Secrets of the Dead

by Tom Harper

  Helena isn’t interested. In her mind, her divorce was never legitimate. Constantius’s children by his second wife were no children of hers: ergo, Constantine’s children by his second wife will be no grandchildren of hers, whatever blood goes into them.

  ‘I can go to Nicomedia,’ says Crispus. ‘If it has to be done.’

  Constantine dismisses it. ‘Licinius is just trying to drive a better bargain.’ He thinks a moment. ‘What if I offer him an extra province? Moesia, maybe.’

  ‘If you offer him land, he’ll think you’re intending to take it back,’ I point out. Constantine and I share a look behind Constantiana’s back.

  ‘Are the Christians so important that you want them to ruin my wedding?’ says Constantiana. The slaves carry on, oblivious to our argument, pinning up her orange veil and tightening the belt on her dress.

  ‘Do you have to name the Christians?’ I suggest. ‘Why not make the declaration vaguer – religious freedom to all, none specified.’

  ‘No,’ says Helena again. ‘Who gave you your victories? Whose sign did you paint on your army when you defeated Maxentius?’

  I cross the room and stare out of the window. ‘Licinius doesn’t care about the Christians. He wants reassurance.’

  ‘So how do I reassure him?’

  ‘Offer him nothing.’

  An outraged squeal from Constantiana.

  ‘Nothing more than you’ve already given,’ I continue. ‘Tell him it’s a fair offer and that to ask more suggests bad faith.’

  Constantine considers it. ‘And if he says no?’

  ‘He’s staying in your palace, in your territory, guarded by your army. If he pulls out of the marriage now, he’ll embarrass you badly.’

  I leave the implication unspoken. I don’t want to offend Constantiana so close to her wedding. But she’s not obtuse. Denied armies, provinces or money to throw into this contest, she uses the only weapon she has and bursts into tears.

  ‘For once in your life, can’t you arrange a marriage without thinking what you’re going to get out of it? It’s almost as if you want your Christians to be there in the marriage bed with us.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Constantine rushes across and embraces her in a fraternal hug. ‘It’s Licinius who’s complicating things. But Valerius is right. It’s a fair offer and your husband’s sure to see it.’ Another hug. ‘He won’t want to let you get away from him.’

  An empress isn’t supposed to cry. Constantiana’s tears have ruined her face. Half a dozen slave girls rush to mend the damage, dabbing and painting until the repair’s invisible. By the time they lower her veil, her stormy face shows nothing but bright spring sunshine.

  The marriage goes ahead and is as lavish as the bride and groom deserve. And two weeks later I head east, spying out the best ground where an invading army might forage, camp and fight.

  Constantinople – April 337

  ‘My wedding …’ A tremor disturbs the remaining powder on Constantiana’s face. ‘I’d almost managed to forget it.’

  ‘A happy day.’

  ‘It bought my brother time to prepare for his next war. We both know that – now.’ She gives me a pitying look. ‘Did you know, the Augustus once considered marrying me to you?’

  I start to make a pro-forma protest, but she talks me down. ‘Some people said he’d raise you to Caesar, before Fausta started popping out sons like a breeding sow. You were handsome, then – and dangerous. More than one woman in the palace cried herself to sleep at night wondering why you didn’t look at her.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ I say, truthfully.

  The mask reassembles itself. The door to the past closes.

  ‘You know the Augustus leaves on campaign next week. When he’s gone, you’ll report to me. Whatever you find out.’

  I walk home, unescorted. Perhaps I should be more careful. As I approach my house, something moves by the door. Too much time in the palace has made me anxious – I pull away, pause, scan the shadows.

  There’s someone there.

  ‘Are you going to rob an old man?’ I call. I wish I hadn’t been too proud to walk without a stick.

  A figure steps into the light cast by the lamp over my door. Relief floods my body. It’s Simeon.

  ‘You could have waited inside.’

  He looks surprised at the thought. Is my reputation so terrifying?

  ‘A man walked into my church today – I didn’t see him – and left a wrapped bundle on the step. There was a message inside.’

