The Lazarus Prophecy (37 page)

There was interference on the television. The sound from a channel she wasn't tuned to was breaking through. She thought that maybe it was a music channel because the sound was of someone mellifluously whistling. Then she thought it might be an old movie because the melody was something vaguely familiar and slightly nostalgic in character. It was jaunty and spry. And she realized as the whistling clarified and grew louder that it was actually coming from behind her.

She turned. He was standing about six feet from where she sat, more or less at the centre of the room. She slid out of her chair, onto her feet. He was wearing a suit and a tie and a heavy lock of the hair combed back in his computer likeness had freed itself in life and tumbled down his forehead. In other circumstances, it would have been a fetching look.

‘How did you get in here?'

‘Without difficulty, if I'm honest.'

‘How long have you been here?'

‘You were showering when I arrived.'

‘You're Dan Luce.'

He took a step towards her. ‘Not entirely,' he said. ‘The alternative was Luca something, probably Luca Dune.'

‘They're anagrams of Edmund Caul.'

‘You're very sharp. How do you know about him?'

‘I have a contact involved with the investigation.'

‘Well connected too.'

‘And now you're Dan.'

‘Not a name I'm partial to. Better than Luca. And Dan Leno, when I saw him, was entertaining enough.'

‘They thought for a while Dan Leno might be the Whitechapel Killer.'

He smiled at that. He said, ‘I can assure you they were wrong.'

She was trying to keep him talking. She was doing quite well at it but it wasn't getting her to the next stage. She could not think beyond the verbal sparring to a route to safety. She couldn't die. Things were going so well. She had barely begun to live and was enjoying life fully for the first time. It couldn't be over. It wasn't fair.

‘You've been telling lies about me, Joan.'

‘It's nothing personal.'

‘I rather approve of lies. I'm as partial as anyone to telling them. I could tell you, for example, that I have no intention of harming you. I could tell you that you're perfectly safe. But we're both far too grown up for fabrications of that sort. You're going to perish. We both know it.'

She smiled. In a moment she would bolt for the kitchen and a weapon. She was not short of physical courage. She said, ‘We all owe God a death.'

‘That's entirely the wrong thing to say to me, my dear.'

She ran. She was quick and steeled slightly by the two slugs of vodka she'd downed. She was almost at the door frame when he caught her and clubbed her lightly to the side of the head and she saw stars dissolve into blackness.

He'd tied her to her bed when she came to. He'd done it with strips of silk torn from her Chinese dressing gown. She was naked. He was standing beside her. She was aware of the scent he wore, slightly concussed, some of her senses dulled, others performing with an exaggerated strength. The smell was cloying. There was a chef's cloth roll of knives, unfurled, on her bedside table. Their knurled grips glimmered in the glow of the streetlamp outside her bedroom window. He had switched off the lights.

He said, ‘Your skin was inked. That's interesting. It's intriguing that you chose to eradicate the designs.'

‘If you untie me, I'll tell you all about it.' Her voice sounded distant and muffled to her own ears, disembodied, almost.

‘It's not that intriguing,' he said.

‘If you spare me I'll give you anything. I'm in a position to do that.'

He chuckled. He said, ‘The position you're in offers scant promise.'

She turned her head. It was a gesture of despair. But she did not despair entirely until a glance in her bedroom mirror on the wall opposite the window told her Dan Luce possessed no reflection.

He pushed her from behind so her weight rested on her hip and shoulder and she gasped in terror and said, ‘What's your real name?' She realized she was speaking Polish. She had been since regaining consciousness. She realized he was too, as fluently as she.

His voice was guttural, an inhuman snarl, the touch of his propping hand against her back cold and scaly now, all pretense gone. ‘My name is Legion,' he said.

She gasped again as he made the first sure, swift incision. She felt her body lighten as the innards slithered warmly out of her, spilling on the bed, the smell of her own hot blood impossibly rich and the world dimming and receding from her reach.

