Across the void her father stood, features as immobile as if they’d been fixed in a steel vice. His expression betrayed a mix of anger and pain and grief, pale lips clamped in a razor line to cage the cry of anguish that welled up inside him like lava in a volcano. His eyes met Jamie’s and the younger man knew Robert Trelawney was seeing a mirror image. He had his right arm around the shoulder of Abbie’s mother, Meseret. Tall and slim, with the pale, golden skin and sculpted features of her daughter, Jamie had barely been able to look at her during the ceremony. The Trelawneys were believers and would take comfort from the priest’s words, but Jamie had never been sure what to believe in. The only thing he knew was that it had nothing to do with stained-glass windows or a man on a cross. If the God these people worshipped existed, how could he have allowed it to happen? Abeba, the name was Amharic and meant flower, but it could just as well have been sunshine, because she had brought a light into his life that he’d never previously known. With Abbie every day seemed filled with smiles and laughter. Now she was gone, and the darkness inside him was a bottomless Stygian well. She had been on this earth for a paltry twenty-six years, three months and twenty-two days. And now all the joy and hope, goodness and energy that made her what she was, was lost for ever. His first reaction, after the initial shock, had been rage at the people who murdered her. He would have happily killed them all: the gunmen, the planners, the facilitators and the suppliers, right down to the contributor of the last penny to the blood money in their bank accounts. Then Bob Trelawney had told him about the doctor’s letter and the baby, and anger had been displaced by a feeling of loss beyond bearing. Jamie had lost his mother and his grandfather, and never even known his father, but he had not truly understood what loss meant until Abbie and his child had been taken from him. Loss meant a gaping emptiness that had once been occupied by his soul and would never again be filled. It meant eyes that would no longer see the world with the same delight. A heart that would never know joy. He knew this was an exaggeration. Things would change. The hurt would fade. But nothing would alter the fact that they were gone.
The anger remained. He still wanted these people dead.
He must have shaken Michael’s hand, because here was Bob Trelawney, solid as a west-country outhouse, thrusting a fist like a leg of lamb at him. He took the hand and shook it, neither man bothering with the traditional crushing match that had defined their relationship so far.
‘Remember, you’ll always be welcome, Jamie. Our house is your house.’ The words came out in a choked rush. Jamie nodded, not daring to speak, ashamed that he couldn’t articulate his thanks for what was an unlikely offer. Bob was replaced by Meseret, pinning him with Abbie’s tear-filled, wondrous brown eyes, dabbing his cheek with Abbie’s soft lips and filling his head with her perfume. He heard a whisper in his ear, or it might have been the breeze, and he held her close, only realizing he hadn’t released her when she pulled his arms away from her body. She took a step back, her eyes never leaving his, nodded and was gone.
Jamie waited while the crowd moved away and he was completely alone, standing over the grave and staring down at the polished casket that contained the mortal remains of Abeba Trelawney. For a minute and more his mind fought for something to say, something that would make it right, but there came a moment, almost, of liberation when he sensed there was no need. The essence that had been Abbie was gone, to wherever such essences found peace. Part of her remained, not in the wooden coffin, but inside him, and she would always be there.
The council gravediggers stood patiently a few dozen yards away, talking together in low voices. They didn’t look at him, but he knew they wanted to finish their job. With a last look into the grave, he reached into the pocket of his overcoat and pulled out two red roses. The rose had been Abbie’s favourite flower. He’d joked that it was because it resembled her: a delicate thing of exquisite beauty that could be dangerous if not handled with care. She had enjoyed that. He dropped them on top of the coffin. One rose for a life extinguished on the very threshold of fulfilment. One for a tiny life that would never be lived. When he turned away the world was a blur.
As he walked towards the cemetery gates he felt a presence at his side and an immaculately dressed man in his mid-forties took step beside him.
