Acid Lullaby (36 page)

Inside the house, Dexter stopped in her tracks. ‘Did you make that out?’ She asked Underwood after Dawson’s call for Evans had spluttered through their radios.

Underwood wasn’t listening. They had found the kitchen. He shone his torch into the huge work area. There was rubbish and soil everywhere. Broken glass crunched under foot. Dexter joined him and looked at the scene of chaos. She noticed there were two blue cool-boxes sitting amidst the detritus; she kicked the lid off one: it was stained black with blood. Underwood found the same residue in the second box. On the work surface was a pile of mushrooms. Dexter looked them over but didn’t touch anything: she already had bad dreams.

They left the kitchen area and after checking the remaining utility rooms in the basement, headed back upstairs to the ground floor. The smell was powerful again, twisting and nauseating. Underwood gestured Dexter towards a drawing room. She looked inside. Rubbish spewed from the fireplace across the floor. Dexter’s torch also highlighted audio cassettes scattered around the room.
She jumped as her foot kicked against something hard; she looked down as a Rubik’s Cube rolled awkwardly away from her.

Underwood moved further down the main corridor, pushing open a heavy oak door. His eyes took a moment to adjust the darkness. The room stank: Underwood knew he had located the source of the smell. He froze as he heard shuffling and swung his torch towards the far end of the room. There his torchlight picked out the shape of Rowena Harvey’s naked body strapped to a table with rope.

‘Dex!’ he shouted, stumbling across the room towards Rowena. Rowena Harvey’s eyes were alive with terror before she recognized Underwood above her. He untied her hands from beneath the table and tore the gag from Rowena Harvey’s mouth. She was hysterical with panic. Dexter entered the room and hurried over. She sat Rowena Harvey upright on the table, removed her own jacket and placed it around her bare shoulders.

‘Rowena,’ Underwood said, ‘it’s me. Look, it’s John.’ Rowena stared at him without any obvious sign of recognition. ‘Where is he?’ Underwood asked. ‘Where is the man who took you?’

Rowena Harvey shook her head slowly, her entire body quivering with fear.

‘Let’s get her out of here,’ Underwood ordered. ‘She needs a doctor.’

‘Agreed.’ Dexter stepped back then suddenly span around clutching her neck. ‘What the fuck was that?’

‘What?’ Underwood snapped as he helped Rowena Harvey to her feet.

‘Something just fucking landed on me.’ She looked at her hand and saw a dark circle of blood. ‘Shit, I’m bleeding.’

Underwood suddenly shone his torch up towards the ceiling. Jack Harvey’s severed head stared back at him. Dexter’s torch then illuminated Sarah Jensen’s head, also hanging about a metre from the ceiling directly behind Jack’s. Together, the two narrow beams of light traced the grisly line back across the room. Five human heads dangled
on ropes from the ceiling. There were five heads hanging in a line and staring directly at the spot where Rowena Harvey had been tied down, like coins aligned on a table.

‘Oh my God!’ Dexter breathed.

‘We need help,’ Underwood replied. Staring up at the ceiling was making him feel nauseous, as if he was seeing the sky swirling above him.

Dexter unclipped her radio and brought it close to her mouth, her eyes never leaving the ceiling.

‘Evans. This is Dexter. Have we got an ETA on the support yet?’

There was silence.

‘Evans or Dawson. This is DI Dexter. Respond please.’

Static crackled from the radio. Then a voice she didn’t recognize hissed through the white noise.

‘Under the milky ocean,’ came the icy reply, ‘something is not quite right.’

Dexter felt a rush of fear and flashed her torch around the room.

‘Time to go,’ said Underwood.

They helped Rowena Harvey to the door and Dexter checked that the corridor was clear before they crossed the entrance hall to the front door. It was locked. Dexter frantically rattled at the handle.

‘It’s jammed, for Christ’s sake,’

‘Try the windows.’ Underwood looked around him, shining his torch into the gloom, trying to anticipate the ambush that he knew was coming.

High above them, leaning over the oak banister on the first floor landing at the head of the grand staircase, the Soma looked down on his people in amusement.

‘They’re nailed shut.’ Dexter gave up heaving at the sash windows. ‘We’ll have to smash them. I need a chair or something.’

