by Taylor Leon
I pulled out her driving licence. She had long blonde hair and a lean, angular face. Her eyes were large and blue. She’d been pretty a few hours ago.
‘I didn’t see any blood on her,’ I said. ‘Could she have fallen in drunk?’ The area was full of bars, and it wouldn’t have been the first time a dead drunk had been fished out of the water.
‘No,’ Arnie said. ‘She has bruises around her neck.’
We waited a few minutes as the rain eased up.
‘Morgan’s got a bug, and Hunter’s in court this week,’ he added. ‘I’m giving this one to you and Cade.’
‘Easing John back in?’
Arnie smiled. ‘Something like that.’
A voice called to us out of the darkness. Arnie sighed, and we crossed back over to the small huddle around the body.
The pathologist, Barney Rivers, looked up. ‘There are fresh bruises on her arms, and legs. She may also have some broken bones. She took a real beating or…’ he looked over at the steps that led down here. ‘She was thrown from up there.’ He put his hands under her chin. ‘But the cause of death was asphyxiation. She was strangled to death before she hit the water.’
‘I’ll get all the CCTV tapes together from up on the street,’ I said. ‘How long has she been dead for?’
‘Not long,’ Barney said. ‘Two to three hours. But you need to see this.’ He pulled the victim’s head to one side. On the back of her neck were some markings that I couldn’t quite make out. We both leaned down to see better. A constable obligingly shone a torch over my shoulder.
The number “2” had been carved into her neck.
The men exchanged a meaningful look before Arnie closed his eyes for a brief second.
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What does that mean?’
‘There was another murder on Tuesday,’ Arnie said. ‘Out of town, but marked with the number “1”.’
‘Coincidence?’
Arnie opened his eyes and shook his head. ‘I don’t believe in them.’
A tent was set up over the body and I could hear Uniforms on the bridge above, pulling a couple of gawpers back from the railings.
I followed Arnie’s stare out across the inky black water. ‘Are you okay?’ I asked him.
He cleared his throat and looked back at me. ‘Just thinking that there are some sick bastards out there.’
‘There’s no doubt about that,’ I said.
And there are always more of them waiting in the wings. So, just as we put some away, more come pouring out onto the stage.
Death and destruction coming at us in great waves, again and again.
That was why I joined The Coven.
5
IT WASN’T THE bedside alarm that woke me at four-thirty.
The compact vibrated next to my head. Without opening my eyes, I reached out to the bedside table and scrabbled around for it. Sampson, my pet Schnoodle, stirred next to me, but managed to stay asleep. Lucky thing.
I pulled the make-up compact down under the duvet with me and flipped it open. I heard Jessie’s voice in the darkness. Plain-Jane-Jessica-Lane, as we called her behind her back. I couldn’t see her in the mirror as I was under the bedclothes, which meant she couldn’t see me either.
‘Erin, where are you?’ she said. ‘The others are waiting.’
I pictured Jessie in her wheelchair and behind her desk, working across all her monitors whilst maintaining communication with us.
The meet was supposed to be now.
Shit.
I pulled the duvet off. Now I could see Jessie in the small compact mirror, frowning at me from behind thick specs.
‘I must have slept through the alarm,’ I said.
I didn’t get home from Benham until gone three. I wasn’t sure why I had attempted to get any sleep at all, I would have been better off staying awake.
‘What do you want me to tell them?’ she asked me.
‘Tell them I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.’
‘This was your nomination, Erin,’ she reminded me.
‘Forty-five minutes,’ I repeated. I shut the compact and fell back on my pillow, staring up at the blank ceiling.
It had been a month since the girls had helped me stop terrorists from blowing up a shopping centre. We’d saved a lot of lives that day, but not everyone. Not Lloyd, not Angel, and not Arnie’s brother. I almost lost Cade as well.
I hadn’t been myself since then. My two separate lives had converged and there was no going back. I’d lost focus, trying to juggle both lives, a cop by day, and vigilante witch by night. Right now, I was falling short on both fronts.
