The Devil in Amber (16 page)

The amber-shirts obliged, dragging the dead woman from the flagged floor and dropping her onto a chair with brutal casualness. Then, stripping the wimple from around her head, Mons pushed back the body so that it sat up straight. The old woman’s shorn white hair almost glowed in the crypt-like atmosphere.

Mons stood for a moment, his face raised to the ceiling, swaying slightly on his feet like a dancer picking up a rhythm. He began to mumble in a low, guttural tone. It was impossible to make out his words, but every now and then he would pause, listening, and make some curious sign or other, turning through all points of the compass and raising first his left then his right hand. He crooked his middle fingers so that they dug into his palm, leaving little white half-moon impressions in the flesh.

Then, in one quick movement, he jerked his body round, leant directly over the dead Mother Superior, and pressed his fingers to her temples. The intonation bubbling in his throat grew even deeper and more sonorous.

The effect on all concerned was utterly mesmeric. I, the captured sisters and even the guards had become spellbound. Pandora stared at her leader, twisting her hair with almost feverish eagerness.

Then the atmosphere in the room suddenly changed. The temperature plummeted and I glanced nervously over my shoulder, quite convinced that we were being watched by some new presence. The place was so wreathed in shadow that one might imagine all kinds of terrors lurking there but we could all see that the air was thickening queerly. I found that I was shivering inside my thick coat and sweater.

A kind of miasma began to form on the stone floor of the chamber as though mist were creeping in from the grey sea beyond, and I again had that weird sensation that time had somehow stopped.

At first, I couldn’t see what had happened. But then one of the nuns screamed and backed away, revealing the impossible sight of the dead Mother Superior sitting bolt upright, her face tipped up as if staring at the ceiling, her eyes perfectly white and opaque.

And then she spoke.

‘
Who has summoned me?
’

The voice was dreadful, low, cracked, flat.

Mons strutted before the woman, his features contorted with hellish triumph. ‘I! Olympus Mons! In the name of Asrael, Baralamensis and the Chief Princes of the throne of Apologia! I command you to answer me.’

The late nun twisted in her chair, her chalk-white face screwing up as though in distress. Then some higher authority seemed to overwhelm her and she sagged once more into a waxy death mask. ‘
As I am commanded, so must I speak.
’

Mons thrust his face towards hers. ‘Then tell me! Where is the Lamb?’

A playful half-smile crept onto the nun’s face, the weird force within her taking command. ‘
You parley with dark forces to find the Lamb of God?
’

The corpse’s words nudged a fragment of memory somewhere in my overheated brain. The Lamb of God?

‘You know why she is important!’ thundered Mons. ‘I seek to do the Devil’s bidding. I command you to aid me!’

The nun’s head fell back, a terrible, gargling moan erupting from her throat and she spoke for a moment in her old, gentle tones. ‘I cannot tell! I must not tell!’

Mons pointed his bony finger at her. ‘I command you! By Him who spoke and it was done! By the most Holy and Glorious names Adonai, El Elohim, Elohe, Zabaoth…’

‘No…’

‘Elion, Escherche, Jar and Tetragrammaton…’

‘
No!
’

Mons wrenched the dead woman by the throat and shook her. ‘Tell me! Tell me! I command you!’

Suddenly, as though all resistance had been overcome, the woman went limp in his grip and a torrent of words began to tumble from her slack, dribbling mouth. Mons dashed to her side so as to hear.

‘
Bred here. Bred here but sent far away,’
murmured the un-dead nun. ‘
Far away. She travels by sea. But now she’s landlocked again. Haha! They sought to hide her from the likes of you. She is dangerous. A gentle, gentle girl. But so dangerous to the world! To us all! Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis! The Lamb. The Lamb of God.
’

I felt cold all over.

An image of the beautiful cabin girl suddenly swam into my mind.

Aggie!

Not short for Agatha but Agnes. Agnes Daye!

Agnus Dei: the Lamb of God!

I
stood in wretched impotence, frozen by the terrible knowledge I possessed. All the attention I’d squandered on that ruddy ‘handkerchief’thinking
that
was the elusive Lamb! And it was sweet Aggie they’d been after the whole time!

