by Peter Laws
She was playing the Lord Mayor of London. Sir Thomas Bloodworth, a part she’d requested because Amelia thought his line was funny. It was true too: he’d actually said these very words – or something close to it. When he was woken to be told of the great fire, Bloodworth didn’t take it seriously. She strode up to the left-hand side of the stage, where some boys were rushing up to her, saying, ‘Lord Mayor Bloodworth! Look at the fire, sir! Whatever shall we do?’ To which Amelia responded by putting her hands on her hips, throwing her head back and laughing out a line from somewhere in her elasticated beard: ‘That fire? That fire? Pish. I bet a woman could wee on that and put it out. I’m going back to bed!’
Laughter swept the crowd.
Line delivered, she stomped off, as kids and teachers broke into Firestarter by The Prodigy. As she vanished behind the curtain, he resisted standing and cheering and clapping with gusto. That’d be odd, and unfair to the other kids, but man was there a huge hug coming for her. She was, after all, the greatest actress who ever spoke a line.
The rest of the play passed slowly. So slowly, in fact, that there were moments when Matt could feel his clothes going out of fashion, but eventually they were done and, when it all finished, the kids came running out to their seats, still in costume. Amelia smothered all three of them in furry, hairy kisses.
‘Peasants!’ she said, still in character. ‘Was I awesome?’
‘You were amazing,’ Wren squeezed her.
‘She’s right,’ Matt said. ‘Brilliant projection.’
‘And Lucy, what say you?’ She swooped dramatically close to her sister, eyebrows pushing up and down like Groucho Marx on speed. When that didn’t work, she pulled her beard up and down too and kept going. ‘Well? Wellll? What say you, peasant?’
‘You were …’ she fought a smile, ‘… you were fine. Now can you stop talking like a loser?’
‘Aha! Fine, she said!’ She stuck a finger high in the air. ‘Then my fee, peasants, is a hearty doughnut! Proceed.’ She pointed to the doors where the crowd was clambering towards the dining hall. Signs said, puddings from pudding lane – this way!
It was just as they left the hall when he felt something in the air shift. There was a murmur in the crowd. Words that went beyond simple questions of whether folks had remembered to bring change or if the mikes hadn’t been loud enough. Something was happening outside and it was causing a lot of frowns.
‘What’s going on?’ Lucy pushed up on her tiptoes.
Amelia started jumping up and down to see, beard flapping. ‘Bet a grandma’s collapsed. They do that, sometimes. Back to my doughnut, though.’
Matt was about to say something, when a rippling wave of teachers’ heads started turning in his direction, each catching his eye. One raised a hand to beckon him to the main doors. Then another.
Wren scratched her cheek. ‘Why do they want you?’
‘Oh dear,’ Lucy’s mouth dropped, half smiling. ‘I bet you parked in the headteacher’s space.’
Amelia gasped. ‘You’ll hang for this, peasant.’
‘I didn’t, honest!’ he said. ‘Listen I better go over and—’
‘Announcement.’ The PA system screeched out feedback and everybody looked up. ‘Can Matthew Hunter please come to the headteacher’s office immediately. Thank you.’
‘Gonna get spanked,’ Amelia said.
He looked at Wren and noticed her smile had dropped.
‘You better go,’ she said.
He nodded and started pushing against the flow, heading towards the staff corridor, near the entrance. Eyes were on him, he could feel that, and he heard the tail end of whispers as he made his way across. Then a teacher in a tracksuit gripped his elbow and guided him to the head’s office. She was there, Mrs Wraithe, standing at her office door and beckoning him to come with a frantic hand.
He trotted towards her. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Mr Hunter. Have you seen what’s happening outside?’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘Come on,’ she shoved her backside against her door and it swung open. Then she walked away from him to a closed set of blinds at her window. ‘Could you switch that light off, please?’
Matt frowned. ‘I’m totally confused here. I’ve been watching the play.’
‘The light, please?’
He clicked it and the office plunged into darkness. He had to navigate around scattered chairs to reach her. She was using one of her long nails to open a gap to see through. She pressed an eye against the opening slit. ‘They’re asking for you, and they won’t go away.’
