Department 18 [04] A Plague of Echoes

by Maynard Sims

  Byron cried out as the fingers tightened, each digit like a metal screw, boring into his brain. He was powerless—frozen into immobility by Schroeder’s ferocious grasp. Images started to fill his mind, hideous scenes of death and destruction—Schroeder’s complete history downloading into his own consciousness.

  After what seemed like hours of being tortured by visions of the Third Reich death camps and of the dybbuk taking life after life in its quest for immortality, the pictures in his mind faded and Byron slumped forward in his chair. “You’re a monster,” he gasped.

  “No, Mr. Madaki. I’m a survivor, which is why your pathetic attempts to investigate my life will not impact on me in the slightest. I am fire proof. I have spent several lifetimes making sure of that, as you have just witnessed.” He reached down and picked up his cane, holding it like a golf club, silver cap pointing towards the floor. “In my grand scheme of things you are nothing more than an irritation, of no more significance than a mosquito. And we swat mosquitoes.” As he spoke the word he swung again with the cane.

  Byron was too weak to dodge the blow and the heavy silver cap of the cane smacked against the side of his head with a crack. He groaned as the pain washed over him again. Schroeder was still speaking but his words were indistinct, blurred by the buzzing in his ears.

  “…your brother, Tevin…birthday…sixteen…a present he’ll never forget…”

  Byron stirred in his seat. “No! Leave him alo…”

  The word was cut off by another blow of the cane…and then another and another.

  Byron pitched forward and toppled to the floor, but he was already dead by the time his face hit the concrete with a sickening crunch.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  When the doorbell rang Tevin Madaki turned up the television and waited for his mother to answer it. She was in the kitchen cooking scrambled eggs for breakfast. “Tevin!” she called from the kitchen. “Can you get that?” It wasn’t really a question.

  “But it’s my birthday,” he called back.

  “And having a birthday has paralyzed your legs?”

  “You’re nearer,” he called.

  “And I asked you to answer it. Now answer it.”

  With a sigh of long suffering, Madaki pushed himself out of his cocoon on the threadbare couch and padded out to the front door. There were three bolts on the door and a mortise lock. Laboriously he pulled back the bolts, twisted the key in the lock and pulled the door open. There was no one there.

  He frowned, swore under his breath and was about to close the door again when he saw the parcel. Left to one side of the doorway the parcel was about a foot square and ten inches high, wrapped in brown paper. In bold black letters someone had written HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TEVIN across the top of it. His frown deepened and he nudged the parcel with his stockinged toe. It moved easily.

  He nudged it again and then bent and lifted it. The parcel was light, very light considering its size. He carried it inside and kicked the door closed behind him.

  “Who is it, boy?” his mother called from the kitchen.

  “Mail,” Madaki called back. “No one there.”

  “Mail?”

  “A gift…for me.”

  “A gift? Well, don’t be shy. Bring it through here. I want to see you open it.”

  Madaki carried the box through to the kitchen and set it down on the counter. His mother wiped flour from her hands with a tea towel and came across to examine it. “I ain’t expecting no parcel,” she said, taking a pair of reading glasses from her apron pocket. She held the glasses a couple of inches from her eyes and peered through them. “Don’t recognize the writing…and where are the stamps?”

  “It’s light,” Madaki said. “Can’t be much.”

  “Who’s sending you gifts?” his mother said as she read the writing scrawled across the top of the box.

  Madaki shrugged.

  “Well, you going to open it? Thing ain’t going to open itself.”

  “It might be from Byron.”

  Janelle Madaki made a noise in her throat close to disgust. “Don’t you mention that name in this house, boy. Your brother ain’t no son of mine.”

  “But maybe…”

  “Just open the damned parcel and put an end to all this unnecessary speculation.”

  Madaki knew better than to mention his brother’s name in his mother’s presence. She had never forgiven him for going off to, as she put it, hunt demons. It went against her strict religious upbringing in Kenya. In her eyes Bryon had brought great shame on the family and would never again be welcome under her roof. But Madaki missed his elder brother. They had been close and his leaving had left a hole in Madaki’s life as big as a football stadium.

  He picked at the tape securing one edge of the brown paper, hoping against hope it might be a present from Byron. His mother watched him, clicking her tongue impatiently at his slow progress.

  Finally she could no longer contain herself. Fetching a paring knife from the wooden block on the counter she pushed him out of the way. “Here, let me,” she said and slid the sharp blade of the knife through the covering of brown paper and sliced it open.

  “It’s my present,” Madaki said and muscled his mother out of the way. He pulled off the remaining brown paper and dug his fingers under the two cardboard flaps of the box, revealing the present inside.

  For a moment he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. “It’s a balloon,” he said uncertainly. It was certainly light enough to be a balloon, but this wasn’t a brightly inflated ball of colored latex. This balloon was brown, almost black, and at one end was a scrubby coating of tightly curled hair.

  It was only when he noticed the tribal scars on each side of the balloon, and the crumpled folds that resembled ears, that he realized what the box contained.

