Red Angel (9 page)

‘I am never ever doing anything with you again, Bo Blackman,’ O’Shea moans. ‘You are dead to me.’

‘As long as you’re not dead,’ I tell him, slowly getting up to my feet.

There are shouts from within the base. It won’t take the soldiers long to find us ‒ we really have to hurry. I pull O’Shea up. He winces dramatically; there’s a nasty cut on his cheek but, as far as I can tell, he’s going to make it.

‘Can you run?’

‘You bet your arse I can.’

We take off. We’ve landed further from the fence than I hoped we would but it’s still hard to reach the top of the hill where the bike is hidden. My side is burning and there’s a pain in my ankle – and O’Shea is far worse. Halfway up, I stop and beckon him onto my shoulders. We complete the rest of the ascent piggyback then I run as hard as can until we’re weaving through the trees and reach the bike.

‘Thank fuck.’

‘You still need to drive, O’Shea. I can’t do it barefoot.’

He flashes me a quick grin and gets on. I leap up behind him. ‘Go!’

Before he turns on the engine, there’s a rustle. At least twenty camouflaged soldiers appear out of nowhere and they all have guns. Big ones.

O’Shea and I are dragged off to separate rooms. I’m trussed up like a chicken, able to do little more than blink. Colonel Arbuckle, who has long hair tied back tightly in a bun instead of a crew-cut, is even more stern and scary looking than her soldiers suggested. It’s less because of her stature, which is actually fairly diminutive even compared to mine, and more because of the freakishly hard lines on her face. If it weren’t for her lack of tattoos, I’d have said she was a black witch.

It doesn’t help that there’s something peculiar about her eyes: the colour of her irises doesn’t seem quite right. I realise it’s because she’s wearing tinted contact lenses. Is Arbuckle trying to pass herself off as human when she’s really something else? Daemons are generally welcome in the armed forces these days so I can’t imagine why it would be a big deal. Unless being a daemon in the army, as well as a woman, makes life too complicated.

‘You know Trace spells are notoriously ineffective,’ she says, leaning against the wall with her arms folded. ‘I’d love to know where you got that one from.’

‘Considering my position, I’d say the one I had was pretty ineffective too,’ I say, mildly.

‘What were you looking for?’

‘A broom. I had the sudden urge to clean and mine was broken.’

Arbuckle’s strange eyes narrow. ‘This is not the place to be flippant, Ms Blackman. Even if you thought that disguising yourself as a witch and flying away on a broomstick was a good idea.’

‘I made an error of judgment. It was all my doing: I forced Devlin O’Shea to come along with me. He has nothing to do with this.’

‘It’s not very heroic,’ she continues, as if I hadn’t said a word, ‘breaking the law to sneak into a military zone and steal a time bubble orb.’ I must have looked surprised because she laughs sharply. ‘You might think army intelligence is an oxymoron, Ms Blackman but I can assure you I’m not stupid. What I don’t know is what you were planning to do with it once you got it.’

I mull over my options. I need something to extricate O’Shea from this mess. I could fabricate a story but I’ll tangle myself further in a web of lies. At least the truth is fairly honourable and might display my good intentions. I tilt up my chin. ‘I want to find Tobias Renfrew.’

Arbuckle’s eyebrows shoot up. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I wasn’t expecting that. He’s been missing, presumed dead, for more than fifty years. What makes you think that you can discover the truth? And why would you even care?’

‘If you’ve been paying any attention to the news lately, you’ll know,’ I tell her drily.

‘The fake ear that purportedly belonged to him?’ she scoffs. ‘That’s why you’re engaging in activities that could see you locked up for the rest of your natural life?’

‘There’s more to this than a severed ear. I have friends who almost died because of it.’ My voice is quiet but there’s a hint of challenge. My implication is obvious: threaten me or mine and face the consequences.

‘It probably has nothing to do with Renfrew,’ she says dismissively. ‘It was some scam between a bunch of lowlife criminals.’

‘All the same,’ I shrug, ‘I’m going to find them and I’m going to find Renfrew. Whether he’s dead or alive.’

Arbuckle taps her mouth thoughtfully. ‘You thought a time bubble would help you.’ It’s not a question. ‘You were going to use it as some sort H.G. Wells-inspired time machine and travel back to the night of his disappearance to find out what really happened.’ I smile. Arbuckle rolls her eyes. ‘The reports of your sleuthing skills are greatly exaggerated.’

