SCRAVIR - Lacklight, preview chapters
CHAPTER1
Europol, Rotterdam
9th January 2017G
Gert is wearing a visitor’s pass.
A year ago he didn’t need one.
Have you been scuba diving recently, Gert?’ Antoine asks. ‘God knows you’ve earned it. I know a great spot in …’
‘It’s not over.’
‘It is over!’ Antoine insists.
It is late evening. Across the open-plan empty office on the third floor, sixty-three sleeping computer screens stare blindly at nothing. Gert is pacing up and down in the kitchen area.
‘Can we sit down?’ Antoine adopts a calmer tone. ‘You’re making me feel dizzy. I am only saying it’s time to move on. You did good. You saved lives and helped bring matters to a close. You’re a hero. You’re limping by the way, are you receiving physio?’
‘Has anyone checked the castle in Romania?’
‘I’ve told you. Local police are satisfied that …’
‘So the answer is no. You don’t get it. Thor Lupei survives by corrupting people. He buys silence. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that …’
‘STOP!’ Antoine smashes his fist on the work surface in frustration. ‘Daniel Murray told police that he saw Lupei’s body burning in the caves beneath the castle, and Romanian police corroborated that a month ago.’
‘And what about the scravir?’
‘You saw the fire on the farm in Whitby, and the burned-out bus. The scravir, whatever they were, are all dead. The British police have confirmed that. Trust me.’
‘And you say I lack objectivity. This isn’t like popping a zit, Antoine. It runs deep, goes back centuries, and people have always looked the other way or blamed the victims. Like they always do. Like when my brother was killed years ago. How do you know that Lupei isn’t controlling what goes on here in Rotterdam? In this building? Right now?’
‘HE’S DEAD!’ For a second it looks like Antoine is about to punch Gert. Instead, he takes a deep breath. ‘Lupei was a human being who did some bad shit and now he’s dead. Listen to me, Gert, if you carry on down this path you’ll end up on the streets, hungry and alone. You’ve already lost your job. Twice. Your paranoia is …’
‘OK, heard the podcast, bought the t-shirt,’ Gert shouts back. ‘Maverick cop goes apeshit, ends up in asylum. Always kept himself to himself, said a colleague. Sad obsessive blah blah.’
‘What do you think of the coffee?’ Antoine offers a top-up.
‘Classic distraction. Very good. Almost worked. So what else did the interviews with Daniel Murray reveal? Local police said he was implicated in a murder in a lay-by on the road down from the castle.’
‘That was a mistake. The mobile phone was incorrectly logged as being at the crime scene when in fact it was …’
‘Hello! Does that sound like crap to you? And can we agree that theft of human organs is not just bad shit?’
Behind Gert, a cleaner steps out of the lift pushing his trolley.
‘Alleged theft. And are you claiming that mistakes never happen and demanding that police are banned from ever correcting the record?’
‘WAKE UP, ANTOINE!’ Gert shouts, his hands cupped around his mouth to make a megaphone.
The cleaner retreats into the lift.
Antoine walks away between the empty workstations then turns, arms outstretched. ‘Three-quarters of this entire floor is busy with cybercrime and terrorism. There’s limited time available for monsters and vampires so … sorry but …’ Antoine searches for the right words. ‘Look, Hervé will sack me as easily as he sacked you if I don’t …’
‘Hervé is fixated on promotion to a cushy job in the justice department in Brussels; I get it. But what if it’s not over? How many more deaths? Give me the resources and I’ll prove that Lupei is alive.’
‘Give you resources? You don’t even work here anymore.’ Antoine throws up his hands in defeat. ‘OK. In the morning I’ll ask Romanian police to send photos of the body of Thor Lupei and of the damage in the castle. But for now please take a sodding break and stay away; I take enough shit on your behalf as it is.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Gert says in a softer tone. ‘You’re a good mate. You will tell me if anything new comes up?’
‘I won’t have to, because nothing new will come up. In the meantime promise me that you will drop this monster vampire conspiracy theory and get a life. Find a new hobby, have wild sex in a yurt, go bungee jumping, take up knitting, whatever, I don’t care. I just don’t want to read your name on the cover of an autopsy report. OK?’
CHAPTER 2
Mikăbrukóczi Castle, Romania
5th December 2016
The fresh fir fragrance of conifer resin comforts and envelops Maria as she crouches in her father’s old overcoat on a mountain that, not long after midday, is already deep in shadow. The temperature is falling. In a few weeks masked carollers will climb the steep road from the village in multi-coloured animal costumes, singing and laughing and rattling their bells, and Christmas will have arrived.
