Secrets of the Dead (24 page)

Symmachus nods.

‘You knew Alexander was there.’

He looks as if he might deny it, then thinks better of it. He doesn’t want to make it easy for Eusebius.

‘This evening you went for a walk near the statue of Venus. Gaius Valerius saw you there.’

No one asks me to confirm it, but Symmachus has something to say.

‘I walk there every evening. Anyone who knows me would have known to find me there.’

Simeon’s still holding the document case. Eusebius takes it from him and holds it up. Something changes on Symmachus’s face, though I can’t tell if he recognises it. Perhaps I’m being too generous. I want to believe his innocence.

‘Have you seen this before?’

Symmachus tugs on his toga, which is in danger of slipping off his bony shoulder. ‘No.’

‘It belonged to Bishop Alexander. This evening, after you had met Valerius, your slave tried to dispose of it and was caught in the act.’

‘He’s lying.’

‘He’s testified under torture that you ordered him to do it.’

‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have tortured him.’

It’s a rare flash of anger, but it does him no good.

‘You were less scrupulous when you had Christians in your power.’ Spit flecks from Eusebius’s mouth. His face is alight with revenge. ‘You were a notorious persecutor and hater of Christians, though when the Augustus Constantine destroyed the arch-persecutors Galerius and Licinius he showed you every forgiveness. But when you saw Alexander of Cyrene in the library that day, the violence in your nature took over. You beat the life out of him, using a bust of your false ideologue Hierocles as the weapon.’

Symmachus hears out the charge in silence. No theatrical denials, no falling to his knees and clutching the Emperor’s feet. He hasn’t come to a secret court in the dead of night expecting to prove his innocence. When Eusebius has finished, he simply shakes his head and says a firm, ‘No.’

‘Perhaps it was simply because he was a Christian. Perhaps you never forgave the fact that he defied you in your own dungeon, that he defeated you. You hated him for it.’

‘I respected his courage. It was the men who broke that I despised. Men like …’ He pauses, searching for the name. ‘Asterius.’

‘
Enough!
’ Even Eusebius seems surprised by the force of his reaction. Perhaps he’s thinking of his friend’s mutilated arms, the life sentence he received for betraying his faith. He draws a deep breath and turns to Constantine.

‘Lord, there were no other witnesses to Alexander’s tragic
death
. The only man who saw it was the killer.’ An arm shoots out towards Symmachus. ‘That man. And having killed him in the most barbaric way conceivable, he stole his papers. Who knows why? Perhaps he thought he could use Alexander’s knowledge against the Church. But as the Augustus’s net closed around him, as the diligent Gaius Valerius tracked down the murderer, he panicked. He worried that the bag would be found. So he ordered his slave to get rid of it.’

‘All lies.’

My head’s spinning as I listen to my own story being rewritten in front of me. I look at Constantine. His face is as blank as glass, but he catches my glance and turns ever so fractionally to meet it.

Do you want a culprit? Or do you want me to find out who actually did it?

I don’t believe any of it. If Symmachus wanted to get rid of the document case why not just throw it in the harbour or burn it? Why send a slave to hand it over exactly where he’d be taking his evening stroll? Someone is setting Symmachus up to take the blame. The only real question is who?

Constantine’s still watching me. So is Symmachus. Is this my chance to save an innocent man? I’ve spent the last five days investigating this murder, but now that it’s come to this sudden trial I can’t think of anything to say. I don’t have any lines in this play they’re acting out. I’m a prop, a blunt instrument to be wielded by others. In that respect, I’m not much different to Symmachus.

The imperial gaze moves on. Symmachus looks away, his last hope gone. The disgust on his face condemns me.

Constantine stares down and says a single word.

‘
Deportatio
.’

Exile. Symmachus will be stripped of his property, his
citizenship
, his family and his rights. Legally, he’ll cease to exist.

Symmachus closes his eyes. His whole body is trembling; the only thing keeping him upright must be pride. I remember what Porfyrius said about him.
He’s a Stoic. Outward things cannot touch his soul
. I don’t think his philosophy is much help now.

‘What about the bag, Augustus?’ Eusebius asks.

‘Burn it.’

