‘This scene is different from the others,’ Sebastian said quietly, when he rejoined his assistant in the living room.
‘No Nazi words or symbols?’ Bimsdale asked.
‘No. And no body parts in the bathroom. I wonder why.’
‘It isn’t unheard of for killers to change their M.O.’
‘Thank you, Special Agent, I’ll bear that in mind.’
Andy Carstens bit back on a smile as he came up to them. Sebastian’s tongue had always been sharp and he’d been on the wrong side of it more than once. He’d also been outsmarted, but he was damn sure that wasn’t going to happen again.
‘Have you looked behind all the paintings and posters?’ Sebastian asked.
The major nodded. ‘Nothing doing. The Nazi connection was kinda public in the Boston murder, wasn’t it?’
Sebastian nodded.
‘Maybe we’ll find something in daylight,’ Bimsdale suggested.
The older men looked at each other.
‘Obviously you’ll want anything of that sort to be kept under wraps,’ Carstens said to Sebastian.
‘Won’t you, too?’
The homicide chief nodded. ‘I’ll get extra people on the streets at first light.’
‘Make sure they cover any evidence up rather than destroy it,’ Sebastian said.
Andy Carstens didn’t like his tone, but refrained from comment. Peter Sebastian had been known to screw local law enforcement over big-time.
‘Do you want joint command?’
Sebastian shook his head. ‘We’ll stay in the background, at least for now. Special Agent Bimsdale will keep in touch with your people.’
The major was surprised, though he didn’t show it. Since when did the FBI stand back in a case like this? he asked himself. Then he thought about the potential consequences. If the killer was hard to catch, there was nothing but failure and opprobrium in store for the officer in charge of the investigation. Which meant two things. Slim Andy needed to keep a close eye on the Bureau’s head of violent crime. And it was time he did some serious delegation himself.
Nine
There was a flash of white light and I came round. Doctors Brown and Rivers huddled at the foot of the bed. I let them confer for a while, my mouth and lips drier than raisins. Finally they noticed that my eyes were open.
‘You’re awake!’ Rivers’s face was unusually animated.
I looked at his colleague. Alexandra Brown’s cheeks were glowing and her eyes were bright.
‘Fantastic, Matt,’ she said, gripping my forearm. ‘You did really well.’
I was glad she was happy, but I was still tied down and desperate for a drink. I looked pointedly at the cup on the bedside table.
‘Undo the straps,’ I gasped, after I’d been given water through a straw.
They glanced at each other.
‘Not yet,’ Rivers said. ‘Dr. Brown’s protocol is that we must wait an hour.’
‘Wonderful. So what happened? I heard music, the Who, I think, then I was falling…’
‘I’ll need you to tell me everything you can,’ the woman said. ‘But the results I have so far are very encouraging. Your readings are better than I ever expected.’ She was like a schoolgirl with a new crush, though not on a human, but a process.
‘Calm down, Alex,’ I said.
She shot me a look that was slightly less icy than normal. ‘Excuse me. I’ve been working on this for a long time.’
‘Good for you. Just tell me what it means for me.’
‘Very well.’ She went back to efficient-scientist mode. ‘It’s difficult to describe for the layman. Basically we tapped into the deepest levels of your memory. Much of the data will need extensive analysis before its significance can be established. The process caused you to speak numerous words in German that we think were triggers. The reverse-conditioning action that I have built into the procedure means that those words will no longer provoke you into predetermined courses of action.’
‘Try me.’
She looked at Dr. Rivers, who nodded. They went over to the bank of screens at the foot of the bed.
‘Blaue Reiter,’ she said.
I felt absolutely nothing.
‘Remarkable,’ Rivers said. ‘Quite remarkable.’
‘Machtergreifung.’
The same again.
‘Wohlauf.’
Ditto, and so on. In every case, I remained completely unaffected. That was unlike the sessions I’d had with Rivers, when I always had to fight the triggers’ effects consciously, with varying degrees of success.
‘Congratulations, Dr. Brown,’ Rivers said, gripping her hand. If he hadn’t been such a dry old stick I’d have bet on him inviting her for a candlelit dinner when we were done.
‘That isn’t all, Mr. Wells,’ the female scientist said, levels of formality in the lab now fully restored. ‘You also gave certain information that I think will interest our FBI colleagues substantially.’
‘What information?’
‘Please, Mr. Wells,’ Rivers said. ‘You can’t expect us to share classified material with you.’
‘Classified material? You just said it came from me. Why can’t I know what it is?’
He was looking uncomfortable. ‘Those are the rules.’
Dr. Brown was getting excited again. ‘Are you sure you have no recollection of what you said?’
I shook my head. ‘I fell for a long time. After that, I found myself walking through a forest, and then crossing a river on a small boat. There was smoke in the air and I heard voices, a lot of them crying. I went through a ruined city, but there was no one around. Just more voices…’ The scene seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
‘That’s very gratifying,’ Dr. Brown said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The “katabasis” was induced by my process,’ she said proudly.
I found my bearings. It so happened that I knew what the term meant-a descent, specifically to the Underworld. When I was at college studying English, I did a project on the literary tradition of such journeys. I’d always been fascinated by the depiction of hell in Milton’s Paradise Lost. That had led me in all sorts of strange directions: from Wilfred Owen’s subterranean First World War trench poems, to the trips to the death god’s realm described by Homer and Virgil, to the urban wastelands of T.S. Eliot. I’d brought in works of art, too-ancient vases and sculptures showing Charon and Cerberus, visions of demonic horror by Hieronymus Bosch and Peter Brueghel, Rodin’s sculpted Gates of Hell. The fact that the Rothmann conspiracy had involved a satanic cult called the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant and had previously spawned a killer who left maps of hell attached to the victims meant that the literary and artistic traditions had extra significance for me, no matter what Alexandra Brown’s drugs and other methods of suggestion had brought out.
‘So you did brainwash me.’
She gave me an imperious look. ‘Certainly not. My process is directed toward the extraction of material from subjects, not the insertion of predetermined stimuli. The emphasis is on making use of structures already present. Do you have some knowledge of underworld voyages?’
‘You’ve read my file. My whole life has been one of those recently. What about the triggers?’
‘What about them?’ said Rivers.
‘Wakey, wakey, Lester. Do you think Alex here’s process has nailed them all?’
‘Please don’t call me that,’ the pale woman said.
‘How about Sandra? Or Lexie?’
‘Please, Mr. Wells.’ She was irritated. One-nil to me.
‘Probably,’ Rivers said, in a low voice.
‘Is that a scientific term?’ I asked.
‘Unfortunately it is,’ he replied. ‘We have now identified a total of one hundred and seven trigger words and phrases. The likelihood is that there are few, if any, remaining.’
‘It’ll only take one,’ I said, remembering the murders in the cathedral. That shut them up.
Eventually they loosed my bonds and let me go. My legs were unsteady and there was a vile metallic taste in my mouth. Dr. Brown said those side effects would soon disappear. I hoped the same could be said for any psychological effects of her process.