by Mark Roberts
‘He turned on that dreadful light again. And walked out of the room.’
‘Did you see anyone else leave the room?’ asked Clay.
‘I think so.’ Louise looked harrowed. ‘When that dreadful light was back on and he walked out, I watched. And I don’t know if it was a trick of the light, but I saw another man follow him out of the bedroom. The First Born and the Angel of Destruction? But they weren’t angels. They were men. Just wicked, wicked men.’
Clay held on to both of Louise’s hands. ‘Louise, look at me.’ When she made eye contact, Clay said, ‘We’re going to help you, Louise. Gina Riley will sit with you, talk to you, listen to you. But for now, I want to ask you about The Sanctuary...’
‘The Sanctuary?’
‘We found a leaflet in your bedroom for a summer fair there. Did you go to that fair?’
‘Of course I did. I go there every single day. Sundays included.’
‘You work there?’
‘It’s not work. It’s my vocation.’
‘The people there, they know you very well?’
‘Of course, everyone knows me. And I know everyone. It’s my home from home.’
‘Louise?’ said Riley.
‘Yes?’
‘When I asked you if you wanted anyone to support you, you said, No one. Couldn’t someone from The Sanctuary have come to your side?’
‘Oh, no! It’s a home for disabled men. They couldn’t come to me, not at this hour. Imagine! They’d all be asleep. Even Gideon who was on duty last night. How could I drag anyone from their beds to this? It’s a nightmare. And it’s my nightmare. But it’s real, isn’t it? And it’s mine. You should never ask for help. It’s a sign of weakness.’
‘Louise,’ said Clay, ‘we all need help. You’re going to need help now.’
‘Only accept help when it’s willingly offered. That’s what Father taught me. And my father was right, don’t you agree?’
21
5.50 am
‘The old boy’s been murdered?’ PC Stephen Rimmer, six feet four, twenty stone and without a single hair on his head or face, looked genuinely upset. He looked around Leonard Lawson’s study and pronounced, ‘Bastard. How...?’
‘Constable Rimmer,’ said DS Stone. Keen to press on, he shook his head. ‘One thing at a time, eh? So why does Leonard Lawson have your contact details in his desk?’
Stone showed him the piece of paper.
‘I gave them to him last Thursday, didn’t I? After the incident in Sefton Park. I was on a routine patrol round the park in the car, with Constable Tom Donovan. It was just an ordinary, quiet middle of the day and we were about to skid back to Admiral Street for a bite...’
‘What happened?’
‘There was a bit of a crowd forming over the road from the Alicia Hotel, so we pulled over and got out to take a look. As soon as we got out, we could hear different voices, all like raised and well pissed-off. Leave him alone! Don’t you talk to him like that, y’weirdo! So we waded in and told everyone to shut up and calm down. And everyone did exactly that except for one person. This tall, strange-looking bloke starts jabbing his finger in the direction of Mr Lawson – I didn’t know his name at this point, but I did know him by sight because he’s always walking round the park – and going, like, Sinner, repent! Repent of your sins, weep and beg forgiveness of the Lord or suffer the eternal pains of damnation. It would have been laughable, but you could see Mr Lawson was really distressed. And the Bible-basher? His eyes were wild but he was as cold as ice. I told him to can it or face arrest for breaching the peace. He looked at me and said, Do you know what I am? Dead serious. Dead cold. Dead calm. He pointed at Mr Lawson and said, Do you know what he’s done? Mr Lawson started walking away, but he was sweating, his breathing was all over the place and he looked like he was about to keel over, so Tom took him to the car and got him to sit in the back while I dealt with the religious nutcase.
‘I asked who saw what and a couple of people said they’d seen the lot, so I told the rest of them to beat it. The Bible-basher clammed up, went off slowly into this trance-like state. According to the witnesses, he was standing on a sandstone plinth by the grass on the edge of the park, staring into space. Mr Lawson was walking in his direction. The witnesses were walking behind Mr Lawson. The Bible-basher sees Mr Lawson and bam! walks right up behind him, following him and whispering in his ear. Mr Lawson starts walking faster and faster, but so does the Bible-basher, and the whispering grows louder and he starts going on, all cold and calculating, about Mr Lawson’s sinful ways. Starts calling him the Devil’s child, at which point the witnesses start intervening, telling him to back off. Then Mr Lawson falls over, falls over his own feet, and that’s when the crowd forms, apparently. People stop to help Mr Lawson up and the Bible-basher starts laughing at him, coldly laughing his head off and talking about the chamber of hell that Mr Lawson is going to go to. Really soon. His time is up. So we’re getting into death threats now.’
