by Sam Christer
It makes him smile. He runs his fingers over the top of the page and feels himself slipping back to childhood. His father never kicked a football with him, never swung a cricket bat, never took him swimming. But he played mind games with him. Nathaniel spent hours devising puzzles, teasers, problems and games that imbued in him powers of logic and the roots of classical learning.
The letters ΓΚΝΔΜΥ ΚΛΥ are ancient Greek, which his father considered the first true alphabet, the source of European, Latin and Middle Eastern alphabets. And he recognised its importance in mathematics, physics and astronomy. His son was made to learn every letter. To test the boy, and to break the boredom, the professor devised a simple code. The twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet assumed reverse values to their English equivalents, so Omega represented A and so on until Alpha represented X. The obsolete Greek letters Digamma and Qoppa represented the final English letters Y and Z. For years Nathaniel would leave his son coded notes around the house – until the relationship became too strained for any form of communication.
Gideon struggles to remember the code. It’s been more than fifteen years. Then it comes to him. ΓΚΝΔΜΥ ΚΛΥ means VOLUME ONE. He glances up again at the dozens of books and wonders how many coded words have been written. It could take a lifetime to decipher them all.
A lifetime to translate a lifetime.
He turns another page, and feels queasy. The handwriting is a savage reminder of the suicide note. He tries to make sense of the first paragraph but he is too rusty to get further than a few words. From the low coffee table he picks up some paper and a couple of pens – black and red. He constructs a table, writing the Greek letters on the left and to the right, the English.
Qoppa Z
F Digamma Y
Α Alpha X
Β Beta W
Γ Gamma V
Δ Delta U
Ε Epsilon T
Ζ Zeta S
Η Eta R
Θ Theta Q
Ι Iota P
Κ Kappa O
Λ Lambda N
Μ Mu M
Ν Nu L
Ξ Xi K
Ο Omicron J
Π Pi I
Ρ Rho H
Σ Sigma G
Τ Tau F
Υ Upsilon E
Φ Phi D
Χ Chi C
Ψ Psi B
Ω Omega A
Using the table, he scans the opening page and quickly translates ΛΩΕΡΩΛΠΥΝ into NATHANIEL and ΧΡΩΖΥ into CHASE. The journal is written in the first person and contains his father’s day-to-day thoughts.
He flicks through a dozen or so more pages, not looking for anything in particular, fascinated that he can travel backwards or forwards through days, months or years of his father’s life. Halfway through the journal, the writing becomes bolder. The passages look as though they’ve been written with vigour and excitement. Years of speed-reading have trained Gideon’s eyes to hop diagonally down a document in search of key words.
ΖΕΚΛΥΡΥΛΣΥ, ΨΝΚΚΦ and ΖΩΧΗΠΤΠΧΥ leap out at him.
He hopes he’s made a mistake. Prays that tiredness has made him jump to the wrong conclusion. On its own, ΖΕΚΛΥΡΥΛΣΥ may be innocuous enough; he’d expect his father to mention it. It means STONEHENGE.
It’s the other two words that are chilling his soul.
ΨΝΚΚΦ is BLOOD.
And ΖΩΧΗΠΤΠΧΥ is SACRIFICE.
22
MARYLEBONE, LONDON
Jake Timberland flings his suit in a corner and sits on the edge of his giant black leather bed with built-in fifty-inch plasma and room dimmers. He’s too wired to get any sleep and strangely enough not in the mood to go hunting cute-ass-would-be-wags for the rest of the night. In any case, the date isn’t over. Thanks to his mobile phone, it’s about to go virtual. The beauty of technology.
In his left hand is his iPhone and in his right the piece of paper with the padlock doodle that the American lovely gave him. Caitlyn to be more precise. Caitlyn Lock.
Just being seen within touching distance of ‘The Lock’, as she’s known, could make him an ‘A-Lister’. He reckons that right now she’ll be doing one of three things. She could still be partying, which he doubts because the gorillas probably wouldn’t allow her that much freedom. She could be having a drink with some of the other clean-cut cuties she was hanging with. Possible. Or she could be a good little girl and already in bed. Probable. Whichever it is, she’ll be thinking about him. You don’t kiss someone like she did and then not think about it later.