  Byron Madaki’s skin had been peeled from his skull in almost one piece, a grotesque, macabre Halloween mask, like the ones advertised in the backs of Madaki’s comic books. The eyelids and lips had been roughly sewn shut and a real latex balloon had been placed inside and inflated, smoothing out the features, flattening the nose, destroying the contours of the face.

  Madaki was in the process of taking the thing from its box when his mother looked over his shoulder to see what his present was. Her scream made Madaki jump. His fingers spasmed and he yanked the inflated head from the box so violently that the balloon burst with a bang and the skin of Byron ’s head crumpled inwards.

  Madaki dropped it back into the box and edged away. Janelle Madaki was on her knees, sobbing and trying to pray at the same time, the combination making Madaki’s nerves scream. His back hit the kitchen wall and he slid down until he was in a crouch. He wrapped his arms around his knees and pulled them close, trying to make his body as small and compact as possible.

  Still his mother’s noise continued.

  “Shut up!” Madaki yelled at her. “Just shut the hell up!”

  And then he began to sob himself, uncontrollably, violently. He couldn’t draw in his breath and for a moment he thought that he too was going to die from lack of air.

  “Why, brother? Why?” He repeated the question over and over.

  But there was never an answer from the flayed skin of Byron Madaki.

  “Why were you so sure Schroeder was behind your brother’s death?” Bailey asked.

  “I wasn’t…at first. Six months later Byron’s personal effects were shipped to us. My brother kept copious notes—journals and diaries. It took me another year before I had a clear idea about what happened to him. It was then I decided to carry on his work.”

  “I’ll bet your mother was delighted by your decision,” McKinley said sardonically.

  “My mother had passed away by then.” Madaki said. “Byron’s death broke her heart. For all she condemned him for his choice of career, he was her firstborn. She never got over it and
her health deteriorated rapidly.”

  “So you had more than one reason for going after Pieter Schroeder,” Carter said.

  Madaki nodded and wiped away a tear that trickle down his cheek.

  “Okay,” Bailey said. “I’ve heard enough. We’ll help you, Mr. Madaki. You will have the full resources of Department 18 behind you.” I’ll sort out the authority for that later, he thought.

  “Thank you,” Madaki said. “I’m very grateful.”

  “You can help us by giving us everything you have on Schroeder,” McKinley said.

  Madaki reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out a small silver flash drive. “It’s all here,” he said, placing the flash drive on the table. “This is all Byron’s research and everything I have found out during my own investigation. I warn you now, there’s a lot of material.”

  “Then we’d best get started,” Bailey said.

  Chapter Thirty

  In a small café on the junction of London’s Hatton Garden and Greville Street Abraham Stern occupied a bench seat at a small Formica-topped table, eating a sandwich, sipping at a large mug of strong, black, unsweetened tea, and reading a James Patterson novel. As Bailey sat down at the table, Stern looked up and smiled, closing the book and laying it down on the table next to his plate. “Harry, it’s good to see you again,” he said affably.

  Stern was an imposing figure—three stone overweight with an unruly black beard and hair cropped to half an inch from his skull, apart from the long tendrils of hair, his peyos, that he kept in tight curls and tucked behind his ears. He was wearing the traditional dress of his faith. The long black overcoat that covered his crisp white shirt and a beige waistcoat that was specked with crumbs from the sandwich. There were more breadcrumbs in his beard.

  “Why are we meeting here?” Bailey said.

  Stern held up his sandwich. “The best salt beef this side of Golders Green,” he said.

  “You’re not trying to tell me that you travel all the way up to Hatton Garden just for a sandwich.”

  Stern smiled again. “It would almost be worth it, but no. My brother, Howard, has a diamond dealership up here. He has an office in the Bourse. I help him out from time to time. Business is good at the moment, despite the recession. People are putting their money into gold and diamonds; a much safer bet than the Stock Market.” Stern raised the sandwich again. “Join me,” he said.

  “I’ve eaten, thanks.”

  Stern shrugged. “Your loss,” he said and took a bite. A slice of pickled gherkin slid from the sandwich and dropped onto his plate. Stern picked it up delicately with his thumb and index finger, examined it for a moment and then popped it into his mouth, murmuring his satisfaction. He swallowed and then said, “A dybbuk. Fascinating. I must admit, when you mentioned it in your call earlier, it piqued my curiosity.”

  “Have you come across them before?”

  Stern shook his head. “Not in my professional life, no, but my grandfather once told me that he’d encountered one. Not that I set much store by anything that old rogue told me. He could bullshit for Israel.”

  “But you know what they are?”

  “Harry, I’m a rabbi. Of course I know what they are. The question that springs to my mind is how can you be so sure you’re dealing with one? A dybbuk is not the sort of demon you come across every day.”

  “I have it on good authority,” Bailey said.

  “Then I must take you at your word. Who is this dybbuk inhabiting?”

  “A South African millionaire living over here. Pieter Schroeder.”

  Stern nodded slowly. “That makes perfect sense. Dybbuks crave power, and someone with as much money as Schroeder wields a lot of power.”

  “You’ve heard of him?”

