Department 18 [04] A Plague of Echoes

by Maynard Sims

  “Stop thinking of this particular dybbuk as a single entity. Think instead of an orange—many segments collected together in a single skin to make a whole.”

  “Okay,” McKinley said. “I’ll buy that. But what I don’t understand is why now? Why didn’t the dybbuk do this years ago?”

  “Pieter Schroeder is the dybbuk’s twelfth possession. Each body he has occupied, each trophy, has become a segment of the whole. Now the orange is complete, and the dybbuk’s strength is almost at its peak.”

  “So what’s it waiting for?”

  “It’s biding its time, conserving and building its strength. The man in the elevator seems to think the dybbuk will make its move and take possession of every member of the cartel within the next few days. And then our problems will really begin.”

  “Because, effectively, we’ll be dealing with twelve dybbuks instead of just the one,” Bailey said.

  “No. Twelve hosts, one dybbuk,” Madaki corrected him. “Twelve of the richest and most powerful people in the world, sharing one consciousness. One mind in control of all that wealth and power, and the ramifications of that scenario don’t bear thinking about. Imagine, the wealth to ruin economies, the power to corrupt on a global scale. If the dybbuk has a mind to, it could even start a war.”

  Carter’s cell phone rang in his pocket. He slipped it out and checked his caller ID. Jane was ringing him. “Excuse me,” he said to the others and stepped outside into the corridor.

  “He’s threatening to take the girls,” Jane said, coming straight to the point, her voice tearful.

  “He took it well then,” Carter said with heavy irony.

  “It’s not funny, Rob. I expected him to kick off but I didn’t expect that. To make matters worse, I rang my mother to tell her what I was doing and she’s disowned me.”

  Carter could imagine Jane’s mother doing just that. “Don’t panic,” he said. “Is David there now?”

  “No. He didn’t even get his suitcase out of the car. I told him as soon as he walked through the door and after spitting a few acid comments at me he simply got back behind the wheel and drove off.”

  “And the girls?”

  “They’re up in their room ignoring me. Rob, what have I done?”

  “The right thing. The girls will come around to the idea. Just give them a little time. Would you like me to come over later?”

  He waited while she thought about it.

  “No,” she said finally. “Not today. I have to start building bridges with Gemma and Amy. I’ll call you later.”

  “Okay.”

  “Rob, I love you.”

  “And I love you too. It will be all right, I promise.”

  “Will it?” she said uncertainly. “It doesn’t feel that way just now.”

  “Have faith,” he said. “We’ll speak later.”

  He rang off and went back to the meeting.

  “Jane?” Bailey said as he entered.

  Carter nodded.

  “Is she okay?”

  “She will be.”

  “Fine. Let’s get on.” Bailey turned his attention back to Madaki. “How did you get on to Pieter Schroeder in the first place?” he said.

  Madaki went very still. “I had my reasons,” he said softly.

  “And are you willing to share those reasons with us?” McKinley said.

  Madaki gave a small shake of his head.

  “It would help us,” Bailey said.

  Madaki remained tight-lipped.

  “Then I think Mr. Madaki is wasting our time,” Paul Lucas said, stepping out from a small anteroom situated at the end of the room, where he’d observed the meeting through the one-way glass of a large mahogany-framed mirror that hung of the wall dividing the two rooms.

  Carter was on his feet in an instant, his face flushed. “You’ve been spying on us,” he said.

  “A tad melodramatic, don’t you think? I’ve simply been observing your progress, as is my right as acting Director in Chief.”

  “You could have asked us if you wanted to sit in.”

  “And, Mr. Carter, I think you know as well as I do where that would have got me. Besides I wanted to observe without my presence becoming a stumbling block, a barrier to the candid nature of the meeting. So, Mr. Madaki,” he said, turning to face the African. “You’ve come to us for help. If we’re going to provide you with any assistance, then you will have to answer our questions openly and frankly. If not, then this meeting is at an end.”

