Something Evil Comes Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles by A. J. Cross

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  A Selection of Recent Titles by A. J. Cross

  The Dr Kate Hanson Mysteries

  GONE IN SECONDS

  ART OF DECEPTION

  A LITTLE DEATH *

  SOMETHING EVIL COMES *

  * available from Severn House

  SOMETHING EVIL COMES

  A. J. Cross

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  This eBook edition first published in 2017 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2018 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD

  Copyright © 2017 by A J Cross.

  The right of A J Cross to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8739-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-853-8 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-913-8 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  ONE

  The jemmy moved forward and back within the narrow space between door and jamb, followed by a pause, quickened breathing and a brief inspection which indicated only minor dents in the wood. A second application plus inspection ended in a series of low expletives, its operator sending a furtive glance around the immediate area.

  His accomplice’s broad face turned to his. ‘I don’t like it here, Col. I don’t like the graves over there. Can we go home now?’

  Col raised his finger to his lips in the kind of gesture Barney understood best, his head filling with yet more expletives, this time directed at his own mother. She was the reason Barney was here at all. She was always going on about him and when his mother got started on something she stuck with it: ‘Take Barney out with you,’ she’d said countless times that day, not knowing where he was going. ‘Go on, it’s a shame for him. He’s got no mates.’

  If Col hadn’t realised before why Barney had no mates it was now blatantly obvious. His nerves were jangling from Barney’s constant questions and he’d had enough of this place with its owl hoots and quick scurryings. Plus, he didn’t like the graves any more than did Barney.

  ‘Just shut up and follow me.’ He held out the jemmy. ‘Here. Carry this.’

  Col left the shadow of the massive door and made a sharp turn, following the line of the building, sticking close to the wall, Barney padding after him.

  ‘Where we going, Col?’

  ‘Home.’

  They continued on in the building’s shadow for a few metres until Col stopped dead, Barney bouncing off him. Midway between two wall buttresses, unnoticed till now despite Col’s recce of the place, was a flight of stone steps leading down to a door. A fraction’s hesitation, a quick look around the dark open space around them and he was down the steps, running his hands over the door, searching for a handle, finding only a keyhole. He looked up at Barney.

  ‘The jemmy. Quick.’

  Barney came down the steps one at a time, like a child, and held it out. Snatching it from him Col applied it to the side of the door, near to the keyhole. A few back-and-forth applications and he got that satisfying sound of splintering wood. This wasn’t going to be a waste of time after all. A few more energetic manipulations of jemmy on wood produced a cracking sound. The door separated from its jamb. A few seconds’ of listening in case his efforts had attracted undue attention and hearing nothing, Col was inside, the blackness only marginally alleviated by moonlight. He turned to Barney close by his side.

  ‘I can’t see nothing. Turn the bloody torch on.’

  A sudden click and the torch emitted a wavering pinpoint in the blackness.

  He snatched it from his cousin. ‘Give it here.’

  ‘I thought we were going home, Col? I don’t like it here.’ The voice became a whine. ‘I wanna go home.’

  ‘Shut it.’

  Low on his heels, the torch balanced upright, Col struck a match in its feeble light. The match flared. Reaching into his jacket pocket he brought out candles and held them to the match. The tiny flames created delineation and shadow out of the blackness.

  ‘Here. Hold these. Hold them up high, like this. Yeah, that’s right.’

  Col’s eyes moved around the room. No wonder it was freezing down here. All he could see was bare stone and the same for the floor. What he wanted was a door to what was above. On the move, Barney following close behind with the candles, he scanned the walls. There was no door except the one they’d come in by. Frustrated, he gestured to Barney to raise the candles some more and got his first sight of yet more stone made into a large box shape. He’d seen something like it in a film a couple of months before. He’d made Barney watch it with him because Barney was just this side of better than nobody when you watched vampire hunters at work. Frowning at a faint smell of burning, he jumped at the childlike voice directly in his ear.

  ‘Col?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think my glove’s on fire.’

  ‘Oh, for—’ He grabbed the candles, then the woollen fingers, pulling at them and squeezing them, then blowing on his own hands.

  ‘You idiot. Take ’em off!’

  He glared at his cousin whose round face in the jack-o’-lantern lighting was as artless as a five-year-old’s. Shaking his head, he moved forward with the candles, reluctant to abandon the place after his efforts to get inside and not about to pass up whatever there might be down here for the taking. He reached the waist-high stone structure and looked down at old wood illuminated by candlelight.

  ‘Here. Hold these while I work out how to get this lid off.’ The flames b
ecame two pairs. He ran his hands over smooth wood, Barney’s voice intruding into his thinking.

