Bestselling Conspiracy Thriller Trilogy: Sanctus, The Key, The Tower

32

Liv Adamsen leaned against the rough trunk of the single cypress that sprang from the lawn by the hospital. She tilted her head back and blew long, relieved streams of cigarette smoke towards the overhanging branches. Through the canopy she could see a large illuminated cross fixed to the top of the building, like a twisted moon in the slowly brightening sky. As a defective tube blinked fitfully inside it, something glistened on the bark a few feet above her head. She reached up and touched it tentatively. Her hand came away sticky and smelling of the forest. Sap; quite a lot of it – far too much to be healthy.

She stood on tiptoe to examine the source of the flow. She made out a series of indentations and cracks in the bark. It looked like seiridium canker, a common disease in this type of tree, no doubt brought on by the long, dry, icy winter. She’d noticed the same thing on the leylandii in Bonnie and Myron’s garden. The increasingly warm summers were drying out the ground and weakening root systems. Sharp, cold periods were allowing these cankers and other forms of rot to take lethal hold on even the strongest of trees. You could cut out canker if you got it early enough, but by the looks of it this tree was already too far gone.

Liv laid her hand gently on the trunk and inhaled deeply on her cigarette. The smell of the sap on her fingers mingled with the smoke. In her mind she saw the cypress burning where it stood, branches twisting and blackening, hungry flames licking at the red sap as it boiled and hissed. She looked at the silent car park, checking she was still alone, spooked by what her imagination had just conjured up. She put it down to her own fragile emotional state, coupled with the exhaustion of witnessing a ‘natural’ labour that had ended with white-coated men whisking Bonnie to a waiting ventouse. At least both babies, a boy and a girl, were healthy and well. It wasn’t quite the story Liv had set out to write, but she guessed it would do. It certainly had plenty of drama. She remembered the moment when she had pulled the emergency cord.

Then she remembered the call.

She’d had the cell for years. It was so old she could barely send a text, let alone take a picture or surf the net with it. Not many people even knew she had it. Fewer still possessed its ex-directory number. She ran through the very short list of those who did while she waited for it to get up to speed.

Liv had adopted what she called her ‘home and away’ system shortly after starting work on the crime desk. The very first story she’d covered had required her to chase down and interview a particularly slippery attorney representing an even more slippery local property developer being sued by the State on several counts of bribery to obtain building licences. She’d left a number for the lawyer to get back to her. Unfortunately the man who’d called her back was his client. She’d been halfway up a cherry tree with a pruning saw in her hand when she’d taken the call. The force of the abuse he’d hurled at her had almost made her fall out of it, but she’d walked into the kitchen, grabbed a pen and paper and jotted down everything he said, word for word. The entire incident, and the direct quotes arising from it, became the cornerstone of the damning article she subsequently wrote.

She learned two valuable lessons from the incident. The first was never to be afraid to put herself in the story, if that was the best way to tell it; the second was to be more selective about who she handed out her number to. She bought herself a new cell and began to use it exclusively for work. Her old one, with a new SIM card and number, had subsequently been reserved exclusively for friends and family. It now shuddered in her hand as it ended its start-up sequence. She peered down at the screen. She’d missed only one call. There were no waiting messages.

She pressed the menu button and scrolled through to the missed-call log. Whoever had called her had done so from a withheld number. Liv frowned. As far as she could remember, everyone who had this number was also in her address book, so should automatically be recognized. She took a final drag on her cigarette, ground it into the damp pine needles and headed back towards the hospital to say goodbye to the human part of her human interest story.

33

The church that filled one side of the great square in the old town was always busiest in the afternoon. It seemed to scoop up the crowds who had spent the morning wandering around the narrow cobbled streets, staring up at the Citadel. The weary visitor would enter the cool, monolithic interior and be immediately confronted with the answer to their unspoken prayers: row upon row of polished oak pews offering, for no charge, a welcome place to sit and contemplate life, the universe and how unwise their choice of footwear may have been. It was a fully working church, holding services once a day and twice on Sunday, offering communion for those who wanted it and confession for those who needed it.

It was into this throng that a man now entered, slowing momentarily to remove his baseball cap in a half-remembered gesture of deference and let his eyes adjust to the gloom after the sun-bleached brightness of the streets. He hated churches – they gave him the creeps – but business was business.

He threaded his way through the knots of tourists staring up at the soaring columns, stained-glass windows and arching stonework of the clerestory – all eyes to heaven, as the architects had intended. Nobody gave him so much as a glance.

