The lie has seven endings…
Slowly, Richard Sharpe had begun to win young Stuart Copperwaite over to the idea that somehow Luc Sante had been connected with the violent deaths of the crucifixion victims all along. Sharpe had spent the morning trying to convince Copperwaite of the weight of the evidence pointing to the old man and minister.
Together now, in a stairwell, Richard wanting no one else to overhear, he forced the issue onto Stuart who had raged at him for having disappeared.
Copperwaite could hardly believe his ears on hearing of the underground trek Richard and Jessica Coran had taken in the company of the RIBA man the day before. He could hardly believe that both Sharpe and Dr. Coran had, independently, arrived at the same conclusion, that somehow St. Albans and Luc Sante had become focal points in some sort of bizarre, twisted Second Coming-Millennium cult. He haltingly said, “I cannot begin to believe that the two of you, M.E. and inspector, as levelheaded as you are, have concocted this incredible theory-not from whole cloth but from cheesecloth, this 'fantabulous' idea,” as he put it.
However, Sharpe persisted, laying out the number of bizarre crossovers and connections and coincidences involving Luc Sante. Someone pushed through the stairwell door just below them, and Sharpe put a finger to his lips, not wishing for anyone to hear Copperwaite's pronouncements. When it became clear that they were alone again, Sharpe continued, saying, “He's bloody protected not only by his sterling reputation, but by the bloody church,” Sharpe barked in ending. “But I've spent hours piecing it together, and there is a major organization behind all the smaller organizations to which each victim has left his worldly goods. It's St. Albans itself. With the help of computer sleuth Gyles Harney, I just got that piece of the puzzle today.”
“That is remarkable,” Copperwaite agreed, astonished.
“The organization and care with which the donations from the victims were masked, that took some expertise in computers, but Gyles managed to unravel it for me. No one can unravel like Gyles.”
“And none can unwind so well as Gyles.”
Sharpe managed a smile, the first he'd shared with Copperwaite since the falling out. “Aye, Gyles likes his pint.”
Copperwaite bit back his confusion, gnarling on his lower lip. “And so, we're caught out. We can't bloody get a search warrant against St. Albans.”
“Nor is it likely we'll get one for Saint Luc's house or office-being attached to the church-either.”
“And in the meantime, what do we do? Wait until another victim shows up in another body of water somewhere around town?” asked Copperwaite, exasperated, pounding a closed fist into the wall.
“We take no bloody action until we can prove what we now merely think, Copperwaite,” warned Sharpe. “Our hands are tied.”
“Unless we can get Luc Sante on tape, admitting to his new cult following, and the fact he's involved in these deaths,” suggested Copperwaite. “And just how do you propose doing that?”
“He seems to've been working overtime to convert Dr. Coran.”
“No, I won't endanger her, Stuart.”
“You're bloody in love with her, aren't you?”
“We share a great deal. Love, I don't know that I would go that far.” Sharpe's inner mind mulled the question over. It hadn't occurred to him to call it love. Certainly, Jessica had not ever used the word, and he had been careful not to, and it all seemed somewhat of a younger man's game, this thing called love. Still, he found himself thinking of her always, to distraction, he warned himself now.
“But it may be our only hope. Have Coran wear a wire, with us nearby. Suppose I'm right?”
“Right about Luc Sante's wishing to win her over to his new world order and religion. I can see that now. He's been building up to it all along, but I daresay she's given him no encouragement.”
“She encourages by her very being, by her engaging him, returning to him, don't you see?” Copperwaite next suggested they walk up a flight for the exercise and so that they didn't appear too damnably suspicious here. Sharpe agreed, and they trekked up a flight.
“By God, Coppers, you are going to make a fine full inspector, one day. That's rather an insightful point you've made, perhaps one I've been blinded to, being… Since I've become so fond of Jessica.”
“If you take it a step further, Richard, if what you suspect Luc Sante of, then it follows that he may well see Dr. Coran as… well, as a perfect candidate for crucifixion?”
“Thanks for that, Coppers. You've the target in the crosshairs indeed.”
“What will you tell Dr. Coran?”
“I'll tell her what she wants to hear, that we're going to move on Luc Sante, one blasted way or another.”