The Soma stepped down from heaven, dressed in a tall hat bedecked with jewels and a belt of moonlight glitter. He slipped gently through the clouds and entwining spirits towards the chaotic earth. He passed his father halfway
down the staircase, ignoring the hideous kink of bone where the old man’s neck had broken. He floated towards the noise, clutching the elixir of immortality in his hand.

‘In the library,’ Underwood instructed Dexter. ‘There’s a chair behind the door.’

Reluctantly, Dexter hurried back through the darkness of the corridor. Underwood remained with Rowena Harvey in the hallway.

‘Get me out of here,’ she implored.

Underwood heard a creak above him and looked up, his torchlight penetrating the darkness and illuminating the face of the descending Soma: a needle glistened in the sudden light. He advanced to the foot of the staircase. Rowena Harvey started to scream. Dexter emerged from the library hauling a wooden desk chair.

‘Get to the car,’ Underwood snapped as she came alongside him. ‘Get her out of here.’

‘Welcome to the incarnation of the lunar race,’ announced the Soma, raising his arms in joyous benediction to the strange new figures below him.

‘What about you?’ Dexter asked.

‘Just get on with it,’ Underwood hissed, beginning to climb the stairs. The Soma had come to a halt on a small landing halfway between the first and ground floors. He ran his hands along the frame of his favourite oil painting, savouring the sensuous touch of the carved wood. He wondered how he should treat his new disciples, imagining the delight in their eyes at the moment that he took Rohini. A man was standing before him, awash with colours at the heart of the light show.

‘Don’t you kneel before your God?’ asked the Soma.

Underwood watched the figure closely. He could see the syringe held tightly in the killer’s right hand and tried to anticipate the angle of the attack.

‘Why do you insult a power you cannot understand?’ the Soma asked in fury.

‘I understand,’ Underwood replied, ‘you are the Soma: God of the moon.’

The Soma paused and felt a sudden surge of joy. Truly they were his disciples. Angels sent to bear witness to the insemination of Rohini. Below them, there was a crash as Dexter slung the chair against the sash window. Fragments of glass exploded across the ground outside. However, most of the wooden frame remained. She wrenched the chair from the window and repeated the movement. The Soma watched impassively.

‘I have come to help you,’ Underwood said. ‘You cannot complete your task alone.’

‘I am a god,’ hissed the Soma angrily. ‘What the fuck would you know?’

‘If you are a god,’ Underwood replied, ‘make time stop. It’s after eleven-thirty. The planets are moving out of alignment. You are too late.’

The Soma tried to assimilate the information. Chaos was returning to the brief order of the heavens. Demons had come to delay him. This was not an angel.

‘You see,’ Underwood continued, ‘you can’t make time stop. So you can’t be a god. Your transformation is incomplete. You can hang heads in a line like the planets hang in the sky but you have no control over time. You are not a God. You are a man. And you’ve failed.’

Another crash resounded from the hallway. Dexter had finally split the interconnecting struts of the window frame. She broke away the splintering wood and, once she had created an adequate space, grabbed Rowena Harvey and pushed her through. There was blood on her hands from the smashed glass but she felt no pain.

The Soma lunged at Underwood and the two men fell to the floor. Underwood used both his hands to grab at the syringe. In the darkness he misjudged the movement and the needle punctured the palm of his left hand, pierced the flesh and emerged from the top of his hand. He felt the contents of the syringe empty harmlessly over the skin of his left arm. Infuriated, the Soma engulfed him in a rain of punches, spitting and hissing his fury. Underwood tried to block the blows with his undamaged arm but soon realized that he was
unable to defend himself. He wasn’t trying to win the fight, merely create time for Dexter and Harvey to get away. As the punches grew in ferocity Underwood found himself beginning to lose consciousness.

Sensing victory, the Soma stood in naked triumph. The assault had disorientated him and he steadied himself as he rose from the stairs, nausea sweeping across his drugged mind. Underwood blinked through the blood at the image of the figure standing above him. Behind the man was a large oil painting. The picture seemed somehow familiar. It showed a hunting scene: a horse rider clad in scarlet at the head of a huge pack of hounds. The Soma staggered back against the picture as he tried to balance himself: to Underwood’s battered consciousness, it seemed as if the two images had become fused. The pack of dogs seemed to be flowing from the man’s body. Through clouds of distorted vision and pain Underwood realized that Mary Colson had not foreseen her own death. She had foreseen his.