What he has to do is tap into that. Tap in and stretch it while it’s still fresh. Give himself something to build a little romance on. And the perfect tool to pull off that little trick is sexy texting. Nothing hard core. Just a couple of short notes to say that he can’t stop thinking about her. Start off casual and polite then feel his way in, reveal a little more of his emotions. No point simply gushing it all out on the first message. If you do that, the girl won’t reply, she’ll just leave you hanging on until you try again.
Jake gets typing. Hope you got home ok. It was great to meet you tonight. Jake. No, that’s not good. He rewrites: Hope you got home ok. It was GREAT to meet you tonight. Jake.
Still not right.
He remembers her age. Considerably younger than him. He adjusts again: Hope u r ok. Gr8 2 meet u! Jake x.
He allows himself a satisfied smile and hits send. Phones are terrific. He watches the little virtual envelope on the screen fold itself up, develop wings and then fly off, straight to the heart of the woman he loves. Well yeah, maybe. For now it’s lust, pure and simple. But let’s face it, without that, love probably doesn’t have a chance.
The phone beeps. Wow, she’s replied quickly. Good sign.
U can ring if u want x.
Not what he expected. Not what he wanted either. A little text flirting before turning in for the night was a perfect idea, but a conversation right now could blow things. He thinks. When a girl says you can ring if you want, that’s not a request, it’s an instruction.
Jake pulls off his socks and shirt, grabs a glass of water from the bathroom and climbs in bed. He feels almost panicky as he calls her.
‘It’s Jake. Hi.’
‘Hi there.’ Her voice is soft and a little sleepy. ‘I wondered if you’d ring or text.’
‘Even after you saw me sit down in a puddle?’
She laughs a little. ‘Especially after you dumped your ass in a puddle.’
‘Actually, I didn’t dump my ass – one of your apes did.’
‘That would be Eric. He has a thing for me. I’ve seen him rough guys up much worse. Much, much worse than you got and I didn’t even kiss them.’
‘Remind me not to put Eric on my Christmas card list.’
‘He’s just protective.’
‘So I noticed. Why did you do that?’
‘Do what?’
‘Kiss me.’
‘Ah, that would be because I wanted to.’ Her voice is almost sleepy. ‘And let’s face it, you wanted me to.’
‘I did?’
‘I’ve never seen a man aching so badly to be kissed.’
He laughs. ‘You’ve no idea how much.’
‘Oh, I’ve an idea all right. You were sticking it in my hip. Pretty big clue.’
He feigns shock. ‘Oh my God, was I?’
‘Yeah right, like you didn’t know.’
‘Let’s change the subject before one of us gets embarrassed.’
‘It won’t be me.’
‘I believe you. How do I get to see you again?’
‘Good question.’
‘And?’
‘And you have to be patient. You can use this phone to call me, it’s my own pay-as-you-go, but it may be a while before we can meet up.’
‘What about my aching?’
‘Be inventive. Goodnight.’
The phone goes dead.
He’s left staring at it. Wondering how he’s goin
g to cope with his pounding heart and a hard-on so big he could spin a plate on it.
23
After yesterday’s sleepless night, Megan is relieved to have her daughter tucked up and sound asleep in her own bed tonight. Loath him as she does, Adam had a point. She switches off the bedroom light, closes the door on her already snoring angel and the army of soft toys surrounding her. Sammy’s temperature’s down, she’s less clammy and feverish. Come the morning her little angel may be back to her normal self.
Megan wanders into the open-plan kitchen-lounge of her small cottage and empties the last of a bottle of Chianti into a glass. Maybe she’ll turn on the TV and watch something dull, clear her head of the worries about Sammy, money and the ever-present problem of balancing motherhood and her job.
But the Chase case is bugging her like a wasp. Suicides usually put a gun to their head and mess up the walls for one of three reasons: they can’t live with the guilt and shame of something they’ve done, they’re afraid of something they’ve done being exposed and their personal or private reputation ruined, or they’re desperately ill, either physically or mentally.
