Fic: Jabberwocky, Part 4/?
By the time Annie and Chris returned to the station, it was nearly dark, and Ray and Gene were waiting for them, anxious looks on their faces. The two of them ran up the steps, thundering up and into the corridor, shoving past anyone in their way and into the CID offices.
“Gov!” Annie shouted as she leaned down, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. Behind her Chris was also panting, although the race from the car park had been a bit harder on him. He flailed his arms madly in the air for a second, then bent over, mimicking Annie, just as she stood up.
“Gov, it’s not Grey, but it’s the man he works for, Myers, Jefferson Myers. Has to be - all the equipment needed, and, I just know, Gov, I know…” Annie had caught her breath and was grabbing at the wrist of Gene’s jacket, “The warehouse studio for him, Gov, he’s a sculptor, and the things that he’s making, Gov, I know it has to be him…” Her voice trailed off, and she noticed her hand on Gene’s cuff. She slowly withdrew her hand and then stared up and into Gene’s eyes imploringly.
“Lady’s intuition is good enough for me on this one, if all else fails, at least there’ll be some much-needed bashing of skulls. Let’s go, Raymondo!” Annie started to run out of the door again, Gene and Ray in tow.
“Chris! Move your sorry hide!” Gene called over his shoulder, and Chris raced out after them, running back down the stairs and past the main desk along with them. Gene paused before Phyllis’ desk.
“Get all of plod you can spare to meet us at…” Gene began.
“The Myers studio warehouse, it’s on the far left of the last block at the intersection of Canal Street and Porter!” Annie finished for Gene as they continued to race out of the station and towards the car park. The four of them piled into the Cortina, Ray unconsciously jumping into the back seat with Annie and Chris, and Gene sped onto the road, tearing across oncoming traffic and spinning into the proper lane amidst a mass of squealing tires, horns, and shouts.
The Cortina continued to race down the roadways, barreling onto Canal Street and into the warehouse district with Annie, Ray, and Chris all checking their guns inside.
“Still unsure about that gun, Cartwright?” Ray asked as he saw her bite her lower lip as she steadied the barrel.
“Just stay out of my way, Ray,” Annie answered, locking the barrel into place and cocking the pistol.
“Easy there, Annie, it’s just…” Chris eyed the gun in her hands warily before she cut him off.
“It’s just nothing,” Annie snapped, and Gene slammed on the brakes in front of the appropriate warehouse, drawing and readying his own gun as well.
Several cars full of uniformed officers were already on the scene, and more were appearing rapidly. “Good girl, Phyllis,” Gene muttered under his breath as he stormed towards the door to the building, Annie, Ray, and Chris in tow.
“I want everyone to stay together on this one, it’s a big place in there, easy to get lost,” Gene snapped over his shoulder as they made their way up.
“The floor we saw was wide open, Gov, if the rest are like that…” Chris began, but Gene cut him off.
“No chances! Stay together on this one, kiddies, or it’ll be me you’ll answer to. On the count of three. One…”
Gene slammed through the locked front doors and into the reception area, where he was met with the screams of Julie, the secretary.
“We’re closed, and you can’t come in, and, and,” the girl began to go into hysterics as Gene quickly whipped his badge out of his pocket and screamed at her.
“Police!” Her eyes went wide and she threw her hands up into the air, palms open and facing them. “Here for the arrest of Jefferson Myers and James Grey,” he added, and the girl pointed at the lift, which was still at the ground floor.
“Any other way up?” Gene asked staring at the open steel sliding door to the right.
“The stairs at the far end run up and down the entire building, it’s just the one staircase or the lift,” the girl choked the words out around sobs and then ducked down behind the desk, makeup smearing down her face.
“Ray, Annie, take a team of plod up the stairs, I don’t want anyone coming down them, hear? Another unit of plod here, no one gets out this front door, absolutely no one! Skelton, you and another unit on the lift with me, now!” Gene shouted and ran towards the lift, Annie and Ray rushing through the revolving door and towards the stairs. The ground floor was just as open as the top floor, and this floor was nothing but raw materials - steel piping, huge sheets of plate glass, vats of dye and large hunks of wood. A closed off area stood in the back, but everything else was open and deserted.
