—
Whitman took East Fountainbridge farther east, running through the road junction known as the Pubic Triangle; there, young lads lured in by tacky fairy lights and thumping music entered the den of sirens proclaiming private dances. It was strange how they were all part of the same local area, elements of different standing working together to improve and entertain the city: the lap-dancing pub a stone’s throw from a four-star hotel; the establishment of naked waitresses neighboring an antiquarian bookstore; the body-entertainment people and the book people, focusing on different aspects of customer delight.
He had now slowed to a fast walk, glancing over his shoulder every few steps. No sight of El Porco. By the time she realized he was gone it would be too late. He crossed over to the West Port, past more bookshops, toward the Grassmarket. The castle’s rear end appeared over the open space.
He glanced at the pubs to his left, close to where the last public hanging in Scotland had been carried out. The condemned man had been granted one last drink right here, in the pub known as the Last Drop.
He needed a beer. But now was not the time. He had to find Charlie.
At the end of the paved street, he climbed Candlemaker Row. He felt in his pocket for his cell phone; it was switched off. He looked at the device, focused, still walking.
Then his face exploded.
A punch.
The pain soared through the whole of his face, centering on the septum of his nose. His eyes watered and closed shut, tears oozing from the sealed red sockets. It took five seconds for him to open them again. His face felt numb and his ears were buzzing. He dropped his palms from his face and saw them covered in blood. He looked up and, through soggy eyes, saw Georgina McBride standing in front of him, grinning.
“You almost broke my nose!”
“Quit acting like a child,” she said. She pulled a pack of tissues from her pocket. “Here,” she said. “You look like shit.”
He opened the pack and used one tissue to wipe his hands and two more for his face. The last he kept over his nose, making his voice muffled.
“You’re dangerous.”
“And you’re in need of a nose job. Come on, criminal, let’s plunk yerself down and get that drink.”
27
They met with Charlie at West Nicolson Street, inside an eighteenth-century pub named after the two sturdy trees that had been planted in front of the edifice.
There was smoke all around. Cigarettes burned between yellowed fingers, which in turn were clutching pint glasses. A projection screen was mounted on the wall on one side of the bar area, but the sounds of the football game being broadcast were drowned out by the music.
McBride was lost. “So are you going to tell me how this film fits into the whole story?” she asked.
“You tell me, Serpico,” Whitman said, drawing on his cigarette. “You show up out of nowhere, talking about a murder I know nothing about, when I’ve been minding my own business.”
“We’re going to have to trust each other, Alex.”
“Three heads are better than one,” Charlie said, looking at Whitman.
“There are hidden frames in the film, pictures that don’t make any sense.”
“The one I saw with the girl.” She noticed the expression on Charlie’s face and took a few minutes to explain how she had made the connection between the serial kidnapper’s video of the girl in the mirrors and the almost identical frame from Sekuler’s film, as found in the Archive’s computer.
“But there’s other stuff, too,” Charlie said. “Codes.”
“Codes?”
“Some of the frames are coded in braille. It’s a letter. Written by Augustin Sekuler, the man who invented the moving pictures.” Whitman pushed the piece of paper with their notes toward her. “The end of the letter is a code, its solution being the key word to decipher the next coded frame.”
She read the letter. “So each code presumably leads to another location in the city.”
Whitman nodded. “That’s what we think.”
“What’s it all for?”
“We don’t know yet,” Charlie said. “Sekuler talks about a secret, something he had to conceal in the frames of ‘Séance Infernale.’ ”
“But the film is incomplete—on purpose,” Whitman cut in. “Which means the missing frames, wherever they might be, are hiding something.”
She studied the letter and the notes. “Well, whatever it is, it has to do with the city.”
“He talks about it like it’s a real live person,” Charlie said.
“Doesn’t surprise me,” McBride said. “There is magic in this city, Charlie. It escapes words, but it recognizes greatness. Like it did with Dickens.”
“Dickens?”
