Shadows and Spirits

Chapter 10

The headache had nearly gone when he woke. The Mistress" eyes still haunted him. The thought of someone he loved having been so fully transformed made him sick to his stomach. Any attempt to approach the idea and examine it led to a shot of adrenaline running through him and a jittery nervous side-effect, but he needed to work it out. A few painkillers set him up for the day, dissipating the tension, but he was left feeling slightly detached from the world. McEwan made his way into work at a measured pace.

McEwan was the first one in when he arrived. He checked his email and found that Amanda, his Boss, had read Malcolm"s most recent post mortem report. Again she re-iterated her opinion they had found the killer. He cautiously replied they still needed the final evidence to prove this. He worked a little more on his own report, until the team had arrived.

“Okay, guys. If I could have a quick word,” he said, perching on the edge of his desk. After a few moments shuffling he had their attention. JJ looked earnest, Ian fiddled with his tie, towering over her. The rest gathered behind them. “I"m sure you"ve heard, we know that our most recent victim was not killed in the same way as our other victims, as it first appears. This means we have a new killer. Until we get proof that our victim was the killer of the women, I want you to keep checking leads.” There were a few groans. “I know, I know. Just a few more hours then we can start to tidy up the files and case notes and you can get your well-deserved time off. I want to thank you all for the sterling effort you"ve put in so far. Just give me a few more hours, okay?” There were few mutters of agreement, and they all shuffled back to their desks, or the coffee machine. He promised himself that they"d have their celebration once he was sure. He decided to find Malcolm and see what the forensics tests had produced.

Malcolm looked up from his work and smiled seeing McEwan walk in. “You look like s**t,” he said, turning on his swivel chair.

“Good morning to you too,” said McEwan.

“I have the results of the tests from the samples we took yesterday,” said Malcolm, quickly sensing McEwan"s no-nonsense mood. He turned back to his computer and brought up the reports he had been sent. “Now, where are we? The toxicology report is largely clear, but did show up some unusual alkaloids, such as Atropine, which suggest that he had ingested some small amounts of belladonna…”

“Why would he have done that?” said McEwan.

“Well,” said Malcolm swivelling back to face him, “I would say it was probably a simple ritual, maybe with some occult overtones. The quantity is quite small so he wouldn"t have been poisoned. In the past women used it to dilate their pupils, the wider eyes making them more attractive, hence the name. I think in this instance it would let more light into the eye, perhaps giving him better night vision. It"s an odd detail, I"ll give you that.

“Now, the DNA, extracted from the blood samples on the scalpel, matches the DNA of three of the victims, our dead murderer and an unknown person. It is reasonable to conclude that the three victims were killed with the knife, given the DNA matches and the entry wounds. The suspected killer"s own blood being on the knife was more conclusive given its freshness; he does seem to have been killed by his own knife. The unknown person is a puzzle; the DNA is from a sample of older blood, so it may be an unknown early victim.”

“He may have killed someone before he began in earnest, perhaps someone no-one would miss, like a tramp, then began his Great Work. That certainly would fit the typical profile,” said McEwan.

“Yes, and I"m sure when you get round to finding his roots, you"ll find he tortured small animals too,” Malcolm said. “What"s this "Great Work" you referred to?”

“I"ll get back to you on that in a minute. Please, continue.”

“What"s left? Ah, fingerprints. Well this was interesting. We only have the victim"s prints on the knife, with one exception. That print is so blurred it could be anyone"s. Whoever killed him was probably wearing a set of rubber gloves. We found nothing unusual in the flotsam from the body, just the victim"s own hair and carpet fibres from his flat.”

“The scalpel has been confirmed to have been purchased by our recent victim,” said McEwan. “The blood on it comes from at least three of the dead women, the knife also matches the stab wounds, and the only fingerprints on the knife that we can match, belong to the dead man. I think we can safely say that we have our serial killer.” He was relieved that this mystery was concluded, but he still needed to know who had killed his murderer.

“That sounds like a good assessment. You look a little troubled. What have you discovered?” said Malcolm.

“I was able to translate the carvings I was looking at yesterday. They spelled out a name and an address. I knew someone with the same name while I was at university, and given this new murder I thought they might be in danger, so I went over to check it out. The place looked like a bomb had hit it, their employer hasn"t seen them, and so the only thing I have to go on is what I found in her journal,” said McEwan, feeling vulnerable sharing this with anyone, even Malcolm.

