

  The scrabbling sounded from inside the vanity unit surrounding the washbasin. Maria froze, cold fingers crawling over her skin, despite the heat from the fan heater. The thought of mice or, worse still, rats filled her mind, bringing the almost primeval fear racing to the surface.

  She stared at the doors of the vanity unit, half expecting them to burst open to allow a hoard of furry, biting rodents to come flooding into the claustrophobic space of the bathroom. There was silence as she edged towards the door and then, as her fingers curled around the brass door handle, the scrabbling sounded again, a dreadful, sickening sound, as if a thousand claws were scratching at the wood, trying to burrow through. Yanking the door open, she fled the bathroom and ran full pelt downstairs.

  She found her mother in the kitchen, preparing breakfast.

  “We’ve got rats!” Maria said br
eathlessly as she burst through into the kitchen.

  Her father was seated at the oak table, The Times propped up against the cafetierre, a slice of toast poised at his lips. He stared at his daughter over the top of his half-rims. “What on earth are you talking about?” he said sourly.

  “Have you had your shower?” her mother asked as she flipped eggs in the cast iron frying pan.

  Maria shook her head. “I heard them, in the bathroom. Inside the vanity unit, scratching, trying to get out.”

  Edwina Bridge looked to her husband, who raised his eyes skywards and dropped his toast back onto his plate. With a sigh of annoyance he got to his feet. “Show me,” he said to his daughter.

  At the bathroom Maria hung back on the landing as her father went inside, dropped to a crouch in front of the vanity unit and pulled open the doors. He spent a few moments taking items out of the unit and stacking them beside him on the vinyl floor. Toilet cleaner, various bottles of disinfectant, a small basket of bath salts in glass bottles, a large, plastic bottle of bleach. When the vanity unit was empty he called his daughter into the room. “Maria, look.”

  Hesitantly Maria entered the room and crouched down beside her father, peering into the empty cupboard.

  “You see,” Colin Bridge said. “Nothing in there. No holes for rats to get in, no droppings. Nothing. I don’t know what you heard but it wasn’t rats.”

  “But I heard something,” Maria said, beginning to doubt herself.

  “But not rats,” her father said. “Now, have your shower and get dressed. Your mother’s taking me to the station this morning and I don’t want to miss my train. She can drop you off at school on the way.”

  Maria got to her feet and switched on the power shower. “Okay,” she said uncertainly.

  “And that’s how it began.” Maria Bridge said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I thought I was going mad,” Bridge said. “I was forever hearing things: the scrabbling in the bathroom, the childish laughter mocking me, and other strange sounds that didn’t belong. But Mother and Father seemed oblivious to it. So much so that I stopped telling them. I was worried that they would send me somewhere to be checked out. I knew one of my father’s good friends was a psychologist who specialized in adolescent problems and I really didn’t like him. He’d come to our house, drink too much and smoke these awful fat cigars that smelt like dead things. The last thing I wanted was to be referred to him. So I retreated into myself and said nothing. That year was one of the most miserable of my life.

  “When I started seeing things as well as hearing them I truly thought I was losing my mind…”

  The boy stood in the centre of the lawn, gazing up at the house. Maria was at her bedroom window staring back at him. He was small and frail, with tousled, corn-yellow hair and the saddest eyes she could ever recall seeing. Today was the fifth day in a row he had appeared. The first two days she had rushed down to the garden only to find the lawn empty. Now she merely looked at him, hoping that in some way he’d try to make contact with her.

  She heard her mother’s footfalls on the stairs, no doubt she was coming up to chivvy her along, to tell her for the hundredth time that she was going to be late for school.

  “Who’s that on the lawn,” her mother said as she came up behind Maria.

  Maria spun around and gaped at her mother. “You can see him?”

  “Of course I can see him,” Edwina Bridge said, giving her daughter a curious look. “Come on, you’ll be late for school,” she said. “And tell your school friends that our garden is not a playground. If they want to come here to play, their parents should get in touch with either me or your father…preferably me.”

  “But he’s not a friend,” Maria protested. “I don’t know who he is. He just started appearing. I think he’s a ghost.”

  Edwina crouched down, grabbed Maria’s arms and stared into her daughter’s eyes. “Now stop that, Maria. I won’t listen to any more of your stories. I really thought we were over that nonsense. If your fath…” Her voice trailed off as she saw Maria’s eyes widen. Her daughter was looking directly over her shoulder at something in the room.

  Slowly Edwina Bridge turned her head to follow her daughter’s gaze, stifling a cry of alarm as she saw the boy from the lawn, standing in the doorway of her daughter’s bedroom, a look of fury in his eyes. Now he was closer she could see there was something terribly wrong with him. His neck had been slashed—a four-inch laceration in his throat, stretching from one ear to the other, the wound open slightly, showing livid, bloody flesh beneath.

  “Get your hands off her,” the boy said in a liquid, threatening voice.

