The Bones Of Odin (Matt Drake 1) (15 page)

The books were deposited next to Ben a few minutes later, and he immediately chose the one titled
Voluspa.
He leafed through the pages like a man possessed; like an animal smelling blood. Dahl chose another volume, Drake a third. Hayden sat close to Ben, studying the text with him.

And then Ben cried out “
Eureka!
I’ve got it! The missing link. It’s Heidi! Bloody Heidi! This book follows - quote ‘the travels of Odin’s beloved Seeress -
Heidi’.”

“Like the children’s book?” Dahl obviously remembered his school days.

Drake just looked blank. “Eh? I’m more of a Heidi Klum type of guy.”

“Yes, the children’s book! I suppose the legend of Heidi, and the story of her travels must have integrated itself from Norse Saga into Scandinavian myth through the years, and then a writer from Switzerland decided to use the fairy-tale as a base for a kid’s book.”

“Well, what does it say?” Drake felt his heart beat faster.

Ben read for a second. “Oh, it says a lot,” he rushed on. “It says damn well everything.”

TWENTY-TWO

WASHINGTON DC

Kennedy Moore sat staring at her PC screen, seeing nothing, and thought about how when you ground life down beneath your heel it was basically just a tennis ball, served by a master. A bit of backspin changed your destiny, some unexpected sidespin sent you into a spiral of self-destruction, then a few days of topspin propelled you right back into the game.

She’d been feeling upbeat on the drive into New York, even better after the museum madness. She’d been feeling good about herself, and maybe even a little bit good about Matt Drake.

How perverse,
she’d told herself. But then, didn’t someone once say that out of great hardship comes great progress? Something like that.

Then the Professor was kidnapped. Ben Blake’s sister was abducted. And Kennedy had walked towards that mobile HQ with determination, head straight and fully in the game again, her thoughts focused on making sense of the turmoil.

Then, as she went to start climbing the steps, Lipkind materialised from the crowd and stopped her short.

“Captain?”

“Hey, Moore. We need to talk.”

“Come inside,” Kennedy motioned towards the HQ, “we could do with the help.”

“Uh, uh. No. This is not about the museum, Moore. Cruiser’s this way.”

He moved off through the crowd, stiff back now facing her like a silent accusation. Kennedy had to hurry to catch up.

“What . . . what’s happened, Captain?”

“Get in.”

The cruiser was empty except for the two of them. The street-noise was dulled, the world-shattering events outside now locked further away than a party-hopping socialite’s virtue.

Kennedy half-turned in her seat to face Lipkind. “Don’t tell me . . . please don’t tell me . . .” the catch in her throat made Lipkind’s stern expression slip, telling her everything before the words had fallen out of his mouth.

But fall they did, and each word was a drop of venom in her already blackened soul.

“Kaleb struck again. We had a month’s grace - then yesterday afternoon we got the call. Girl . . . ahh . . . girl from Nevada,” his voice thickened. “New to the city. Student.”

“No. Please . . .”

“I wanted you to know now, before you heard some rat-fuck kinda way.”

“No.”

“I’m sorry, Moore.”

“I want back in. Let me come back, Lipkind.
Let me in.
”

“I’m sorry.”

“I can
help
you. It’s my job. My life.”

Lipkind was chewing his bottom lip, a sure sign of stress. “Not yet. Even if I wanted to, the Brass wouldn’t approve. You know that.”

“Do I? Since when would I know the thoughts of politicians? Everyone in politics is a bastard, Lipkind, and since when did they do
the right thing?
”

“Ya got me,” Lipkind’s growl betrayed his heart. “But orders, as they say, is orders. And mine ain’t been changed.”

“Lipkind, this is . . .
ruining
me.”

He swallowed drily. “Give it time. You’ll be back.”

“It’s not
me
I care about, dammit! It’s his fucking
victims! Their families!”

“So do I, Moore. Believe me.”

After a moment she said: “Where?” It was all she could do, all she could ask, all she could think about.

“Moore. You ain’t gotta pay no penance here. Ain’t your fault this psycho’s a fuckin’
psycho
.”

“Where?”