  He hands over a flat wax tablet. I hold it up to the light.

  Gaius Valerius Maximus –

  Be at the statue of Venus at dusk tomorrow. I can give you something you want.

  No name or signature. The wax is brittle and dry.

  ‘When did this come?’

  ‘This afternoon.’

  ‘Did anyone see the man who left it?’

  ‘Nothing they remembered.’

  Of course they didn’t. I send Simeon away and tell him to come back tomorrow. The day’s gone on too long. My last thought before I go to sleep is of Constantiana, a slumped woman old before her time, with not even memories to comfort her.

  My wedding. I’d almost managed to forget it.

  How will I ever solve a murder in Constantinople? The city is filled with broken statues and broken people; lives smashed by everyday violence like stones under a chisel. Yet ask, and no one remembers a thing.

  XXI

  Pristina, Kosovo – Present Day

  ABBY STOOD IN the alley across the street from her apartment building and watched. She’d been there for the last half-hour, looking for danger and screwing up her courage. All the parked cars were empty; none of the overlooking curtains twitched. Twenty minutes ago she’d seen Annukka walk out the door with her gym bag over her shoulder. That should give her an hour.

  Heart in mouth, she walked briskly across the road and let herself in to the building. No sirens wailed; no cars screeched to a halt; no one shouted her name. She ran up the stairs to her flat. Just as her hand touched the handle, she noticed the corner of a sheet of paper slid under the door.

  For a moment, she thought she might run down the stairs, all the way to the airport and straight back to London. Don’t be stupid, she told herself. If someone was waiting inside, he wouldn’t have left a note to announce himself. She unlocked the door and stepped in.

  The flat was empty. She picked up the note and unfolded it.

  Heard you’re back in town. Let’s meet for a drink. Jessop. A phone number with a Kosovo prefix followed.

  She remembered Michael’s diary, just before he died: Jessop, 91. She remembered an airless room in the Foreign Office, Mark fussing about while a stern man with a hard face recorded everything she said. Jessop’s from Vauxhall. She remembered his parting words to her, as she stumbled out of the room minus one gold necklace. Be careful.

  Abby folded up the note and stuck it in her pocket. It begged fifty questions, but she wasn’t going to think about them now. She went to the bedroom and found her car keys in the drawer where she’d left them a month earlier. The car was where she’d left it, too, parked around the corner outside a minimart. She went inside the shop and pretended to leaf through a rack of magazines, watching the street for the eyes that were surely looking for her, until she could almost convince herself that they weren’t there.

  On a proper highway, Ferizaj would have been fifteen minutes’ drive from Pristina. On the E65 road south, it took the best part of an hour. It might have afforded Abby time to think, except that most of the time she was too busy trying to stay alive. The two-lane road was Kosovo’s main corridor to the outside world, crammed every hour of the day with lorries, buses, cars and even the occasional horse-drawn cart. Traffic crawled along, and if a gap appeared it was immediately plugged by a vehicle attempting some kamikaze overtaking move. On the bridges, yellow signs gave speed restrictions for tanks, a reminder that this was still occupied territory.

  Camp B
ondsteel, the largest US base in the Balkans, stood in rolling hills below the pointed spire of Mount Ljuboten, better known to the soldiers as Mount Duke. Abby left her car in the parking lot and walked up a narrow path between a chain-link fence and high concrete blast barriers. To her left a high earthwork stretched around the perimeter, and it occurred to her that the basic design for a military camp hadn’t changed in millennia.

  The gatehouse was a windowless, corrugated-iron warehouse with red-painted walls and X-ray machines. The moment she walked in, a Hispanic man in a brown uniform accosted her. FORCE PROTECTION, said the badge on his sleeve. She wondered why the world’s most powerful army needed protecting, and from whom. He asked for her badge and looked disconcerted when she couldn’t produce one.

  ‘I’m with the EULEX mission,’ she said. ‘I need to meet with one of your soldiers, Specialist Anthony Sanchez.’

  More consternation. A tall black sergeant strode over. ‘Is there a problem, ma’am?’

