The Deceit

36

‘Let’s hear the first message again.’

Karen leaned forward and pressed play on her phone; the speakerphone relayed the sound of her daughter’s voice, echoing around the Chief Super’s office.

‘Mummy Mummy Mummy he is going to hurt me Mummy Mummy he is he is I’m scared Mummy Mummy please he is he is hurting me Mummy!’

Then came the silence, then the incantation, then the scream, then nothing. Nothing.

CS Boyle steepled his index fingers, tipped back his seat and closed his eyes, thinking. On his desk sat a framed photo of his daughter, aged twenty-one, graduating from university, accepting her degree with a gown and a dazzling smile. Next to that was a photo of her brother, on a boat somewhere, laughing.

Alive.

Karen found it hard to repress a bitter envy. This pointless, acidic hatred of happiness and normality, of happy people and normal people, had begun to consume her these last hours. How could they be happy and normal? How could they drive calmly to work and laugh in pubs and chatter away in restaurants when Karen’s daughter was being prepared for death?

Yet she didn’t cry. Karen had cried herself out last night, when she had been picked up from the pavement by kind strangers and driven to Julie’s house. On Julie’s sofa she had collapsed in on herself, like a demolished building. She had wept for an hour or more, continuously. And now the storm had passed; now the weeping was done, and the sterile bitterness, the fear, and the anger, were all that was left.

No, she didn’t want to cry any more: she wanted to kill this man Rothley. Even if she got there too late, even if he murdered Eleanor, she would kill him: she would, she would slay him. Her ardour for revenge was biblical.

‘And the third message. Can we hear that?’ said the CS. ‘We haven’t heard the third one yet.’

Karen pressed the button on her phone.

There had been five voicemails in a row. This was the third. It began with Rothley chanting.

‘Magoth, Asmodeus, Sebt-Hor, Ariton and Amaymon, I call upon you — here and forever — to return to this house, on the third day of the moon, when you shall take the child with you, unto the world unknown.’ A serious silence followed this chant, tainted only by a strange, machine-like sound in the background. Then Karen’s daughter spoke up, calmly and lucidly. ‘In cuius sunt vobis postulans hoc actus sacrificium?’

CS Boyle dropped his hands, and stared, transfixed, at the phone. ‘Good Lord. Is that Eleanor?’

‘Yes.’ Karen was almost used to it now. She stared at the window. Some small furtive flakes of snow were falling from a dark grey sky; she wished it would snow more, snow properly. Cover everything in whiteness and erase the world.

‘But … she’s talking Latin,’ said Boyle, stating the obvious.

Karen nodded. ‘Yup.’ She’d heard these messages a dozen times, first with horror, then with sadness and panic, now with this dull gnawing fearfulness, and anger. Lots of anger. ‘He goes on here, on the fourth message, it’s the same.’

Once more she pressed the speakerphone. Rothley’s firm, low and confident voice filled the office. ‘It is on Eleanor daughter of Karen that I shall work a spell of final binding. Eleanor daughter of Karen must be cast into the outer darkness. Bind and fasten the flesh of Eleanor. She must not breathe, she must not be warm, she must not move, strike her and bind her, on the third day of the new moon, strike her, and bind her, and take her, at once at once at once, lift her up as a sacrifice to Satanael, Saoth, Seth, Satanoth. Amen. Amen. Amen.’

Another pause. Then another tiny grinding, whirring noise in the background. It was surely some kind of machine? Yes. Karen recognized it. Like a drill, but muffled, as if someone in the background was making something. Perhaps a table. Or an altar? Alan was good at that stuff. DIY. He used to come round and fix Karen’s shelves.

Then Eleanor spoke again, her voice high and light, the voice of a six-year-old, quite calm and content. ‘Nos facere iussa. Sumemus diem tertium mensis puellam. Amen.’

The message ended. CS Boyle’s face was, again, appalled. His gaze was watery as he stared at the phone.