“Then you will propose her wearing a wire device?” asked Copperwaite, standing still now at the top stair.
“Yes, if it's the only way. Can you arrange for the device, the surveillance van, all of it?”
“Consider it done, Sharpie.”
“I must contact Jessica. See if she is willing to become the sacrificial lamb.”
“She's not likely to say no to you, Richard. She hasn't so far.”
“Curb your tongue, Coppers. She's every bit a lady.”
“Meaning no harm, Sharpe.”
“Good, keep it so, and get the surveillance team together, then.”
“Right-o.”
Copperwaite disappeared through the door to their right, while Sharpe took the stairs back down for another exit. He'd decided that Luc Sante had too many friends on the force, too many eyes and ears. He wanted the element of surprise to be on their side when and if he decided to arrest. “Arrest for what?” he asked himself now. “On suspicion of being the Crucifier? On the suspicion the man had wantonly killed five human beings? That he showed a depraved indifference to human life?” Precisely what could he make stick to a priest of Father Luc Sante's standing in the community?
Luc Sante looked up from his scribblings to confront the shadow that suddenly lengthened and scurried across his desk. He half expected to look up and into the eyes of Satan himself, for so many years his archrival and enemy, but instead he found a stem-looking, somber Dr. Jessica Coran firmly rooted before him. “Ahhh, Dr. Coran, amazing you should show up this way. I was just wondering how I might entice you back through request or invitation. I have so enjoyed our talks, and you're such a wonderful conversationalist.” Flattery, she thought, will get you everywhere you want to be, if the target of flattery is weak-minded, weak-kneed, feeble, or strung out on drugs. How many poor slobs had Father Luc Sante lured into his cult through the kind word? “I hardly call what I did conversing, Dr. Luc Sante.”
“And why would you not call our conversations conversation, my dear?”
“You delightedly talked, I delightedly listened.”
“Are you suggesting that it was tutelage? I the teacher, you the student to be filled like some empty container? I hardly think it so.”
'Tutelage perhaps? Perhaps persuasion?” she countered. “My arguments are admittedly persuasive, practiced, I confess.”
“Honeyed, sometimes wondrous,” she characterized his arguments.
He only laughed lightly and smiled. “I masterfully led you, like a talented dancer, through the intricacies of my thinking, but it hardly can be called propaganda or an attempt to change you or your thinking, my dear, at least not without your consent.”
“My consent?”
“Your absolute consent, for without consent, there is no truth in a gesture, be it making love or committing one's soul to the Almighty.”
Any time now, she thought to herself, any time now you can just spew forth your confession to me like the kids in Diamondback had done for J. T., but 1 guess I won't hold my breath on that score. Instead, she crazily, insanely wanted to totally give in to Luc Sante here, now. She wanted to allow his verbal symphony on the eternal truths and the eternal battle of good over evil to manipulate her, to use her, place her as another pawn on his cosmic chessboard.
She resisted, however, in the deepest part of herself, and in turn she began to manipulate him, telling him, “I've actually come about the case. I've a theory you must hear and verify for its veracity.”
“A theory of your making?”
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“Perhaps the victims are not what they appear to be.”
“A victim is a victim, how else should a victim appear?” he replied in caustic staccato.
“If a victim is a perfect victim, as in a willing victim, has she not been persuaded that in becoming a victim, that she, in some small measure, helps in God's cosmic plan for the universe? You see, Dr. Luc Sante, where I'm going with this?”
He looked confusedly across at her where she now sat in the big leather chair opposite him. “A willing victim, a perfect victim to this foul villain who is leaving a trail of blood across London. You are speaking hypothetically, I pray?”
“Hypothetically, yes, but what do you think of the theory of the crime? That there are willing, perfect victims among us, and I suspect the Crucifier has found them in the sick, the feeble and infirm. My autopsy on Burton showed him to have colon cancer, and I suspect the other victims, too, were facing some sort of health crisis, and perhaps found leaving this world in the fashion they did easier than suicide. Suicide closes the gate on eternal life, but sacrifice, now that's another story altogether, now isn't it, Father?”
“Depends upon what it is your are sacrificing and to whom, I should think.”
“Imagine if all of the Crucifier's victims were willing participants in their own sacrifices. It might make sense of this bizarre case.”