McBride nodded. “He was in Edinburgh,” she said, “for a series of lectures. He was wandering the city, killing time before his talk, when he visited the Canongate Kirk graveyard. On one of the tombstones he saw a memorial slab that read, EBENEZER LENNOX SCROGGIE—MEAL MAN; it belonged to some man from Kirkcaldy who was a corn merchant—a meal man. But Dickens misread it as ‘mean man.’ He was shocked by the description, and two years later he used it as inspiration for A Christmas Carol, which featured Ebenezer Scrooge, a ‘mean man’ erroneously based on Ebenezer Scroggie.”
Whitman cut in and said, “Wait a second.” He pointed his finger at McBride. “I still don’t get what’s in all this for you. How could a film shot a century ago have any bearing on a modern murder?”
She fidgeted on the leather chair. “Like I said, our perp has paid homage to one of the fragments hidden in ‘Séance Infernale.’ You found a copy in Sekuler’s old workshop and you thought it was the only copy. But it’s not. The footage the perp sent as a videocassette back in the 1980s is similar to the one we found a few days ago at the Archive. So…”
“So your perp has seen the frames in ‘Séance,’ ” Charlie said.
“Exactly. How many places could Sekuler have stashed his work in Edinburgh? His workshop and his house are prime candidates. You searched his workshop, where you found the film. That leaves his house. You said you don’t know its location, but the perp obviously does. It’s been almost a century since the film was made, and a lot of things can happen in that time. Sekuler’s property may have changed hands from one person to another until…”
“Until the killer got to it.”
McBride nodded. “Maybe it’s the place the perp happens to live, or where he works; maybe it’s an abandoned warehouse or tunnel that only he knows about. With this”—she gestured at the notes on the table—“we have a shot at finding the place. If we follow the frames, we find where the other copy is stashed…”
“And we also find your perp,” Whitman said. “And the missing girl—Amanda Pearson, was it?”
She nodded. “Indeed. So you find your inventor’s treasure—or whatever he’s hiding—and you help save a little girl’s life, at the same time clearing your name. Not too bad from just a movie.”
“Sounds like an adventure—right out of The Goonies,” Charlie said, raising his pint.
McBride laughed at this. And then she straightened the notes and pointed to the first riddle. “I’ll tell you what, though: It is so true about the house that speaks. That is exactly what my grandmother used to call some houses when I was a little girl.”
“How do you mean?”
“Speaking houses. If you observe them carefully, the façades of most houses in Edinburgh bear inscriptions. Usually it’s the name of the person who built it, or the owner’s; sometimes it’s the year it was erected. Other times, though, there are little pieces of wisdom, scattered in the city for all to see. Especially the one I’m thinking of. They call it the Speaking House.”
Charlie stared with wide eyes. “Where is this house?”
28
It was one of those treasure boxes dotting the city, a maze of historic rooms crammed full of iconic objects from the capital’s past. Huntly House was a typical
sixteenth-century edifice, with triple gables over the lower stories. Charlie, McBride, and Whitman stood on the Canongate, facing the building once known as the Speaking House. Some of its windows were open, but no one was watching them; in museums, nobody looks out the windows.
Inside, informative displays told the history of the city, from prehistoric times through to the nineteenth century. Visitors could see collections of colorful shop signs, pottery, and silver and glass. But Whitman and his companions were not interested in the inside; in Edinburgh, the buildings themselves are often the real attractions. Sometimes, if you listen closely, they speak; and their stories whisper of their past.
People were moving by them, not paying attention to the three figures looking up at a sixteenth-century house with alabaster inscriptions on its stone walls.
