The Keeper

by Natasha Mostert

  ‘Yes, he did. Chris and Valentine were really close, you know. Brothers.’

  ‘Chris?’

  ‘Yes. Chris Connor.’

  ‘Is he still around?’

  ‘No.’ He heard her sigh. ‘He just… left. I never heard from him again.’

  ‘Was he blond, good-looking?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. All my friends were drooling over him. You know…’ She hesitated. ‘You asked me about Mia, yesterday. Remember?’

  He did indeed. It had been a calculated risk. He had worried how Amy would react to Mia’s name but he had wanted to know exactly what Valentine had told her.

  ‘Remember you asked me why Valentine hadn’t told Mia he was fighting again?’

  ‘Yes. You said you told him not to. Gave him an ultimatum.’

  ‘I did. But Chris had a lot to do with it as well. He warned Valentine that superstition has no place in a fighter’s heart. That a fighter has to believe in his own abilities, not in some woman protecting him. A fighter has to make his own luck, he said.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Chris was right, wasn’t he?’

  Nick made a noncommittal sound.

  ‘Because after you left yesterday, I couldn’t help thinking that we were wrong. We shouldn’t have stopped him from telling her. It couldn’t have hurt, could it?’

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  It was raining: a quiet, insidious rain that misted her hair and silvered her raincoat. A fragrant hush hung over the street and she could smell the moisture in the air and the muddy scent of wet soil. A few houses in the street had light coming from their windows.

  Mia moved from one leg to the other. She had been waiting for almost an hour. There was a bench only a few paces away but she did not want to run the risk of missing him. From here she had a clear view of the front door of the white stucco building with its wrought-ironwork and graceful pillars.

  Ash had never invited her or Nick to his flat and it had never occurred to her that this might be unusual. When the three of them were together, they had somehow always gravitated to her place. Ash’s apartment was less than three miles from her studio, but a world away. This was an upscale street in an upscale neighbourhood: quiet, green, plush. From here you could see the dome of the Albert Hall.

  She glanced at her watch. He should have left by now. JC had a boxing class every Friday night at six and Ash was a regular. But it was already quarter to the hour.

  A man and a woman walked past her. The woman was trying to worm her hand through the man’s arm, and the set of her head spoke of an eagerness to please. His spine remained rigid. The woman turned her head and looked into Mia’s eyes. The subdued desperation of her gaze stayed with Mia as the couple walked away from her, disappearing round the corner.

  The rain sifted down. The street remained empty. She glanced at her watch again. By now, Nick would have arrived at the sleep clinic at Exmare. It had come as a surprise to them that Ash had told Nick the truth about his former job. After all the aliases he had used, they had fully expected the name ‘Adrian Ashton’ to be fake and the details he had given them about his life as a researcher to be bogus as well. But no: Adrian Ashton had indeed worked at the Exmare Institute. Nick had spoken to one of Ash’s former colleagues and she had agreed to meet him.

  ‘Do you think it’s worth talking to this woman?’ Mia was dubious. ‘She has nothing to do with fighting.’

  Nick shook his head. ‘I want to see where Ash worked and I want to talk to the people he worked with. He left under a cloud—he admitted as much. I want to know why.’

  He grimaced suddenly and placed a hand on his back.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Mia looked at him apprehensively.

  ‘I think I may have pulled a muscle when I grappled with the bastard yesterday.’ Nick moved his shoulders. ‘It’s nothing, don’t worry. It won’t slow me up for the fight.’

  Before he left, he hugged her hard. ‘Stay safe, OK?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid. Keep away from Ash.’

  ‘Yes.’

  And she hadn’t lied to Nick, she thought. She wasn’t going near Ash. She was only going to take a look round his apartment.

  The door opened and suddenly he was standing on the doorstep. Her stomach tightened. He was dressed casually in jeans and a dark all-weather jacket, and in his hand he carried a gym bag. His dark blond hair was slightly tousled. He looked up and down the street and then turned left towards the Brompton Road.