Her disdain makes me stiffen. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You don’t think others have tried? That the police haven’t attempted to use time bubbles to solve crimes?’ She blows out air in an expression of disgust. ‘There would be no criminals loose on the streets if that were the case.’

I frown. ‘But…’

‘Time bubbles evolved in laboratories during the 1970s to keep dangerous chemicals safe. They are meant to provide a form of stasis, not tourism. That’s why companies use them as the latest type of cryogenics. But being inside a bubble is entirely different to being on the outside: you can’t plug it in and see who was on the grassy knoll. You can’t go back and kill Hitler. They’re
bubbles
. You’re trapped inside; your movements are limited. What do you think would happen if you engaged a time bubble here and now? If you set it to go back, say, a year and there was already someone inside this room in that time?’

I stare at her. She sighs, exasperated. ‘The past is set in stone. It’s already happened and you can’t change it. A bubble will not establish itself in a place where there are living beings. It would displace them from their own time, and time will not allow that. You can only use a time bubble to go back to places which are empty of people. If you think you can transport yourself to Renfrew’s mansion on the night of his party and see what really happened, you’re kidding yourself. Those serial killers you murdered…’

‘I didn’t murder them!’ I splutter.

She dismisses my interruption with a wave of her hand. ‘Those serial killers knew what they were doing. They knew history. They probably experimented in order to take themselves out of our time and into another. But they didn’t interact with the past, they merely existed inside it for a short period. In fact, they probably saw nothing more than a few buildings or trees.’

‘It doesn’t mean it wouldn’t prove useful,’ I say stubbornly.

Arbuckle shakes her head. ‘As useful as looking at a photo or a painting.’

‘Renfrew might be using a time bubble,’ I point out. ‘It makes sense. No one has seen him since that night in 1963. If he used a bubble, he could…’

‘Didn’t you hear me tell you they were developed in the seventies?’

‘He still could have…’

‘No,’ she says flatly. ‘He couldn’t.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

For a long moment she doesn’t answer but regards me steadily. Finally she nods to herself. ‘Wait here.’ She stands up and walks out.

I can’t move a bloody inch, I can’t do anything but ‘wait here’. I go through the motions of straining against my bonds but it’s pointless. They’re not vampire-proofed like Magix’s damn handcuffs but the army clearly has considerable experience in dealing with tribers. What makes it worse is that my face is itching, probably from the oil that’s congealed on my skin. No matter how I contort myself, I can’t reach it.

At least the discomfort gives me something else to focus on, now that Arbuckle’s revelation that utilizing a time bubble to investigate Renfrew is a waste of time. Not only was breaking into Brigstone the worst idea I’ve ever had, it was also for nothing. Even if we’d succeeded, we’d have failed.

I can already picture the look on my grandfather’s face. Assuming he doesn’t immediately disown me first, of course.

Arbuckle strolls back in and places a heavy file on the table in front of me. A fountain pen is clipped over the front page and in the corner at the top I can see the words ‘Renfrew, Tobias’. A squirm of excitement shoots through my belly. She’s really going to let me see the army’s own records?

‘I have spoken to my superiors and I can’t show you all of this,’ she says. ‘In fact, even what I’m going to let you read is classified.’

‘So why are you doing this?’ I ask, virtually salivating.

‘Because we need to do something to make you desist from your current course,’ she answers briskly, turning over the cardboard cover to the first page.

A photo of Renfrew stares out at me. His head is turned towards the camera so the famous ruby in his ear is displayed prominently. His mouth curves into the semblance of a smile but there’s hard look in his orange daemon eyes that the camera can’t fail to capture. Renfrew is perched over a desk with a pen in his hand. It’s apparent that he takes – or rather took – his health seriously. His body is lean and the faint shadows around his arms where his suit is bunched up highlight his muscle.

‘I’ve never seen this shot,’ I say.

Arbuckle snorts. ‘We’re not the
Daily News
. Like I said, this is all classified.’

