Acid Lullaby (28 page)

Sauerwine shook his head. ‘She’s on tranquillizers. She’s out for the count. To be honest, I was about to head up to Fulford Heath and see if I could help out. Hospitals depress me.’

Underwood nodded. ‘I’ll stay here for a while.’

Sauerwine collected his notebook and radio from Mary’s bedside table and left the ward. Underwood tried to focus on the basic facts of the case. He found the silence of the ward helpful. So far they had found six bodies. Five had been decapitated. Victims had been both male and female and of various ages. Both Farrell and Harrison had suggested the killer drove a large expensive car. The tyre tracks on the heath appeared to confirm that he drove a large vehicle. That made sense to Underwood. There was one anomaly Underwood recalled: all the bodies had been found outside except Jack Harvey’s. Jack had been attacked in his own home. The killer had taken pains to burn all of Jack’s records. Had he been trying to erase Jack or his own previous identity? Underwood was becoming increasingly convinced the killer had been one of Jack’s patients.

Underwood had been aware that Jack was living beyond his means: a beautifully furnished house and office, a new expensive car. Perhaps Jack had been doing private consultations in addition to his police work. It was against regulations but an understandable lapse. There was a possibility that the killer was wealthy. Had he been paying Jack inordinate amounts for treatment? Underwood’s mind collided with a brick wall. It made no sense. Why would anyone financially secure pay a police psychiatrist for treatment when they could afford specialist attention? Through the dim light of his exhaustion, Underwood saw a possible reason.

Mary Colson shifted slightly in her bed. Underwood wondered if Julia had lit a candle for his own mother as she had promised. He felt a pang of guilt that he had not done so himself. When he had tried on previous occasions he had not found it a helpful process. It had made him feel like a hypocrite. He leaned his head back against the wall and, tired of his own mind, drifted into a light sleep.

He
dreamed
of
Julia.
She
was
in
church.
It
was
dark.
He
was
blowing
out
candles
as
she
lit
them.
They
had
walked
down
the
aisle
together.
Julia
had
knelt
in
front
of
the
altar.
He
could
hear
a
baby
crying.
He
looked
around.
The
noise
grew
louder.
He
looked
again.
There
was
a
baby
lying
on
the
altar
table.
He
walked
up
and
considered
the
child’s
face.
The
baby
was
screaming,
gasping
away
its
life.
Alison
Dexter
was
standing
beside
him.
She
was
screaming
too.

4th May

He awoke at 6a.m. and realized he had been crying. His eyes stung. He looked down and saw Mary Colson’s hand resting on his. She seemed to be trying to wake up: her eyelids struggling to roll back the heaviness that the tranquillizers had given them. Underwood leaned forward.

‘Mr Underwood?’ her voice was dry and almost inaudible.

‘Hello, Mary,’ he said softly.

‘Did you remember the keys?’

Underwood nodded.

‘Your friend wants to know about the keys.’ Her grip on the top of his hand tightened slightly as Mary tried to wake up.

‘I know, Mary, you told me.’

‘Good,’ she whispered. ‘He’s been talking about a box.’

Underwood felt his hackles rise in fear. ‘Jack told me to put things – things that made me sad – in a box.’

‘He wants you to open it.’ Mary’s eyes were open now. She was becoming more alert and aware of her surroundings. ‘I’m in hospital.’

‘You fell over yesterday. You banged your arm and your head. Do you feel all right? Can I get you anything?’

Mary smiled faintly. ‘I’d like a cup of tea.’ She patted his hand softly. ‘You’re a good friend.’

Underwood stayed until Mary had been served breakfast. He decided to refrain from informing her about the bodies on Fulford Heath, judging her condition to be too weak. After Mary had sipped her tea and made a half-hearted effort to eat some porridge, she lay back on her pillows and drifted back to sleep. Underwood left a brief note saying that he would return to see her in the evening. It was by no means an act of entirely selfless generosity. Mary’s description of the location of the bodies was uncannily accurate. Underwood realized that the old lady still provided the only real insight into the investigation. However, there were other issues drifting through his consciousness. As he drove away from the Infirmary, Underwood’s mind inevitably came to focus again upon his own mother. Ten years before he had driven from the same hospital never to see her again. He knew that in many ways he had been a frustration and a disappointment to her: particularly, his failure to produce children. Their relationship had become fraught in the months leading up to her death: as the cancer had taken control of her body, Elspeth Underwood had become irrational and spiteful. He knew she had been in great pain and he remembered the terror that had grown behind her eyes. Her fear had been translated into bitterness. She had criticized him for ancient indiscretions; accused him of deserting her if he arrived late for visiting time at the hospital; crushing any sympathetic comments with savage fatalism. His rational mind had long accepted and tried to box the memory. However, Underwood knew in the darkest, most childish and selfish part of his soul, that he still resented the manner in which his mother had left him.

Mary Colson’s hospitalization and her warmth towards
him had come as a sharp contrast. She had called him her ‘friend’. The simple gesture had a deep reverberation with Underwood. He had come to believe that with the collapse of his marriage and his lapse into depression he had lost the ability to build new friendships. Mary’s affectionate nature engaged him. She had accepted the inevitability of her death stoically: ‘I’m not afraid of dying,’ she had told him in reference to her vision of the dog-man, ‘but not like that.’ Underwood wondered whether his own mother might have felt the same way about her own disease but merely lacked the courage to say it. He had always been the focus of his mother’s love as a child. Perhaps her bitterness stemmed from the fact that the son she had worshipped had been unable to save her. The thought filled him with pity.