What part could she possibly play in Mons’s nefarious schemes? My mind raced as the garrulous corpse cheerfully spilled the beans.

‘Where is she now?’ demanded Mons, his hands dancing about the nun’s throat as though he were tempted to have at her again. ‘Where?’

‘
Where the blue lamp glows and the red church looms. And only a friend stands watch over her
.’

‘Where is she, damn you!’ screamed Mons.

‘
Ask him who is fallen,
’ smiled the dead Mother Superior. For one last time, her face assumed a look of serenity, then distorted again as though in torment. ‘God forgive me!’ she shrieked, then slumped to the floor, her dead face smacking on the flagstones. The séance was over.

‘Why do they always do that?’ raged Mons. ‘I hate it when they
do that! They talk in damned riddles and I’m left none the—’

‘Him who is fallen,’ murmured Pandora.

Well, I knew what that meant, all right. Curiously, though, no one seemed to be taking the hint. But what of the blue lamp and the red church? And a friend standing watch?’

Pandora’s face creased into a puzzled frown, like a schoolgirl sucking thoughtfully on the end of a pencil. ‘Him who is fallen…him who is fallen.’

Mons seemed stumped. He gave the Mother Superior’s body a swift kick in frustration.

I was finding this difficult to credit. Didn’t Mons’s mob know their Bible? Particularly the bit about the battle between God and the most comely of his angels? And who had got his comeuppance at the hands of the Almighty?

‘Someone who’s had a nasty fall recently?’ mused Pandora. She snapped her fingers. ‘You jumped off that pier, Olympus! Would that count?’

‘Unlikely,’ mused Mons. ‘I’m the one asking the question.’ He cracked his knuckles and frowned. ‘Perhaps that nun I shot first. She could be said to have fallen—’

‘IT’S ME!’ I yelled, unable to bear their lack of erudition a moment more. ‘For Christ’s sake, what did you
do
at school, Pandora?’

My sister swung round. ‘You, Lucy?’

Mons brightened up at once. ‘Of course! The fallen angel! Lucifer!’

‘
Yes
,’ I said patiently. ‘Really, you’re not being awfully bright.’

Mons fixed me with his arc-light stare. ‘You know her, then? You know this woman, this Lamb of God?’

I whistled nonchalantly. ‘Perhaps. Say I do know her…what do you want her for?’

‘That doesn’t concern a bungling amateur like you!’ Mons positively spat. ‘Just tell me where she is!’

I folded my arms. ‘Or what? I suppose you could shoot me and
then try that trick with the hypnosis or whatever but I rather get the feeling it’s not something one can just do at the drop of a hat. You do look a mite peaky, if I might say so.’

Mons’s hand flew unconsciously to his face. The séance did indeed seem to have taken a great toll on him. His skin had assumed a greyish pallor and his eyes were heavily bloodshot.

He marched right up to me, mouth curling into a snarl. I could smell the tobacco on his breath. ‘You’ll tell me, Box, or by God—’

‘By God?’ I queried. ‘I rather thought He was out of the picture.’

Mons’s reddened eyes bulged beneath his heavy lids and I could see he was building to another of his rages. Thankfully Pandora stepped in.

‘Can’t do any harm, Olympus,’ she drawled, inhaling deeply on a black cheroot. ‘After all, he’s not leaving any time soon, is he?’

Mons held my stare. ‘He’s not leaving here at all.’

I gave Pandora my sweetest smile. ‘How does the old saying go? One can choose one’s friends…’

‘Don’t you dare bring family into this!’ she hissed. ‘There’s nothing left between us! Nothing! What kindness or family loyalty have you ever shown me? You selfish, arrogant whoremonger! For the sake of the Tribune I would cut you down without a second thought.’

She dashed her cheroot to the flagstones and stubbed it into oblivion. A flurry of ash, picked up by the draught, whispered away into the shadows.

I shrugged. ‘Well, at least I know where I stand. You were about to outline this great plan of yours.’

Mons clasped his hands behind his back and began his Eyetie strut again. ‘Oh, it’s nothing much really. I merely wish to summon the Devil himself and use his power to perpetuate my own.’