‘Who are they?’
‘You need to get them to clear the car park as soon as possible, some parents want to leave and they’re completely blocking the path.’
‘Who are you talking about?’ He leant forward, squinting through the gap, then his face sank. ‘Oh, crap … I’m sorry about this.’
‘Just get them off school grounds? They’re up on kerbs and blocking cars. It’s a health and safety time bomb.’
‘Will do … and again, I’m sorry …’ He headed for the door.
She called after him. ‘Funny old life you lead, isn’t it, Mr Hunter?’
‘Oh, it’s a laugh a minute.’
He rushed back down the corridor, trying to ignore the crowd of other parents whose eyes literally bulged with curiosity. He pushed through the revolving doors and stepped into sudden lights, shockingly bright, clicking on and flinging his huge shadow against the school wall. He squinted into the beams and saw silhouettes of figures lurking behind. The figures rushed towards him, and he held up a hand to block out the light.
‘Professor Hunter? Any comment?’
He was so tempted to say, Certainly, the school play was a triumph! But instead he just said, ‘Comment on what?’
‘On Tom Riley … and the demon murders.’ A camera lens rushed in, flooding his face with light. ‘You were with him today, does he really believe he’s possessed by Satan?’
‘I’m not talking about this here. Let’s get off the school grounds first, then maybe I’ll—’ he stopped. ‘What do you mean murders?’
‘You haven’t seen the news?’
‘No …’
‘Tom Riley. He’s killed somebody else tonight.’
‘That’s impossible, he’s in custody.’
‘That’s where it happened. In a hospital secure unit. He’s killed a female police officer. They say he cut her throat.’
The ground. It moved.
Matt felt it shift beneath him.
He swayed for a moment at the thought of it. Knowing. Just knowing who that female police officer was. It was PC Pamela Marriot, from earlier this morning. She of the blonde curls and the custard creams and the twitchy fear, whenever Tom Riley looked her way.
‘Professor?’ the reporter said, and then offered another question that seemed to make the earth spin just that little bit faster. ‘Who is Baal-Berith? Professor? Professor? Are you all right?’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Matt had always assumed it was the magical repel-mantra for journalists the world over. Yet no matter how much he flapped his lips to say ‘no comment’ they just weren’t going to budge. As long as he was standing there, physically in their space, this little troupe of reporters were going to stand there too, jaws hanging, microphones poised, waiting for Matt to throw them a tiny fish of information, or better yet, a frustrated, emotional outburst.
He also knew that if he went back into the school, they’d probably just follow him in. Or just as bad, they’d hover out here until he came back out. And in the mad crowd rush one of their big vans would back into a little kid from Year 7 and break both of their legs. The most popular, most sporty kid in school, no doubt. Meaning the Ofsted and the Olympic hopes of the school would be recklessly dashed because of Matt Hunter’s kooky, spooky life.
He swivelled his head to look back at the building, where his car was blocked by a house-sized Land Rover. And beyond it, he saw parent
s in the school, cupping their hands to see out. Confused faces, irritated faces, and the most prominent one of all was fogging up her office glass with many huffs and many puffs. Mrs Wraith kept making a shooing motion with her hands. Go, she mouthed. Go. Go.
There really was only one option left. Run away.
Matt twisted his shoes on the pavement, ‘I told you … no comment. So … um … I’m going now.’ He started a fast power walk towards the gate. He heard them trotting behind, so he broke into a jog. Their footsteps only sped up too, and they called out their loud questions after him. Stuff like ‘Why are exorcisms on the rise today?’, ‘Did Tom Riley speak with the devil’s voice?’ and ‘Was there vomit?’
His escape pod was waiting just outside of the school gate, perfectly timed.
The local bus jerked to a stop and the doors unfolded with a loud hiss. He hopped straight on board and slapped his debit card against the reader. ‘Could you close the doors, please?’
‘Come again?’
‘The doors. Those guys aren’t with me.’