For now the road carries only a large black Mercedes. From her vantage point up on the hill, hidden behind a thicket of dead brambles and snow, Maria watches the car turn into the yard and pull up in front of her family’s farm.
Already at the front door, her mother stands arms akimbo, grey hair tucked under her red headscarf. The driver climbs out, opens the rear door and the familiar bloated figure of the town’s mayor steps out into the cold air of the farmyard, his jowled face smeared in weak winter sun.
Maria is too far away to make out what they are saying. The mayor stabs his finger angrily in her mother’s direction. The driver lights a cigarette and turns away to stare at crows fighting on the barn roof. Her mother throws up her hands in exasperation. The mayor follows her into the house. With her brother and father down in the village there is no one else at the farm. Maria chooses the path that keeps her hidden from view. Snow squeaks under boot. Emerging by the road behind the hedge, she crosses briskly to the back of the house, praying the shutters are closed and that she won’t be seen. She grips the door handle with one hand and turns with the other to stop the spring from squealing, as she did during the long honeysuckle evenings last summer when escaping to spend time at the river with Dumitru, the first boy she has ever loved.
Raised voices from the kitchen. On tiptoes she grabs a poker from the fireplace in the backroom.
‘They say there was a fire beneath the castle. Did your good-for-nothing daughter see anything?’ The mayor’s voice. ‘Thank you so much for worrying about her.’ Her mother’s tone is scrupulously polite, but Maria recognises the familiar lace of sarcasm. ‘I will pass on your best wishes.’
‘If Lupei is dead I need the proof. It is more than two weeks since …’
‘Yes, yes, you explained.’
‘I can have you arrested.’
‘Why are you afraid? Is there no one in the town hall with the balls to cross the castle threshold?’
‘You are in league with him!’ the mayor shouts. ‘Bringing death to the region. Destroying our culture. Do as I ask, or I will …’
‘You will what?’ her mother speaks softly. ‘If we are in league with Lupei, how will you attack us and hope to get away with it?’
‘Bitch. Rot in hell. All of you.’
The front door slams. Seconds later the Mercedes starts up and drives away.
‘How long have you been standing there?’ her mother asks as Maria opens the kitchen door.
Maria says nothing but understands that she must return to the castle.
It is a thirty-minute walk along the steep narrow path beneath the trees up the mountain.
For nearly a month Maria has done as she has been told. After all, she is not yet seventeen and has only worked at the castle since the summer; the other staff members are three times her age. The day after Maria bumped into that foreign boy, Daniel, at midnight in the Great Hall, Soreana, a sour-faced old pumpkin who scrubs floors and polishes door handles until she sees her wizened face staring back, came to the farm and told Maria to stay away until she hears differently.
It isn’t the money, she is still being paid; it’s about what happened that last night at the castle. The Maestru, Thor Lupei, requested a feast for two. He was so happy, showing off, showering Daniel with the best food and fine wines, playing that blues music he loves, and showering Maria and the other servants with compliments. Then, the following morning, she arrived for work only to be turned away at the gate by Radu Felini. Since then only rumours and now the mayor saying if Lupei is dead …
On the path ahead a red squirrel pauses in a shard of sunlight, then vanishes behind a tree. Maria carries on up the path.
Someone told her Lupei fixes people; that he is a healer as well as a music star. Is that why Daniel was there? When she first saw him, Daniel was in a wheelchair then, later that night in the Great Hall he was walking, if a little unsteadily, and asking directions to Lupei’s office.
Had Lupei fixed him?
Others say that Lupei destroys people. A murderer, sorcerer, thief. Those who fear Lupei avoid paths like the one she is climbing, claiming that an army of monsters prowl the lacklight beneath the trees, killing villagers who travel alone. They call these monsters scravir and blame every misfortune in the region upon the scravir and Thor Lupei.
Maria crosses a small glade where the snow reaches her knees. Tiny mounds of snow perch like hats on the top of the fence posts. Overhead a brief splash of blue, pale as mallard eggs, is swept away by the low clouds sweeping the treetops.
A ping on her phone reminds her she is meeting Dumitru by the stream later.
Back beneath the conifers, where the snow has not reached, the path climbs steeply. She is only minutes from the castle. Maria fears neither the path nor the scravir. Not because she thinks they are folklore fantasy, she knows they are real. She has seen them, but she knows they are not like the wolves that venture down from the high mountains on the harshest days of winter. The scravir are slaves; they obey their master, Thor Lupei. That is why, instead of hiding away at home, exchanging silly stories about a catastrophe, Ovidiu, Soreana and the other older servants should be at the castle checking that all is well and offering help if help is needed.
