The nameless dead

Thirty

It turned out that Apollyon had done his homework. He stopped me frequently as I went through Sara’s murderous career, asking questions that made it clear he knew plenty about her. Although I hadn’t written a book about the Soul Collector’s activities in the U.K., there had been no shortage of coverage in the media. But I probably learned more than he did from the conversation. Apparently there were grounds to believe that she was responsible for at least forty murders in the U.S., Canada and Mexico over the last two years. Given that some of them involved extreme methods and savage mutilation, I struggled to put her in any worse light.

‘So the bitch and her brother killed people in the ways you used in your novels,’ Apollyon said, looking at me as if I was even lower on the evolutionary scale than he was.

‘They were trying to frame me,’ I said uncomfortably. I could see where this was heading. I’d been given a kicking often enough at book festivals over the levels of violence in my novels…

‘Yeah, but you made that shit up. What kind of twisted fuck are you, man?’

‘What, writing stories about murder is worse than committing it? I never came up with anything as gross as the Hitler’s Hitman killings.’

He looked away. ‘My sister was only following the client’s instructions.’

‘Well, she had one sick client. Any idea who that was?’ I tossed the question in as an afterthought-maybe I’d get lucky.

‘Quit fishing, asshole. I’m asking the questions here.’

There was enough emotion in his voice to suggest he was vulnerable. He’d seen his sister die and he’d narrowly escaped death himself. Even an experienced assassin might get shaky.

‘You realize she’ll kill you,’ I said, keeping the pressure on. ‘Sara doesn’t give up.’

‘From what you say, she’s got you in her sights, too.’

‘True enough. But I don’t give a shit anymore.’

‘What makes you think I do?’

Stalemate-he’d lost his closest relative, too.

‘What are you going to do with Rothmann?’ I asked.

‘You can’t have him, if that’s what you mean. The Antichurch has a commandment about heresy.’

‘Does it involve an upside-down cross, blinding, disembowelment and strangulation?’

‘Why? You want to join him?’

‘Not particularly. I wouldn’t mind watching, though.’

‘That could be arranged. But first you’ve got a date with Hades.’

I felt the hairs rise all over my body. Did he mean Hades, King of the Dead, or his underground realm? There was only one thing to be said for the latter-it was where the shades of Karen and our son had gone.

Apollyon laughed. ‘You look kind of eager. Just what kind of lunatic are you?’

I hoped I’d get the chance to show him in the very near future.

The duty doctor reached the interview room a few minutes after Sebastian sent for her. Confirming that Sir Andrew Frogget was dead didn’t take long. Coming up with a cause was less straightforward.

‘I know I have to wait for the postmortem,’ Sebastian raged. ‘Just give me your opinion, Doctor-’ He stared at her ID tag. ‘Parslow. You are a doctor of medicine, not philosophy, right?’

Ellen Parslow glanced past him and caught the gaze of his assistant, who looked embarrassed. ‘I have medical qualifications from Yale, Johns Hopkins and the Navy,’ she said, brushing back a lock of blond hair.

‘So diagnose,’ Sebastian ordered.

‘How was he beforehand? Had he been under strain?’

‘We were questioning him,’ the senior Bureau man said, glancing at Arthur Bimsdale. ‘It’s on film if you want to take a look. He was under pressure, sure, but he seemed to be bearing up.’

Parslow looked at the younger man, who nodded his agreement. ‘No shortness of breath, excessive sweating, redness of face?’

‘No,’ the agents said in unison.

‘Do we have access to his medical records?’

‘We can get that,’ Sebastian said. ‘He’s a Brit.’

‘Right. The pathologist will need to be copied.’

Sebastian raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Obviously. Do I have to get on my knees, Doctor? Give us some help here.’

Ellen Parslow beckoned to Bimsdale and together they lifted the dead man’s upper body from the table.

‘Hold him there, please,’ she said.

Arthur Bimsdale grimaced, but carried out the instruction.

After she’d examined the face, neck and chest, Parslow straightened up. ‘I take it he’d just drunk coffee from that cup,’ she said, pointing to the empty paper container.

‘I…I brought him it,’ the younger agent said. ‘Along with something to eat.’ He looked at the still wrapped sandwich that had been knocked to the floor. ‘He didn’t have time to…’

‘I smelled coffee on his lips.’ The doctor made notes on a clipboard.

