by Sam Christer
Hunt nods understandingly. ‘Mr Vice President, we would welcome the assistance of the FBI. I will have my staff officer make arrangements with the Director General’s office.’
Kylie Lock speaks for the first time. She wants to ask only one question and the nervous pitch in her voice betrays how frightened she is of what the answer may be. ‘Please tell me, Mr Hunt, honestly, do you think my daughter is still alive?’
The Chief Constable answers without hesitation. ‘I am sure she is. I feel confident that we’ll soon find her.’
Kylie smiles, relieved.
Thom Lock’s eyes tell a different story. He would have said exactly the same if he’d been in the chief’s position. He knows the truth. It’s unlikely his daughter will get out of this alive.
83
Megan can’t face another minute at work. She shuts down her computer, grabs her stuff and slips out into the car park. The only consolation is that Sammy doesn’t now have to stay at Adam’s.
Lost in anger at being dropped from the big case, she almost misses Gideon Chase walking towards reception. His head is down and it’s clear he’s burdened with even darker thoughts than her own. ‘Gideon,’ she shouts.
He lifts his eyes, forces a weak smile and turns and heads towards her car. ‘Inspector, I was just coming to see you.’
Megan glances at her watch. ‘You should have called. I have to pick up my daughter. Is it something that can wait until the morning?’
He looks disappointed. ‘Of course, not a problem.’
But she can tell that he doesn’t mean it. ‘What’s wrong? Why did you drove out here to see me?’
He’s been rehearsing things in his mind for the past hour but now he’s really not sure where to begin. ‘You were right. I haven’t been telling you the truth about everything.’
‘What do you mean?’ For a second she can’t remember what it was that she had been accusing him of lying about.
‘I saw the man who broke into the house, my father’s house.’ He holds out his mobile. ‘I got a picture of him.’
She takes the phone from his hand. The photograph is not good. Shaky. Burned out a little by the cheap flash. Badly framed. Everything you shouldn’t do if you’re trying to take a good picture. But there’s enough to go on. A face to fit her profile.
Megan looks long and hard at the shot of the stocky man with rounded shoulders and short blond hair. He’s just as she imagined. White male, mid-thirties, somewhere around fourteen stone, quite broad, forty-two- to forty-four-inch chest.
‘I took it just before I shut the door on him,’ Gideon explains. ‘If you look closely, you can see the papers burning in his hand.’
She squints at the tiny screen and sees he’s right. The photo is better than she first thought. It’s evidential. ‘Why didn’t you want us to know about this?’
He shrugs. ‘It’s hard to explain. I guess I thought I could track him down before you did.’
‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘To ask him about my father. Find out what he’d been involved in. What it had all meant to him.’
She senses there’s more to it than just a need for personal retribution. ‘What do you mean, “what it had all meant to him”?’
Gideon freezes. He wants to tell her, have her help him make sense of things but he also doesn’t want to seem crazy. ‘My father kept diaries all of his life. Every year since he was eighteen.’
Megan doesn’t remember any reports mentioning diaries found at the house. ‘So?’
‘I think they could be important.’ He studies her, looking for a reaction. ‘Do you know anything about the stones and the Followers of the Sacreds?’
‘What stones?’
‘Stonehenge.’
She laughs. ‘Listen. I’m having a very bad day and I can’t work out riddles. What is it? What are you talking about?’
‘My father was a member of a secret organisation. It was …’ he corrects himself, ‘… it is called “the Followers of the Sacreds”.’
The DI gives him a cynical look. ‘So what? Your father had a secret club. He wouldn’t be the first. The police service is full of Freemasons and the like. I’m sorry, I really have got to go.’
‘It wasn’t like Freemasonry,’ Gideon snaps. ‘This group is dangerous. They’re involved in all kinds of things, rituals, maybe sacrifices.’
Megan scans him. He’s clearly exhausted. Depressed. Possibly even post-traumatically stressed. ‘Gideon, have you had any decent sleep recently?’
