by Simon Toyne
He remembered the sixty-two personnel files he’d delivered to the Abbot’s chamber the previous day. Sixty-two red files for sixty-two Carmina. He turned his body slightly as if listening intently to the sermon and conducted a silent head count.
The trapped air of the cathedral cave shook with the deep sound of every voice in the Citadel chanting the final doxology in the original language of their church. ‘Every day will I bless thee; and I will praise thy name forever and ever. Blessed art thou, O LORD: teach me thy statutes.’
Athanasius just managed to finish as the lines of the congregation started to disperse. There were fifty-nine guards. Three were missing.
As the sun rose, the great windows lit up above the altar; God had opened his great eye and was gazing down upon his loyal congregation. Light had, once again, defeated darkness; the new day had begun.
Athanasius filed out of the cathedral in the crush of brown cassocks, his mind filled with the possibilities of his discovery. He knew a little of Brother Guillermo’s past and guessed now at the reason the Abbot might have singled him out. It was a thought that troubled him greatly. He had always prided himself on his ability to curb the Abbot’s impulsiveness. The fact that three of the guards were now missing made him anxious — not just because he feared the Abbot’s response to Brother Samuel’s death, but because he’d had to discover it for himself.
By revealing the prophecy to him in the forbidden vault the day before, which seemed to foretell the end of the Sacrament and a new beginning, he thought the Abbot had demonstrated a thawing of the crippling secrecy that he believed kept the Church frozen in the past. Now his suspicions suggested quite the opposite. Far from looking forward toward an enlightened future, he feared the Abbot might be returning to the medieval behaviour of their dark and violent past.
Chapter 55
Liv sat in silence in the harshly lit interview room.
She continued to stare at the picture on the newspaper while Arkadian gently filled her in on the details. When he finished he laid his hand on the blue folder by his side. ‘I’d like to show you some more photographs,’ he said. ‘We took them prior to the post-mortem. I realize this may be difficult and I’d fully understand if you don’t want to, but it may help us understand more about Samuel’s death.’
Liv nodded, wiping tears from her cheeks with her hand.
‘But I need to clear something up first.’
She looked up at him.
‘I need you to convince me that you’re really his sister.’
Liv felt exhaustion settling upon her. She didn’t want to get into her entire life story right now, not the way she was feeling, but she also wanted to know what had happened to her brother. ‘I only found out the truth myself after my father died.’ The things she had discovered eight years ago began to surface, things she usually kept locked away. ‘I had some pretty fierce identity issues on the boil. I’d never really been sure where I fitted. I know most kids go through a stage of thinking that they aren’t really part of their family, but I had a completely different name from my dad and my brother. I never knew my mother. I asked Dad about it one time, but it just made him go quiet and withdrawn. Later that night I heard him crying. In my over-imaginative teenage state I assumed it was because I’d picked the scab off some shameful family secret. I never asked him again.
‘When he died, my grief, or sense of loss, or whatever you want to call it, seemed to settle on this one unanswered question. I fixated on it. I felt like I’d not only lost my father but any chance of finding out who I really was.’
‘But you did find out,’ Arkadian said.
‘Yes,’ Liv replied. ‘Yes, I did.’
She took a deep breath and sank back into her past.
‘I’d just started my freshman year at Colombia. I was a journalism major. My first big assignment was a three-thousand-word investigative piece on a subject of my choice. I decided to kill two birds with one stone. Dig into the big family secret. I caught a Greyhound to West Virginia, to the place where my brother and I were born. It was one of those towns that could be listed under ‘Americana’ in the dictionary. One long main street. Stores with awnings stretching out over the sidewalk — most of them closed. It was called Paradise. Paradise, West Virginia. The Founding Fathers clearly had high hopes.