“Yes, yes, of course, the literature of religion and cults is littered with examples of just that, yes. I suggested this early on in the case. Richard Sharpe knew of my fears along these lines. I suggested the victims could be participant members of a cult, or don't you recall?”
“Yes, well, the possibility's been staring us in the face for some time now, hasn't it?” She stared for a moment at the painting over his desk of the hamlet and small parish in the English countryside, a place of purity and innocence, the image of peace on earth, his former parish, he'd called it. Then she added, “Victims who voluntarily go to their deaths, imagine it. Imagine the impulse to be a major part of the Second Coming. Certainly, if convinced of this… Well, I can appreciate the longing, the need to be part of something greater, larger than oneself, can't you?”
“Yes, I can imagine it.”
She wondered what she might say to get him to admit to one incriminating word, to state that he had been working overtime in his attempt to mesh with his God, to mesh with Jesus Christ, and in so doing, bring about the Second Coming.
“Do you believe, Father Luc Sante, that a person can be bom into this world a victim, that his or her fate from the day of birth is stamped victim of murder?”
Luc Sante suddenly and forcefully disagreed, shouting “No!”, his fist coming down on his desk like a hammer. “A child is sent from God, and a child demands to be bom, and we are all placed here for a reason, not some reason we fabricate, but a reason He alone fashions. We have no say so in it, and we must listen to our inner voice. No one is created by God for the express purpose of being murdered.”
“What about created as a sacrificial lamb, then?”
He shook his head, considering this. “There is so much evil waiting here for the innocent. True enough, but innocence must face evil, do battle with it, struggle against it. Speaking of which, actually, I've recendy had my eye on Strand,” he said with a conspiratorial whisper, a finger raised to his lips as if telling her to keep it down. “Sometimes, I believe these old walls are filled with gossiping ghosts.”
“What is your concern about Father Strand?”
“Strange business going on hereabouts, that is between here and the street bazaar that I've only recently learned of. You know, I fear that Martin is no saint after all, but the very sort of being I've spent my entire life combating, the sort that disguises himself even in the robes of the church.”
She felt intrigued. 'Tell me more of your suspicions. Father.” She felt hopeful, that if Luc Sante could point her in another direction, it might prove him the innocent victim here, too.
“Well, I've my suspicions now that-God help us-that Strand could be involved in something sinister. Even that he could be this… this awful, godless Crucifier himself.”
This came as a revelation to Jessica and a welcomed one. “What makes you suspect him?”
“I learned of some questionable bills. That's how my suspicions were first fueled. These led to even more questionable donations, death gifts, actually. As it turns out, Coibby, O'Donahue, Burton, all of them have left funds with St. Albans through roundabout means, and it smacks as suspicious as bloody… as can be, you see.”
“How long have you known of this?”
“I only just uncovered the evidence. I was here writing a letter to Sharpe on the matter. Look, look for yourself.”
She crouched forward and turned the paper he had been writing on, and yes, in black and white, he had been asking Sharpe to look into his findings, to determine what connection Strand might have with the murders. “I tell you I am now frightened to be alone around the man. But I did not link the problem at first with murder, of course, undl I telephoned the bank. He's been forging my name to accommodate himself in whatever manner he sees fit. He made a major purchase from an antique store.”
“What sort of purchase?”
“An altar of some sort, an altar I have not seen.”
“Are you certain of this?”
“I inquired. The storeman I spoke to over the phone thought me mad. Said I had paid for it with my own personal check. Forged, you see.”
“His own personal altar?”
“I've not seen or located it. I have no idea where it stands. But this and my curiosity about what he does with his evenings… Well, I'd often wondered over that… and so last night I followed him down to the bazaar near old Crown's End pub on Oxford Street, and there I lost him. You know how crowded Oxford is always with tourists, all the quaint shops there. He disappeared into thin air before me, somehow into the bowels of the underworld there.”
“Underworld? What underworld?”
“There's said to be a series of catacombs and vaults, old cellars left over from Roman times down there below the bazaar. No one goes there of course, rat-infested, perhaps a few homeless living down there, but Martin somehow disappeared there.”
“Shall we go have a look?” she asked.
“By all means, but shouldn't we call for what is it? Backup? As they say in police parlance?”