‘Good for you,’ Sebastian said. ‘So what happened?’

‘The obvious candidate is heart failure. He’s in good physical condition for his age, but there may have been an underlying problem-we need those records. The sudden nature of this death is interesting. You say he showed no signs of difficulty or discomfort in the period immediately before he collapsed. I would expect there to have been some signs, even minor ones. Same with other potential causes-stroke, anaphylactic shock and so on.’

‘He was alone for about ten minutes before I came back with the coffee and food,’ Bimsdale said. ‘We checked the film before you got here. He didn’t seem to have done anything to himself.’

Parslow nodded. ‘That corresponds with what I’m looking at here-no signs of him having taken anything toxic. Besides, you were both in here with him for-how long?’

‘At least five minutes,’ Sebastian said. ‘The film will show the exact time.’

‘So you would have seen if he was struggling for breath or the like.’

There was a knock at the door and a pair of crime scene technicians swathed in white appeared.

‘All right,’ Sebastian said. ‘We need to clear the area.’

‘The medical examiner’s on his way, sir,’ one of the CSIs said.

Peter Sebastian stalked away, followed by Bimsdale.

Ellen Parslow watched them go. She’d done a course on stress management in the Navy. It looked to her that the Director of Violent Crime was in urgent need of advice in that area, not that she was going to tell the overbearing cocksucker so.

I was left alone in the cell for some time. My watch had been taken, along with my shoes and belt, and I guessed it was at least an hour. I was tired after the long, violent day, but there was no chance of me sleeping. Apollyon had obviously mentioned Hades to put the shits up me. It didn’t have that effect literally, which was just as well considering the lack of facilities. My mind was working overtime. I made myself take deep breaths and tried to get into a self-protective zone. I had no doubt that I was going to have to use my combat skills if I was to get out of the camp in one piece. I tried to remember what Dave Cummings had taught me about mental preparation. That made me think of Quincy-he had reiterated much of that during our sessions. Quincy. He was another victim of Sara’s brutality. I owed her for him, too.

At last, the door opened and a pair of large specimens with buzz cuts advanced on me. My wrists were pinned behind my back with plastic restraints and I was led into the corridor. The concrete chilled my bare feet and gave the soles an abrasive rub that soon became unpleasant. At the end of the passage, we came to a steel door. One of my guards swiped a card through the locking device and it opened inward. On the other side was an elevator with a steel mesh cage. We went down what seemed like a long way. Another sealed door was opened and we walked into the underworld.

‘What the-’ I broke off in amazement as the full extent of the scene in front of me became apparent.

‘Welcome to Hades,’ Apollyon said, coming out of the darkness on the right. ‘In the Antichurch, we prefer to call it Hell.’

Both names were appropriate. The underground area beneath us was huge, with lights flashing in the distance and flares of flame blasting out all over. I made out buildings dotted around, some low and some as much as three stories high, but all of them in a partially ruined condition, as if a tank had driven around firing through windows and smashing against walls. Lengths of timber hung from some of the roofs like gibbets-when I looked closer, I realized that from some of them bodies were dangling. There was a roar and fire consumed a block in the middle distance. I could hear screaming from it, but saw no one emerge. A black-surfaced river wound through the domain, carcasses of animals aground in the shallows. A wrecked car was hanging from a rickety humpbacked bridge in the foreground, much of the brickwork having been knocked away. The horizon in the far distance was bright red, silhouetting ramparts and uneven walls above which smoke was curling. There was a stench of rotting matter much worse than any swamp.

Apollyon smiled grimly. ‘What do you think?’

‘Someone’s been to art school,’ I replied, with a lot more bravado than I felt; I had just noticed that the pale-colored objects in the middle of the river were naked, and incomplete, human bodies. ‘Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, right panel,’ said a familiar voice.

I looked past Apollyon. Like me, Sara was barefoot and the fatigues she’d been given were too big for her. Her face was pale and drenched in sweat. What had they done to her?

‘Correct,’ the bearded man said, apparently gratified.

‘Also, Pieter Brueghel’s Dulle Griet, Jan Brueghel’s Orpheus,’ Sara continued. ‘Plus shades of works by Michelangelo, Memling, the JS Monogrammist, Simon Marmion, Dore, John Martin…’ Sara’s voice faded away and her head dropped. She looked in a bad way.

