Very Important Corpses

  ‘You’ve got that look again,’ said Penny. ‘What is it this time?’

  ‘How did the killer get in?’ I said. ‘If Jennifer thought she knew who the killer was, or what he intended to do, that would explain why she retreated to her room. To work on her report before she sent it in. She’d want to be sure she had all her ducks in a row before she pointed a finger. Particularly if she suspected someone important.’

  ‘But the principals wouldn’t have sat still, if an Organization agent said they were in danger,’ said Penny. ‘She could have just given a general warning, and let security take care of it.’

  ‘Perhaps she knew, but couldn’t prove anything,’ I said. ‘Either way, she would still have locked her door. So how did he get in, to kill her?’

  ‘Perhaps she knew who was behind the killer but not the killer himself,’ said Penny. ‘She might have opened the door to someone she thought she could trust.’

  ‘Even so,’ I said, ‘the killer couldn’t rely on being invited in.’

  I hit the door a couple of times, just testing, and the sturdy wood rattled heavily in its frame. Not something that could easily be forced. I knelt down and studied the lock. Another old-fashioned keyhole, rather than a card slot. I leaned in as close as I could, pressing my face against the door.

  ‘Ishmael,’ said Penny, ‘what are you doing?’

  ‘Looking for signs the lock has been tampered with,’ I said. ‘Even the most experienced field agent will leave some marks when he picks a lock.’

  ‘And you can see that without a magnifying glass?’ said Penny. ‘Of course you can. Alien …’

  And that was when I smelled something. Just a trace, but definitely familiar. I breathed in deeply through my nose and realized the scent was coming from inside the keyhole. That strange scent, from the unseen creature in the cellar. I straightened up, and told Penny what I’d found.

  ‘Inside the lock?’ said Penny. ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘The creature we encountered in the cellar … is what our killer changes into to do his dirty work,’ I said. ‘But he’s not just a shape-changer, he’s a shape-dancer. Able to change any part of himself into whatever he needs it to be. He can be any animal or combination of animals, or any person he needs to impersonate. He changed his hand, transforming it into something that could enter the keyhole and operate the lock. That’s why I’m getting the smell from inside the hole.’

  ‘OK …’ said Penny. ‘That’s several steps beyond a werewolf! That’s inhuman! Have you actually met anything like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Quite often. You’d be surprised at the extremes life can take in the hidden world.’

  ‘I don’t think I want to know!’ said Penny.

  ‘That’s a large part of how they stay hidden,’ I said. ‘But it is rare – and I mean really rare – for any of them to act so openly in the everyday world.’ Then I stopped, as several things suddenly came together in my head. ‘That’s why our murderer becomes a creature to carry out his kills! He doesn’t need a weapon, or anything else that could be used to identify him, when he can manufacture everything he needs out of his own body. Teeth, claws, massive muscles … Enough to tear his victims apart and wreck their rooms. I think he destroyed the principals’ rooms so we wouldn’t wonder why he wrecked Jennifer’s room. We were meant to think it was just part of his pattern, when really he only tore this room apart because he was searching for Jennifer’s notes. To confirm what she knew about him. It’s all been nothing but misdirection, right from the beginning. He’s been using the legends of Baphomet and the Coronach creature to keep us from seeing what he really is and what he’s been doing.’

  ‘He must know the layout of the House from top to bottom,’ Penny said slowly. ‘Including the secret cellar and its tunnel. How would he know all that?’

  ‘Someone must have told him,’ I said. ‘His unknown master … Maybe the Major Domo …’

  ‘Really?’ said Penny.

  ‘How far would she go, I wonder, to get her old home back? What kind of deal with the devil might she be prepared to make to get what she’s wanted for so long?’

  ‘Hold it!’ said Penny, holding up one hand in protest. ‘All this jumping to conclusions is leaving me breathless. Are we saying she’s the one behind the killer creature? Or just someone who’s been supplying the killer’s master with necessary information?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think we need to ask the Major Domo some very pointed questions.’

  ‘You do that,’ said Penny. ‘I’ll watch, from a distance. While hiding behind something substantial.’