  “My brother has had dealings with him, in the past. Schroeder dabbled in diamonds a few years ago. Bought himself an exhausted mine, threw money at it and made it operational. He chanced upon a rich seam and for a while went into production, until DeBeers bought him out, giving him a massive profit. Schroeder got out of the trade, but by then he was rich enough to develop other aspects of his company. I can understand the dybbuk inhabiting him. He’s a prime target.” Stern took a final swallow of tea and put the mug down on the table. “The question I have to ask you, Harry, is how this dybbuk concerns me?”

  “We believe the dybbuk is trying to increase its sphere of influence,” Bailey said.

  “Increase its sphere of influence? You make it sound like a corporate takeover. What does that mean exactly?”

  “Schroeder has gathered a group of powerful and wealthy men and women around him. We think the dybbuk intends to inhabit them all simultaneously.”

  Stern’s eyes widened slightly. “Is that possible?”

  “That’s what I came here to ask you,” Bailey said.

  “Ah.”

  “And to ask for your help in stopping the dybbuk achieving its goal.”

  “Ah,” Stern uttered again. “I think another cup of tea is in order. This needs some serious thought.” He signaled to the young waitress wiping down a nearby table. “Two teas,” he said to her. To Bailey he said, “You’ll join me this time?”

  “Of course,” Bailey said.

  Once the waitress brought the tea, Stern adjusted himself on the chair and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Right,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I know.” He shifted in his seat again. Whether he was uncomfortable on the chair, or whether the subject of the conversation was making him restless, Bailey couldn’t tell. “There are ways to stop it,” Stern said. “But I don’t want to offer false hope.”

  “Any hope is better than none.”

  “Firstly there is an exorcism. This displaces the dybbuk from the host and, hopefully, sends it into limbo, but this isn’t guaranteed. It can lead to the dybbuk taking up residence somewhere else…in someone else. And the mechanics of performing an exorcism is a logistical nightmare as you need ten rabbis to perform it and there’s every chance that the dybbuk will attach itself to one of them to ensure its survival.

  “Secondly, you can kill the host, so long as you’ve adequately protected yourself to stop it entering you, destruction of the dybbuk is almost completely assured. Of course this raises moral issues, as you can imagine.”

  “Is there a third option?” Bailey said.

  “Yes, there is. But it’s probably the most difficult to achieve. It’s important to remember that the dybbuk was once a man, human like you and me, and in very rare cases a dybbuk can survive the first two options if it retains its tie to its original body. Normally once the dybbuk moves on to its new host the original body expires. It can choose to keep the body alive, don’t ask me how, you’re the investigator into the supernatural, but it’s a double-edged arrangement. The dybbuk has to protect the body, to keep it from harm. If the original body is destroyed, then the dybbuk attached to it is destroyed along with it.”

  “But why would the dybbuk take such a risk?”

  “Because the original body provides a bolt hole, a safe refuge for the dybbuk if it’s under threat.”

  “But in theory, if we found its original body and destroyed it that, in turn, would destroy the dybbuk?”

  “In theory, yes. But, as you can imagine, it’s not an easy task. It’s rare for the dybbuk to have preserved its original body—and we don’t know that the one possessing Schroeder had the foresight to do it—but, if it has, it will have concealed it well, hidden it from random discovery. It could be anywhere in the world; in any country, on any continent. Your chances of finding it are practically zero.”

  “I see what you mean about false hope,” Bailey said and sipped his tea.

  “Is this everything you have on Schroeder?” McKinley said, scrolling down the computer screen.

  Tevin Madaki nodded his head. “Everything,” he said.
r />   “It’s very thorough,” Carter said. “Have you verified the names of the members of Schroeder’s cartel?”

  “There are ten names there. There may be others, but I haven’t managed to uncover them.”

  “These are enough to be going on with,” McKinley said. “You understand that some of the names on this list are untouchable.”

  “I realize that some of the people there have a considerable amount of influence.”

  “You can say that again,” McKinley said. “Edward Holcombe for one. He’s related to the Royal Family, isn’t he?”

  “A distant cousin,” Carter said. “But I think Annabel Jackson is likely to be more of a thorn in our side. A self-made millionaire and fuck buddy of our incumbent prime minister. It’s said that he doesn’t sneeze without asking her permission. She has his ear at all times and some would say it’s effectively she who runs the country. All speculation and gossip of course, but she’s not a lady we want to cross.”

  Madaki looked downcast. “So you’re saying there’s nothing we can do?”

  “No.” Carter said. “We’ve just got to tread carefully. If Schroeder and his pals get an inkling that we’re on to them, Department 18 will be shut down so fast Simon Crozier won’t have a job to come back to when he recovers, and our investigation will be left high and dry.”

  “Can they do that?”

  “The Home Secretary can, and Marie Bates, who’s second on that list, is married to him.”

  “I wonder if her husband knows what she’s planning to do,” McKinley said.

  Carter shrugged. “Who knows, but he’s going to find out soon enough, unless we do something about it.”

  “Okay that gives us enough to go on for the moment,” McKinley said.

  “Then you’re finished with me?”

  “For the time being. Come on, I’ll walk you down.”

  They were in sight of the main doors when Madaki froze mid-stride.

  “What is it?” McKinley said pulling up next to him.

  “That man, the one at the reception desk. That was the man I spoke to in the elevator.”