Jamie acknowledged Adam Steele with a polite nod. ‘I didn’t see you in the crowd, but thanks for coming along.’ He wished the tone matched the sentiments, but the other man would understand. A friend since the Cambridge days when Steele had been one of his tutors – though friend was perhaps too strong a word for it – they’d had similar interests; art and languages. Jamie had eventually graduated with a First in Fine Arts, fluency in German and Spanish, and a working knowledge of Russian that was getting a little rusty. At first he’d found the antics of the public school set a bit overwhelming, but Steele gradually eased him into a group of acquaintances who’d been helpful since he’d set up his own art dealership and recovery business in a fourth-floor Old Bond Street office the size of a shoebox. Their paths diverged when the older man had inherited the better part of a substantial merchant bank and exchanged the leafy groves of academia for the dogfight of the City, but recently a shared hobby had brought them closer again.
Steele pushed his hands deeper into the pockets of his cashmere overcoat and hunched his neck against the raindrops dripping from the cherry trees lining the path. ‘The notice said friends and family, so I thought I’d keep a low profile,’ he said. ‘She was a very special girl, and …’ He shrugged. Yes, Jamie thought, since the massacre there had always been an ‘and …’ Two weeks after the horror on the M25 they still hadn’t finalized the number of dead. At least Abbie’s parents had been able to identify their daughter’s body and the police were sufficiently satisfied with the cause of death to release Abbie for burial. They were the fortunate ones, if you could call it that. There had been whole coachloads of bodies, all mixed together in a great carbonized mass as they died fleeing the bombs and the bullets. Some of the people closest to the exploding petrol tanker had been more or less atomized. Burnt-out cars might contain the remains of one cremated body or four, only forensics would ever tell, and that would take time. Meanwhile, the families waited. He’d heard that just one body in four had been formally identified, leaving hundreds praying that their missing father, son or daughter was one of the still anonymous burns victims lying in a coma, or taken to a hospital so overwhelmed by the number of casualties that they couldn’t keep up with the paperwork.
He stopped abruptly as they approached the gate, frozen by the flicker of dozens of camera flashes that had Abbie’s distraught family trapped in their bright embrace. As he watched, Michael hustled his mother and father away from the pack of press photographers into the car that had carried Jamie to the funeral and it drove off.
‘Vultures,’ Steele muttered. Sensing Jamie’s anger, he took him by the arm and steered him away. ‘Why don’t we take a walk? I like cemeteries. People are at peace here.’ The gravel path led them to the older part of the graveyard, where the moss-covered stones didn’t hold the same threat to mortality as the gleaming marble they’d passed. Here there were no carefully tended plots, or mini gardens with plastic flowers and gnomes, no children’s toys or gold embossed epitaphs, only time-worn inscriptions to men and women long gone, and well on the way to being forgotten.
‘She liked to take me dancing.’ Jamie gave a short, bitter laugh when he saw the startled look on Adam Steele’s well-fed features at the unlikely suggestion. Quite suddenly he felt the need to unburden himself in a way that hadn’t seemed possible in the past few days and the words poured out. ‘Nightclubs. Up the West End. Three in the morning and still going strong. She didn’t even drink. Could go all night on two glasses of tonic water.’ He shook his head at the memory. ‘Liberating, she called it. “Here,” she said, “we can be whoever we want to be.” At first I didn’t want to be there, all thumping base and techno-whatever, but gradually she got me to relax and I enjoyed it. Not exactly
what I’d call music, but it was hypnotic.’
‘You’ve never struck me as someone who needed to search for himself, Jamie,’ Steele murmured. ‘I’d say you always knew exactly who you were.’
‘Actually, I was just happy to be with her,’ Jamie continued, as if the other man hadn’t spoken. ‘She was so full of life, you see. Bursting with it. I can still see her now, tall and beautiful, waving her hands in the air, and so elegant; like one of those graceful African antelopes you see on safari. Aloof, you might have said – life seemed to flow around her – but I’ve never met anyone who cared more.’
‘And the bastards killed her.’
Jamie’s head whipped round and Adam Steele recoiled from the violence in his eyes. He’d heard stories, just whispers, about certain events surrounding the discovery of a Raphael painting, the provenance of which was still being verified. And more recently something concerning an art-loving Russian billionaire who’d become the victim of a now-deceased serial killer. For the first time he saw a hardness, verging on savagery, in Jamie Saintclair, that convinced him those whispers might be true. As quickly as it appeared, the flame died, leaving just the glowing embers. ‘Yes, they killed her.’
