The Sixth Soul (23 page)

The memory of Hannah drifted to the front of her mind, a memory she both cherished and had to fight off every day. Hannah, six weeks old, feeding from her breast at four o’clock in the
morning, moonlight spilling into the otherwise dark bedroom, the moon caught like two points of light in her baby’s eyes. It had been a difficult pregnancy and birth, but Hannah had been such
a good baby and had grown into a bright and loving toddler. And then she had died. Two fragments of moonlight, gone.

Sarah imagined the density of her womb filling with life above her pubic bone. She stroked her belly with the flat of her hand, as if reading the landscape of a life waiting to be lived.

Then she heard them. It was the distant hum of a dreadful din. Even in a private moment, the mass will of 10M prevailed.

She hurried back down the corridor where a sixth-form prefect stood at the open doorway of the classroom she’d abandoned, attempting to steady the growing anarchy inside the room.

Teachers from nearby classrooms appeared at their doors.

‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ Sarah pronounced, sweeping past and taking up her place again.

She stared in a manufactured cold rage at the ringleaders, a skill she’d picked up from a pitbull sergeant major she’d served under in her TA days, and which she had mastered over
many years in school. She then picked off the sheep with glances, some of sorrow and some of anger. Silence descended. Then, in barely more than a whisper, she said, ‘Could you close the door
please, Jenny?’

The entire class was looking at her, something she was used to, but today it suddenly felt so strange.

And she had to think: what were they studying?

‘Close your books,’ she said.

‘Mrs Rosen, can we watch the DVD?’

‘Yes . . . Jenny, overhead projector, please.’ She placed the DVD into the laptop and heard the whirr of the overhead projector as the SmartBoard came to life. ‘Where is
God,’ Sarah asked 10M, ‘in the face of evil?’

Ten long minutes later, the bell rang for the end of the lesson and the start of morning break. As the first of the students headed out, Sarah turned on her phone to call Rosen.

‘You have one voicemail message; message one sent today at nine-forty-five.’

The mechanical voice gave way to a human one.

‘Hi, I’m leaving a message for Mrs Sarah Rosen. This is Dr Brian Reid calling from the Haematology department at St Thomas’s. Your notes have been passed on to me by Dr Tom
Dempsey from Gynaecology, who I believe you saw yesterday. I was wondering if you could give me a ring, please. There’s a complication on your blood sample. Erm . . . yes, if you call me back
on my mobile, that might be easier than going through the switchboard.’ He reeled off the number and closed with, ‘Please call me as soon as you can.’

She tapped in the numbers, feeling a rising unease that bordered on panic. A voice said, ‘Yes?’

‘Is that Dr Reid?’

‘Yes, yes, it is.’

‘It’s Sarah Rosen.’

‘Oh, thanks for getting back to me so quickly, Mrs Rosen, that’s really helpful of you.’

‘Is there a problem?’

‘Ah, well, that’s why I’m calling.’

‘Could you tell me what’s the matter?’

‘It’s the blood test you provided at your antenatal appointment.’ He fell silent.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘It could be a number of things. There’s nothing wrong with you as such, but we are a little concerned about your baby, particularly given the . . . your maturity.’

‘Dr Reid, why don’t you stop talking in generalizations and start spelling out the specific problem?’

‘Mrs Rosen, calm down. It could be something and may be nothing, but we have to be sure. That’s why you’ve been passed over to Haematology. The Haematology and Thrombosis
Centre is situated on the first floor, North Wing of St Thomas’s Hospital. Could you be there at nine-forty tomorrow morning? Could you do that?’

‘Why not sooner?’

‘Because this isn’t a total emergency. You’re not in danger of losing the baby immediately. Look, it’s a precaution, it’s Dr Dempsey being “fussy” if
you like. We haven’t got time to send out an appointment card, so if you just wait at the main door of the clinic, I’ll send someone to pick you up, save you having to deal with the
clinic clerks. I owe him a couple of big favours, that’s why I’m pushing you through.’

‘Well, thanks for that, Dr Reid.’

‘That’s OK. Nine-forty, tomorrow morning, Haematology main entrance, first floor, North Wing, just by the lifts.’

‘Couldn’t it be sooner?’ Sarah asked hopefully.