The master has always been fair to her and the other villagers he employs. He sees through the corruption and the self-interest of those families who have run the town and the valley for generations, he has talent and receives important visitors; that is why the mayor and all the others are jealous of him
Maria emerges from the forest and joins the single-track road for the last fifty metres to Mikăbrukóczi castle. Hidden from view, a crow sounds the alarm. The snow is thicker here than down the mountain, soft muffling every hard surface. There are no tyre tracks or footprints.
Set into the ramparts is a gatehouse. Beside the massive wooden gate hangs an iron chain that she pulls, feeling the cold on her fingers. Bells rattle on the other side of a wall over a metre thick. Her breath blooms and feathers as she stamps her boots. Here above the clouds the air is clear and she can see across the valley to her uncle’s barn tucked in below the huge rock they call Old Man’s Nose
Bolts are drawn back and the small door set within the gate opens to reveal a familiar face.
He isn’t pretty with his patchy thinning hair and his missing nostril. The staff call him Pepene, Romanian for watermelon, because of a gaping grin that reveals too many teeth and too much gum.
Pepene is scravir. The most powerful in the castle.
He stoops to look out, his huge emaciated frame towering above her, his grey pockmarked skin stretched tightly over his skull. Rough brown peasant clothes. Like all scravir, he is mute. When she first set eyes on him, Maria found him frightening; the numbtrance eyes, feral mouth, hands clenched as if on the cusp of a violent act. But he is a slave, instincts dulled and under the control of his master.
‘I have come to see Maestru,’ Maria announces.
Pepene steps back and ushers her across the threshold with a deferential sweep of his hand.
They cross the ground that in summer is a broad green of grass and alpine flowers but now, in December, is featureless snow broken only by the single huge tree, its leaves long since flown, its branches an empty cage in which sits an owl. A shriek echoes as the bird takes flight and disappears over the castle walls on silent wings.
It is a bad omen to see an owl in daylight and Maria mutters Doamne Fereste three times under her breath to cancel the bad luck before it festers. God forbid, God forbid, God forbid. She strides towards the main building, overtaking the scravir.
The dark oak door is unlocked. As always. She pushes it open, steps inside and stamps the snow from her boots, with Pepene in her wake. Everything looks in order. Flanking the walls of the entrance hall are the three suits of armour, gleaming brightly beneath the recessed spotlights, each holding a different weapon: a long sword, a metal-headed mace, and a battle axe. Hanging on the walls are animal heads: two wolves, a stag and a chamois. Beyond them, in the stairwell, faded tapestries are interspersed with a dozen vintage electric guitars. She recalls Lupei’s amused expression as she open-jawed while he was listing the famous musicians who had previously owned them.
Maria enters the Great Hall and immediately feels uncomfortable standing in that glorious space with her auburn hair hanging loose instead of tucked inside her maid’s cap. Logs crackle and hiss aromatically in the fireplace. Cherry and oak, Thor Lupei is very particular about the wood.
There is another odour. Whispering. Masked by the smell of the fire. Maria wrinkles her nose.
‘Where is Maestru?’ she asks the scravir.
Pepene heads out into the entrance hall. She follows him round one corner and then another and stops. Where previously she has only ever seen dark oak panelled walls she is face to face with the open doors of a lift. The scravir steps in and waits for her to join him.
She hesitates.
One of the old servants, Ovidiu, told her of this lift but she did not believe him. Why would you take seriously the words of a man who has reached sixty years of age without doing anything more challenging than chopping wood, clearing snow and peeling vegetables? A fool who claims that wolves lay eggs and all Italians are afraid of pine cones.
And yet here it is.
A lift.
She studies Pepene’s face but cannot read it. What is he thinking? Is he thinking? Down in the town you would not find a single soul who would put him- or herself alone in a lift with a scravir, though it is also true that none of them has ever met one.
Maria knows that some parts of the castle are out of bounds but she cannot shake off a growing fear that something is not right, that something has happened to Thor Lupei. As the lift doors start to close, she steps forward and sticks a foot in the way. The doors spring back to the open position.
The others are all fools and cowards: Marius, the chef; Ovidiu and Paul, the two half-wits employed to cut vegetables, chop wood, and clear snow; Soreana and Cecilia, the two bossy old women from the village who scrub floors and polish door handles; and Radu Felini the manager. She is not being nosy. If the Maestru is unwell who will call the doctor and prepare his food and medicines? And if Lupei has gone away on a foreign trip then he will never know that she went looking for him. After all Pepene won’t say anything; he is mute.
