Sanctus (21 page)

Kutlar sat up front, staring into the jagged darkness of the tunnel. The rumble of tyres across the uneven floor and the hammering of the diesel engine combined to produce a singularly mournful sound. The vibrations rattled the plastic dashboard and plucked at the stitches in Kutlar’s leg. He relished the pain – it kept him focused and proved he was still alive.

His head was fuzzy from the pills he’d taken. He realized he’d have to watch that. He’d have to stay sharp if he wanted to think his way out of this one. It had all come clear when Cornelius and Johann helped him out of the clinic and into the van.

‘You need to tell us what happened,’ Cornelius had said, like he was just offering friendly advice. ‘You need to tell us how the girl managed to escape. And, most importantly,’ he’d added, so close that the whiskers of his beard brushed against Kutlar’s ear, ‘you need to tell us what she looks like.’

That was why he was still breathing. They only had her name, but he had seen her face. As long as they were still looking for her, he was more useful to them alive.

The passage rose suddenly and emerged into a cavernous chamber. Johann swung the wheel and the headlights flashed across a steel door before they crunched to a stop. Johann killed the engine and he and Cornelius slipped out of the cab. Kutlar didn’t move. He watched them in the side mirrors. The chassis shifted slightly as the back doors opened and Kutlar heard the ripple of heavy plastic as the first of the stiffs was lifted out.

He’d been shocked when they popped the two paramedics. The doc’s death had been more acceptable somehow; no one would be that surprised when his body was eventually found slumped in the chair where they’d left him. He’d stepped across the line long ago when he got hooked on junk and started treating gunshot wounds. The medics, though – they were just civilians.

Glowing red in the brake lights, the monks reappeared from behind the van with the first body-bag and laid it by the steel door. When they’d twice repeated the process, Johann took out his swipe card and the door sprung inwards. Seconds later it clicked back into place, sealing the bodies inside.

Cornelius and Johann climbed back into the van.

‘I can help you find her,’ Kutlar said.

Cornelius turned to him, lip curled. ‘How?’

‘Get us out of here and I’ll show you.’ Kutlar tried to conjure up a smile but only managed a grimace. ‘I need to make a call.’ He shrugged theatrically. ‘But there’s no signal down here.’

Cornelius said nothing for a moment, just looked at the thin film of sweat bathing Kutlar’s skin despite the chill of their surroundings. ‘Sure,’ he said finally.

Johann twisted the ignition key.

The engine throbbed into life, the sound suddenly overwhelming in the confined space. Kutlar glanced at the wing mirror and watched the red glow fade from the cave as they drove away.

The three body-bags lay in the black silence of the mountain while torches were being lit in the maze of tunnels above by those coming to collect them. A little over twenty-four hours after escaping from the Citadel, Brother Samuel had returned.

As crime scenes go, the cold-storage chamber of the city morgue was about as good as it got. Highly restricted access had prevented the usual build up of partial prints, hair follicles and other assorted trace evidence that clouded most investigations. All the surfaces were clinically clean. And there was a complete CCTV record showing where the suspects had been and what they had touched.

‘There,’ Arkadian said, pointing at the edge of the bunched-up green plastic sheet on the trolley. ‘The first suspect touched it as he pulled it over himself.’

Petersen smiled. The only thing easier to lift prints off was glass.

‘He also touched that drawer.’ Arkadian pointed to locker number eight. ‘Let me know as soon as you find anything.’ He left Petersen laying out his brushes and unscrewing a tub of fine aluminium powder.

A uniformed officer was stationed by the door, ensuring no one else came in or out. Reis paced the corridor outside his office. He held up a specimen jar as Arkadian approached.

Arkadian took it without breaking his stride. ‘Where is she?’

‘First-floor staff room,’ Reis called after him.

