Infixion (Mesmeris Book 2) Read online

  INFIXION

  K E COLES

  Copyright © K E Coles 2014

  K E Coles asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  All rights reserved. If you have purchased the ebook edition of this novel please be aware that it is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and refrain from copying it.

  Photo adapted for cover image © Steve Boyland

  For translation rights and permission queries please contact the author’s agent

  [email protected]

  About the Author

  K.E Coles was born in Taplow, Berkshire and now lives in beautiful West Wales. She is an exhibiting fine artist and a selection of her work is available on this website

  http://www.saatchiart.com/kazmojazz

  Infixion is her second novel and is the sequel to Mesmeris

  Dedication

  To my children for reading and telling me straight when I get it wrong, and my husband for always taking my writing seriously, right from the start.

  Thanks also to Gail Rennie and Mo Lovatt for their vital feedback, Steve Boyland for another fab cover image, and my agent, Lisa Eveleigh for all her hard work.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO PEARL

  CHAPTER THREE MARCUS

  CHAPTER FOUR PEARL

  CHAPTER FIVE JARVIS

  CHAPTER SIX MARCUS

  CHAPTER SEVEN MARCUS

  CHAPTER EIGHT PEARL

  CHAPTER NINE MARCUS

  CHAPTER TEN MARCUS

  CHAPTER ELEVEN MARCUS

  CHAPTER TWELVE PEARL

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN MARCUS

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN MARCUS

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN MARCUS

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN PEARL

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN SPICER

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN SPICER

  CHAPTER NINETEEN SPICER

  CHAPTER TWENTY SPICER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE PEARL

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO SPICER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE SPICER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR PEARL

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE SPICER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX PEARL

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN SPICER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT SPICER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE PEARL

  CHAPTER THIRTY PEARL

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE PEARL

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO PEARL

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE PEARL

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR SPICER

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE SPICER

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX PEARL

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN PEARL

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT SPICER

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE SPICER

  CHAPTER FORTY PEARL

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE SPICER

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO PEARL

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE SPICER

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR PEARL

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE PEARL

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX PEARL

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN PEARL

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT SPICER

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE PEARL

  CHAPTER FIFTY PEARL

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE PEARL

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO SPICER

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE PEARL

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR SPICER

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE PEARL

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX SPICER

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN PEARL

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT SPICER

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE PEARL

  CHAPTER ONE

  The regular slap of Doc Martens on tarmac echoed through the country lanes. Leo peeled off the latex gloves as he ran. He slid them over and around the bloodied knife. By the time he reached the car, both gloves and weapon lay buried deep inside the pocket of his Parka.

  The drive across country should have taken three and a half hours. His foot itched to hit the floor, but he couldn’t risk being pulled over. A steady seventy-five would have to do. A hold-up on the M25 meant three and a half hours became nearer six. That was okay. Once he’d made his announcement, Papa wouldn’t mind. He’d realise he’d been underestimating Leo’s ability, his potential. He’d promote him to an Elite for sure.

  A complacent smile spread across Leo’s angelic features as he drove through the electrified gates and onto the gravelled drive.

  Almost midnight.

  Masters, slimy toad that he was, answered the door and stepped aside. No sign of the sneering lip curl, the mocking welcome Leo had learned to expect. No, this time Masters kept his eyes lowered, kept quiet. Leo felt the heady power of his new status. Now, finally, he’d get the respect he deserved.

  He tapped on the library door.

  ‘Come.’ Howard Pitt sat behind his vast, oak desk. His white hair seemed to glow in the soft light, accentuating the darkness of his eyebrows and the even darker eyes beneath.

  Leo breathed in the combined scent of beeswax polish and Pitt’s distinctive cologne, an earthy, spicy blend of spikenard and myrrh.

  ‘Ah!’ Pitt spread his hands on the desk. ‘At last.’

  ‘I did it, Papa,’ Leo burst out. ‘I killed him.’ He couldn’t suppress a smile.