Satisfied with her reasoning, Maria steps into the lift. The doors close and she feels herself descending, which is strange, she isn’t aware of there being a beneath to the castle.
The lift doors open onto a corridor whose walls are lined with photos showing Thor Lupei standing tall, his long white hair flowing over his shoulders, beside strangers she has never seen at the castle, couples, individuals, groups. Different places: cities, beside rivers and seas, in town squares, in front of fireplaces and in gardens. Almost everyone in the photos is smiling. They must be fans of his music. She knows he has a band though she has never seen them play live. Dumitru had shown her a shaky video of a concert he found online: Thor Lupei and the Hounds of Hellbane. There are no official videos. Maria asked Lupei why not and he replied that mystery is more alluring than self-promotion.
Half a dozen photos appear to have been snatched from the wall, their broken frames scattered across the floor. Shards of glass crunch underfoot. The unexpected mess upsets Maria; who is responsible and why hasn’t the mess been tidied up?
At the end of the corridor is a second lift. She enters and Pepene presses a button. When the doors reopen they step out into a bright modern space with Scandi-minimalist furniture in pastel shades and potted plants. Who cleans this part of the castle? Surely not the two old women; their tongues wag up and down like leaves in the breeze, the whole village would have heard by now.
Behind her, the lift doors hiss and click shut.
As interesting as is the area she stands in, it is nothing compared to the area beyond the vast floor-to-ceiling window that divides the large space in two. Open-mouthed, Maria takes it all in, while snatching a short sweeping clip of the scene discretely on her phone to show Dumitru later. In front of her is what must be an operating theatre, packed with machines and computer screens connected by a forest of cables. Trolleys covered in gleaming metal instruments she cannot name.
Set against this ordered neatness is a scene of chaos. At the far end of the operating theatre equipment is strewn across the floor. A cabinet overturned, files and papers. Broken bottles, scalpels. An operating table on its side. And beyond that an open doorway through which are strobing lights and what appears to be a person lying half in vision. Trousered legs and brown leather shoes. Maria films another short clip on her phone. Feeling guilty, she glances over her shoulder at Pepene; he is looking in the other direction.
Maria is intensely aware of the whispering odour. Stronger here than in the great hall. Sweet, metallic, savoury … as if a barbecue has caught fire, burning everything in sight, including the grill. She shivers involuntarily.
Pepene stands beside a closed door, his hand resting on the handle, like a marionette awaiting a pull on his strings.
‘Where is he, Pepene?’ There is a strident tone to her voice, she is trying to sound more in control than she really feels. ‘How can I help him if you cannot even tell me where he is?’
The scravir blinks slowly. The familiar ugly grin divides his face, like a slowing tearing sheet of paper. He pulls open the door.
Maria has seen enough. She will return tomorrow with reinforcements, dragging the other servants up the mountain herself if she has to. Turning tail, she crosses back to the lift and presses the call button. She sees Pepene reflected in the stainless steel doors of the lift, his head tilted to one side, as if in thought. Maria wants out. She wants fresh air.
Where is the bloody lift?
The lift pings and the doors open and she hurries in. She spins round to find the lift control panel and is surprised to find she has 4 options: 1, 0, -1 and -2. This must be minus two. Why wasn’t she paying more attention earlier? As she pushes the button she notices that the scravir has started walking, in her direction.
‘It’s OK,’ she says out loud. Though she is speaking to herself the scravir appears confused. ‘I’ll find my own way out, don’t worry,’ she hopes she sounds calm.
Why aren’t the doors closing?
She presses the button again and feels her eyelid twitching the way it does sometimes when she is stressed. The doors start to close.
‘See you later.’ As if she is simply popping out to collect the post.
The scravir’s smile is fading. The doors meet and the lift mechanism engages. There is a tapping sound from the other side of the door.
The gentle vibration of the lift tells Maria she is moving and she breathes a sigh of relief. She will text Dumitru as soon as she is outside to let him know where she is. Still a good hour of daylight left.
The lift stops with a tiny shudder. Maria brushes a strand of auburn hair away from her face and waits for the doors to open.
Suddenly everything is spiralling out of control.
Where is the connecting corridor with the photos and the broken glass? Instead the doors have opened onto a narrow passageway cut into bare rock. Smoke hangs fat in the air along with that odour, not a whisper now but an ugly shout that screams of danger. A monotonous bleeping like a car alarm. Pulsating light.