  She waited until he had fully disappeared from view before walking swiftly down the street. She had planned on pushing all the buttons at the door until someone buzzed her in—when people heard a female voice and saw an unthreatening woman on the spy camera they tended not to worry too much—but she got lucky. As she approached the front door it opened and a nanny and her charge emerged. The little boy had a bright red umbrella, and wellingtons that seemed too big for him. Mia held the door open for the nanny, who was struggling with a pram, and the woman thanked her.

  There were five names listed next to the intercom. Adrian Ashton was in Flat 4. Mia slipped into the building and the ornate door swung silently shut behind her.

  It was dead quiet inside. An old-fashioned iron lift sat motionless on the ground floor, its doors open, but Mia decided to use the stairs. They were carpeted in russet-gold and flanked by a highly polished and very elaborate banister. Light sconces lined the cream walls.

  She walked slowly up the stairs, the thick carpet deadening her steps. There seemed to be only one apartment on every floor. On the landing leading to the fourth floor, she stopped for a moment and looked out of the window, feeling strangely removed from the textureless, slippery world outside. The pewter-coloured sky had turned a luminescent white. In the street below, the trees with their wet barks gleamed black.

  She had noticed that Ash carried only one key on his key ring and it was no surprise, therefore, that the door leading to Flat 4 showed only one lock. If it had been a Bramah lock, she would have had to turn round and go back. But it was nothing as ambitious. Danny had taught her how to do this one; she could do it with her eyes closed.

  Danny Bright was a former client who had done time for burglary. Upon his release he vowed to turn over a new leaf and decided to get a tattoo to celebrate this life-changing decision. As he was low on funds, and unable to pay her, he had offered to teach her how to pick locks instead. She had agreed because it was sort of a cool skill to have. Today that skill was going to be essential.

  Before she took out the pouch with picks from her pocket—a graduation present from Danny—she looked up at the ceiling to see if there were any security cameras. There were none.

  She started working on the lock, forcing herself to stay calm and not to rush. It was all to do with breathing and touch. If she became anxious, she’d lose it. Without warning, the door gave under the pressure of her hand. She stepped across the threshold, allowing the door to click shut behind her.

  He had left the lamp on his desk burning and the light showed a room of elegant proportions. Tall sash windows looked out on to the street and the ceilings were high and airy. At the end of the passage leading off to her right she could see the edge of a bed peeping out from behind a door.

  She stepped more fully into the living room. It was sparsely but luxuriously furnished in shades of charcoal-grey and moss-green. A deep leather sofa faced a fireplace that was filled with tubs of white hydrangeas. In front of one of the windows stood a highly polished knee-hole desk and on its gleaming surface was a closed laptop.

  And there were books: one entire wall lined with tightly packed volumes. She tilted her head sideways to read some of the titles. Mixed in with books with inexplicable names like Superconductivity at Room Temperature without Cooper Pairs were books written in Chinese, the lettering delicate and mysterious. They were probably medical textbooks because when she opened them she saw they were filled with anatomical illustrations. There were
also other, older books with weathered covers. Again, she wasn’t able to read the text but she was almost sure she knew what they were. They were bugei, books on the warrior arts. They would contain information on fighting techniques that had largely disappeared over time—dropped from martial-arts styles because they were deemed too dangerous. She slipped one of the books from the shelves and touched the pages in awe.

  There were several paintings on the walls but it was the exquisite gold, turquoise and red colours of a scroll painting that drew her attention. The scroll depicted monks with their heads slanted meekly sitting opposite a rotund, almond-eyed Buddha. She did not understand the symbolism of this particular scene but she knew what she was looking at. It was a Thangka painting. Travelling Tibetan monks used to roll them up and take them on their journeys as meditation tools. This one seemed to have something to do with medicine and healing. At the bottom of the frame were the words ‘Mentsekhang/Lhasa’ engraved in gold. But what made Mia’s skin prickle was that Keepers used to carry these scrolls with them as well. An almost identical Thangka painting hung in one of the rooms inside the Retreat.

