by Simon Toyne
A few mouse clicks later, the Abbot opened the case file Inspector Arkadian had closed less than an hour before. The face of Brother Samuel returned to haunt him, pale and ghastly under the stark lighting of the autopsy room. ‘I’m afraid the body appears remarkably undamaged by the fall,’ he said, scrolling rapidly through the first few images.
Athanasius winced as he caught sight of ribs poking through the shattered body of his former friend. The Abbot opened a text document, mercifully obscuring the ghastly images, and started to read. When he got to the final comments his teeth clenched.
Whoever this man was, he chose to fall. He waited until he had witnesses then ensured that he would land in city jurisdiction. Was his pre-death vigil some kind of signal? If so, who was he signalling to — and what message was he trying to communicate?
The Abbot followed the Inspector’s train of thought as it brought him dangerously close to forbidden territory.
‘I want the source who gave us this file to keep us regularly updated.’ The Abbot closed the case notes and opened another folder labelled Ancillary Evidence. ‘Any new discovery, any new development, I want to know about it immediately.’
He clicked on an image file and watched the screen fill with a slide show of close-ups of other evidence relating to the case: the coiled rope, the blood-soaked cassock, rock fragments retrieved from the torn flesh of the monk’s hands and feet, a strip of leather lying on an evidence tray. .
‘And send word to the Prelate,’ the Abbot said gravely. ‘Tell him I need a private audience as soon as his holiness is blessed with sufficient strength to grant one.’
Athanasius could not see what had so unsettled the Abbot, but it was clear from his tone that he had been dismissed.
‘As you wish,’ he said, bowing his head and backing silently out of the room.
The Abbot continued to stare at the image until he heard the door shutting behind him. He checked he was alone then reached into the front of his cassock and pulled a leather thong from around his neck. Two keys dangled from it — one large, one small. He bent down to the lowest drawer of the desk, fitting the smaller key into the lock. Inside it was a mobile phone. The Abbot turned it on as he stared once more at the image frozen on his computer screen.
He punched the numbers into the phone, checked they were correct then pressed the call button.
Chapter 35
Liv was driving slowly back along the I-95 with about ten thousand other people when her cell began to vibrate.
She glanced at the display. The caller’s ID was withheld. She dropped it back on the seat and returned her gaze to the slow-moving traffic. It buzzed a few more times then fell silent. Having been awake for what felt like a week, her only priority now was to get home and into bed.
The buzzing started up again almost immediately — too quick to be the answering service calling back. Whoever it was must have hit redial as soon as they’d heard the voicemail message. Liv looked at the river of red brake lights snaking into the distance ahead of her. She clearly wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry, so she swung her car over to the verge, slammed it in park, cut the engine and switched on her hazard lights.
She grabbed the cell and hit the answer button.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello.’ The voice on the other end of the line was male, unfamiliar and roughened round the edges by the hint of an accent. ‘Who is it I’m speaking with please?’
Liv’s antennae bristled. ‘Who are you trying to reach?’
There was a brief pause.
‘I’m not exactly sure,’ he said. ‘My name is Arkadian. I’m a police inspector trying to identify a man who was found with this phone number on him.’
Liv ran his response through her journalist’s mind, weighing every word. ‘What department are you with?’
‘Homicide.’
‘So I guess you’ve either got a perp who won’t talk or a victim who can’t.’
‘That’s correct.’
‘So which is it?’
He paused. ‘I have an unidentified body. An apparent suicide.’
Liv’s heart lurched. She ran through the list of men who had this number.
There was Michael, her ex-boyfriend, though she didn’t really peg him as the suicidal type. Her old college professor, but he was on holiday with a new girlfriend who was about twenty years his junior — he definitely wasn’t suicidal.
‘How old is. . was this man?’
‘Late twenties, possibly early thirties.’
Definitely not her professor.
‘The body does have some distinguishing marks.’
