Bad to Worse Read online

  Nicholas stood behind Paulo and read the email from Worse.

  ‘The police might take things more seriously now we can give an Interpol warrant name,’ he said.

  Paulo wrote a short account of events, describing the difficulties and dangers police would face in retrieving Glimpse’s body. He asked Nicholas for his opinion before sending it.

  ‘Excellent, Paulo.’

  ‘I think I should phone again.’

  This time, he was put through to a senior officer who accessed the email as they were talking. Paulo was told that Madregalo police had received a high-level communication regarding Glimpse from an Inspector Spoiling in Australia, and preparations were underway to get officers out to the LDI station. They could expect a recovery team, mortuary specialist, coroner’s officer and detectives to arrive late afternoon the next day. Paulo stressed that the body was deep underground and staff should be chosen who could cope with claustrophobia. They would need better lighting than LDI had available, a ladder, and a power saw to cut the victim down. Finally, they should have weapons in the event the crab returned while they were in the tunnel. And, by the way, there was no road access to the cave. They would need to hike their equipment for five kilometres.

  When Paulo finished the call, he swivelled his chair to face Nicholas, who was sitting at his desk.

  ‘They believed me,’ he said.

  It was the first moment in the day that Nicholas saw Paulo start to relax.

  ‘Which bit?’ said Nicholas. ‘They believed a story about a monster crab squeezing to death an Interpol fugitive deep inside the Joseph Plateau and leaving him hanging from the cave ceiling? They will need a ladder to reach him? They should bring power tools to cut through a giant claw? They need to be armed in case they are attacked by a ten-foot-high crustacean running at them on two legs in the dark? Paulo, even I don’t believe it. Do you think you were talking to the real police? Are you sure it’s not an emergency psychiatric team that will be arriving tomorrow?’

  Paulo was looking seriously at Nicholas. It was then that both realized the magnitude of what they had been through, and at last felt safe to connect with an intense relief. Simultaneously, they burst into laughter.

  Early the next morning, Paulo and Nicholas went to Glimpse’s truck. It was locked, and Paulo expressed admiration for Nicholas’s foresight in obtaining the keys.

  There was little of interest in the cab. They accessed the back through separate locked doors at the rear, which they left open for light. The inside at the cab end was set up like an RV, with bed, bathroom and kitchen facilities. The rest was workspace with benches along each side and an office chair that could be secured during travel. There was a library of geological references and a mineral sample collection.

  Nicholas sat at a computer and activated the screen, pleased to find it not password protected. He examined email history and document files, setting up copy folders to send to his own machine. Paulo searched systematically starting from the rear. He untied the neck of a bulky sack under one bench, and felt inside.

  ‘Look what we have here, Nicholas.’

  He pulled out a small josephite. Nicholas leaned across and took it.

  ‘It may just be quartz, but it does look like our specimen.’ He got up and peered into the sack. ‘I wonder where he found all these?’

  Nicholas resumed his work at the computer. There was an office area with spring-back files and several papers organized with bulldog clips. Paulo flicked through them and stopped at a sheet headed ‘Geode analysis’. There was a cover letter from Madregalo Analytical & Assay, with an attached physical description, crystallography report, and listing of chemical composition. Someone had circled Terencium, and underlined each terencium compound itemized below it. Paulo put it aside to keep, and continued his search.

  He came last to the living space behind the cab. A small eating table was folded down, with some papers resting on it.

  ‘Nicholas. Come here,’ he said.

  Nicholas pushed the office chair back and stepped forward to the kitchen. In front of Paulo was a hand-drawn map on an A4 sheet. A roughly circular region had a GPS reference written at its centre. An arrowhead indicated north. At the southern rim was a hatched area, labelled Glitzernstein to the side. From this, running south from the circle, was a line labelled Vulkanstraße. Below that a long arrow pointing east was annotated ‘M 265’.

  ‘Volcano Road. I don’t know of any volcanoes in the Ferendes,’ said Paulo. ‘But supposing that M means Madregalo, it’s between here and the capital.’