‘I’m already bending the system to hurry you through, Mrs Rosen.’

‘I’m sorry. I’ve got that.’ And she told herself not to worry.

She ended the call. It wasn’t an emergency. But if it wasn’t anything wrong with her, it must be the baby, and that wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

Not in danger of losing the baby
immediately
? To conceive and then miscarry the child was worse than not conceiving. As the bell rang for the beginning of lessons again, she was haunted
by savage disappointment, the old wound of loss made new once more. It simply didn’t bear thinking about but, as she gathered her things into her bag, she knew that she would be able to think
of nothing else as she went through the motions of teaching Year Seven about Moses in the bulrushes.

She walked down the corridor with one thought for company.
It’s my fault if my baby dies, because I’m too old to have him.

A
t Isaac Street Police Station, it was a full house for the five o’clock team meeting. Rosen’s glance swept the room.

‘Two pieces to report to you. First off, congratulations to Robert Harrison. He’s tracked down Paul Dwyer’s last known point of contact, which goes back to the mid-eighties.
Dwyer was a medical student who didn’t complete the course, but it gives him medical know-how and that, boys and girls, ties in very nicely with what we know about Herod’s
methodology.’

A ripple of approval ran around the room, with all eyes turned to Harrison, who stared directly at Rosen.

‘Second, I’m calling a press conference tomorrow morning, that’s Friday, nine o’clock. We’ve got two pictures of the two suspects. On Friday morning, I’m
going to issue notice on one prime suspect.’

‘Boss, was that suspect or suspects?’ asked Harrison.

‘Singular, Robert. We’re issuing limited CCTV footage from the British Library.’

‘Dwyer or the priest?’

‘Dwyer. Let’s look at the pictures of Dwyer from the British Library. These are the ones we’ll release.’

It was an absolutely clear image of Dwyer’s face as he entered the British Library, his expression unemotional. His identity was impossible to deny if you knew him by sight.

‘And this one.’

A shot of Dwyer from the John Ritblat Gallery, at a moment when he had stared directly into the eye of the CCTV camera.

‘There’s no point in shining the spotlight on Flint. Yet. We’ll never get to Dwyer through Flint. We need Dwyer behind bars fast. It’s my theory that Flint’s been
controlling him remotely, through this Capaneus website. If we publish Dwyer plus Flint, that puts Dwyer in a pair, a gang if you like, and that would give him a sense of belonging that would buoy
him up. We don’t want that. If he’s wanted on his own, then he’s just that. Alone. Picked on. I want Dwyer to feel more alienated than he does at present, more alienated than
he’s ever felt. For now, I want him to think there are no other suspects. Let’s assume Dwyer trusts Flint implicitly. I want to drive a wedge between them. If we issue footage from the
British Library where they were both present and there’s no sign of us wanting Flint, then it’ll hit all his inferiority and victim buttons in one go.

‘Here’s the upside. When we warn the public about Dwyer, we’re showing Dwyer that we know who he is. Once his image is out there, experience tells us, forty-eight hours after
the press conference the pressure will start to bite and he’ll make a mistake.’ He paused. ‘Here’s the downside of the ticking clock. According to Flint, he’s got one
more mother to abduct and he’ll have to do it quickly. So, say farewell to your loved ones for the time being, because we’re all on board 24/7. Any questions?’

‘Are you going to show us what Flint looks like?’

‘When are we publishing the priest’s picture?’

‘Monday morning, nine o’clock, second press conference. The images we have of Flint, from the Charing Cross CCTV at rush hour. On the subject of pictures of Father Sebastian, I
received these three from Cardinal McPhee within the last two hours. I intend to issue the third, most recent, image on Monday morning.’

Cardinal McPhee had sent the three pictures on a pen drive.

‘OK, this is Father Sebastian.’

A professionally posed picture of the priest at his ordination appeared on the SmartBoard.

‘This one looks most like him now, though he’s older-looking.’

Rosen then clicked through to another photo – this one less recent, and taken at an odd angle.

It looked like a corpse at the side of a broken road, the hot sun beating down, flies congregating around the bloodied head. But the eyes were open.

‘What happened to him?’

