by Sam Christer
‘Didn’t have time but I found him in my father’s private room trying to look through the diaries I showed you.’
She’s not sure what he means. ‘Your father’s private room? You mean his bedroom?’
‘No. The room next to it. He had built a secret area at the end of the landing. That’s where he hid all his journals. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d never spot it. But I’d left the door open.’
Megan wonders for a moment whether he’d accidentally let a con man or another burglar into the house, someone sizing the place up for antiques. ‘This builder, did you get his name?’
‘Smithsen, Dave Smithsen.’
She digs out a pen from her bag and writes the name on a beer mat. ‘Do you want me to check that he really is a builder?’
‘No need. I went to see him. I asked him outright if he was involved in the Followers with my father. He denied it.’
Megan takes a long look at the tired and grief-stricken man across the table. Hidden rooms. Secret sects. Builders that he mistakes for prowlers. The guy is sick. Paranoid. She wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’s suffering from some form of post-traumatic stress.
‘Gideon, I think you’re reading too much into all this. You’re all churned up and need some time to get closure on your father’s death, the break-in and the attack on you. You’ll get respite when we lock someone up, and hopefully that will be soon. We’re running face-analysis data on the phone photo you gave us and we’ve got word out with our informants on the streets.’
He nods.
Megan sees it’s not enough. ‘We’re taking all this seriously. I promise you.’
‘No, you’re not,’ he snaps. ‘My father took his life because of something that this group was doing. Something awful. And you’re not taking it seriously at all. You’re just concerned with the damned break-in and no doubt your crime figures.’ He slugs down the rest of his wine and stands. ‘Thanks for the drink and coming out here. I’m going to go. Need to get some fresh air. Be on my own.’
98
Megan thinks about everything Gideon said as she drives back to Devizes. She’s sure his fears and paranoia are unfounded. He’s just mixed up and stressed out. By the time she’s back at her desk, she has a simple plan to banish any nagging doubts and prove there’s nothing in any of his accusations.
She hits the phone and uses her network of contacts to get the direct line of Professor Lillian Cooper, Head of Haematology at Salisbury District Hospital. The professor is a close friend of someone she knows. Megan dials the medic’s number and manages to coax out of her the result of the blood tests Gideon had taken when he was kept overnight following the fire.
‘The test results are negative. No disorders of any kind. Your man is the picture of perfect health.’ Professor Cooper sounds bored as she flicks through his file. ‘In fact, looking at his notes there’s been nothing wrong with Gideon Chase since he was a kid.’ There’s a long pause. The plastic tap-tap-tap of computer keys clacks down the line. ‘Well, I’m really not sure about the accuracy of what I’m reading.’ There’s surprise in her voice. ‘It seems he was misdiagnosed when he was young. There’s a record here of him having CLL, chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.’
‘What is that exactly?’
‘CLL is an awful disease. Doesn’t usually show in people under forty. Must be in the family. It manifests when the production of blood cells malfunctions and the process gets out of control. The lymphocytes multiply too quickly, live too long. You end up with too many of them in the blood, then they fatally overwhelm the normal white cells, red cells and platelets in the bone marrow.’
Megan wants to make sure she fully understands. ‘But he doesn’t have this – he was misdiagnosed?’
‘Yes, that’s right. Hang on.’ There’s another pause while she scans the notes again. ‘I’m sure he was misdiagnosed but no one seems to have admitted that they did it. Most peculiar. It says he exhibited an advanced stage of the disease and needed preliminary treatment. Then months later his blood tested clear, just as it did when we screened him.’ She sounds exasperated. ‘It just doesn’t fit. Simply doesn’t fit at all. CLL is an incurable condition, it never just vanishes.’
‘And professor, you’re sure he is clear of it now?’
‘I have to be cautious. You can never say anything terminal has gone for ever, but looking at the file in front of me, I’d have to conclude that he no longer has the disease that he was previously diagnosed as being fatally ill with.’
Megan thanks her and hangs up. It’s not what she expected to find. Not at all. The medical records support Gideon’s unbelievable story about being cured because he was washed in water from the stones at the henge.
The next call that the DI makes secures the business trading records of David E. Smithsen. She follows with requests for his work and home telephone records and his credit card bills and bank account details.
From the deluge of documents that electronically floods in, Smithsen appears to be a successful, respectable builder and professional landscape gardener. Megan uses Google Maps to look at aerial and 3D images of his business premises and his house. The home is lavish, detached, probably an old farm that has been converted. At least five, maybe six bedrooms. Several extensions. She zooms in. A swimming pool cum gym by the look of it. Big fences all around. Electric gates and cameras. Somewhere in the region of five to six acres. She values the spread at around three million pounds. Minimum. Megan taps her computer keys. And it doesn’t look like he has any mortgage. In fact, no debts of any kind. A DVLC search shows he has a soft-top Porsche, presumably for his wife and a Bentley bearing his personal plate. Another click of the computer keys and she finds he has a cool million in the bank.
Smithsen’s business accounts look in order. He and his wife are directors of a limited company with an audited annual turnover of eleven million pounds and a profit of one and a half million. The income seems consistent with his lifestyle. She runs a criminal records check and it comes back squeaky clean. Not so much as a parking fine.