“If we find something, we'll call for backup. Come on. Lead me to where he disappeared.”
“First, I want to settie your mind about St. Albans.”
She looked queerly back at him.
“Don't deny it. I know you've come to suspect me in all this hideous affair. Rampant suspicion. Isn't it all part and parcel of what you do for a living, my dear?” She sighed heavily, nodding. “Yes, I'm guilty.”
He took her gently by the arm. “Now come along to our dungeons here in the cathedral, so you will put your mind at ease about Father Luc Sante.”
At midday, Richard Sharpe pulled up to the York Hotel in search of Jessica, time seeping away from him like water through a sieve. He'd been unable all morning to locate her to even inquire if she would consider wearing a wire. He inquired with the crime lab, Schuller and Raehael. No one had seen her this morning.
She had left word with no one.
He then tried telephoning her at her room, but he'd been unable to reach her at the York, either.
He had a mad notion she might actually be in her room, sound asleep with earplugs in her ears, or in the shower when the phone had continued to blare. He kept telling himself that she could not be so foolish as to go into Luc Sante's lair again, alone.
He banged uselessly on the door even as he listened for the shower within, but no report of any noise whatsoever on the interior returned to him. Finally, he went back downstairs and demanded a key, flashing his badge, fearful she might be incapacitated inside her hotel room.
When he and the chief of hotel security, a friend of longstanding, entered the room, they found it immaculate, the bed even neatly arranged, he supposed so that the maids needn't work so hard where she might be concerned.
Richard searched the premises for any clue, any sign of where she might have gotten off to when his eyes fell on Luc Sante's book on the nightstand. “Can we trace her last call from here, time and destination?” he asked the security head. “Absolutely. I'll just have to make a call,” Harlan Nelson replied.
The wait felt longer than it was, Sharpe nervously pacing the empty room. Finally, Nelson read the phone number, saying, “The call was put in at 10:40 p.m.”
“That's the Yard, CID, no help.”
“Anything else I can do for you, Richard?”
“No, Harlan, but thank you. Will you lock up here? I must hurry.”
“Certainly, Richard, and my best to your girls.”
But Sharpe had disappeared through the doorway. In the lobby, he ran into Erin Culbertson who slowed him, saying, “Aren't you spending a lot of dme here these days!”
“Out of my way, Erin.”
“Cheeky of you, Richard, not returning my calls!” she called out after him. She then located her assistant who drove the van with all the equipment, and they tried to follow Richard Sharpe through the noonday traffic.
Driving as fast as he dared, Richard imagined all sorts of horrors for Jessica. He suspected that she had indeed gone back to St. Albans, knowing what she now knew, in an attempt to confront Luc Sante with the facts.
Sharpe feared such an act both brash and deadly. He rushed toward St. Albans, but he found himself hopelessly snarled in traffic, some accident ahead. He radioed for Copperwaite to join him at St. Albans, to stake the place out as Stuart had suggested, explaining that Jessica Coran had already returned there before he could get to her to discuss the wire device. “Can you meet me there?”
“Where are you now?” asked Copperwaite. “In traffic at a streetlight. Some accident has gridlocked me in. I'm abandoning the car for a few blocks' walk, and from there I'll catch a cab.”
“See you a block south of St. Albans, then? On Exeter, maybe?”
“Fine, yes, do that.” Richard was off and running.
Using a flashlight, Luc Sante led Jessica to and through. “All the known secret chambers of the cathedral,” as he put it, explaining that the crypt they stood in, at the very bottom-bottom of the church had, in the Middle Ages, become the burial crypt of the early priests who had lived their lives behind the walls of St. Albans.
Her penlight in hand, Jessica felt the breathing, staring walls closing in on her. They'd left the warmth and sweet-smelling incense of rosewood in the cathedral, left its familiar corridors. This place formed a dungeon mired in dme, sodden with dampness. It recalled the mine shaft she and Richard and Tatham had traversed.
“You have a cemetery below the church. How… interesting,” she managed. “I'm something of a cemetery enthusiast, and I've seen crypts and cemeteries in every place that I've ever visited, but nothing like this.” The room opened on a secret chamber where headstones lay in rows on the dirt floor; beneath each a former priest lay at eternal rest.