He reached the far corner of the church and his mood immediately soured. A line of people sat on a bench by a row of drawn curtains. He briefly considered jumping the queue, but didn’t want to risk drawing attention to himself, so sat down next to the last sinner in line until an apologetic-looking foreigner tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to a vacant booth.

‘It’s all right,’ he stammered, avoiding eye contact and gesturing towards the corner. ‘I want the one on the end.’

The tourist looked perplexed.

‘Go ahead. I’m funny about where I do my confessing.’

The man hunkered down on the bench. Normally his freelance business took him to the shadowy recesses of a bar or a car park. It felt weird, doing it in a church. He watched two more sinners emerge before the stall he needed finally became available. He was out of his seat and into the booth almost before the previous incumbent had emerged. He yanked the curtain shut behind him and sat down.

It was cramped and dark, and smelt of incense, sweat and fear. To his right a small, square grille was set into a wooden panel slightly lower than head height.

‘Do you have something to confess?’ prompted a muffled voice.

‘I might,’ he replied. ‘Are you Brother Peacock?’

‘No,’ the voice replied. ‘Please wait.’

Whoever was on the other side of the grille got up and left.

The man waited, listening to the whispers of tourists and the clicking of cameras. They sounded to him like the rasping legs of scuttling insects. He heard movement on the other side of the grille.

‘I am the emissary of Brother Peacock,’ a low voice announced.

The man leaned forward. ‘Please forgive me, for I have sinned.’

‘And what have you to confess?’

‘I have taken something from my place of work, something which does not belong to me, something I believe concerns a fellow Brother of your church.’

‘Do you have this thing with you?’

A pale hand dusted with freckles took a small white envelope from an inner pocket.

‘I do,’ he said.

‘Good. You understand that the purpose of confession is to enable sinners who enter the house of God burdened with their sins to leave again free of those burdens?’

The man smiled. ‘I understand,’ he said.

‘Your sin is not grave. If you bow your head before God I believe you will find the forgiveness you seek.’

A hatch slid open beneath the grille. He passed through the envelope, feeling a slight tug as it was taken from him. There was a brief pause. He heard it being opened and inspected.

‘This is everything you took?’

‘It’s everything there was to take as of about an hour ago.’

‘Good. As I said, your sin is not grave. I bless you in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. You may now consider your sins absolved – provided you remain a friend to the Church. Bow your head before God once more and he will reward his faithful servant.’

The man saw another envelope poking through the hatch. He reached down and took it. The door slid shut and whoever had been on the other side departed as quickly as he had arrived. Inside the envelope was a thick wad of unsigned hundred-dollar traveller’s cheques. They always paid him this way, and he smiled at the neatness of it. If he had been followed, which he knew he hadn’t, he could plausibly claim they’d been mislaid by a tourist. They were also untraceable, probably purchased by someone using a fake ID at any one of the Bureaux de Change that lined the old streets.

He pocketed the envelope and slipped out of the booth, past the patient queue, his eyes making contact with nobody until he’d left the church well behind him.

34

Five minutes after Brother Peacock’s emissary had absolved the man with the freckled hands, the envelope was placed in a basket alongside twelve dead chickens and eight pounds of ham at the foot of the tribute wall on the shadowy northern side of the mountain, then winched up on a swaying rope until it disappeared from sight.

Athanasius wiped a sheen of sweat from his skull as he watched the refectory monks haul in the basket. He retrieved the envelope before it joined the rest of its contents in the large copper stockpot. He had walked down nearly half a mile of corridors and stairwells to get to the tribute cavern. Now he had the envelope he turned wearily on his heels and walked right back up them again, heading to the ornate splendour of the Abbot’s private chambers.

Athanasius was breathing heavily by the time the gilded door closed behind him. The Abbot snatched the envelope and ripped it apart, hungry for the knowledge it contained. He stalked over to a writing desk set against the wall by the stained-glass window and folded down the front to reveal a sleek modern laptop.

A few mouse clicks later, the Abbot opened the case file Inspector Arkadian had closed less than an hour before. The face of Brother Samuel returned to haunt him, pale and ghastly under the stark lighting of the autopsy room. ‘I’m afraid the body appears remarkably undamaged by the fall,’ he said, scrolling rapidly through the first few images.

Athanasius winced as he caught sight of ribs poking through the shattered body of his former friend. The Abbot opened a text document, mercifully obscuring the ghastly images, and started to read. When he got to the final comments his teeth clenched.

Whoever this man was, he chose to fall. He waited until he had witnesses then ensured that he would land in city jurisdiction. Was his pre-death vigil some kind of signal? If so, who was he signalling to – and what message was he trying to communicate?