* * *

The statement detailed everything that had happened to her from walking into the morgue to identifying the mystery man on the CCTV footage. Liv was preparing to sign it when Arkadian appeared. She still wondered what Gabriel’s game was and why he was playing it. She hadn’t described him as ‘the man who tried to kidnap me’. The most he had done was to impersonate an officer and offer her a lift into the city. He wasn’t the one who’d stuck a gun in her face. He hadn’t snatched her brother’s body either, although she still wasn’t sure what he’d been doing in the cold-storage room. In the end she’d settled for ‘the man who met me at the airport and claimed he was my police escort’. It wasn’t elegant, but it was accurate. She scribbled the date next to her name.

The uniformed officer checked her signature then scraped his chair back from the narrow table. Arkadian closed the door behind him.

Liv dragged a depressed-looking geranium across the table towards her and started deadheading it, pinching the shrivelled flowers from the choked stems and crumbling them into the pot. ‘Found him yet?’

Arkadian looked down into the street. It would have been the perfect moment for a police van to screech to a halt in front of the building with all three suspects cuffed in the back, but it didn’t happen.

‘Not yet,’ he said. A diesel rainbow was smeared across the wet road where the fire-trucks had parked. ‘We’re working on it.’ He turned back to the crumpled newspaper on the table between them, the front page now a kaleidoscope of letters and crossings out. ‘Had any luck with that?’

‘Haven’t had much time to focus on it, to be honest. Been kind of distracted.’

Arkadian said nothing, hoping the silence would soften her.

‘Do you really believe this is why they took him?’ She examined the scrawled symbols and letters once more.

‘Maybe. As soon as we catch them, we’ll ask. Until then, I’d like to ask you something.’ He laid the package Reis had given him down on the table-top.

Liv’s eyes narrowed. ‘That’s a buccal swabbing kit.’

Arkadian nodded. ‘Given what Reis got back from the lab, it would be very helpful for us to compare your DNA with your brother’s. It would also establish your biological kinship beyond any doubt.’ He slid the kit towards her.

Liv picked the last dead flower from the geranium and mulched it with the others. She rubbed her hands together then opened the specimen jar and wiped the cotton swab inside her cheek. She screwed down the lid and handed it back to him. The Citadel rose up behind the buildings across the street, stark and impassive against the sky. The sight of it made her shudder.

Arkadian followed her gaze. Saw a flash of movement from the street below. ‘Jesus,’ he said, springing from his chair. A TV news van had pulled up in front of the building.

‘I didn’t call them,’ she said. ‘I’m strictly print. We hate those guys.’

There was a knock on the door.

‘Sorry, chief,’ Petersen said, ‘but I’ve lifted practically a whole set of latents from the sheet. You want me to send them for routine processing or fast track?’

‘Hang on a minute, I’ll come with you.’ He turned back to Liv. ‘I know you didn’t call that news crew, so don’t misread what I’m about to say . . . I think we need to get you out of the building.’

Liv’s expression darkened.

‘This isn’t an attempt to get rid of you; I just think you’d be safer away from here. If the press know what’s happened, they’ll lay siege to the place. I don’t want the people who took your brother finding out on the six o’clock news that you’re here. But I think it’s best you stay under our protection. I’m going to arrange for someone to drive you back to Central so you can get a shower and a change of clothes. I’ll catch up with you later, OK?’

Liv looked down at her mud-encrusted outfit.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘But if you’re using this as an excuse to sideline me, then I’m going to walk straight back out and call a press conference.’

‘Be my guest,’ he said. ‘Just stay away from the windows. I don’t want to see your face on the news.’

Neither do I,
Liv thought as she inspected her grimy blouse. She pulled a dirt-roughened lock of hair down from her fringe and glanced over at the window, trying to catch her own faint reflection in the glass. Instead her eyes were drawn back to the thin, dark mountain soaring into the clear blue sky.

Athanasius had been summoned into his master’s office shortly after Matins and asked to accompany him on a task – ‘for the sake of the brotherhood,’ the Abbot had said. ‘
A task that you must not discuss with anyone.’

So here they were, picking their way down a narrow, rubble-strewn stairway, the way ahead lit only by the burning torch in his hand. Occasionally they passed other narrow and mysterious passageways.