He shakes his head. ‘Not much.’
Now it all makes sense to her. His father’s death and the burglary and attack on him must be taking their toll. ‘Maybe it could be a good idea to see a doctor? They can give you something to help you rest. Get you through things for a few weeks.’
‘I don’t need drugs or advice, inspector. I need you to take me seriously. My father killed himself because of this group, the Followers of the Sacreds. I don’t know exactly why. But I think it all has something to do with me.’
She looks from her car to the front door of the station. Only one will take her home to her daughter.
‘This has to wait until tomorrow,’ she says. She holds up his phone. ‘I am keeping this until I can make a copy of the photograph that you showed me. I’ll give it back when I see you.’
Gideon nods disappointedly. ‘Please come to the house. I’ll show you the diaries. Then you’ll see things differently.’
Megan hesitates, her own personal safety is always at the back of her mind and Chase is showing signs of becoming unstable. ‘My DS and I can come around at ten in the morning. Is that all right?’
‘Ten is fine.’
They say goodnight and she walks to her car looking down at the mobile that he gave her and the face of the blond-haired man with a fistful of fire.
PART THREE
84
MONDAY 21 JUNE, SUMMER SOLSTICE
STONEHENGE
High on the hillsides surrounding the stones, Lookers watch the revellers gather like ants around the giant sarsens. The pilgrims hold hands, forming their own human circle against the Megalithic landscape. Throughout the dark hours of the night the men of the Craft have watched them come.
Thousands of strangers. People of multiple nationalities, ages and beliefs. Pagans, druids, Wiccans, heathens, Christians, Catholics and Jews. Some of them to worship. Others just to witness the spectacle. They have come. Just as they always do.
Out in the darkness, in the undulating Wiltshire fields, there are illegal camps and the crackle of small bonfires, lit as in ancient times to mark the passing of the solstice. The site itself has been flooded with a wave of pagan colour since access to the stones was opened in the night.
The mystique, the ancient customs and practice of the solstice come up against the machine of modern organisation. Crowd control, hygiene, traffic routing. And devotion to one of the oldest gods. Money. Even the samba bands are selling CDs of their own works, with souvenirs as plentiful as drugs and booze.
They have journeyed from across the world for this day and as they near the henge, they become aware that the intense police activity is not only for them. Word travels about the missing American girl and her dead lover and many kneel and pray out of respect and hope.
The drumming that has gone on all night picks up a heavier, more urgent rhythm. The air buzzes with excitement. White-robed druids rehearse their prayers. Bare-chested pagan men dance with pensioners in anoraks and hippy women with beads and flowers in their hair.
Primitive horns start to sound, the orchestra of the old infiltrated by new immigrant vuvuzelas. Waves of cheering, clapping and chanting ripple across the pond of people. Innocent eyes, some glazed with drugs, others bright with virgin anticipation, are now all trained on the pink sky, waiting for the magic, straining for the first flash of sunlight to pierce the most famous stone circle in the world.
The sun breaks and penetrates the ringed sarsens. A giant che
er erupts.
Aside from the Lookers, there are no Followers anywhere near the henge. They know better. Instead, they are gathered miles away in the Sanctuary. They kneel on the cold stone of the Great Room. The place where their gods are located.
85
When Gideon wakes he squints at his watch and knows instantly that he’d been right going back to the police. It’s nearly ten in the morning of the longest day of the year and he’s just had his first real sleep for almost a week. A weight has been lifted from his shoulders.
He showers, shaves and hurries downstairs. The security buzzer sounds just as he’s filling the kettle. He presses the electromagnetic release and on the monitor watches Megan’s car glide through the grand iron gates and up the gravelled driveway.
He opens the front door. ‘Good morning,’ he says brightly.
‘Morning,’ replies Megan, less enthusiastically. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Dockery.’
The DS smiles from beneath his sunglasses and offers his hand.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ says Gideon shaking it vigorously. ‘Come through to the back.’
