The War in the Dark Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Semper Occultus ‘Always Secret’

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also Available from Titan Books

  “A deliciously wild fantasy.”

  MARIE CLAIRE

  “Extremely well written and hugely enjoyable.”

  STARBURST

  “James Bond meets Indiana Jones... a rip-roaring adventure. This is the book you’ll be reading on the beach even when it rains or the sun goes down.”

  MARK MILLAR

  “A rattling good read... it’s thrilling.”

  RUSSELL T. DAVIES

  “This book had a tremendous sense of paranoia and uncertainty, and a plot that kept me riveted to find out how it would resolve.”

  GENEVIEVE COGMAN

  “Like an irresistible blend of a John Le Carré spy thriller and Hammer’s The Devil Rides Out, Nick Setchfield’s debut novel is a vivid and compelling page-turner, which propels you from scene to scene with such verve and invention that you have no choice but to keep reading. It’s the sort of book you pick up, thinking, ‘I’ll just have five minutes’, and an hour later you’re still feverishly turning the pages, because you have to find out what happens next.”

  MARK MORRIS

  “Nick Setchfield’s The War in the Dark is a thrilling, shocking, action-packed delight! Its horror and magical elements are firmly grounded in a beautifully realised, strangely topical reality, and its momentum never lets up. An assured, memorable debut.”

  TIM LEBBON

  “A compelling fusion of Bond-era espionage and occult horror.”

  JAMES BROGDEN

  “Nick Setchfield’s occult spy thriller is a smooth blend of James Bond and M.R. James, played with tons of wit and style. This is something new that entertains like something old. Triumphantly suave.”

  PAUL CORNELL

  The War in the Dark

  Print edition ISBN: 9781785657092

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781785657108

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: July 2018

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

  establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2018 by Nick Setchfield. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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

  For Dad

  SEMPER OCCULTUS

  ‘ALWAYS SECRET’

  Motto of the British Secret Intelligence Service

  1

  OCTOBER 1963

  Christopher Winter had never put a bullet in the head of a priest before. The idea felt faintly blasphemous.

  He smiled in the half-light. It was the kind of morbid little thought that came to him on these occasions. Sometimes it felt like a ghost trace of conscience. He let it go.

  He was a tall man in his forties, lean as fuse wire, his black curls cropped close to the skull, military fashion. His face was nearly as unexceptional as he needed it to be. Only his eyes betrayed him, startlingly green in the London dusk. The lids were hooded, as if trying to conceal the remarkable irises.

  It was almost evening. Clouds the colour of ash occupied the sky. Winter waited in the doorway of Kingsland Edwardian Butchers, inhaling a ripe tang of meat and sawdust as he watched the Portobello Road.

  Tables filled the street. There were stalls of silverware and bric-a-brac, lamps and decanters, apples and pocket-watches. A sudden gust scattered a sheaf of antique maps. They blew into the gutter, their edges claimed by petrol spills.

  No sign of Hatherly, his echo man. Not that Winter was meant to see him, of course. Hatherly was entrusted to be invisible, only revealing his presence if things turned ugly. Once a child’s nanny had caught a ricochet and lay pooling bright, innocent blood on a marble floor in Mayfair. Hatherly had broken cover and taken a bullet in the sternum for his trouble, shot by the same Soviet sniper that had just eliminated a defector. An operational failure, the memorandum had stated. The girl had died two days later.

  Winter wanted to spot him, just as a matter of professional pride. It was good practice.

  He let his Woodbine flare and die. The streetlamps were on now, their sodium glow exposing a fine rain. Winter buttoned his houndstooth coat and retrieved a pair of driving gloves from its pockets. The lambskin strained over his lean fingers and prominent knuckles. He could feel the dull weight of his Webley & Scott .25 against his heart.

  It was time to kill Father Costigan.

  As he walked he lit another cigarette and recalled Faulkner’s briefing. The SIS had kept tabs on Costigan for a while now. Given his position his communist sympathies naturally attracted attention. It wasn’t unusual for such men to fall hard for leftist rhetoric – priests often fancied themselves as social reformers – but it was always noted, and never favourably. No one wanted Marxism disseminated under cover of whist drives and evensong.

  And then his name had surfaced in Soviet radio traffic. The British monitoring station in Vienna had snagged it, flashed it home. The clergyman was trading secrets with the enemy. Just how the priest of a shabby little church in Notting Hill had access to the finer particulars of British intelligence was a detail Faulkner had chosen not to share.

  Winter had no idea what information was bleeding to Moscow. He knew only what he needed to: Costigan had leaked material of national importance. That was enough. His superiors knew more, of course, but secrets built the hierarchy, polished the mirror-maze.