  ‘Remember that film, Col? The vampire went to sleep in a thing just like this, didn’t he?’ A brief silence. ‘Is this where they hide all the stuff, Col?’

  Col slipped his fingers into the narrow space between stone and wood and gripped the lid, then stopped, ears straining, brow furrowed. He’d heard something. Something coming from outside.

  ‘What’s up, Col—?’

  ‘Quiet.’

  A chill running across his shoulders, he lowered his head, looking towards the steps and up. Whatever it was had stopped. He glanced at Barney. No point asking him if he’d heard it. If you asked him what day it was you risked getting two different answers. He listened again. Nothing. This place plus Barney had got him jittery.

  He grabbed the wooden lid and pulled, eyes squeezed tight, rarely used muscles screaming. It moved a few centimetres. He gripped it again, pulled some more, then manoeuvred it to one side and stared down into the small triangle of blackness.

  ‘Bring the candles here. I can’t see nothing.’

  The flickering light fell into the triangle. Sunken eyes in dark sockets regarded Col, the nose below them a dark wedge, the lips pulled back in a crazy grin above a gaping hole …

  Col reared, fell backwards, candles falling and rolling around his feet as he shoved Barney aside and lunged for the steps. Erupting into the cold night, breath exploding in great clouds, Barney on his heels, he came to a stop, leant against the wall, his heart filling his throat, cold sweat on his forehead, clutching the torch like some puny weapon.

  ‘You two! Stop right there—’

  They fled without a backward look.

  The uniformed man reached the spot where they had been, looked down at the open door, the flight of steps and started towards them.

  TWO

  Spreading moisturiser onto her damp face, Kate Hanson was lost in her own head. Gym class was hard tonight. Glad when it finished. A lot to do tomorrow. ‘Mom?’ Need to get the post-grad research students moving with the—

  ‘Mom!’

  Hanson started and looked up at her thirteen-year-old daughter’s aggrieved reflection behind her in the mirror. ‘I called you. Twice. Didn’t you hear? You were looking dead weird.’

  Hanson eyed Maisie via the mirror. ‘I was doing some para-cosmic thinking, actually.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Old Mrs Hetherington looks exactly like that when she’s doing what she calls “wool-gathering” and she’s, like a hundred and three.’

  ‘Why aren’t you asleep? You went to bed an hour ago.’

  Hanson got the pout-and-shrug combination which had become a standard response from Maisie to most inquiries over the last couple of months. ‘Have you got a headache? Stomach cramps?’

  The blue eyes rolled. ‘Just leave it.’

  Hanson studied this slightly shorter version of herself: dark red hair in lush, natural curl, large blue eyes in a heart-shaped face and, in Maisie’s case, a sour expression.

  ‘Grandpa’s going to make hot chocolate. Would you like some?’

  ‘Please.’

  A couple of minutes later Hanson followed her downstairs and into the kitchen where Maisie was now sitting, elbows on the table, head propped on her hands. Hanson got an inquiring look from Charlie. She raised her shoulders. Whatever’s going on with her, I do not have a clue.

  ‘Have you and Chelsey had an argument?’

  ‘No.’

  OK. Leave it there. Hanson assembled mugs and Charlie dispensed chocolate powder.

  ‘Mom?’

  ‘Mmm …?’

  ‘How old were you when you decided that you wanted to be a forensic psychologist?’

  As Charlie poured hot milk onto chocolate Hanson considered the question. ‘I don’t think I did decide, at least, not in the way you probably mean. I suppose I slowly gravitated to it.’

  ‘Right,’ said Maisie, managing to put a morose twist on the single word.

  Hanson pressed on. ‘You’re thinking about what you’d like to do eventually?’

  ‘That’s already decided isn’t it? Something with maths.’

  Hanson suppressed a sigh. Tuesday evening. She’d already done two very full days at the university, she needed sleep and right now she could do without a discussion which had all the makings of a minefield.

  ‘No. Nothing’s decided. You can keep your options open until you identify whichever area really interests you.’ She understood Maisie’s comment about her future. Maisie had a prodigious mathematical talent. Twice weekly during the previous academic year it had taken her across the road from her high school to the university where her mother lectured, to join undergraduates at least five years her senior in maths lectures. She’d appeared to thrive and in October the arrangement had been upped to thrice weekly.

  ‘Maisie if there’s a problem with your university lectures …?’

  ‘I didn’t say that! Did I say that?’

  Experience telling her she was on a hiding to nothing, Hanson took the tray of drinks and carried them into the sitting room, Maisie trailing her. Setting it down, she handed one of them to her father. ‘Here you go, Charlie.’