  It was going wrong far faster than she’d expected. She found herself beginning to stutter. ‘No problem – just – I need to speak to one of the soldiers here. Specialist Anthony Sanchez.’

  ‘She’s from the Justice Department,’ the guard contributed.

  ‘Is he in trouble?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Do you want to make a report for his commanding officer?’

  ‘That’s not –’

  ‘Do you have security clearance?’

  ‘I –’

  ‘Perhaps you should come back another time, ma’am,’ said the sergeant firmly. He scribbled a number on a piece of paper and gave it to her. ‘Here’s the number for the Public Affairs Office if you want to make a complaint.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She trudged back down the path, among a gaggle of local cleaners and contractors finishing for the day. She couldn’t face the drive back straight away: she went to the café across the road and nursed a coffee, while she watched the clouds gather in the valley. This part of the world had more than its fair share of storms.

  Michael would never have let this stop him, she thought. Michael would have charmed a pass out of the guard, or talked his way in with a joke and a bottle of whisky. She replayed the conversation in her head and winced. How had she become such a wretched failure? She stared out the windows at the concrete walls and watchtowers. It wasn’t the sort of place you broke into.

  She finished her coffee and made her decision. The café had a payphone: she used it to dial the number on Jessop’s note. He answered almost at once.

  ‘Good to hear from you.’

  ‘What are you doing in Kosovo?’

  ‘I could ask you the same question.’ He wasn’t angry, or menacing. If anything, he sounded sympathetic. Abby fought back the urge to reciprocate.

  ‘Is Mark here?’

  ‘Stuck in London.’ Jessop didn’t sound too troubled by it.

  ‘I need to see you.’

  ‘Then that makes two of us.’

  They met in Bar Ninety-One. Michael used to joke it was EULEX in miniature: a cross between a French café and an English pub, squatting in a Yugoslav building whose upper windows were still blown out from the war. It was warm and busy, but Abby would have preferred somewhere less obvious. This was Pristina’s answer to Rick’s Place in Casablanca: every diplomat, bureaucrat, journalist and spy passed through here sooner or later. She recognised three German judges, deep in conversation with the police chief; at another table the EULEX Chief of Staff laid bets on a Premier League football match with someone from the press office.

  Jessop was sitting in a corner watching the football, a Peja beer and a pint of Guinness untouched in front of him. He waved when he saw her, as if their meeting was the most natural thing in the world, and pushed the beer towards her.

  She remembered the entry in Michael’s diary. Jessop, 91. ‘Do you come here often?’

  ‘When I’m in town.’

  ‘You know, there’s a rumour the CIA has bugs in the light fittings.’

  He took the voice recorder out of his jacket pocket and looked at it mock-wistfully. ‘I won’t need this, then.’

  Abby put her bag on the table and pulled it open. ‘I’ll save you some more trouble. Help yourself to whatever you want to steal.’

  Jessop ignored it. ‘You’re supposed to be on sick leave. Why did you come back to Kosovo?’

  ‘Trying to get away from people like you.’

  ‘And how’s that working out for you?’ He stared at her face. The wound from Dragović’s pistol cut a thin crimson ribbon down her chin; the bruising around it was in full flower. Abby looked back defiantly and said nothing. Jessop took a long sip of his drink.

  ‘We showed your necklace to some boffin at the British Museum. He authenticated it as genuine fourth-century Roman, the real McCoy.’

  ‘Can I have it back, then?’

  ‘It’s in London. If you tell me the truth about how you came by it, maybe I’ll ask them to FedEx it.’

  She stared into his face, the hard lines and no-nonsense haircut. There wasn’t much to trust there.

  ‘I told you the truth in London. Michael gave it to me. He didn’t say where he got it.’

  ‘Did you know he was an obtainer of rare antiquities?’

  But she wasn’t interested in that line of conversation. ‘My turn,’ she countered. ‘Why did you meet Michael here the week before he died?’

  Jessop was too professional to look surprised. ‘Did he mention it?’

  ‘I found a note in his diary.’

  He drank his Guinness and wiped foam off his upper lip. ‘Nice to get a decent pint, in this part of the world.’

