by Steven Dunne
‘Not yet.’
‘Get Cooper to help you.’
‘Not your skill set?’ teased Noble.
‘I promised Gadd I’d run my eye over Lee Smethwick’s boat.’
Twenty-Five
BROOK PARKED NEXT TO THE Scientific Support van and stepped from the car. The sun was shining and the Trent sparkled invitingly. He checked his watch – two hours until the next broadcast, maybe the final one – then stepped under the police tape. A watching elderly couple billed and cooed their excitement at living so close to a potential crime scene and gaped at Brook in wonder, as though he were the star of a film première.
‘Sir.’ DS Gadd beckoned Brook on to the narrow boat.
‘Jane. Found anything?’
‘A treasure trove of evidence – he’s got books about Egyptian funeral rites, Ancient Egyptian gods, embalming, mummification …’
‘All circumstantial – anything linking him to the vagrants?’
Gadd shook her head. ‘Not yet. He knew we were coming. There’s no paperwork and no hint of where he might have gone. Maybe Forensics can turn something up.’
‘You’ve worked up his background?’
‘Yes, sir. Lee Smethwick. Forty-four years old. Originally from Bradford. No wife, no children, no living relatives. He’s widely travelled with the Merchant Marine but that was nearly twenty years ago. One thing – Smethwick has lung cancer and he found out six months ago that it was terminal.’
‘Sounds like a trigger.’
‘He’s got a year at most.’
‘The same as most of his victims,’ said Brook. ‘No criminal record, you said.’
‘No.’
‘Work record?’
‘Varied. He doesn’t seem to stay in jobs longterm. He’s worked as a chef at Derby College for the past year and before that, cooking at various pubs. He did a turn at Rolls-Royce ten years ago. Not in the kitchens though. He’s a qualified engineer, which may explain something we found on the boat.’
‘Show me.’
She ushered Brook through the only door. The boat was sparsely furnished befitting the single male – a shelf of books, a sofa which doubled as a bed, a small television, a stove and a tiny galley. Dominating the middle of the cabin was a table with a scale-model of some kind of building on it. Gadd walked over to it.
‘A model of a building,’ said Brook.
‘Yes, sir, but here’s the interesting part.’ She pointed at a doorway on the model which had a small rectangular piece of stone balanced on its end in front of it. The stone was held up by an intricate web of string which was trapped under another small block of stone, itself balanced over a hole. ‘Watch.’ Gadd removed a pin from a small hessian pouch, containing sand. The sand began to trickle out into the hole beneath the second stone. As the hole filled, the pressure of the rising sand increased on the second stone until it was lifted sufficiently to allow the string to be freed, thus lowering the first stone across the doorway. ‘Wherever he is, we think Smethwick may be intending to seal his victims inside the building.’
‘As well as himself.’
‘Sir?’
‘The Ancient Egyptians sealed burial chambers from the inside,’ said Brook. ‘To thwart grave robbers. Usually a priest would sacrifice himself along with hundreds of slaves, who would then accompany the Pharaoh to the afterlife to do his bidding.’
‘Ah. That explains the film poster,’ she said, nodding behind Brook’s head. ‘I Googled it and it’s about precisely that.’
Brook turned. His eyes swept around the room until they alighted on the poster for a film starring a young Joan Collins. Brook’s mouth fell open. Land of the Pharaohs. He checked the spellings in his head. There was no mistake.
Len Poole woke with a bad back and a splitting headache. He raised his head gingerly to look over at his bedside clock. It wasn’t there. Then he remembered. The clock was at his bedside but he wasn’t.
He moved his left arm but knew without looking that his watch was gone and he dropped his head back with the thud of a ripe melon. Shockwaves of pain surged through his skull and he reached delicately back to feel the bruising and what felt like dried blood matted in his hair.
Day or night, he couldn’t tell – just that it was black as pitch wherever he was. He moved his hands around his head and massaged his neck where most of the pain was centred. Then he felt around his immediate surroundings – his bed was hard and unforgiving. He sat up and felt around some more. He was lying on cold tiles on some kind of raised plinth. He could hang his leg off the side and just touch the floor.