Annie and Ray raced up the stairs, several dozen pairs of feet pounding behind them as the uniformed officers continued after them. They reached the door onto the second floor and flung it wide, staring around them and finding what appears to be a workspace: nothing but huge metal tables and workhorses, wooden and metal topped, lining the walls. Huge industrial saws, fitted to slice through sheet metal, and dozens of soldering irons and welding torches lined the walls. The closed off area at the front and the enclosure that had been at the side on the ground floor were both missing: there was nothing but a wide open workspace.
“PC’s Cooper, Dillon and Myles, I want you back down on the ground floor. Carter, Adams, Mickelnay and Billings, I want you stationed at this floor, nobody gets into or out of these doors!” Ray barked down the line at the cluster of uniforms that were following him and Annie up the stairs, and he and Annie continued to charge up them, the remaining uniformed officers behind them.
Meanwhile, across the wide expanse of warehouse, Gene, Chris, and several constables were on their way to the top floor, the lift operator nearly having a heart attack as the officers drew their weapons. “Top floor, Sunshine, and make it fast, police,” said Gene as he showed his badge to the old man, who started the lift going all the way up.
“Lift stays here, make sure he doesn’t try anything,” Gene stated as he ripped into the gallery foyer and then through the gallery, staring at the statues as he whipped past. “What is this, land of the bloody damned? People spend good money on this shit? Looks like something my dog would’ve cacked up.” He took the pleasure of knocking down several of the statues as he made his way for the stairs, their heavy weight already precariously balanced on thin stands.
“Lift is positioned at the top, top floor cleared!” He shouted down the stairs, his own contingent of plod and a terrified looking Chris behind him. Gene shouldered clear through the next floor, the sixth or fifth, he hadn’t kept count, and stared at the darkened showroom. Inside was a half-finished full installation of the grotesque statues, light bounding off of shards and hunks of glass, twisted frames of metal, bizarre and twisted pieces of wood and bright red fabric. “No wonder I hate the fine arts,” he sneered as he tore through the floor, frantically searching for anything other than the statues. His search proved fruitless - nothing but the twisted and glinting hulks met his search.
“Si - Fi - Next floor cleared!” He shouted as he headed back towards the stairs, only to be met with the loud, metallic thump of all of the building’s lights going out. “Ray! Chris! Annie!” He screamed, wondering which of them, or which team of plod, had somehow let someone get past long enough to cut the power of the building.
“All still in place, Gov!” Ray called from the stairwell.
“Had to be someone who was already outside!” Annie shouted back up at them, fear obvious in her voice.
“Torches! Keep searching, everyone keep searching!
“We already cleared all but the fourth floor, Gov, and you’ve got the sixth and fifth - has to be the fourth floor!” Ray called back up, screaming down at the constables, “Everyone on the alert, and get some torches up here, now! Keep your positions! No one goes into those floors, no matter what, or I’m cracking heads in!” Ray tried to sound as much like Gene as possible, but only succeeded in having his last few words come out slightly garbled and manic.
Annie felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle as the uniformed officers on the lower floors began to hand up torches, thin streams of battery powered light cutting through the dark, but failing to illuminate even the entirety of the stairwell. “Gov, DS Carling and I are coming onto the fourth floor with you, we’ve got torches,” Annie said as she and Ray slowly climbed the stairs, each trying to balance two torches in their left hands, and their pistols in their right hands.
“I’m right with you,” came Chris’ shaky voice, and he reached out his left hand and took one of the torches from Annie, just as Ray handed one of his to Gene. The four of them slowly piled into the floor, shining the beams into every corner. Gene whirled around when he heard Annie gasp.
“Gov…” Annie was shining her beam at what looked like another sculpture, but after he came close to it, he noticed that it was actually some form of hanging cross. A wooden cross, stained with blood.
“Sick bastard!” Gene raged, then he let his beam fall to the floor. About four dozen small pieces of glass, each streaked crimson, were piled up beneath the cross-like contraption, and more blood was pooled beneath it. Gene felt his heart rise up in his throat as he stared at a wide streak of blood smeared on the floor - a trail - moving away from the cross and over to the lift.
“Bloody son of a bitch! Bastard had to have left before we got the lift to the top - Chris, did you notice any blood on the lift?” Gene twisted around again, staring at Chris, whose eyes were wide.
