Murder Path (Fallen Angels Book 3) (26 page)

Adam looks across at us, a wry smile rising on his face as he bends his head, his neck cracking, and says, ‘Welcome to the end game John.  Perhaps I should formally introduce myself.  I am Gabriel.’

Chapter 37

Strange strode up the cellar stairs two at a time, then sprinted along the hallway of ‘Gihon’ and out into the road, circling around the building to his left, the early evening sun casting a red tinge to the clouds crouching low over Morpeth.

‘Did anyone at all come out?  Even if they didn’t look like any of our suspects.  Anyone at all?’  Strange shouted as he ran past the ARO’s at the side of the building, looking frantically into every surrounding doorway.  The ARO’s shook their heads as Strange ran past them and around the back of the building, repeating the same mantra, all six ARO’s responding negatively.  Strange slowed down as he came down the right side of the building, the ARO’s already shaking their heads negatively from hearing his shouted request carrying on the slight breeze.  He walked disconsolately back to the front of ‘Gihon’, where Cruickshank was standing out front, her arms crossed vexed across her chest and a black brogue tapping of the tarmac impatiently.

‘Now that you’ve finished running around like a headless chicken, do you think we could get on with some real detective work?’  Cruickshank admonished harshly, before seeing the tears in the corners of Strange’s eyes.  Her features softened slightly and she approached Strange, uncomfortably lifting a hand and placing it on his forearm reassuringly.

‘I just needed to check, Gaynor, for my own peace of mind.  You are right, this is the worst degree of worse.  What we can do now is get on to the council and see if there are any known tunnels in this area.  Alongside that we will get uniform out immediately to continue the house to house.  They were here two minutes ago, they can’t be far away now.  We also need to bring the roadblocks in and tighten the cordon around the town.’  Strange replied, appreciative of her softened stance.

‘Sounds like a plan.  I’ll call in and ask about the tunnels and sort the roadblocks out, you go and brief the ground troops.’  Cruickshank instructed, immediately taking the walkie-talkie from her pocket and talking into it.  Strange nodded and headed off to the line of officers manning the perimeter.

‘Gentlemen, listen up.’ he shouted on approach. ‘The house is empty, but there was someone in there not long ago, which means they must still be in the immediate vicinity.  I want the odd half of the cordon to immediately start house to house within this radius while the even half maintain the perimeter.  Shields, you are number one.’ Strange finished, tapping Shields on the shoulder as he passed through the cordon, his attention caught by Harris running along the road toward him.

‘Sir.’  Harris shouted breathlessly as he slowed his sprint down, his PPE overalls scrunching noisily.  He stopped in front of Strange, doubling over, dropped his bag on the road, and placed his hands on his knees while sucking in a huge lungful of air.

‘You are going to have to watch this physical exertion Ian, it’s going to kill you.  What is it?’  Strange questioned, reaching out an arm to support his breathless colleague.

Harris straightened up, taking in another deep breath, then spoke. ‘I’ve just lifted a fingerprint off the wheel on the Evoque and entered in into PNC.  We got a match straight away.  It is Jessica Seymour’s.’ 

‘Hold on, hold on.  That can’t be right.  We had confirmation that the DNA found in the car crash was Jessica Seymour’s.  We also had confirmation that the DNA found on Darrie’s body was from a third Eve clone, not Jessica Seymour’s.’  Strange ruminated.  ‘There’s a pillory in the cellar in ‘Gihon’.  Can you go and see if there’s any prints on it.  There is also a pool of blood.  Get that DNA tested as quickly as you can, and tell the lab that needs to be minutes, not bloody hours.’

‘Right away Sir.’  Harris responded, then picked his bag up and slightly less strenuously, headed towards ‘Gihon.’

Cruickshank approached Strange, watching quizzically as Harris trotted past.  ‘What did Harris have?’

‘He found a print in the Evoque.  It is Jessica Seymour’s.  Our evidence tells us it can’t be hers, but that’s what he’s found.  I’ve asked him to see if he can find anything on the pillory.  We now have a CCTV image of her and a fingerprint.  That’s not getting sloppy, that’s trying to tell us something.’  Strange pondered, looking down at Cruickshank’s intently listening face.

‘She’s pointed us towards Adam’s place.  She’s making us aware that she is involved.  Is she trying to help Saul and Angus?  Is that what she is trying to tell us?’  Cruickshank offered.

‘Well if she is, thank fuck for that, because at the minute, they need all the help they can get.  Still no signal.’  Strange finished, his expression concerned.

‘Be patient.’ Cruickshank started, just as Strange’s phone rang, Mr Boombastick adding levity to the sombre mood.  Strange rifled around his pocket and pulled the phone out, hitting answer and putting it on speaker at the same time.

‘Jeremiah Strange.’ he introduced.