‘Al-Qaida.’
‘Or one of their spin-offs.’ Jamie’s voice held an almost visceral loathing. ‘According to the news they used the correct code word when they claimed responsibility.’
‘Gloated, you mean.’
The eyes flared again, and the tone matched them.
‘They butchered her in cold blood. Stood over her and pumped three bullets into …’ Jamie shook his head as if he was fighting a knife deep in his guts, ‘… into her face. She was so beautiful. Why would they do that?’
‘Because they despise beauty,’ Adam Steele said. ‘Because they’re savages.’
‘Abbie wouldn’t have believed that, even if she’d known what they did to her. She wasn’t like that. She always thought the best of people.’
‘And you, Jamie?’
‘Me?’ Now the green eyes went as cold as an Arctic ice field. ‘If it was up to me I’d kill every last one of the bastards and consign their rotten souls to Hell.’
They continued on for a while and Jamie was surprised to find they were back at the gate. The photographers and the funeral cars were gone, and the only vehicle in sight was a sleek black Aston Martin sports car.
‘Looks like they’ve abandoned you.’ Adam glanced at his watch, ‘Can I give you a lift to the hotel?’
‘No thanks, I’ve made my excuses. It will be mostly Abbie’s relatives and her workmates. Warm tea, cold sausage rolls and copious amounts of sympathy. I’m not quite ready for that.’
‘Home? Office?’ Steele persisted. ‘Sure?’
Jamie shook his head. ‘I need a bit of time to myself. I’ll walk to the station, it’s not far.’
The older man held out his hand and Jamie took it. ‘Look, old son,’ Steele said, ‘take this for what it’s worth. I’m no psychiatrist, just someone who does a little business, enjoys life and collects baubles with sharp edges. Sometimes, though, it’s better to get straight back into the saddle. Give the mind something else to dwell on. When you feel up to it, come round to the flat. I might have something for you. Something that will definitely interest you, I promise.’
Jamie gave him a look, and Steele laughed as he opened the Aston’s door. ‘Don’t tell me you’re too bloody busy?’
Jamie watched the big car roar away, the powerful engine kicking through the gears. No, he wasn’t too busy. Saintclair Fine Arts was walking its usual perilous tightrope between solvency and the other thing. Truth was, he needed either a change or a rest, but something told him a rest would only invite the ghosts of the past back into his life. There had been something in the way Steele made his suggestion, a certain electric charge in his voice, that made Jamie Saintclair think he might well take up that offer.
But not now. Now, he needed a bottle of malt to numb the pain, some music to remember her by, and a lonely bed where he could dream of vengeance.
IV
Bang. Bang. Bang. His mind threatened to explode as he smashed his fists against the coffin lid. Bang. Bang. Bang. It wouldn’t budge, not even the tiniest fraction, and he knew that even if it did he would still be buried beneath six feet of damp, black earth that would pour into his mouth and suffocate him. His throat constricted at the thought and the level of panic rose, so he would have screamed if he had been able. Bang. Bang. Bang. Jamie Saintclair came bolt upright in the bed, the breath wheezing in his throat and cold sweat running down his back. The coffin had been a nightmare, but the banging was real. He rolled over and stood up on shaking legs, dragging on the black silk robe Abbie had given to him on his last birthday. The sound came from the front door of the Kensington High Street flat and he staggered through, wishing to Christ he hadn’t had the last of the Macallan and with half a dozen horrible scenarios fighting a nuclear war in his aching head.
Bang. He ripped back the bolt and opened the door.
‘Mr Saintclair.’
‘Ugh?’
‘Perhaps there might be a better time, sir?’
Through a half-opened eye the blur became a uniformed sergeant of Her Majesty’s Metropolitan Police. He shook his head. ‘Wha’ can I do f’r you?’ God, something had made a nest in his mouth and he sounded as if it was still in residence on his tongue. He licked his cracked lips. ‘No, um, time like the present, Officer.’