‘This piece of hell that’s been reserved for Mr Lawson – tell me about it, Constable. What did the Bible-basher say?’
‘He said, in front of everyone – and this is when the crowd really turned against the nutter – he said that...’ PC Rimmer took out his notebook, flicked to the relevant page and read: ‘Just as you have condemned half to the silent void, you and your other half will be condemned to the eternal silence of hell.’
‘You took the Bible-basher’s details?’ ‘I did, yes. Samuel Forster. Date of birth: 14th August 1984. Address: here we go, 201 Ullet Road. It all checked out. I sent him away with a stiff warning. Pull any more of this and it’d be the cells and the magistrate.’
‘Here we go, 201 Ullet Road?’
‘It’s a home for recovering alcoholics. Only most aren’t recovering...’
‘Did you get a picture of him?’
‘Tom did. He sent it to my phone.’ PC Rimmer took out his phone and showed the screen to Stone.
A human face. Stone reeled off eleven digits. Rimmer keyed them into his phone and sent the image to Stone’s phone.
The man faced the camera. His eyes were a piercing blue and his nose was large and hooked, giving him the look of an eagle. His mouth was big and fleshy and his chin was square and strong, but Stone kept looking back at his eyes. Intensely cold and blue, with a glint of poison in the dead black pupils.
‘Give me your notebook, please,’ he said.
Rimmer handed it over, open at the relevant page, and Stone took a picture of the words the constable had written down and dated as Thursday 13th December 2018, 11.54 am. He turned the page and took a picture of Forster’s personal details.
As Stone handed back PC Rimmer’s notebook, he noticed something melting behind the constable’s bullish façade, and he suspected he was holding something back. ‘What is it? Spit it out. It could be important.’
‘I felt unclean when I was near him. And ever since last Thursday, I’ve felt like there’s something under my skin. I never dream. But I have since Thursday – every night. About him.’
‘It’s an occupational hazard,’ said Stone. ‘We all come across it at some point.’
‘Come across it?’
‘Evil,’ replied Stone, hurrying to the front door and wishing he could be in Ullet Road in the blink of an eye. ‘Pure evil.’
22
6.01 am
In the multi-storey car park of the hospital, Clay paused at the driver’s door of her car and, looking out at the lights of the city centre, felt the weight of her iPhone in her coat pocket. As she took it out, she drank in the ethereal patterns of light cast by the moon across the dark waters of the Mersey.
She looked at the display – ‘Hendricks. 1 jpg.’ – and opened the picture.
At first sight it looked like a leftover piece of wood, a dark offcut set against the aluminium background of the mortuary. Then her focus fell on to its dark markings. She read the attached message.
Eve, Dr Lamb thinks it’s a scrambled wor
d or letters. It gives me the impression of a slightly disfigured dragonfly escaping through an open window. What do you see?
Her scalp crawled as she looked at the primitive image that had been forced into the centre of Leonard Lawson’s body, saw what Hendricks was getting at. She was certain it was no accident.
The snow started to fall again, floating past the white lights of the city. She imagined the lines carved on the spear falling past her face, driven by the wind and gravity, disguised as snowflakes and hidden by snowflakes. And on this night of great savagery, she found a beauty in the light and dark that prompted her to do something that not another soul knew about. She prayed to the dead guardian of her childhood, Philomena, opening her heart and mind to release whatever came from them and receive whatever arrived in return.
I am still your child. Please help me. Help me see. Help me understand.
‘What do you think of it?’
The voice, familiar but distorted as it echoed, came from the shadows of the empty car park and Clay nearly cried out. She turned and saw Hendricks walking towards her.