Watching crap TV with Sampson, whilst gorging on popcorn and wine most evenings, didn’t help.
I hauled myself out of bed and pulled on the same black jumper and jeans I had worn just a short time ago. After quickly downing a glass of fresh orange juice, I took out my leather biker’s jacket and found my beanie hat, tucking my hair inside.
Sampson was still asleep on the bed, so I made sure he had a bowl of water and food. I brushed my teeth and was about to leave when I remembered to take out my police ID from my jacket pocket. I wouldn’t be needing it this morning. I opened a kitchen drawer and exchanged it for the brown envelope Victoria had given me specifically for this damnation.
Thirty minutes later I parked down a quiet residential side-road, and walked the quarter mile to our meet.
Frankie was up on the flat roof waiting for me. We were both twenty-eight, although with her elfin face and light freckles she looked several years younger. Her blonde hair was tucked into the upturned collar of her coat. She put the binoculars down and turned to face me when she heard me approaching. These days she was the closest person I had to a friend and the one who had introduced me to The Coven, but even she was scowling at me this morning.
‘You’re late,’ she said. ‘Again.’
‘We fished a girl’s body out of Benham Lock late last-night,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
Frankie’s face softened. ‘I guess not as sorry as that girl. Was it an accident?’
I shook my head.
‘Anything we can do to help?’
Ah, the new world order that I had campaigned for; insisting to The Coven’s leader, Victoria, that we should be more pro-active, by not simply carrying out damnations after the crimes, but helping to stop the bastards from carrying them out in the first place.
‘It’s early days,’ I said.
She nodded and waited a second to see if I was going to add anything more before we got back to the job in hand.
We were three storeys up, looking down a residential street which comprised three-floor terraced apartments lining both sides of the narrow road. The house we were watching was about a hundred yards to our left and opposite.
‘The target’s inside,’ she said.
The target was Roland Vitchkov and he was my nomination.
Roland Vitchkov ran a small sex ring that two colleagues of mine had uncovered several weeks ago. Illegal immigrants, just creeping above the legal age limit, were set up to entertain Vitchkov’s clients. His clients would pay vast sums of money for these waif -like girls. Money that went straight into the back-pockets of Vitchkov and his cronies. The girls were forced to perform whatever perverse desires needed satisfying; as far as Vitchkov was concerned, the more perverse the better because then he got to charge the clients more. The girls didn’t have a say, just like they didn’t see the money. If they showed any unwillingness then Vitchkov would threaten to send them back home, or worse.
‘Is Sara in there?’ I asked Frankie.
She nodded. ‘Yes, she is.’
Sara was the girl who had persuaded me to act, inadvertently pushing me to nominate Vitchkov for damnation.
My colleagues had pulled Sara in on a flimsy drug charge and then asked me to sit in on the interview. They thought that having another woman there might persuade Sara to open up about the sex ring, the real reason they had nabbed her.
She told us in broken English what Vitchkov and his clients had done to her and the other girls. I felt so dirty listening to her, that by the end of it I had wanted to get home and shower. Then, just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, she produced a photo of Elisa, a pretty, young girl from Eastern Europe. With tears flowing, she told us Vitchkov had killed her when she refused to carry out a particular act with one of his clients.
When my colleagues left the room for a moment, I whispered to her: ‘Let me help you. You don’t have to go back there.’
‘I can’t abandon the other girls,’ she said.
‘We can raid the place. You can help us with the timing. We can end this. We can protect you.’
‘He has people back home,’ she said. ‘Even if you can protect us, he will find my family. Are you going to protect them as well?’
‘If he’s in jail then he can’t do anything.’
She smiled at that. ‘Didn’t your friends tell you? Mr Vitchkov is a diplomat. You can’t touch him.’