The Abbot followed the Inspector’s train of thought as it brought him dangerously close to forbidden territory.

‘I want the source who gave us this file to keep us regularly updated.’ The Abbot closed the case notes and opened another folder labelled Ancillary Evidence. ‘Any new discovery, any new development, I want to know about it immediately.’

He clicked on an image file and watched the screen fill with a slide show of close-ups of other evidence relating to the case: the coiled rope, the blood-soaked cassock, rock fragments retrieved from the torn flesh of the monk’s hands and feet, a strip of leather lying on an evidence tray …

‘And send word to the Prelate,’ the Abbot said gravely. ‘Tell him I need a private audience as soon as his holiness is blessed with sufficient strength to grant one.’

Athanasius could not see what had so unsettled the Abbot, but it was clear from his tone that he had been dismissed.

‘As you wish,’ he said, bowing his head and backing silently out of the room.

The Abbot continued to stare at the image until he heard the door shutting behind him. He checked he was alone then reached into the front of his cassock and pulled a leather thong from around his neck. Two keys dangled from it – one large, one small. He bent down to the lowest drawer of the desk, fitting the smaller key into the lock. Inside it was a mobile phone. The Abbot turned it on as he stared once more at the image frozen on his computer screen.

He punched the numbers into the phone, checked they were correct then pressed the call button.

35

Liv was driving slowly back along the I-95 with about ten thousand other people when her cell began to vibrate.

She glanced at the display. The caller’s ID was withheld. She dropped it back on the seat and returned her gaze to the slow-moving traffic. It buzzed a few more times then fell silent. Having been awake for what felt like a week, her only priority now was to get home and into bed.

The buzzing started up again almost immediately – too quick to be the answering service calling back. Whoever it was must have hit redial as soon as they’d heard the voicemail message. Liv looked at the river of red brake lights snaking into the distance ahead of her. She clearly wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry, so she swung her car over to the verge, slammed it in park, cut the engine and switched on her hazard lights.

She grabbed the cell and hit the answer button.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello.’ The voice on the other end of the line was male, unfamiliar and roughened round the edges by the hint of an accent. ‘Who is it I’m speaking with please?’

Liv’s antennae bristled. ‘Who are you trying to reach?’

There was a brief pause.

‘I’m not exactly sure,’ he said. ‘My name is Arkadian. I’m a police inspector trying to identify a man who was found with this phone number on him.’

Liv ran his response through her journalist’s mind, weighing every word. ‘What department are you with?’

‘Homicide.’

‘So I guess you’ve either got a perp who won’t talk or a victim who can’t.’

‘That’s correct.’

‘So which is it?’

He paused. ‘I have an unidentified body. An apparent suicide.’

Liv’s heart lurched. She ran through the list of men who had this number.

There was Michael, her ex-boyfriend, though she didn’t really peg him as the suicidal type. Her old college professor, but he was on holiday with a new girlfriend who was about twenty years his junior – he definitely wasn’t suicidal.

‘How old is … was this man?’

‘Late twenties, possibly early thirties.’

Definitely not her professor.

‘The body does have some distinguishing marks.’

‘What sort of marks?’

‘Well …’ The voice faltered, as if weighing up whether or not it should divulge anything further.

Liv knew from experience how reluctant cops were to give out information.

‘You said this was a suicide, right?’

‘Correct.’

‘Well then, it’s not like a murder where you need to hold back information to weed out false confessions, is it?’

Another pause. ‘No.’

‘So why don’t you just tell me what sort of distinguishing marks you found and I’ll tell you if I know who it is?’

‘You seem very well informed about how these things work, Miss …?’

It was Liv’s turn to falter. So far she’d managed to give nothing away while the caller had revealed his name, his profession and the purpose of his call. The crackle of the long-distance line punctuated the silence. ‘Where are you calling from, Inspector?’

‘I’m calling from the city of Ruin, in southern Turkey.’ That explained the crackly line and the accent. ‘You’re in the United States, aren’t you? New Jersey. At least, that’s where your number is registered.’

‘They clearly didn’t make you an inspector for nothing.’

‘New Jersey’s the Garden State, isn’t it?’

‘That’s the one.’

The crackle returned to the line. Arkadian’s attempt to loosen her up with small talk clearly wasn’t working. ‘OK,’ he said, trying a fresh tack. ‘I’ll do you a deal. You tell me who you are, then I’ll tell you what distinguishing marks we found on the body.’