They had been walking steadily downwards for almost five minutes when Athanasius saw a dim glow up ahead. It came from inside an arched doorway that looked newer and more sculpted than its forgotten surroundings. He followed the Abbot into a small cave where two monks stood silently, each carrying a torch of their own. Both wore the green robes of the Sancti.

Athanasius averted his eyes and noticed another door sunk into the wall, this one made of heavy steel. A thin slot sat to one side of it, similar to the hi-tech locks that guarded the entrance to the great library. The Abbot nodded a silent greeting to the Sancti, reached into his sleeve and removed a magnetic card. There was a muffled clunk. The Abbot pushed the door wide and the three of them passed through. Athanasius stood alone for a moment, then followed.

The chamber was slightly smaller than the one they had just come from and the air inside seemed warmer, thickened by a fine dust that caught the orange glow of the flambeau. It had an identical steel door built into the far wall, in front of which lay three cocoons of heavy-duty plastic. Athanasius knew immediately what they must contain.

One of the Sancti unzipped the closest far enough for a head to emerge. A thin trickle of blood ran from a small hole in his temple to his hairline. Athanasius didn’t recognize him, nor the second body. But he knew the third. He looked upon the face of his dead friend and had to reach for the wall to steady himself.

‘The cross has returned to the Citadel,’ the Abbot said softly as he too looked down upon the battered face of Brother Samuel.

For a moment all four stared at him, then, as if on a pre-arranged command, he was zipped back into the bag and the Sancti carried him away. He waited for them to return for the other two bodies. But they did not.

‘These unfortunates must be disposed of,’ the Abbot said. ‘I am sorry to have to leave this task to you – I know you will find it distasteful – but I have matters of great importance to attend to, your brothers may not walk in the lower section of the Citadel, and you are the only person I can trust . . .’

He made no move to explain who the men were, or why they were now lying dead on the floor of this forgotten cave.

‘Take them to the deserted section in the eastern chambers,’ he said. ‘Drop them in one of the old oubliettes. Their bodies will be forgotten, but their souls will be at peace.’ He paused at the entrance and rubbed his hands together, as if washing them. ‘The door will close automatically in five minutes,’ he said. ‘Make sure you are clear of this room by then.’

Athanasius listened to his footsteps recede into the darkness.

The cross has returned to the Citadel . . .

Athanasius recalled the words of the Heretic Bible:

He wondered what they had in mind for the defiled remains of his friend. He’d be taken to the chapel of the Sacrament, no doubt; why else would Sancti have come to fetch him?

But to think he might rise again . . .

It was the logic of a madman.

He glanced down at the remaining bags, two anonymous corpses in a silent crypt, and wondered what lives they had woken up to that morning and who might now be wondering anxiously at their silence. A wife? A lover? A child?

He dropped to his haunches and said a silent prayer over each as he zipped them gently back into their plastic shrouds. Then he dragged each of them into the antechamber, fearful that the door might click shut at any moment, and turn the dusty chamber into his own tomb.

Liv sat in the staff room of the city morgue, looking at the picture of her brother and conjuring images from her past. Relating her family history to Arkadian had been like shining a light into it. She remembered now how she had sat Samuel down in her dorm-room and excitedly told him all the things she’d found out on her trip to Paradise, West Virginia.

She pictured him perching on the edge of the narrow bed, his face, already clouded with pain and sadness, paling to ash as she told him the details of how they had both come into the world. For her it had explained all the unanswered questions about identity that had tormented her throughout her childhood and teens. She had hoped that sharing it would bring him peace also. But her attempt to cool his smouldering self-hatred had only thrown fuel on to it. He already blamed himself for the death of their father. Now she had handed him a reason to blame himself for their mother’s too.

He had shambled away like a ghost.

He didn’t speak to her for months afterwards. All her calls went unanswered. She even left messages at his therapist’s office, until she discovered he’d stopped going and started fervent visits to church instead.

The last time she had seen him was in New York. He had called up out of the blue, sounding happy and vital, just like his old self. He told her he was going on a journey and wanted to see her before he left.