I could have said: I am part of The Coven and we can touch anyone. But I didn’t. Instead, I reached across the table and clasped her hands. ‘I am going to get you out of there,’ I said. ‘All of you. I promise.’
She pulled her hands free, and looked at me as if I was some sort of idiot.
My colleagues returned and said she was free to go, but warned that they might want to speak with her again.
After she had gone they told me what I now knew. Vitchkov was well protected and we wouldn’t even be able to speak with him.
****
Three days later, Frankie turned up at Vitchkov’s sex den, timing her appearance for when we knew he would be there, sampling the product as he called it.
Frankie claimed to be the dead girl’s sister, insisting this was the last address she had been given. She made a scene, hollering at the girl who answered the door.
‘Where is she? Where is my sister…what have you done with her?’ Frankie yelled in the East European accent she had been practising.
Vitchkov came out of a bedroom upstairs. Pulling up his trousers, and buttoning up his shirt, he stumbled clumsily down the stairs. His shirt was stretched over his fat chest, his round face glistening with sweat, his dark grey hair like his moustache was matted with moisture. The source of this sheen and his excitement stood at the top of the stairs in white stockings and suspenders, her long red hair messed up, the thick lipstick on her young face smudged. The heavy make-up did nothing to hide her relief that he had been called away from her.
‘What’s going on?’ he spat, looking at Frankie and then at the girl who had let her in.
‘She’s looking for her sister,’ the girl shrugged.
‘Your sister?’ He looked Frankie up and down.
‘Elisa.’
There was a flash of surprise. ‘I don’t know any Elisa,’ he said. ‘You should leave.’
‘You don’t know who Elisa is? Are you sure?’ Frankie spoke slowly and very deliberately, forcing Vitchkov to think about the dead girl.
‘I’ve never heard of her,’ he lied.
Frankie left the house having read him and knowing for sure that Sara had told the truth.
The next day she relayed the entire dialogue to us, and my nomination was unanimously approved.
****
Two days ago, Jessie had hacked into Vitchkov’s electronic diary and seen he was planning to stay here overnight, once all his customers had left. Now, up on the roof, Frankie and I switched to using our mobile phones, inserting our earpieces and dialling into a specially secured conference call number.
‘Erin’s here,’ Frankie said.
‘At last,’ Jessie said. ‘Is everyone in position?’
‘Moira and I are good,’ Bella said.
‘I’m going downstairs now,’ said Frankie. She passed me the binoculars and walked back towards the roof hatch access.
‘There’s just one camera at the end of the street,’ Jessie continued. ‘So, we don’t have the clearest view. Erin, you need to cover the left-hand side up to the corner. Just make sure there are no surprises.’
A couple of minutes later, Frankie appeared in the street below where Moira and Bella were waiting for her. I watched as the three of them marched towards the house; Frankie flanked by the dark amazonian Bella, on one side and Moira, the older housewife and mother, on the other.
I listened in as Frankie rapped on the door. After several minutes, we heard whispering and the door was half-opened.
A young girl’s voice. ‘Who is it? Have you any idea what time it is?’
‘I’m Elisa’s sister,’ Frankie said. ‘I came here looking for Elisa a few days ago. Please, I have nowhere to stay. My sister told me this house looked after her. Is there someone I can talk to?’
‘Are you crazy? There is no-one to talk to at this time in the morning!’
‘Please, I’ve been up all night wandering the streets again. I’m desperate.’
‘You need to go. This is not a good place.’
I heard a male voice, calling from upstairs. It was Vitchkov. I couldn’t see him, but when he snarled, ‘You again!’ at Frankie, I could picture his face all scrunched up in anger.
‘You better get in there, ladies,’ Jessie said.
‘Got that,’ Bella said. Down below, I could see her and Moira crossing the road and following Frankie in through the front door.
Then, there was the expected commotion from inside. Vitchkov raised his voice in protest when Frankie asked if she and her friends could have a quiet word alone with him.