  It did not feel like the home of a murderer. This was the home of an educated man with a sense of beauty. What exactly she had thought to find in Ash’s apartment, she wasn’t sure: she could only hope she would recognise it when she saw it. The man was a killer—but how did he kill? Somewhere in his home where he lived and felt safe, there should be something that would betray his secret.

  The computer was of no use. When she switched it on, her way was immediately barred by a password prompt and she had no choice but to log off again. But on the desk, next to the laptop, was a large, leather-bound portfolio trimmed with red stitching. The leather was creased and smudged as though it had absorbed the oils from many fingers over many years. She unhooked the leather thong that secured the two leaves and opened it.

  She drew in her breath. The folder was filled with photographs of dead people: mummies, to be exact. The pictures were deeply unsettling—dried, monkey faces and once-plump bodies shrunk to skin, bone and leftover muscle. Some of the figures seemed racked with hilarity: bent over as if paralysed with laughter and teeth showing in grotesque smiles. Other corpses stared straight ahead, their mouths open and screaming.

  And there were so many of them. She paged through the glossy pictures. One of the photographs was a long, wide-angled shot showing rows upon rows of bodies lining the walls, stretching into a far distance. How many bodies? There must have been thousands.

  The very last picture in the folder was of a little girl who was sleeping. Her heart-shaped face was innocent and peaceful and the picture seemed completely out of place in this catalogue of horror. It was only when Mia looked closer that she realised she was looking at yet another mummified corpse. At the bottom of the picture was a label with the words ‘Rosalia Lombardo, 1920’.

  Rosalia. Such a pretty, feminine name. It fluttered in her mind—a tantalising memory. Ash saying, ‘The person who is responsible for who I am today is a girl. Her name is Rosalia.’ She had looked at him, not understanding, and he had smiled. ‘Maybe I’ll tell you about her someday.’

  He never had.

  Mia stared at the picture of Rosalia Lombardo, a little girl who had inspired a man to become a killer, and she wondered why.

  A hushed shuffle of footsteps sounded outside the door. Mia looked up sharply. There was another soft sound, as if a bag had been dropped on to the thick carpet, and then came the unmistakable sound of a key inserted into the keyhole.

  There was no place to hide in the living room. Without thinking, Mia slammed the folder shut and sprinted down the narrow corridor. From her peripheral vision she noticed a galley-sized kitchen and a bathroom leading off to her left. But she wanted to get as far away from the living room as possible. As she dashed into the bedroom at the very end of the passage, the front door started to open inwards.

  There were only two obvious hiding places in here: inside the cupboard or behind the door. The cupboard was unknown territory and the last thing she wanted to do was to fight her way through jackets and shoes. She slipped behind the bedroom door and stood stock still.

  The front door clicked shut. She heard the silver sound of a key dropped into a bowl, then quiet.

  She was thinking furiously. Had she left any traces of her presence in the living room? She had switched off the laptop and closed it. The leather folder with pictures was probably not in exactly the same spot where he had left it, but near enough to make no difference. What else?

  She went cold. The book on the lost warrior arts. She had not replaced it. She had left it on the seat of an upholstered chair next to the bookshelf so that she could have a last look at it before she left.

  It was quiet. But after a few moments she heard another sound: he was at the desk and had switched on the computer. The sound she had heard was the opening sequence for Windows. Then came the light, irregular tap of computer keys.

  The drumbeat of her heart was loud in her ears but she forced herself to calm down. If she kept giving off distress signals he would sense her presence. What she needed to do was to empty her mind and shut him out of her thoughts. Lifting her eyes, she looked out of the window on the opposite side of the room and re-centred her focus.