The guards lead Symmachus away. Constantine steps down off his throne and disappears through a door. The play’s over; they’ve no more use for me. No one tries to stop me going. As soon as I’m out of the room, I run down the palace corridors, following the tramp of the guards’ boots. I catch up with them in an anteroom near the north gate.

‘Have you come to celebrate your success?’ Symmachus’s voice is dead.

‘I had nothing to do with it.’

‘
I had nothing to do with it
,’ he parrots back, falsetto. ‘
I
had nothing to do with Alexander’s murder, and yet here I am.’

‘I’m sorry.’

A grimace. He’s got so little left, even my sympathy counts for something.

‘Constantine’s a reasonable man,’ I persist. ‘In a few months, he’ll recall you.’

‘In a few months we’ll all be dead. Tell yourself anything else, it’s a lie. First they get rid of you; then they send the assassins.’

He wipes his forehead and gives me a look filled with hate.

‘You know how it goes.’

Kosovo – Present Day

THEY LEFT CAMP
Bondsteel and drove north, back up the highway towards Pristina. Abby was getting sick of the sight of it. Jessop had wanted Sanchez to come with them, but his commanding officer flat out refused. The best Jessop got out of him was a KFOR map, which Sanchez marked where he thought the tomb had been.

Rain sluiced over the windscreen; tarpaulined lorries veered and swayed uneasily in front of them. Abby fished a cigarette out of her pocket and fumbled under the dashboard for the cigarette lighter. All she found was an empty socket.

‘They call it a power socket these days,’ said Jessop, laughing at her. He took a plastic lighter out of his pocket and reached across to light the cigarette.

‘Thanks.’ Abby tapped the bulge in her pocket. ‘Want one?’

‘I quit.’

She glanced across and saw he was smiling. ‘So how come you still carry the lighter?’

‘In case of emergencies.’

Mitrovica was a shabby, low-rise town squeezed between two rivers. During the war it had seen some of the worst atrocities; even now it was a divided city. French soldiers guarded the bridges; minarets and bell towers contested the skyline. Abby had hoped to avoid it, but the main road was closed for repairs. They drove in across a causeway on a floodplain. Rusted cars littered the shoreline. Across the river a crumbling factory pumped out smoke and pollution.

While Abby drove, Jessop tapped away at his phone.

‘What sort of a spy are you?’ she mocked him. ‘Shouldn’t you at least look where we’re going?’

‘I’m reading about it. Apparently, the Romans were up here in a big way. Lead and silver mining. We’re only about eighty miles from Ni
š
.’

‘Is that a good thing?’

‘It’s where the Emperor Constantine was born. Remember, I said the symbol on your necklace was his monogram?’

Abby slouched lower in her seat. She still hadn’t told Jessop about the scroll in Trier. She had Gruber’s translation in her pocket, a hard wad, but somehow, the moment had passed.

‘So – what? Do you think this was Constantine’s tomb?’

More taps on the phone. ‘It says here Constantine was buried in Istanbul. The Church of the Holy Apostles, if you’re interested.’ He put the phone down in defeat. ‘I don’t know.’

Abby switched on the radio and kept her eyes on the road.
She
thought Jessop was watching her, and felt herself recoil.
However nice he’s being, he’s still a spy
, she reminded herself.

North of Mitrovica the road got quieter. Jessop put his phone away and stared out of the window. They were in a river valley, green fields on the valley floor giving way to thickly wooded hillsides and mountains beyond. Tall haystacks like beehives lined the fields at the sides of the road.

Something was puzzling Jessop. ‘The signs are different,’ he said. ‘Serbian?’

‘Up here, they almost run a parallel state. A lot of them only take Serbian money, too.’

Jessop shook his head in disbelief. ‘This whole so-called country’s barely the size of Somerset. You’d think that would be small enough for them, without trying to subdivide it again.’

‘They still think they’re part of Serbia. If NATO hadn’t conquered it, they would be.’

‘Maybe they should have thought of that before they started massacring Albanians.’

‘Maybe.’

Jessop gave her a sideways look. ‘It says in your file you’re supposed to be an idealist.’

From the corner of her eye, she saw a steel cross standing proud on a ridge overlooking the road. ‘That was a long time ago.’

They lapsed into silence. A military lorry with a German flag on the back drove past in the opposite direction. In the rear-view mirror Abby saw bored soldiers sitting with their rifles.