“In ancient times, it was thought the only way the graves of the holy fathers would remain undisturbed,” explained Luc Sante.
“They were robbed in those days by grave robbers, body snatchers, I know,” she said.
“Actually, the holy men had their bodies hacked up and pieces sold to the superstitious who-”
“My God, why?”
“Oh, but a holy man's finger or even more so his penis could bring joyful bounty to a family who blessed it each night!” Luc Sante laughed. “Human idiocy, but there you have it. Imagine how much people paid out in funds for the purported bones of Christ over the years. His body has been sold over and over for countless generations like some of your swampland in Florida.” Again, his laugh bounced about the silent sepulcher. He then pointed to the slabs with inscriptions. “My predecessors. Their remains still considered as holy as ever.”
Luc Sante next opened another room, using a huge jailhouse key on a large ring, and there he displayed a small crypt. Jessica saw the crypt here as an ancient, sealed stone coffin, like something out of a Robert Bloch gothic novel, where a timeless vampire might reside within.
Here, too, stood walls lined with torches that burned centuries before, now sitting silent under Luc Sante's modem, battery powered, handheld torch, the flashlight sluicing through cobwebs, creating a patina of flying dust particles everywhere. The walls were festooned with dust-laden cobwebs, appeared crumbling as did the stairwell leading to this place.
“I think I've seen enough,” she confessed.
“Not at all. There are corridors on either side of this room. A regular mausoleum. What we hide here is fairly banal, of no interest, and certainly out of use.”
“You've made your point well, sir.”
“We may just as well take this path,” he countered. “It leads full circle to where we entered, and it is no further, and along the way, you can decide for yourself if St. Albans has any other skeletons in her closet.”
They continued along ancient corridors, the odor of earth and mineral-rich water, seeping through the rock face here, filled her nostrils. They passed several dungeonlike rooms, each of which Luc Sante insisted on opening, each sending forth a vile, stale breath like that of cadavers. Cobwebs and filth which appeared to have gone undisturbed for centuries met them at every turn. “Nothing whatever here,” he assured her again. “Still, I can well understand both your suspicion and curiosity.”
“How did you know I was suspicious and curious?”
“It's part of you, isn't it? In your genes, your nature? And me
… I read people. Part of my genetic makeup to read and understand people.”
Jessica felt a sense of calm acceptance and welcomed relief waft over her as a result of Father Luc Sante's simple gesture and his revelations here. She felt badly that she ever doubted the man, felt badly about herself as well, that she could be so stupid as to embarrass herself this way, and she readily discounted all the coincidences when Father Luc Sante said, “I fear my suspicions about young Father Strand, however, to be true. Do you know he brought many people here for solace, such as the twins, you know, the hapless pair you met the other day. He thought they could benefit from both his ministering and my therapy, and perhaps they have. They respond to me because I was once their minister, when they were younger, you see.”
She noted his absolute innocence in admitting this fact. “Father Strand knew this fact, and so he arranged to bring them here?”
“He did.”
“And what about Father Strand. How long have you known him?”
“It seems forever. He was just a boy first time I met him. He readily joined our choir at Bury St. Edmonds at the time.”
“Bury St. Edmunds?” she asked.
“No, no… Gloucester. Edmunds was my second parish. Had to pay my dues to find my way to a London parish. “I didn't want the twins here, but Strand stood his ground, saying they had no other place of refuge, that the world was too big for them. He convinced me to take them in. They live nearby, but in practice, they live here at St. Albans.”
“O'Donahue lived in Bury St. Edmunds,” she told him. “And you never told police of your connection with her.”
“I had none. If she were in congregation there, she did not make herself known to me.”
“But you saw the police report saying where she had once lived.”
“I did, but I didn't think it relevant. I did not know her.”
She nodded, accepting this. “I'm sorry,” she told him, “for ever having suspected you of… of being involved in such evils as… as I did.”
“Nonsense, my dear. It is your job to cultivate a healthy, suspicious, and cynical mind. Without it, where would you be? Shall we go down to Crown's End, to the street bazaar, see if we can learn where Martin has been hiding himself away of late?”
“Do you think it might tell us something?”
