Thy Fearful Symmetry (13 page)

Cut to the studio, where baffled environmentalists and scientists speculated wildly. The most important question – was this actually blood – was the only one sidestepped, opinion being that until tests came back it was impossible to comment on the chemical make up of the fluid. Gemmell knew what blood smelled like, and didn't have to wait for a specialist to tell him.

Neither did most Glaswegians. There was little panic, just baffled, excited awe. The United Kingdom was lucky in that regard. Other countries were already seeing riots, as religious fervour drove existing tensions sky high. The Apocalypse was upon them, which curtailed the amount of time everybody had left to inflict suffering on those they disliked. Gemmell was sceptical. The end of the world was something that should happen thousands of years in the future, not at nine o' clock in the morning, before he’d had a coffee.

Summer found his attitude hard to credit. Forcing the car forward through the crowds of people on the street, all of whom were heading towards the Clyde, she told him as much. “Sir, haven't we got better things to be doing than poking through that ruin again?”

Gemmell's eye twitched. How long was it going to be, he wondered, before people realised there was nothing to drink? “What would that be, Sergeant? Sitting around the station whispering about Armageddon?”

“No sir.” Jackie's voice was quiet, but to his surprise she didn't drop the issue. “It's only a matter of time before these people react to the situation. There's going to be panic buying, looting, rioting, and worse. Shouldn't we be getting ready for that?”
 

Gemmell pursed his lips. Jackie Summer was a thinker. “You're right. I'm just tired. What can we do though? Until trouble starts, we can only get officers on the street. We've done that. The press can urge people to carry on as normal, but nobody's going to pay any attention. Unless somebody declares a state of martial law, these idiots have every right to go and see their river of blood.”

“Do you think that's what it is?”

“Summer, if you're going to ask pertinent, intelligent questions one minute, and then transform into a dribbling idiot the next, you can get out and walk. Of course it's blood.”

Nodding, she eased the car to the kerb outside the burned shell of a tenement building. “Sorry sir. I still don't see why we're back here though.”

Three weeks ago, they had watched firefighters douse the last of the flames in the building, not knowing that the explosion that gutted it was a harbinger of strange days. To date, there had been little luck tracking down the resident in whose flat the explosion started, Pandora Numen. She was seen being carried from the building by one Ambrose Eidolon, now also missing after reports of violence in his flat on Hillhead Street. This morning, while watching rivers of blood flowing the world over, in the middle of a miserable caffeine craving he couldn't satisfy, Gemmell had felt the stirrings of an idea. Connections that had always been there began to look luminous against the murk of events, and patterns jumped out at him.

Ambrose Eidolon, according to the descriptions given by the neighbours, bore a strong resemblance to the man who had walked out of Queen Margaret Union, leaving behind dozens of dead people. Possibly unconnected, but decidedly curious, was that Clive Huntley, the child beating teacher and amateur escapologist, was one of those same neighbours his officers had interviewed the night that Eidolon vanished. The significance of the surnames Eidolon and Numen, synonyms that Gemmell would have spotted weeks ago if he had been less stressed, finally slapped him in the face.

Instinct told him that the two missing persons, Ambrose and Pandora, were somehow at the heart of things. Find them, and answers would follow.

Climbing from the car, forcing the door open against the herds of humanity streaming past, he took a dozen knocks and bruises as he made his way to the pavement, he joined Summer in the calm behind the police tape sealing the scene.

“Never fails,” he said, as he ducked under the yellow strip. “Bloody stuff might as well be razor wire. “

“If you say so sir. I'm still not sure what I'm looking for.”

“No idea, Summer. I wanted to see it again, that’s all. The Fire Service said the explosion was underground, in the basement level, where Pandora Numen lived.” He picked his way through the detritus, to where the stairwell had been.
 

Summer followed him. “They couldn't say what caused the blast, but it was forceful, and came from a single point. The damage decreases the further away you get from the detonation point. Like a bomb, rather than a gas leak. Are we safe in here?”

