First and Only (24 page)

And then he had seen them.

Seen them slinking from the back
of the building, the accursed witness and his guardian angel. He watched them
as they moved between the cars. He followed closer now, watchful, wary. The
guardian angel was not a man like other men. Lucifer could see that.

He knew a predator when he saw
one.

He would take care with that one.

They stopped at a car and the
angel propped up the witness while he opened the door. Lucifer crossed quickly
to his van. He must move with care, with guile, lest the angel mark his
presence. He slipped inside, started the engine and waited for them to leave.

*

Steve bundled Psimon in through
the passenger door and watched as he curled into a foetal position making it
impossible for Steve to fasten his seatbelt.

‘
Sod it
!’ thought Steve,
closing the door and moving quickly round to the driver’s side. He jumped in,
started the car and drove quickly out of the car park heading away from the
psychic convention and away from the man who would do Psimon harm. Beside him
Psimon cowered in his seat muttering incoherently.

‘Hang on, Psimon,’ said Steve.
‘We’re going to get you home. Then I’m phoning the damn police.’

Psimon could manage nothing more
than a stifled protest. He was lost in a life’s worth of fear.

*

Lucifer was careful not to get
too close but still he dare not lose them. Those in dominion would not be
forgiving if he were to let the witness go a second time. It was fourteen years
since his first killing; fourteen years since the priest had failed to stop
him, and died for his sins, for his shame. But the witness had heard him. The
witness knew what he had done.

The witness must be silenced.

Lucifer was calmer now. The pain
had lessened; the tumult subsided. But the chorus had not retreated; it hovered
over the deep, waiting to see that he would not fail.

*

Steve was having difficulty
concentrating on the road. Psimon kept twisting in his seat making it difficult
to move the gear stick. He was sweating and mumbling like a man caught in the
grip of a nightmare.

‘Pain and death,’ he muttered.
‘All is pain and death.’

‘It’s all right, Psimon,’ said
Steve, reaching out a hand to calm him. ‘We’re almost there.’

Steve kept glancing down at
Psimon, growing more concerned by the minute, and when Psimon slipped down into
the foot well beneath his seat Steve just let him lie there. He was driving on
auto-pilot, navigating the traffic with one eye always on his tormented
passenger. He barely glanced in his rear-view mirror. He did not notice the
stealthy shadow that matched their every turn; the black van that followed them
like a hearse.

*

Lucifer hung well back. He drew
the van in to the curb. The car had stopped; stopped outside a house, a row of
large motorcycles lined up on the road ahead of it. He waited to see if this
were the place, the place where the witness lived.

Yes. There… The angel climbing
out of the car. Moving round to get the witness; dragging him out, heaving him
up the driveway like a boneless cripple.

‘
Where are your bold words
now?’
thought Lucifer. ‘
Your boasts and your certainty? Has your courage
failed in the presence of the chorus?
’

Lucifer’s gaze burned as he
pulled back out into the road, coasting slowly down the tree-lined street. He
wanted to see where they went. Knowledge was power. The more he knew the easier
it would be to overcome them.

*

‘
Oh, great
,’ thought Steve
as he pulled up outside Psimon’s flat. ‘
A biker’s rally on our own fucking
doorstep.
’

There was a row of five or six
bikes parked up on the road outside the neighbour’s house, many more packed
onto the driveway. And, strung up between the trees on either side of the
drive, a crude banner fashioned from a white bed sheet.

‘
WELCOME HOME SPIKE
,’ the banner read.

Steve shook his head and climbed
out of the car. He went round to the passenger’s side and manhandled Psimon out
of the car. Then with Psimon barely able to walk he shuffled awkwardly towards
the flat. Holding him up against the door he felt in Psimon’s pockets for the
key.

‘That’s it, Psimon,’ he said.
‘We’re back at the flat.’

‘He’s here… he’s here,’ moaned
Psimon looking at Steve through his watery eyes.

‘I know,’ said Steve. ‘It’s okay,
you’re home now.’

‘No,’ said Psimon but all
assertiveness had gone from his voice and Steve took little notice of his
objection.