Poole lifted his head again, this time ignoring the pain. He swung his legs down over the edge of the slab and held out his arms like a blind man to feel his way through the blackness. A few yards away he stubbed his toe against a hard object and felt the cold tiles of a similar plinth to his own. He groped his hands warily around the slab. Something covered in cloth lay on it. He shrank back – his muscle memory told him it was a body.
He took a breath and felt again. He found the hands crossed on the chest. He felt for the face and rubbed his fingers together after touching it. Some kind of waxy substance had transferred itself from the skin. There was a hint of perfume. Poole guessed it was some form of mortician’s preservative or cream mixed with cosmetics for use in embalming bodies. He was in some kind of mortuary, a house of the dead. He knew about those. What worried him most was that he had his own slab.
He realised with a feeling of dread that he must be in the lair of The Embalmer, the sicko he’d read about in the papers, fighting in vain for space with the Deity case. There’d been an appeal at the end of a Deity press conference and they’d shown an artist’s impression. The man who’d attacked him must be The Embalmer and this was where he did his grisly work.
Poole damped down the rising panic – he had to find a light. Groping his way around the cadaver, Poole’s left foot and knee hit something heavy. It fell with a smash and a splash and Poole fell with it, landing in a foul-smelling unction of soft spongy matter which covered his hands and knees.
A second later the smell of rancid meat and pungent salts hit his nostrils, followed by something far worse – the knowledge of what he’d fallen in.
In his fever to get away, his hands slipped on soft, slimy objects which he realised were organs. He cast them away as he scrabbled backwards from the stench – kidneys, lungs maybe, and the shape and texture of the intestine was unmistakable. Worse, as he scrambled for distance between himself and the viscera, the intestine wrapped itself around his feet until he could wriggle his way no further without unravelling the offending gristle from his ankles.
He tried to hold back the rising dread but now he screamed long and loud – to no avail. And when he fumbled his way, hands and knees across the slimy floor, broken shards of pottery lacerated his leathery palms.
Finally he sat motionless amongst the stinking wreckage of a former human being, trying to protect his damaged hands and sobbing as the vile moisture began to soak through his tracksuit to his buttocks.
Brook fumbled for his phone on the narrow deck. As he plucked it from his pocket, it began to vibrate.
‘John.’
‘Sir, we’ve found a witness who saw what happened to Len last night. We were right. He was abducted.’ Brook received the information without answering. ‘Are you there, sir?’
‘I’m here, John.’
‘And you’ll never guess what the abductor was driving.’
Brook emitted a short, noiseless laugh. ‘Was it an ambulance, by any chance?’
There was a pause at the other end before Noble rejoined, ‘How do you do that?’
‘It’s one case, John. Smethwick and Rusty. They’re working together.’ Brook closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘Live Forever. They’re going to embalm those kids and then they’re going to mummify them. Like Tutankhamun. The tramps were just practice so they could do a good job on their perfect young bodies.’
‘And L
en?’
‘Not sure, but Poole’s a pathologist. Maybe they need him for some reason.’
‘He might still be alive then. How did you find out?’
‘I found the missing poster from Rusty’s bedroom. Land of the Pharaohs. It’s about sealing a dead Pharaoh safely in his tomb. Rusty knew it would tip us off so he took it down and gave it to Smethwick to keep. It’s hung on the wall of his canal boat.’
‘Jesus. What do we do?’
‘We find them before it’s too late.’ Brook rang off. They’re dead, you know. Gadd was suddenly beside him. ‘Did you catch that?’ She nodded. ‘Find out everything there is to know about Smethwick. Everything. I don’t care how far back you go. He’s near and we’ve got to know where he’s gone because that’s where Adele and the others are.’
Poole sat with his head bowed, trying to block out the stench of human remains with the bloody handkerchief tied around his face. It wasn’t that he hadn’t experienced such smells before, just that he’d always done so in the relative comfort of his air-conditioned, temperature-controlled Pathology lab.