  Pitt pressed his hands together in an attitude of prayer. ‘And?’

  Leo frowned. What did ‘and’ mean, for fuck’s sake? He swallowed. ‘And – well, I thought . . .’

  Pitt opened his hands, palms up. ‘Where is he?’

  What the fuck? ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pitt said, the word harsh with impatience, ‘so you said. But where, Leonard, is his body?’

  ‘His . . ?’ Shit! ‘It’s – it was in the . . .’

  ‘You left it there?’ Pitt’s eyes widened. He stood, walked around the desk.

  Leo took a step back.

  ‘Go,’ Pitt said, with a tight smile, ‘and get it.’

  ‘Papa?’ Another six hours driving? And how the hell was he going to get a six foot three corpse into that crappy Ford Fiesta?

  ‘He betrayed me, Leonard.’ Pitt’s presence filled the room, filtered into every molecule of air. ‘He betrayed our faith.’

  ‘I know, Papa. That’s why . . .’

  Pitt held up a hand. ‘Now tell me, what kind of deterrent,’ his tongue clicked on the last ‘t’, ‘would it be for me to say . . .’ he leaned into Leo’s face, and put on a wheedling voice, ‘he’s dead?’

  Leo tried to swallow, but his mouth was dry.

  ‘I want,’ Pitt’s black eyes bored into Leo’s brain, ‘his head. On a spike. On my desk, where everyone,’ he waved a hand to take in the room, the house, the whole damned world for all Leo knew, ‘all my children, can see the proof. That, Leonard, is a deterrent.’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  Pitt exhaled, went back to his swivel chair, and sat heavily. ‘Take some men with you this time.’ He closed his eyes.

  Leo waited, and waited. When he felt pins and needles in his foot, he guessed he’d been dismissed. He put a hand on the ornate, brass doorknob.

  ‘Oh, Leonard?’

  Leo turned.

  ‘If I don’t get Jack’s head,’ Pitt smiled, benignly, ‘I’ll have to use someone else’s.’

  Leo’s hand tightened until the brass cut into his fingers.

  ‘You understand my meaning, yes?’ Pitt said.

  Leo’s mouth wouldn’t work. He nodded.

  ‘Good.’ Pitt waved him away. ‘Now drive carefully.’

  CHAPTER TWO PEARL

  They hurried into the church, the police and the paramedics. Their footsteps, their hushed voices, jarred in the deathly silence.

  They fought for a while to stop the blood spurting from his chest.

  It ran over my legs, flooded over the flagstones - a river of red. Its tr
ibutaries trickled into the cracks between the stones, sank into the ancient foundations.

  Too late, the man said. A major artery. Nothing they could do. He had kind eyes, the one who said it, and he touched Jack gently, carefully, as though afraid of hurting him.

  The rain hissed through the open door. When I closed my eyes, it sounded like fire crackling through brushwood. No fire here though, no warmth except from his body, and even that was fading.

  I rocked him back and forth like a baby. Or, rather, rocked his head and shoulders. The rest of him lay stretched out. He seemed longer, flat out like that, unnaturally long. The bloodied white robe clung to his contours. His legs and feet lay exposed, pale in the feeble light. I wanted to cover them up, rub them with my hands, chafe the life back into them. Instead, I rocked and sang – a lullaby for my lover - tuneless, aimless, wordless.

  It didn’t matter. He couldn’t hear it, would never hear it.

  That body had held mine, had been mine, been inside me. Now they wanted to take him away. I held him closer and kissed his face. There was warmth still. I felt it on my lap – faint but there.

  ‘Pearl.’ Dad put his hand on my shoulder.

  I shook my head and held Jack tighter.

  Dad prised my fingers away from him. ‘You have to let him go.’

  The paramedics lifted his weight from me, stole my little, precious warmth. They laid him on a stretcher. The white robe slipped away from his body. No dignity for him in death then. They covered him with a sheet, pulled it over his beautiful face, and he was gone, obliterated, as if he’d never existed.