Where is she? Which button did she press? Has the lift made a mistake and taken her to the wrong floor?
‘You cannot leave.’ A slow voice, dry as raked stones.
Has it come from the passageway or down the lift shaft?
‘Vă rog. Salveaza-ma!’ Maria mutters, please, save me.
It’s the owl. You knew it was bad luck, why didn’t you just turn away?
‘Doamne fereste, Doamne fereste, Doamne fereste.’
Before she can reach out to push a lift button the doors start to close and the display panel above them flashes Level 0.
Pepene has called the lift! He is dragging her back!
Or has she miscalculated? Is the operating theatre below ground?
‘You cannot leave.’ The same voice, muffled through the walls of the lift. How can it be? The scravir are mute.
Losing her cool, Maria pushes the -1 button over and over. Then the -2 button. The doors lock shut and the lift snaps into gear. The lift begins to vibrate. She is moving but she cannot decide in which direction.
How can you be so headstrong and stupid?
Doamne fereste, Doamne fereste, Doamne fereste.
God forbid.
She bangs the buttons again, vainly attempting to control the destination of the lift. The illuminated display above her flickers a couple of times then dies.
But the lift is still moving.
Doamne fereste, Doamne fereste, Doamne fereste.
She imagines Pepene’s face pressed up against the lift doors, waiting for them to open. His big ugly grin and his missing nostril. The slightly fetid potting shed aroma that exudes from him. How can he be talking? He is more than forty centimetres taller than she is. What was she thinking?
The lift stops.
Her heart is thumping in her throat. She is hyperventilating. The doors begin to move. She closes her eyes, bracing herself for whatever fate has in store.
Then opens them.
Thank you, thank you.
The corridor with the photos. Maria rushes out before the doors can change their minds, whips off her scarf and places it between the doors, and races across to the other lift, the broken glass crunching under her feet. Behind her, the doors of the lift she has just vacated are closing and opening, closing and opening as the mechanism comes into contact with the scarf. Pepene cannot reach her.
Jumping up and down impatiently, she awaits the second lift. She is in it before the doors are half open, pressing the 0 button and willing the doors to close.
Moments later she steps out of the lift into the entrance hall. Her feet want to take her outside, to run across the snow past the tree, all the way to the gatehouse and out into the safety of the forest. But Maria has something else she must do. She heads into the Great Hall and out again through a different exit along a corridor she knows well; she took the British boy this way. She says boy but he isn’t a boy. A student perhaps? Anyway, Daniel wanted to reach Maestru’s office; he told her Lupei had sent him to collect papers.
Maria is curious. She cannot help herself; she has to know what happened. Homo Narratus, the storytellers. The heavy door opens in a rush of cold air onto a small courtyard, its shadows swathed in snow like cobwebs cluttering an attic. A flash of blue sky high overhead as she pauses to text Dumitru a message then hurries across the courtyard and pushes the next door, that creaks and sighs, and she is back undercover and in the oldest part of the castle.
The air is chill, no heating here. She can see her breath. The stone staircase, with the worn uneven steps she climbs two at a time, releases her onto a wide corridor thick with passing time and lined with suits of armour and medieval weapons. Not weapons that kill precisely with a single small hole, a lethal shot fired cleanly, but metal surfaces that rip rough-ragged to dismantle fraying flesh from bone in barbaric chaos.
Maria wonders if such weapons would kill a scravir; Pepene is safely locked away though, it won’t come to that.
She stops in front of a large ornate carving made of solid oak. A feral forest is chiselled into its wooden surface: jackals and jays, wildflowers and wolves. From just above her head, a carved crow stares down, its eye hard and cold. At ground level a wild boar glowers up at her. Even the robin perched beside the keyhole is malevolent.
The door to Thor Lupei’s office.
It is here that she brought Daniel Murray. She clicks the stone beside the door. Has the hidden key has been replaced?
The hole is empty.
She warned Daniel that his heart must be pure or he would never re-emerge from the room beyond the door; parroting what she herself has been told.
All those who entered this room without his permission have died. Very dark magic. You will be safe because he has asked you to go in but I cannot enter.
Now she fears the worst. Had he lied? Had he come to steal from the Maestru? Should she push the door to see if it is unlocked? Is her heart pure?
She is ripped from her reveries by the door itself.
The wooden crow has blinked and is turning its head to look past her and down the corridor. Behind her a faint rattle of rusty links on a chain heralds the arrival of a metal ball, the size of an orange and studded with spikes.