The Book of Souls (The Inspector McLean Mysteries) (46 page)

The two by four clattered to the ground, and then McLean felt hands grab him under his armpits. He tried to fight, but all the strength had gone from him. He was dragged a short way, propped up against a pillar. He managed to raise one hand, though it felt like it was encased in concrete, and touched the side of his head. Sticky wetness coated his fingers and pain exploded across his vision in a shower of sparks. When they cleared, he could see Needy, bending down and looking at him through those horrible, puffed-up eyes. He had the book in his hands, a quizzical expression on his face.

'Why do you fight it? It's nothing to be afraid of.' Needy opened the book and then held it up so that McLean could see. His vision was still blurry from the smoke and the blow to his head, but there was something about the size and shape of it that filled him with a terrible certainty. This was the book he'd found the slip of Kirsty's dress in. This was the Liber Animorum, the Book of Souls.

'I can't read it, Needy,' McLean said, his voice cracking. The heat was rising quickly now, the fire spreading between the piles of materials stacked up against the walls nearby. Needy didn't seem to have noticed at all.

'No, no, no. You don't read it. That's the whole point. It reads you. See?' The sergeant turned the book back around, his eyes went down to the words and he started to mouth cod-Latin gibberish.

'Itis apis potet avere bygone. Iacet summare quaelam coveris.'

McLean saw his opportunity, lunged for the piece of two by four lying off to his side. The wood was heavy in his hand, too heavy maybe. He rolled over, getting his other hand to it too, ignoring the pain that shot through his head. Scrabbling to his knees, he brought the weapon round in a sweeping arc just as Needy realised what was going on. The sergeant let out a surprised squawk, jumped up and let go of the book. He took two steps backwards in an attempt to steady himself, then tripped over his cloak and toppled over into the fire.

The flames leapt on him as if they were alive and hungry. His cloak caught first, then with a horrible fizzing sound audible over the roar of everything else, Needy's hair burst alight. He struggled upright, pulling himself out of the fire with hands that were bubbling and blistered. And yet he didn't scream, just kept on mouthing unheard words. McLean staggered back, legs giving out as the last of his strength left him. A pillar of human fire limped towards the book, stretched out its weeping hands, sank to its knees and then toppled forward onto the open pages. The paper caught in an instant, wrapping Needy's head in a wreath of yellow flame. McLean could only watch as the skin bubbled away, oozing red blood and yellow pus, Needy's jaw still working away as he tried to read the words that had consumed his soul.

*

McLean watched the book and the man who had been his friend as they burned. A part of him, deep inside, was shouting at him to get up, get out, but he could hardly breathe now. It felt like he was at the top of Everest, every muscle in his body screaming in pain. It was too much effort. He was so tired. He had no strength left. He'd fought so long to right the wrong that Anderson had done. Perhaps now it was time to stop fighting and just give up.

With the last of his dwindling strength, he put his hand in his pocket. Pulled out the thin strip of fabric that had been torn from Kirsty's dress. Barely able to hold it between his fingers, he watched as the fire-driven wind rippled it this way and that. He remembered her wearing it, how it hugged her figure, how it twirled when she danced and the smile in her eyes.