Gemmell examined a scattered mass of bricks. The stairwell, he was sure. “They don't build them like they used to. The building's structurally sound. Most of the supporting walls are still in place. It's not going to come crashing down on us, if that's what you're worried about.” Somewhere above him, there was an alarming creak as weight shifted. Gemmell glanced up. “Probably.”

“You think everything's connected, don't you?”

The question surprised him, and he stood abruptly. “What makes you say that?”

“You keep talking about the explosion being the start of things. You want to see this place, despite everything going on.” Summer's lips pursed. “Pandora Numen and Clive Huntley are connected through… through Ambrose Eidolon?” Her eyes came up, meeting his. “Jesus, Eidolon could have been the man from the Queen Margaret Union! How long have you...”

Gemmell raised a hand, happy that his logic held up under somebody else's scrutiny. “This morning.”
 

“Eidolon is allegedly attacked in his flat,” Summer continued, “runs to the roof of his building, and vanishes. Not long after – a little over an hour, I think – he pulls an apparently injured Numen from this building, setting off the fire alarm and causing everyone else to evacuate just before the building goes up. A few weeks later he's seen wandering through a crowd of people dancing themselves to death, then vanishes again. He's still in Glasgow, isn't he?”

Gemmell was pleased, and nodded. “I think so. I think these two have some answers for us, Jackie.”
 

Summer rubbed the back of her neck. “Sir, we don't have the resources to mount...”

“I know. Not with public disorder a fait accompli. That doesn't stop me making it a personal priority. I don't know how much time I'm going to have, not with everything kicking off this morning. I could do with some help. I'm asking, not ordering. It could look bloody strange, two officers looking into old cases while new ones are presenting themselves left, right, and centre.”

Jackie Summer cast her eyes out to the thronging street. “Sir, I think…” She bit her lip. “I think it will only look strange if anybody's allowed to notice.”

Gemmell grinned, and gave her a wink. “Good lass. We'll make a notorious rogue of you yet.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Calum winced at the noise of the police tape ripping away from the doorframe, aware of the low murmur of a man's voice coming from the flat next door. Not waiting to see if he had been heard, he slipped Ambrose's key into the lock and stepped inside, closing the door behind him. For a long moment he held his breath, only releasing it when there were no inquisitive footsteps in the hallway outside.

The flat Ambrose had called home for over forty years looked decidedly worse for wear. Plaster was scattered widely across the centre of the room. According to the demon, the damage was caused by his body smashing into the ceiling. Every time Calum thought he was becoming adjusted to his new reality, details made his mind reel. Looking at the dent in the ceiling, he wondered what condition he would be in if he had hit a solid surface so hard. What must the creature who could toss a body with such horrible strength be like?

Despite his wish to nurse the knocks and bruises he had gathered pushing against the crowds to get there, Calum decided he would stay no longer than necessary. The thought of what this Leviathan might do to him if he caught him was no longer an abstract concern, but a brutal spur to action.
 

The door to the bedroom stood ajar. Tangled bedclothes lay in a heap at the end of the double bed, and Calum threw them aside, pulled out the wooden chest behind them, and eased open the lid.

As he reached inside, his eyes registered what they were seeing. Ambrose had warned him, in an offhand way, what he would find there, but it had not quite sunk in. Filtered by the red curtains, the light had a crisp scarlet quality that accentuated the macabre collection before him. A skull, too small to be an adult's, absorbed the light so well it looked freshly soiled with blood. Other bones were scattered about haphazardly, among them black candles, metal pentagrams, loose tarot cards, and more. Stage props, Ambrose called them, and in the light of day, with friends gathered around, they might be comical. On his own, in the lair of a penitent fiend, they were horrible.
 

Mortified, Calum nudged the artefacts aside, searching for the box Ambrose had described. When he found it, at the bottom of the chest, he was unimpressed. Pulling it free of something tough and rubbery that he did not want to dwell on, he carried it through to the huge living room window for a better look. About the size and shape of a cigarette packet, the wood was old and dirty. There were no markings on the box, no paint, no varnish, and it was only when he turned it over in his hand that Calum saw what was so curious about it.