‘Do you think you should have brought back-up?’ she asked.

‘London’s assessment is that the countryside up here is fairly peaceful.’

‘It isn’t London who’ll be getting shot at if things go wrong.’

‘I’m aware of that.’ Jessop squinted at the map. ‘I think our turn should be just around the next corner.’

They slowed to a crawl. Abby checked her mirror. There’d been a little red Opel behind them for a while, but she hadn’t seen it for the last few miles. ‘Is that it?’

It
was a dirt track with a strip of weeds down the middle. It blended with the surrounding fields so well they might not have noticed it, if there hadn’t been a white shrine standing on the corner. A bedraggled bouquet wilted at its base, testament to some too-familiar road tragedy.

Jessop stared at the map. ‘Let’s try it.’

The track was heavily rutted. Abby engaged the Landcruiser’s four-wheel drive, wrestling to keep it moving through the mud. Jessop leaned forward and peered through the rain-spattered windscreen.

‘Do those tyre-marks look fresh to you?’

Abby didn’t have time to look. The track had crossed the valley and begun to climb through the trees, where the slope and protruding rocks added new complications. Rivulets streamed down the track, gouging away the soft earth. Under the tree canopy, the day was almost black.

She crested the hill, spun the car around a sharp bend – and stopped so fast she almost stalled the car. A black pick-up truck stood parked across the road, blocking it completely. Two men in dark blue camouflage fatigues and balaclavas were standing beside it, AK-47s cradled in their arms.

‘KFOR are supposed to make sure this doesn’t happen,’ Jessop said. He had his phone out and was frantically tapping the screen. ‘They’re supposed to keep the roads open.’

‘Looks like someone didn’t get the memo.’ She was surprised how steady she felt. Crazy though it was, she knew what to
do
in these sorts of situation – had faced them dozens of times before. The scenery changed, but the actors never did: pick-up trucks and men with guns.

She reached in her pocket for the cigarette pack, then raised her hands so that the gunmen could see. One man walked forward; the other stayed by the truck, weapon pointed at the Toyota’s radiator.

The man drew level and gestured her to wind down the window. Dark eyes surveyed her from the balaclava’s moon-holes. He looked surprised to see the woman driving.

‘Papers, please?’ he grunted in English.

Abby fished out a cigarette with her teeth, then offered him the pack. He took it without thanks.

‘Is it OK to reach in my bag?’ She’d spoken in Serbian. The eyes squinted; the head nodded.

‘What are you doing here?’

Abby jerked her head at the side of the Landcruiser and thanked God for the stickers on the side. ‘EULEX. We’re supporting the environment ministry.’

She fumbled in her bag and handed the passport to the guard. He opened to the page with the twenty-euro note slipped inside.

‘And your friend?’

‘Some expert from London. He wants to see the trees.’

The twenty euros disappeared into a pocket. ‘Wait here.’

He walked back to the pick-up and conferred with his companion. He took out a silver mobile phone and started talking vigorously. The gun pointed at the car didn’t move.

‘What did you tell them?’ Jessop asked.

Abby stared ahead and tried to control her breathing. ‘He thinks we’re looking for illegal wood.’

‘Illegal wood?’

‘Seventy per cent of Kosovars use log fires for heating their homes. Outside the cities life can be pretty primitive. Even in the towns, the electricity supply’s mediocre at best. Illegal logging’s a big problem.’

‘And he thinks we’re hot on the trail?’

By the pick-up truck, the guard was still talking earnestly into his phone. ‘Who knows what he thinks? Or who he’s telling. Those uniforms are Serbian police.’

‘Are they allowed –?’

‘Have you still got that lighter?’

Jessop held it out, but his hands were trembling so badly he couldn’t spark the flint. Abby took it from him and lit her last cigarette.

‘This is the Balkans,’ she said through a mouthful of smoke. ‘Uniforms mean nothing. In Bosnia in the nineties, Milo
š
evi
ć
sent the Serbian army over the border, gave them new badges, and suddenly they were the Bosnian army.’ She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of expert?’

‘I’m a generalist.’

In front of them, the guard finished his call and put the phone away. It flashed like a knife where the headlights caught it. He slung his gun on his shoulder, then walked slowly back to their car.