  Tension crackled in the room as Madaki thought about the proposal. Carter was about to say something but Bailey gave a small shake of his head. Carter shot him a furious look but kept silent.

  Madaki stared up at the ceiling and exhaled, pursing his lips and turning the exhalation into a low whistle. “Very well,” he said at last. “I’ll tell you. Though you must realize, this is very painful for me.” He poured water into a glass from a carafe in the centre of the table, took a sip, then sat forward and folded his hands on the desk. “Pieter Schroeder killed my brother.”

  “When do rehearsals start?” Schroeder said as Gabrielle sat down at the breakfast table.

  Gabrielle sipped her freshly squeezed orange juice and patted her lips with a paper napkin. “Tomorrow. There’s a warehouse in Limehouse that Ashley uses as rehearsal space. We start there and move into the theater in three weeks time. It’s very exciting.”

  “And very fast. I was expecting the audition period to last longer than that.”

  “The play’s already cast. I was the last to be chosen.”

  “For such a pivotal role. That’s extraordinary.”

  “Apparently Ashley approached my agent over a month ago, but she was trying to get me another role that would keep me in the States so she neglected to tell me. It was only after the TV show she was trying for fell through that she mentioned it. But according to Ashley he was desperate to have me for Eliza, so he waited until the last possible moment. Flattering eh?”

  “Very. Are you nervous?”

  “I have a few butterflies. I’m slightly worried that I won’t live up to Ashley Cooper’s expectations, but it’s the thought of performing in front of a live audience that’s been freaking me out a little. It’s so long since I’ve been onstage. Film and TV work makes you lazy. You have the luxury of retakes if you screw up. Onstage you only get one shot at it.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine, Poppy.” Schroeder reached out and patted his granddaughter’s hand reassuringly. “I can understand why Cooper waited. Having a Hollywood star in his little production guarantees good box office.”

  “I’m hardly that, Papa, a star I mean. Marilyn Monroe was a star, Helen Mirren is a star. I’m just a jobbing actor, and lucky to have a job. Will you be there opening night?” she asked eagerly, bracing herself for a refusal. Her grandfather rarely went out, preferring to cocoon himself in his home and let people come to him. His reclusiveness was becoming legendary.

  “Of course. I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Schroeder said.

  Gabrielle spluttered on her next mouthful of orange juice. “Really? You mean it?” she said, dabbing the napkin at her lips again and suppressing a cough.

  “When do I ever not mean what I say? How could I miss my darling granddaughter’s debut on the London stage?”

  Of course she wouldn’t know he was there. The man known to Gabrielle and the rest of the world as Pieter Schroeder would be dead before his granddaughter finished her first week of rehearsal. But he would live on and, yes, he would be at the Old Vic to witness Poppy’s Eliza Doolittle.

  “My brother, Byron, was blessed with the same gifts as me,” Madaki said, “But he was a decade older and started in this line of work many years before I became involved. It was only after his death that I got into it and, I’m ashamed to say, I only followed in his footsteps to get reveng
e for his murder. Byron was a good man, a kind man, but he was a relentless hunter. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the myths and legends of South Africa, but we have more than our fair share of demons. Vampires, shape-shifters, elementals: more than enough to keep this Department busy for decades. And Byron was just one man: a man who’d taken on the task of ridding the world of these monsters.

  “I don’t know how Pieter Schroeder appeared on his radar, but I do know he spent months gathering information about him, researching every aspect of the man’s life. I found one of his scrapbooks after he died and it was filled with newspaper reports, magazine articles, even a short piece from the Reader’s Digest, about Schroeder and his businesses.

  “Eventually his interest in Schroeder came to the attention of the man himself and he took counter measures. Byron was beaten up outside a nightclub in Capetown and left for dead. He survived and carried on with his investigation, despite a warning from his attackers to stop probing and to keep his nose out of Pieter Schroeder’s business.

