Murder Path (Fallen Angels Book 3) (14 page)

Strange approached the entrance and followed her gaze, his expression running through concerned, to bewildered, to horrified all in the space of a second. He started to circle the room, instinctively following Cruickshank, mirroring her transfixed gaze.  Soft footfalls and the rustling swish of plastic personal protection equipment signalled the arrival of Marcel Laurent to the room.  He strode in, straight to the centre and looked up to the monstrosity on the ceiling.

‘It is a body Ma’am.  It is a body that has had every last piece of skin peeled from it.  In order to ensure the exposed muscles, tendons and organs don’t fall out, it has been wrapped tightly in cling film.  The body has then been nailed to the ceiling and spread-eagled in a star shape as you can see.  The feathers along the length of the arms have been stapled to the exposed flesh.  You can just see that a rib has been removed from his chest cavity, on the left, and that his intestines are also missing.  Our skin is the largest organ in our body.  It has a surface area of about two square metres and is about three millimetres thick.  If you cut it into strips about a centimetre wide, then you’ll have about two hundred metres of skin.  That’s what has been used to write the words that surround the body.’ Laurent informed the detectives nonchalantly.

Cruickshank had finished circling the room and was back at the door now.  She looked over to Strange, who was just finishing his revolution, and took in his gaunt, haunted expression.

‘Where does this put us Strange, at an advantage or another disadvantage?’  Cruickshank queried as she started to read out the words, formed in slivers of skin stapled to the ceiling around the body.

‘We are the Fallen Angels.  I am Madame Evangeline.’

Chapter 18

Two different people, two different locations, two different musical instrument cases and both with the same word written on them.  ‘Unas’.  That is not a coincidence.  And if it’s not a coincidence, it means that Ennis and McFetrich knew each other?  Did they get there cases from the same place?  Were they in the same band?  They definitely both went to sex clubs and were both murderers.  Is ‘Unas’ some reference to a murder club perhaps?  Did they both know Gabriel, is that how they met?  What’s the significance of an instrument case without an instrument inside?

I hear a key slide into the front door lock.  It will be Rebecca, but I can’t presume.  I silently vacate my seat in front of the bank of monitors and quickly and quietly step out of the study into the main, wide hallway of the apartment and position myself flat against the wall to the side of the front door.  The door opens and a plethora of plastic bags rustle through the frame, twice as wide as Rebecca who shuffles in afterwards, her cheeks rouge and blowing under the weight.  I relax, stepping out from the wall to help her.

‘Shopping?’  I query, trying to see inside the bags as I take some off her as she kicks the door shut with a foot before dropping the remaining ones onto the floor.

‘Things we need for tonight.’ she replies curtly, still out of breath, but also with a heightened level of emotion in her voice.  She found the institute hard and I was hard on her.  I drop the bags to the floor as well and reach out my arms and embrace her, pulling her tight into my chest.  I can feel her heart racing as she returns the embrace and squeezes into me.  We stand in near silence, just holding and comforting, the only sound a slight muffled sob from Rebecca’s mouth, which is buried deep in my shoulder.  She pulls away and looks up at me with puffy, tear filled eyes.

‘That was much harder than I thought it would be and I’m not talking about nearly getting caught by Munro.  I mean going back to that cell and letting the memories of my time locked in there back into my mind.  I don’t know how they managed to stop me killing myself.’ she says.

‘Sorry I had to be so harsh and push you on.  I just didn’t want you to get caught.’ I answer, straightening her grey wig and wiping a forming tear from the corner of her eye with my thumb.  

‘You’ve no need to be.  It was me who stupidly went down to the cell.  How’s Jacob?  Have you found anything out about the name on the trumpet case at all?’ she asks, while leaning in and pecking me on the cheek before leaning down, picking up some of the bags and heading off into the study.  It is incredible.  In an instant the emotion is gone, the tears are dry and she is back to practical. 

‘Jacob’s fine.  We had a little chat earlier and I sat him looking out over the river.  I’m sure he’s trying to use different length dilations himself to say something, I’m just not sure what yet.  I’ve started to look into ‘Unas’.  Other than knowing he was a pharaoh I haven’t got much farther.  I was just starting to look into it when you arrived.’ I walk into the study after her, plonking my backside down into the seat and swivelling into the screens.  Rebecca kicks her shoes off, takes off her tight tweed jacket and flings it and her grey wig onto a leather chair in the corner, then rolls a stool up beside me and sits down. 

