The Burning Altar

by Sarah Rayne

  ‘It’s a great problem at this time of day.’ The man spoke with a slight accent, and Lewis, watching him get in behind the wheel, said, ‘You aren’t English, are you? Where are you from?’

  Dark eyes met his in the driving mirror. ‘The East.’

  ‘Are you indeed? I was in the East many years ago.’

  A cruel, remembered smile curved the reflected face. ‘I know,’ said the man softly, and as he switched on the ignition, the other passenger door was opened and someone slid in next to Lewis

  A voice said coolly, ‘Whatever you are thinking of trying, Sir Lewis, do not. We don’t want to shoot you, but we will do so if necessary.’

  Lewis saw the gun before he looked at the second man’s face, but he did not need to look. The voice, faintly contemptuous, strongly accented, was the one he had been trying to forget for twenty-five years.

  Kaspar.

  Two courses of action were possible. One was to attempt to escape. Lewis considered this briefly. He might be able to leap out of the car and yell for help, and he might just about bring it off, except that it was more likely that Kaspar would send a bullet into him before he had got the door half open. A solitary gunshot would never be noticed amidst all this traffic and impatient revving of cars and changing of gears. He might manage to stun Kaspar first and scramble out before the driver could do anything. The driver was probably armed as well, but no one, not even a le Carré hero or a James Bond could keep a gun levelled and negotiate rush-hour traffic. Lewis glanced at the car’s controls: electronic door locks operated from the driver’s console. Damn high-tech engineering!

  The other course was to sit tight and listen to what they had to say, and hope it would lead him to Grendel, because Grendel’s disappearance must be mixed up in all this. He looked at Kaspar. Kaspar was older by twenty-five years but the eyes had not changed and the thin curving smile had not changed either. Lewis felt a chill close about his heart, but he said, ‘Well? What is all this?’

  Kaspar smiled, but he said, ‘Have you really forgotten the punishment graven on the Eighth Stone Tablet of the Decalogue?’

  Lewis stared at him, a cold hand closing about his heart. The Eighth Tablet. The Tablet of Treachery and Betrayal.

  ‘You remember it?’ said Kaspar softly. ‘Yes, I see you do. We seldom invoke the Decalogue these days, Sir Lewis; but it still rules us. It will rule your trial. And if you are found guilty, the sentence will be that of the Eighth Stone. Exactly as it was twenty-five years ago.’

  Lewis forced anger into his voice. ‘What kind of trial?’ he said. ‘And for what crime?’

  ‘The crime you committed twenty-five years ago,’ said Kaspar. ‘The murder of a religion. And this time we shall make very sure you do not escape.’

  He brought up his left hand and Lewis caught the glint of a hypodermic needle before darkness rushed down.

  Ginevra sat in Elinor’s yellow and white bedroom and repeated to herself how absurd this all was.

  The obvious deduction had to be that her aunt had gone off with Sir Lewis, but Ginevra found this completely incredible, because if Elinor had gone off with Lewis Chance she would have let somebody know, even supposing she was the kind of person to go off with a man, which she was not. And she had been expecting Ginevra: she had telephoned early on Friday morning, saying how much she was looking forward to the weekend, suggesting a visit to a street-market on Saturday afternoon, and asking Ginevra please not to travel by bus which would be unreliable and exhausting, and if there was any difficulty about the money for a train or coach to say so, because Elinor would pay it. You did not make plans to visit street-markets and offer to pay train fares if you were on the brink of an illicit passion. Anyway there was no such thing as illicit any longer, and Elinor and Lewis Chance were both free to do whatever they wanted.

  Ginevra inspected the flat cautiously. Bodies under the bed? Axe-murderers waiting in the shower? No, of course not, you fool. Not even so much as a guilty lover cowering trouserless in the wardrobe. Elinor clearly occupied the yellow and white bedroom: her pale blue dressing gown hung behind the door – at least if she had gone off with a man she hadn’t taken that erection-crumpler with her – but the tiny bedroom next to it was half prepared for Ginevra’s use. Fresh sheets had been put ready to make up the bed along with two thick bath towels and an unopened bar of scented soap.