‘Oh,
that
old plan,’ I mused, stifling a yawn. ‘Well, best of luck, old darling. Where does the girl come into all this?’

‘So you do know her!’ cried Pandora triumphantly.

I held out my hands, palm upwards, ceding their point.

Mons stroked his waxed moustache. ‘There is an invocation. An ancient, ancient thing. It’s called the Jerusalem Prayer and it’s mentioned in heathen writings and diabolistic tracts going back as far as you can imagine. It shows how not just some minor demon but the Dark One himself, the Goat of Mendez, may be summoned back to hold sway over his earthly kingdom.’

‘Rot,’ I said simply.

Mons seemed rather pleased by my scepticism. ‘Many have doubted as you do, Mr Box, only to find their cherished and simplistic view of the world turned upon its head. But let us return to the Prayer. It describes how, if a chosen one is sacrificed to Satan, he will be released from the supernatural bonds with which he is restrained. That sacrifice is a Perfect Victim, a woman with holy blood running through her veins, descended from an unbroken line of such anointed ones—’

‘I’ve heard of such a legend!’ I gasped. ‘A child descended from a union between Christ and Mary Magdalene!’

‘Don’t be so fucking stupid,’ snorted Mons. ‘There’s
hundreds
of those! No, this one is
really
special. In a designated place, at a designated hour, she must become his Bride. It has taken me a long time but finally I tracked her down. To the Convent of St Bede.’

I thought of what Captain Corpusty had said. Aggie had been brought up by the sisters but then placed in his care. But why? Then Sal Volatile’s words came back to me. He’d found the Lamb, he said. Hidden under Mons’s very nose. The sisters must have seen that Mons was getting close and so secreted the precious girl on the
Stiffkey
as a crew member, never realizing that the ship was already bound up in Mons’s drug-smuggling schemes. She’d been hidden in plain sight, indeed.

‘Doesn’t do you much good without this Jerusalem whatsit of yours, though. Or have your clever boys found that as well?’

Mons nodded excitedly and let out another of his childish
giggles. ‘I’ve spent several fortunes in the hunt but I finally traced it to some filthy little fence back in the good old U.S. of A.’

Hubbard the Cupboard, of course. Pennies, as you can imagine, were now dropping all over the shop. ‘But he got greedy, yes?’ I speculated. ‘Removed part of the Prayer in order to hold out for more money?’

Mons’s face darkened. ‘To find myself held to ransom by scum like that! After all those years of fruitless searching.’

I grunted unhappily. So Mons had managed to infiltrate the RA and had used his acolyte, the odious Percy Flarge, to rub the fellow out. But Flarge hadn’t found the square of silk, the ‘handkerchief’ that obviously contained some vital missing part of the ritual! The part dealing with the sacrifice of the Lamb of God!

My hand stole to my trouser pocket where the wretched thing now nestled. ‘So now you’re going to kill this girl–stab her with an ornamental dagger on a stone altar or some such tosh, I’ll wager–just to fuel your insane fantasies about black magic?’

Mons seemed surprised. ‘You’ve seen what I can do!’ he cried. ‘I made the dead speak! I am as one with Banebdjed!’

I glanced down at the motionless form of the Mother Superior. ‘A conjuring trick. Some form of deep hypnosis. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she were simply in a deep sleep.’

‘She’s dead!’ he yelled.

‘I doubt it.’

‘She
is
!’ he squealed, like a petulant child, reaching down and grabbing the Mother Superior by the arms.

Suddenly, she let out a dreadful groan. Whether it was the last residue of air in her leathery old lungs or the vestiges of the demonic possession I cannot tell, but Mons stepped back, startled, and the assembled nuns set up a terrible caterwauling. It was all the distraction I needed.

Swinging round, I socked the amber-shirt guard on the jaw and grabbed his Tommy gun, immediately turning it on Mons.

His hands flew up and I yanked him towards me by the lapels of his expensive suit. The other guards rushed forward.

‘Not one more step,’ I yelled, ‘or I’ll spray his brains all over the stonework! You understand?’

‘Get back!’ hissed Mons. ‘Get back, you cretins! He means it!’