The two officers trail him into the kitchen and settle around a rectangular pine table while he makes hot drinks and small talk. ‘I guess you’re busy with the solstice?’
‘Very,’ says Megan. ‘The roads are crazy. I should do what my ex does, stay away from work at this time of the year. Drives me mad.’
‘It alternates,’ says Jimmy. ‘One year the mob is well behaved and the next they let rip like wild animals.’
Gideon sorts out teas and coffees, milk and sugar and then joins them at the table. Megan sees this as her cue to gear-change the conversation. ‘Last night you spoke about your father’s diaries and implied that they might shed some light on his death. Can we see them?’
He puts his cup down and stands. ‘Yes, yes you can. But you need to know something.’
‘What?’
He walks to the foot of the stairs. ‘They’re not easy to follow. Wait, it’s best I show you what I mean.’
He goes to the hidden room and selects one of the volumes that he has decoded. He returns slightly breathless and hands the diary to Megan.
‘What is this language?’ She holds the book at arm’s length, as though it might somehow help.
‘Code,’ he explains. ‘My father wrote all the diaries in code. He devised it when I was a kid, as a way to teach me Greek.’
She squints at the open pages. ‘This is Greek?’
‘Not really. It is Greek but Greek backwards. The letters have reverse values to their English equivalents, so Omega represents A and so on.’ He reaches for a pen and on the edge of an old newspaper writes out ΜΥΣΩΛ ΨΩΞΥΗ. He hands it to Megan. ‘What do you think that says?’
‘Megan Baker.’
He looks spooked. ‘How do you know that? You barely looked at it.’
She smiles. ‘What else would you write? You’re trying to interest me, have me take a personal stake in understanding the language. So it follows that you would write something personal, and the only personal thing you know about me is my name.’ She turns the pages of the journal. ‘Why did your father do this? Why did he feel the need to write in a code that only you and he understood?’
Gideon is not completely sure. ‘So no one else could understand it?’
She weighs it up. ‘You write a diary because one day you want someone else to read it. People think otherwise but it’s true. If what your father has written is important, then he wanted you to read it and perhaps do something with it. Something he thought only you could do. Maybe he wanted you to translate and publish it?’
Gideon suspects publication is the last thing Nathaniel wanted. But her words have touched a nerve. ‘You think he wants me to approve of all this? Be a part of it?’
‘I don’t know. What is the “this” that you’re talking about? Why don’t you tell us?’
Over the next couple of hours he tries to. He reads them some of the important extracts he’s translated – about the Followers of the Sacreds, the powers of the stones, their roles as all-healing gods. He even discloses some details about his mother’s death, her fatal disease and Nathaniel’s fear that he may have inherited the condition.
Megan is not sure how to voice what’s on her mind without offending him. In the end she just comes out with it. ‘It is possible that your father was mentally ill.’ She tries to soften the blow. ‘He was a brilliant man. He could well have hidden something like that.’
‘He wasn’t mad,’ insists Gideon. ‘There’s a lot of truth in what he wrote.’
‘Provable truth?’ queries Jimmy.
Gideon gets up from his seat and goes to the window. He looks out over the lawns that his father walked. He feels uncomfortable having the police in the house, about discussing his father and his private life, but their scepticism gives him no choice. ‘When I was a kid, I was ill. Very ill. It was probably the start of the same disease that killed my mother.’ He looks back from the garden to the officers. ‘You know what my father did? He took me home from hospital and gave me a cold bath. A special bath that cured me. The water he sat and bathed me in was collected from Stonehenge. When I could walk again, he took me there and made me touch all of the stones, the giant sarsens and even the smaller bluestones. Since then I’ve had no trace of that disease. No illness. My health is remarkable. My skin and body recovers from cuts and bruises faster than anyone else’s that I know.’
Jimmy gives Megan a discreet but telling glance.