Everything is completely above board, but it doesn’t feel right. She must have missed something. Megan looks more closely at the mobile phone records. He has the latest 4G iPhone but hardly uses it. She goes line by line down the itemised call list and sees he has rung home on it, booked the same restaurant a few times and downloaded a couple of emails. A guy as successful and busy as he is should be showing high call usage. She goes back to his landline records and scrutinises them. They show a similar pattern of low activity. Either he is terrific at delegating and has everyone running around making calls and money for him. Or he has another phone. One that isn’t billed to his work or home addresses.
Megan is sure he’s running an off-the-shelf, pre-paid phone. No contract and no trace of owner. A ‘burner’, as street kids call it.
Why would a millionaire businessman do that when he’s already got a state-of-the-art iPhone? She leans back at her desk and smiles.
He’s keeping something secret. That’s why.
99
As he walks in the dying evening light towards the stones, Gideon tries to remember exactly when he came here last. Probably twenty years ago just after he’d fallen sick.
He is carrying his father’s ashes in a scatter tube chosen for the purpose and he feels sad and nostalgic. He looks out across the field and gathering mist and remembers how his father had held his hand and led him across the misty fields towards the towering stones.
Two decades on he experiences an echo of that fear. A reverberation of the anxiety he had felt when he was eight years old and he’d been left for a few moments in the midst of the giants. It had felt like eternity. The shadowy ghosts, as big as trees, closed in on him. Crowded him. Reached jagged hands out for him.
Gideon recalls it all. His father had spoken strangely that day. Talked about how there were things in life that he wouldn’t be able to fully understand but should respect. Like the moon. A goddess watching o
ver him. A powerful force linked to his unconscious powers and the cyclic rhythms of life – human fertility, crop growth, the changing of the seasons. He was too young back then to understand it.
Gideon looks across the great sarsens and bluestones. He sees his father putting a hand on one in the middle of the circle and reaching out to him. Telling him that the soul of the universe was buried deep in this rock, protected and preserved for ever.
He hadn’t wanted to take his father’s hand but he did. It was frightening. Like a charge of electricity surging through two points. A crackling, blistering energy that bound them together. Then his father took him around the circle. Made him touch all the other stones. Pressed him against them and held him there as the current pulsed back and forth between stone and flesh.
‘Good evening.’
The voice startles him. Comes out of nowhere. He turns quickly.
It is his father.
For a split second that’s what he thinks. His heart is beating crazily. He gasps for breath. The man in front of him is of the same size and shape as his father. Probably a similar age. In the gathering mist the resemblance is unnerving.
The old man smiles. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s okay. I was miles away.’
The stranger steps nearer. He is now taller and broader than Gideon first thought and has short grey-white hair. His eyes are piercingly dark. ‘You shouldn’t be in here, you know. Access is by appointment only. You have to book in advance.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Gideon looks off towards the car park.
‘It’s all right. I don’t mind. What do you have there?’ The stranger nods towards the tube.
‘My father’s ashes. He wanted to be scattered here among the stones.’
The man gestures to the henge. ‘I imagine then, that this place meant a great deal to him?’
‘It did.’ Gideon glances at the nondescript tube. ‘He was an archaeologist and studied them in great detail. He thought the stones were magical. Maybe even sacred.’
The stranger smiles. ‘Many people do. That’s why they come. I’m very sorry to have heard about your loss.’ He tilts his head respectfully. ‘I’ll leave you now to fulfil your father’s wishes. Good night.’ He turns and walks away.
Gideon stands for a second and looks around. It is now getting really dark and the mist is rolling in like a slow tide. He feels a chill, knows that if he leaves things much longer, he won’t be able to fulfil his father’s strange request.
The lid to the tube is tight but he carefully levers it free. He doesn’t know where to begin and where to end. Should he just shake the tube and walk away, grey powder streaming like a dud flare? Or should he try to distribute the remains as evenly as possible?
He remembers reading in the diaries how human remains were found all around Stonehenge. Hundreds more were buried in nearby fields, ancient camps where the stone workers had lived.
Gideon looks into the end of the tube and walks to the first stone in the opening opposite the Heel Stone. He heads clockwise, shaking the ashes out around the small circle of sarsens and bluestones. The container is empty before he reaches the end but he completes the ritual, shaking it until the circle is closed.
Then he finds himself strangely drawn to the middle and compelled to kneel. He mouths the words he couldn’t say when he saw the body at the crematorium. In the darkness he whispers, ‘I’m sorry, Dad. Sorry that we didn’t know each other better. Sorry that I didn’t tell you I loved you. That we didn’t find a way to overcome our differences and share our dreams. I miss you. I’ll always miss you.’
Black clouds creep across the pale rising moon. Before Gideon can get to his feet a hood is pulled tight over his head.
Four Lookers drag him to the ground.
100
Megan is about to switch off her computer for the night when it pings with a message. Tired, she opens it. It’s an alert from the force’s facial recognition unit. They’ve found a street camera match to the fuzzy camera-phone shot Gideon had taken of the burglar.