‘You know a lot about infernal affairs,’ Apollyon said to her. ‘It’s a pity you can’t join the Antichurch.’

I wasn’t surprised that my ex-lover had educated herself about depictions of hell-after all, she did call herself the Soul Collector and her sister had been a practicing Satanist. Despite that, I was still taken aback by what I saw moving beneath us. At first I thought it was fake, some kind of model projected onto a screen, but then I realized the figures and the terrain they were moving through were real-though what did ‘real’ mean down here? Demonic figures with blackened faces, carrying lances and curved swords, were heading into the Hades landscape. They were followed by others, whose forms had been shaped in the imagination of Bosch-diabolical creatures with the heads of birds and fish, all armed with vicious blades and stabbing weapons. Another had the front half of a beetle and the extended rear legs of a frog, and behind it came one with a rat’s head and butterfly’s wings attached to its back. There was only one group missing.

‘Where are the souls of the wicked?’ I asked.

‘Ah, you noticed,’ Apollyon said. ‘Where are the naked humans that the creatures of Hell will torment and feed upon?’ He laughed. ‘Take a guess, why don’t you?’

I looked at Sara. She was nodding slowly.

‘Don’t worry, you can keep your clothes on,’ the bearded man said. ‘We’ll even give you some weapons.’

One of the gorillas stepped up and dumped wooden staves in front of us, two long and two short ones.

‘Oh, thanks,’ I said.

‘You prefer we take them back?’ Apollyon demanded.

‘No, that’s okay.’

‘All right. Now listen up. This isn’t just a turkey shoot-or should I say, a turkey slash and stab.’ He grinned. ‘The two of you have got a genuine chance to get out of here. All you’ve got to do is find your way to the exit at the far side of Hades.’

‘Yeah, right,’ Sara said contemptuously. ‘Like you’re going to let us go.’

Apollyon shrugged. ‘Sure I’ll let you go. As long as you get past the devils and demons.’

‘Oh, great,’ I said. ‘I take it those spears and swords are sharp.’

‘You shouldn’t complain. At least they aren’t carrying firearms.’ The bearded man turned and nodded to the big man with the badge on his cap. This time, I recognized the figure on it, one that had its own relevance to the location. Hercules, the ancient Greeks’ most dynamic hero, had descended to the underworld to capture Hades’ three-headed watchdog Cerberus. I hadn’t seen any other characters from ancient myth in this very medieval hell.

‘Right, take them down,’ the officer ordered.

I was marched to a metal staircase. As I went down, I heard more footsteps. It seemed that Sara and I were going to be working together. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Would she be watching my back or looking for an opportunity to execute me? Maybe I should have been thinking about doing that to her, but I didn’t have it in me. We had enough to contend with, and I had no idea what had happened to Rothmann.

A last door was opened and we moved out onto the damp earth at the beginning of the infernal landscape.

‘Hey, shoes,’ I said, as my feet sank into the mud.

‘Screw shoes,’ the guard behind me said. ‘You see any humans wearing footwear in those paintings?’

This wasn’t the time or place for a discussion about realism in art. The staves were tossed a few yards in front of us.

‘Follow your noses,’ said another guard.

I felt the plastic shackles fall from my wrists. By the time I had picked up my wooden weapons, the door had clanged shut behind the guards. I looked over at Sara. She was rolling up the sleeves of her camouflage jacket. She drew one of them across her forehead. I noticed how thin her forearms were. Surely she hadn’t given up the daily sessions in the gym that she had started in London.

‘Any idea where we should head?’ she asked, peering ahead.

Loud barking broke out to the right. I listened and thought I could make out three dogs. Either Caesar had a couple of friends or Cerberus was lying in wait for us.

‘Let’s go to the left,’ I said.

‘Why not? Capitalism’s dead and buried, after all.’

I raised an eyebrow and set off through the mud, glancing up at the figures on the viewing platform where we had been.

‘See you at the far side,’ I shouted. That provoked raucous laughter. Screw them, I wasn’t giving up without a fight.

As we approached the first pair of buildings, I saw a long spear wave above the roof and heard muffled commands.

We were expected.