  Horrible, screeching wails echoed from the walls, the pews, the ceiling, as if all heaven and earth cried for him. And I knelt, rocking back and forth, my arms hugging my chest where it hurt, where the empty space gaped, raw and bloody.

  CHAPTER THREE MARCUS

  Images of a seaside town flickered silently in the corner of the living room. The four young police recruits lay stretched out over cheap sofas, in various stages of intoxication. Mike lolled, head back, eyes half-closed. Any minute now, he’d be snoring. Andy lay with his head in Kate’s lap.

  It was kind of annoying, those two getting together. Changed the dynamic of the flat. Marcus drained his can, crushed it in his fist. Dead, he thought – extinguished.

  He glanced at the TV, then sat up, every nerve in his body alert. That face – the white hair, black eyebrows. A familiar mix of rage and fear coursed through his veins.

  The others followed his gaze.

  ‘Hey,’ Andy said. ‘It’s that weird cult nutter. Must be about those murders. Turn it up.’

  ‘No,’ Marcus said, too sharply.

  Kate frowned. ‘You’re from Brighton, aren’t you?’

  Marcus nodded.

  ‘Mad, eh?’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Marcus said, gaze fixed on Howard Pitt’s face. ‘Mad.’ Then Pitt’s face was gone, replaced by pictures of smiling kids, teenagers. Marcus felt ill. The names of the victims scrolled across the bottom of the screen. And there it was – Rebecca Fielding. And there she was, his sister, Becky, smiling at him.

  He lumbered to his feet, zigzagged towards the bathroom.

  ‘You all right?’ one of the lads shouted.

  He couldn’t answer. He lurched into the bathroom, slammed the door shut, and slid the bolt across. He turned on the tap, splashed his face with cold water. Deep breaths. No. Nothing was going to stop this. He held onto the sink, and crouched down, bounced on his heels. Still they came, the stinging tears. Not here, not with the guys. The tears spilled over, ran down his face. One sob. Not too loud. Maybe they wouldn’t hear it. He slammed his forehead against the porcelain basin – once, twice, three times.

  Better. Deep breath in through the nose – out, slowly, through the mouth. The tears stopped.

  Someone tapped lightly on the door. ‘You okay?’ Kate.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Be there in a bit.’ He stood, wiped his face with the back of his hands. He looked okay, a little pink around the eyes, that’s all.

  ‘Marcus . . .’

  Don’t, he thought – please don’t.

  She did. ‘We didn’t know – had no idea. I’m so . . .’

  Marcus growled, smashed his fists against the wall. Silence. He heard the living room door close, could imagine Kate mouthing stuff, imagine the shocked faces. How was he going to go out there, and face them all, watch them struggling to say the right thing? As if there was any ‘right thing’.

  But he did go out, because he had to. ‘You can do this,’ he told himself. ‘You can do this.’

  He opened the door. Three pairs of eyes, straight at him.

  ‘Hey, man,’ Andy said. ‘What can I say?’

  Marcus turned, made it to his room somehow. He left the light off, headed for the corner, and crouched small. Tried to hide himself from it all, from everything.

  By the time Kate came to find him, his muscles had seized up. She helped him stand, undressed him, and manhandled him into bed – all without saying a word. Then she undressed and climbed in beside him. She held him close all night, as if she knew just what he needed - the touch, warmth, comfort, of another human being.

  CHAPTER FOUR PEARL

  Detective sergeant Jarvis came back to the vicarage with us. She looked frayed around the edges. Her clothes, her dull, mid-brown hair, her make-up, all had a hurried look about them, as if she’d just tumbled out of bed and got ready in the dark. Perhaps she had. It was the middle of the night, after all.

  Dad, Jarvis and I went into the kitchen. I sat down, because my legs were trembling.

  Jarvis pulled a pen and notebook from her jacket pocket. The corners of the paper were curled and brown. I wondered if she smoked, and kept her fag ends in her pocket. She smelled as if she did.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘you say someone ran into the church, stabbed the victim, and ran out again?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Uncle Jim came through the back door. He wiped his feet on the doormat, shook the raindrops from his hair. In his dark suit and tie, and with his mouth shut, he looked almost smart, especially next to Jarvis.