‘The summer we were born my mom and dad had been travelling all over, chasing work where they could find it. They were organic horticulturalists, ahead of their time in many ways. Mostly they ended up working regular gardening jobs, a few municipal positions here, some farm labouring there, anything to earn enough money to tide them over for when the babies came. They checked in whenever they were passing some local medical facility, but I think taking blood pressure and listening in to check on two little heartbeats was about as far as it went in those days. They didn’t have ultrasound scans. Mom and Dad had no idea there was anything wrong — until it was too late.
‘The “hospital” I was born in was a medical centre at the edge of town. When I went back it was standing in the shadow of a huge WalMart, which was no doubt responsible for all the empty stores on Main Street. It was one of those rural facilities whose main function is either to patch people up and ship ’em back out with a jar full of aspirin, or refer them on to proper hospitals. It was rudimentary enough when I found it, so God knows what it was like when Mom and Dad fetched up there.
‘I got chatting to the nurse at reception, explained what I was doing and what I was looking for. She showed me a storeroom stacked high with boxes of old medical records. It was a mess. Took me an hour just to find a box from the right year. Inside, the documents were all mixed up. I went through it and dug out the birth records and read through them. Mine wasn’t there, so I wrote down the names of all the staff who’d been around back then and convinced the receptionist to put me in touch with one of them, a nurse who’d worked at the centre in the eighties — Mrs Kintner. She’d been retired a few years but still lived locally. I went to see her. We sat on her porch drinking lemonade. She remembered my mother. Said she was beautiful. Said she’d fought for two days to give birth to us. They couldn’t see what the problem was until they took us out “the sunroof” as she described it — emergency C-section.’
She rose slowly from her chair.
‘I was born Sam Newton,’ she said, in a voice barely louder than a whisper. ‘My brother’s name was Sam Newton. We were born at the same time, on the same day, to the same parents. We’re twins.’ She turned to her right and pulled her shirt from the waistband of her jeans. ‘But not ordinary twins.’
She lifted her shirt.
Arkadian saw a scar, white against her pale skin. A crucifix lying on its side. Identical to the one he’d found on the monk’s body.
‘Lots of brothers and sisters are described as being joined at the hip,’ Liv said. ‘We really were. Or joined at the side, at least. Our three lower ribs were fused. It’s what the supermarket tabloids luridly describe as Siamese twins. More accurately, we were what’s known as omphalopagus twins, where two infants are joined at the chest. Sometimes they also share major organs, like the liver. We just shared bone.’
Liv lowered her shirt and sank back on to her seat.
‘Nurse Kintner said it caused quite a stir. There’d never been a case of fused twins being different genders before, so the doctors got quite excited. Then, when my mother worsened, and so did we, they started to panic. She’d lost so much blood trying to give birth to us, suffered so much internal damage delivering an awkward-shaped double baby, that she never regained consciousness. I suppose they realized that they, or the hospital at least, were responsible, so they hushed everything up. She died eight days after we were born — the same day Samuel and I were surgically separated. It was only then that they discovered only one birth certificate had been issued. They quickly issued a new one for me, giving the date of our separation as my birth date. I suppose, technically, it was the day I became an individual. It was my father’s
idea to name me in Mother’s memory. Liv Adamsen was her maiden name, the name of the girl he’d fallen in love with and married. That’s why he never wanted to talk about it.’
Arkadian took in the new information. Held it up against what he already knew, searching for any questions it still hadn’t answered. ‘How come your grandmother’s name was different from your mother’s?’
‘Very old Norwegian tradition. Granny always preferred the old ways. All children used to adopt their father’s name. Granny’s father was Hans, so she was called Hansen, which weirdly means ‘son of Hans’. My mother’s father was Adam, so she was Adamsen. Tracing family trees is a bitch if you’re Scandinavian.’ She looked down at the newspaper. Samuel’s face stared back at her. ‘You said you wanted to show me something that might help explain my brother’s death,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
She watched Arkadian’s hand tap uncertainly on the blue folder. He had softened towards her, but was still guarded.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I’m just as keen to find out what happened to him as you are. So you can either trust me or not, it’s up to you. But if you’re still worried about what I do for a living, then I’ll sign any gagging order you care to throw at me.’