  He took it from her. ‘Thanks, Kate.’ He glanced at Maisie now on the sofa, well-shaped brows low, then at Hanson who shrugged. Within five minutes Maisie finished her drink, jumped up, put her mug on the tray and headed for the door, omitting the usual kisses. ‘G’night.’

  Charlie watched her leave then glanced at Hanson. ‘What was that about?’

  ‘You know as much as I do. Whatever it is she’ll tell me, possibly you, in her own time.’ Maisie was some months into her teenage years and so far, so … OK. Hanson recalled Maisie’s toddler years, distance lending them a rosy glow. In reality, much of it had been a difficult time. She and Kevin had separated, followed by divorce and lone parenthood for her. Maisie had become increasingly challenging. Hanson had blamed herself, then Kevin and finally both of them for not being able to hold things together. Testing and the revelation of Maisie’s high IQ had stopped the self-blame, the other blame. Maisie was now old enough to tell Hanson what was troubling her. If anything. Eventually.

  ‘OK, Kate?’

  She looked across at Charlie, aware that she was smiling. ‘Yes. Everything’s fine.’

  THREE

  Early morning chill on her face, Dr Connie Chong glanced ahead to the spire of St Bartholomew’s Church jabbing November cloud, laying odds that where she was heading was as cold inside as it was out. In October she had left Birmingham for eighty-degree days in the place she still thought of as home. Her return to bone-chilling damp two days ago had prompted her to add a fleece beneath the forensic suit she was wearing. The choice had perturbed her. It was something her elderly mother might do. Now she didn’t care. Without it, she’d be cold to the bone and likely to stay that way for the next several hours. She smiled, knowing the life-enhancing power of such small positives when it came to her job. She walked onto the wide swathe of land, the massive church now in full view.

  Acknowledging the scenes-of-crime officers watching her approach, she went under the blue-and-white tape. Her first task was to get information. She waved a hand at one of the young uniformed constables from headquarters, idly noting that he looked about fifteen. He came towards her, breath preceding him in clouds.

  ‘The chief was frugal in what he told me,’ she said. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘A community support officer on the night shift rang it in.’ He pointed. ‘He was coming along that side of the church when he heard noises, came to investigate, and saw two figures running out of there.’ He pointed again, this time to a flight of stone steps disappearing downwards. He looked back to Chong.

  ‘He went and had a look. It’s in there.’

  It. ‘Nobody else has been inside so far?’ She got a swift headshake.

  ‘SOCOs have been waiting for you to come. I was instructed to guard the scene unt
il you arrived.’

  ‘Is the community support officer still here?’ Another headshake.

  ‘After he phoned it in, he waited. I was first here. He told me he’d gone down and seen it. I didn’t ask any questions. He looked like he was about to puke,’ he finished, adding a quick ‘ma’am’. ‘He went straight to headquarters to make a statement.’

  This was shaping up to be Chong’s kind of scene. No disturbance. No exposure to the elements. And so far, thanks to the chief’s tight lips, no media interest. She looked at the youthful officer, wondering when she’d acquired the gravitas to cause nervousness in the ranks. Well, among the very young and inexperienced. ‘No doubt it will all be in his statement. Has an official of the church been informed?’

  He flicked open his notebook, the small act lending him stature. He pointed to a large Victorian residence some distance away, where the land rose, a dark shale path among nearby headstones leading to its dark bulk outlined against the overcast sky.

  ‘That’s Church House. A Father Anton Delaney lives there. He’s sort of the vicar here. Before the CSO left I told him to guard the steps and went over and rang the bell. Got Delaney out of bed. He was all for getting dressed and coming to have a look but I told him to stay indoors and that somebody would get to him in due course.’

  ‘Well done.’ She beckoned to one of the SOCOs who came at a quick clip.

  ‘Let’s take a look at what we’re facing here.’

  They followed the constable to the flight of stone steps. Reaching them he moved to one side, starting at a sudden owl hoot.

  ‘It’s down there,’ he said, adding an unnecessary, ‘you can’t miss it.’

  Slipping on shoe covers handed to her by the SOCO, she approached the steps, three of his colleagues also following, each carrying a portable light source. As she reached the last step one of the lights was activated, throwing bright white light onto splintered wood along the edge of the few-centimetres-open door. She pushed at it. It creaked, squealed in protest then swung wide.

  They came inside, keeping to the walls, the white light flooding the low-ceilinged stone chamber. The distant sounds of early-morning traffic barely audible above ground were now silenced. Chill air closed around them. She looked across to the single feature of the place: a rectangular stone structure around a metre-and-a-half in height and approximately two metres in length. She waited as two of the SOCOs made a quick examination of the floor, followed by headshakes. Nothing for their own footfalls to disturb or destroy.