And then she was dancing again, that last tiny fragment. Pirouetting in the air currents, up and up, around and around, closer and closer until the roaring flames took her too. Tears stung his eyes, but they could not run. The heat evaporated them before they could wet his cheeks. Thwarted even in that last lament, he slumped onto the floor and prepared to die.

~~~~

65

She comes to him in his pain, like an angel of mercy. She is naked, but there is no shame in that. Her face is filled with joy, her hair tumbling over her shoulders like a deep black waterfall.

'Don't panic, Tony. It'll be over soon. One way or another.' He hasn't heard her voice in too long. He used to have a tape, but the fire took it, like it took everything else about her, left him only his memories. She bends down beside him, soothes his forehead with a hand as cool as the first good snow of winter.

'Kirsty.' He croaks the word, his throat like baked sand. It's so hot, he feels like he's burning up.

'Shhhh. I'm here. We're all here. It's going to be all right.'

And she's right, they are all here. One by one he sees them. Trisha Lubkin, Kate McKenzie, Audrey Carpenter, Laura Fenton, Diane Kinnear, Rosie Buckley, Joss Evans, the list goes on as all the people Needy and Anderson killed walk past him, one by one, and touch his brow with cool fingers. They are all naked, but all smiling, lively, excited. All free. And there are more, too. People he doesn't know, and people he does. John Needham as he was a decade earlier, staring at nothing, an expression of terror on his face. Donald Anderson, younger, dressed in a monk's habit and wide-eyed as he sees what he has done. What the book has made him do.

'Kirsty.' His voice is little more than a whisper, and now he can hear a great roaring wind, feel it gusting on his face, searing off the skin. It sweeps up the people all around him, whipping them into the air like a tornado. They go willingly, their arms spread wide, their faces upturned and rapturous. Too late he realises that she must go too. He reaches for her arm, taking her hand. It is cool to the touch, so smooth. He'd forgotten what she felt like. He misses her so much.

'Don't go.'

'I have to go,' she answers with that slow patient way of hers. 'You have to let me go. It's time to move on.'

Her fingers are slipping away from his. She is floating up into the air, her hair whipping round her face. She stares down at him and smiles, fading away from his sight.

'I love you Kirsty,' he says. And then she is gone.

*

'What did you say, sir?'

McLean's eyes snapped open and he found himself staring up at the sweat-streaked face of DS Ritchie. He felt like someone had shoved him into an oven at gas mark nine, and it wasn't hard to see why. All around was flame.

'We've got to get out. Now.' Ritchie stooped down and hauled McLean upright. He dimly recalled that she'd been injured herself. What was she doing coming here endangering herself? He'd tell her off later, he decided.

Everything hurt, but his legs seemed stronger than they had any right to be. Once he was up, he was able to stagger towards the nearest doorway, back into the admin block. Smoke billowed around the lower ceiling, flames eating at the wooden desks and shelving. They half walked, half fell down the spiral stone steps to the tunnel. The air was slightly better down here, a steady draft being dragged through by the fire up above. Still it was difficult to breathe.

McLean paused as they crossed the chapel. 'We need to secure this. It's a crime scene.' His voice was little more than a croak. DS Ritchie leant against the wall by the door back to the house, panting.

'With respect, sir. Fuck the crime scene. We need to get out of here before the whole place explodes.'

As if to underline her point, a dull thwump sound echoed from the tunnel, followed by a roar that rose in tone as it rose in volume. Brain addled by lack of oxygen, it took McLean long moments to realise what was happening. Then the hidden door in the wood panelling disintegrated in a ball of flame. Splinters stung his face and the force of the blast knocked him to the ground. He crawled over to the doorway as flames started to eat away at the wooden plaques and the eagle lectern.

'You're right, sergeant. Fuck the crime scene.'

They leant on each other for support, struggling up the stone stairs, first to the basement and then to the hall. The acrid smell of smoke was everywhere, even in the hallway. And overlaid on top of it was that horrible rotten egg gaseous smell. McLean tried to place it, but his brain was too addled to make any sense. Marsh gas? Broken sewers?

The air outside was a blessed relief, cold and sweet and pure. The two of them struggled across the gravel to the car, still no sign of the promised back up, or the air ambulance. They'd only gone half way when a huge explosion shattered the calm. McLean half turned, seeing a great black cloud rising from the site of the ironworks. Then there was an odd whistling noise, like a train coming out of a tunnel at full speed, and the whole front entrance to Needy's house blew open in a gout of flame. Windows shattered, firing razor shards of glass out across the driveway.

Both of them were knocked to the ground. McLean ended up face down in the gravel, clinging on as if he were about to fall off the world. His head rang with the explosions, the heat, the onset of concussion. But slowly, as the winter chill eased his burns and the vertigo ebbed away, he began to hear the wail of distant sirens.

~~~~

66

He walks down the street the same as he did almost every day for two years. It was part of his beat, part of the regular rhythm of the job. But today is different. He hasn't worn the uniform for a while now, and in his absence this part of the city has changed. At first he's worried as he sees the new coffee bars and expensive fashion boutiques.  Perhaps the shop he seeks is no longer there. So much is different now that the parliament is being built; the old order demolished to make way for the new.

But it is there still, the little shop with its neat green paint and tinted windows. Some things will always hold out against the march of progress, and that is good. He pushes open the door, hears the tinkle of the bell and glances up at the movement of it jangling on its little spring. Nods in approval, the shop has the right feel to it.

Not all the books are old, but none of them are new. He runs his fingers down their spines as he walks through the line of shelves towards the little counter at the back. The shopkeeper greets him with a friendly smile. He's an old man, with a trustworthy face.

'Can I help you sir?' A trustworthy voice, too. Warm and relaxing.

'I'm looking for a gift, actually.' He's embarrassed a little, but the old man's smile wins him over. 'It's for my fiancée. We're getting married in the spring.'

'My congratulations, sir. And did you have anything particular in mind?'

'Well, this might seem a little stupid. But she's a junior doctor. Just graduated. And I thought maybe some old medical text. You know, something from a time when they used leeches and cupping and stuff. I thought it would be...' He tails off. Spoken aloud, the idea seems almost insulting. These are valuable books, after all. They need to be cherished and protected. Not the sort of thing you give on a whim.

'But what a splendid gift.' The shopkeeper's smile notches up another inch. 'And so appropriate. Of course, there are doctors today who still subscribe to both cupping and leeches. But a memento of a time when medicine was raw and experimental. Yes, splendid.'

And then everything is fine. The shopkeeper knows the very thing, and it's reasonably priced too. Not in the shop at the moment, but if he could take some details, he'll be in touch just as soon as he's retrieved it from his store.

He leaves the shop with a spring in his step. She's normally so difficult to buy presents for, but she'll love this. He just knows it.

~~~~

67

It was going to take more than twenty-four hours rest and a change of clothing to make McLean feel fully human again. For a start his face and hands felt like he'd been on holiday in the Costa del Sol for a fortnight and forgotten to pack the sun cream. And there was the nagging sense of unreality about it all, too. He'd heard about anoxia and the strange hallucinations it could bring on, but knowing that didn't make it any easier to accept.

'You were in here when it started? Jesus, inspector. What the hell happened?'