‘I just wondered if I might ask you a few questions, sir, and return this.’ The policeman held out a clear plastic evidence bag containing a mobile phone that Jamie vaguely recognized as his own. ‘And perhaps I might make you a cup of coffee to apologize again for the bad timing of my visit. Though I’m sure you, more than anyone, understand the urgency of the situation?’
Five minutes later they were seated at the kitchen table. Jamie had thrown on a few clothes and he sucked at the life-giving nectar that was milky Nescafé with three sugars, though he usually took neither sugar nor milk. ‘Good.’ He raised the cup in salute.
The grey-haired sergeant gave the tight smile of a man who’d administered many such life-giving revivers and took out his notebook to signal that the interview had entered its more formal phase. He placed the evidence bag on the table in front of Jamie.
‘You volunteered your mobile phone as evidence on,’ he checked his notebook, ‘the twelfth of February, three days after the unfortunate events out by Gerard’s Cross. Can you just confirm that this is the evidence in question?’ Jamie nodded, but made no attempt to pick up the phone. ‘Good. Then I formally return this evidence to your possession. If you could just sign here, sir.’ He produced a form and Jamie accepted a cheap plastic ballpoint and signed with a shaking hand. The sergeant smiled, relieved to have the difficult part of the proceedings out of the way. He picked up the bag and carefully dropped the phone into his palm. ‘Now, sir,’ he handed Jamie the slim oblong of black plastic, ‘if I could ask you to switch it on – I think the battery should still be charged – and, er,’ his face twisted in a way that said he wasn’t entirely comfortable, ‘bring up the final message you received from the, ah, late Miss Trelawney. I hope this isn’t too painful for you, sir. As I say, I can come back another time.’
‘No, that’s all right. If it’s important?’
‘The latest count is four hundred and forty-five dead, sir. Everything is important.’
Jamie grimaced. ‘Yes, sorry. It says. “Caught in traffic, going to be late. I’m OK.” Then a space, then: “febluis”.’ He shook his head. ‘She … Abbie … was obviously trying to reassure me that everything was all right. It must have been sent before the attack.’
‘Well, that’s the thing that’s slightly bothering our people, sir. According to the timings on the phone, and the data from the service providers, this message was transmitted in the latter stages of the assault on the motorway traffic. In fact, it was sent only two minutes before our surveillance helicopter w
as shot down, at a time the cameras we recovered from the chopper show the first terrorists already making their escape.’
Jamie tried to force his drink-fuzzed mind to analyse the significance of the information. ‘I …’
‘That’s right, sir. It appears that Miss Abeba Trelawney survived the first phase of the attack and was killed while the terrorists were making their withdrawal.’
‘Shit.’ The breath turned to mud in Jamie’s lungs and he struggled to breathe. ‘She …’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Saintclair, but there’s no easy way to say it. Your young lady was among the last, if not the last, to die on that day. Which makes this text enormously significant. The main part of the message seems perfectly normal. What I need to know is if “febluis” means anything special to you. Is it some kind of special shorthand between you? A coded message only Miss Trelawney and you would understand?’
‘It doesn’t mean anything. I mean … febluis … what could it mean?’
‘That’s what we’re … I’m, asking you, sir. Our best people have turned it upside down and inside out. She’d have been frightened and confused.’ Jamie flinched at the image of Abbie terrified amongst the burning cars and trucks, trying to send her last message, the petrol smoke thick in her nostrils and her murderers prowling all around, and that final moment … ‘They’ve checked out all the ways she might have missed the keys she was aiming for, but they haven’t been able to come up with anything. We’re looking at whether it could be a name, or a word in a foreign language. I’m told Miss Trelawney is part-Eritrean? To be honest, you’re our last resort.’
‘I’m sorry, Sergeant.’ Jamie shook his head. ‘I can’t help you. How … how are the investigations going? Are you any closer to catching these animals?’
‘I couldn’t say, sir. You’ll understand that this is far and away this country’s biggest murder inquiry. I’m just a superannuated delivery boy, really, and with bad knees at that. I read in the papers that several suspects are being held and we are “following a number of lines of inquiry”. You know what, sir?’
The Excalibur Codex Page 3