  “A short while later the bank foreclosed on his mortgage and he was evicted from his home, forced to live in a seedy hotel in one of the rougher areas of town. According to one of his journal entries, he was certain he was being watched, followed wherever he went, his private correspondence intercepted, his cell phone hacked, his calls monitored.

  “He was convinced that Schroeder was behind the harassment. It would take someone with real financial muscle to orchestrate such a campaign, and Schroeder was nothing if not rich.

  “A month after he lost his home my brother was killed.”

  “How was he killed?” Harry Bailey said.

  Madaki stared down at the desk, tears forming in his eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  On Hope Street in one of the poorer districts of Capetown stood the Majestic hotel, a rundown flophouse that spectacularly failed to live up to its name. It had been Byron Madaki’s home for the past three weeks. His room there was a seedy, insect-infested box with peeling wallpaper and scabrous paintwork. The sheets on the bed hadn’t been changed since he moved in and stank of sweat, and in the bathroom, black mold gathered in spots at the hem of a grubby plastic shower curtain and on the grouting between the cracked and stained terracotta tiles. But it was the best he could afford and it was a roof over his head.

  He could have gone back to the family home, a small apartment in a block built in the 1960s, but he didn’t want to endanger the lives of his mother and younger brother, Tevin, who still lived there. And he was sure his ongoing investigations could do just that. So he tolerated the conditions of the Majestic, killing as many of the seemingly endless supply of cockroaches and other bugs, and sleeping in his clothes on top of the bedcovers, rather than climbing in between the rank and slightly damp sheets.

  He was a hundred yards away from the hotel when a man stepped out of the shadows and stood before him. Byron tensed, preparing for the assault he was sure was coming his way. The man blocking his path was big, white, raw-boned and well muscled; a whole heap of trouble wrapped up in a cheap suit and a trilby hat. To Byron’s surprise the big man smiled and brandished a cigarette. “Got a light?” he asked in a thick Afrikaans accent. Byron waited for the derogatory salutation kaffir that usually followed in situations like this. When it didn’t and the man’s smile actually grew a little wider Byron relaxed and reached into his jacket pocket for the cigarette lighter he habitually kept there, despite having given up smoking the previous summer.

  The punches, when they came, were quick and savage—two fists pounding into his kidneys, making him cry out and sink to his knees. A canvas bag was pulled roughly over his head and he was lifted bodily from the ground by three pairs of hands and thrown carelessly into the back of a van. A door slammed, the engine gunned and the van sped off into the night with Byron tossed and buffeted on the ribbed metal floor of the vehicle. When he tried to steady himself a boot of one of his abductors nudged him painfully back to his precarious prone position.

  The pain in his kidneys was excruciating and wave after wave of nausea swept over him. The bag over his head obscured all light and that, along with the bumping and swerving of the van, disoriented him. Time became meaningless as the pain and nausea swamped his thoughts. Pain, nausea and fear. He knew he was going to die tonight. When the van finally pulled to a halt Byron had no idea where he was or how long it had taken to get here. The same hands pulled him from the floor of the van. “Stand!” The order was barked at him.

  He managed to keep his feet beneath him and stood there shivering, despite the warmth of the night.

  “Walk!” A hand shoved him in the small of the back, propelling him forward. Gravel crunched under his feet as he put one foot tentatively in front of the other. Ten paces and the gravel disappeared to be replaced by concrete and he guessed they had entered a building of some kind.

  “Stop!” Another barked order and Byron stopped walking.

  The canvas bag was ripped savagely from his head and fierce electric light blinded him.

  He opened his eyes millimeter by millimeter and saw he was in a large warehouse-sized building with whitewashed walls and lit by row upon row of blazing fluorescent tubes.

  “Sit!” A hard aluminum chair smacked against the backs of his knees and he crumpled into it.

  He looked about him and for the first time saw one of his abductors standing ahead of him, hands in pockets, staring at him—a thin, weasel-faced man in his late thirties with stringy blond hair and a scar that bisected his cheek and twisted his top lip into a permanent sneer.

  “Who are you? Why have you done this?”