‘This was taken by one of the tourists on the bus that came across him after the beating in Kenya. Look at the next picture. We’re releasing a cropped image of his face.’

Sebastian, cleaned up and wide awake, on a white sheet in a hospital bed, wearing white shorts, his body marked by healing wounds.

There was complete understanding in the silence that greeted the image, but for one small sound. Next to Bellwood, Harrison made a noise in his throat as if something was stuck there, choking
him.

Rosen showed the cropped image of Flint looking directly at the camera. Bellwood took a sideways glance at Harrison who stared at the screen, looked away and then back at the screen again.

‘How’d he survive?’ someone asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Rosen. ‘In the meantime, I’ve already issued an all-ports on Flint and alerted Europol. If Flint makes it out of Britain, it’s the least
we can do to warn our neighbours. They’re distributing the information and pictures of Flint direct from The Hague. We’ve spread his face across the constabularies at home, particularly
Greater Manchester. That is where he comes from. And Cambridgeshire, where he studied.

‘Back to Dwyer now. Someone somewhere must know Dwyer. We’re urging all pregnant women in the London area, if it’s possible, not to be alone. Particularly after his
picture’s published. Any more questions?’

There were none.

‘The usual health warning, folks, but with absolute rigour. None of this goes out of the room.’

Rosen eyeballed each and every officer there, pausing only at Harrison, who had turned pale, as if he was about to throw up on the spot.

——

B
ELLWOOD STAYED WHERE
she was as people drifted away but kept her eyes pinned on Harrison.

He sat at his shared desk, staring into space, allowing the phone to ring and eventually fall silent. Slowly, she moved into the space behind him, out of his eyeline, and walked up to his
seat.

‘Good work, Robert, tracking Dwyer back to the eighties, making that medical link!’ He didn’t move from his seat, nor turn his head. Instead, he just tensed up, as if someone
had given him a huge fright rather than an evenly worded compliment. ‘Are you OK, Robert?’ she asked.

He turned, offering her the most forced of smiles.

‘Yeah,’ he replied.

‘You don’t look well.’

‘I’m fine.’

He got up from his desk and walked out of the incident room as if it were on fire but didn’t want to appear too distressed about it.

On the other side of the incident room the phone on Rosen’s desk rang. Rosen picked up and Steve Lewis from PeCU introduced himself.

‘What’s happening, Steve?’

‘The software’s thrown up a password, but the Capaneus site’s been shredded. There’s nothing behind the door of the New Testament – the entire site’s been
erased. Someone must have guessed we were on to them. The good news is I’ve got a location for where the site’s been run from.’

‘Canterbury,’ said Rosen. ‘Just east of.’

‘How did you know?’ Lewis sounded amazed, as if his unique gem of wisdom had been suddenly devalued to that of a message inside a fortune cookie.

‘Lucky guess. Thanks for trying, Steve. I appreciate all your efforts.’

Lewis hung up. As Bellwood approached, Rosen relayed the news to her.

‘What’s your take on it?’ asked Bellwood.

‘Dwyer’s either had his instructions on the sixth victim, or Flint’s using a different means of communicating. Either way, Dwyer could be abducting a woman right
now.’

A
sleep on and off all afternoon, he lay on his single bed in the monastic cell of his bedroom and dreamed of the woman he’d been forced to
address as ‘Mother’.

Mother wore gloves, long white gloves up to the elbows to cover the track marks that the other saved souls of the Church of the Living Light had noticed from their pews and complained about to
Pastor Jim, who’d ordered her to cover her arms during worship. But Herod could see the fragile network of veins beneath, criss-crossing her inner forearms like a map of the London
underground, a permanent record of her former sins that the long white gloves could mask but could never eradicate.

She wore them to worship, then she wore them all the time, but when Herod closed his eyes at night, all he could see were her needle-hacked veins and arms.

In his dream, she was singing at the top of her voice but all that came out was a ringing sound followed by silence, a sequence that simply repeated. He opened his eyes and snatched up his
mobile phone. He pressed the button to connect the anonymous call – always, always it registered on the display as anonymous – and, as soon as he did so, the caller rang off at the
other end.

The house lay mute. And then, from downstairs, something most unusual happened. For a few moments, he had to question what it was and whether it was really happening.