Do they know? Whitman wondered. As they head to their jobs and schools and colleges and meetings and lunches, does anyone pay attention to these bizarre words hovering over their heads? A couple of tourists were waiting for the bus, resting their backpacks against the Speaking House’s walls; a man was gazing at the Ouija boards and alchemical jewelry in the Wyrd Shop’s window. Across the street, the Doric-columned portico of the Canongate Kirkyard stood as it had since the seventeenth century, inviting the world to explore the necropolis unraveling beyond its black iron fence. The few rays of light coming through the clouds gleamed on the stone clock of the Old Tolbooth, once a toll-collecting gate, at another time a prison for Covenanters. A few hundred years ago, across the street, a lord justice clerk had reputedly once succeeded in raising the devil in his backyard.
“You see?” Charlie said.
“See what?”
“The inscriptions.” He took out his notes. He had been scribbling in his notebook from the moment McBride gave him the clue he needed. McBride and Whitman huddled around him. Charlie had written down four inscriptions, followed by their literal translations. “Some were added during the 1930s. I’ve only written down the ones that existed in Sekuler’s time.”
HODIE MIHI CRAS TIBI CVR IGITVR CVRAS—Today to me, tomorrow to thee; why therefore takest thou thought? (I am a happy man today; your turn may come)
VT TV LINGVAE SIC EGO MEAR(VM) AVRIM(M) DOMINVS SVM—As thou of thy tongue, so I of my ears, am lord (As you are master of your tongue, so am I master of my ears)
CONSTANTI PECTORI RES MORTALIVM VMBRA—Mortal affairs are a shadow to a steadfast heart (To the constant heart, things of the mortal world are but a shadow)
SPES ALTERA VITAE—There is another hope of life
“The builder incorporated the inscriptions into the walls,” McBride said. “Evidently, many of the neighbors didn’t want the house to be built and took their frustrations out on the builder. So he carved these inscriptions; it’s like a dialogue with the annoyed neighbors. But as long as the house stands, only the builder’s side of the dialogue remains.”
“Nice little story,” Whitman said. “What’s the point?”
“The inscriptions,” Charlie said again. “Compare them to the last part of Sekuler’s letter.”
Whitman’s eyes widened in recognition as he scanned through Sekuler’s words, shifting his gaze back and forth between the message and the house’s inscriptions.
Charlie was right: the alabaster inscriptions looked alarmingly similar to the letters from Sekuler’s frames.
“They’re identical?”
“Almost,” Charlie said. “Some letters are missing. Guess what happens when you write the letters down.”
“A word?”
Charlie nodded. “The code was simple—if you knew about the house.”
“So what’s the word?”
Charlie showed him, but he placed his hand over the rest of the notes, holding back another surprise.
SOROBORUO
“What the hell is that?” Whitman said.
“Beats me.”
McBride scratched her head. “So that’s the key word?”
“I’ve already tried it,” Charlie said. “It’s not.”
“Then you’re wrong.”
“Already ahead of you. Don’t forget,” Charlie said, “there’s the last part of the message: ‘Only the mirror can see the secret it keeps.’ ”
“So,” McBride said, “if you read the letters in reverse, you get the word we’re after?”
Charlie nodded and slid his hand down another line, revealing the word in reverse:
OUROBOROS
“In true mirror reverse, the R, for example, would look like R, but it would still signify the same letter,” he explained.
“Sounds like…something. Any idea what it is?”
“No. But it is a real word. And I know this because it works.” He handed his notebook to Whitman, who proceeded to read it under the light of the moon. It was another letter by Augustin Sekuler. As he read, his gaze strayed to the street across from them. A man was sitting on one of the benches outside the kirkyard, doing a bad job at pretending to read a newspaper by moonlight. Whitman could see right through him: silk shirt, tobacco-stained smile, gold rings adorning his fingers.
“Stay calm,” he said. “I think we have a spectator.”
“What?”
“Don’t look. Guy on the bench across the street, reading the paper.”
They pretended to idle in front of the building for a few minutes, then slowly retreated toward McBride’s car, which was parked about fifty yards away, outside the People’s Story museum.
Whitman scanned the reflections in the shop windows; he noticed the man had stood up from the bench and was following them.
They picked up the pace.
