The Memory Man

by Steven Savile

  ‘Go,’ he rasped, banishing the familiar ghost.

  And finally, the wood cracked.

  The integrity of the crucifix was failing but not fast enough. He writhed about, trying to put all his weight into each desperate twist, as the flames rose up around him. In seconds he would burn.

  But Mitch’s ghost refused to abandon him.

  Light hurt Ash’s eyes as he tried to banish his friend one final time.

  The black silhouette ran down the length of the aisle, charging into Michael and sending him sprawling across the flagstones.

  He had never imagined that the spirit tasked with guiding him into the light would fight so desperately to take him.

  The acrid smoke stung his eyes.

  His lungs filled with the stuff. He could barely breathe, but then his hand was suddenly free.

  ‘Am I dead?’ he tried to ask, thinking his spirit had liberated itself from the bonds of flesh, as he fell forward.

  He didn’t fall all the way; he hung awkwardly by one wrist. The sudden searing agony that tore through his body convinced him he was very much alive. No matter how desperately he thrashed about, kicking furiously, the heat of the flame clawing its way up his body, he couldn’t pull free of the worm-riddled wood.

  And then he fell into the fire.

  The burning prayer books scattered around him.

  He felt the searing heat on his skin.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ he told Mitch Greer’s ghost. ‘I’m not ready.’

  He felt hands close around his ankles and drag him clear of the blaze. Then felt the weight of someone smothering him with their body to put out the flames.

  ‘Mitch?’ he said, or tried to say. His voice wouldn’t obey him. ‘Leave me alone. Please.’

  He saw a face through the smoke and tears.

  It wasn’t Mitch’s.

  There were no ghosts in the chapel save for those Stefan Karius had brought in with him.

  It was a woman’s face.

  He only saw it for a moment, the silence in between heartbeats where hope lives, and then he was gone.

  SEVENTY

  Ash woke in a hospital bed.

  His entire body felt as though he was still on fire.

  He was alive.

  He had no idea how.

  He didn’t care.

  He was still alive.

  A woman sat in the room’s only chair. She read a magazine. She looked bone-tired. He tried to shift position in the bed, but the feel of the sheets against his skin only made the pain worse.

  ‘Lucky boy,’ she said.

  He didn’t feel it.

  He knew the voice, but not the face.

  ‘Frankie?’

  ‘Peter.’

  He shook his head, and immediately regretted it. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Saving your life. Not that you wanted me to.’ This time it was her turn to shake her head. ‘Telling me to leave you alone. You don’t know me very well, do you?’ Her smile was gently mocking.

  ‘It was you?’

  ‘Who else did you think it was?’

  ‘I don’t know … I thought I saw …’

  ‘Donatti,’ she said for him, filling in the gaps. ‘It would have been a lot harder without your friend’s help.’

  Ash started to say he was no friend, then remembered the man sprawled out on the chapel floor, his lifeblood leaking out of him.

  ‘He was willing to give his life in return for yours.’

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Laura. She was frightened you’d hit some kind of self-destruct button after your last conversation.’

  ‘How,’ he said again.

  ‘She found Donatti. He confessed. I was already on my way to Paris. He met me at the airport. We went straight there.’

  ‘I don’t even know where “there” is. Michael took me to the remains of an orphanage, but then he hit me with some kind of sedative. The next thing I knew I was in that chapel.’

  ‘It is in the grounds of the orphanage. It didn’t burn down when the rest of the house did.’

  ‘How did Donatti know we’d be there?’

  ‘Patterns of behaviour,’ she said. It was one of his favourite touchstones when it came to any investigation. Criminals fell back on patterns of behaviour. ‘It was where it all began. It was where it had to end.’

  Ash listened as Frankie told him about the discovery of the dossier in Karius’s apartment, and the switch – how he’d burned one of his first victims and traded places with them, letting them be dead for him. She told him about the final page in Karius’s dossier, and how he had been marked as the Memory Man’s final victim.