There was no way to open it. The wood was a solid shell. Hefting it in his hand, he could tell that it was hollow, and something that felt like sand shifted inside. What would Ambrose want with a sealed box of sand? Did he know some spell to get at the contents?
 

Chuckling, he realised he was being naive. Ambrose could just take a hammer to the thing. Just because the world was suddenly full of magic, that didn't mean there was no place left for the mundane.

Looking out of the window, Calum saw why Ambrose had stayed there for so long. The three-storey building crested a steep hill, and even the second floor view was magnificent. It was a god's eye view of the people who called Glasgow home. Rooftops spread like crazy paving across the West End, the occasional tree poking bare branches between them, birds wheeling over everything like angels. For a moment, Calum felt close to the divine, and then his depression crashed back over him.

Forcing his thoughts to other matters, he found distractions easy to find. The Clyde was now an open vein, pouring blood into the sea. Already the crazies were on street corners, fighting the crowds to stay atop their soapboxes as they preached brimstone, death, and life everlasting.
 

No, that wasn't right. A few weeks ago, Calum would have called them crazy. Now he knew they could be right. They were, at the very least, closer to the truth than everybody else.

Many of those battling through the streets were students, and scepticism ruled in their ranks. Some insisted the river was a crude prank, and Calum found such a ridiculous misrepresentation of the facts infuriating. Others were speculating about some sort of freak geographical occurrence, red clay beneath the riverbed suddenly being exposed by the snow-swollen waters and spewing sediment upwards. At least that had an element of logic behind it, though Calum knew it was also false.

The river was full of blood. Probably human blood. It had excited and invigorated people, to have this grotesque miracle appear in their lives, but eventually common sense was going to kick in. Unless the phenomenon reversed, or rain fell, Glasgow was going to get a taste of what drought really felt like.
 

I can stop that happening
, Calum thought, as he gazed out.
I can clasp my hands together any time I want, hand my fugitives over, and make the world work properly again.
 

Perhaps that was true, but Calum could smell the flaws in his own logic. It didn't make sense that God was inflicting this on the world in order to flush the two refugees out. As far as he could tell, Ambrose didn't actually need water to live. Pandora had spent three weeks with no nourishment whatsoever, and looked no worse for it, coma or no coma. If she were a human in hospital, there would be drips feeding her fluids and nutrients. Evidently, that was not necessary in her case. Furthermore, as a possible incentive for them to hand themselves over, holding the world to ransom was seriously flawed. Ambrose certainly wasn't going to be concerned at the plight of humanity. While it might prick his fledgling conscience a little, there was no chance that he was going to martyr himself for others.

Calum was pulled from his reverie by a voice behind him, and as he turned around he mustered the presence of mind to slip the box into the back pocket of his jeans. A man was standing in the centre of the rubble, leaning on a golf club, frowning. “What are you doing here?”
 

Trying to frame an answer to the question, Calum was alarmed to see red liquid dripping from the man's hands, and then remembered overhearing that the taps were flowing with blood too. The unshaven, tired looking man before him must be the neighbour. “I…” Calum decided on absolute honesty. If it worked on an archangel said to be the voice of God, it might work here too. “I know the owner. He gave me his keys, asked me to pick up some things for him.”
 

“You know Ambrose?”
 

Calum's guard went up, but he fought to bring it back down. Of course this man knew Ambrose, they were neighbours. Nodding, he managed a smile. “Yes, we're good friends. He's staying with me.”

The other man mirrored his nodding, and the effect was oddly hypnotic. “I see. I see. That's good. That saves time.”

From the now open front door, Calum heard a low, repetitive sound that had been there all along, but which he had only just tuned in to. Exhaustion seeped through him, the wonders he had already witnessed in the last twenty-four hours having inured him to outright terror. It was a woman, sobbing harshly but quietly, pain underscoring each expulsion of sound. Calum wondered again about the blood on this man's hands.