Nathaniel Chase doesn’t seem to fit any of those categories. She’s pulled all the background intelligence she can. Bank records, mortgage accounts, stockbroker dealings, everything financial and personal on both father and son. But there are no real clues. Fascinating family – and deceptively wealthy. Or at least now the son is. He’s getting it all, the solicitors told her. From what she can see, that turns out to be more than £20m in property, cars, stocks and savings. As well as the estate and the two cars garaged in it – a seven-year-old Range Rover and a vintage Rolls valued at more than a million – there are paintings and antiques held in vaults, collectively worth in excess of five million. There is Nathaniel Chase’s portfolio of personal investments and private banking matters, all routed through UBS in Switzerland. Another six million. Strangely, UBS didn’t handle his company activities. He left that to Credit Suisse and this year’s figures show a bottom-line profit of more than a million. The old professor owned land across the county too, no doubt of obscure archaeological worth.
Now it’s all Gideon’s.
She looks again at the money trail. If in doubt, follow the cash. If it’s not about sex, it’s about money. If there’s no other explanation, then it’s money. Always money.
Could the son have faked his father’s suicide? He had so much to gain and she knows he’s lying to her. Might explain why he didn’t identify the man who attacked him in his father’s study. Maybe the attacker was an accomplice. Perhaps Gideon Chase is really a murderer and a fraudster?
Then again she could just be very tired and not thinking straight. She gives in and switches on the TV. The X Factor. Fantastic. Utter drivel. Just what she needs to forget about work.
24
It’s the middle of the night and Sean Grabb can’t sleep.
He knows a good rest is a long way off. Years away. He pulls a fresh bottle of vodka from his fridge, unscrews the top and swallows almost a quarter without even getting a glass. He’s not so dumb that he doesn’t understand what’s happening. If any sane man had done half the things he has, they’d be hitting the bottle as well.
That’s how he rationalises it, as he finally gets a tumbler from the loose-hinged cupboard in the tatty kitchen of his terraced home. Some nights the memories are just too much to bear. They hit the back of his retinal screen like the flash frames of a horror film. Tonight is one of those nights. The image of the sacrifice’s smashed skull won’t go away. Nor that of his dull empty eyes or his moon-white, bled-out flesh.
Grabb downs another blast of vodka. It was done for the greater good. He gets that. But it doesn’t stop the horror show rerunning in his head. One blink and he’s back there dealing with the corpse. Dead meat, that’s what Musca had called it. Told him to treat the kid that way. Imagine the body was a rack of lamb, a leg of pork.
They threw the mutilated corpse into the back of Musca’s van and drove out to the abattoir, for which he had keys. The kid weighed a ton as they hoisted him up on to the processing line. Musca dangled him upside down, like a stunned cow, then he slit his throat and drained the last of the blood into a run-off grid.
Grabb can still hear the clank of the chains, the buzz of the electric motor and the ghostly echoes of equipment clunking into life and towing the dead body along the line. Then the monstrous mangling. The decapitation. The organ removal. The skin peeled off by hydraulic pullers. He almost threw up when Musca had to free flesh clogged from the claws of their automated accomplices.
He takes another hit of vodka. But the images stick. They’re clogged in his memory. Stuck as doggedly as the awful clumps of flesh that jammed the process line. He tells himself that the visions will fade but deep down he knows they won’t. They’ll always be there. Now the soft, warm wave is coming. Not fast enough, but it’s coming. He can feel it rolling in. But it won’t wash away the guilt. Or the fear of being caught.
The line stripped the kid’s bones clear of any shred of flesh or evidence that could be used against them or anyone. The advanced meat recovery system at the plant reduced it all to mechanically recovered meat – ready for human or animal consumption. It was so damned efficient it even produced neat packages of bone, lard and tallow. The blood and fecal matter just got dumped, washed away like sewage.
‘No need to worry,’ Musca kept saying. ‘No need to fret.’
But he was worried. Is fretting. Not just about the nightmares. Or the guilt. But that it’s all got to be done again.
Soon.
