The Manhattan Puzzle

by Laurence O'Bryan

  She pressed the P, and straightened herself up. She had to look normal in case anyone else got in.

  It wasn’t going to be easy. An image of Detective Grainger’s slumped body was still in her mind. A physical wave of revulsion passed through her. She shook, as if she was ill. She had to report this to Grainger’s colleagues.

  Who could have done this? She gripped her arms around herself.

  And what about that bald guy? Was he involved in the murder? Then she imagined him contacting other people, getting them to intercept the elevator. But at least they wouldn’t know which floor she was getting out on until the elevator stopped.

  The elevator kept going up. She willed herself to calm down. Maybe he hadn’t alerted anyone. But who the hell was he?

  She was leaning against the back wall, staring at the doors, waiting for them to stop and for someone to be standing there. A disturbing flashback of Detective Grainger kept playing in her mind. Over and over.

  She’d have to call the detective’s colleagues, tell them what had happened, do something about her lying there. It wasn’t right. All those cockroaches. Another wave of nausea ran through her. Poor woman. Just doing her job. She closed her eyes.

  Would Sean get blamed for this too?

  If the NYPD had been looking for him with their guns holstered, they’d certainly hold them in their hands after they heard about what had happened to one of their own.

  The elevator stopped.

  The doors opened, rattling at one point as if they were bent. She held her breath. She was looking into a dark corridor. Reflected lights from another building twinkled through a window at the far end.

  Her mobile beeped. She pulled it out.

  There was a voice message waiting for her.

  69

  The office in Whitehall was almost empty. Only four other staff members were monitoring news sites and video feeds.

  Henry Mowlam and Major Finch were watching a security camera feed from the exterior of the BXH building in New York. It was three forty-five in the morning London time and ten forty-five in the evening in New York. The crowd outside BXH was getting bigger. And people were still arriving, which, given the weather, was a small miracle.

  Then the camera view changed and Lexington Avenue appeared.

  ‘You did leave a voice message for her, didn’t you?’ said Finch.

  ‘I told her to contact me urgently. I couldn’t have made it any clearer that we needed to speak to her,’ said Henry.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Why haven’t we got internal access to the BXH building cameras?’ said Henry.

  ‘Ask the Prime Minister, Henry,’ said Finch.

  ‘I will, the next time I see him.’

  ‘You keep an eye on things while I brief the others.’ Finch gathered up the print-out they’d been arguing about and headed for the conference room, where two senior Bank of England executives were waiting, their heads close together, exchanging whispers.

  Henry didn’t mind that they were involved. It would relieve some pressure to know that the UK financial authorities were monitoring what was happening to BXH. Tens of thousands of UK employees would be directly impacted if anything happened to the bank. Henry didn’t want to have to worry about that. He had other things to concern himself with.

  The plan of the lowest level of the BXH building, and its likely significance as a location marker for a tomb of some type was what he’d been arguing with Finch about. He had convinced her not to tell anyone his pet theory yet, and he was glad of that victory.

  Now he had to work out what they would do when Sean Ryan was captured, because he surely would be. The murder case was increasingly looking closed against him following his confession.

  Whatever happened, it was likely that the US media would find out about the murdered dancer in London having a part of her skin cut off. That meant the internet would be alive with Satanist banker stories by Monday. The NYPD were notoriously leaky.

  The question he had to think about now was which part of this nightmare had any significance for his ongoing investigation; the threat to the UK financial sector, the threat of a psycho murderer on the loose, or the fact that he’d located a square and arrow symbol tomb site, which it appeared Lord Bidoner was about to take control of.

  And was there really something of significance in this symbol?

  He turned to his screen. And where was Isabel Ryan? Why wasn’t her phone on, and why hadn’t she picked up her messages?

  70

  A UK number was calling her again, it couldn’t be Sean as he was in America.

  Whoever had called her would have to wait.