A car engine started outside and Underwood allowed his eyes to close. The Soma, having cleared away his dizziness, left him on the landing and headed downstairs.

Dexter allowed herself a final look over her shoulder at the house. Rowena Harvey sobbed in the seat next to her. She felt a terrible guilt about leaving Underwood behind. She hesitated for a moment, on the point of unbuckling her seat belt and returning inside. Then she saw the naked figure of the Soma emerge from the front of the house and rush towards the car.

She started the engine and crunched into first gear. Gravel sprayed from behind the car as the wheels slid. She pulled away, checking in her mirror as distance began to open up between the car and its terrible pursuer. The Mondeo accelerated down the twisting drive for a few short seconds. Dexter’s eyes lingered too long in the rear view mirror. Too late, she saw the police squad car directly in front of her, blocking the exit to the drive.

‘Fuck!’ she shouted, slamming down hard on her brakes.

The Mondeo crashed into the Volvo at thirty miles an hour. Dexter and Rowena Harvey were flung forward. The Soma
skipped in delight and sprinted hard across the gravel, ignoring the pain as it dug and tore into his feet. Stunned from the impact, Dexter saw the shape running towards them in her mirrors. She tried to clear her mind and forget the pain. She had to act quickly. She had no weapons. She was uncertain how long it would be before help arrived.

Make
a
decision.

Dexter slammed the car into reverse gear and pressed down hard on the accelerator. The Mondeo wrenched away from the Volvo and surged backwards. The onrushing Soma had no time to react. Dexter closed her eyes as the impact came, she heard his legs break and winced as his body thumped down on the roof of the car before sliding onto the driveway. Her heart was pounding. She unlocked her door and stepped outside.

The Soma lay on his back on the gravel, staring at the sky he no longer controlled. Dexter saw that both legs had been mangled, twisted out of shape by the force of the impact. She looked into the staring blue eyes. They blinked and looked at her. The Soma was alive. Satisfied that he no longer posed a threat, Dexter ran back to the house.

Fifteen minutes later, Underwood woke to find himself surrounded by people: ambulance men, uniformed police officers. He found his position, lying flat out on the stairway, an embarrassment. He tried to sit up but a strong hand restrained him.

‘Stay put, mate,’ said one of the paramedics.

‘I’m fine,’ Underwood replied.

‘You’ve got a needle through your hand. Stay still while we take it out.’

‘Be careful,’ Underwood warned. ‘There’s poison in the syringe.’

‘We know. Don’t worry.’

Underwood winced as he suddenly became aware of intense pain.

‘You all right, guv?’ Dexter was crouching over him now. He was pleased to see her.

‘What happened?’ Underwood asked as the paramedics worked on his injured hand.

‘I got him.’ She thought for a second. ‘Well, the Mondeo got him.’

‘Is he alive?’

‘Yep. Broken legs and some busted ribs but he’ll live. We’re sending him to Accident and Emergency at Addenbrookes. I got two uniforms going with him.’

‘Rowena?’

‘She’s okay. Evans was stabbed in the stomach. He’s in a bad way. Dawson was cracked on the back of the head. He’s conscious.’

Underwood winced as the needle was slowly drawn out through the flesh of his hand. He concentrated on the picture of the dog-man hanging a few feet above him.

The ambulance rattled at speed through the flatlands north of Cambridge. Max Fallon’s acid-soaked brain tried to seek explanations for the disastrous events of the night. It was hard for him to see beyond the excruciating pain in his legs and chest. He was gasping for air: dragging oxygen from a face mask into his lungs. His broken bones shifted agonizingly with every bump of the ambulance. To Fallon, the pain manifested itself as colours: white in his chest, red in his legs. Those colours were blinding and bright; they mixed with the green eyes of the car that had reversed into him, that had cut the universe from beneath his bleeding feet.

He was being punished. Daksha had cursed the Soma with consumption for favouring only one of his daughters. He tried to remember how the story had finished. Daksha’s daughters had begged their father to be lenient and the creator-god had mitigated his punishment: the lunar god’s
disease would be intermittent, reflected by the waxing and waning of the moon.

The pain was growing more acute. The colours became more vivid and frightening as Fallon’s body was swathed in great washes of fire and light. He realized that there was no one to plead for leniency. His pain would be perpetual. There would be no mitigation.