  ‘She’s not that scary.’

  ‘Oh, I think she could be if you annoyed her sufficiently.’

  ‘Hasn’t stopped you poking her with a verbal stick.’

  ‘I can run faster than she can. She’d never catch me.’

  I considered Jennifer’s locked door again. ‘First things first. We need to give this room a good going over. See what there is to see.’

  I hit the door with my shoulder and it burst open, shattering the lock and sending pieces flying through the air like shrapnel.

  ‘Doesn’t that hurt?’ said Penny, as she entered the room.

  ‘Like you wouldn’t believe,’ I said, rubbing my shoulder as I followed her in.

  ‘Well, be a brave little soldier and there will be treats later.’

  The furniture still lay in pieces, surrounding the untouched bed. I moved around the room carefully, looking at everything and touching nothing. Penny stayed just inside the door, frowning thoughtfully.

  ‘The damage here doesn’t seem nearly as extensive as in the principals’ rooms,’ she said finally.

  ‘He wasn’t trying to make a mess here,’ I said. ‘Just trying to find Jennifer’s report. He must have been desperate to know how much she knew.’

  ‘If he found anything, he would have taken it with him,’ said Penny.

  ‘If he’d found it, yes,’ I said. ‘But field agents are trained to hide their reports in places no one else would think to look.’

  Penny put her hands on her hips and glared around her. ‘We’re working on the scenario that the killer let himself in unannounced, taking Jennifer by surprise. She wouldn’t have had time to hide anything.’

  ‘Jennifer was a professional,’ I said. ‘She would have heard something, no matter how careful the killer was. No matter how fast he got to her, she still had somewhere she could hide her report in a hurry. If she was working on her laptop, all she had to do was swallow the memory stick and purge the information from her computer. The killer probably never even saw her do it.’

  ‘But doing that gave the killer enough time to be able to jump her from behind,’ said Penny. ‘So she couldn’t defend herself. Yes, that works!’

  ‘There’ll have to be an autopsy,’ I said. ‘To retrieve the memory stick and see what’s on it.’

  ‘We don’t have time to wait for a pathologist,’ said Penny. ‘How badly do we need the information?’

  ‘If it comes right down to it,’ I said. ‘I’ll go down to the freezer with a really big knife and do the job myself. Wouldn’t be the first time.’

  ‘I could have lived without knowing that,’ said Penny.

  I closed the door carefully when we left Jennifer’s room. But it didn’t want to stay shut, sulking because I’d mistreated it. Penny smiled.

  ‘I’m starting to see a trend here, with you and doors. So what do we do now?’

  I wanted to say ‘Why do you keep asking me that? I’m as much in the dark as you are.’ But I didn’t, because I knew why. I was the one with long experience of fieldwork, murder and bodies. I thought hard.

  ‘Someone in this house must be pretending to be someone else,’ I said finally. ‘Our killer has changed his shape and is hiding behind a familiar face. That’s why he took the heads – to help confuse the issue.’

  ‘I thought we already had an impostor?’ said Penny. ‘The replaced pri
ncipal? That is why we were brought in on this case in the first place.’

  ‘Remember what I said about the killer being the murder weapon? I think our killer is taking his orders from whoever is impersonating a principal. But now he’s hiding in plain sight, watching us from behind someone else’s eyes. He could be anyone. Anyone at all.’

  Penny looked at me, suddenly suspicious. ‘OK … What present did I give you last Christmas?’

  ‘Fifty Shades of Grey,’ I said. ‘And I couldn’t get past Chapter three without wincing. Never having to say you’re sorry shouldn’t involve rope burns. What did I give you?’

  ‘A whole tin of Quality Street, because they’re my favourites. Though I made you eat all the toffees.’

  We exchanged a quick smile and, having determined we were both who we seemed to be, continued with our theorizing.

  ‘This is getting genuinely disturbing,’ said Penny.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is. The killer could take on any friendly face in order to get close to someone. He became one of the escorts to get into the principal’s room, and his victim never suspected a thing until the killer dropped his mask … and became something awful.’