  She gripped her forehead. The elevator doors pinged closed. It started moving up again. It felt as if the walls were closing in on her. She jabbed at her phone, called Sean.

  Answer, please, answer.

  A dizziness filled her.

  If ever you’re going to listen to me again, God, let it be now.

  A message – the number you called is unavailable – was read out by an incongruously optimistic-sounding female voice. She slid down the wall. What the hell was going on?

  She pushed herself back to her feet. She wasn’t going to disintegrate. Not now. Not ever.

  The light in the ceiling dimmed for a second. Then it came back, as if the building power had been cut off.

  The elevator jerked, but kept going up.

  She felt in her back pocket for the card Gus Reilly had given her. She should call him.

  The elevator stopped. The door pinged open.

  She was looking into a corridor with oak-panelled walls and polished side tables. This had to be the penthouse level. The depth of the shine on the wooden floor alone said that.

  Then the heat hit her. The elevator had been cold. But this floor was heated enough to walk around in just your socks. She stood still, the skin on her face prickling, sure that some guard would appear at any moment.

  Gold-framed Currier & Ives prints of old New York hung on the walls of the corridor. Yellow fake-looking marble pillars protruded from each side. A small crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling halfway along.

  If he was in the building this was definitely where Sean would be. She could feel it. And the best thing was that there was no one waiting for her. No one in the corridor. She’d gotten away.

  She stepped forward. The elevator pinged closed behind her. Then it hummed away. For a moment, as silence descended, she felt as if she was the only person in the building.

  She waited and listened, trying to work out what to do. There was a deep rumbling from somewhere far below. She thought about Detective Grainger again. She had to call someone when she was finished up here. It shouldn’t take long to check one floor.

  She stepped forward. After the concrete floor below, the polished wooden floor felt like glass under her shoes. Her head was buzzing with the implications of what she’d just been through. Seeing Grainger’s body had rattled her deeply. She had to be careful now. Very careful. Her heel squeaked on the floor. She stopped. There were two doors in the corridor, near where it opened into what she could already see was a high-ceilinged lobby.

  She started walking again. Her pulse was throbbing in her neck. As she came near the end of the corridor she heard a buzz of conversation. She stopped.

  She’d heard a whirr.

  She turned to her right and looked through a doorway. A two-foot-high stack of paper was feeding itself into a large shredding machine beside an office table. The machine was vibrating, quietly. A stream of shredded paper was falling into a giant white box, almost soundlessly.

  She moved closer and looked into the room, trying to be quiet. There was no one in it. The stack of papers was sitting in a box on the floor and a feeder was whirring every few seconds, sucking in sheets one at a time. She was about to go when she noticed what was on the sheets. It was something familiar.

  She went nearer the shredder.

  Each of the sheets had a line drawing of th
e square and arrow symbol on it. And each of them had notes on it, as if someone had being trying to work out what the symbol meant and had printed out copies.

  She stared at the sheets. Sean had been right. There was a connection between BXH and the book they had found in Istanbul. But what was it? What could connect a bank to a little known two-thousand-year-old symbol?

  Then she heard something else.

  It was a faint voice.

  And it pulled her forward like a fish on a hook.

  It was Sean’s voice.

  Oblivious to the throbbing in her chest, and feeling a sudden sense of vulnerability, she stepped out of the room through a door at the far end. She was in a double-height tomb-like lobby. A black marble staircase curved upwards in the centre. On the far side there was a large doorway. It was partly open. Sean’s voice was coming from it.

  ‘I did it. I killed her. Are you happy?’ he said, loudly.

  A sucking emptiness pulled at her. She was listening to her husband confessing to murder.

  She pressed her hand into the pit of her stomach and headed towards his voice, a moth moving towards its destruction.

  The double doors were in front of her. She could get through them without touching them.

  She moved into the room, her sense of vulnerability overridden by her need to see Sean. The space was bigger than a tennis court. It had three high windows overlooking the twinkling lights of Manhattan. At the far end of the room the crackle of logs burning emanated from a giant fireplace.