‘I'm entertaining three possibilities,' the Home Secretary said. ‘The first is that this is a killing committed by the Scholar, or by Dan Luce, since they appear to be one and the same. The second possibility is that Joan Fairchild is the victim of a political assassination carried out by a Muslim extremist deliberately in the manner of the Scholar.'

Jane took this in. She said, ‘The third theory?'

‘Her own people did it.'

‘It was a sort of Night of the Long Knives?'

‘You can tell me whether he used a long knife.'

‘He used several. The knife that killed her with his opening stroke was long. Others were used for the mutilations that followed.'

They were at Chequers. London was still as secure as the heavily deployed police presence could make it. But the Prime Minister was at pains to keep his cabinet members out of public view and away from the possibility of physical attack.

If that happened he would be forced to declare a State of Emergency, something he wanted to avoid. There was a risk those factions skirmishing at various crisis points in the more ethnically diverse boroughs would view that as provocation. Declaring a State of Emergency, putting troops on the streets and imposing a curfew, could escalate the violence into full scale revolt. Minorities would claim they were being victimized. The Knights of Excalibur would call it an attack not just on the rights of the individual but on freedom itself.

Jane had been helicoptered to the meeting. The weather was clear and the patchwork of fields unfolding beneath her on the flight had looked fertile and serene. In some ways the country followed a rhythm long established and unchanging. In others it was changing at alarming speed and she honestly feared that socially and politically they weren't far now off a tipping point.

‘In a way it doesn't matter,' the Home Secretary said. ‘People will believe what they want to believe regardless of the facts. The Knights have their martyr and she couldn't really
have been better picked. If there was an election today on the basis of the polls they'd win by a landslide.'

‘They couldn't field the candidates, could they?' Jane asked.

‘I don't think they have any intention of letting it come to the vote. The ballot box isn't really their style. Insurrection's quicker and more straightforward, when the force is with you the way it is with them.'

‘It was him,' Jane said. ‘It was the Scholar or Dan Luce, which isn't his real name. He's someone who doesn't register on security cameras, which is as infuriating as it's inexplicable. He doesn't leave fingerprints. He doesn't shed hair or sweat. We think he might lick them.'

‘He might what?'

‘He washes their skin afterwards. He hasn't so far left a trace of his saliva.'

‘Then how do you know it was him?'

‘The message written in Fairchild's blood at the scene is in his handwriting. It's neat and distinctive and provides compelling physical evidence. And when he tried to deliver his note last night telling us about the killing, he was spotted.'

‘But not apprehended.'

‘He was recognized by two Tactical Support Group officers who approached, challenged and attempted to Taser him.'

‘What happened?'

‘They're in hospital. They're both off the critical list, but their injuries are described as life-changing.'

Susan Lassiter put her head in her hands. Then she let them fall and smiled. ‘How many more do you think he will kill?'

‘It's an impossible question to answer. If we catch him, then obviously there'll be no further victims. I spoke to our theologian this morning and he seems to believe he'll stop at nine. Apparently nine has numerological significance in demonology.'

‘There were nine circles in Dante's hell,' the Home Secretary said.

‘He went so far as to predict the likeliest candidates.'

‘That's a game being played at every dinner party in England.'

‘When they aren't busy boarding up their windows.'

‘I suppose you and I are obvious targets.'

‘If he can get to us, yes we are. And then finally he will return to his unfinished business with Charlotte Reynard.'

‘He sounds a clever chap, your theologian.'

‘He isn't that clever. He didn't predict Joan Fairchild.'

‘That wasn't her real name, you know. She concealed her background pretty well but we've had some smart security services people on her case. I got the report yesterday afternoon. She was originally a Pole from Gdansk. She stole the identity of a Manchester orphan who died at the age of six. There are international warrants active on her on three continents.'

‘What did she do?'