“Me, perhaps. I know the young man has been doctoring books. I just don't know why, and this purchase of an altar? I know he's not set up a storefront church anywhere.”
“I suppose it wouldn't hurt to have a look.”
“That's exacdy what I had thought.”
“Where is Strand now?” she asked.
“I'm not sure. He comes and goes pretty much as the spirit moves him, especially of late.”
“Well, then, let's have at it.” It was a phrase she'd picked up from Sharpe.
On exiting the church, just before pushing through the doors, Luc Sante spotted Martin Strand getting into a cab. He pointed at the man in black and said, “It's him-Strand. He's likely off to the bazaar. We must flag down a cab and follow him.”
Jessica rushed out ahead of Luc Sante and waved down a passing cab. They clambered into the cab and with Strand's cab long out of sight, the old man shouted, “Crown's End bazaar.”
“Which end, east or west?” asked the driver.
“Either! Just get us there the quickest possible speed.”
“That'd be east end, then,” replied the cabby.
“Then do it, man! Do it!”
They soon found themselves deposited amid the street bazaar, a series of street hustlers in makeshift cubicles, many surrounding ancient buildings here which by day served as office buildings. Booths and open air stands invited tourists in, the booths three layers deep, some fixed up around ancient pillars. This, the east end of the serpentine bazaar, teemed with shoppers, mostly tourists, but somehow, amid the crowds, Jessica made out the back of Father Strand's head. She feared losing sight of him. Strand moved along briskly just across and down the street from where Jessica stood alongside Father Luc Sante. They froze for a moment, seeing the shadowy, distant figure of Strand looking about before disappearing again into the crowd.
“Where the deuce is he?” Luc Sante wanted to know, waving his cane.
“He's there!” she told Luc Sante, pointing. But Strand's visage, or rather his long golden hair, went in and out of a sea of others. “We need to get closer, or we'll lose him.”
“I'm slowing you down. Go ahead, shadow him as you police people like to say. I shall come along behind you. I don't wish to lose him any more than you do. Go, go!”
She did so, putting all her effort now into keeping Strand in her sight. If anyone at St. Albans was guilty of serial killing, it must be the mysterious Father Martin Strand, she told herself as she became Strand's shadow.
She gazed back once to see if Father Luc Sante followed, and she could see him coming along, slowly but surely. People on the street engaged Luc Sante, called out to him, asked for his blessings. When Jessica returned her gaze to Strand, the man had again vanished. “G'damnit,” she cursed.
Luc Sante, catching up, gasping for breath, asked, “Why have you stopped? Where is he?”
“He's gone.”
“Gone?”
“Vanished.”
“Without a trace?”
“Like smoke… like a chameleon.”
“Oh, and this is exactly where I lost him when last I was here.” Luc Sante jabbed the sidewalk with his black cane.
Circling, staring in all directions, being jostled by the crowd, Jessica said, “Then there must be someplace he is disappearing to, right about here. He can't have stepped into another dimension.”
“Oh, you don't know Strand. He's something of a magician, that one. Had me fooled, and I'm the supposed expert. Let's face it. For all these years, his choirboy looks have gotten him by. He simply is not what he appears to be.”
Jessica began the search through this street-comer madhouse of electric energy, a kind of Sodom and Gomorra of bartering. Every item imaginable could be purchased here, and one of the shops Jessica now stood before must be where Strand purchased his ancient altar. At the same instant Jessica's eyes fell on the incredible array of oaken furniture made to appear ancient. Father Luc Sante, growing excited, pointed it out as well, saying, “This is the shop on the receipt for the altar I told you about, Jessica. This is where he purchased the missing oak altar.”
On entering the shop, Jessica saw that it was filled with an array, indeed the enure spectrum of religious icons and paraphernalia, including crosses as large as the beams on ancient firehouse ceilings. She immediately wondered if Strand had also purchased an ancient cross here, with spikes thrown in to seal the deal? Jessica asked the question of Luc Sante who puzzled it out.
She followed with, “What about having a custom-made brand for the underside of the tongue made here?”
“There is a shop for every taste at this street bazaar,” he assured her. “No doubt there is a shop where this sort of branding is routine, like tattooing now! Or body piercing. Trust me, on this street, anything can be had for a price.”