“No, Gov, but, but… I thought I might’ve smelt it…” Chris couldn’t take his eyes off of the mess on the floor, wondering how much blood it took to make a streak that long, and a pool like the one over by the cross. Wondering exactly what the cross had been for. He felt his stomach lurch upwards and gritted his teeth against it.
“Wonderful, shit… Everyone back downstairs, now, enough of this bullshit, all of these wretched things, this fire and ice piss and arse!” Gene was screaming even louder now, and Annie stopped in her tracks.
“Gov - that’s it! The major installation, the one for the athenaeum - it’s supposed to be called ‘Fire and Ice,’ isn’t it?”
“Only name I saw for the ruddy shit, Cartwright, on the fucking sign outside where it should read ‘Daft Psychotic Bastards’ House of Horrors! Who gives a shit?” Gene turned around towards Annie, stopping his mad race for the stirs.
Annie felt her heart begin to race as she quickly assembled the pieces. “The statues for the installation were meant to have burning fabric and ice sculptures in them at different times, and when we first got here, Chris and me… The ground floor, Chris said…” Annie took off running, shouldering her way quickly past the constables lining the stairwell, Gene, Ray, and Chris running after her.
“There is one place we haven’t searched, on the ground floor, the enclosure just as you come in from reception,” Annie gasped as the four of them disentangled themselves from the mass of constables on the ground floor and headed into the materials level of the warehouse. “It has to be a refrigeration unit, for the ice sculptures on the installation display floor!”
Annie’s declaration was met with a loud, metallic bang, the sound of gunfire and of a bullet dancing off of a metal wall.
“Very good, little girl. You were wrong, James. Apparently, they can make decent detectives,” came a high pitched, gravel-toned voice from the corner. Myers.
“You can all lower your weapons now, or at least one of you is going to die,” came a much calmer, more sedate voice from the side of the warehouse. “You were wrong about the layout of the studios, by the way. There is a doorway, on the ground level, between the reception desk and the materials store. For loading transfers, you see.” Grey’s voice was cool as ever, every word enunciated perfectly, his tone unhurried and unalarmed.
“Fat chance of that, you slimey bastard,” Gene grunted as he kept his gun trained on the white shafts of light drifting out of the refrigeration chamber and illuminating Myers’ large form. “There’s dozens of us; you’re surrounded. Just put the guns down and play nice, boys, and no one gets hurt.”
“No one gets hurt? Are you serious? You’re talking about depriving the world of one of the greatest artistic talents of today, and you call that harmless?” Grey’s voice was incredulous as his silhouette appeared in the doorway, the snout of a gun visible in his hand, trained directly on Gene.
“Artistic talent? This nutter? Those horrible, creepy, disgusting pieces of dog shit upstairs? How in the hell is depriving the world of a pack of bloody lunatics that think scraps of fabric and twists of metal created by perverted psychopaths a crime? The art world ought to pin a medal on me for it! I’d say they ought to put up a statue, but who knows what kind of hideous pile of wank and horse shit they’d come up with. Hell, might even come up with an actual pile of wank and horse shit. Isn’t that what passes for art these days? You bastards should’ve stopped when you’d hit soup cans.” Even in the dark, all of CID and plod could tell that Gene was livid.
The group stood in stalemate, white light and clouds of defrosting condensation billowing out around Myers’ form, his gun trained directly at the crowd of police from across the room, and dim yellow light setting off Grey’s silhouette in the side door, his gun pointed not just at the police, but at Gene Hunt’s head. Chris, Annie, and Ray all had their weapons drawn, but were unsure whether to train them on Grey, Myers, or to drop them to the floor.
Annie felt her eyes widen when Myers began to slowly advance on the group of police. “What did you just say about my art, you pathetic Neanderthal?” Myers was fuming, and Annie saw this as her chance.
“He said a pile of wank and horse shit would’ve been better, and, and he was right. It’s hideous. It’s not moving at all, it’s just junk. Nothing more, just junk. Worthless. No, no emotion, no evocation, nothing whatsoever. Doesn’t capture the attention at all, just, just takes up space…” Annie began to set in against Myers work as best she could, knowing that to refer to it as ‘creepy’ would only help to prove his point. She felt her grip tighten on her gun, felt her finger move over the trigger. Just need him to move his arm. They need to move their arms, and then we can go for him.