Here, in the darkness, he tried to shut down all the senses he didn’t need, keeping his eyes closed and relying on his ears for sensory input. Unfortunately they registered every squelch as he shifted his position. But then his ears told him that he might have a bigger problem than the odour of human remains. Rats.
He heard them first. Only one, then another and then another darting around to investigate the smorgasbord of offal that Poole’s clumsiness had provided. His hearing became supercharged, picking up every scurry, every squeal as the rodents went about their foul business gnawing on the bloody banquet. There were other sounds that kept him alert, gave him hope. He’d heard a distant rhythmic thud from time to time that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth. It suggested some kind of building work in progress though it never lasted more than half an hour.
He also fancied he could hear someone groaning, but not out of pain or fear but the effort of some unknown hard labour. This was always followed by a hacking cough. At least someone was near, and this gave him hope.
Training his ears on his immediate situation, however, didn’t bring comfort. The increasing volume of curious rodents confirmed his worst fears and he pressed himself nervously against the cold wall. First contact was when he felt a nuzzling against his trousers and kicked out, giving rise to an intense screech that only served to amplify the sense of urgency amongst the other bustling rodents, dashing this way and that. Something ran across his hand and he pulled them both across his chest for protection, but still they kept coming. Another ran up his leg and showed no disinclination to get off until Poole flung a hand in its direction, receiving a nip on the knuckle for his trouble.
‘Please God. Not like this. I don’t deserve it. Please.’
To his horror a rat then dropped down on to his head and squealed loudly when Poole battled to disentangle it from his wiry thatch. Enduring the bites, he grappled with its slick furry body and quick tail, trying to get a grip before extricating its talons from his tonsure. Finally his grip locked and he flung the beast against the far wall with a piercing shriek. The rat’s colleagues, however, were not discouraged and Poole became increasingly frantic as four, five, six of them mounted their challenge for fresh meat.
‘Please God.’
At that moment a large vertical bar of dazzling white light opened on to Poole, widening rapidly to illuminate the stark and bloodied vault in which he sat. The rats scampered back to the sanctuary of dark corners and Poole felt emboldened to scramble to his viscera-flecked feet, gazing all the while at the radiance beyond. The intensity of the light dipped as a figure with an elongated head stepped in front of the beam. For a split second, Poole wondered if he were encountering an alien.
‘God is listening, Anubis,’ said a man’s gravelly voice. Poole saw a hand held out towards him holding a shepherd’s crook. ‘Fear not, mortal. I wear the Atef Crown of Osiris. Come.’
‘Do we know if it’s the same ambulance?’ asked Charlton back in the Incident Room.
‘Not for sure,’ said Brook. ‘But it is.’
‘But if they changed the number-plates, it’s not going to get picked up, is it?’ snapped Charlton. He looked at his watch. ‘Five minutes to broadcast. You think Rusty met Smethwick at college?’
‘Where else?’ said Brook.
Cooper and Noble walked through the door and marched over. ‘Mrs Mansell, three doors down,’ said Noble. ‘We don’t have a photograph yet but we showed her the composite. She got a good look at the guy and she’s certain it’s Smethwick.’
‘What happened?’
‘Not sure. She noticed the top of the ambulance driving into the cul-de-sac. It was dark so she went upstairs for a better view and saw Smethwick closing the back doors. A couple of minutes later he drove away and this morning she noticed Len’s Jaguar parked in the street. She didn’t see Len.’
‘Did she get a number-plate?’ said Charlton. Noble shook his head. ‘What about CCTV?’
‘None,’ said DS Morton.
‘But once we knew The Embalmer might be involved with the students, we looked at roads surrounding the Brisbane Estate for the night of the party and found an ambulance parked at the bus stop on Western Road near the new housing development. There’s a CCTV camera. It’s some way off but you can definitely see people getting into the cabin around four a.m. on Saturday morning. The techs are trying to enhance it, but …’
‘At least we know we were right,’ said Brook. ‘They must have walked to Western Road through the fields at the back of Kyle’s house.’