Underwood made a sudden decision. He left the ring road and drove directly into New Bolden town centre. He passed the grey carbuncle of the police station and headed south on Argyll Street to the residential district known locally as the ‘Hawbush’. Here he parked outside St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church. He sat quietly in the car for four or five minutes before going inside.

The church was a plain brick structure built in the early 1950s. Underwood pushed open the door. He tried to stymie his usual feeling of sceptical resentment by focusing on the job in hand. The church was being prepared for mass. Underwood wanted to be well clear of the area before any hocus-pocus began. He asked a woman arranging flowers on the left-hand side of the nave for directions to the devotional candles. He found the stand almost immediately, noting that none of the candles had been lit. He checked his watch: it was still early. The fact that his candle would be the first of the day made Underwood feel even more uncomfortable.

He struck a match, enjoying its gratifying flare, and lit a single candle. Developing an appropriate thought to accompany the act proved difficult. Instead, Underwood found himself recalling his mother’s face on his wedding day. It had been a curious mixture of pride and despair: pride in her son’s happiness, despair at his coming of age. The candle
flame glowed in front of him. The priest drifted into Underwood’s field of vision, preparing the altar table for mass. Underwood remembered his embarrassment at being forced to take communion during his childhood, loathing the hypocrisy of undertaking an act that meant nothing to him. It had pleased his mother though. The priest smiled over at him. Underwood nodded an acknowledgment and decided to leave.

St Josephs was attached to a nearby Roman Catholic School and as Underwood headed back towards the west door, he noticed a display created by the children along the wall. He found himself slowing slightly to absorb their brightly coloured renderings of biblical stories and characters.

‘My
favourite
Saint
is
Saint
Francis,’
one piece began,
‘because
I
love
animals
and
Saint
Francis
could
talk
to
them.
I
have
a
dog
called
Mac
and
a
hamster
called
Chuckles
and
I
speak
to
them
all
the
time.’

Underwood smiled. Another display exhibit was entitled
‘Twenty
Questions
About
Church’.
He read on,
‘What
is
mass?
Mass
is
very
important
in
the
Catholic
Church.
It
commemorates
the
Last
Supper.
We
believe
that
the
bread
and
wine
turns
into
the
blood
and
flesh
of
Jesus
Christ.’

Another child had copied out an extract from a religious text in beautifully flowing calligraphic writing:
‘For
not
as
common
bread
and
common
drink
do
we
receive
these;
but
in
like
manner
as
Jesus
Christ
our
saviour,
having
been
made
flesh
and
blood
for
our
salvation.’
Underwood had seen enough. Churches and hospitals were his two least favourite places and he had supped full of both. He hurried back to the car, shivering in the cold morning air. Unlocking the door, Underwood began to assimilate some of the extracts he had read and a terrible logic started to emerge.

The killer of Harvey and Stark had injected them full of some curious mixture of drugs before killing them. These drugs induced hallucinatory experiences and visions. Underwood had already sensed that the drugs were not designed solely for the purpose of killing the victims. There
were much easier ways of achieving that. He reasoned that the drugs were intended to change the victims’ perception of their environment or their captor. Did the killer want to be changed in the perception of his victims into someone or something else? Dr Miller had mentioned that certain chemicals in the drugs had been used in the past as truth serums; that they made the taker vulnerable to suggestion.

Underwood thought about the Catholic Mass. The idea of change was important to several religious belief systems. In the Catholic Mass the communion bread and wine is thought to physically convert into the flesh and blood of Christ:
‘Jesus
Christ
our
saviour,
having
been
made
flesh
and
blood
for
our
salvation.’
Were the drugs injected into the victims as some bizarre Eucharistic ritual? Was the killer enacting some form of transubstantiation, changing himself in the minds of his victims from the mundane to the spiritual? Or by forcing the mixture into their bodies was the killer compelling them to share in his vision, to become one with him?

It didn’t quite hang together but Underwood sensed he was close to discovering something. The Holy Communion was a passive act where the receiver willingly takes the Eucharistic elements into their body. The killer’s actions were aggressive. He was forcing his will onto his victims. He was injecting them with his drugs forcibly and presumably in the face of resistance. It was a penetrative act: a rape of the perception. For the first time Underwood began to see the crimes in a sexual context. The killer was forcing his own vision into the minds of his victims. He wanted to create change; to forge a new mode of perception. Underwood felt a cold rush of anxiety as he thought of Rowena Harvey. He was beginning to see why the killer wanted to keep her alive.

The key was in the nature and history of the mixture. The killer had created a specific fluid that he believed was somehow synonymous with himself. During their meeting in the botanical gardens, Adam Miller had mentioned that the Amanita Muscaria mushroom had been used recreationally in ancient human civilizations. Underwood suddenly realized that he needed to find out how and quickly.

He could feel the pieces of the puzzle were dropping into place. The killer was most likely a patient of Jack’s: not an official police referral but a private client. The killer was wealthy and drove a large jeep or people-carrier. He was trying to change the perception of his victims: make them alter the way he appeared to them. The Amanita Muscaria mushroom had been deliberately selected by the killer. The mushroom had a long history and was closely interlinked with certain ancient civilizations. And the killer was collecting heads. He now had at least five. He had completed his countdown. Underwood started his engine and accelerated away from St Josephs.