Jessica could easily imagine it possible here from the evidence of her eyes. For here, staring from every tabletop and street vendor's booth, lay black market items from rhino homs to human skulls, ancient swords too heavy to lift to entire table and chair sets that appeared to have been taken from royal homes, the workmanship that fine and intricate. Here Jessica saw the arcane and archaic, the bizarre and fantastic, including a fellow whose entire stock comprised of branding tools\ Branding irons, both large and small, even miniature in size to create ready-made tattoos without the wait for those able to withstand the pain.
Jessica wondered if the tongue branding iron had not come from this collection of knockabout junk. Jessica saw real family crests for sale, stamps of office, royal seals, extraordinary candles, canes, boxes, paintings, artwork, and sculptures from around the globe; she saw mantels, clocks, children's toys, portmanteaus, chests, armoires, cast iron stoves, kitchenware, pirate ware, fantasy ware, warfare ware, and pinned insects of the most exotic nature, followed by an array of colorful African, handcarved coffins, and beside these, Old World headstones made to order, all this and more within walking distance of St. Albans, and all the variety of wares displayed within feet of one another. Many of the outdoor salespeople had covered ancient doorways, alleyways, and stairwells leading up this way, inviting down that way. The street vendors had built their makeshift booths, like any flea market, wherever they found space, and this section, where Jessica and Luc Sante found themselves, sat squarely in a run-down area of old warehouses that had fallen on hard times many years before, long since abandoned. In other districts, particularly along the Thames, property in ill repair had become fodder for real estate developers following the lead in America to build condominiums and time shares out of old buildings via judicious refurbishing. But this blighted area would have none of that.
So where had Strand disappeared to?
They came up blind at every turn. Every doorway locked, every alleyway empty, every stairwell leading to yet another locked door. Until Jessica found one stone causeway leading gently downward. “This could be where he disappeared to,” she suggested to Luc Sante.
“We should not attempt to go any further alone,” Luc Sante warned. “There's a dark side to Martin that I-forgive me- fell blind to. Me! Me, the so-called expert on evil, and yet I could not recognize it all this dme in my presence in its pleasing form,” lamented Father Luc Sante who suddenly looked old, frail, small, defeated, sunken.
“Exactly right. I saw a pay phone about a block back. Go there and call Sharpe and get the troops here. We may well be onto something.”
“I will not leave you alone here, and you cannot go any further, Jessica,” Luc Sante near ranted. “Do you understand?”
“I'll just wait here undl you get back, in case he shows up again.”
“If you're promising me you will stay put, then I'll make the call, otherwise…”
“I promise. Now, go!”
Jessica watched as Luc Sante disappeared into the crowd around the bazaar. She turned back to the stone walls and stairwell that so caught her attention and curiosity. It was remarkably old, these walls, this stairwell going down into a dark and gloomy place where there might be yet another locked door, but one she could not see. She lifted her penlight from her pocket, the same as she used in the tunnels with Sharpe. She had used it at St. Albans as well, and now here, but the light, as powerful as it was, revealed no door at the long, downward spiral below her feet. Instead, it appeared to be a bend, a cornering which meant the shaft continued onward in a zigzag fashion.
Luc Sante would be some time, she thought. He seemed as genuinely amazed at Strand's sudden disappearance in the area as she had been. He had been certain that this exact area had swallowed Strand up before when he had followed the man here yesterday.
Jessica wondered if she hadn't stumbled on a passage of Roman architecture in the city. She stepped down into the passage which led invitingly, hauntingly into a labyrinth of walls-still Roman in appearance. From here she located another passage going off in yet another direction with its own set of stairs. Strand could be anywhere among the dark corridors of this ancient place.
All the stone stairwells led downward into the bowels of this place. “Damn,” she swore at herself, “why didn't I have Sharpe come along with me?” She continued one step in front of the other, while at the same time thinking, “I've got to go back, let Father Luc Sante know I'm all right and that these walls and stairwells lead somewhere.”
She turned full around, taking a step back toward the direction from which she came, anxious to reenter the bustling world above, to return to street level and the life that abounded there, to see Father Luc Sante's kindly face searching the entryway for her, but a noise from behind distracted Jessica. It seemed the sound of a falling foot, followed by another. Strand? she wondered.
