Graham Masterton - Innocent Blood

‘I think it’s time we called the police,’ he said. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Not in here. Not with a cellular phone. Not unless you want to end up in eighteen million matching pieces.’

They started to walk back toward the basement. As they did so, they heard the rattling of keys. They turned around to see the main church doors opening and a tall young man step inside. He had long straggly hair and a beard, a hawk-like nose, and he was dressed in a loose linen shirt and worn-out jeans. He stopped when he saw them, and frowned.

There was a brief moment when none of them moved. But then the young man pushed his way back through the doors, and disappeared. Frank went after him. He ran down the length of the church, bounded down the steps outside, tripped, and crashed into the corrugated-iron fencing. He was just in time to see the young man escaping out into the street.

He followed, even though he had bruised his shoulder and twisted his knee. By now the young man was almost halfway along the block, loping toward Fairfax Avenue, his hair flying behind him. Frank had to run like Long John Silver – dot one, carry one – and his knee was so painful that he couldn’t help himself from shouting out ‘ shit! ’ with every step he took. But he had always kept up his tennis, and he was fit enough, and by the time the young man had reached Fairfax Frank was gaining on him.

The man ran into the street, holding up his hand to stop the traffic. But without warning a taxi came speeding across the intersection and struck him a glancing blow with its side mirror. There was a shout and a screech of tires. The young man tumbled back into a parked pickup, staggered, and then fell sideways on to the pavement. He was still trying to climb back on to his feet when Frank came bounding around the front of the pickup and seized his shirt.

‘OK, Jesus. Got you!’

‘His name’s John Frederick Kellner,’ said Lieutenant Chessman, finishing his chicken taco and smacking his hands together. ‘Twenty-six years old, a web designer from Redondo Beach. He refuses to tell us anything, but we’ve been talking to his mother and his twin sister.’

‘Did they have any idea of what he was mixed up in?’ asked Frank.

‘He was always involved with radical politics, ever since he was at high school. Animal rights, Stop the War, No More Nukes – that kind of malarkey. But his mother hasn’t seen him for nearly a year.’

‘What about his childhood?’ Nevile asked.

‘His father walked out when he was five, apparently, and he was sent to live with his uncle and his aunt from the age of seven. He was removed from their custody shortly after his thirteenth birthday because his uncle was suspected of abusing him. Until April of last year he was receiving regular treatment at the Westwood Center for clinical anxiety.’

‘Another victim of abuse, then,’ said Nevile. ‘It looks as if my theory is correct.’

‘He hasn’t admitted to being a member of Dar Tariki Tariqat,’ said Lieutenant Chessman. ‘But he is an abuse victim, yes, and he did have access to explosives that we are ninety-nine percent certain belong to Dar Tariki Tariqat – so, yes, I guess your theory seems to be panning out, so far as it goes.’

They were sitting in Lieutenant Chessman’s office at the Hollywood police station on North Wilcox Avenue. All around them was chaos. Phones rang incessantly, people were shouting and arguing, and the corridors were crowded with harassed police officers and jostling news reporters. Television vans were double parked in the street below, and all the doors were guarded by officers from the SWAT team. Kellner was being questioned under tight security by successions of police detectives, as well as special agents from the FBI and intelligence officers from the CIA.

Frank, Nevile and Lieutenant Chessman were still talking when Police Commissioner Marvin Campbell appeared on the six o’clock television news looking groomed and glossy and deeply relieved.

‘Of course it’s still too soon for us to be counting chickens, but today the forces of law’n’order struck a crushing counter blow against the terrorists who have been threatening our city, our freedom of expression and our very lives.

‘Bomb experts have already removed large quantities of explosives from St John the Evangelist Church for forensic testing. However, we are in very little doubt that their chemical composition will match the residue from the recent bombings at The Cedars, Universal, Fox, Disney and Warner Brothers.’

Commissioner Campbell declined to disclose exactly how the store of explosives had been discovered. ‘Let me simply say that the Los Angeles Police Department, in association with the FBI and other agencies, have contributed investigative work of the highest order – a unique combination of down-to-earth diligence and almost miraculous inspiration.’

‘In other words,’ Nevile said dryly, ‘they had bugger all to do with it.’

During the course of the next few hours, Dar Tariki Tariqat unraveled at the seams. FBI computer experts went through John Kellner’s PC and found that three years ago he had logged on to an online discussion society calling itself Whipping Horse. Ostensibly, Whipping Horse was a support group for the victims of any kind of abuse – child molestation, domestic violence, bullying, rape or sexual harassment. Unlike any other support group, though, it didn’t offer comfort and friendly advice. It offered something far more exciting and liberating: the chance to get even.

Abuse victims were encouraged to strike back at the people who had made their lives a misery. They could do this in a small, irritating way by constantly ordering pizzas – or taxis, or mail-order goods – for their one-time tormentors, day after day, week after week. Or they could get more serious and infect their office computers with pictures of child pornography. Or they could jeopardize their careers by calling their companies and suggesting that they had been operating some kind of illegal kickback.

Trash Their Treasures! the website urged. ‘Vandalize their houses, dig up their lawns, set fire to their cars. After everything they’ve done to you, it’s nothing more than they deserve. And society should be punished, too, for turning a blind eye while you suffered.’

Members of Whipping Horse who had taken their revenge on their abusers were asked to report back to a secure email address, describing exactly what they had done, ‘in full, grisly detail, please! So that we can all enjoy how you made the bastard(s) squirm!’ Those who had carried out the most extreme acts of retribution would be invited to join an ‘inner sanctum.’

‘The inner sanctum will regularly meet to devise effective punishments for abusers of all kinds, and also for those who abuse by omission, by trying to pretend that abuse does not exist, and that life is all happiness and sunshine. For the first time, victims of abuse can show the world what it is like to have your life damaged beyond human repair, and your very soul taken away from you. For the first time, victims of abuse are being offered a path in the darkness.’

Dar Tariki Tariqat . In the darkness, a path.

At nine twenty-seven the following morning, Frank was woken by the phone ringing. It was Nevile.

‘They’ve found a list of Dar Tariki’s members. They include all the people who volunteered as suicide bombers. Richard Haze Abbott, Alexander Sutter, the man and the girl who blew up The Cedars – everybody. The police have been able to make two or three arrests, but at least seventeen of them must still be in hiding someplace. Presumably the ones who are going to carry out the next nine bombings.’

‘Do they have any idea who’s behind it?’