Beyond Evil

by Neil White

  Beyond Evil

  Neil White

  There's no way back...

  The picturesque city of York is rocked when the hellraiser and lottery winner Billy Privett is found murdered in a town centre hotel - his corpse brutally dissected, as if someone had performed a post mortem whilst he was still alive. Chillingly, the walls of the room bear words daubed in Billy's blood, including "Free" and "The Process is Coming Down."

  Billy's infamous reputation had been sealed a year previously - when a local university student had been found dead in mysterious circumstances at one of his debauched parties - and his death is little lamented, apart from by his lawyer, the young and ambitious Amelia Diaz, who remains convinced of his innocence.

  But who could have killed Billy in such a way? Unbeknownst to the police, a terrifying new cult is on the rise, one that may hold the key to Billy's death; The Church of the Free Mind. The cult is presided over by the charismatic and terrifying Charlie Watson, who holds absolute power over the church members. But when Amelia is drawn too close to the group whilst investigating Billy's death, it seems that these fervently religious cult members would do anything to protect their leader - even murder...

  NEIL WHITE

  Beyond Evil

  To everyone at Avon

  Chapter One

  The blue flickers of the police lights dominated the view as Sheldon Brown looked out of his windscreen. He’d had the call thirty minutes earlier, and so had scrambled out of bed, the fatigue chased away by adrenaline. That had faded, replaced by the rhythm of his heartbeat, like flutters in his chest.

  Sheldon reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out his bottle of diazepam, small blue wonders. He washed two down with a bottle of water. They wouldn’t take effect straight away, he knew that, but just the act of taking them made his fingers tremble less. He checked his reflection in the car mirror, that his tie was straight, his shirt not too creased. He didn’t look too bad. It was the middle of the night. That would give him some latitude.

  He stepped out of his car and pulled at his shirt cuffs. The cold hit him straight away. It was summer, but the night air never stayed warm in Oulton, the Lancashire town that had become the hub of his police career. He had started out in the town as a young cadet, a few years spent sorting out the fights that spilled out from the pubs, the licensing hours just a guide, not a rule. His rise through the detective ranks took him to the larger towns in the county, but eventually he made his way back.

  Oulton was the last stop before the moors, where the roads out of the valleys snaked upwards and towards Yorkshire, where there were few trees to stop the howl of the wind, just coarse grasses that grew wild. The town didn’t offer much for tourists other than a starting point to go somewhere else. There was a small maze of shops, once family-run businesses turned into charity shops and nail salons, but most of the pubs were boarded up now, victims of supermarket booze and the smoking ban. Weather-beaten terraced streets ran up the hills to empty patches of land where factories used to dominate. Some of the houses were rendered and painted in pastel shades, except that exhaust fumes and cold winters had turned them shabby, so that they were just dirty breaks in the lines of grey stone.

  There were some elegant spots though, where the mill-owners had lived, grand stone gestures set in their own grounds, with curving gravel drives and wide lawns, nymph statues spraying water into lily ponds. The mills were gone, and so they made for large country hotels, used for weddings and by those walkers who liked to start their hikes as near to the top of the hills as they could.

  Sheldon was in front of one of these hotels, the drive lined by marked police cars, headlights illuminating a huddle of people in uniform slacks and shirts. Ivy spread over dark grey walls and around white lattice windows, with wide glass conservatories along both sides. He took his suit jacket from the hook in the back of his car, and once buttoned up, he took a deep breath and set off walking. Just take command, was his thought, as he got closer. He tugged at his cuffs again. The gravel crunched under his feet, like loud cracks in the night. There were people looking out of their bedroom windows, curiosity beating sleep.

  A uniformed officer walked towards him, his fluorescent jacket bright green in the darkness, bouncing back the weak light from the faux Victorian lamps that lined the driveway. His arms were outstretched, ready to turn him away. Sheldon pulled out his identification and said, ‘What time did the call come in?’