  Two people were standing in front of the fire, staring off and down to their right as if there was someone sitting there, out of sight. She walked towards them, moving almost silently, hoping to see Sean, yet afraid of what his words meant.

  Mr Vaughann was one of the men. Fred Pilman, BXH’s US Chief Executive, was the other.

  She’d only seen him once before. But he wasn’t the type of person you’d easily forget. He had silver hair, a square jaw and silver-rimmed glasses.

  She kept walking. For a long moment she felt invisible.

  Until Mr Pilman saw her. He raised an eyebrow, and touched Mr Vaughann’s arm. Vaughann looked towards her, did a double take, and swayed backwards. He looked like someone who’d spied his worst enemy.

  Her eyes scanned left and right as she went up the room. She had to walk around some ornate high-backed chairs.

  Sean had to be sitting on one of those chairs, half-turned away from her. The pounding in her throat had reached her ears.

  And then she saw what they were looking at.

  71

  Henry reached for his phone. It was time to call Isabel again. He looked up at the big white plastic clock on the end wall of the situation monitoring room. One more minute and he’d call her.

  That would mean he’d be calling her exactly every fifteen minutes. You didn’t want to frighten someone by calling every few minutes and it was best to have a pattern you could stick to. And report on.

  He looked at his screen. The information about the movement of funds into the Ebony Dragon hedge fund was giving him real cause for concern. The original Chinese suitor for BXH was a bank controlled by a Mr Li. But that takeover had been cancelled.

  But now Li’s funds were being made available to the Ebony Dragon hedge fund, which was the preferred bidder to take over BXH. It would look like a Western fund was taking over the bank, but much of the money was still going to be Chinese.

  It would be quite a coup, if Lord Bidoner pulled it off.

  He pressed the call button on the phone. He waited.

  Then, at last, her phone began ringing.

  72

  They were watching Sean on a small LCD TV. It was sitting on a low table near the wall on her right. On the screen Sean was holding his head, looking down. She felt a sharp tug of disappointment, followed by a warm rush of relief. This was just the same confession she’d already seen. It was a different bit of it, but it was still a recording, which could be doctored.

  Her phone warbled. She pulled it from her pocket and switched it to vibrate. Someone in the UK was calling her again.

  ‘How did you get up here?’ said Pilman. His voice was weedy, but firm.

  ‘Where’s Sean?’ she replied, her words tumbling out, as she put her phone back in her pocket.

  ‘And what the hell’s going on here?’ She looked at the TV. It was silent now.

  ‘You can’t just walk in here,’ said Vaughann, loudly. His tone was superior, gold-plated confidence. He pointed a remote control at the TV. It went blank.

  Then he turned to her.

  ‘This is a private floor.’ He looked past her, as if he expected to see a guard behind her. ‘I know your husband being missing is traumatic, but you are trespassing up here.’

  ‘I’m looking for Sean.’

  ‘Well, you can see he’s not here. Now you must go.’ Vaughann sounded angry.

  That was good.

  ‘You have no idea where he is?’ She said it calmly, though every cell in her body felt raw.

  ‘That’s correct, Mrs Ryan. You need to look for him somewhere else.’

  She jabbed a finger at Vaughann. It was shaking. ‘If Sean did anything wrong, I’m damn sure it was because of BXH. There’s something very odd going on here. Or maybe you’re shredding all those documents for no reason.’

  Vaughann shook his head. ‘We shred all unnecessary documents every week, Mrs Ryan. It doesn’t mean anything.’

  She raised her eyebrow. ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘You must leave,’ he said. He waved at her, dismissing her. Then he sneered.

  ‘Go away. You are trespassing.’ His voice was raised. She was a piece of dirt he wanted removed.

  He stepped towards her, put a hand on her upper arm, gripped her and pushed to get her to go.