‘Let’s get you upstairs,’ he
said.

And as he closed the door a black
van cruised slowly past the house.

Had he not been so distracted
Steve would surely have noted the slow speed of the van. Had he not been so
distracted he would have recognised the unusually large shape of the van’s
driver. But as it was, he did not. The van just grazed his peripheral vision
and was gone. Then without a second thought Steve closed the door and turned to
face the stairs.

*

It wasn’t until he had driven
past a second time that Lucifer made sense of the house. It was split into two;
two flats, one up and one down. The lights in the upper flat had come on and he
caught a fleeting glimpse of the angel through the large bay window.

‘
We have you now
,’ he thought,
turning off the road to check the area and to see how he would come at the
house.

He had seen a small pedestrian
footpath leading off down the side of a neighbour’s house. He would head round
the block to see where it led. Perhaps it would offer a less conspicuous
approach.

Lucifer surveyed the terrain and
laid his plans.

He would wait till dark and then,
chorus willing, he would take the witness.

Chapter 28

Steve ceased his pacing and crossed once more to the
window.

‘Where the hell are they?’ he
cursed.

It was over three hours since he
had first called the police, more than thirty minutes since they had last
assured him that someone would be with them directly. It was dark now and Steve
peered up the street hoping to see the lights of an approaching police car. If
they did not come soon he would pack Psimon into the car and take him down to
the police station himself.

Steve glanced in the other
direction, to the house next door, where Psimon’s rowdy neighbours seemed to be
warming up for the evening. The noise from the biker’s ‘homecoming party’ was
getting louder by the minute. With an irritated snort Steve stepped back from
the window and went over to check on Psimon.

Psimon sat hunched in the
armchair as he had for hours, knees drawn up against his chest, head tilted to
one side, staring into space. He was traumatised, insensible. Steve had not
been able to get a coherent sentence out of him since they got back to the
flat. He had tried gentle reasoning and stern commands but all to no avail. Now
he knelt once more beside his chair and lifted the fourth mug of tea with which
he had tried to coax Psimon out of himself.

‘Why don’t you just try and drink
something,’ he suggested, although he knew that it was less for Psimon’s
benefit than for his own reassurance.

If Psimon would just take a
drink, do something normal; at least that would give Steve something to work
with, some way of breaking through this wall of fear. But Psimon did not even
register the tea. His gaze simply passed through the cloud of steam as it did
through Steve.

Steve put the mug of tea down
beside Psimon’s chair. He sat back on the sofa, a twisted knot of frustration
in his guts. If there were ever a time that he needed Psimon’s special
abilities it was now. But Psimon was lost to him, locked away in the fearful
mind of an eight-year-old boy, a little boy waiting to feel the cool touch of
his mother’s soothing hand, a touch that would never come.

*

Lucifer kept to the shadows.

The fates were smiling upon him.
The footpath had led to the perfect place to leave the van; a small car park
beside some tennis courts, dark, unused, surrounded by trees, perfect. He had
left the van in the corner of the car park, reversed it close to the footpath
while staying clear of the dim pool of light cast by the first of the small
street lamps. He had swapped his suit jacket for one of dark leather that
absorbed the light. He had donned his black leather gloves then reached into
the back of the van to take what he would need.

A small crowbar to gain entry… a
gag… some black plastic ties… a telescopic security baton and of course his
pistol; a handful of lightening that made it all so easy.

Lightening for the angel.

Baton for the witness.

That would be more than enough.

Now he padded down the path, keeping
to the side where the widely spaced lamps did not reach. A vast shadow moving
through the lesser shadows of night; moving with stealth and purpose, doing
what he had done a dozen times and more, doing what he had been called to do,
to seek out those who spoke untruths.

And to silence them.

*

‘Psychic?’ said Detective
Inspector Hunt.

‘Yes,’ said Steve with a deep
sigh of annoyance.

‘Like Uri Geller?’ asked
Detective Inspector Regan.

‘No,’ said Steve trying to retain
his composure. ‘Not like Uri Geller. Psimon is the real thing… a genuine
psychic.’