Lipkind knew what she needed and told her the place.

*****

Open building site. Three blocks south of Ground Zero. Developer by the name of Silke Holdings.

Kennedy found the site in twenty minutes, noted the fluttering crime-scene tape on the fourth floor of the open shell, and sent the cab away. She stood before the building, staring up with spiritless eyes. The place was deserted - still an active crime-scene - but it was getting late on Saturday, and the incident was over twenty-four hours old.

Kennedy kicked at the rubble, then let herself onto the construction site. She followed an open flight of concrete stairs up the side of the building to the fourth floor, and walked out on to the concrete slab.

A strong breeze tugged at her loose blouse. If her hair hadn’t been scraped back with a heavy-duty band it would have thrashed around as if possessed. Three views of New York opened up before her, rattling her vertigo, a condition she’d had all her life but had strangely only just remembered.

Yet she had climbed
Yggdrasil,
the World Tree.

No vertigo then.

It reminded her of the
Odin
case and of Matt Drake in particular. She wanted to return to it, to him, but wasn’t sure she had the balls.

She ventured out across the dusty slab, avoiding heaps of rubble and contractors’ tools. The wind tugged at her sleeves, at her pants, making them billow because of the excess material. She stopped near to where Lipkind had described the body’s location. Contrary to popular TV, bodies are not marked out in chalk - they are photographed, then its exact location measured from various fixed points.

Anyway, she just needed to be close. To bend down, to fall to her knees, close her eyes and pray.

And it all rushed back. Like the fall of the Devil from heaven. Like the making of an archangel, everything flashed through her mind. The moment she’d seen Chuck Walker pocketing a slab of dirty money. The crash of the Judge’s gavel proclaiming his guilt. The dead stares of her colleagues, the obscene drawings that started appearing on her locker - attached to the hood of her car - fixed to her apartment door.

The letter she’d received from the serial killer where he thanked her for all her help.

She needed to do penance for the new murder she had helped Thomas Kaleb commit.

She needed to seek forgiveness from the dead and the grieving.

TWENTY-THREE

WASHINGTON DC

“This thing’s more revealing than Britney,” Ben was rushing his words with choked excitement. “It says - ‘Whilst he is on the World Tree, a Volva reveals to Odin that she knows many of his secrets. That he sacrificed himself on
Yggdrasil
in pursuit of knowledge. That he fasted for nine days and nine nights for the same end. She tells him she knows where his Eyes are hidden, and how he gave them up in exchange for even more knowledge.”

“Odin the Wise,” Dahl interrupted. “Parnevik said he was always considered to be the wisest of all Gods.”

Drake muttered: “Revealing your secrets to a woman is never wise.”

Ben sent him an eye-roll. “Odin fasted on the World Tree for nine days and nine nights with a Spear thrust through his side, like Christ on the cross. Heidi says that in his delirium Odin told her where his c
ompanions
were hidden. And where his Shield was hidden. And that his Spear should stay there. And that he wanted her to scatter his companions - his
Pieces
- and lay his body in the Tomb.”

Ben grinned at Drake, wide-eyed. “I may not have completed my quest for the fabled clitoris, my friend, but my work here is
done.”

Then Ben remembered where he was, and the woman who stood beside him. He gripped the bridge of his nose. “Damn and bollocks.”

Dahl didn’t bat an eyelid. “To my knowledge - which extends only to what I bothered to listen to as Parnevik lectured - is that
Volvas
, like Egyptian Pharaohs, were always buried in the richest graves with many valuables beside them. Horses, wagons, gifts from faraway lands.”

Hayden appeared to be hiding a smirk. “If we follow your story logically through its entire course, Mr Blake, then I guess Heidi’s so-called
travels
are in fact an explanation of where all the Pieces of Odin were scattered . . .or hidden.”

“Call me . . . Ben. Yes, Ben. And yes, you are right. Of course.”

Drake helped his friend out. “Not that it matters now. All the Pieces have been found, except for the Valkyries and . . .” he paused.

“The Eyes.”
Ben said with an intense smile. “If we can find the Eyes we can stop this
and
grab ourselves a bargaining chip for Karin.”