  The sky had turned black. The leaves of a creeper brushed wetly against the pane. How long she stood there, she did not know. It was dark inside the room and the soft wash of light from the living room was far too faint for her to make out the time on her watch. But as she waited, the rain outside became sharper, drumming against the window, and the creeper shook in the wind. The room was filled with substantial shadows. She could identify the shape of a chair, and on the windowsill—black against the lesser blackness of the sky—was a vase, its lines as graceful as a woman’s hips. On the bedside table stood a framed photograph, but in the gloom she was unable to see the picture inside.

  Still she waited. Suddenly, the tap of keys stopped. A rustle of paper and then he was coming towards the bedroom. He had switched on the light in the passage and a burst of electric light spilt brightly into the bedroom. The photograph inside the frame on top of the bedside table was suddenly clearly visible and with a shock she realised she was looking at a picture of herself.

  Just as his shadow fell over the threshold, the phone started ringing. He made a small noise under his breath—a soft, slightly annoyed puff of air—and she sensed him moving away. The ringing stopped and she heard his voice but the words were indistinct.

  Her eyes were fixed on the picture in the frame. She had never seen it before: it had been taken without her knowledge. It was a close-up shot, he must have used a long-lens camera, and the photograph showed her in three-quarter profile. She was smiling and one hand was brushing away the hair from her face. By some trick of light, it looked as though her hair was aglow—pure gold—and even her body seemed to shimmer round the edges. Her eyes seemed serene. She looked happy.

  The sound of his voice stopped and her stomach clenched. But instead of walking into the bedroom, she heard him go into the bathroom, shutting the door firmly behind him.

  She did not wait. Blessing the carpet for its sound-deadening qualities, she forced herself to walk, not run, down the passage and into the living room. The book was where she had left it. She slid it back on to the shelf and made a beeline for the front door. With agonising slowness, she opened the door and eased it shut behind her, trying to minimise the sound of the click. And then she was running, running down the stairs, out of the front door and into the black night and the rain and the wind.

  On the opposite side of the street she stopped and turned round. Her eyes travelled up the side of the building to the graceful windows on the fourth floor. From here she could see the side of the bookcase and the Thangka scroll, its colours glowing like jewels. She stood there, half-expecting to see his tall figure appear framed inside the window and silhouetted against the light. But the window remained empty and after
a while she turned her back on it and started walking.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Alexa Longford was a good-looking, middle-aged woman whose hair was maybe dyed just a bit too red and who was relying a little too much on her Botox treatments. When she smiled at Nick, her expression stayed strangely enigmatic.

  ‘What is it you do here exactly?’ Nick asked as they walked to her office, passing by laboratories and messy work cubicles.

  She gestured vaguely. ‘The Exmare Institute is devoted to the study of chronobiology in general, but here, in this particular wing, we deal with sleep cycles. We’re especially interested in how sleep patterns may be linked to disease.’ She looked at Nick, her eyebrows raised. ‘Night-time can be perilous, you know.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘It’s as though the body goes overboard as it tries to defend itself. Fevers spike because the body escalates its defences during darkness and this can lead to inflammation. Another example is the body closing down its airways at night. This keeps out foreign intruders but, as you can imagine, is very dangerous for people with breathing problems, which is why so many asthmatics die at night-time. Most heart attacks and strokes take place in the early morning, but they brew at night. Why? We’re trying to find out if some of these incidents correlate with sleep cycles.’

  Nick glimpsed a long, hospital-like corridor through a glass-panelled door. The door had a big forbidding ‘Keep Out’ sign prominently displayed.

  Longford noticed his interest. ‘In there we run a lucid dreaming programme where we teach people how to take control of their dreams. Give them the ability to dream the dreams they want to, in effect.’

  ‘That’s possible?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Stephen LaBerge managed to induce lucid dreaming under laboratory conditions at Stanford University in the Eighties. Many psychotherapists now teach lucid dreaming to their patients as a way of helping them deal with past traumas.’