‘Don’t we need to be careful doing internet searches?’ she queries, grabbing a box of tissues and rubbing the thick caked makeup off her face.

‘I’m using a triple embedded server hop.  The final server is somewhere in the Philippines and there is no direct connection back to this computer.  Everything is proxied and encrypted. No one will ever find where we are browsing from.’  I might sound like I know what those words mean, but I don’t.  All I do know is they won’t be able to track us. 

‘Okay, so he’s a pharaoh.  Can’t say I’ve ever heard of him.  Is he famous for anything in particular?’ Rebecca asks, rolling her eyes at my confident tech speak, knowing full well I am about as tech savvy as a duck billed platypus.

‘Let’s take a look.’ I bring up the web browser I was using earlier and start scrolling through the article I had been reading on Unas.  ‘That’s interesting: he was the first pharaoh to start a funerary cult.’

‘What’s one of those when it’s at home?  Anything like a cargo cult?’ Rebecca queries, leaning closer into the screen, her right breast caressing my arm as she does, causing my loins to stir.

I gulp slightly before answering.  She notices the hesitation and looks down to where my eyes are nervously glancing.  ‘Perv.  You’ll have to control your ardour a lot better than that later.’ she quips jovially, turning back to the screen while pushing her breast further into my arm.

‘Not quite.  Cargo cults tend to be isolated tribes worshipping inanimate objects or ‘cargo’ washed up by the sea or river.  Funerary cults are present in a number of older dynasties, particularly the Greek, Roman and Egyptian.  It’s the religious practices centred on the dead.  Particularly how the living can pass on benefits to the dead in the afterlife and appease their wrathful ghosts.  You may have heard of animals, particularly cats, and also humans being buried alive with dead pharaohs.  That’s what the funerary cults did and it seems our friend Unas started them.’

‘Is that something Ennis and McFetrich could be involved in?  All of the killers the Angels have been exposing have been radicals from current religions.  Is this a group of killers reviving the older religions?’  Rebecca muses, reading down through the article on the screen. 

‘It’s a possibility and certainly something to explore.  It also says Unas was the first to have ‘Pyramid Texts’ carved and painted on the walls of the chambers in his pyramid.  Now what are Pyramid Texts?’ I click on the hyperlinked words and another web page opens.

‘A collection of 759 spells or ‘utterances’ used to protect a Pharaoh’s remains.  Practiced by a funerary cult.  Possibly the oldest known religious texts in the world and the oldest two hundred and twenty eight of them are carved into the pyramid of Unas.  One of the most famous utterances, only found in that pyramid is the ‘Cannibal Hymn’. A god who lives on his fathers, who feeds on his mothers. Unas is the bull of heaven, who rages in his heart, who lives on the being of every god, who eats their entrails when they come, their bodies full of magic, from the Isle of Flame.’ I recite, my mind a whirl of conjecture.

‘Are they eating the rest of their victims, like Bentley was?  Is that why there have never been any remains found?  Do they believe that this in some way makes them gods?’  Rebecca queries, shaking her head slightly as she takes in the information as well.

‘Who eats their entrails when they come?’  I muse, letting the words run through my mind, reminding me of McFetrich’s broken body and how his gnawed entrails spelt out ‘Even Fallen Angels Have Wings’.  Is Gabriel trying to tell us something? Is he trying to draw us in?  Or is this Adam and the Angels? 

‘It’s great that you are detectiving and all, but it would be useful if you told me what you were thinking.  I might be able to help.’  Rebecca sternly says as she knocks my arm hard with her breast, breaking my machinations.

‘Sorry, it’s just habit.’ I say, smiling ruefully.  It’s how I work.  It’s how my mind works.  It picks up a point or a fact or a word –in this case entrails- and throws it back through my recent memory to see what it hits and then explores the potential links between them.  In this case McFetrich’s gnawed entrails and what the significance is.  Is it Adam or Gabriel trying to tell us something or even trying to draw us in?  The other word that’s thrown in there is ‘Cannibal’ and yes, I think they could be eating their victims, but that old lunatic who bit the cocks off people is singing in my mind as well.  Did you get a chance to glance at any of the files?’ I ask, swivelling in the chair and unbalancing Rebecca deliberately as I slouch to the floor and grab the closest plastic bag she had dropped.

‘No I didn’t you bastard.’ she says, cuffing me over the head playfully while kneeling down at my side, grabbing another bag and removing the manila folders inside.