  Nicholas took his smartphone from a pocket and searched on the coordinates. He zoomed on a map of the Joseph Plateau, and showed Paulo.

  ‘That position is north of the Madregalo road, deep in jungle. There are no roads indicated.’

  ‘But we know that there are scattered logging tracks across the plateau. Maybe Glimpse got close with his truck then bushwhacked the rest.’

  ‘He can’t have bushwhacked very far carrying that sack of rocks,’ said Nicholas. ‘And if he got in with this rig, we should manage with one of our 4WDs.’

  Paulo was still looking at the map.

  ‘Volcano Street,’ he said softly. ‘It’s a rather odd name to give, don’t you think? As if there is some kind of road or track already there.’

  ‘Glimpse was odd. We should keep the map, and the josephites,’ said Nicholas, returning to his task at the computer.

  The police arrived in two trucks at 6.00 pm, and set up a small work compound at the edge of the main clearing, near Glimpse’s truck. The group was self-sufficient, but they accepted Paulo’s invitation to join the station staff for dinner in the canteen. Paulo took the opportunity to address them all about conditions in the cave, what hardships to expect, and what safety rules to obey. He stated forcefully that while underground, he would be the person in charge regarding all but police operational matters.

  After the meal, Paulo and Nicholas and two detectives walked over to the station office, where an informal interview was conducted. They were told that a joint statement would be prepared for them both to sign. If this accorded with findings the following day, the detectives considered that neither was likely to have to attend an inquest, as Glimpse’s death was not actually witnessed and not itself suspicious in respect of foul play.

  The whole team, with Nicholas and Paulo leading the way, set off for the caves at 6.00 am. Those in the police retinue, except for the senior detective, carried heavy equipment packs, and the walk was slower than usual.

  They rested outside the cave entrance, where packs were reorganized, torches distributed, and Paulo held another briefing. The plan was to regroup in the first cavern and enter the tunnel with Paulo and two armed officers in front. This lead party would move beyond Glimpse, set up a torch battery, and take up position to look out for the crab. Because of the confined space and the awkwardness of Glimpse’s location at the z-bend, sections of the team would come forward as needed, starting with the detectives and a police photographer, who would then withdraw to allow forensics in, who were also charged with custody of Glimpse’s firearms. They would be followed by the recovery crew with ladder, power saw and two stretchers. Finally, a clean-up team would check the site. Glimpse was to be carried to the surface and bagged in daylight. Paulo requested minimal unnecessary noise in the tunnel so they could listen for the scratching sound. He emphasized that they had no idea how fast the crab was capable of moving using its unusual gait. When questions were dealt with, he started the generator, and climbed into the entrance. The police followed, with Nicholas at the rear.

  They reached the first cavern without incident. Because they could not be sure if crabs ever ventured the whole tunnel length to this chamber, the forward party ran their torch beams around the space. When Nicholas caught up, Paulo was pointing out the tunnel entrance, and several powerful police torches were naturally directed at it. Nicholas had never seen that part of the cavern so well illuminated.

 
He had a fleeting impression, apparently missed by others present, that an enormous human shadow figure stood astride the tunnel opening. Within a moment, it was lost, as the torches moved away to light the ground for walking.

  The party entered the tunnel in the order Paulo had planned. Nicholas stayed behind to examine his tripod-mounted survey camera, left there after their hurried escape. He disconnected the computer, which had video of Glimpse’s first appearance in the cave, and placed it in his pack. Later he would provide a copy to the police, including the voice recording of Glimpse’s plan to kill them. Then he crossed the chamber to join the others.

  They were in the tunnel for an hour. First out was Glimpse on a stretcher, his puffy face unrecognizable. The cheliped had been sawn through, and the terminal pincer still clasped its victim’s neck to the thickness of cervical vertebrae. The severed end projected sideways from the stretcher, making transport slightly difficult. Then came the rest of the claw, as large as Glimpse himself, bizarrely carried on a second stretcher like a human casualty. Last out of the tunnel were Paulo and the armed guards.