‘I think you’re a regular creeping Jesus!’ She laughed, the goose bumps on her skin settling down, warm relief filling her where ice-cold shock had swamped her a moment earlier.
‘I bet you say that to all the boys.’
‘Only the ones who stalk me into car parks during the graveyard shift. Get in out of the cold. Jeepers creepers!’
Hendricks sat next to Clay in the front of her car and she flicked on the overhead light. ‘I saw you coming in here,’ he said. ‘I was on my way over to the Royal from the mortuary.’
‘Louise Lawson almost certainly saw two men leave her father’s bedroom,’ said Clay. Hendricks sank down a little in the passenger seat. ‘They’re passing themselves off as the First Born and the Angel of Destruction.’
She pulled up the picture of the engraved shaft and turned it to him.
‘It’s the best shot I took. You’ll see, the markings are much clearer when you look at it with your own eyes under a good light,’ said Hendricks. ‘Ten lines: two approximately 3 centimetres long, two about 2 centimetres, and five about 1 centimetre.’
She looked at the simple pattern of lines. ‘I like your dragonfly and window image. Any other markings on the shaft, Bill?’ Hendricks shook his head. ‘There’s nothing coincidental in any of this,’ she said.
‘What’s your view of it?’ asked Hendricks.
‘You’re the one with the psychology doctorate.’
‘And you’ve got witchy instincts.’ He winced as soon as the words left his mouth. ‘Sorry.’
‘Accepted. I know what you mean, Bill.’ She laughed. ‘But let’s talk about your childhood instead.’ She held her phone up to the light, the sight of her wristwatch reminding her that, in that moment, two sadistic killers were out there. She had to get on. She had to find a handle on the picture she was looking at. She had to get to The Sanctuary to find out as much as she could as soon as she could.
‘The killers are making a statement about Leonard Lawson,’ she said, ‘but they’re also making a statement about themselves. Louise Lawson said the one who spoke referred to them as the First Born and the Angel of Destruction. They’re setting themselves outside the range of what’s normal, what’s human. Above and beyond moral laws in the service of Death.’
She stared absently at the windscreen. ‘They attacked the sum of what Leonard Lawson was as a man. And in vandalising his whole body, they’ve reduced him to something less than human. It’s a complete attack, designed to roll on long past the old man’s death.’
In the ensuing silence, Clay switched off the overhead light. As he opened the door to leave, Hendricks asked, ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Read Leonard Lawson’s manuscript, “Psamtik I”. And try and come up with an angle on the symbol they left inside the old man’s body.’ She paused. ‘I was going to say—’
Hendricks stood outside the car, hand on the door, eager to close it and move on. ‘...I don’t think there are any precedents.’ He telegraphed Clay’s thought.
She pointed back and forth at her own head and then his. ‘If I’m witchy, so are you, Bill. Think!’ Her mind returned to Hendricks’s initial response to the way Leonard Lawson’s body had been staged. Medieval. Torture. Terror. What horror could have inspired such a set-up? Images from dozens of old paintings of hell and its torments flashed through her mind.
Hendricks shut the door.
As she reversed, words flowed through Clay’s head as if a voice was whispering in her ear. Back in the way back when, what did you do, Leonard Lawson, to incur such wrath?
Just as she was about to call Stone to tell him to meet her outside The Sanctuary, his name appeared on the display and her phone rang out. She connected.
‘Eve, I’ve spoken to PC Rimmer. We’ve got a prime suspect. I’ve called for back-up. I’m pulling up outside 201 Ullet Road. Meet me there!’
23
6.06 am
The bell was broken, so Stone banged on the black door with the brass 2 and 1 and a gap where the 0 should have been. Footsteps hurried to the door. A light went on.
Bangbangbang.
The door opened and a tall, muscle-bound man with a neatly cared-for mane of blonde hair stared at Stone with calm arrogance. He looked as if he was addicted to his own reflection, not alcohol. The name on his ID badge, hanging from a Gold’s Gym vest, read ‘Darren’.
Stone showed his warrant card and said, ‘This is a murder case. Cooperate or deal with the consequences.’