Something across the road caught my eye. There was a black Merc parked there. The doors flew open and two large men in suits climbed out and quickly strode across the road, towards the house.
‘You see what I’m seeing, Jess?’
‘That car’s been sitting there all night,’ Jessie said. ‘Vitchkov must have had his men camped outside the whole time.’
‘Ladies, you’ve got company coming,’ I said to the three inside the house.
And we have a problem.
The two suited men went inside and slammed the door shut behind them.
I heard one of them say in broken English. ‘Is everything okay Mr Vitchkov?’
‘No, everything is not okay!’ Vitchkov screamed back. ‘It’s five thirty in the morning and I have these three whores standing in my hallway. Where the fuck were you two idiots?’
‘We’re sorry about that, Mr Vitchkov. We will take care of this. Ladies, please come with us into the front room, and don’t do anything silly. Our guns are loaded.’
6
I WAS ALREADY on the move, leaving the binoculars behind. Jessie couldn’t help the girls, so it was left to me.
I could hear the men through the girls’ earpieces, shepherding them into the front room.
‘I’m on my way,’ I said to everyone. ‘I’m going to have to make this up as I go along, but quickly remove your earpieces before they are seen. Jessie, I’ll keep mine on under this hat.’
There was a rustling noise and then the distant hum from inside the house abruptly ended. Now, there was just Jessie and myself left on the line.
‘So, what’s your plan?’ Jessie asked.
‘I wasn’t joking when I said I’m making this up as I go along.’
‘Shit,’ Jessie said. I hardly ever heard her swear.
Five minutes later and I reached the front door.
‘You can’t just march in there,’ Jessie said, as I knocked twice.
The door opened about three inches and I saw a dark male face peer out. I had to assume he was holding a gun in the hand I couldn’t see.
‘Yes?’ he said angrily.
‘My name is-’
He slammed the door shut before I could finish.
‘Great,’ Jessie said. ‘That went well.’
‘We’d better move to plan B,’ I said to Jessie and knocked on the door again.
‘P
lan B?’ Jessie asked.
‘Yeah, plan B,’ I replied, as the door inched open again.
The voice behind it started speaking. ‘Go awa-’
This time I kicked forward, slamming my right boot against the door, catching the man behind it off balance. He was thrown back as the door swung open.
Sara was halfway up the staircase with three young girls all dressed in their nightwear. Her eyes widened when she saw it was me, but she didn’t have a chance to react further because the guy I’d knocked back had clambered up and raised his gun in my direction.
Suddenly, we heard a crash in the front room. The gunman glanced at me uncertainly before pushing past. I started after him, pausing at the foot of the stairs. ‘Take the girls upstairs into one of the bedrooms,’ I said to Sara. ‘And stay there until I come and get you.’
The front room was in mayhem. When Frankie heard me kick the front door open, she had used telekinesis to throw glasses and a decanter from the sideboard, taking the captor who had remained in the room with them by surprise. There was broken glass across the floor, and in the middle of it, the gun that had been knocked out of his grip.
Bella seized the opportunity and rushed him, a right hook lifting his eighteen-stone frame off the floor, and with a second punch, slamming him into the sideboard. He slid down into a heap on the floor, out cold.
The second bodyguard, who had entered the room just ahead of me, was met by Moira, who barrelled into him in a blur of speed before he could comprehend what was happening. His weapon flew out of his hands, but he quickly regained his senses, taking hold of Moira before throwing her off him.
I grabbed him from behind as Bella came across, and her fist connected firmly with his jaw. His body fell back against me and I stepped out of the way, letting him crash to the floor.
The four of us turned to the large sliding doors at the far end of the room which led out into the small garden. Our target, Roland Vitchkov, was pressed up against them, looking to escape.
‘What are you?’ he hissed. ‘You’re not human.’
He pulled the door open and ran- well, waddled- at speed out onto the dark patio and beyond that, the small grassy garden, his untucked shirt flapping in the light wind.