The bus driver gave a slow blink, then he craned his neck and spotted the coming commotion on the pavement outside. He shrugged and hit a button. The doors folded shut, just as palms pressed against it. ‘So, mister … are you famous in a good way, or famous in a bad way?’
‘Neither,’ Matt said, and the bus engine rumbled into life.
Matt grabbed one of the bars for balance and watched the dwindling reporters on the kerb. They were shaking their heads and giving up, but he saw the headlights of their vans lighting up behind them. They’d be out on the street soon.
He sank into a seat and thought, wow. I’m like James Bond escaping a Russian tactical squad. Only my getaway car isn’t an Aston Martin. It’s the number 105 to Amersham. ‘Can you just let me off round the corner, please?’
‘Shame. That was the shortest getaway in history,’ the driver mumbled, as he started to swing the bus round.
The doors opened and Matt leapt out. He slipped through a gap in a metal fence he’d seen earlier this evening, on the way in. A faulty street light had turned it into a murky, but handy, black hole. He ran through, churning up the smell of damp wood chips under his feet, and found himself in a playground. Around him were swings, a long metal rocking horse and a climbing frame with a little wooden house on top of it. All in blackness. And then a sports field that led to the back of the school.
He saw the twin lights of the media van, twinkling at speed through the tree trunks to his left. They’d be round the corner soon.
He scurried up on the metal frame, said ‘bugger’ when he clanged his kneecap against a pole and then he quickly crawled inside the tiny wooden box. It stank of urine in there, even though the floor was dry. He hoped – and this was a very pure and earnest dream – that the stink was only canine.
Keeping inhalation to a minimum, he pulled out his phone and saw a string of missed calls, all from the last hour. He didn’t recognise some of the numbers, but the other was DS Fenn from today. He dialled him back and pressed the phone close to his ear, crouching into a ball at any hint of headlights outside. The glow from his screen threw a dull light across the graffiti in here. Well fancy that, Matt thought, as he waited for the phone to pick up. Apparently, the popes no dope cos the pope smokes dope.
Fenn’s voice fizzed into his ear. He sounded troubled, breathless. ‘Matt? Where are you?’
‘A bunch of reporters just chased me out of my kid’s school play. So I’m sitting in a pool of dog piss, hiding in a playground. You?’
A swift sigh on the line. ‘Dammit. I’m sorry about this.’
‘It’s okay. But listen …’ He felt his eyes close, tone dropping at the question he dreaded asking. ‘They’re saying Tom attacked someone at the unit. That a policewoman’s dead. It isn’t Pam, is it? From this morning?’
Nothing.
‘Fenn?’
‘She’s not dead, they’re wrong on that.’ His voice was low, quiet, lost in a sudden crackle on the line. ‘We thought she might be, but it wasn’t quite as bad as we thought.’
‘How, though? He was handcuffed.’
‘I went back to see Tom, after we interviewed Perry. I wanted to formally arrest him for suspected murder. Pam was guarding his room, just like I asked her to. She said he’d been totally silent since we left him. He’d just sat completely still the whole time, but though he couldn’t see me arrive, the second I walked into that corridor, and Matt I mean the second, he started wailing and screaming in his room like a madman, and he was calling out …’ Fenn paused. ‘Sorry mate, but he kept calling for you.’
Creeeeek.
Matt blinked when he heard it. The sound of metal scraping and starting to grind.
Matt’s mental filing system was pretty good with sound. So this metallic creak was instantly understood and duly categorised. Someone was settling into one the swings out there, though he couldn’t see from inside this little hut.
‘He was furious that you weren’t with me,’ Fenn went on. ‘He’s like, where’s Matthew? Where’s Matthew? He just kept screaming it. And I mean Matt … he was frickin’ livid.’
Creeeeek.
‘So I said you weren’t coming and he just had some sort of seizure, like a fit …’ Fenn said. ‘But not like any fit I’ve ever seen before.’
Matt’s head reached the little doorway, and slowly, really slowly, he pushed his face into the breeze.
‘We were looking through the window at him, and I saw his whole body twisting and bending. I swear I heard a bone crack. His arms, his head … the angles of it … shit. It’d give you nightmares.’
Creeeeeeek.