‘What sort of marks?’
‘Well. .’ The voice faltered, as if weighing up whether or not it should divulge anything further.
Liv knew from experience how reluctant cops were to give out information.
‘You said this was a suicide, right?’
‘Correct.’
‘Well then, it’s not like a murder where you need to hold back information to weed out false confessions, is it?’
Another pause. ‘No.’
‘So why don’t you just tell me what sort of distinguishing marks you found and I’ll tell you if I know who it is?’
‘You seem very well informed about how these things work, Miss. .?’
It was Liv’s turn to falter. So far she’d managed to give nothing away while the caller had revealed his name, his profession and the purpose of his call. The crackle of the long-distance line punctuated the silence. ‘Where are you calling from, Inspector?’
‘I’m calling from the city of Ruin, in southern Turkey.’ That explained the crackly line and the accent. ‘You’re in the United States, aren’t you? New Jersey. At least, that’s where your number is registered.’
‘They clearly didn’t make you an inspector for nothing.’
‘New Jersey’s the Garden State, isn’t it?’
‘That’s the one.’
The crackle returned to the line. Arkadian’s attempt to loosen her up with small talk clearly wasn’t working. ‘OK,’ he said, trying a fresh tack. ‘I’ll do you a deal. You tell me who you are, then I’ll tell you what distinguishing marks we found on the body.’
Liv chewed on her bottom lip, weighing her options. She didn’t really want to give up her name, but she was intrigued and she really wanted to know who had been walking around with her very private phone number and was now lying on a mortuary slab. A beep sounded in her ear. She glanced at the grey display screen. A triangle with an exclamation mark flashed above the words LOW BATTERY. She normally had about a minute between this and total shut down, sometimes even less.
‘My name’s Liv Adamsen,’ she blurted. ‘Tell me about the body.’
She heard a faint and infuriatingly slow tapping as her name was fed into a computer.
‘Scars — ’ the voice said finally.
She was about to ask another question when the floor gave way beneath her.
Late twenties, early thirties. .
Her left hand moved involuntarily to her side. ‘Did the body. . does he have a scar on his right side, about six inches long. . like a cross laid on its side?’
‘Yes,’ the voice replied with the softness of rehearsed condolence. ‘Yes, he does.’
Liv stared straight ahead. Gone were the I-95 and the morning traffic crawling into Newark. Instead she saw the face of a scruffily handsome boy with dirty blonde hair grown long, standing on Bow Bridge in Central Park.
‘Sam,’ she said softly. ‘His name’s Sam. Samuel Newton. He’s my brother.’
Another image filled her mind: Sam back-lit by a low spring sun casting long shadows across the tarmac of Newark International Airport. He’d stopped at the top of the steps leading up to the plane that would take him to the mountain ranges of Europe. Shifted the bag on his shoulder containing all his worldly goods and turned to wave. It was the last time she had seen him.
‘How did he die?’ she whispered.
‘H
e fell.’
She nodded to herself as the image of the golden boy faded and was replaced by the shimmering red river of the Interstate. It was what she always thought had happened. Then she remembered something else the Inspector had said.
‘You said it was suicide?’
‘Yes.’
More memories surfaced. Troubled memories that made her soul feel heavy and brought fresh tears to her eyes. ‘How long do you think he’s been dead?’
There was a brief pause before Arkadian answered. ‘It happened this morning. . local time.’
This morning? He’d been alive all that time. .
‘If you want, I can call your local police department,’ Arkadian said, ‘send some photos over and get someone to bring you in to formally identify the body.’
‘No!’ Liv said sharply.
‘I’m afraid we need someone to identify him.’
‘I mean it won’t be necessary to send photos. I can be there in. . maybe twelve hours. .’
‘Honestly, you don’t need to come here to identify the body.’
‘I’m in the car now. I can head straight to the airport.’
‘It really isn’t necessary.’