Pulling Mons to me and wrapping my arm around his neck, I jerked him backwards so he let out a little squawk. Then, pressing the gun to his temple, I looked wildly about for an exit.

Despite the shadows, I could see a huge iron-banded wooden door in the wall behind me and I shuffled slowly towards it, Mons’s boots dragging over the flagstones.

‘Don’t be an idiot, Lucifer!’ sneered Pandora. ‘You know you haven’t a chance. Give up now and we’ll be merciful.’

‘The quality of your mercy, dear sis, is somewhat strained, I fear,’ I cried, eyeing the doorway. ‘You!’ I jerked my head towards one of the guards. ‘Get the door open.’

The pale-faced thug looked to his master, who said nothing. I jabbed the gun into Mons’s face to encourage him and he nodded hastily. The guard unlocked the great door and it swung open with a dreadful, protesting shriek of rusted hinges. The outside showed as an arched black silhouette. Freezing air poured inside and over us.

‘I could kill you now,’ I hissed in Mons’s ear. ‘Bring this whole thing to an end.’

He swivelled his dark eyes towards me. ‘Then why don’t you?’

That was obvious. If I cut down Mons, his followers would have no compunction in taking me down with him. He was my guarantee out of there.

Mons laughed mirthlessly. ‘And where do you think you’re going? We’re on an island, Mr Box. There’s no hiding place.’

It was true. I hadn’t thought much past getting out of the convent in one piece. I glanced feverishly around the chamber. Each of the guards was poised to spring should I put a foot wrong.

I renewed my grip on Mons’s throat and hauled him backwards through the doorway and out into the night.

It was good to breathe clean, fresh air after the horrible frowst within. I glanced at the black water lapping close by, whipped up by the breeze.

Right by us was the lorry, and next to it the sleek silver motor that must be Mons’s car. The man I was semi-throttling seemed to read my mind and giggled his little boy’s giggle. ‘High tide, my friend. No one’s driving out of here for a while yet.’

I cursed his smug face. The amber-shirts and Pandora had formed a semi-circle just outside the convent doorway.

‘Stay back!’ I yelled, then aimed the Tommy gun and a spray of bullets ate up the shingle on the threshold.

In answer, a bullet whistled past my cheek–so close I could feel its scorching heat–and I saw that Pandora had let fly with a pistol.

‘Don’t try that again or I swear I’ll cut you down!’ I bellowed.

A wonky smile lit up my sister’s features and I saw that she was about to take aim, calling my bluff. ‘You won’t shoot me and you won’t shoot him,’ she called, calm as a snake.

‘Pandora!’ hissed Mons. ‘Don’t risk it.’

‘It’s no risk,’ she said, coolly cocking the gun. ‘My brother’s a coward. Always has been.’

I chanced a look behind me at the short distance to the sea. The swim back to the mainland seemed to be my only option. My mind was made up, quite suddenly, as Pandora let fly with a couple more shots. I dived to one side, taking Mons with me, then sprayed the whole of the facade of the convent with sub-machine-gun fire. The night lit up like a fireworks display as the bullets sang off the stones.

Mons let out a kind of croak of fear as I dragged him into the shadows. An amber-shirt came pelting towards us and I loosed off a round, smashing his jaw. A spray of blood showed up, black as ink, against the light pouring through the open doorway. The poor
fool crashed to the shingle but Mons took advantage of the distraction to twist round and ram his head into my solar plexus. I crumpled backwards, all the air knocked from me, and strained weakly to pull the trigger of the Tommy gun.

Mons scrabbled to his feet, shingle jumping everywhere, and yelled for assistance. I lashed out at his shin and he fell heavily on top of me. I managed a couple of sharp jabs to his face but he was strong and fought back, wrestling with the icy steel of the weapon in my hands. Still winded, I could scarcely retaliate and I felt my grip slackening on the machine-gun. I was done for unless I could pull one last trick. Mons was dragging so desperately at the gun that when I suddenly let go, he toppled over with a cry of surprise.

In the instant before he got up and trained the weapon on me, I scrambled frantically into my pocket and pulled out the silk handkerchief.