  There was food in the kitchen: tins of soup and beans in the cupboard and packets of muesli, and the fridge was stocked with cheese and salad and eggs. Two large chicken portions stood in a casserole dish, alongside a carton of soured cream and a small bag of mushrooms. That probably meant that Elinor had been planning to make one of her marvellous chicken curries for them: not one of Ginevra’s sort where you sloshed in a tablespoonful of instant curry powder and banged everything in the oven and hoped for the best, but the one where Elinor ground up all the spices with a mortar and pestle, and simmered everything for about three hours and then stirred in the soured cream. Ginevra straightened up, frowning. Would anyone make all these preparations – a half-ready guest room, a complicated chicken curry – and then succumb to lust on a grand scale halfway through? Ginevra might do it herself, but she could not imagine Nell doing it.

  She came back into the sitting room, and it was then that she saw Elinor’s handbag on the small gate-leg table under the window. The bag was open, and doorkeys and purse were visible. Ginevra, aware of mounting fear, went through the bag’s contents. It felt like the worst kind of intrusion, but it had to be done. Cheque book and cheque card were there; comb, tissues, a little make-up bag. Everything you would expect to find. Would anyone go off for a weekend without taking money and latchkeys and make-up?

  Ginevra threw her few things into the wardrobe in the tiny bedroom, dragged a brush through her hair, and went down in search of the romantic poet.

  ‘Of course I have reported the matter to the police,’ said Raffael, regarding Ginevra in the wooden-floored canteen which seemed to be the centre’s heart, but which was completely empty now. Ginevra supposed people did not expect to receive hand-outs and help on Saturday mornings. During the week, this would be a rather lively, rather interesting place: filled with people serving or eating food, and wandering in for different reasons. But like this, shadowy and empty, it was a bit forlorn and creepy. Their voices rang out hollowly and when they crossed to the office, which was at the back, their footsteps echoed. It had begun to rain and there was the lowering darkness of late October. But once in the office Raffael turned on lights and flicked the switch of a coffee machine, and as the strong good scent of hot coffee began to permeate the room, normality returned.

  ‘What did the police say?’ Ginevra watched him setting out two mugs and opening a carton of milk while the coffee filtered. He was more attractive than she had remembered: dark-eyed and high-cheekboned. Middle-European? Italian? Even farther East? Those slanting cheekbones made you think of Arabian Nights tales and lost kingdoms: Scheherazade and Schahriar, and Omar Khayyám and the desert caravans going from Damascus to Mecca and Baghdad . . . Nineveh from Ophir with ivory and apes and peacocks . . . Now I’m back to English poets.

  ‘The police were singularly uninterested,’ said Raffael, pouring the milk and handing one of the mugs to Ginevra. ‘“A lady has not returned after a night, sir? And a gentleman is missing at the same time?”’ A brief expressive gesture with the hands.

  ‘Yes, but listen, her handbag’s in her flat – money, keys, everything in it. Toothbrush and sponge in the bathroom. I think all of her outdoor things are there as well.’

  The dark eyes flickered, and Ginevra, watching, thought: that’s disconcerted him. Now why?

  But Raffael only said, quite coolly, ‘If your aunt has gone with Sir Lewis, money would be the last concern she would have.’

  ‘Oh I see. Well, yes. I suppose he’d buy whatever she needed.’ Ginevra was not going to say that Elinor, with her brusque defensive shyness would have been horrified at the idea of her boss
buying toothbrushes and combs for her. ‘What about checking all through the house?’ she said. ‘She might have fallen somewhere and broken an ankle, or knocked herself out. I mean, you have searched the house, have you?’

  Raffael said, ‘Of course I have searched the house. There is no need to glare like an angry cat, Miss Craven.’

  ‘I’m not a cat. I’m—’

  ‘It was a compliment. I like cats. And you have tawny eyes and hair.’

  He said it as one making a statement rather than proffering a compliment, but Ginevra felt a sudden tug of attraction. She said in a determinedly prosaic voice, ‘Then if she’s not in the house, what do the police suggest we do?’