‘Yes it is,’ she said. ‘It is necessary. My brother disappeared eight years ago. Now you’re telling me that, until a few hours ago, he was still alive. I’ve got to come. . I need to know what the hell he’s been doing all these — ’
Then her battery ran out.
Chapter 36
The man with the freckled hands sat at the cafe pretending to read the sports pages. The place was busy, and he’d only just managed to grab a table right at the edge of the cool shadow cast by the awning that stretched over the pavement. He watched the sun creep slowly across the white linen tablecloth towards him and shuffled back in his chair.
From where he was sitting he could see the Citadel rising up in the middle distance, almost as if it were watching him. The sight of it made him uneasy. His paranoia was not entirely groundless. Almost as soon as he had finished paying the traveller’s cheques into an account at the First Bank of Ruin that no one but he knew about, he had received two new messages. The first was from someone he’d occasionally done business with, requesting the same information he had just sold. The second was from his contact in the Citadel, offering to pay handsomely for his ongoing loyalty and regular updates. It was proving to be a very lucrative morning indeed. Nevertheless he did feel slightly uneasy taking money for ‘ongoing loyalty’ when here he was, in plain view of the Citadel, about to give the same information to somebody else.
He glanced up from his paper and waved at the waiter to bring him his bill. It was odd that this case in particular was proving of such interest to so many. It wasn’t a murder or a sex case, both of which were traditionally his best earners. The waiter swept past, leaving a small round plate on the table with the bill trapped beneath a mint at its centre. He’d only had a coffee but he pulled out his wallet, selected a particular credit card and exchanged it for the mint, which he popped in his mouth. He laid his paper on the white linen tablecloth and smoothed it down, feeling the slight lump inside it. He leaned back in his chair and looked away, just another tourist enjoying the weather, as the waiter scooped up the newspaper and the plate without breaking his stride.
The sun continued to creep across the sky and the man pushed his chair further back. It had to be sex. He’d had a peek through the file himself the first time he’d swiped it and there was definitely something kinky going on, judging by all those scars. His guess was something weird that the holy folks were trying to cover up.
He also knew that the other party he was hawking the information to had no love for the Citadel, or the people inside it. The information he’d fed them before proved that. He’d given them the case file relating to the paedophile priest scandal a few years back, and another time he’d provided names and numbers of key witnesses when a bunch of charities affiliated to the Church were being investigated for fraud. He figured this must be the same kind of deal. They were probably trying to find out as much as possible so they could fan the flames of any breaking scandal and embarrass the hell out of the holier-than-thous up on the hill. All of which was good news for him. A nice juicy sex scandal with a religious angle would play out nicely in the tabloids — and they were the best payers of all.
He looked back up at the mountain and smirked. If they wanted to give him a bonus for his loyalty then more fool them. Maybe that kind of thinking worked up there where people believed in the great hereafter, but in the real world the only thing that mattered was the here and now. He wasn’t going to give them an update anytime soon either. Getting large files to them was such a pain. He didn’t mind forwarding bullet-points via the new text number they’d given him; at least that was a step in the right direction. But he’d already trekked up the holy hill once today with a flash drive in his hand; the update could wait until tomorrow. They still paid him either way.
The waiter drifted past again, placing the dish back on the table with the credit card tucked under the receipt. The man picked it up and put it back in his wallet. He didn’t need to sign anything or punch in his PIN number, his coffee was already paid for and his account had just been credited with over a thousand dollars. He buttoned his jacket and with a final nervous glance up at the cloudless sky, he put on his cap and slipped away from the cafe and back into the crowd.
Kathryn Mann sat four tables behind him in the depths of the awning’s shadow. She watched the informant shuffle away through the foot traffic on the great eastern boulevard, his baseball cap and raincoat incongruous in the bright sunlight. The waiter appeared by her side and placed her bill on the table along with the newspaper. She tucked it into her bag, feeling the bulge of the envelope inside it. Then she paid her bill in cash, making sure she left an extravagant tip, and headed off in the opposite direction.