Matt saw the empty swing slowly rocking itself to a stop, like somebody had just slipped off it. Matt quickly scanned the shadows around him, and out across the gloomy void of the field. He saw nothing. Nothing except a bitter night wind curving the tips of the trees at a considerable angle. The same wind that probably pushed the swing in the first place. Yep. Just some wind, pushing one of the swings and somehow not the other. He watched it rock to its final, gentle stop.
Matt slid off the climbing frame and crunched into the woodchips, eyes in a constant, nervy scan. He found a roundabout and sat against it. It slowly started to revolve under his weight. ‘So … what happened?’ His voice was a whisper, he noticed.
‘He just smacked his head off the bar. Like hard as hell. Split his forehead wide open. Blood everywhere, and he went to do it again. So me and Pam just got in there and grabbed him. I’d already called for some nurses. I heard them rushing up the corridor prepping a sedative, but me and Pam thought we had him under control, then he bit her.’
Matt blinked. ‘He bit her?’
‘Right in the throat. Just locked his damn teeth in. Me and the two nurses, male nurses mind you, we couldn’t get his jaw open. Then he pulled away from her really hard, teeth still together, and Pam just dropped, blood everywhere. He just kept laughing and spitting and demanding to see you, and that we should all do as he said, because he was the great Baal-Berith and Baal-Berith gets what he wants. So I told him to fuck off and almost throttled him. The nurses dragged me off.’
‘And Pam?’
‘Intensive care …’ His voice started to crack. ‘I should have waited for the nurses. Dammit, I should have hung back. And I’m sorry about the reporters, Matt.’
‘That’s nothing, but I just thought we were keeping this demon stuff under wraps? How did it get out so quick?’
‘How do you think? It was Perry. The second he left us he called the papers.’
Matt pictured Perry in the car park, wrapped in leaves and stuck on his phone. ‘That little turd.’
‘Yep. And he’s shouting about this case from the rooftops now. He’s everywhere. I’ve heard him on local radio, he’s on TV tonight and he’s told them all about you. That you saw her body. That you were with Tom. He’s calling it the Demon Murder, and folks are lapping it up. He wants to raise awareness.’
‘He calls it The Great Devouring.’
Matt sighed, and jabbed a shoe to the ground. The roundabout jerked to a stop. ‘That’s Kissell.’
‘What?’
‘Bernie Kissell. The famous exorcist he mentioned. That’s one of his phrases. The Great Devouring.’
‘Yeah, well he’s warning everybody about it. Telling them to turn back to the church, cos Tom Riley is just the start of a whole wave of possessions that are sweeping the country. It’s making headlines, put it that way. Especially when he’s insisting that Tom’s completely innocent. That something else took him over.’
‘What a mess.’ A breeze rolled across him. ‘So I take it with the media, I just say no comment?’
‘No, no, no. You do not say no comment …’
‘What?’
‘I want you to comment. I want you to comment a lot. You’re respected, Matt, you’re known. And what’s more you’ve spoken to Tom and you’ve seen what he did in that cellar. So if any reporter asks you, you tell them. You say Tom Riley has serious mental damage, and that’s all there is to it. You balance out all this nutty satanic stuff with common sense.’
‘You know most people aren’t going to fall for Perry’s mass possession idea.’
‘I’m not worried about most people. I’m worried about the minority who do believe it. So just help me redress the balance, yeah? Cos I don’t want this kicking off a bunch of wannabe exorcists, hunting for demons. That’s not going to end well.’
‘Agreed. What about Tom? Should I come in? See what he wants?’
‘Screw Tom Riley,’ Fenn shouted down the phone. ‘He’s being transferred to prison for now, so he can sit in there, wait for his trial and rot. And when he’s convicted of Justine’s murder, and what he did to Pam, he can go back in there and rot a bit more.’
‘Fenn, I’m so sorry,’ Matt said.
‘Then just help me nip this demon stuff in the bud, okay? It’s making me nervous … oh, and Matt,’ he paused for a while, like he was considering whether to speak or not. ‘You know he whispered something to Pam, just before he got her.’