The two plainclothes CID officers
had arrived a few minutes earlier and it was clear that neither of them
considered this a worthwhile use of their time. Now they stood in Psimon’s
living room looking down at him and even Steve could read their minds…

‘So what makes you think it was
the killer?’ asked DI Hunt.

‘It was Psimon’s reaction,’ said
Steve. ‘And the exit sign, TIX and the number three.’

Steve raised a hand to his
forehead. He knew how this sounded. He wished that Psimon were coherent. He
could convince them in a second.

‘And he fitted Psimon’s
description,’ Steve added futilely.

‘So Psimon had seen him before?’
asked DI Hunt.

‘Not exactly,’ replied Steve, the
sinking feeling getting stronger as he spoke. ‘Psimon has visions,’ he said
wearily. ‘Glimpses of the future, of other places.’

The inspectors looked as if they
had heard enough.

‘He had an impression of this
guy; a big guy, like a giant… with eyes so dark they are almost black.’

‘And that’s the best description
you can give us?’ asked DI Regan.

‘No,’ said Steve with more
excitement in his voice. ‘I’ve seen him. I can tell you what he looks like.’

The inspectors continued to look
at him but Steve noticed that neither of them had so much as reached for a
notebook.

‘He’s big,’ said Steve. ‘I mean
really big… six-seven, six-eight. And well built; must be nineteen or twenty
stone.’

They looked at him now as if he
were exaggerating and DI Regan actually started moving towards the door.

‘He’s good looking too, in a
scary kind of way…’ persisted Steve. ‘Strong jaw, dark eyes, heavy forehead.’

DI Hunt lowered his eyes.

‘Dark hair,’ said Steve, doggedly
refusing to let them write him off as a crank. ‘Long,’ he added.  ‘But he had
it smoothed back with grease or wax. And he wore a suit,’ he concluded. ‘A
smart blue suit.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Brennus,’ said DI
Hunt. ‘But in the absence of any
actual
evidence to suggest that this
man might be the killer, there’s really nothing we can do.’

Steve ground his teeth against
the frustration. He looked down at Psimon but Psimon had started to rock
slightly in his chair.

‘He’s coming… he’s coming… he’s
coming…’ he whispered over and over.

‘
That’s not helping our case
,’
thought Steve bitterly.

‘Your friend really does seem to
be in some distress,’ said DI Hunt and it was the first time that Steve had
heard anything like sympathy in his voice. ‘Maybe you should call a doctor.’

‘So that’s it,’ said Steve,
ignoring the inspector’s well-meaning advice. ‘You are not going to do anything.’

‘As I said,’ said DI Hunt.
‘There’s nothing we can do.’

‘You could call Chief Constable
McCormack at Bootle Street police station,’ said Steve. ‘You can bet your ass
he’ll take Psimon seriously.’

‘It’s Sunday night,’ said DI
Regan from the doorway. ‘What do you want us to do, call him at home?’

‘Damn right,’ said Steve, his
voice rising to a shout.

DI Hunt raised a calming hand.

‘We’ll call him in the morning,’
he said. ‘If he supports what you’re saying then we’ll call back tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow might be too late,’
said Steve.

‘That’s the best we can do.’

‘So you’re just going to let the
killer go free?’ challenged Steve.

The inspectors gave him an
unpleasant look.

‘Let him go free to kill again.’
Steve followed them out of the room as they headed for the stairs. ‘Well you
won’t have to wait long,’ he called after them. ‘In fact you should be finding
another body soon.’

The inspectors started down the
stairs.

‘That’s right,’ Steve went on.
‘Another tortured body... Only this poor bastard has been crucified.’

The inspectors stopped. They
turned. They looked back up at Steve with an intensity that had been sadly
lacking till now.

‘What did you say?’

*

Lucifer had seen them arrive, the
pawns of so-called justice. One big, one small. He had ventured round the house
to watch them enter, to make sure. But the guardian angel had opened the door
and let them in. There was no doubt, this complicated things. Three was an
awkward number to handle. He would consult the chorus, ask for guidance, find a
way.