‘Ah, DCI Strange, it’s Professor Janice Auld here.  We talked yesterday about Robert Caldwell and you asked me to call if I had any further information.’

‘Hello Jan, how are you?  Yes I did.  I’ve also got DCI Cruickshank here with me.  What have you found out?’  Strange enquired.

‘Hi DCI Cruickshank.  I’m doing well, still buzzing about what you brought to us.  For some reason, we couldn’t find anything on our computer records for Robert Caldwell, so we’ve been digging into the paper archives and have found the student records for him.  Interesting reading.  He was a straight ‘A’, A level student and had an unconditional offer to get into the University.  He studied Biomedicine here for two years and was always top of his class.  His notes show that he had a particular interest in cell biology and was involved in some ground breaking research exploring the possibility of storing external information into the nuclear DNA at the heart of a cell.  The other thing his records show is that he was a very highly strung student, extremely temperamental, very isolated and not at all sociable.  He had quite a few altercations with the ethics committee on where he wanted to take his research, eventually leaving when they wouldn’t back him with his DNA experiments.  We don’t have any records about where he went afterwards.’  Professor Auld relayed.

‘Do you think he could have been involved in what you have seen in the Seymour family?’  Cruickshank asked.

‘No, I don’t think so, he would have been too young.  However, if he is part of the same family lineage as the people who were involved, then it would explain why he was so good at it.  I think he wouldn’t have any misgivings about trying any genetic experiment, no matter what the morality or ethics involved.’  Auld finished.

‘Was there anything in the files about his family?  Mother, father or siblings?’  Strange questioned.

‘Not that I saw.  There’s no one here who remembers him that well to ask either.’  Auld answered. 

‘Thanks Jan.  That has been very useful.  As always, if you think of anything else, just call.’  Strange wrapped up, then ended the call.

‘So John’s potential twin was ever so slightly mentally unbalanced and a genetic whizz kid.  We also know that he is a murderer.  John said this was all about Jacob.  What kind of weird and warped experiments has Adam been trying out on him?’  Strange queried rhetorically, his features creased with the pain of the thought.

‘While the worst is we don’t have them, that’s not the worst it could be.  At least we know they aren’t dead, yet.  So we still have time.  Not a lot I don’t think, but some.  I should have trusted your judgement earlier about John as well.  I can see now that he is trying to find out why and I can see that wherever possible, he is trying to help us.’   Cruickshank offered, with the slightest hint of humility breathing from her words.

Strange raised a silver eyebrow in surprise, a glint of humour entering his pained, furrowed face. ‘Gaynor Cruickshank, that wouldn’t be your attempt at an apology by any chance, would it.’

‘No Jerry, that’s me just being honest and stating the facts as I see them.’ she responded sternly, her eyes lighting up with the fire of affection for a second as she continued in a whisper, ‘I’ll apologise properly later.’ she finished, then turned abruptly and headed back towards ‘Gihon’.

Strange looked longingly after her for a second, whispering to himself.  ‘I think this old codger might need to hang up his brazen braces, because that’s the woman who I want to be my home.’  Strange stepped after her, back towards ‘Gihon’, and caught up with her striding steps beside the front door, just as Harris came out.

‘Ian, have you got something helpful for us!’ Strange queried on seeing the Forensic Examiner.

‘I did manage to get a number of prints from the pillory.  I can confirm that there was another one there for Jessica Seymour.  I also found prints from John Saul, Rebecca Angus and a fourth print that we don’t have on file.  That fourth print was all over the dungeon and all over the tubes with the torsos in as well.  I need to get the blood away to the lab, but it’s going to be half an hour before it gets there and they have a chance to process it.’  Harris relayed.

‘Well, as soon as they have anything, let us know.  I think it will just be for confirmation.  A second fingerprint in the same place with the other three seals it for me.  I think Jessica Seymour has been the clone involved all the way through this, and she has used the other two as distractions.  I’m not quite sure at the minute who she has been trying to distract, but I think that’s been her play.  Now, is that fourth print Adam’s or Gabriel’s?’  Strange offered, ushering Harris past, slapping his back as he went.

‘I think its Adam’s.  What if she found out what Adam was up to, being part of the cult of Unas and involved in killing all of those women.  Was that her play, to try and uncover him, without letting him know she knew?  Trying to get Saul and Angus to help expose him?’  Cruickshank mused.

‘It’s a theory Gaynor, but a little light on facts.’ he teased, before continuing seriously. ‘They all know now that Adam was involved in killing those women.  I just hope that has put them all on the same side in this, and that they can help each other, because right now, they are somewhere around here with two murderers, Adam and Gabriel.  Anything from the Council on Tunnels yet?’  Strange finished.