Gideon sees it. ‘I know you think I’m crazy, but I’m not.’ He returns to the table, reaches across it and takes Megan’s right hand. ‘You cut yourself, right? How long have you had that blue plaster on your finger?’
She looks at the dirty wrap. ‘I don’t know. Maybe a week. It was quite a deep cut.’
‘Look at my face.’ Gideon angles his jaw towards her. ‘You came to see me in hospital after I was assaulted. You saw the cuts and bruises. Do you see them now?’
She doesn’t.
‘What happened to the wound to my jaw that they wanted to put stitches in?’ He sees a flash of doubt in her eyes and tilts his chin. ‘And the split lip? Do you see any sign of it? Any trace at all?’
Megan’s heart races. She doesn’t. His skin is unmarked. Not even a scratch.
There’s a flash of triumph in Gideon’s eyes. ‘You still have a plaster on a little cut. From a week ago. Now tell me that my father was mad. Tell me that there is no truth in any of his writings.’
86
The top brass had a sleepless night. A call in the early hours turned the investigators’ lives upside down. A call from Caitlyn’s kidnappers.
By the time the Chief Constable and his team assemble in his office the story is already out. A tip-off, no doubt from inside the force. The world’s press is camped outside police HQ.
Commander Barney Gibson kicks off the emergency meeting. ‘At two a.m. a call was put through to the incident room. As a matter of routine it was recorded. I will play it for you in a moment. The call has been traced to a public telephone box. No surprise in that. Except this call box was not in England – it was in France.’ He waits for the significance to sink in. ‘It was made from a public box off Rue La Fayette almost in the centre of Paris. French police are at the scene and are looking for camera footage, but I’ll be very surprised if they find any. They’ll go over it for fingerprints or any other trace evidence that might match against our fingerprint or DNA databases.’
Hunt is anxious to move things on. Thom Lock has been informed and is on his way from his hotel. ‘Please play the tape, Barney.’
Gibson presses a digital recorder placed in the middle of the table. They hear a voice. Male. English. The sound quality is poor. ‘You’ve been expecting this call, we know you have. We have Caitlyn Lock and shortly you will hear our demands.’ A pause and a click. The girl’s voice floats eerily into the room. It’s low and sad. ‘My dad used to read to me.
Every bedtime he’d sit beneath the quilt with me and read until I fell asleep.’ She laughs sadly. ‘He made up stories about a fairy princess called Kay and her adventures, and then …’ It’s clear she’s close to tears. ‘Then I’d fall asleep holding my daddy’s hand.’
Everyone around the conference table is a parent and the tape visibly distresses them. Caitlyn’s voice strums their nerves. ‘I don’t recall much about my mother. I guess I remember her tying yellow bows in my hair for my first day at school. Cos I hated the blue uniform. I remember making waffles with her at my grandma’s house. Almost every time we went round. And she used to sit me up on a cushion in her make-up room on the lot and have her own personal artist pretty me up.’
Gibson clicks off the recording. ‘Technicians are examining it and checking for authenticity. And Chief Constable, I believe you will be validating it with Vice President Lock this morning.’
‘I will. Thank you, Barney.’ Hunt turns to his press officer, Kate Mallory. ‘How widespread is the leak, Kate?’
‘Very, sir.’ She’s mid-thirties, balloon-faced with round glasses and straggly black hair. She slides copies of national newspapers across the conference table, her fingers black from print ink. ‘All the majors have it.’ The Mirror’s bold-print front-page headline screams: ‘France Now Key In Lock Case.’ The Sun leads with a giant screen-grab of Caitlyn in a bikini and just one word, Survivor?
Kate Mallory reads the first few lines of the Mirror article: ‘The search for kidnapped American beauty Caitlyn Lock, daughter of US Vice President Thom, sensationally switched to Paris last night as top British cops rushed to investigate a cross-channel call from her captors. Kidnappers made contact via a special line set up by the police for public information. The gang is understood to have played an Al-Qaeda style recording of Caitlyn, in which she revealed intimate details about herself, her father and her mother.’