  Maria watched her mother’s mouth opening and closing, searching for words and finding none. Although Maria didn’t blink, did not look away from the boy for a second, one moment he was standing in the doorway, the next he was inches away from her mother. The boy raised his arm and brought it swooping down in an arc, hitting Edwina Bridge across the jaw and knocking her sideways.

  Maria cried out as her mother toppled silently to the floor. The boy drew his foot back, taking aim. In her mind Maria could see the foot flying forward, connecting with her mother’s unprotected face.

  “No! Stop this! She’s done nothing to you!”

  The boy froze, leg hovering in midair, a look of feverish glee on his face. He was breathing heavily, almost panting. He stared into Maria’s eyes.

  “Please,” she said softly, almost silently.

  The boy put his hand to his lips and giggled. Maria recognized the sound at once. “They’re all the same,” he said.

  And then the scrabbling sounded again, this time coming from her wardrobe. Maria gasped and spun around to see the wardrobe doors shaking in their frame.

  “No!” she cried out. “Stop this! Please stop this!”

  She turned back to face the boy, but she and her mother were alone in the room. A few seconds later the scrabbling stopped.

  Maria was shaken and confused. She crouched down to comfort her mother who was lying, whimpering, on the floor, her legs drawn up to her chest, her head tucked in to her neck.

  Maria reached out and stroked her mother’s hair gently. “It’s all right,” she said soothingly. “He’s gone.”

  Gradually Edwina Bridge raised her eyes to meet her daughter’s. “Who was he?” Edwina said haltingly.

  Maria shook her head. “I don’t know, Mum. I don’t know.”

  “So how did the Department get involved?” Bailey said.

  “A friend of my father recommended him to go and see someone in Whitehall,” Bridge said.

  “Who was it your father saw?”

  “God, I can’t remember his name. We’re talking thirty-five years ago.”

  Bailey’s eyes widened. “As long ago as that?”

  “I’m forty-seven,” Bridge said bluntly. “And please don’t say I don’t look my age. I inherited the young gene from my mother. She was seventy when she died and didn’t look a day over fifty. In my line of work looking younger than one’s age is a curse. It robs you of authority. It was years before people started taking me seriously. All through my twenties and for most of my thirties my bosses and my patients treated me like a kid.”

  “And you’re sure you don’t remember the man’s name?”

  “Deacon, Duncan, something like that. He worked for Department 18 anyway. That’s all I know. That and that they cleared the house.”

  “Everett Deayton?” Bailey said.

  “That was it,” Bridge said. “Deayton. A big man, with a larger-than-life personality. Do you know him?”

  “He was my boss when I first joined the Department. He was a very gifted psychic and a talented investigator. He’s still around I think. Must be in his eighties now.

  “Would you like to know what the…disturbances were all about? I could ask Deayton
. He used to live a couple of miles from here. He’s probably still there. I could pay him a visit.”

  She shook her head. “Don’t go to any trouble. It’s past history now.”

  “Fair enough,” Bailey said. “But at least it explains why you weren’t fazed when I introduced myself.”

  “If it hadn’t happened, I still wouldn’t have been fazed by knowing what you do. I work in a hospital, for God’s sake. If I told people the half of what I’ve seen, what I’ve experienced, they’d be sending for the men in the white coats.”

  Bailey plucked at the sleeve of his own white coat. “I hate to mention this but…”

  She slapped his hand away. “You know what I mean.”

  Bailey chuckled. “Yeah, I know. Can I see Simon now?”

  “The short answer to that is no.”

  “You’re worried I’ll attack him again. Let me assure you it won’t happen again. I have my guard up this time.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with what happened before. He’s still unconscious and seems to have picked up an infection. He was running a fever so we had to get out the ice packs to get his temperature down. It could be MRSA—we’ll know for certain when the test results come back from the lab—so for now I’m keeping him in an isolation unit until we have the bug under control. So no visitors, sorry.”

  “So he’s in a coma?”

  “He’s unconscious. I wouldn’t say coma. My view is that his body has shut down temporarily while it recovers from the operation and fights the infection. He needs time.”

  “Well, perhaps you’ll contact me when he comes out of it.”

  “I’ll keep you informed,” Bridge said.

  “Sorry about your nose, by the way.”

  “Sorry about the bedpan,” she replied with a smile. “Still, no permanent damage done, eh?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  In his sixteen-bedroom mansion, overlooking London’s Regents Park, Pieter Schroeder sat like a poisonous spider in the centre of the web of deceit, manipulation and corruption he had carefully built, strand by strand, over the years. That he was still here after all this time was a testament to his power and sheer animal cunning. He had surrounded himself with the best people to help construct and shoulder the weight of that power. Men like Leon Sultan, a born killer with an impressive IQ, who solved many day-to-day problems and kept Schroeder’s organization running smoothly. Men like Michael O’Brien whose abilities in some ways surpassed even his own.