  ‘It was only when I said your name that Donatti understood what he had done. He was determined to put it right. He made me wait outside. He wanted to talk to Karius first, to convince him to see sense.’

  ‘And we know how that worked out,’ Ash said.

  ‘I came in after the gun went off. I saw you hanging on that cross, the flames rising up around you. I didn’t think I’d be able to get to you. But somehow you pulled yourself free. Then when I tried to drag you out of the fire, you started shouting at me, telling me to leave you alone, you didn’t want to go.’

  ‘I thought you were someone else,’ he said, managing a wry smile.

  ‘Well, I dragged you out of there, but the fire was out of control. The roof was collapsing. Everything was going up. He’d doused the entire place in petrol, not just the Bibles and hymn books. I didn’t think I’d be able to get Donatti out of there, but I was damned if I was going to leave him to burn with that bastard. Karius carried him to the door, not me. I didn’t realize it until we were away from there, in the ambulance, but he put a journal in Donatti’s robes. His last act was actually a noble one. He saved the man, then turned and ran back into the chapel before I could stop him. The entire roof came down on top of him.’

  ‘Donatti?’

  ‘He’s out of danger.’

  ‘Good. I … he knew. He knew it all. And instead of saying something, making Maffrici confess, he let the judge hide his sins.’

  ‘He didn’t have a choice, Peter. A higher power told him what needed to be done.’

  ‘God?’

  She laughed at that. ‘A little more mortal.’

  ‘The Pope?’

  ‘A few years ago, during an investigation into child abuse within the Catholic Church, a number of crimes of the priests and others came to light. The secrets of several of these Church-sponsored orphanages were exposed, and a prominent priest was implicated. The judge managed to help him avoid a trial. They were protecting the Church. Closing ranks. See No Evil. Hear No Evil. Speak No Evil. The motto of the holy men. The Father gave up his liberty. He lives basically under house arrest in the Vatican, dedicating his life to prayer. He can never leave the Holy See.’

  Given everything Karius had told him in the derelict orphanage, being locked up in the luxury of the Vatican didn’t seem like much of a punishment. He said as much. ‘Maffrici was the judge?’

  She nodded. ‘Karius believed he was complicit, that at the time of their greatest need he had let the children down, taking the Church’s coin.’

  ‘Just like my dad.’

  ‘He didn’t take any money,’ Frankie contradicted. ‘He was a child running for his own life. He did nothing wrong. Did he never talk about it?’

  ‘Never.’ Ash shook his head. ‘I knew that he had grown up in care, but he never let on. My father had a lot of secrets.’

  ‘Don’t we all? And like I said, you’re a lucky boy. The doctors tell me most of the burns are superficial. There’ll be some scarring, but you’ll be fine. They’re more concerned about any damage to your lungs.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll get that sexy sixty-cigarettes-a-day rasp all the ladies love.’

  ‘Speaking of which, Laura sends her love and told me to tell you to get your arse back to London. It’s all change.’

  ‘What do you mean?’
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  ‘A decision’s come down from Division, everything is centralizing. They’re moving us into a custom-built complex. She’s not happy because it means leaving London.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘You’ll like this.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Go on, guess.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Bonn.’

  He couldn’t help himself, he burst out laughing. It felt good to laugh, right up to the moment he thought he was going to cough a lung up in the process.

  ‘It gets worse,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Do I even want to know?’

  ‘This wasn’t my decision.’

  ‘What wasn’t?’

  ‘Division don’t want anyone working alone. The edict’s come down from on high. Until the relocation’s complete I’ll be working out of River House.’

  ‘How do you feel about that?’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘How did you vote in the referendum?’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘That.’

  ‘Yes. That. The elephant in the room.’

  ‘I didn’t vote.’

  ‘You didn’t vote?’

  ‘I was too busy being shot at in Spain by rather pissed-off members of a drug cartel.’

  ‘I can see why voting would slip your mind,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Do I pass the test, partner?’

  ‘We’ll see.’