The Sixth Soul (22 page)

‘How does that make Herod go out and kill women and their babies?’ asked Lewis.

‘Directly, it doesn’t. That’s where you come in.’

She pointed to the screen of Lewis’s laptop, at the word ‘More’.

He clicked ‘More’. Black screen. From the centre, a blossoming red light from which appeared the words: ‘ To read the New Testament, type in your password,’ alongside a
box.

‘And the password needs cracking?’ asked Lewis, looking at Rosen.

‘We believe this is where Herod’s been getting his ideas. Can you help?’

Lewis reached into his pocket and took out a pen drive. ‘Come back in, say, half an hour.’

——

L
ATER,
R
OSEN RETURNED
to his desk, where Lewis and Jones were in tight discussion.

‘How’s it going?’ asked Rosen.

‘I suspect this site’s got some serious encryption software,’ said Lewis. ‘It kind of reminds me of the NSA mainframe.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s the IT used by the US government’s intelligence gathering services. It’s not using biometric screening, fingerprint or retinal access, but whoever’s put this
together is a serious maths head. It’s running its security off a mutating algorithmic program. NSA security programs change on a daily basis. This is changing every few minutes. Devilishly
clever.’

‘Is there anything you can do?’ asked Rosen.

‘Yes.’ Lewis pulled up a briefcase and took out a black pen drive. ‘Something I’ve been working on for another department. It’s not quite finished but it’s
operational. We’ll run it from my laptop. It’ll watch your Capaneus website and as soon as a user logs on with a password, it’ll relay that right back to my laptop. The moment
that happens, it’ll send me an alert and I’ll be straight on to you. Then we’ll be able to get into the New Testament.’

Rosen thought about the website and the individuals who would have access to the New Testament of the Capaneusian Bible. There was one in particular.

‘In that case, we’ll know exactly when Dwyer’s online.’

H
erod.

It was all drifting away from him. Beginning with time, the length of hours and the value of calendar days, the quality of night and the shifting colour of daylight.

A pulse of doubt beat within the heart of certainty.

Fifteen hours lying on the floor at one stretch, with the clearest conviction that he had merely stumbled and paused to catch his breath but would rise again in a matter of seconds, pushed on by
the awful thought: Alessio Capaneus had all been a dream.

The thought caused an acute pain in his chest and he imagined his heart breaking, literally snapping like a dried-out husk.

He pulled himself up from the floor.

‘I believe in Capaneus, the One True Prophet of the Lord Satan . . . I believe . . .’

Leaving up the hatch to the basement – his fear of confined spaces had returned – he walked backwards down wooden steps into the subterranean space where the hoist remained ready by
the table in the dim artificial light, central to the trio of windowless rooms.

The mobile air-conditioning unit hummed, a reassuring sound that seemed to murmur to him, ‘It’s real.’

He opened the half-door on the wall facing the staircase. Beyond, it stank of earth, the wetness of a world fit only for worms and crawling creatures. The farmer had made a good job of
compacting the walls of the tunnel with sand and cement to produce a hard-finished surface that made it possible to scramble to the manhole on the surface of the farmyard without pulling away
handfuls of soil and dead roots. But on the three occasions he’d made the journey from basement to farmyard through the tunnel, he’d hated acting like a sightless bug.

He closed the half-door on the tunnel and wandered into the meditation suite where the sensory deprivation chamber remained sadly idle, minus Julia, a coffin for the living without its mentally
unravelling carrier. It was strange how the hollowness inside him shrank when the carriers were present, strange how it swelled again when they were gone.

He needed the comfort, the total affirmation that his efforts had not been in vain, that he had laboured well in the service of Satan under the guidance of Alessio Capaneus.

So he walked into the room where the souls were trapped.

He took his first lingering look at Julia’s foetus, Baby Caton. In spite of the waters breaking, he’d been the easiest to deliver. Herod felt a rush of pride in his growing surgical
skills that blew out the fire of doubt that had burned him as he lay upstairs with his face to the floor. His doubts in Capaneus now seemed as ridiculous as the fear of his mother’s footsteps
in his nightly dreams.