Drake, Dahl, and Hayden remained tight-lipped. Drake eventually said: “The Valkyries must be out there too, Blakey. Can you find out where they were discovered? There has to be some old newspaper account or something.”

“Heidi
devised
the legend and the Ragnarok thing,” Ben was still musing, lost in his research. “Odin must have tutored her before he died at Ragnarok.”

Drake motioned Dahl and Hayden aside with a nod of the head. “The Valkyries,” he said to them. “You remember the complete lack of information, and thus the possible criminal angle? Any chance Interpol can get together with the CIA and give it a shot?”

“I’ll go authorise it now,” Hayden said. “And I’ll follow up on the investigation our IT techs have been carrying out on the Germans. Like your cute little friend here
almost
says - electronic trails should lead us to them.”

“Cute?” Drake smiled at her. “He’s more than that. DIP in photography. Lead singer in a band. Family man, and . . . ” he shrugged, “yes . . . my friend.”

She leaned in close, said: “He can take my picture any time,” then laughed lightly and walked away. Drake started after her, both puzzled and pleasantly surprised. He’d been wrong about her. Christ, she was harder to read than Kennedy.

Drake prided himself on his judge of character. Was he slipping? Had the civilian years made him go soft?

A voice spoke in his ear, making his heart leap. “What’s that?”

Kennedy!

“Crap!” He jumped, and tried to disguise his little leap in the air as a routine stretching of the limbs.

The New York cop read him like a book. “I’d heard the SAS have never been ambushed in enemy territory. Guess you were never part of
that
team, huh?”

“What’s what?” Ben asked distractedly, in answer to her question.

“That?” Kennedy leant forward and tapped the side of the monitor, indicating a tiny icon hidden among a jumble of manuscript symbols.

Ben frowned. “Dunno. Looks like a picture icon.”

As Kennedy straightened herself, her hair came free of its bindings and fell across her shoulders. Drake watched it cascade down to the small of her back.

“Woah. That’s a lot of hair.”

“Can it, freak.”

Ben double-clicked the picture icon. The screen transformed into text, its bold title leaping out at them.
Odin and the Seeress, arrayed at Ragnarok.
And beneath that, a few old lines of explanatory text.

This painting, by Lorenzo Bakke in 1795, impounded from the private collection of John Dillinger in 1934, is believed to be based on an older image and shows the Norse God Odin’s companions laid out in peculiar order in the place where Odin died - the mythical battlefield of Ragnarok. His favoured Seeress looks on and weeps.

Without a word Ben clicked again, and the painting materialised before them.

“My God!” Ben murmured. “Well done.”

Kennedy said, “It’s a blueprint . . . of how to arrange the Pieces.”

TWENTY-FOUR

WASHINGTON DC

“Let’s get some copies made.” Ever cautious, Drake took a few quick snaps with his phone. Ben had tutored him to keep a good, workable camera handy at all times and this was unforeseen pay-dirt. “All we need now are the Valkyries, the Eyes and a map to Ragnarok.” He stopped abruptly, jabbed by a splinter of memory.

Ben said: “What?”

“Not sure. Damn. A memory. Maybe something we’ve seen these last few days, but we’ve seen so much I can’t narrow it down.”

Dahl said: “Well, Drake. Maybe you were right. It could be that a modern-day Dillinger has an interesting private collection of his own.”

“Look here,” Ben read on. “It says that this painting is unique, a fact unrealised until the early 1960’s, whereupon it was included in a Norse Mythology exhibition and sent on a short world tour. After that, and with waning interest, the painting was locked in the museum’s vault and . . . well, forgotten about. Until today.”

“Good job we brought along a cop.” Drake was making an attempt to boost Kennedy’s self-esteem, still unsure where her head was at after New York.

Kennedy began to tie her hair back, then hesitated. After a moment she jammed her hands in her pockets, as if trying to trap them. Drake tapped her on the shoulder. “So, how about you go get that painting and bring it here. There might be something we can’t see from a photo. My old mate Dahl and me’s gonna check out the shady side of art collecting. Shake a few trees.” He paused, grinning. “
More
trees.”