  It was five o’clock when they arrived back at the station. Glimpse and the claw, each body-bagged and labelled, were placed in cool boxes on one of the trucks, and the expedition equipment repacked for the return journey.

  The relief of having that gruesome task completed, and a physical and emotional exhaustion from the day, seemed to be shared by everybody, even those who had not made the arduous trek. For the station staff, this partly was the knowledge that Glimpse was finally to leave their presence.

  Again, Paulo invited his guests to the canteen for dinner. Alcohol was rarely consumed at LDI, but tonight it flowed. Mostly, observed Nicholas, from a police cache somewhere in the body-bag truck. There were speeches and replies, and replies and replies, and Glimpse was rechristened, and the crab was promoted to honorary Sergeant, and then to Inspector, awarded a bravery honour, voted amputee of the year, and made Director-General of Interpol, and then the United Nations, issued a special nine-legged no-hands driver’s licence and given the keys to Glimpse’s truck, and finally auctioned in absentia for sushi, but still toasted all evening till the cache was drained. It was a night of the blackest humour.

  The dark, heavy hessian sack containing Glimpse’s sparkle stones was stored under Edvard’s vacant desk in the office hut. Nicholas had chosen from it an especially nice example to place on his desk, as his previous find had been sent to Cambridge for identification.

  This became for him a muse object that often brought to mind the avenue of josephites in the second cavern, and led him into elaborate fantasies of its ceremonial purpose. It was always a shock coming back to the sensory world of the actual, to accept that the ripples seen on the lake’s surface were probably caused by the giant crab stirring, and that he was lucky not to have suffered the fate of Glimpse.

  He wondered also about the shadow picture he had seen in the first cavern. Paulo had not noticed it, but without the lighting power that the police had provided they would be unlikely to re-visualize and define its outline. Increasingly, Nicholas felt frustrated that exploration of the cave was inadequately resourced, particularly regarding illumination.

  Tøssentern, of course, was working hard in Cambridge to marshal those resources, not only financial, but intellectual. Every time he received a report from Paulo, there seemed to be need of a new and arcane expertise. The list had recently expanded to include a limnologist, archaeologist, dendrochronologist, mineralogist, analytical chemist, arthropod biologist, seismologist and now, of all things, a vulcanologist. What was expected to be a temporary visit to the station of some speleologists and an anthropologist was now looking like the establishment of a satellite natural history university.

  Pending those developments, the cave soon took on a secondary priority for Paulo and Nicholas. This was partly because they knew it was unsafe to explore without better lighting and protection. But other work needed attention also. One of the main functions of LDI in the Ferendes was to provide schooling to children, and some adults, from dozens of regional villages. This generated a load of administration, which Paulo managed. For Nicholas, there was the ongoing linguistic analysis of Ferent dialects in pursuit of one of LDI’s objectives, which was identification of their common precursor language.

  Nicholas was a volunteer at the station, and had been so for some years. He derived his substantial income by consulting for global banking and insurance companies, developing their investment and risk-mitigation products. That work occupied him for some hours most mornings.

  He was keen also to devote more time to his personal research interest of swint language, which was advancing rapidly in other centres. Finally, there was the volcano.

  Glimpse’s map was pinned to a corkboard above Nicholas’s desk. When he wasn’t concentrating on his computer screen, or contemplating the josephite, Nicholas would stare at the map.

  He had purchased satellite photography of the region. Even knowing the exact location, it required imagination to discern any ring-shaped area differentiated from its surroundings either topographically or by vegetation.

  Then Nicholas thought of something else. He accessed a meteorological earth monitoring service and ordered infrared imagery. The result was stunning. Centred on Glimpse’s coordinates was a multi-kilometre diameter caldera with a thermal radiance several hundredfold that of the surrounding jungle.

  They had found the volcano, and it didn’t look extinct.