On a wide shelf on the wall, six cylindrical jars were set out in a line, filled to the brim with formaldehyde. In five of the six jars, there were foetuses.

What was real was before his eyes. The five souls awaiting sacrifice, and the one empty space awaiting the sixth soul.

He pursed his lips at Baby Caton and wondered, what song was in his soul?

And, he wondered, what songs would burst forth from these souls when they were sacrificed?

He moved to the sixth and final jar, stared into the formaldehyde awaiting the sixth foetus, the sixth soul, and, in the dim light, saw his own face reflected in the curve of the glass, his
features blurred, his doubts dispersed.

R
osen stared at the faceless model construction that John Mason had created based on the ear print and the single hair found in the loft of Julia
Caton’s house. He pored over the range of images of the man who he assumed was Paul Dwyer, captured at the British Library, pictures of him alone as well as with Father Sebastian.

Rosen needed to think very carefully about which images to release, and in what order. Getting the choice right was a matter of life and death.

He looked at the one of Dwyer, enraptured as he left the toilets, then at the image of Dwyer, dead-eyed and alone on his way into the British Library.

Rosen glanced at the clock on the incident room wall: a quarter past ten. Rosen felt gluey with tiredness; it really was time for home. But he stayed where he was, gazing at the images, racked
by choice.

One by one, he separated all those of Flint and moved them to the edges of his desk so that they were out of his eyeline, leaving only those of Dwyer on his own: in front of the faceless,
eyeless, mouthless, soulless model created by Mason.

And, as time moved on towards eleven o’clock, Rosen came to a decision about the release of the CCTV images.

The strategy would be simple.

He would isolate Dwyer. He would use the imagery to make Dwyer feel alone.

‘Sir!’

Rosen was stirred from the depths of his thoughts by the unwelcome sound of Harrison’s voice. He looked up slowly.

‘You’re working late, Robert.’

‘You gave me something I could really get my teeth into. The Church of the Living Light.’

Rosen noticed that Harrison had a file of papers in his hand, as thick as a telephone directory.

‘Sit down, Robert.’

Harrison placed his papers on Rosen’s desk and wheeled over a chair.

‘The Church of the Living Light, then, Robert?’

Harrison sat down, his gaze meeting Rosen’s directly.

‘Lots of stuff on the internet to begin with. In a nutshell, it was a cult dressed up as an evangelical Christian Church. The head guy was a Pastor James “Jim” Walsh. To begin
with, all seemed right as rain: lots of good works in the East End of London, a growing congregation, soup for the hungry, solace for the lonely, nothing to alarm anyone. Pastor Jim, however,
didn’t have a single qualification to run a church; he was a self-made minister who’d actually ordained himself on the sex offenders’ wing at Durham. I managed to track down a
woman called Jane Rice, who coordinates Unlock, a charity for survivors of cults. She’s elderly now, but she’s still all there.’ He tapped the side of his head with a patronizing
calm. Rosen thought,
You’ll be old yourself one day
.

Harrison reached into his file and pulled out the top ten sheets.

‘This is a transcript of the whole interview I conducted with her this afternoon.’

‘How’d you get it typed so quickly, Robert?’

‘I did it myself, sir.’ Harrison handed the pages to Rosen. ‘I’ve highlighted all the key information.’

‘Thanks. How did you get on with Jane Rice?’