“Any luck?” said Malcolm.

“Yes and no. The journal"s full of some crazy s**t involving angels and Nephilim and using some magical process to turn into one. But it also documents some of her recent activities. So I followed them to someone who calls herself The Mistress, who turns out to be an intense recluse. She turned Kate away and sent her to some guy called Kether instead. This Mistress woman didn"t give me a straight answer when I asked how to find him, but gave me a riddle. She also suggested that Kate herself is likely the murderer I"m looking for, since the process she has gone through has probably made her a psychopath.”

Malcolm could see that McEwan was clearly exasperated. “Your old friend, Kate, has tried to do something to become an angel and driven herself mad and thus turned into a murderer?” he said.

“She"s tried to become a Nephilim, to achieve some kind of enlightened state, like Nirvana I guess. The Great Work in alchemy is similarly an attempt to gain enlightenment, to get closer to God by undergoing a transformation process.”

“What exactly is a Nephilim?” said Malcolm.

“Mythically, or at least Biblically, a Nephilim is the offspring of a human and an angel,” McEwan said.

“Ah, so some kind of spiritual being become flesh?”

“Possibly, but this group of angels, or Watchers as they are referred to, seem to either already have been on earth, or descended to where humans were living, driven by their attraction to the Daughters of Man. I would guess they were actually a more advanced race or tribe, a group of which rebelled, broke some tribal taboos, bred with the locals and then taught them their trade secrets. This tale has somehow led to the concept of angels as we know them today,” said McEwan.

“I"m not exactly the Biblical expert, but wasn"t Jesus also the offspring of an angel and a mortal woman? And I"m sure there was supposed to be angels at his birth too, but that could just be one of those muddled Christmas traditions,” said Malcolm, frowning as he recalled this information.

“Well some people attribute Mary"s conception to a visit from Gabriel, but he was the deliverer of the news of the Holy Spirit at work. Certainly an angel tells the shepherds to go and visit the holy child. But the tales are not consistent or even present in all the gospels.”

“I seem to have diverted you,” said Malcolm.

“Well I was wondering if this Great Work is what everyone aspires to, to get back to God.”

“Even our murderer, crawling through blood and pain?” Malcolm said, surprised to hear McEwan speculate on the spiritual.

“Why not? Just because he"s chosen the wrong direction, doesn"t mean it"s not that impulse which had been driving him.”

“It"s certainly an interesting motive for murder,” laughed Malcolm.

“I didn"t mean it as a motive, just a hidden influence, in all of us, that had become twisted in this case. Likewise, whatever the cause for her state of mind, or even if it has made her capable of murder, I still need to find Kate.”

“What was the clue you were given?” Malcolm said.

“I could find this guy Kether on the Tree of Life.”

“I"m guessing that"s not the one in the Garden of Eden, unless he"s a serpent.”

“That was the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. I"m pretty sure the angel sent to guard the Tree of Life was Lucifer. At least the cherubim were given that job and he was their leader.”

“Have you checked the Jewish traditions regarding the Tree?”

“Not yet. I"m not long in, and it was a long night.”

“I"m afraid I can"t help you with this one.” Malcolm smiled apologetically.

“Okay, thanks anyway, Malcolm. Sometimes it"s good to just have someone to bounce ideas off.”

McEwan made his way back upstairs to the office and started a quick search on the web. Kether was a station on a diagram used in the Kabbalah called the Tree of Life. The Kabbalah was a form of Jewish mysticism that coalesced in the 12th century. McEwan thought it must have had a strong influence on the Alchemists, as it too had a notion of a Great Work, which was much more explicitly about coming closer to, and becoming more like, God. He looked more closely at the ten stations, or sephira, on the diagram. The diagram looked more like a number of interlinked triangles than an actual tree. The sephira were arranged in order of the descent of God"s emanation, down through different levels of being. At the top, outside the Tree, was God, followed by Kether the first and highest point on the tree, and far from God, imperfect and impure, was the Earth. The name for this sephiroth was Malkuth. Was this Kether also the shadowy figure behind Malkuth Media? It was the only lead he had, so McEwan returned to the riverfront.