I pull the contents of my bag out.  It’s not folders.  It’s something leather and black with silver studs on it.  I look from it, to Rebecca with a curious furrow ploughed on my brow.  She is wearing a wicked grin.  ‘And what’s this?’ I ask, concerned.

‘A gimp suit.  You’ve got a mask as well, and a bit for your mouth, and some reins.  Everything you need to be my slave for the evening.’ she teases lewdly, but with a strength to her tone which is intoxicating and dominant.  My mind does what it does and links recent memories.  Gimp suit screams of Michael Angus.  Screams of him fucking Rebecca wearing one, screams of morality gone wrong, screams of the utter hell she went through when she found out it was him inside the suit.  How can that association, that memory, not freak her?  How can it not take her back to that same suicidal place that the cell earlier managed to take her back to?  How the hell does her mind work?

My face must be echoing every one of those thoughts because I see her expression change to concern and then understanding, filling with a curious empathy.  She reaches over and takes hold of the gimp suit in both hands, placing it on her lap and then holds my hands tenderly, stroking the stigmata in the palms.  ‘It’s all about control John.  I can see you wondering how I could possibly be so brazen about a gimp suit when Michael wore one when I fucked him.  If I were being a mum, it would upset me.  But right now I’m not being a mum.  I’m being a Madame.  And as a Madame, I have seen many men wearing these.  As a Madame, I control how I feel, I control what I do.  I relinquished control when I was in that cell.  I let myself become a victim.  Understandable, as it was with you when Ennis mutilated your body, Sarah died and you thought Jacob and Eve were dead.  We both lost control.  We both wanted to die.  Now we don’t.  Now we want to find out why?  Data, information, knowledge and wisdom are your control.  Being a Madame is mine.  Let’s see what wisdom we can find in these files, eh?’        

Her beauty is the wisdom of understanding.  Understanding herself.  Understanding me.  Not judging.  Just understanding.  That is a remarkable strength.  I nod subserviently, an apologetic smile arcing over my slightly embarrassed features.  ‘Okay, but please, go gentle on my genitals when I’ve got the suit on, they are still a bit tender.  Let’s sort these files.’ I finish, squeezing her hands tightly then grabbing another bag with files sticking out of it and emptying them on the floor.

‘I will be gentle, but I can’t promise other people will.’ she teases, starting to flick through the folders. ‘Do we want to sort them into Seymour’s and non Seymour’s, see what we have of each?’ Rebecca suggests.

‘Fine by me.’ I respond, quickly flicking through the ones in my hands and splitting them as suggested.

Rebecca’s eyes are darting between the tops of every folder dropped onto their relevant piles, her lips silently muttering numbers and names, until all of them are sorted. ‘So, fifty six files in total, thirty eight with the name Seymour, ten with the name Howard and eight with other names, one of those with my name on it.’ she reels off methodically, reaching straight for the Seymour pile and ignoring her own file. ‘We should start to draw up a family tree for the Seymour’s and see if we can find our cock gobbler.’

Rebecca jumps up and heads over to the incident wall, grabs a pen from the side cabinet, opens the first file and starts scribbling down a name, sex and date of birth.  I can see she is distracting her mind on the other files, even though she is curious about her own.  I am curious as well.  No files for John Saul, no files for Robert or Gabriel Caldwell either.  Still no signs of where I fit in this mess.  Why would Ennis have her file hidden away?  Could he have known she was possibly part of the Seymour family?

‘Interesting.  The first three Seymour’s are women born in the 1950’s.  Clarissa, Jean and Margaret.  Clarissa seems to be the sister that went to Italy.  Jean….’ she pauses.

‘What?’  I ask, looking up towards her from the files in my lap.

‘Jean Seymour had a daughter, called Rebecca.  The father was Cecil Seymour.  I think I’ve found my parents.’

I jump up, the files slipping to the floor from my knee and cuddle into Rebecca supportively, looking over her shoulder at the file. 

‘It’s a strange feeling.  I’ve wanted to find out for years who my parents were, and here they are, in front of me and I just feel: numb.  Is that because I was half expecting it?  Is that because they are dead, and I’m never going to meet them now anyway.  So know I know.’ she finishes, flippantly.

‘It’s going to feel strange, regardless of the circumstances.  I suppose the important thing is that now at least, you do know.  For better or for worse.’  I encourage, hugging her tight.