They met at Grand Central Station and spent the day hanging out and doing tourist stuff. He told her he’d realized some things that had given him a new focus. He said that when someone dies so someone else can live, then that someone has been spared for a reason. They had a higher purpose; the journey he was about to begin was his way of divining what that purpose was.

She’d assumed the journey would entail climbing a bunch of scary-assed mountains, but he told her that wasn’t the way to get closer to God. He didn’t elaborate and she didn’t ask him to. She’d just been glad he seemed to have found an exciting new direction. She didn’t for one moment think, as she waved him off at the airport, that she would never see him alive again.

Liv blinked back the tears and looked up at the Citadel, standing like a sliver of night against the spring sky. She felt now the pain her brother must have felt back then. She had never blamed herself for her father’s death or her mother’s, but she blamed herself for Samuel’s. No matter what Arkadian thought, it was her desire for self-knowledge that had led to her discovering the truth about their birth, and it was her thoughtless revelation of it to Samuel that led to his fall from the top of that bloody mountain.

The sound of the door clicking open snapped her back to the present. She rubbed at the wetness around her eyes and turned to see a bulky plainclothes cop with a round, pasty face and thinning hair the colour of brick. His eyes peered at her from the softness of his face and his hands rested on his hips, opening his jacket slightly to reveal a hint of shoulder holster, and a set of handcuffs clipped to his belt. His shirt strained to contain his belly and a badge rested on it, suspended from a cord around his neck.

She’d seen a million like him; the insecure kind, who had to let you know they were police, even though they wore no uniform. They were the sort she always cosied up to when working a story, because they liked to talk.

His brow creased. ‘You OK?’

‘Yeah. Just . . . having a moment . . .’

He nodded uncertainly. Tried a smile. Gave up and pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘Only, I got a squad car out back when you’re ready. I’m going to sneak you out and take you over to Central. We got a gym over there where you can grab a hot shower and a change of clothes.’

Liv blotted her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. ‘Sure,’ she said, shooting him a smile that was even weaker than his. ‘What’s your name . . .?’

‘I’m Sulleiman,’ he said, lifting his photo ID. ‘Sulley, if you want to be friendly.’ She caught a glint of what looked like a chrome-plated .38 sticking out of his pancake holster as she looked at the picture. The flash of the camera had bleached out his face a little and he looked more serious in the picture than in real life, but it was definitely him: Sub-Inspector Sulleiman Mantus, RPF.

‘OK,’ she said, satisfied that she wasn’t about to be kidnapped again. ‘Let’s go, Sulley.’ She swept the newspaper from the table and followed him out.

The reception area was humming as they made their way through it. Two uniformed officers were standing guard by the entrance, checking everyone in and out. Beyond them, Liv saw a news crew, lights on, camera rolling, the reporter standing with her back to the building as she taped her report; or maybe it was live. Liv drifted behind the Sub-Inspector into a hushed hallway leading to the rear of the building. Another uniformed officer stood by a pair of overlapping plastic doors. He nodded as they approached.

‘After you . . .’ Sulley stood aside.

The plastic buckled slightly before delivering Liv into what she momentarily mistook for the blinding sunshine.

Then a woman shouted: ‘Are you connected with the disappearance of the monk?’

Liv spun round to head back into the safety of the building but the Sub-Inspector grabbed her arm and hustled her towards an unmarked police car a little way down the alley. She dropped her head so her hair fell over her face.

‘Are you under arrest?’ the reporter yelled.

A flashgun exploded to her right and a man’s voice joined the questioning.

‘What is your connection with the missing man?’

‘Was the theft an inside job?’

The Sub-Inspector pulled open the rear door of the car, pushed Liv firmly into the back seat and slammed it behind her.

Liv glanced up just as the interior flooded with light from a camera pressed against the window. She wrenched her head away.

The car bounced on its springs as Sulley dropped into the driver’s seat.

‘Sorry about that.’ He caught her eye in the rear-view mirror as he fired up the engine. ‘It’s amazing how quickly the press catch on to these things.’

He popped the handbrake and eased away from the pack. The last thing Liv saw as she glanced out of the rear window was the dead-eyed stare of a camera lens looking right back at her.