  The constable held his hand up in apology and said, ‘Just after one, sir.’

  ‘Who’s supervising the scene?’ Sheldon said.

  ‘Sergeant Peters.’

  Sheldon knew her. Tracey Peters, smart and ambitious, but normally on the burglary team.

  ‘You’re the first inspector to arrive, sir.’

  Sheldon nodded, just to stop the panic rising. This could become his case, but he had to control it.

  ‘So what have you heard?’ Sheldon said.

  ‘You won’t like it, sir.’

  ‘I don’t expect to like it,’ Sheldon said, the words coming out clipped and precise. ‘I said what have we got?’

  A blush crept up the constable’s cheeks. ‘A male, dead, in there,’ and he pointed towards the hotel. ‘There was a complaint about noise, and when the duty manager went to the room, he found a body.’

  ‘Any word on who it is?’

  ‘The room was booked in the name of John Bull, so I heard, but that sounds like, well …’

  ‘Bullshit?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  Sheldon set off for the front of the hotel. He went to a plastic crate filled with forensic suits, hooded paper jumpsuits packed into plastic wrappers. He ripped at the polythene and slipped one on over his clothes. Once he had snapped on the face mask, he set off to join the small huddle of white paper suits just outside the hotel doors.

  The crowd turned to look at him as he joined, and when they realised who it was, Sheldon spotted the exchange of glances, the raised eyebrows.

  ‘How bad is it?’ Sheldon asked.

  ‘As bad as anything I’ve ever seen,’ someone said. He recognised the voice, and the long dark lashes blinking over the mask. Tracey Peters.

  Sheldon nodded, and tried a smile. ‘A bit different to looking at overturned furniture,’ he said, and then, ‘how much of a mess have the staff made?’

  ‘No one stayed long enough to get near the body. As soon as they looked inside, they backed away, screaming.’

  Sheldon looked towards the building but didn’t say anything for a while. He looked up at the bedrooms. Someone was taking photographs with a phone. A tale for the dinner party.

  ‘Let’s take a look,’ he said, and walked around the small huddle. He heard the boots of Tracey Peters behind him.

  He climbed the hotel steps quickly and went through the revolving door. His footsteps echoed in the marble lobby, a walnut reception desk in front of him, a brass plaque reminding him of the hotel name. Sweeping stairways curled upwards behind it, lined in plush wine-coloured carpets.

  Tracey stepped in front. ‘It’s at the back,’ she said, and led him away from reception and through a long room filled with high-backed chairs and a large stone fireplace.

  They turned into a long corridor lined by doors. There were plates outside some, remnants of room service. Neither said anything. All he could hear was the rustle of their paper suits. His eyes scanned the walls for any blood smears that might have been missed, but it looked clean. At the end of the corridor, by an open fire door, he saw the bright glare of arc lights coming from one of the rooms and the bustle of more white forensic suits.

  The crime scene investigators stepped aside as he got near. One was dusting the glass on the fire door, hoping for a print. Another was swabbing the doorfra
me for DNA, in case someone grabbed the door on the way out.

  ‘Anything yet?’ Sheldon said.

  The dusting stopped for a moment and the tired eyes of a middle-aged man turned to him. ‘Nothing much, sir. All the blood is on the bed. No footprints in the room. There were handprints, but they were smears, and so no good for getting any prints.’

  ‘I’ll need to speak to everyone who was using rooms along this corridor, and the night manager,’ Sheldon said.

  ‘He’s been trying to get in the way since we got here, worried about his business,’ Tracey said.

  ‘He’ll have to keep worrying,’ Sheldon said, and then went into the room. He shielded his eyes as they became used to the glare of the lights, and once he was able to take in the scene, sweat prickled across his forehead and his mouth filled with acid. He looked away for a moment and took a deep breath. Once he knew that he was able to look again, he slowly raised his head.