Chapter 37
Liv sat in the big steel-and-glass box of Newark Liberty Airport — Terminal C — sipping what was practically a bucket of black coffee. She stared up at the departure board. Her flight still wasn’t boarding.
As soon as her phone had died she’d raced home as fast as the so-called ‘rush-hour’ traffic had allowed and booked herself on the next flight to Europe. The first leg of her journey was due to take off at ten-twenty, which gave her just enough time to stuff a few things into a holdall, grab her work cell phone and charger and jump into a cab.
She’d switched the SIM card from her private one on the way and discovered that Arkadian had left her a long message trying once again to dissuade her from coming. He’d given his direct line and cell number and asked her to call him back. She saved the message and stared out of the window all the way to the airport. She would call him back. She’d call him when she was staring out of the window of a Turkish taxi and heading to his office.
It was only when she’d finally checked in that the adrenalin ran out and exhaustion took over. She knew she’d be able to sleep as soon as she got on the flight, or at least grab as many z’s as premium economy would allow, but first she had to stay awake long enough to get on the plane, hence the industrial-sized coffee.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it from her jacket and checked the caller ID. The number was withheld. She should have turned it off. Now she was going to have the Inspector asking more questions or trying to persuade her to stay away. She exhaled wearily, suddenly craving a cigarette, and pressed the green answer button to stop the infernal buzzing.
‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hello,’ a deep voice replied.
It was not the Inspector.
‘Who is this please?’
There was the slightest pause, one that even in her sleep-starved, coffee-frazzled state put her immediately on her guard. In her experience the only people who hesitated when you asked their name were people who didn’t want to tell you.
‘I’m a colleague of Inspector Arkadian,’ the voice rumbled. The Engl
ish was accented like Arkadian’s, but he sounded older, more authoritative.
‘Are you his boss?’ she asked.
‘I’m a colleague. Has he contacted you?’
Liv frowned. Why was one cop checking up on another via a witness? That wasn’t the way things worked. They talked to each other, not to outsiders.
‘Why don’t you ask him?’ she said.
‘He hasn’t been in the office for a few hours,’ the voice replied. ‘So I thought I’d give you a try. I assume you have spoken with him.’
‘We spoke.’
‘Of what did you speak?’
Her antennae continued to bristle. This new guy just didn’t sound like a cop, at least not any she knew. Maybe they bred them differently over there.
A loud announcement echoed through the terminal, calling her flight. She squinted up at the departures board. Her flight was now boarding at gate 78, about as far away as it was possible to get without leaving the state.
‘Listen,’ she said, heaving herself wearily to her feet and grabbing her holdall, ‘I’ve had virtually no sleep, I’ve drunk about a gallon of coffee, and I’ve just had some really bad news, so I’m really not in the most sociable of moods. If you want to be briefed on my earlier conversation, ask Arkadian. I’m sure his memory is every bit as good as mine, probably a damn sight better right at this moment.’
She hung up and hit the ‘off’ button before it had a chance to ring again.
Chapter 38
As soon as Liv hung up, the Abbot ordered Athanasius to fetch Brother Samuel’s personal file from the library. He’d also asked him to bring the files of each current member of the Carmina as a plan formed in his mind.
Bad news, she had told him. Some really bad news. . And Arkadian had taken the trouble to call her. .
It wasn’t possible. No one could enter the Citadel if they had any living relatives. The absence of family ties meant there would be no emotional pull away from their work inside the holy mountain and no desire to communicate with the outside world. The security of the Citadel and the preservation of its secrets were absolutely reliant on this rule never being broken, and the background checks for any new applicant were exacting, rigorously carried out and always erred on the side of caution. If someone’s family records had been destroyed in a fire, they were rejected. If they had one distant cousin, whom they’d never met and believed to be dead but couldn’t trace, they were rejected.