Arkadian’s hand stopped drumming the file. He got up and left the room, leaving the folder behind.
Liv stared at it, fighting the urge to grab it and look inside while the Inspector was out of the room. He returned moments later with a pen and the Homicide unit’s standard non-disclosure agreement. She signed it and he checked the signature against a faxed copy of her passport. Then he opened the folder and slid a six-by-four glossy across the table.
The photo showed Samuel’s washed body lying on the examination table, the bright lights making the dark network of scars upon it stand out clear and grotesque on his pale skin.
Liv stared at it, dumbfounded. ‘Who did this to him?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘But you must’ve spoken to the people who knew him. Didn’t they know anything? Didn’t they say if he’d been acting strangely — or seemed depressed about something?’
Arkadian shook his head. ‘The only person we’ve managed to speak to is you. Your brother fell from the top of the Citadel. We assume he had been living inside it for some years, seeing as there’s no evidence of him living elsewhere in the city. How long did you say he was missing?’
‘Eight years.’
‘And in all that time there was no contact from him?’
‘None.’
‘So if he was there the whole time, the last people to see him alive would’ve been others inside the Citadel, and I’m afraid we’re not going to be able to talk to any of them. I’ve sent a request, but that’s just procedure. No one will speak to me.’
‘Can’t you make them?’
‘The Citadel is, quite literally, a law unto itself. It’s a state within a state with its own rules and system of justice. I can’t make them do anything.’
‘So they can choose to say zilch, even though someone has died, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it?’
‘Pretty much,’ Arkadian said. ‘Though I’m sure they’ll say something eventually. They’re as aware of positive PR as anyone. In the meantime, there are other avenues of enquiry we can explore.’ He removed three more photographs from the folder and slid the first across the table towards her.
Liv saw her phone number scratched on to a thin piece of leather.
‘We found that in your brother’s stomach. That’s how we managed to contact you so quickly.’ He slid the second photo towards her. ‘But that wasn’t all we found.’
Chapter 56
The roads in the Lost Quarter had first been haphazardly scratched into the earth by handcarts and horses in the early part of the sixth century and were now utterly unequal to the volume, speed and width of modern traffic. As road-widening required demolition, which wasn’t an option here, the town planners had implemented a one-way system so complex it ensnared cars like flies in its unfathomable web.
Driving his ambulance through these medieval streets was something Erdem had nightmares about. His paramedic’s operating manual required him to respond to any callout in the greater metropolitan area within fifteen minutes. It also required him to bring his vehicle back in the same state it went out. Which meant that a trip into this stony warren of paint-scraped walls at anything like the necessary speed to fulfil the first obligation inevitably resulted in a drastic failure to comply with the second.
He watched the cross on the side of the ambulance emerge slowly from the shadow of a stone archway, revealing the rod of Asclepius at its centre entwined with a serpent. He eased up the power and switched his eyes back to the road, trying to make up a little time until the next obstacle forced him back to a timid crawl.
‘How we doing?’ he asked.
‘We’re at fourteen already,’ Kemil replied, checking the watch. ‘Don’t think we’re going to be breaking any records on this one.’
The subject they were heading to was a white male who’d been found unconscious on one of the side streets at the edge of the Lost Quarter. Given the time of day and the man’s location, Erdem figured he was either an OD, or had suffered a gunshot or knife wound. Whoever had called it in hadn’t given much information, just enough to warrant an ambulance callout; all in all the perfect start to a perfect day.
‘Any news from the police?’ Erdem asked.
Kemil checked the radio scanner’s readout for a squad-car number. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘Probably still finishing off their coffee and breakfast rolls.’
The squad car was obviously not treating it as an emergency. Unlike the paramedics, they were under no pressure to respond within fifteen minutes — especially at breakfast time.
