“Really?” she replied, offended, but he took no nodce of her emotions.
“The public prosecutor's involved to her nipples as well. Pardon, but it's the truth. She's a spumed woman since…”
“Since you slept with her?”
“I made that mistake, yes, at a particularly low point in my life, I'm afraid.”
“And that reporter who's so interested in you? How many women have you had since your divorce?”
“We call it grazing, but-”
“And is that what we've been doing-grazing?”
“No, never!” She challenged him, asking, “Then what?”
“What we have is altogether new to me, beautiful and lovely. Please, you must trust me. 1 hold you in the highest regard, Jessica.”
She managed a smile and a shake of the head, and then she asked, “All right, so how do we break this case and restore you to prominence at the Yard in the bargain?”
“To find a cult that is conducting the bizarre 'business' of crucifying people in some sort of warped sacrifice to God. Yes, Doctor, where to look? The million-pound question.”
“We both saw those huge cross-tie beams in the old photos of the Marylebone Mine; wouldn't be difficult to fashion them into an old wooden cross… And since coal dust was found embedded in the wounds of the dead, this mine shaft direction we've taken, it does make sense.”
He nodded appreciatively, adding, “Yes, even the cross might be made of coal-shaft beams, in which case, they'd have long before become coated with the ancient coal dust that might have shared space with a Roman beetle.”
“I fear any delay and we could have another crucified victim on our hands tomorrow. I fear they are going for seven victims.”
“Quite right.” He looked at the darkening sky, clouds having rolled in, his watch now telling him the time. “My Lord, it's already 5 p.m. We don't have much light left. Let's have out of here.”
The entire trip to where the mine had been, Jessica tried to recall a single word, a single clue that might actually have been given her as to Luc Sante's possible involvement in murder, and while she recalled the entire picture of the man as a saint who fought against evil his entire life, she could not recall any single word or phrase he used that would implicate him in any such depraved and hideous wrongdoing as staking men and women to a cross to watch them die their slow deaths. She could not imagine the old man plotting with such depraved indifference to human life.
No, she simply could not accept the notion of Father Luc Sante as the leader of a cult bent on murder in the name of Christ, the Second Coming, or the True Millennium. They might just as well indict his elderly secretary, Miss Janet Eeadna. Still, strands of their last conversation, all about the group mind, began to insinuate itself upon her like some night creature, like an incubi come creeping over her to take her breath away. Had she been asleep throughout the investigation here? Had she been blinded by Luc Sante's apparent benevolence? She recalled the sensation of having been drugged on the tea Strand had served her.
When they arrived at where the mine once stood, they found nothing but paved streets and the Crown's End Bazaar, a place crowded with merchants and tourists who'd been brought in by the busload. Not a single sign of the old mine remained. “According to the map we saw at the RIBA, it was here.”
“Richard, the operative word is was… was here.”
“But no more,” he conceded.
She gripped him by the arm, sighed, and asked, “What now?”
'To the terminus of the canal. It spills out into a reservoir not far from here.”
They drove to this destination, and once again located disappointment. If there once had been a thriving canal, like the mine, it had disappeared. Richard, frustrated, climbed from the car and began a foot search for any remaining sign of the canal. After scouring the ditches around the reservoir, he finally located a rusted over, weeded over grate, buried in the brush, a grate large enough for a man to pass through, but it hadn't been opened, he estimated, in forty or fifty years.
“No one going in and out of here,” he resignedly said.
“Let's go back to the Yard, Richard, get the photos developed, have a closer look. Perhaps we overlooked something in the replica.”
“This case leads from one dead end to another.”
She attempted a hug to soothe his anger and disappointment, but he pulled away, saying it had grown late. “Let's be out of here, Jessica.”
Across the city in the operations room of Scodand Yard, Chief Inspector Boulte had long before ordered Copperwaite to set up surveillance teams at every entry road to the Thames embankment, and every pond and lake in the city parks, using as many city patrolmen as required. Inspector Boulte, angry that his plan to prove Periwinkle and Hawkins the Crucifiers had failed, now determined to catch the killers as they disposed of their next victim. Meanwhile investigation into the copycat killing proceeded separately.
“Where the hell are Sharpe and that woman from America?” Boulte exploded at Stuart Copperwaite.
Copperwaite threw up his arms in defeat, explaining, “I've left messages all over the city for both to call in, but they've remained silent. Frankly, sir,” Copperwaite said, “I'm somewhat worried about them. It's not like Inspector Sharpe to simply disappear and not-”
“Find them. Send them to me when you do.”
Boulte strode purposefully from the ops room and down the long corridor to his office, his footfalls like clapping hands against the smooth surface of the floor, his face like a lantern smoldering in a haystack.
Copperwaite, when sure his superior had closed his door and was out of earshot, muttered, “Sharpie tried to tell you we had the wrong men in custody, you fart-bag, but you wouldn't listen, now would you? And that bitch prosecutor Sturgeon, she simply wants to embarrass Richard. Maybe now you'll pay more attention to the postmortem evidence at hand.”
Copperwaite noticed other investigators staring at him, one jokingly calling out, “So, Coppers, it's finally come to this? You're talking to yourself, man.”
Copperwaite ignored the jibe, grabbed up his phone, and eased into his chair. The Crucifier had stepped up the schedule of sacrifices he or they intended, and the Yard must be ready for the bastard this dme. It would prove a long night, and he must amass an army of eyes, enlist them all in the hunt for the maniacs behind all this madness.
Copperwaite took a moment to assess his part in hamstringing and bringing Richard Sharpe to his knees. He admired and liked Sharpe, always had, but at the same dme, he disliked Sharpe always being right, always in the know, always on top. When Boulte had made it perfectly clear that Sharpe had become the target of an internal investigation, it was whispered into Copperwaite's ear that he would do well to distance himself from Sharpe and to cooperate in any way necessary with the internal audit. Then and only then did Copperwaite begin to see Richard's flaws.
He must have said to himself a hundred times overnight, “Richard brought this upon himself. It was never my doing. So why do I feel so guilty and so alone?” And where was Richard now? And was Dr. Coran with him? Funny thought flitting in and out of his mind replied, Hampton or Surrey, in a bed-and-breakfast, enjoying one another and the countryside on a getaway, perhaps. Copperwaite smiled at the notion, wishing Richard well.
He returned to the business at hand, setting up surveillance teams all over the city to cover any and all large bodies of water.
EIGHTEEN
The only power Satan wields is our belief in his lies.
Diamondback, Louisiana At dusk, Sunday October 1, 2000