‘And then where?’ said Charlton.
‘When we know that, we find our students,’ said Brook.
‘We’re rechecking all CCTV for the night of the party,’ said Morton. ‘Assuming the ambulance had the same plates as when Inspector Brook was attacked, if there’s any sighting we get an approximate location.’
‘Keep on it.’
‘DS Gadd and her team are digging into Smethwick’s past,’ said Brook. ‘Assuming Rusty Thomson’s not local, Smethwick’s background gives us our best chance to find them.’
Without waiting for a second invitation, Poole skidded towards the light with only the briefest wary glance at the gore on the floor around him. As he drew near he was able to see the shadowy outline more clearly. The figure didn’t have an elongated head but wore some kind of white headdress with feathers on the side. His legs were tightly bound and encased in a slim-fitting white robe, held in place by a long trailing sash wrapped around his waist.
As the figure turned and shuffled back to the light, Poole caught a glimpse of the man’s hands and face. They were dark green. He wore green knitted gloves on his hands and what appeared to be thick make-up on his face and neck.
Poole hesitated. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ The scratch of a rodent’s talons on the concrete floor induced a nervous glance behind him and he hastily skipped after his saviour.
‘Let me out of here,’ he demanded. He looked around for a weapon but saw nothing suitable. He considered rushing him, but his bizarrely dressed captor looked tall and powerful. Poole hoped there’d be a better opportunity.
Through two more large whitetiled rooms they travelled, the stranger not looking back once. At the entrance to a brightly lit third room, Poole could hear the whine of a generator. His green guide turned and ushered him into a large dome-like space at the centre of which was a sunken whitetiled dry pool, surrounded by a wooden rail. Too small for swimming, Poole guessed it was some kind of treatment pool. High windows at the top of the dome allowed Poole’s first glimpse of natural light – the sun was shining.
In the middle of the dry pool lay a large empty sarcophagus. It looked extremely sturdy. At the base stood a large jar with a heavy stoneware lid, much like the one Poole had kicked over in the darkness a few rooms away. It was empty. To one side stood a hefty wooden table. Next to it was a large copper tank with
two tubes attached. With a sinking heart, Poole realised it was for draining and storing the blood from a corpse. Next to the large table was a smaller table on which sat a loaf of bread and two wine glasses. There was also a variety of surgical instruments, most of which he recognised. He picked up a bone cutter and brandished it.
‘Ra smiles on us, Anubis,’ said Osiris.
‘Let me out of here,’ snarled Poole.
His captor stood, arms folded, before him – in one hand the crook and in the other some kind of whip or flail. His eyes were closed as though in prayer and when he opened them, the bloodshot whites of his eyes were picked out in stark contrast to the dark make-up covering every inch of his face and neck. Poole fancied he recognised the man in his rearview mirror.
‘Think you’re going to cut me up and dump me in the river, sicko?’ growled Poole, mustering some aggression. Over my dead body, went unsaid. ‘Let me out of here.’
‘Fear not, my subject. I mean you no harm.’ Osiris raised his face to the heavens to intone with great solemnity: ‘Geb, Nut, Father of the Earth and Mother of the Sky, I prepare to join you in the Underworld. Horus, my son, I call on you to continue my work in this world as I …’ At that moment, the man fell into a violent coughing fit which ended with him covering his mouth with a white-robed sleeve. When he pulled the sleeve away, Poole saw blood there.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ demanded Poole, advancing on the man. ‘You abduct me in the middle of the night and bring me here. How dare you? Let me go.’
The green face returned to the horizontal and the man glared at Poole. ‘I am Osiris, insect, and I dare to bring you to this holy place.’
‘What place? Where are we?’
‘We are at the Ibu, Anubis.’
‘Ibu? Anubis?’
‘The place of purification where I must prepare for my journey. Come, Anubis, eat.’ Given his almost bound legs, the man walked as best he could over to the table bearing the food. Poole readied the bone cutter.
Osiris waved a hand at the loaf and the bottle. ‘Sacred barley for your sustenance. Wine for your thirst.’