‘Here we go.’ Erdem eased round a corner and spotted a crumpled pile of clothes on the far side of the shadowy street. There was no sign of a police car. There was no sign of anyone.
‘Seventeen minutes,’ Kemil said, punching a button on the radio that would register their arrival time back at base. ‘Not too bad.’
‘And not a scratch on her,’ Erdem said, bringing the ambulance to a standstill, taking the keys from the ignition and slipping from the driver’s seat in a single practised move.
The man on the pavement was deathly pale and the moment Erdem rolled him into the recovery position he discovered why. His entire upper right leg was wet with blood. He lifted a flap of material in the torn trousers to see how bad the trauma was — and stopped. Instead of a gaping wound he was staring down at the blood-stained gauze of a tightly wrapped and fairly fresh dressing. He was about to turn and holler for Kemil when he felt the cold hard barrel of a gun against the back of his neck.
Kemil hadn’t even managed to get out of his seat before the bearded man appeared by his open window and pointed the pistol in his face.
‘Call it in,’ he said with an accented voice that sounded English. ‘No assistance required. Tell them the man you found was just drunk.’
Kemil reached blindly for the radio handset, his eyes flicking between the black hole of the muzzle and the steady blue eyes of the man holding it. This was only the second time he’d been ambushed in nearly six years. He knew the thing to do was stay calm and stay helpful, but this guy was really unsettling. The last time he’d been ’jacked, the gang wore ski masks and had been so strung out and jittery they were as likely to drop their guns as fire them. This guy was calm, and he wore no mask. All that disguised his appearance were a thick beard growing in patches round ridges of old burn tissue and the red hood of a windcheater pulled low over his long sandy hair.
Kemil’s hand found the radio handset. He picked it up and did as he was told.
Chapter 57
Liv stared down at the new photograph.
Another stainless-steel tray lined with a white paper towel, on top of which lay five small brown seeds, each with something scratched on to its shiny surface.
Ark
adian slid a third photo across the table.
‘The symbols were scratched on both sides,’ he said. ‘Five seeds, ten symbols — mostly letters, a mixture of upper and lower case.’
He arranged the photographs so one overlapped the other. The letters were now lined up in pairs.
T a M + k
? s A a l
‘They’re arranged in the same order in both photographs so you can see which marks were scratched on to each seed in case the pairings were deliberate. I can’t see anything in them myself, but perhaps that’s the point. Maybe it’s not supposed to be obvious to anyone. Maybe it was just meant for you.’
Liv looked at the jumble of letters.
‘Mean anything?’
‘Not immediately,’ she said. ‘Can I have that pen back?’
Arkadian reached into his pocket and handed it over.
She took the newspaper, smoothed it flat and copied the symbols into the blank sections of sky surrounding the image of her brother. She saw her own name emerge from the letters and spelled it out, adding the rest of the symbols underneath to maintain the original pairings.
s a M l?
a + A k T
Was it shorthand telling her SAMUEL had been ATTACKED? It seemed a bit of a stretch. Besides, the seeds had been discovered during his post-mortem, which surely made the warning somewhat redundant.
‘Haven’t you got expert code breakers for this kind of thing?’
‘There’s a cryptology professor at the big university in Gaziantep who helps us from time to time, but I haven’t called him. It seems to me your brother went to extraordinary lengths to make sure this message wasn’t found by the wrong people, so the least I could do was respect that. I honestly think it was intended for you and you’re the only one who’ll be able to make any sense of it.’ Arkadian lowered his voice. ‘No one else knows about these seeds. Just the pathologist who found them, me — and now you. I kept the photographs out of the file. If news of this got out, I’d have every Ruinologist and Sacramental conspiracy theorist offering their take on its meaning. I’m trying to solve this case, not the identity of the Sacrament — although. .’ He scrutinized the seeds once more.