  There was a man in front of them, lying spread-eagled on a bed, his arms and legs pulled to the corners and tied to the bed legs.

  ‘That’s some extreme sex game,’ Tracey said, and she pointed to a ball gag that was discarded in the corner of the room, a leather strap with a plastic ball in the centre. Sheldon thought he could see teeth marks in it.

  Sheldon let out a long breath. ‘I don’t think he was enjoying it,’ he said, and took a step closer, leaving Tracey nearer the door.

  The man was naked. He didn’t look old, the Maori tattoos that swirled down from his shoulders giving that away, but it was what was above his shoulders that made Sheldon wonder if he’d sleep again that night.

  There was a shock of black hair on the pillow, slick with blood, because where the face had once been there was just the bright white of cheek and jawbones, streaked red by blood and remnants of torn flesh and muscle. The eyes were still in place, and teeth seemed set in some final grimace. The face had been cut away in a neat shield, as if a stencil had been used.

  ‘Why would someone do that?’ Tracey said.

  ‘It makes him harder to identify, but that can’t be the reason,’ Sheldon said, his voice quieter than before. ‘Is the face still here somewhere?’

  Tracey shook her head. ‘Not in this room.’

  Sheldon closed his eyes.

  ‘There is a bit more to this,’ he heard Tracey say.

  Sheldon opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘In what way?’

  ‘I spoke to the police doctor when he left,’ she said, and then raised her eyebrows. ‘He thought that the victim had been alive when it started.’

  Sheldon looked back to the body on the bed and shook his head. The constable outside was right. This was going to be a bad one.

  Chapter Two

  The noise started in his dream. There was a bird on a branch, bright red and blue feathers, chirruping at him, but then the bird faded and the room came into view.

  He was in bed and the chirrups were still there, except that they were now electronic. He groaned and put his head under the pillow. It was the telephone. He could ignore it, just wait for the answer machine, but then he realised that he couldn’t let it do that. He might need the call.

  He threw the pillow to one side and stumbled out of bed. The floor swayed under his feet. He tasted the booze as he exhaled, stale and unpleasant, and then he pulled the discarded T-shirt from the front of the clock radio. Eight o’clock. Later than he thought.

  The phone was still ringing.

  ‘All right, all right,’ he shouted, and made his way through his apartment, wiping his eyes. The answer machine beat him to it.

  ‘Charlie. It’s Julie. I can’t make it this afternoon. There’s been a murder. It was supposed to be my day off, but they’ve cancelled my leave to cover for those drafted in to help. We’ll do it another time, but we need to sort it out. And Charlie, you called again Saturday night. Don’t do it again, I told you. Andrew is getting sick of it.’

  Then it clicked off.

  Charlie sat down. This afternoon? Then he remembered. They were supposed to be sorting out their things, the breakup routine.

  He put his head back and closed his eyes. He was glad he had avoided it. The apartment would need cleaning, and he didn’t need to look to know that there were the remains of a late night Sunday film session on the floor: a pizza box and a line of empty beer bottles. He would get a life-lecture from Julie if she saw it, and he didn’t need it. They’d been together for just a year, and he hadn’t changed. He was almost forty and was drinking too much when they got together. He was just the same a year on. He guessed she was supposed to change him. Was it his problem she hadn’t succeeded?

  It was his own fault for getting involved with police officers, he knew that, but Julie hadn’t been the first. He was a defence lawyer, and the police had an expectation that he would be some successful go-getter, all about sports cars and the best restaurants. It had never taken them long to find out that it wasn’t like that, because some lawyers are just courtroom shouters and part-time ambulance chasers.

  Julie had been one of the longer relationships, but that was only because of his reluctance to let her leave. She was attractive, tall and elegant and blonde, like a tick-list on a dating site, and they had got together during one of those long chats at the custody desk. He hadn’t fought as hard that day, and spent most of the interview watching her. They went out for a meal, and she moved in two months later. She moved out ten months after that, when she realised that they had nothing in common, and that Charlie wasn’t interested in finding anything they might share.