‘I don’t understand how she is speaking Latin, I just … Could he have coached her?’ His eyes desperately swept the room, looking at Karen, then Detective Sergeant Curtis, then at the grey sky through the window. He quailed visibly. Then he gazed at Karen once more. ‘What does it mean? The Latin? Have you had it checked?’

‘Yes.’ She took out her notebook. She had talked to Ryman, the witchcraft guy, first thing. ‘The first line is, apparently, “On whose authority are you commanding this act of sacrifice.” The second line of Latin is, “We will honour your command, we will take the girl on the third day of the moon.”’ Karen closed her notebook. Her voice was level. She was in control of her emotions, if nothing else. ‘The expert I consulted said these are the expected responses from the sub-princes in the Abra-Melin ritual.’

‘The sub what?’

Karen explained, matter-of-factly. ‘Demons, essentially. The first chant is Rothley first requesting the sub-princes, the demons, to do his bidding, and then the demons give their response, through my daughter, and then the second chant is Rothley’s command for them to do the sacrifice, and the demons respond again.’ She stared momentarily out of the window as she spoke. ‘The demons agree, they agree to do the sacrifice. Apparently, this second chant, of Rothley’s, is not from Abra-Melin directly — it’s ancient Christian Coptic magic.’

‘Sorry?’

‘The expert, Ryman, thinks that Rothley may have got hold of a more authentic copy of the Abra-Melin ritual.’

‘Authentic?’

Karen explained: ‘It seems there are many disputes as to the, uh, authentic version of this Abra-Melin magic — different versions in different libraries, with varying spells and demands and suchlike. Ryman’s theory is that Rothley has got hold, or thinks he has got hold, of a very ancient version, the authentic version, which has these Egyptian chants, from Upper Egypt, where the magic first came from. We know he is trying —’ she had to force the words out — ‘to do the ritual in the most authentic and challenging way. By taking a … a … a … a … child’s life.’ Keep going, she had to keep going. ‘It makes sense he would do everything as correctly as possible. Including sourcing the most authentic version of the ritual. If he really wants it to work.’

CS Boyle’s face was quite pale. ‘I still don’t understand how he’s got your daughter to speak Latin. I mean, she … she doesn’t speak, er, Latin, does she?’

‘No. Of course not. She’s six.’

‘Then how? She’s six years old, yet she’s word-perfect.’

Karen had no answer. She simply wanted Rothley dead.

Boyle straightened his uniform: a man visibly struggling to master his confusion, and maybe his emotions. ‘OK, the last message, you said there was one more?’

‘Yep.’

‘Let’s hear it.’

For the final time Karen pressed the button on her phone. The voice of a grown man sobbing filled the office. DS Curtis closed his eyes as the sobbing went on, and on. A grown man crying. For a minute, or a minute and a half. It was, in its own way, the most terrifying of all the messages.

The sobbing continued but the message cut out, automatically. The full ninety seconds was used up. The office was silent. Boyle exhaled, long and slow, as if he hadn’t been breathing. ‘Is that your cousin Alan?’

Karen nodded. ‘I think so. It’s quite hard to tell because, well, I’ve never heard him cry before. He’s not … you know, he doesn’t cry like that. But yes, I am pretty sure that’s him.’

‘But why is he crying?’ Boyle said, stupidly. Then he seemed to realize his stupidity and blushed and shuffled papers on his desk, to disguise his embarrassment. ‘All right, let’s reconvene here in an hour.’ He looked at Curtis. ‘How are we doing on the Crowley properties?’

Curtis began his explanation of their progress, combing through every address ever associated with Crowley. Karen knew all this stuff, so she excused herself and made her exit. She breathed deeply and calmly as she walked, fearing that otherwise she would faint. People in the corridor avoided her gaze; or so she imagined. Perhaps they didn’t. Perhaps she just looked slovenly and they’d noticed and turned away in politeness. She was wearing last night’s clothes; after the phone messages she had been too scared and distressed to go home to the flat and get her stuff.

How did Rothley get Ellie to speak Latin?

Back at her desk she sipped water, then clicked on her computer. She had an email to her personal account from an unknown sender. She opened it.