‘Nothing yet, I asked them to call me when they did.  I’ll give them a chase up, otherwise we’ll just be standing here like prize puddings.’  Cruickshank answered, taking her phone out of her pocket and redialling the last number.

‘Hello, DCI Cruickshank again.  Have you found any plans yet?  Oh you have.  Were you planning on ringing me back, I did say it was urgent.’ she admonished, rolling her eyes towards Strange in frustration.

Strange reached into his pocket and pulled his phone out, clicking on the mapping application.  He looked down at it with disappointed expectation, then scanned his perimeter, taking in the Chantry Bridge to his left, the houses and pubs on the far river’s edge, and the crenellations of the castle behind them.  His phone beeped, a red dot appearing on the map.

‘So ‘Gihon’ was an old distillery, and there’s smugglers tunnels underneath, running under the river, towards the castle.’  Cruickshank relayed with agitated urgency.

‘John’s just activated the tracker.’ Strange interrupted and showed her his phone, the red dot on the map now pulsing and bleeping continually. ‘He has found Jacob, and they are in the Castle.’

Chapter 38

‘When you boil us all down to our basic components, we are nothing but a string of zeros and ones.  On or off.  There or not there.  Then you build a collection of those ones and zeros up.  More than three billion of them, to create a single strand of DNA that lives in a single cell.  Then that single cell splits and creates us.  Every bit of what we become starts with zeros and ones.  On or off.  There or not there.  Chaos becomes simple when you understand that.  Did you know that we have already developed the technology that allows us to store more than seven hundred terabytes worth of data in one gram of living DNA?  That’s something like fifteen thousand High Definition movies, or seventy billion books, all in a single gram of DNA that can live in your body.  That’s more books than you would ever be able to read in a million lifetimes.  Just imagine what we could do, if we were able to store our memories there.’

Adam, or Gabriel, whoever the hell he is, is standing at the glass opposite us, spouting forth calmly and eloquently as I look in confused fury over to him.  Rebecca is beside me, pawing the glass, looking down upon angelic Jacob.

‘Less of the mental bullshit, who the fuck are you?’  I demand, banging my fist into the toughened glass.

‘Do I have your attention Mr Saul?’ he says, in a clipped, precise home-counties accent, the same one he used when I heard him on the phone for the very first time in Featherstone Hall.  I stop banging.  I look at his calm, controlled demeanour and realise that at this moment, there is very little I can do.

‘You have my attention.’ I answer.

‘Excellent John.  Now, what I need you to understand is that at the moment, Jacob is safe.  What I need you to understand is that there are explosives in the altar beneath Jacob, and if you do not do exactly as I ask you, then I will blow us all up.  Do I make myself clear.’ he asks calmly.

‘Crystal.’ I rumble, staring in anger at his patronising face.

‘Good.  Now behind you is an inversion bench.  Rebecca, I would like you to strap John up in that please, the tighter the better.  Just so you don’t feel left out, Eve is going to strap me into a similar bench in here.  Eve, I’m going to unfasten your handcuffs.  Now I know you will probably want to kill me for how I have played you, but you need to understand something too.  One of the triggers for the explosives under Jacob is a tiny transmitter injected into my arm.  As long as the transmitter can feel my pulse, then the trigger won’t set off.  The second my pulse stops, it explodes.  So, kill me, and we all die.  Do I make myself clear?’  Adam asks, while bending down and releasing Eve’s handcuffs.

In an instant, Eve’s hand shoots up, the fist balling, a swift uppercut unleashed that follows her body as she springs from the floor and the fist connects directly with Adam’s chin.  He staggers backwards into the glass behind him as Eve follows through with the other forming fist and thrusts it, with the weight and momentum of her body behind it, straight into Adam’s stomach, winding him.

‘Oh, I’m not going to kill you.  Torture you until all your body parts are broken, yes, but not kill you.’  Eve hisses furiously, her body shaking with rage and coursing with adrenaline.

Adam simply laughs through a deep breath as he stands, not even trying to defend himself.  ‘That is exactly what I want you to do Eve.  Break me, until there are only five things in my body keeping me alive.  Now, I would suggest you strap me into the rack rather than waste your energy on what will be a one sided fight.’ he relays and walks over to the rack as Eve looks at him, then over to us in confusion.

He wants to be restrained.  He wants to be broken.  He wants me to do the same?  There are tubes in here, like the ones I had in my legs as a child.  Rickety rooms are falling apart once again. I look at Rebecca, fear feasting on my stomach, and back my body into the inversion rack.  She starts to strap my legs in, whispering across to me as she does.  ‘What’s he doing John?  He’s trapped himself inside a glass case, is being restrained in a chair and wants to be tortured.  It doesn’t make sense.’

‘He’ll tell us in a moment, he won’t be able to help himself.  But you need to prepare your mind.  He’s going to ask you to torture me, to break me.  Get yourself ready for that.’  I answer, her silent features vehemently disagreeing with me.