In the dark distance, she could barely make out the form of a man, his back to her, moving steadily onward, downward into this Stonehengelike place.
A rat scurried past, followed by another, each no doubt carrying enough fleas and disease to infect anyone they might bite. She returned to the lip of the opening where she had first stepped into the Roman walls, scanning for any sign of Luc Sante. On seeing the old man tottering back, his cane held high, she cautioned Father Luc Sante, pleading, “Please, remain aboveground and direct authorities when they arrive. Watch for Sharpe.”
“I could only locate Boulte. Sharpe and his partner were unavailable. Listen to me, young woman, you promised me you wouldn't trek down in there alone!” Luc Sante protested.
“No, I promised you I'd wait until you returned before I did anything else.” She whipped out her. 38 Smith amp; Wesson from her shoulder holster, and she felt the comfort of the more compact Browning automatic strapped to her ankle below her pants leg. The. 38 police special alone should be enough to assure Luc Sante of her safety. She said, “I'm not entirely alone!” as she hefted the. 38 between two fists for him to see. “I know what I'm doing. I'm a marksman.”
The gun made the old man start, as if he suddenly saw her in a new light. Perhaps he had never thought of her in relation to a weapon, despite the work she did.
“I'm going ahead with my investigation,” she declared. “Direct authorities when they arrive.” She could hear Luc Sante behind her, still cautioning her to wait, cursing her for being so stubborn and impertinent, a cute word to use under the circumstances, she thought and continued forward into the gaping darkness that rushed up to meet her.
The stairwell dropped incrementally below her feet as she went deeper into the recesses here, and then the stone floor began a sharper spiral, and the walls narrowed in and in, as if moving in on her, wanting to crush her. Soon-her flash signaling each new step-the walls began scratching at Jessica's shoulders like ghouls reaching from vaults to tear at her clothing.
She could no longer see Strand or what had in the blackness appeared to be Strand, but she continued to hear noises, peculiar, odd sounds: the swishing of a robe, the scratch of a heel, the hum of some sort of machine, perhaps the reverberating noise from aboveground traffic, traveling through the rock here. She heard the distinct sound of seeping water, and for the second time today, she saw walls that bled with moisture. Her clothing had long been stained with the mineral-rich water.
The odors assailing her nostrils were those of ancient crypts and dungeons, stagnant places where only things requiring no light grew and festered, died and decayed. Her thoughts continued worrying her with each new step. The noises coming from above and through the rock, like the pulse of electricity-like the blood fuel that drove all of London-calmed to silence now, but sounds rising from below her rose up like awakening gnomes. She imagined the walls coming to life; she imagined the stairwell turning to Jell-O, slick and thick and slimy. She imagined spiraling into an Alice in Wonderland world below her ankles or coming out on the moon and stars, finding herself inside a bell jar. But none of this happened. The walls and stairs held even as she slipped on the now slick surface.
If this is the way to crucifixion at the hands of the Crucifier, she mentally whispered to herself, then how did those older people make it along this passage? Were they carried, dragged along in their chugged state? She recalled no serious bruising that would indicate such a scenario, so then how… A moan, human and low and guttural and pained escaped from somewhere ahead, and at her feet the inclined stairs ended, leaving her on a bed of rock.
Jessica, hearing distinctly human noises-the sound of more than one man-wondered whom Strand had met in this awful place? What was the meaning of the low, animal-like but human wail? Was she at last in the lair of the monster, on the Crucifier's ground?
She hesitated taking another step, but in the near distance, she saw that the tunnel opened on light, flickering, flaming, dancing light. She feared investigating further on her own, but she felt drawn to see precisely what lay at the end of the tunnel.
She inched forward, praying that by now Sharpe, Copperwaite, and an army of police were this moment taking direction from Father Luc Sante as to her whereabouts.
She believed now that she had long since left the rim of this peculiar hell, and that she now stood in the belly of the beast. This horrid place called to mind the rungs of hell in Dante's Inferno, the rungs to which a killer the year before promised to send Jessica. It appeared Satan had had his way with her after all, she now mused, for the Devil had brought her here, full circle, in a sense. Was the same evil that stalked her a year before still at her heels now? she wondered.