  And then he remembered she mentioned a call. He sighed. He had done it before when drunk, just a call to see if she wanted to give it another try. It wasn’t that he even thought that way when sober, but bad ideas are sometimes crafted on the long weave home from a pub. Julie was with someone else now. Perhaps that was what rankled.

  Charlie opened his eyes and stumbled to his feet, groaning at his reflection in the mirror. His dark hair was now streaked with grey and too long for his age, gathered in greasy curls around his collar. His beard was unkempt, more like he’d forgotten how to shave rather than he’d decided to grow one.

  It wasn’t a good start to the week. His mother had always said that he would amount to nothing, and he thought he had won the argument by qualifying as a lawyer. Except that he had spent the next fifteen years slowly proving her right.

  He looked away and went to the window instead.

  His flat was on the top floor of a four-storey apartment block overlooking Oulton, blocking the view to the open moorland, the bricks clad in fake stone to make it blend in with the growing town. He got the sun as it set in the evening, and the views gave him something to look at when he was on his own, even the grey sprawl of Manchester, although the city buzz never got as far as the town.

  The phone rang again, and he thought about not answering, but he didn’t think it would be Julie again. It could be a client, or the police.

  It was one of the drawbacks of being a defence lawyer, that he had to be available when the clients needed him, but most calls meant nothing. Like relatives letting him know that their cousin or brother had been arrested, only to find out that the prisoner had chosen a different lawyer. But there is always the prospect that the next call will be the big one, the case that keeps the practice ticking over for another year. The large frauds are the best, where the volume of paperwork creates plenty of billable hours, but not many came in like that. Anyway, he wasn’t the sort who liked to spend his time scouring through paperwork. He knew what he was: a tub-thumper, defending on emotion, shouting for his clients in a small northern town. He had the guile and legal brain for trading blows with barristers in the Crown Court, and he had thought about going down that route, but he didn’t have the temperament. He might enjoy the arguments, but sometimes he fought too hard when finesse would be better, and he struggled to control his hackles when he heard the sniggers of the country-set.

  And he’d have to shave m
ore often.

  He clicked the answer button, and it took him a few seconds to recognise the greeting as Amelia’s, his business partner.

  ‘Amelia? This is early.’

  ‘You’ve got a change of schedule today, Charlie,’ she said, her voice curt. ‘We’ve been burgled.’

  The day was getting worse. ‘Anything taken?’

  ‘Not as far as I can tell, but there’s a broken window and they’ve been through the files.’

  Charlie didn’t like the sound of that. Some of the town’s worst secrets were in those files, the real stories behind the crimes, not the excuses the defendants spill to their friends. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

  ‘No, I need you to go to court and deal with my cases. I’ll sort things out here. And there’s been a murder.’

  ‘Yes, I know. People are rushing to tell me.’

  ‘From the whispers I’m getting, it’s a bad one. You need to get to the police station.’

  ‘We’ve got the suspect?’

  There was a pause, and then, ‘I don’t know if there is one, but I want you to find out what you can, in case they bring him in and he hasn’t got a lawyer. Your name might just tumble out of the custody sergeant’s mouth. You know how it works.’

  ‘I think I’m right out of all charm,’ he said.

  ‘My cases are quick, and I’ve checked your diary,’ Amelia said, not listening. ‘You haven’t got much on. Just try and get the gossip.’

  Charlie wiped his eyes. He did know how it worked, but he wasn’t in the mood for a Monday morning schmooze at the custody desk. It wasn’t the sergeant who was important, but Amelia had never learnt that. She thought that a flick of her hair with a sergeant brought her work. Unlikely. Custody sergeants are immune to charm. No, the people who pass your name to the prisoners are the civilian jailers. Make friends with those people, and it is your name that gets mentioned through the hatch of the cell door.