  ‘We can leave the questioning for now,’ he said. ‘We already know who’s responsible.’

  Jarvis frowned. ‘Guv?’

  ‘That damned cult,’ Jim said.

  Jarvis pursed her lips. ‘You sure?’

  ‘The victim was a member. He wanted to leave,’ Jim said. ‘He was going to testify.’ He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. ‘We’d have had them all – even Pitt.’

  Dad filled the kettle. ‘Tea?’

  Tea – the answer to every emergency.

  Shadows and dark circles ringed Dad’s tired eyes. ‘Poor lad didn’t stand a chance,’ he said. ‘Once they’re in . . .’ He shrugged. If blood had splashed onto his cassock, it didn’t show, absorbed into the blackness. On his dog collar, it stood out, pink and red, spotted and smudged like some obscene artwork.

  If we’d been alone, I’d have hugged him, told him how much I loved him for trying to save Jack, and maybe we’d have cried together.

  But we weren’t alone, and everything felt odd and formal, as if we were parts in a bad play and I was the only one who hadn’t read the script.

  ‘We’ll keep this quiet,’ Jim said. ‘If they think there’s even a remote possibility he’s alive, they may panic, make mistakes.’

  Dad nodded, but I don’t think he believed it – don’t think any of us did, even Jim.

  No one could escape Mesmeris. Leo had told me so, his warm breath on my ear. Before the flash, the arc of silvery light. Before the hot, sweet, metallic eruption.

  ‘Pearl,’ Dad said, ‘are you all right?’

  ‘I need a shower.’ The smell from my coat, from my hands made me want to retch.

  ‘We’ll need your clothes, I’m afraid,’ Jarvis said, ‘for evidence.’

  I nodded.

  Other people – police and forensics - came through the back door, so I went
up to the bathroom. My body felt weightless. I steadied myself, gripped the handrail, afraid that if I let go I might float up to the ceiling.

  My head hurt. Someone else’s eyes, red and puffy, stared back at me from the mirror. My Parka, my legs and my hands were sticky, caked with blood. It pulled on my skin like a face pack, cracking when I moved. I didn’t want to think about the blood, because if I did, that pain lodged in the base of my belly might wake up, and grow, and destroy me.

  A woman in white overalls gave me clean clothes to wear, and took my filthy ones away in a plastic bag.

  Mum appeared from work, all flustered, her hair windswept and sparkling with raindrops. She hugged me to her chest. ‘Oh, my lovely girl.’ She kissed my forehead. ‘My lovely girl.’ She turned away, wiped her eyes with a tissue.

  I could have cried then. I wanted to, but didn’t dare, afraid I’d never stop.

  Numbness descended on me. A blessing, I suppose – something from God to dull the pain. I gazed out of my bedroom window, watched the rain sweep across the overgrown garden, the church, and the fields beyond, and wondered how I was going to live without him.

  CHAPTER FIVE JARVIS

  Back at the station, Jarvis filled in the paperwork, her account of the incident. It was five hours after her shift should have ended. Not that she minded working late for a murder case. That was what she enjoyed, after all - a bit of drama - what she’d come into the job for. Paperwork though, that was the pits.

  She took a slurp of the disgusting coffee, and wrote down the facts as she saw them. She was careful not to criticise Macready. She liked the guv. He was a top DCI, well respected, and normally knew exactly what he was doing. With this one though, his obsession with what he called ‘this damned cult’ seemed to have clouded his judgement.

  He hadn’t even considered other possibilities, and that bugged Jarvis. The girl seemed a more likely contender. Something odd about her. Okay, so she’d had hysterics in the church when they took the corpse, but since then, nothing, cool as the proverbial. Something iffy there. Of course, he wouldn’t see that, would he? Not with her being his niece or goddaughter, or whatever the hell she was.