The Grotesques (32 page)

ELLA STIFLED AN
inward groan. Debbie, her perpetual gum-chewing, nail-painting habits on display, had noticed her as soon as she walked into the
Informer
. The few hours of sleep she had managed to snatch after the blood test Rob insisted on had not endowed her with anywhere near enough resilience to face the tribulations of petty rivalry.

“You’d think some people wouldn’t have the nerve to show their face around here. Not after shirking their workload,” Debbie said as Ella slid behind her desk and rummaged in the drawers for a leftover piece of chocolate, a cake crumb, a sweet, anything that could supply a scrap of courage. The blank notepads, blue pens, and discarded chocolate wrappers, devoid of even the vestige of a flake, were a major let-down.

“Is Phil in his office?” she asked, promising herself an entire block of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut when this was over.

Debbie smirked. “Is he cheesed off with you! Here.” She extricated a notepad with illegible scribble from under piles of papers and dropped it on Ella’s desk. “He wants a story on the pileup on the Princes Highway, and I’ve already written a feature article.”

Ella stood. She did not have time for this.

Debbie’s smile faded. “Not so fast. He’s reading my masterpiece.”

“You’re right,” she said, sinking down and turning on her ancient computer. “He’ll want hard copy.” The machine whirred to life with a few grudging, off-key beeps.

“Well, what do you know, it’s going to work straight off today,” Debbie said. Ella shot her a mistrusting look. Debbie shrugged. “Had to use it yesterday. Mine was on the blink.”

The
Informer
might not have the resources to provide reliable equipment for its staff but that didn’t mean Ella was willing to share her files. She made a mental note to change her password. When Debbie was not peering over her shoulder. Her hands flew over the keys, and within an hour she had produced a passable article. Definitely not Pulitzer material, but it had to be more coherent than whatever Debbie had written. She snatched the printout before her colleague could lay her nosey hands on it.

“I warned you,” Debbie said, reclining in her chair and picking up a nail polish bottle. The smirk was back on her face, and Ella felt her eyes follow her to the door, where Phil’s gruff voice answered her knock.

“Go away unless you’ve got me a leading story.”

Ella opened the door. Her overweight editor had his feet on a battered desk, a bitten doughnut in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. When he saw her, Phil immediately dropped his feet, tossed the papers onto the desk and the doughnut on top of them. “Where have you been? You’re late with your copy. When I said you could have time off, I didn’t mean you could have a goddamn honeymoon.”

“I need you to print this. Front page. Tomorrow.” Ella held out the article.

Phil waved her in and took the printout. “So your source panned out?”

Ella felt a lump form in her throat. “He’s missing.”

Phil did not miss a beat. “Crap.”

She was not sure if his concern was for Adam or his story. “I think I know where he might be. I mean, I’ve got a lead so I’m on my way out again.”

Phil finished skimming the text and blinked like he was the one suffering from hallucinations. He threw her a puzzled look and reread. “You sure you want your name to this?” he said at last.

“I need my name to that. I need it to go to print. Tomorrow.”

Now he really looked at her. “Do you believe it?”

“Would you believe me if I say it’s the truth?”

“It doesn’t matter. This isn’t going to hurt business any. An original idea like this might even drum up some new customers.”

“You’ll get more once I chase down a few leads. In the meantime, I need some background.”

“Debbie’s got that covered. And I expect the next instalment tomorrow.” The lights flickered. Phil tilted his head to the ceiling. “Goddammit!” As if in response to his swearing, the buzzing fluorescent tubes cackled out. While the room darkened, light still poured in from the large window behind the desk. “Those vermin are costing me a damn fortune in electrical repairs,” he said, standing.

“What vermin?” The regrettable words were out before she could think.

“Bats. Apparently, there’s a whole colony in the roof.” Phil walked into the main area, leaving Ella staring at his back. The creatures were stalking her. She shook her head, hoping that thought did not make her even more certifiable. Perhaps it was just that they needed a safer roost than the belfry and whatever was lurking there.

In the main room, Debbie was pretending to fill a cup with water from the cooler next to Phil’s door. She straightened as soon as she saw Phil, leaving the cup in place. From her wary expression she had obviously heard every word.

“I’ve got a great angle for the River Ripper story, Mr Waterman. Do you want me to interview residents around the Port Canal?”

“No. I want you to give Ella everything you’ve got on it and finish the story on the crash.”

Forgetting the cup by the cooler, Debbie stomped to her desk.

“What have you uncovered about the Church of the Resurrection?” Ella asked while she brought Google up on the screen and typed the English word
grotesque
. Phil had remained by his door, hands on hips, obviously checking Debbie was going to do what he asked. By way of complying, she slapped a pad that contained as much doodling as text on Ella’s desk.

“Debbie, people’s lives are at stake. Do you think we could work together for once?”

Debbie, elbow on the edge of her desk, was resting her jaw on her palm, still chewing, and watching her intently. “Well, I’m not the one keeping my information to myself.”

As the computer displayed a list of websites, Ella wondered rather uncharitably if she could trade her annoying colleague for Adam or Cecily. “I don’t suppose you speak French?” Romain’s last word had sounded like the English
gargoyle
, but she had no idea how to spell the French equivalent. She would have to try a translation dictionary as soon as she was done with
grotesque
.

“I work for an
English
newspaper,” Debbie said as though it was an unbelievably stupid question.