  The Church of St John of the Cross stood on the corner, squat and soot-stained. A scruffy noticeboard carried faded flyers for weekly choir practice and the Christmas jumble sale. There was a stone Christ crucified in the doorway, captured in an agony of granite. Winter nearly stubbed his cigarette out on the effigy but he hesitated. He wasn’t an especially good man but he tried to keep his soul as clean as he could. He tossed the Woodbine to the pavement and let it expire among the weeds.

  Winter stepped through the porch and into the creamy gloom of the nave. The pews were lit by candles, illuminating the stained-glass window that dominated the interior. There was a striking scent of decay. Something mouldering, halfway between damp and dust.

  Winter’s training was triggered as he entered the ch
urch, approaching his target: he found himself scrutinising every potential point of concealment and escape, appraising the geometry of threat, just as he had been taught.

  His senses bristled. This was a place of worship in the heart of his own country but there was something here that uneased him, something that refused to be measured and evaluated.

  A motion caught his eye. He glanced up at the ceiling. For a moment the shadows themselves seemed to swarm across the rafters.

  He stepped deeper into the church, past the pews with their threadbare hassocks and dilapidated hymn books. An eyeless bust of St John of the Cross faced him across the nave. The statuette’s blind gaze felt strangely reproachful. Once again something shapeless crawled at the very edge of his vision. He tilted his head and saw nothing.

  It was colder now, as if London’s chill had entered the church in his wake. He kept walking, taking care to soften his steps on the flagstones. He passed the font. There was a dull bronze smear on the chipped porcelain. It looked very much like blood.

  He hoped Hatherly was close.

  ‘Onward, Christian soldier,’ said a voice, behind him. The words were gentle, warm and threatening, like a razor dipped in honey.

  Winter turned. A figure stood at the entrance to the church, haloed by the glow of the porch light. He was a portly man in a black cassock, jowls bulging over the rim of his dog collar. He wore wire-framed spectacles. The moon-shaped lenses shone with reflected candlelight, obscuring the eyes.

  ‘Father Costigan?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Not that Winter needed to ask. He knew precisely who this man was. Only an hour ago he had studied a black-and-white photograph in a crisp manila folder, noted every liver spot, registered every mole. Asking the man to confirm his identity was a formality, part of the ritual.

  The priest began to walk towards him, past the dimly lit pews. His steps were easy, unhurried. ‘I don’t know your name,’ he said, ‘but I can guess why you’re here.’

  Winter wouldn’t draw the gun. Not yet. It would look like he was flinching.

  ‘Clearly I’ve betrayed Queen and country,’ smiled the priest, softly mocking the words. ‘Time for my divine punishment, in the name of national interest. You people do love your biblical judgements.’

  Winter’s voice was even. ‘Kneel on the floor and place your hands at your temples.’

  The priest smirked as he drew level with Winter. The man smelt of must and abandoned rooms. ‘And what about your punishment?’

  Costigan’s eyes were revealed now. They looked like bags of blood, weighing upon the lids. The priest met Winter’s gaze and matched it.

  ‘Just look at you. I’ve rarely met a soul so in need of redemption. I can almost taste it. What in God’s name have you done in your life?’

  ‘Father Costigan. Please. We can do this with dignity. Kneel on the floor and place your hands at your temples.’

  Again there was a ripple of shadow at the periphery of Winter’s vision. He kept his gaze locked upon the priest. ‘I won’t ask again.’

  Costigan held the moment, contemptuous. And then he turned and walked to the lectern that stood to the side of the nave. A mahogany eagle roosted upon it, its beak carved in a snarl. Costigan picked up a Bible, bound in oxblood leather.

  ‘By the book, I see. Well, this is my book.’

  He wet a thumb and leafed through the pages. And then he paused, with a smile.

  ‘And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!’

  The priest’s voice was commanding, full of religious theatre. The words filled the empty church.

  ‘Revelation chapter eight, verse thirteen. The King James Bible. Though some say there’s a mistranslation and it’s actually an eagle that’s flying through the midst of heaven. The eagle is, after all, the enemy of the serpent. Are you my enemy, young man?’

  Winter was thrown by the priest’s reaction. In his experience men usually anticipated the bullet in a number of ways, none of them especially dignified. There was terror, there was pleading and sometimes there was a frantic attempt to charm. This was something new. Costigan was gliding above this confrontation. He had an arrogance that seemed utterly unafraid.

  ‘We can go in the back,’ said Winter, flatly.

  The priest laughed.

  ‘Yes, we wouldn’t want to stain the house of God. Dear Mrs Gilligan works miracles with the duster but blood is so troublesome.’

  He closed the Bible, left the lectern and walked back to Winter.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said. ‘You clearly believe in judgement. Do you really think you won’t be judged for killing me? In a holy place like this, no less?’

  ‘You have betrayed your country.’

  ‘My country!’ the priest spat. ‘This kingdom of rain? Don’t be so stupid. And tell me, just what secrets do you imagine I’ve traded?’