She flips over several pages at once. I try to take in as much information as I can but Arbuckle does a good job of keeping the important parts concealed. As far as I can tell, they all relate to Renfrew’s military career. When she stops at the next report, however, I feel my heart in my mouth. The date at the top is January 17th, 1963. That’s the night of the party, the last time anyone ever saw him alive.

At 22.30 hours, the guests assembled at the front courtyard. Extensive interviews have stated that the numbers exceeded eight hundred, including staff. The subject took to the stage at 22.38, wearing a mauve smoking jacket rather than the tuxedo he wore earlier on. Neither the tuxedo nor the jacket were ever located.

‘He changed his clothes,’ I breathe. That fact had never been released.

‘Well,’ Arbuckle says, pragmatically, ‘there was a considerable amount of blood.’ She turns the page to the crime-scene photos. I have seen these before but the scale of the brutality still turns my stomach. There’s evidence of five separate corpses, all hacked to pieces.

‘At least you can say he was an equal-rights killer,’ she continues, pointing to different limbs in turn. ‘Witch. Human. Daemon.’ A tiny smile lifts the corner of her mouth. ‘Vampire.’

‘You think he did it then? He killed all of them?’

‘I don’t think, Ms Blackman. I know.’

‘Where’s the evidence then?’

‘His fingerprints were everywhere.’

I lift my eyes from the file. ‘It was his house. Of course they were.’

‘His prints were on the bodies too. What was left of them.’

‘There’s no motive.’

Her expression doesn’t change. ‘Isn’t being psychotic enough?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer, merely reaches over and starts turning more pages. I crane my neck to catch a glimpse of what’s in the file but her body blocks my sight line. She takes out one large photo and stands back as she studies it. Then she looks at me. ’Searching for Tobias Renfrew is a waste of time.’

I suddenly have a good idea what she’s holding in her hands. Nausea fills my stomach, although I can’t say whether it’s due to disappointment, rubber-necking excitement or the thought of seeing yet another body.

I wait until Arbuckle turns it over with a flourish. I’m right: it’s a photo of another corpse, in lurid Technicolor. The bright red ruby glitters in his earlobe, the colour mirroring the pool of blood around his head. His face is obscured partly because of the position of the body and partly because half of it seems to be have been blown off. His right hand is outstretched, one finger curled round the trigger of a gun.

‘He killed himself.’

Arbuckle nods. ‘As you see.’

‘But why?’

‘Who’s to say? Guilt perhaps, after the bloodbath at his house,’ she suggests. ‘Or maybe he knew the net was closing in and it was only a matter of time before he got caught. Either way,’ she says as she taps the corner of the photo, ‘by 1965, Tobias Renfrew was dead.’

I shake my head in disbelief. ‘If you know this, when why don’t you tell people? Release the damn photo?’

‘I have already told you that we are not the
Daily News
, Ms Blackman.’

‘The amount of money that’s going into looking for him, though! The people who’ve searched! His family members! All that wealth…’

‘Indeed,’ Arbuckle comments, ‘all that wealth. If Renfrew is declared legally dead, who gets the money?’

‘His descendants, surely.’

Her eyes flicker. ‘They’re all thugs. A billion pounds in the hands of that lot? No one wants to see that happen.’

‘If you knew he was dead you could have done something back then. You could have let the charity take the money…’

‘That charity is defunct because they couldn’t manage their finances. They’d have frittered away the Renfrew millions in a heartbeat.’

‘If you can prove he really killed those people, then the Agathos Court can confiscate his wealth. Surely the army approves of that?’

‘There are some who believe the Court already has too much power.’ At my look, she shrugs. ‘Not only humans. There are high-ranking daemons who think the same.’

‘People should still know!’ I argue.

Arbuckle’s defence is simple. ‘Why? It doesn’t serve any purpose. Well,’ she amends, ‘not any purpose that serves the army.’

‘It’s not your decision to make,’ I protest.

‘And neither is it yours.’ She holds the photo up. ‘Classified. You can’t tell anyone.’

‘But…’

‘Even if you do, the army will deny it.’

I stare at Renfrew’s corpse. This is ridiculous. I open my mouth to argue further then I see something and change my mind. ‘Do you know where his body is now?’

‘An unmarked grave; I don’t know where. There are no records of the location and few people still living know its whereabouts.’

I lick my lips: they’re cracked and dry. I could really do with some O neg right about now. ‘What about the gun?’