“How dare you, you ignorant little bitch! After coming in with your obsequious comments, making me think you might actually have a brain in your pretty little head,” Grey’s composure finally broke, and Annie steeled herself further.
“Having a brain has nothing to do with it, the work’s listless, dead, nothing but random paraphernalia. A, a poor imitation of Ferber at best. Totally lifeless, utter and complete trash,” Annie tried to think back to her earlier conversation with Grey, tried to think of anything that might make him angrier.
“You cannot be serious!” Grey’s arm rose in a gesture of ire, his gun moving away from the clustered group of police, and Annie prepared to fire… Only to drop to the floor as shots were already fired, the sound and smell of gunfire filling the wide expanse of the room. She looked around to see most of the uniformed officers on the floor, ducking for cover, and Grey and Myers’ bodies were slumped in piles on the concrete floor. Myers had blasted at nothing, his aim too far towards the empty warehouse, and Gene had shot him in the shoulder. She could still hear him, screaming and crying out about the pain in his arm.
“With any luck to the art world, you’ll never be able to use it again. And you’re knicked!” Gene shouted as he pulled out his handcuffs and pulled Myers’ bleeding arms roughly behind him.
Annie stared over at Grey’s form, silent on the ground, and watched as one of the constables placed two fingers on his throat. “Dead,” the constable declared, and Annie heard a brief, hissing inhalation from behind her. She turned to see Ray and Chris, Chris staring wide-eyed at the gun in his hands, his breath coming rapidly, and Ray with a hand on Chris’ shoulder.
“Bloody brilliant, Cartwright, and what a shot from the master here, eh?” Ray mentioned. Chris still had his eyes trained on the weapon.
“Sam!” Annie exclaimed as she looked up, watching the Gov leave Myers’ cuffed form on the concrete floor and head into the refrigeration unit.
“Ray, get plod sorted out, get an ambulance and a hearse lined up, now!” The Gov shouted over his shoulder as he started to walk towards the door of the unit. Bright, harsh light and cold spilled out unforgivingly, and he couldn’t see anything for the cloud of condensed air billowing out around him.
Gene took a deep breath as he let Myers drop, then slowly walked over the threshold of the refrigeration unit, feeling his heart beating in his ears. White frost coated the sides and the floor, a thick carpet of crystals, looking almost like snow. Metal stands holding carefully sculpted ice sculptures jutted out from the floor, a forest of crystal clear figures, strange, abstract arcs of chiseled, frozen water. Gene started when he noticed the blood on the floor - a small, still pool of it, not spreading, not seeping. He stepped around one of the statues and immediately felt his heart stop.
Sam’s body was a broken mess, bruises and cuts covering his thighs, his belly, his buttocks, and his shoulders and neck. His arms were flung forward in front of him, a hideous caricature of George Reeves’ superman, blood welled in what seemed to be a hundred deep tears. The body was stretched out on a thick sheet of clear tarp, and it looked like Myers had started his harvest just as they had come knocking. A thick patch of skin and muscle had been lifted up along Sam’s left lower back, stretching from the side of his body to his spine, and from the bottom of a horribly misshapen rib cage to the beginning curvature of his buttocks.
“No…” Gene whispered as he stared at the bloodied, naked form in front of him, throat and eyes burning in the cold. “No…” He thought of the other team members, then turned towards the door, “Do not come in here! That’s an order! Do not come in here!”
“Gov?” he heard Annie’s voice start to waft through the door, heard the commotion of dozens of footsteps and Myer’s generic, angry cries outside.
“I said, ‘Do not come in here!’ That means not at all, not for a second! Chris, Ray, get Cartwright and plod and get Myers out of here, and get that ambulance and that hearse! No one comes in here, no one at all!” Gene screamed it at the top of his lungs, aware that he was shrieking so loudly his own eardrums nearly burst. He pulled off his coat and spread it over the exposed body of his DI, staring at Sam’s face. Blood covered his nose and mouth, spreading up and over most of his face, and his eyes stared vacantly into space, tinged red with the blood that had spilled into them. Sam Tyler was dead.