  ‘I’m going to have nightmares about this,’ said Penny.

  ‘After he was finished the killer changed again, to resemble one of the security guards. Which is why no one noticed anything out of the ordinary when he was slipping in and out of open doors during the gunfight. Who knows how many different faces the killer used in all the confusion? That’s how he got to Baron. By appearing to him as someone he knew, and telling him February wanted to see him. Maybe the face he used was mine …’

  ‘Don’t!’ said Penny.

  We looked at each other for a long moment.

  ‘How are we supposed to track down a killer who could be anyone?’ Penny said finally. ‘Or … anything? For all we know, he could be hiding as a piece of furniture and we wouldn’t know anything about it until we sat on him!’

  I had to smile. ‘No, there are limits, even for a shape-dancer. He can change from one living thing to another, but that’s it.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ said Penny.

  ‘Want me to kick a few chairs around, just to be on the safe side?’

  A terrible howling burst out on the air, and we both looked round sharply. It was the sound of some great beast, fierce and feral. Some ancient thing, from the days when beasts were predators and men were prey. Penny grabbed hold of my arm, her fingers digging in painfully.

  ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘It’s the creature,’ I said. ‘While we’ve been looking for it, it’s found us.’

  ‘Where did that awful sound come from?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ I said. ‘The top floor.’

  Penny made herself let go of my arm, and we headed for the stairs.

  ‘Remind me,’ she said. ‘Why exactly are we running towards certain danger?’

  ‘Because it’s the job,’ I said. ‘And because this time we can see what we’re doing. I don’t care what form the killer’s taken … If it’s got an arse, I’m going to kick it. Didn’t you say you were determined never to run from it again?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Penny. ‘But I meant, after we’d loaded ourselves down with all kinds of weapons. Along with body armour, explosives, and industrial-strength good-luck charms.’

  ‘You don’t need any of that,’ I said. ‘You’ve got me.’

  I stopped at the top floor landing, so Penny could get her breathing back under control, and looked around me. Nothing moved in the long open corridor, but I caught a trace of the creature’s familiar scent. I could feel a tension in the air, as though something was watching. And then heavy vibrations echoed through the floorboards under my feet, growing steadily stronger. Something really big and really heavy was coming our way. I turned to face it, gesturing quickly for Penny to get behind me. There was a growing thunder of pounding feet, and then the creature burst round the far corner and came charging down the corridor towards us. Penny made a sound behind me, but I didn’t dare turn my attention away from the creature. From my first look at the thing that had killed so many people. The thing in the dark that had made me run.

  It wasn’t hiding any more.

  It wasn’t a wolf, or even a wolfman. It wasn’t any kind of creature from the natural world. The thing was huge, some eight feet long and five feet high at the shoulder; with a barrel chest and a sleek powerful body. It went on four legs, terrible muscles bunching and churning under thick silver-grey fur. Vicious claws on oversized paws tore chunks out of the thick carpeting. The creature had a wide feline head, and powerful jaws packed with teeth. It looked like every predator that ever was, concentrated into one deadly form. It looked like what it was: the killer instinct that lives in every man, given shape and form and malignant intent.

  It slowed as it drew nearer, and its great head came up. I think it had expected us to run, like we had in the cellar. But Penny stuck close behind me as I stood my ground and grinned fiercely at the creature. I always feel better when I’m doing something, when I have a chance to get my hands on whatever it is that’s been giving me grief. I leaned forward and braced myself. The creature snarled viciously and threw itself at me. I waited until it was almost upon me, and then lashed out with all my strength and punched it in the face.

  I hit it right on its bristling nose, and my fist sank deep into the flesh and kept on going. The creature slammed to a halt, as though it had run into a brick wall. The neck compacted as its head was forced back into its body. The sounds of breaking bones filled the corridor.

  The collision didn’t force me back one inch. I was braced, keeping my arm extended, soaking up the impact through my shoulder. I knew I’d feel it the next day, but right then I didn’t care, caught up in the savage satisfaction of the moment.