  She didn’t smile. ‘Why did you meet him?’

  ‘OK – since we seem to be getting on so well being honest with each other. I’m on the anti-trafficking taskforce. I met with Michael to discuss arms smuggling.’

  ‘He was working with you?’

  ‘He thought I was representing a Russian businessman who wanted to import Ukrainian-made AK-47s to Italy.’ He held her gaze, waiting for the penny to drop. ‘He was going to help me.’

  The bar erupted in cheers. Up on the TV screens the home team had grabbed an equaliser. Abby just stared at Jessop. She wished the noise could change what he’d said, sweep it back and drown it. She drank a deep gulp of beer, bitter liquid sour in her mouth. Nothing changed.

  The game restarted, more urgent now.

  ‘Do you have proof?’ Abby asked. ‘You were pretending, so you could trap him. Maybe he was, too.’

  ‘We’ve got plenty of proof. We’d been tracking him for months.’

  His face offered no hope. Abby pushed back her chair and ran to the bathroom. When she emerged five minutes later, eyes wet and skin red, Jessop was still there. He hadn’t touched his drink while she was away.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ she whispered. ‘Michael’s dead. Who are you still chasing?’

  ‘There’s a man called Zoltán Dragović …’

  ‘I’ve met him.’

  Now it was Jessop’s turn to look stunned. A hit. Abby took grim pleasure in it.

  ‘He picked me up in Rome on Friday. Shouldn’t you have been following me or something?’

  ‘Jurisdictional issues,’ Jessop muttered. ‘Go on.’

  ‘His men bundled me into a car and took me somewhere that looked like a museum. Like his villa in Montenegro. I thought he was going to kill me.’ She touched her chin. ‘He made do with this.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘What does he have to do with Michael?’

  Jessop sighed. ‘Dragović is the biggest people-smuggler, gun-runner and drug-trafficker in the Balkans. Michael worked in Customs for the most porous country in the region. Do you need me to spell it out?’

  She still couldn’t believe it. She told herself she didn’t believe it. But deep down, in the cold recesses of her soul, she knew it made sense. Michael’s never-ending supply of easy mon
ey, the car and the holidays that were extravagant, even by Pristina expat standards. The villa. A memory flashed into her head, stripped of all the darkness and denial that had obscured it for so long.

  ‘That night at the villa,’ she said slowly. ‘I woke up and went outside. Michael was by the pool with the man who killed him, but they weren’t fighting. They were looking at something together. He only attacked Michael when he saw me.’

  She remembered Jessop’s original question. ‘Dragović wanted to know why I survived.’

  ‘They left you for dead. They were almost right.’

  ‘No.’ She pinched the skin of her forehead between finger and thumb, fighting back the headache pounding against it. ‘Dragović said there was someone else there. The man he sent never came back, but there wasn’t any body.’ She looked up. ‘Was there?’

  ‘The police only found Michael’s. I suppose the other chap could have been swept out to sea.’

  ‘But then who killed him?’ Abby looked down. She’d finished her drink and not even tasted it. ‘What do you want from me?’ she said again.

  Jessop reached across the table and took her hands in his. She tried to pull away, but his grip was tight and he wouldn’t let go.

  ‘Look at me.’ She twisted her head around like a miscreant child, refusing to meet his gaze. ‘Look at me. You think Michael’s death was the end of something? Ever since that night, Dragović’s been going crazy. Routine’s out the window. Kidnapping you, taking you to meet him – that’s not part of the plan. Some of his closest associates have never met him, so why you?’

  Have you ever wondered why you’re not dead?

  ‘We’re picking up chatter from Dragović’s people – more than we’ve had in months. Whatever Michael was involved in was something huge, way beyond the low-grade smuggling stuff we had on him. And we don’t have a fucking clue what it is.’

  She stopped struggling and stared at him, looking for comfort in his grey eyes and finding none.

  ‘I don’t know either. I don’t even know why I’m alive.’

  ‘You’ve got something.’

  She pointed to her bag. ‘Everything I have in the world is right there.’