  “Shut it, kaffir!” the thin man said and twitched the automatic pistol he held in his left hand as encouragement. Byron fell silent.

  There was a moment, a pregnant pause of complete silence where the tension in the vast space seemed to crackle with an energy of its own, but then the silence was broken by the harsh scrape of metal against concrete as something was dragged across the concrete floor behind him. Byron turned sharply and saw another man approaching, pulling another aluminum chair in his wake. This man was tall and blond, smartly dressed and very good looking. His short, almost white, hair shone in the fluorescent light and his light brown, sun-kissed features seemed to glow. The man’s pale blue eyes settled on Byron and he smiled. “Mr. Madaki, good of you to join us.”

  “Did I have a choice?” Byron said as the man parked the chair two yards away, facing him.

  The blond man reversed the chair and sat astride it, folding his arms across the back and leaning forward to stare at Byron intently. “Not really, no.” He had an accent, not South African, Scandinavian maybe.

  “My name is Nils Larsen. I’m an associate of Pieter Schroeder.”

  “I thought you might be,” Byron said.

  “When I say associate I mean second-in-command, his lieutenant, his right-hand man.”

  “Am I supposed to be impressed,” Byron said and then yelped as weasel-face, who had moved round behind him, cracked him across the cheek with the barrel of his pistol.

  “Show some respect, kaffir,” he said.

  “Calm yourself, Anthony,” Larsen said. “And get our guest a glass of water.”

  Weasel-face, Anthony, made to protest but a look from Larsen changed his mind.

  Once they were alone Larsen leaned farther forward in his seat, tipping it up onto two legs. “You’re proving to be pain in the rear, Byron. So much so that Mr. Schroeder wants to meet you himself.” He checked the gold Rolex on his wrist. “In fact he should be here any minute. Ah, here comes Anthony with your water but, if I were you, I wouldn’t drink it. I think he might have spit in it…or worse.”

  There was a rumble of steel on steel and the large double doors at the far end of the building rolled back on their runners and a dark maroon Daimler drove through at a sedate five miles per hour. Three yard
s away from them the car stopped and a liveried chauffer stepped out and walked around the car to the rear door. He pulled the door open and then stepped to one side to allow the occupant to exit.

  The man who climbed out of the Daimler was not what Byron was expecting. Shorter than average with a small potbelly and wispy salt-and-pepper hair with matching goatee, Pieter Schroeder looked more like a favorite uncle than the devious and utterly ruthless business man, not to mention the cold-blooded killer, Byron knew him to be.

  Schroeder pulled an ebony cane capped with an embossed silver knob, from the back seat, slammed the car door and walked across to then, leaning heavily on the cane and favoring his right leg.

  “Good day, Nils,” he said to Larsen. He didn’t look at Byron. “So this is the bane of my life, is it?”

  “It is, Pieter,” Larsen said.

  Without warning Schroeder spun on his heel and swung the ebony cane like a sword, catching Byron across the face, rocking him in his seat. Byron felt the skin of his cheek split and the flow of warm blood as it trickled down towards his chin. He looked up at Schroeder with pain-filled eyes. “Bastard!” he hissed as pain lanced through his head.

  Schroeder pulled a linen handkerchief from the pocket of his jacket and used it to wipe Byron’s blood from the cane. “You’ve had plenty of chances to drop your investigation, Mr. Madaki, but still you persist. So I’ve decided to give you the information you’ve been trying to unearth.”

  “And then what? You’ll kill me?”

  “You cannot kill a dead man, Byron,” Schroeder said. “And you’ve been a dead man walking since you embarked on this investigation of yours. It was only a matter of time before the reaper caught up with you.” He tossed the bloodied handkerchief into Byron’s lap. Byron grabbed it and pressed it to his throbbing cheek. He could feel the skin under his eye beginning to swell, impairing the sight out of his right eye.

  As he wiped the blood away from his cheek with the handkerchief, Schroeder moved behind him, dropped the cane to the floor, and clamped his hands around Byron’s head.