25
THURSDAY 17 JUNE
LONDON
Caitlyn Lock squints through the morning’s bitter yellow haze across the shimmering water of the Thames. She is lying in the warm soft bed at her father’s apartment, just one of his many properties. There is a house in Rome. Another in Paris. And two or maybe three more in Spain and Switzerland. So many she can’t remember. Then there are the places back home: LA, New York, Washington. Pop is famous and loaded. And Caitlyn is on track to become more famous and loaded than he is. Or her mom.
She will talk about her father at the drop of a hat, but not her mother. Oh, no. Mom is out of bounds. Kylie Lock is a minor Hollywood star who walked out on them to set up with her toy boy co-star. Caitlyn can barely give her the time of day, let alone free publicity. If she was honest, maybe she’d admit understanding what she sees in François, a dark-eyed Frenchman who tops six feet and looks like he could model swim shorts.
She gives up hugging the quilt and slips naked out of bed. Hands on hips, she admires herself in the long mirror next to the giant picture window overlooking the London Eye. She turns. Strikes a coy look over her shoulder and completes a three-sixty. Her mom would kill to have a body like this.
She turns sideward, studies the Union Jack tattoo on her behind. No one but her and the tattooist who put it there has seen it yet. She pads over the cream shag pile carpet to the low table with her cellphone on it. She laughs and picks it up. It’s untraceable. Packed with pay-as-you-go credit that no one but she and her girlfriends know about. She turns it on and taps in the pin. While waiting for it to find a network, she looks at her ass again, thinking how hard her pop will kick it if he ever finds out what she’s about to do.
The phone finds a signal and she thumbs her way through to the camera function. It takes a while for her to stop giggling and shoot some pictures. Most are hazy and badly framed – finally she takes one that will do just fine.
She sits on the edge of the bed, brings up Jake’s number and adds a brief message. She hits send and collapses with laughter.
26
Chepstow, Chepstow and Hawks looks more like an antique auctioneers than a law office. A legal professor at Cambridge once told Gideon you can classify the client according to the lawyer he engages and Chepstow and Co. seems to prove his point. Traditional and reliable no doubt, but old-fashioned and dusty. The place fits Nathaniel to
a T.
A grey-haired, bespectacled woman in her fifties tells him politely that Mr Chepstow is ready to see him and leads the way to a mahogany-panelled door bearing its occupiers’ brass nameplate. The man rises from behind a squat walnut pedestal desk in the corner, framed by a curtain-less sash window. ‘Lucian Chepstow.’ He thrusts a Rolex-wristed hand from the cuff of a blue pin-striped suit.
‘Gideon Chase. Pleased to meet you.’ He silently curses his automatic politeness.
‘I’m very sorry about your father. Please take a seat.’
Gideon occupies one of two leather library chairs positioned on the near side of the grand desk, while the lawyer, a man in his early forties with grey-white hair, returns to his seat, smoothes down his jacket and sits.
‘Have you been offered tea? Or water?’
‘I’m fine, thanks.’
Chepstow places his hand on the desk phone. ‘Are you sure?’
Gideon’s irritated to be asked twice. He puts his uncharacteristic edginess down to unfamiliarity, the unpleasant circumstances. ‘Thanks, but really I’m fine.’
The door opens. A worn old man lumbers in – shoulders slightly rounded. Unmistakably Lucian’s father, the practice’s founder. ‘Cedric Chepstow,’ he mumbles, almost as though answering a question. Without offering his hand, he takes the chair beside Gideon. ‘I hope you don’t mind my coming in. I want to offer my condolences. I knew your father very well. Splendid fellow. I’ve been his solicitor for twenty years.’
Gideon considers pointing out that Nathaniel never qualified for the title ‘splendid’ but lets it slide. ‘No, not at all. Thank you.’ He adds, almost surprising himself, ‘How well did you know him? What exactly did you do for him?’
The Chepstows exchange glances. The question has clearly thrown them, and that interests Gideon.
‘More professional than personal,’ concedes the old man. ‘We handled all the legal paperwork connected with his businesses – deal memos, contracts, agreements, some import and export documentation, those kind of things. He was one of our major clients.’