When they were just a few feet away from McBride’s car, they saw the second man. He was hanging around under the arches, near the sign proclaiming gifts that made a difference, looking into the windows of their car. The man hadn’t seen them yet; he was smoking a cigarette and flicking the ash on the tray top of the garbage can next to him. Whitman recognized the man as the unibrow limo driver who had tried to murder him.
“Is that…”
“Yup. There’s two of them.”
“What do we do?” Charlie said.
“Keep a calm sooch,” McBride said. “Let’s get in the car.”
Unibrow finally saw them and turned to face them. He was a bear of a man. He stood, blocking access to the driver’s door. In the distance behind him, Whitman saw there was a third man, standing on the cobbled footpath a good fifteen yards away.
Charlie stepped behind Whitman and McBride, avoiding eye contact with anyone. The limo-driver guy had almost caught up with them; he stood on the opposite side, a stone’s throw behind them, another human barrier ensuring they wouldn’t make a run for it.
Unibrow stared at Whitman. “Do you know who we are?” American accent, McBride noticed.
“Sure,” Whitman said. “You’re the Three Stooges: Moe, Curly, and”—he gestured at the third man far behind them—“I always forget the other guy.”
“Maybe you’ll remember this.” The man brushed aside the tails of his overcoat, revealing a semiautomatic in a nylon holster under his left arm. “Mr. Valdano would like his film back. The memory stick.”
“What if I don’t want to give it back?”
McBride quickly read what was about to happen. She saw the man’s eyes; he would not hesitate to harm, even to kill, Whitman on the spot.
“I’ve got it,” she said. “I have the memory stick.”
The man granted her a glance for the first time.
McBride fished in her coat pockets.
Whitman was dumbfounded. He shot her a What the hell are you doing? glance, but she didn’t see it.
From a pocket, she produced a set of keys. Whitman couldn’t see a memory stick anywhere, and that puzzled him even more. The keys were mounted on a ring, and the ring was mounted on a stainless-steel handle.
McBride’s hand closed tightly around the base of one of the serrated keys. She swung it across Unibrow’s fa
ce, in a fast, slashing motion, like she was trying to split the air in two. Blood spurted, spraying across Unibrow’s cheeks, across everybody’s shirts, and across the wall to their side. Unibrow felt the blood with the tips of his fingers. He barely made a sound, crumpling to the ground almost instantly.
Nobody believed it at first; they stood over him, sucking in the cold air, the key in McBride’s hand resting by her side following the sweeping movement, blood still dripping on the cobbles.
McBride made for the car door, but Whitman grabbed her and pointed down. She gasped; one of the Volvo’s front tires lay flat; someone had slashed it.
By now Unibrow had recovered consciousness and was trying to get up.
McBride acted quickly. “Follow me. When I give you the signal, leg it like hell.”
Whitman and Charlie gave each other a look. They followed her as she darted forward, away from the car, straight onto the Canongate, toward the bridges. Toward the third man. He was baffled at first, seeing his victims sprinting toward him, but he quickly moved toward them, too.
On McBride’s signal, the trio broke into a run. People around them made way, staring. “Over here,” McBride said, and signaled Whitman and Charlie to take a right, on a cobblestoned path that led into the Calton Tunnel.
They heard shouts behind them. Two of the thugs were after them.
“Nice going, Serpico,” Whitman said, already out of breath. “Two guys in one day. You must be proud. I don’t suppose I should wait for a third one anytime soon?”
“Three’s my lucky number,” McBride said, grinning through gritted teeth.
“Stop or we shoot,” one of the men behind them shouted.
But Whitman and his companions kept going, bulling their way through the street, their shoes flapping on the cobbled stone.
Thunder rumbled overhead. Rain began to pour down.
Whitman heard short wheezing sounds from behind him: Charlie was panting already. A man his size…maybe this hadn’t been such a great idea.
A few hundred paces farther and they were entering the tunnel, taking them into the bowels of Calton Hill.
Séance Infernale Page 17