  ‘We are advised to wait for another twenty-four hours,’ said Raffael. ‘Perhaps until Monday morning. If there is no news by then, the police will send one of their men to talk to everyone here.’ Another of the sudden pauses, as if he might be weighing something up in his mind. ‘It looks as if you might be faced with a solitary weekend, Miss Craven.’ Their eyes met.

  ‘So I might. What about you? I mean – do you have to be here at the centre?’ Ginevra was damned if she was going to acknowledge the implicit suggestion in the expressive eyes.

  ‘I am around,’ said Raffael. ‘Sometimes I am here for several hours. There are no set times. This afternoon I will return to my rooms, which are nearby.’ Another pause. ‘But I shall come to the centre later this evening. Perhaps around seven.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s one of my tasks to ensure the security of the building,’ said Raffael, and again appeared to wait. The silence lengthened. It would be very easy indeed to say something like: ‘Well, if you feel like it, come up for a drink.’ Or even, ‘Can you eat chicken curry?’

  Ginevra said, ‘I see. Thank you for telling me everything.’ And stood up and went back up to her aunt’s flat.

  It would have been immensely intriguing to spend the night with someone who looked like Lorenzo the Magnificent or something out of Omar Khayyám, but there was promiscuity and there was outright madness, and to go to bed with someone she had only met a couple of hours earlier would be madness.

  Ginevra sat down on the hearthrug, hugging her knees, and stared at the glowing bars of the electric fire. Raffael had said that the police had been informed about Elinor’s disappearance, and Lewis Chance’s, and also that he had searched the house. And while it was all very well to listen, rapt, to someone who looked like Lorenzo the Magnificent, Ginevra was not going to take Raffael’s word for absolutely everything. What the hell was somebody who lived in a bedsit in Canning Town doing with a name like Raffael anyway?

  She paced restlessly about the flat, peering into her aunt’s wardrobe again – yes, all Elinor’s clothes were here – and came back into the sitting room to stare out through the window. Rain streamed down in a ceaseless silver curtain, making it impossible to see across the road, and even at this time of day, it was dark enough for lights to be needed everywhere. It was important not to think that she was on her own in this brooding old house. She was not really on her own: there was a phone on the desk and she could walk out into the road any time she liked. She went determinedly into the tiny bedroom again and pulled on sneakers and the sweater she had worn on the train. She tied her hair back because it tended to tumble over her eyes and it felt more comfortable to be tidy for a house search. Raffael had said she had tawny eyes and hair like a cat. Nobody had ever said that to her before.

  She glanced at her watch. Two o’clock. Raffael had left for his rooms nearby, but he would return later.

  There was plenty of time for her to make her own search of the house before he came back.

  The old building was silent as she let herself out of the flat and locked the door, carefully pocketing the key, but the lights on the hideous iron stairway were on. Ginevra supposed there was some kind of time switch. She went systematically down, checking rooms as she went, unsure of what she was looking for but looking anyway. Elinor had said the place had been a music hall around the turn of the century, and even with the restoration it was easy to see how it would have looked. It was an interesting place and it might be fun to research into its past. There was a course in Theatre History starting next term; she might sign up for it and see if she could use this place as a study project.

  The house felt shadowy and gloomy and there was a disturbing sense of eyes watching from the shadows. This was creepy but could not be paid any attention. Ginevra went firmly through the house, looking into offices and interview rooms, opening the doors of lavatories, because people had been known to pass out in the loo and lie undiscovered before now.

  The ground floor was mostly taken up with the canteen and a couple of back offices, and there was no sign of Elinor anywhere. Ginevra went slowly down the iron stairs. Anything at the bottom? There was a kind of vestibule with cupboards opening off and a cubbyhole for cleaning stuff and Hoovers. And there was a door under the iron staircase, half open, with a dim light filtering out. Basement? Cellars? It did not look a very likely place, but it had better be checked. She pushed the door cautiously and went down the narrow wooden steps. She had been expecting to see conventional cellars at the foot of the rickety wooden stairs: stone-floored rooms stretching beneath the old house: maybe the remains of a wine cellar, certainly heaps of junk and broken furniture.