‘She'd been a white supremacist since adolescence. Mostly it was hate crimes. Trolling, death threats, libelous smears, some really charming fun and games. Crystal meth manufacture and transportation in Texas. There was an arson attack on a Berlin refuge for asylum seekers she was suspected of but never charged with. She had a police record in Holland for assault.'

‘Will you make this public knowledge?'

‘What do you think, Detective Chief Inspector?'

‘I think it would be totally counter-productive. She's being deified by millions of people who won't thank you for trying to shatter their illusions. They'd think it propagandist lies. You might as well desecrate her grave. You'd get the same response.'

‘You should go into politics. You've an instinct for it.'

‘You're between a rock and a hard place, Home Secretary.'

‘Go and catch our killer, Jane.'

‘Will that make any difference now?'

‘It might save our lives. I still value mine. It might get Saint Joan off the front pages of the newspapers. And I'd like him punished. I didn't have much time for his most recent victim but I still believe in the criminal justice system.'

‘I'm doing my best.'

‘I know you are. Why did you call your theologian, this morning?'

‘The message left at the Fairchild murder scene was written in an ancient Hebrew dialect. It was the usual End of Days stuff. He referred to himself as the Crimson King and the Lord of Misrule, which he's done before. But at the end there was a sort of footnote where he alluded to a story from the Book of Genesis. You know about Jacob's Ladder?'

‘Jacob was a Biblical Patriarch. He was involved in a flight from his brother, sleeping in the open air when he dreamed of a ladder ascending to heaven. In the dream, he climbed it.'

‘The Scholar suggested it might be missing a few rungs.'

‘Your theologian is called Jacob something. I remember that from Sandra Matlock's piece on Sunday. He's called Jacob Prior.'

‘It's wordplay, a kind of punning joke.'

‘He's toying with you.'

‘Yes. I'm afraid he is.'

‘Catch him, Jane. You have until the end of the week.'

Peter Chadwick waited at a disused airfield deep in the Norfolk countryside. It was an isolated spot in a still under populated county. Driving a borrowed Land Rover there had brought back memories of his military service. Searching the sky through the powerful binoculars he wore around his neck was a ritual that prompted further reminiscences.

He'd been thinking about soldiering anyway. He thought that Ministry of Defense budget cuts and the deployment on active service abroad of most of the nation's strike troops made the home front rather vulnerable now. It was his opinion that Birmingham and Leeds and possibly Manchester would be better governed in the present crisis under the rule of martial law.

London was a different case, politically and symbolically. But he had driven through the makeshift barricades of burning tyres and mattresses that morning more convinced with every block travelled that the city was quickly on the way to becoming ungovernable.

Driving out of Finsbury Park he recognized the faces of some of the boys manning the barricades. They were young offenders he had spent a great deal of time and patience trying to rehabilitate at what they euphemistically called the youth club where he volunteered. Their
faces had possessed a look almost of rapture, as though events held them spellbound. It wasn't really that far, he didn't think, from being the case.

At least they recognized him. Christian and Muslim, they harboured no hostility towards him. They let him through the smouldering barriers to the ghettoes they were intent on establishing. You had to be thankful for small mercies.

Brixton and Tooting were ablaze. In Tehran, the British embassy had been stormed and overrun. The crisis would escalate internationally, he was gloomily sure. It was a long time since Britain had been a net exporter. You probably had to go back to the time when an Irishman called Daniel Barry had outwitted a malevolent creature called Edmund Caul in the gas-lit isolation of a Lambeth railway arch.

But Britain would export this: this conflict of faiths turned hostile threatening to escalate into civil war. Most of Europe was ripe for it. America would inevitably follow. This would become a global crisis and the world would be irrevocably altered. This was the End of Days.

He heard before he saw the aircraft. It was a two-seater with a single engine and made an atrocious amount of noise. But the airfield had been mothballed after World War Two and then allowed to fall into dereliction in the early 1960s. Its control tower was a squat ruin with smashed widows and caved in roof. The Nissan huts in which the airmen and mechanics had quartered were almost papery with rust. Nobody ever came here.