  Those who deal occupationally with the macabre commonly seek emotional release through alcohol and humour, itself often morbid. Madregalo police bestowed upon Glimpse the Ferent name Nusero Loosan, which means hangman with crabs.

  Under the extreme, pyroclastic conditions in which igneo-capsular condensation occurs, a josephite might be formed having lattice faults in its crystalline shell (effectively microfractures) through which the sulphide core, pressurized by dissolved argon, will slowly leak. The result is a hollow interior with an internal surface having a highly irregular deposition of residual terencium and other salts, the whole then resembling a transparent geode. Glimpse apparently discovered one of these, possibly already broken open, and had its internal composition analysed. By that means he came to realize that he was in possession of a novel, and commercially valuable, source of terencium concentrates.

  13 THE INTUITION REMINDER

  Richard Worse looked forward to Thursday evenings. Every week that both he and Sigrid were in town, they would meet for a conversation over an informal meal. Apart from his housekeeper’s visiting, it was the single regularity in Worse’s life, and had been so for many years.

  Tonight they had chosen Indian, but the cuisine was never a priority; that was always the conversation. They would generally review the travails and amusements of their respective working weeks, talk about people, events, politics, psychiatry, art, illness, philosophy and language. Their friendship was deep, intellectual, and platonic. For Worse, in many ways, it served to restore the normative, as well as bring some lightness to a life that was often solitary, ruminative, and intensely focused on the criminal mentality of others.

  On this particular evening, he did arrive ruminative. He had spent the afternoon studying a folder of documents from Thomas Worse, sent by secure email. It included a little about Thomas himself, a personal account of the Worse family in Dante, and a history of the disputation with a certain Mortiss family going back to the nineteenth century. As far as had been determined, it started in 1877 with a frontier-style gunfight between a Worse ancestor and an outlaw called Rigo Mortiss. A contemporary witness account of the incident was recorded in the town newspaper, and Thomas had scanned archival copy for Worse’s benefit.

  Ordinarily, Rigo Mortiss would have been forgotten along with his unmarked grave. But he had brothers, who seemed to have nothing more to occupy their time than to mount repeated revenge attacks on Thomas M Worse I, as he was now identified in family documents. Fortunately, these wer
e routinely repelled.

  Then something unexpected happened: the Mortiss brothers became rich. Starting with standover tactics in the licensed water storage and carriage trade, they next amassed a fortune in silver mines by expedient theft of title using the proven business model of forgery, extortion and murder. The following generation embezzled the family interests into railroads, ranching, and the nascent car industry, most of which survived in descendent businesses within the modern corporate empire still named Mortiss Bros.

  Meanwhile, the Worse family had incarnated, over six generations, a Thomas M Worse, the First to the Sixth, in continuous incumbency of the office of sheriff, with oversight of the civil and legal protections of the citizens of Dante.

  Worse described recent developments to Sigrid, beginning with the email from Anna Camenes, of whom Sigrid knew, though the two had never met. When he came to the part about the six incarnations of Thomas M Worse as sheriff of Dante, Sigrid gave a short laugh and said, ‘Like the Dalai Lama,’ at the very moment that a bowl of palak paneer was placed before her. The waiter gave her a curious look before disappearing.

  ‘Thomas included a dossier on the current Mortiss business as well. He didn’t say, of course, but some of the reports have a sophistication that suggests to me they run, or at least have in the past, a police intelligence operation on the family.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Sigrid.

  Worse served food onto their plates, and Sigrid took up the discussion.

  ‘The question for you seems to be whether the vendetta is going global, as Thomas suggests it might, and therefore whether they’ll take an interest in you and your loved ones. From your distinctly dismissive tone, I take it that you don’t view the possibility seriously.’

  ‘I was avoiding that word,’ he said. But he was thinking about ‘loved ones’.

  ‘Vendetta? You can avoid it. The whole dispute appears to be rather one-sided, though. More vendetta than feud. I think it’s suitably descriptive.’