‘She’s not in touch with Dwyer now. But she knew what was going on with him until round about the mid-eighties. His mother was being counselled through Unlock. She was on a
combination of all kinds of prescription medication because of the hammering she’d given her body when she was a junkie. She died suddenly; the coroner’s verdict was misadventure, as
she’d taken too many pills within the space of twenty-four hours. I’ll follow that one up first thing tomorrow. Anyway, Paul Dwyer was drummed off a medical degree course at around the
same time as Mummy died. He’d done two years training as a doctor at UCL Medical School, but this is where the trail goes stone-cold. After his mother died, Paul goes out of Jane’s
sights but she did make one interesting observation. His mother was loaded; she’d inherited a small fortune. Paul in turn, no doubt, inherited all that cash. Do you want me to follow up his
career as a medical student, or are you going to pass that one over to Bellwood or Corrigan?’

‘You’ve done excellent work here, Robert. Why should I take it away from you after you’ve done so much?’

‘You don’t trust me, sir.’

‘Haven’t we been here before, Robert?’ Rosen pointed at Baxter’s door. ‘He’s trying to find failure in me and you’re feeding him; that’s why I
don’t trust you.’

‘I didn’t set out to become a snitch when I joined the Met.’

‘So what changed?’

‘Baxter. He made it very clear to me that if I didn’t act as his “eyes and ears”, he’d make sure my career didn’t progress. If I acted as his spy in the camp,
he wouldn’t get in my way. I just want you to know, it’s not personal. None of it’s been personal.’

It sounded like vintage Baxter, exploiting the vulnerability of those weaker than himself to further his own political ends.

‘Why didn’t you come and tell me this at the time it happened?’

‘With respect, what could you have done about it? Baxter’s in the process of giving you a public spanking. But I’d like to be a part of this team, I’d like to feel like I
belong here.’

‘Leave it with me, Robert.’

Harrison stood up and extended his hand. ‘No hard feelings,’ he said.

Rosen shook Harrison’s hand and released it as quickly as possible.

‘One other thing,’ said Harrison. ‘I earwigged some of the guys talking about a missing page in a book of poetry in Father Sebastian’s bedroom. William Blake’s
Songs of Innocence and Experience
. I spoke to Eleanor Willis and got the details from her of the edition, publisher – Everyman Classics – year of publication 1973; missing
pages twenty-three and twenty-four. I tracked it down on Abebooks and spoke to a book dealer. The two missing poems were “The Tyger” and “The Sick Rose”. I printed off a
copy of “The Sick Rose” from the internet.’

Harrison placed a copy of the poem face down on Rosen’s desk.

‘I’ll see you in the morning, sir. No hard feelings.’

‘Good work, well done.’

Harrison smiled and walked out of the incident room. When he had gone, Rosen turned the page over and read quietly to himself.

He pushed the poem as far away as possible and tried to contain the unease that made his spine tingle in a cold eruption of goose bumps.

He rubbed his eyes, grateful for the fact that he had an alternative document to look at. He started to read the transcript of Harrison’s interview with Jane Rice. It was single spaced and
highlighted neatly with orange marker pen. He flicked forwards to the account of Paul Dwyer’s failed medical career. Rosen’s pulse quickened: Paul Dwyer had medical know-how. It was
enough, more than enough.

T
here was no good time to experience morning sickness and the first lesson with 10M on a cold, wet spring morning was proof of this. The
class’s collective heads were bent over multiple copies of the GCSE RE textbook
Faith and Action
. Sarah took out the DVD that went with the textbook, her stomach lurching violently.
She gripped the edges of the table and fought down the urge to throw up, but it was a losing battle.

She flung open the door of the classroom.

‘Mrs Rosen?’ a pupil called after her.

She hurried to the pupils’ toilet at the end of the corridor, clenching her teeth and holding her breath in an effort to keep control. She made it to the nearest cubicle before being
violently ill.

Sarah rinsed out her mouth with water and splashed her face, which was drawn and red with exertion. In a mirror that normally reflected girls on the cusp of womanhood, she saw a woman in middle
life, but smiled and said to her reflection, ‘So, you’re not too old to have a baby after all.’ And she didn’t care if 10M were walking on the ceiling. She stroked her belly
and laughed out loud.

Her head throbbed. Still not knowing if she was going to be sick again, she stared into the mirror and smiled again.