She reads the text: ‘An individual male matching the facial biometrics of your target has been identified by camera XR7 in Tidworth. Click on the icon below to view more stills and to contact coordinating officer.’
She shifts the cursor to a little picture of a camera and clicks it. Her heart jumps. The shots are fantastic. Close to a dozen of them. In several the suspect is stood outside a shop, locking and unlocking the premises. It is a butcher’s shop. Damn. She’d thought about a chef or catering worker, not a butcher.
The psychological profile she’d drawn up comes rushing back to her: white male, thirty to forty-five, manual worker, possibly in catering business, local pubs, restaurants. He fits it to a T.
Megan is so elated she doesn’t notice her ex and her daughter in the CID office until Sammy shouts.
‘Mummy! Mummy!’ The four-year-old comes running between the desks.
Megan opens her arms and gathers her up.
‘Got a lost child here,’ Adam says. ‘Told me her mother was a famous detective. So I thought I’d return her in person.’
She kisses Sammy and rearranges her on her knee. ‘What are you doing here?’
He gives her a cheeky look. ‘I was working a tip-off that you might come out with us.’
Megan thinks about telling him to back off, take things more slowly. But he and Sammy look so happy together.
Adam sits down at her desk, just at the exact moment Jimmy Dockery walks into the room. The two men catch each other’s eyes. There’s a crackle of curiosity in the air. The kind that makes a cat’s tail stand up and fluff out.
Jimmy had come with news for Megan. Good news. Important news. But now he doesn’t want to give it to her. Not with her husband sat there. It’ll have to wait until the morning. He waves and wanders out of view.
Adam watches him go and allows himself a smug smile.
101
Gideon is trying to make sense of what’s happened. He remembers his head being covered, strong hands holding him, a sharp spike of pain in his leg. They must have drugged him and taken him somewhere to sleep it off.
The hood is off and he’s sat in the dark on a cold stone floor. Candles flicker in all four corners. It’s small. Small and has no door.
He’s in a cell.
Maybe it isn’t a cell. Maybe it’s a tomb.
Half-drugged, he struggles to his feet and sways unsteadily. He paws at the walls. There’s no way out. His father had written about people being buried inside a Sanctuary. This could be it. He has been walled up in the Sanctuary and left to die.
He feels anxiety climb his chest. There can’t be much air in this place. It can’t last long. He picks up a candle and extinguishes the others. No point burning precious oxygen. Standing with the single light burning out, he reasons that they’re not going to leave him here to die. He told Smithsen that he’d taken precautions, a planned delivery to the police of damning documents, unless he was free to call it off.
The candle burns out.
His heartbeat rises and his hopes fade. Surely they’re going to have to come to him, find out what he knows, how much he can hurt them.
There is a guttural rumbling of stone. Narrow slits of light appear in the middle of two opposite walls. Hooded, robed figures flood the small room. Gideon doesn’t fight as they overwhelm him, cuff his wrists and drag him through an exit. No hood or blindfold this time. Something has changed.
The corridor they’re leading him down is long and winding. Gradually the lighting on the walls becomes more ornate. It even starts to feel warmer. He’s flanked by two men. The one on his right pulls an iron ring sunk into a wall. Hidden pulleys go to work. A section of stone slides noisily back. They push him into a chamber.
The stranger he saw in the mist at Stonehenge sits in a hooded brown robe behind a circular table made of honey-coloured stone. ‘Sit down, Gideon.’ He waves a hand to the seating opposite him.
‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’
‘I saw you at the henge.’
The Master smiles. ‘I met you several times before, when you were a child. Your father and I were friends.’
Gideon is surprised. ‘Then you know what he went through. What happened to my mother and what he had to do to save me.’
‘Indeed, I do.’ He studies Gideon. ‘You have clearly learned much, presumably from your father’s journals. But do you actually understand what you have been reading?’
‘I think so.’
‘So tell me.’
‘You are the Henge Master, the spiritual leader of the Followers of the Sacreds. My father was a senior and trusted member of your Inner Circle. You, he and many others give your lives to the protection of the Sacreds and the renewal of their energy.’
The Master cracks a thin smile.‘Not quite right. But close.’ He’s keen to learn how much more Nathaniel’s boy knows. ‘Do you have any idea how the spiritual energy of the Sacreds is sustained?’
‘Human sacrifice. Offerings made before and after both the summer and winter solstice. At specific moon phases. My father described them as necessary for the restoration of celestial and earthly balance.’
The Master looks impressed. ‘You are a good scholar. But there is a big difference between theory and practice.’ He folds his robed arms. ‘You sought us out, Gideon. What is it that you want?’
‘Acceptance. My mother and father are dead. You are my family. I am already a child of the Sacreds, you know how my father baptised me as a child.’
The Master nods. ‘Indeed. He bathed you in waters from the Sacreds and asked them to protect you from the disease that had killed your mother. He promised them his own life if they afforded you a long and healthy one.’
Gideon’s eyes well up. Once more Nathaniel’s words come back to him: ‘I will willingly give my own blood, my own life. I only hope it is worthy. Worthy enough to change things. To alter the fate that I know awaits my poor, motherless son.