  The creature collapsed in front of me, its head pushed right back between its shoulder blades. Its legs kicked helplessly as it thrashed and squalled on the floor. I jerked my fist back out of its shattered head, and my hand was soaked in black blood. It felt thick and cold.

  Penny wanted to come forward for a better look at the creature. She thought the fight was over; but I knew better. I gestured sharply for her to stay back, and for once she didn’t argue. The creature was already scrambling back on to its feet. It shook its broken head back and forth, and I could hear shattered bones reknitting themselves. The creature’s head thrust forward, out of its body, and the face re-formed in a moment. The creature fixed me with horribly human eyes, and then smiled a calculating smile.

  Up close, the thing’s scent was almost overpowering. A mixture of all the beasts that have ever scared human kind. A scent designed to terrify, to reach the old atavistic parts of the human brain and reduce a man to a quivering helpless prey. But whatever my ancestors might have been, they weren’t human. I took a deep breath, filling my head with the thick scent, and frowned. The human part was clearer than ever. And I recognized it. As though the creature knew what I was thinking, it reared up to its full height and the great head scraped against the ceiling. Its shape changed subtly to allow it to stand like a man. It towered over me, and I met its gaze unflinchingly.

  ‘I know who you are,’ I said. ‘Who you really are. I always knew your scent contained a human component, but I had to get this close before I could recognize it. How long have you been a shape-changer, Christopher Baron?’

  Penny made a shocked sound behind me. I didn’t look back, keeping my eyes locked on the creature’s burning gaze. And then, quite suddenly and simply, its shape melted away and Baron was standing before me in his distinctive red-leather jacket. Like a man who’d just slipped off one costume and put on another. He stood calmly before me and inclined his head briefly, like one player congratulating another on a good move. Penny moved forward to stand beside me.

  ‘Hold everything!’ she said. ‘The last time we saw that jacket, it was ripped to shreds and soaked in blood. And where di
d the rest of those clothes come from? He wasn’t wearing any a moment ago.’

  ‘Really?’ said Baron. ‘That’s your first question? That’s what you want to go with? All right then, the jacket you were shown was my real jacket. A small sacrifice on my part, to help convince you I was dead. Because no one wastes time looking for a dead man. What I’m wearing now aren’t clothes at all; they’re just a part of me, like the fur I had before.’

  ‘Oh, ick!’ said Penny.

  ‘You asked,’ said Baron. He turned to me.

  ‘That’s why you weren’t covered in blood between your kills,’ I said. ‘The blood disappeared along with your fur, when that became clothes again.’

  ‘Well, obviously,’ said Baron.

  ‘What happened?’ I said. ‘How did you become … this?’

  He smiled, in a self-satisfied sort of way. ‘Remember the shape-changing experiments, back when we worked for the Beachcombers? After you left, I volunteered to serve as one of the test subjects. I was in a lot of trouble at the time, and I needed a way to disappear so completely not even my well-connected enemies would be able to find me. The process worked for me, even though it killed everyone else. Given that the scientists were basing their work on DNA material supplied by the Immortals, I suppose it’s always possible an Immortal went skinny-dipping in my family’s gene pool at some point and that saved me.

  ‘I killed the scientists, so no one would ever know what I was capable of. Then I just put on one of their faces … and walked out into the world and disappeared. I could be anyone or anything I wanted, and you’ve no idea how liberating that can be. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve done … and been.’

  ‘Then how did you end up here?’ said Penny, cutting to the chase as always. ‘Working as head stooge for the Major Domo?’

  Baron looked at me. ‘Is she always this irritating? Oh Ishmael, you’re looking so disappointed in me.’

  ‘You killed people you swore to protect,’ I said.

  ‘Not all of them,’ said Baron. ‘Not yet, anyway. And in my defence, the money is quite outstandingly good. Don’t look at me like that, Ishmael! You have no more right to the moral high ground than I do. I remember some of the people you used to be, and the things they did. There’s probably more blood on your hands than mine; it’s just that mine’s easier to see. Because I never tried to hide it.’