  The dank culvert with the eerie green waterlight sent a shiver of cold fear through her. The tunnel was deserted and silent save for the faint slopping sounds of water, but the sense of being watched and followed was much stronger here. Ginevra found herself glancing perpetually over her shoulder.

  The tunnel was unspeakably nasty. Like a giant’s drain. Anything might come creeping out of the shadows to meet you. Anything might be prowling stealthily along behind you.

  But it was so clearly the kind of place where you might trip and break your ankle or knock yourself unconscious, that she forced herself to go on. Ginevra could not think of any reason why Elinor would come down here – why anyone would come down here! – but the image of her aunt lying helpless somewhere refused to be banished. She would go to the end of the tunnel and if there was no sign of Elinor, she would go back upstairs and think what to do next. To wait until Monday morning was out of the question.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Raffael had not liked leaving Ginevra alone inside Chance House, but she had stone-walled every attempt he had made to stay. Had she thought he was trying to seduce her? Now there’s a thought, Father Raffael! An unwilling smile lifted the corners of his lips as he crossed the road to the corner where his ramshackle bedsit was situated. We might have guessed there would be a female in it somewhere, de Migli had said, coldly sarcastic. De Migli, unfortunately, knew the circumstances of Raffael’s parting with the Church: he had been one of the Curia presiding over Raffael’s case, most of whom had studied the details with the faint bewilderment of celibates, who know the sins of the flesh by name but seldom encounter them in any other form.

  But de Migli had not looked bewildered. He had regarded Raffael with cold disgust and he had said very little throughout the entire hearing. Raffael had been raw and bleeding inside and exhausted from the weeks and the months of mental anguish, but he had eyed them all arrogantly, refusing to appear humble. He thought most of the Curia had recognised and understood this for exactly what it was, but de Migli had not and de Migli had never failed to plant a barb on the few occasions they had met since. So much for Christian charity. De Migli would never have understood that the female, who had figured so prominently at the hearing but whose face Raffael could scarcely now recall, had been a symptom rather than a cause. He would certainly consider Raffael to be now hellbent on Ginevra’s seduction, which said a very great deal about de Migli.

  But twenty years separated him from Ginevra, and despite de Migli’s cynicism, Raffael had not yet reached the age of leering at young females from behind a carapace of crapulous dotage. The alliteration of this pleased him and he repea
ted it to himself. But however good it sounded he was a long way from it yet.

  He let himself into the house and went quickly up to his two rooms on the second floor. He hated the sloppily split old house, but it had provided him with exactly the right springboard to get into Chance House, which was what Cardinal Fleury had wanted.

  ‘I’ll leave the mechanics of it to you,’ His Eminence had said. ‘But I want you to get into Chance House and from there into the confidence of Lewis Chance or those close to him. It might be necessary to mingle with the poor creatures who attend the centre—’

  ‘I imagine it might,’ agreed Raffael, straight-faced. ‘It will be a salutary reminder that I’m fortunate not to be one of them.’

  ‘Things have perhaps – not been easy since you left us?’ This had been Fleury’s delicate way of asking if money had been tight, and Raffael had smiled inwardly, and had thought: Yes, but this mission is more timely than you know, Fleury.

  ‘I’m not on the streets yet,’ he had said.

  ‘And you won’t mind living in such a place for a time?’

  ‘I’ve experienced worse.’

  He had, but not much. The house’s interior had appalled him and his two rooms were furnished with the most astonishing collection of things he had ever seen. But they were very convenient for Chance House and he had assumed he would become desensitised to peeling wallpaper and rising damp and the constant smell of cooking. This had not yet happened. The damp had etched green fungal swirls beneath the windows, and the cooking smells were always the distasteful ones of meals gone before, never the appetising drift of meals to come. They frequently mingled with a whiff of what might have been joss sticks burning, but which Raffael could by this time identify as cannabis or grass. When the smell was at its strongest, the thump of heavy rock music was at its loudest, as if the two were interdependent. There was never any giveaway smell of cocaine, partly because the consignments were delivered after dark to the basement flat, and partly because they were never there long enough to leave any evidence of their sojourn – into the dealer’s hands and on to the street inside a couple of hours. When this strange business was cleared up Raffael was going to take enormous pleasure in informing against the basement tenants.