Sighing, Ella typed the words
church
and
resurrection
into the search box. She leant back as she scanned the results on grotesques so that Debbie could push her curious nose into the screen. The ploy worked. She was eager to show she knew more than Ella.

“Did you know the Church of the Resurrection faces the wrong way?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a Christian church, right. They’re supposed to face east but that church faces west.”

Ella struggled to bring images of churches to mind. “The modern ones don’t all face east.”

“Yes, but everything else about this church is so completely
traditional
.” Debbie wrinkled her nose at the last word.

“Genord must have had a good reason,” Ella said to keep her talking. Debbie was right. Genord had reconstructed a perfect replica of a medieval church. That fact was not going to have escaped his notice, and Ella was sure any reason he had would be to serve his own twisted purpose.

Debbie swivelled and flipped through another notepad before she resumed painting her nails. “Remember the public furore at the time building approval was given? I’ve been doing a little digging.” Ella’s surprise must have shown. “Waterman said I had to get out of the office and do first hand research,” she put in with a shake of her head, like it was a bizarre request for a filthy task. “Anyway, seems local residents were dead opposed to the church. The council actually rejected the approval and offered another site—that’s a matter of public record. The locals weren’t happy about a private enterprise acquiring the reserve—but Genord kept insisting the church had to be built on that site. Apparently, he specifically wanted it near water. Then the council decision got overturned at state level. It was all kept very hush-hush but there are rumours a large amount of money changed hands.”

Ella clicked on the Wikipedia entry for
grotesque
and scrolled down while Debbie talked. The screen flickered ominously.

“We’re talking billions,” Debbie said when she failed to act impressed.

“Rumours are just that.” The people who talked to
Informer
reporters were not known for either accuracy or honesty. She returned to the entry. It was useless.

Debbie blew on her nails. “Yeah, but remember the sudden boost to infrastructure funding at about that time? The new hospital was planned, the southern expressway was widened to accommodate two way traffic, the extended tramline built . . .” She trailed off but Ella’s mind added that the northern expressway had been built and the buses had doubled their frequency around that time too. Ella looked at Debbie with renewed respect. What she was saying suddenly seemed credible. Debbie lowered her voice as though they were part of the conspiracy. “And then Senator Brackham retired to a mansion on Sydney Harbour
and
bought a holiday house in the Dandenongs.”

“Did you find out why it was kept so quiet?”
How
it was kept so quiet.

“Part of the deal on both ends. There were even a couple of deaths during construction of the church, but work was barely delayed. The cause of death was listed as heart attack in both cases, but there were accusations of sloppy work and even resignations around the coroner’s office.”

Ella turned back to the screen. It flickered, then stabilised. “Who’s your source?” she asked. She needed facts not insinuation.

“Are you going to name yours?” Ella had to concede that was a fair point. “Anyway, what’s bizarre is that Genord never contested the prohibition to ring the bell. And despite the expense, he still went ahead and put one in. I mean, after all the trouble he went to in order to get exactly what he wanted, he accepted that ruling without a peep. Strange, when there’s an Orthodox church with a working bell just round the corner.” Debbie was warming to the story. “Isn’t this sort of thing right up your alley? I’ll swap you digging up political dirt for investigation of the church. What does
grotesque
have to do with the church anyway?”

“They’re the statues on the roof.”

Lightning-like bursts of light cut across the screen.

“You mean the gargoyles?”

Ella looked up and blinked. Lack of sleep had made her slow. She keyed in the word. The second paragraph in Wikipedia conveniently displayed the French equivalent.
Gargouille.
A French speaker might match Romain in pronunciation. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she scanned the text. Saint Romain, chancellor to a king of France, had defeated a dragon called La Gargouille which had terrorised Rouen in the seventh century. The town had burned the beast, but its head had remained intact.

Ella scraped her chair back. This sick parody of history was just not possible. A chancellor would have been an intelligent man. But if what this entry said was true, that would mean Romain and the statues were protectors after all. She had to get to the church and find a way to transform Adam and the girls back before the police and their assault team arrived. Pale and clammy, she leant forward and typed in
flesh to stone
. Somewhere in the vast net of misinformation there had to be reference to a cure.

Nothing.
Think, think
, she told herself. What was it the pathologist had warned her about? His sarcastic voice echoed in her mind. Basilisk.

“What do you want to know about them for?”

“I need to find out the cure.”

“Basil,” Debbie supplied as Ella scrolled down.

“But there’s nothing here about turning people to stone,” she said in dismay. Flesh sloughing off bone, yes. Poison looks, yes. But stone?

“Of course not. That was Medusa’s power.”

Ella glanced at Debbie out the corner of her eye. “How do you know about this stuff?”

Debbie rolled her eyes. “D’oh. It’s basic mythology 101. What we write about every day. How’d you ever get a job here?”

“I’ll never know.”

Frantic clicks on different sites produced everything she could ever want to know about the gorgons. Except for one thing. “What’s the cure?”

“I don’t think there is one.”

Feeling sick, Ella stood. The search had turned into a waste of time.

“Where are you going?”

“I need to do some follow up.”

Debbie leapt from her chair. “I’m coming with you.”

“Not unless you want to be sacrificed to a dragon.”

“Huh?”

“The topic of your next lead article is on the screen.”

With a spectacular crack, the computers died. Debbie frantically tried to restore power to her own machine.

Ella jogged to the car, as much to lose Debbie as to hurry away. As she pulled the door handle on her Toyota, Debbie came flying out of the building, her impossibly high heels no deterrent to speed.