‘You asked me who the hell I was John.’  Adam starts speaking, as Eve viciously ties the restraints on his legs. ‘I know what you really want to know is who the hell are you, and what is our relationship.  Much like you, I spent my childhood alone, in a pristine white room, on a pristine white bed, with pristine white sheets.  Occasionally the Nun’s would bring me food, and say prayers over me.  Every day they would take me off to a clinical operating theatre, shining silver, where a doctor would stick needles and tubes into my bones, sometimes feeding things in and sometimes taking things out.  Do you know, I was probably in the next room to you, only a foot thick wall keeping us apart.  But just as you didn’t know I was there, I didn’t know you were there.  But I had a friend who played with me and helped me to while away the lonely hours.  Gabriel.  He was an imaginary friend to start with, just a construct to have a conversation and to play games with.  I got his name from the only picture in the room, of the Angel Gabriel.  As the years passed, and the treatments became more painful, he became more than imaginary, he became part of me, and the person I became when I was in that theatre.  He became an inquisitive soul, wanting to know what they were doing, wanting to get involved, keen to understand why he felt pain.  You might say that I was suffering from dissociative identity disorder.  I didn’t know what that was at the time, but certainly Gabriel became a real personality inside me.  It’s not really surprising, given who our father was.  Right, Eve and Rebecca, there are six tubes on the floor, each with a needle at the end.  You need to force them into our legs, right the way into the bones.  Just look for the injection scars as a guide to where they go.’

So we are related and lived our childhoods a foot apart.  He dumped his agony into a second personality, I locked mine away into rickety rooms.  Rickety rooms which are fully open now, the memories of lying in that theatre, on that bench, feeling the excruciating pain of the needles sliding into my bones burning my mind and overwhelming me.  My body shakes as I see Rebecca raise the first tube, and with every part of the control I have left, that the memories haven’t overwhelmed, I try and hide the fear from her, I try to encourage her.  She rolls up the beige leg of the slacks I’m wearing, exposing the flesh below: exposing the scarred flesh.  She places the needle of the tube over the scar furthest down my shin and looks up at me in imploring agony, shaking her head uncontrollably, her eyes wide in terror.

‘Put it in.’ I sing softly to her tortured emerald eyes, not breaking her gaze, drinking her in.  She doesn’t break our gaze either, an apologetic whimper escaping her lips as she forces the needle in.  Electrical impulses fire every synapse, my back arcing, my limbs shaking, the very breath in my lungs forced out of my wracking body, a muffled grunt escaping with it as I try and subdue the scream my mind wants to wreak.

‘Impressive John.’ I hear Adam’s words sail into my ears, his voice ever so slightly pained, as I tilt my head and see Eve thrusting the needles into his legs.  ‘I remember screaming for what seemed like weeks the first time that happened to me as a child.  Only five more to go.’

‘You said, our father.  There is nothing in the files we found at the Institute that says who we are.  Are we twins, or are we clones?  Who was he?’  I ask, my head turned towards him, his to me, as we look at each other over the still, quiet form of Jacob.

‘I’m surprised you haven’t worked that out yet John, what with you being an excellent detective, fastidious in the detail.  There’s one detail that has been in your face constantly since the first time you met Dr Ennis at The Fielding Institute.  You were never going to find it on file either.  Even secret religious organisations like the Fallen Angels have their darkest secrets, that they want to keep hidden from everyone else.  That’s us.  We are twins John.  From the same biological father and the same biological mother.  Created from one egg that split into two.  Our mother was Clarissa Seymour, the sister who moved to Italy.  What can I tell you about our father, to give you a clue?  I know.  He had two overriding characteristics.  A brilliant artist, a psychopathic killer.  You guess which trait each of us inherited.’ Adam reveals, his voice hardly even changing as Eve thrust the remaining needles into his legs throughout.

While my mind screamed in agony every single time Rebecca pushed one of them into my legs.  But that didn’t stop my mind blazing away down the trails of realisation, to the significance of paintings, to the Angel with the stretched out arms, stigmata on his palms, painted by the lunatic , Frederick Charlton, my father, that hangs in the reception of The Fielding Institute.  But the timelines don’t add up.  He died in the early nineteen hundreds and Clarissa wasn’t born until the nineteen fifties.

‘I can see the penny has dropped John.  Yes, Freddy the Mangler was our father.  I can also see your confusion.  How can we be the offspring of two people separated by half a century?  Simple, they froze his sperm, much like yours was frozen to make Jacob.  Now the questions you should have asked are, why did they feel it necessary to use the frozen sperm of a dead madman?  Why did they feel the need to introduce his DNA back into the bloodline?’ Adam teases, his face alive with the power of control, revelling in the revelations.