Liv chewed on her bottom lip, weighing her options. She didn’t really want to give up her name, but she was intrigued and she really wanted to know who had been walking around with her very private phone number and was now lying on a mortuary slab. A beep sounded in her ear. She glanced at the grey display screen. A triangle with an exclamation mark flashed above the words LOW BATTERY. She normally had about a minute between this and total shut down, sometimes even less.

‘My name’s Liv Adamsen,’ she blurted. ‘Tell me about the body.’

She heard a faint and infuriatingly slow tapping as her name was fed into a computer.

‘Scars –’ the voice said finally.

She was about to ask another question when the floor gave way beneath her.

Late twenties, early thirties …

Her left hand moved involuntarily to her side. ‘Did the body … does he have a scar on his right side, about six inches long … like a cross laid on its side?’

‘Yes,’ the voice replied with the softness of rehearsed condolence. ‘Yes, he does.’

Liv stared straight ahead. Gone were the I-95 and the morning traffic crawling into Newark. Instead she saw the face of a scruffily handsome boy with dirty blonde hair grown long, standing on Bow Bridge in Central Park.

‘Sam,’ she said softly. ‘His name’s Sam. Samuel Newton. He’s my brother.’

Another image filled her mind: Sam back-lit by a low spring sun casting long shadows across the tarmac of Newark International Airport. He’d stopped at the top of the steps leading up to the plane that would take him to the mountain ranges of Europe. Shifted the bag on his shoulder containing all his worldly goods and turned to wave. It was the last time she had seen him.

‘How did he die?’ she whispered.

‘He fell.’

She nodded to herself as the image of the golden boy faded and was replaced by the shimmering red river of the Interstate. It was what she always thought had happened. Then she remembered something else the Inspector had said.

‘You said it was suicide?’

‘Yes.’

More memories surfaced. Troubled memories that made her soul feel heavy and brought fresh tears to her eyes. ‘How long do you think he’s been dead?’

There was a brief pause before Arkadian answered. ‘It happened this morning … local time.’

This morning? He’d been alive all that time …

‘If you want, I can call your local police department,’ Arkadian said, ‘send some photos over and get someone to bring you in to formally identify the body.’

‘No!’ Liv said sharply.

‘I’m afraid we need someone to identify him.’

‘I mean it won’t be necessary to send photos. I can be there in … maybe twelve hours …’

‘Honestly, you don’t need to come here to identify the body.’

‘I’m in the car now. I can head straight to the airport.’

‘It really isn’t necessary.’

‘Yes it is,’ she said. ‘It is necessary. My brother disappeared eight years ago. Now you’re telling me that, until a few hours ago, he was still alive. I’ve got to come … I need to know what the hell he’s been doing all these –’

Then her battery ran out.

36

The man with the freckled hands sat at the café pretending to read the sports pages. The place was busy, and he’d only just managed to grab a table right at the edge of the cool shadow cast by the awning that stretched over the pavement. He watched the sun creep slowly across the white linen tablecloth towards him and shuffled back in his chair.

From where he was sitting he could see the Citadel rising up in the middle distance, almost as if it were watching him. The sight of it made him uneasy. His paranoia was not entirely groundless. Almost as soon as he had finished paying the traveller’s cheques into an account at the First Bank of Ruin that no one but he knew about, he had received two new messages. The first was from someone he’d occasionally done business with, requesting the same information he had just sold. The second was from his contact in the Citadel, offering to pay handsomely for his ongoing loyalty and regular updates. It was proving to be a very lucrative morning indeed. Nevertheless he did feel slightly uneasy taking money for ‘ongoing loyalty’ when here he was, in plain view of the Citadel, about to give the same information to somebody else.

He glanced up from his paper and waved at the waiter to bring him his bill. It was odd that this case in particular was proving of such interest to so many. It wasn’t a murder or a sex case, both of which were traditionally his best earners. The waiter swept past, leaving a small round plate on the table with the bill trapped beneath a mint at its centre. He’d only had a coffee but he pulled out his wallet, selected a particular credit card and exchanged it for the mint, which he popped in his mouth. He laid his paper on the white linen tablecloth and smoothed it down, feeling the slight lump inside it. He leaned back in his chair and looked away, just another tourist enjoying the weather, as the waiter scooped up the newspaper and the plate without breaking his stride.

The sun continued to creep across the sky and the man pushed his chair further back. It had to be sex. He’d had a peek through the file himself the first time he’d swiped it and there was definitely something kinky going on, judging by all those scars. His guess was something weird that the holy folks were trying to cover up.