  Something flipped inside her. Anger rose. She couldn’t control it. She spun, rage slipping loose from its reins and hit his cheek, hard, in a backhanded gesture.

  He cried out in a high-pitched moan.

  The blow had reverberated into the bones of her hand and wrist. There was a horrible moment of sudden regret when she thought he was going to push her back or maybe even hit her. But she stood her ground.

  And he stepped back, even though he was a lot taller than her. One hand went to his cheek. The smell of his aftershave was in her nostrils.

  ‘You deserved that,’ she said. She was shaking.

  She pointed at him. ‘Don’t touch me again. Ever.’

  Vaughann was rubbing his face. His eyes had narrowed. He stared at her with undisguised malevolence.

  Pilman came towards them. His hands were high in the air, as if he wanted a truce.

  ‘Mrs Ryan, we just want you to leave. Mr Vaughann will not touch you again.’ He put a hand on Vaughann’s shoulder, pushed him gently to the side.

  Then he smiled at her, as if he was trying to sell her something.

  She was trembling.

  ‘I am sorry that he touched you. My colleague is under a lot of pressure.’ His eyes flickered over her shoulder.

  She glanced behind her. Standing by the door was a security guard. She could feel the blood moving out of her face, a weakness in her knees. But at least it wasn’t the bald guy she’d seen earlier.

  ‘You can leave this to us,’ said Pilman, loudly. Her turned to her. ‘We know Mrs Ryan.’

  Vaughann looked pissed off. His facial muscles bulged, as if he was physically restraining himself.

  The trembling inside her slowed. She gave Vaughann a crooked smile. The guard turned on his heel and left the room.

  ‘Detective Grainger is dead,’ she said.

  ‘We heard the news a few minutes ago,’ Pilman replied ‘It’s been a terrible shock. Absolutely awful. Apparently every free NYPD officer in midtown has been called to this building. We’ve never had anything like it. We haven’t had a serious criminal investigation here for twenty years. This building is going to be swarming with officers soon, all looking for your husba
nd, Mrs Ryan. That’s what all this is about.’ He stared at her.

  She got the impression he was almost blaming her for it all.

  ‘Sean isn’t a murderer,’ she said. Her voice came out high-pitched.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Vaughann. He had straightened his expression. He looked unruffled now, though she was sure he wouldn’t easily forget what she’d done. But she was still glad she’d slapped him.

  ‘You’re not going to frame him.’ She was trying not to shout, but her head was buzzing. She took a deep breath, making a conscious effort to slow her breathing.

  ‘Some people just snap, Mrs Ryan. You have to accept that. His confession is damning,’ said Pilman. He sounded concerned at her refusal to face facts.

  Vaughann was staring at her. You could have bottled his contempt, sold it as an anti-personnel device.

  ‘Someone came running at me down there. He looked very strange.’

  Vaughann looked as if he doubted everything she said.

  ‘You must explain everything that’s happened to you to the police, Mrs Ryan. We’ll see to it that Sean gets a good lawyer here, though we don’t have to,’ said Pilman.

  Isabel saw a silver pot of coffee on a warmer with some gold-rimmed cups and saucers on a mahogany table near the window. She walked towards it. Her legs felt shaky. She had to get some caffeine into her. She didn’t ask for permission, she just poured herself a cup.

  They were whispering to each other when she turned around.

  ‘Sean knew a lot about BXH, didn’t he?’ She gripped the cup firmly. The coffee was lukewarm, but good, damn good. She drank almost the whole cup in one gulp.

  Then she walked over to where they were standing, in front of the low table.

  ‘Why are you watching Sean’s confession?’

  ‘We’re still getting used to having an employee confess to murder,’ said Vaughann.

  She put her empty cup down. Behind the coffee table, there was a door with square panels of sparkling leaded glass. The glass was tinged yellow, like the ornately patterned wallpaper, which covered the walls with intertwined flowers. The door looked as if it might lead out to a balcony. Should she be looking around, doing what she’d come up here to do?