  ‘Not my job to know.’

  Costigan leaned close, his lips curling. His breath smelt faintly of tar. ‘My secrets will burn the flesh from this world.’

  It was time to end this. Winter reached inside his overcoat. The pistol felt reassuring in his hand, heavy and familiar. He ignored the sweat on its lattice grip and removed a silencer from an outside pocket. In a quick, deft movement he screwed the tube to the head of the barrel, twisting it into place. It clicked, locked.

  ‘On your knees.’

  The priest threw a hand towards him. It held a knife, plucked from the cassock. The blade flashed and found Winter’s arm, puncturing his coat and piercing the flesh. There was a hot flare of pain but Winter kept the gun tight in his fist. He smashed it against Costigan’s hand. The knife tumbled to the flagstones.

  The priest’s fingers curled around Winter’s forearm. He had remarkable strength. The hand closed, choking a fresh spasm of pain from the wounded arm.

  The gun jerked upwards. Winter’s finger squeezed. A bullet fired with a cordite stench. It struck the stained-glass window, splintering a cherub.

  The priest’s nails dug into Winter’s wrist, pricking the skin, claiming blood. Winter forced the trembling gun higher, closer to Costigan’s face. Another bullet fired. This one sailed into the rafters, scattering dust, useless as the last.

  Costigan’s other hand reached for Winter’s face. The broad palm pressed against his mouth, the nails targeting his eyes. Again the power in the man was astonishing. He seemed possessed by a feral energy.

  Winter locked his fist around the priest’s arm and pushed back. As he did so he looked into Costigan’s eyes. Something moved in the pupils. Something that didn’t entirely belong to a man. Something that was one with the church’s shadows.

  The priest’s hand moved closer. Winter stared at the greasy flesh. It was bulging, translucent. The skin itself seemed to strain, as if struggling to contain something.

  ‘Christ,’ he breathed.

  The hand was bulbous now. Swollen, it cracked and tore. A shoal of insects burst from the ruptured flesh. Flies, lice, silverfish.

  The creatures poured onto Winter. Instinctively he shut his eyes and bolted his mouth, though he wanted to cry out, even scream. He staggered backwards into a pew, shaking the flood of insects from his face even as he sensed them scurry into his hair.

  Finally he forced his eyes open and stared at Father Costigan. The priest’s expression was savage now, his face streaked with gobs of bile. He had removed his glasses. The man’s eyes were orbs of pure blood. Tiny albino spiders prised themselves out of the tear ducts, their pale legs curling over the lids.

  Winter raised and steadied his gun. He aimed for the head.

  ‘I am beyond flesh,’ Costigan said, defiantly. ‘Flesh shall burn.’

  Winter pulled the trigger. A bullet tore through Costigan’s skull, shredding bone. The priest fell.

  Winter stepped forward, kicking insec
ts from his shoes. Hearing only his own fractured breathing he pulled a pencil and a notebook from his pocket, turned his wrist to expose his watch and noted the exact time. His pencil tremored in his hand. His writing was a brisk scratch.

  It was then that he smelt smoke. The corpse was burning: flames spread from the cassock and began to consume the body. They leapt from the priest and sought the pews, feasting on the old wood. The lectern, too, caught fire, the carved eagle succumbing to the rage of unnatural flame. Hymn numbers burned and blackened.

  Winter’s eyes prickled at the smoke. His lungs began to rebel at the charred air. Turning to go, he glanced at the stained-glass window, seeing the London night through the headless, bullet-smashed image of a cherub. There was a star in the sky, pin-bright.

  Winter left the church. He wanted to run but he walked, as calmly and as casually as he could, for all that he was dripping insects. And then, when he had paced the length of the street, he turned into an alley, dropped to his knees and vomited.

  He crouched there for a while in the cool dark, his head resting against the rim of a steel bin. His arm pulsed with pain from the knife wound and the sleeve of his shirt felt tacky with blood.

  He tried to process what he had just seen. The whole experience had the gauzy feeling of a waking dream. All he knew was that he had encountered something extraordinary. Something that had just rewritten the rules of his world.

  He gathered himself, rose to his feet and began to walk back to Portobello. It was raining now, a determined rain that drummed the pavement and turned traffic lights into fairground blurs of colour. This kingdom of rain… Winter heard a fire engine in the distance.

  He passed the junction of Chepstow Villas, past its intersection with Westbourne Grove. As he did so he saw a familiar figure across the street, sheltered by a tree. Hatherly. His echo man. Thank God.

  Winter quickened his pace. He had no idea how he would explain any of it. He was just grateful for his colleague’s presence. That was all that he needed right now. That and a whisky mac in the cosy fug of The Old Star and Crown.

  He nodded as he crossed the road, dodging a black cab and a cyclist.