Sirens were closing in and Darren flipped up a gear. ‘OK, yeah, come in.’
‘Don’t close your front door for now,’ said Stone. ‘Others are to follow.’ He shadowed Darren through the vestibule and into the hall. There was a smell of Thunderbird in the air. The reception desk had a large book and a pen attached to it by string. Above the desk was a huge analogue clock and a sign:
RULES OF THE HOUSE
NO ALCOHOL ON THE PREMISES
CURFEW 7 PM
THREE STRIKES AND YOU’RE OUT
WE HAVE A WAITING LIST
‘Has everyone obeyed the curfew?’ asked Stone as a police car screeched to a halt outside.
Darren nodded, pushed the signing-in book towards Stone, the day’s date at the top of the page. Three columns: Print. Sign. Time. Stone surveyed them. Small islands of legibility looked utterly lonely in a sea of squiggles. Down the print column a single hand repeated different names.
‘I can’t see Samuel Forster’s name here?’
‘Here.’ Darren took the book. ‘Some of the guys have got the shakes,’ he explained.
Two constables entered the hallway. ‘What’s going on?’
Stone flashed his warrant card.
‘There he is!’ He pointed to a line in the ledger. The print was a series of crooked vertical and horizontal lines.
‘Take me to him.’ Stone turned to the constables. ‘One here, one with me.’
Up a flight of stairs, the smell of Thunderbird intensified. Stone sniffed.
‘It’s offa their breaths and it’s offa their skins. No booze onna premises.’
‘Has he acted any differently since last Thursday?’ Stone asked as they hit the landing. There were many doors leading down a wide corridor. ‘Which one?’ He held his breath.
‘On the end, right-hand side!’
Stone marched to the door, opened it and threw on the main light. Four beds, four men, all asleep. He pulled up the picture sent to his phone by PC Rimmer.
The first man to his left looked like an eighty-year-old dwarf, struggling for breath and on the point of death. The Chinese man in the bed next to him had his mouth and one eye wide open and the other shut. Stone turned to the bed facing and saw a white man with shredded dreadlocks and boils on his cheeks and forehead.
The last man lay perfectly still and hidden under the duvet. Stone lifted the cover back and looked at Darren, in the doorway, combin
g his hair with the fingers of one hand. ‘This is Samuel Forster, right?’
‘Sam, yes.’
Samuel Forster, black, twenty-three stone and wearing a string vest and baggy Y-fronts, pulled the duvet back over himself.
Stone showed Darren the picture of the man who had harassed Leonard Lawson in the park. ‘Do you know him?’
Darren scrutinised the image with contempt. ‘He doesn’t live here. Never has and I’ve worked here three and a half years. I have no idea who he is.’
‘I’ll remind you, Darren, that this is a murder investigation.’ Stone showed the picture once more. ‘Does he live here and is he here right now?’
‘You can go and wake up every last arsehole and have a look for yourself. Do I give one? I’m telling you straight. He doesn’t live here. I don’t know him from Adam.’
Deflated, Stone stepped into the snow and wind just as Eve Clay pulled up outside. He walked over to her car and the passenger door opened. He got in and showed her the picture of the eagle-like, cold-eyed man whose name he didn’t know.
‘This is the religious maniac who terrorised Leonard Lawson on Thursday and fobbed off PC Rimmer by passing himself off as an obese black British man called Samuel Forster.’
Clay was in first gear and away.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Stone.
‘Not far. To The Sanctuary.’ Her windscreen wipers were on top speed, but the snow was winning the race. ‘Tell me everything that PC Rimmer told you. And send whatever you’ve got to my phone and to Bill Hendricks, Gina Riley and Barney Cole.’
24
6.21 am
Clay got out of her car outside The Sanctuary. In the stillness of pre-dawn, Sefton Park had the silent aura of a space where magic might be possible. She evaluated the building and one word sprang to mind: money.
Illuminated by the security light he had tripped, DS Karl Stone walked through the freshly fallen snow towards the imposing front door. He was dwarfed by the three-storey, double-fronted, Victorian mansion, its windows black and its front wreathed in shadows. Not a single light was on inside the house. He knocked on the door.
