The Queen's Cipher (29 page)

He rose to his feet and showed her the door less graciously than he had intended.

With Madison out of the way he could concentrate on his old flame. He noticed her understated elegance - the Hermes silk scarf, the black suit and the calf length leather boots – and felt drawn to her. Even now, in her formidable middle age, she had a powerful influence on him.

“Julia,” he said, kissing her on both cheeks and ushering her into his office. “How are you today?”

“Very well, thank you.
The Spectator
wants an article on Oxford’s academic contribution to English literature. I’ve told the magazine editor it is a case of arrested development. The dons who wrote the best books like Lewis Carroll, Tolkien and C.S Lewis did so for children.”

“Is that so?” Not so much a question as a general wondering.

Julia felt the need to explain her presence. “I was in Stratford this morning for a theatre trust meeting and I thought I’d drop in on you.”

She rummaged around in her shoulder bag. “Like the Greeks, I come bearing gifts. I knew you wanted this.” She handed him a CD of Poulenc’s
Dialogues des Carmelites
. “There are only two operas that really move me –
La Boheme
and this one – and I think
Dialogues
has the more effective ending.”

Not knowing what to say he kissed her again. “How about an early lunch?” he asked.

“That would be lovely,” she replied. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t drink. I’ve got a conference at five and university finance is a sobering subject at the best of times.”

The words were innocent enough and her eyes fixed upon him but he could tell her thoughts were elsewhere. Was it some emphasis of voice or the way she was fiddling with her silk scarf.

“By the way,” she added brightly, “I saw your ad in the local paper. Why does a tour company need an academic consultant?”

He smiled at her. “Blame my American partners for that. Ever since they came on the board they’ve been pressing me to appoint a theatre guide with expert knowledge of the Shakespeare plays. They think it will enhance the theatregoing experience.”

“Have you filled the post yet?”

“Not so far. Have you somebody in mind? I’m sure the cousins would greatly appreciate a recommendation from you.”

Julia looked at him, hearing rather more than he meant, and began to talk in a distracted fashion. The words tumbled out in half sentences that had to be pieced together to form a narrative. There was a young lecturer at Beaufort College in whom she took a special interest. As a boy he had seen his parents blown up by a terrorist bomb in Northern Ireland. He was psychologically damaged, a loner, and yet he had a brilliant mind and was very different from the current crop of students who wore their cynicism like a badge. He might fit the bill.

But that wasn’t the only thing she had come to say. “I’m having more trouble with Major Duncan,” she sighed, her lower lip trembling.

“Do you mean the fake one with the odd forwarding address?”

“No, not him, the one you met at the Frankfurt Book Fair. He’s been in touch with a colleague of mine about a Bacon genealogy that will cast a new light on sixteenth-century history. There’s some kind of scam going on and I’m going to be caught up in it. You can see that, can’t you Seb?”

Actually he couldn’t. All he could see were the tears welling up in her eyes.

“They’re playing games with me.”

He murmured a few polite negatives - surely not and you must be mistaken – but she wasn’t listening to him. “I thought you were going to find someone who’d make discreet inquiries but I haven’t heard a thing.”

It simply wasn’t Sebastian Christie’s day. Here was another woman reproaching him for his shortcomings.

“Look, I found an investigator who made preliminary inquiries. The man you met in Verona is called Donald Strachan, a once famous Shakespearean actor living on a houseboat in Shoreham who buys and sells Jacobean memorabilia. The private detective believes Strachan disguised himself in order to enhance his status. Says he’s harmless. I was going to tell you this at our next meeting. I really do want to help ...” He ran out of words.

“What about the real Major Duncan?” she persisted.

“There didn’t seem any point in checking him out. His name had simply been taken in vain.”

Julia blew her nose on her handkerchief. “Well, that’s no longer the case. The two men must be working together. And you know why this bothers me. I’ve got a lot to lose.”

He wanted to tell her what he felt about her but now was not the right time.

“Alright Julia, if that’s what you want. I’ll get my man on to it. Now lunch is calling.”

Julia gave him a hug. Here we are, she thought, rolling back the years, sharing things again.

21 MAY 2014

The low front hovered overhead leaching the colour out of the countryside. Fog clung to the flood plain like ancient sin and for the lone runner looming out of the watery haze there was no end in sight. The track-suited athlete had perfect control over his body, understood how each muscle and sinew worked, but his melancholy showed no sign of lifting, resembling sorrow as mist resembles rain, muffling the senses in its eerie stillness.

In running through the wet pastureland until his lungs burst, Freddie hoped to lose himself in a world of pain. To pound away until there wasn’t a thought left in his head. Passing the longhorn cattle in Christ Church Meadow for a second time he pulled up, drenched from his exertions, and admitted defeat. As an exercise in forgetfulness, it had been a dismal failure. Everything he came across reminded him of her and how she had played him for a fool. Beauty without truth was a lethal cocktail.

He would never get over her betrayal. That she was sleeping with her head of department was bad enough but to learn about it from a hysterical American woman made things far worse. Winona Cleaver had wept down the line; telling him how she had overheard Milton’s indiscreet long-distance conversation and jotted down the telephone number. Are you aware, she shrieked, that your wife is having an affair with my husband. He had been too shocked to correct her. He had simply hung up. But he couldn’t get rid of the picture stamped on his brain: bodies intertwining in a tableau of treachery.

He glanced at his watch. There was time for a quick shower before meeting the London train. Donald Strachan would be on it. The old actor claimed to have exciting news of an American publisher for a book that they might write together. Freddie wasn’t looking forward to the meeting. He would have to reject the offer. He couldn’t afford to tilt at any more academic windmills, not when he was facing police inquiries and a college disciplinary tribunal.

Then, in a single moment, standing beside the chewing cattle, panting for breath, passion replaced reason.  Cleaver had got under his skin and like a parasitic protozoan he was burrowing into his brain. He hated the man for taking his girl and trying to harm his career. But it went deeper than that. Cleaver and his kind were opposed to freedom of thought. They saw themselves as the guardians of history but it was the old problem of who guards the guardians. Establishments had tried to control the flow of information ever since the Catholic Inquisition. However modern he might seem, Cleaver actually stood for the thumbscrews and the rack. He had to be stopped.

“To hell with it,” Freddie yelled aloud. “I’ll show the bastard!”

22 MAY 2014

In an oak-framed building called Bookmark, a mahogany wall clock chimed the hour as a well dressed grey-haired man sniffed a leather-bound volume and sighed with pleasure as he ran his hand over its soft spine. Appearances mattered in his world. Everything should be spic-and-span. Hence the navy blue blazer, pink and white striped shirt and sharply creased wool flannels. A good soldier should always respect himself and what he did.

Books were easy to respect. They were living things. He could hear their sounds and smell their scents, the musty but somehow compelling aroma of decaying parchment and rotting wood; he could stroke their marbled covers and even taste them when he moistened his fingers to turn a page: row upon row of shining editions with their red, blue and gilt bindings like ceremonial soldiers on parade.

But there was no parade ground now, just a bookshop with a second-hand section where customers had to contend with uneven floors, low lintels and exceptionally narrow catwalks. Book lovers needed to be thin and athletic to browse here. Not that it mattered financially as most of Bookmark’s business was with private libraries and interior decorators.

Gone were the days when an antique bookseller could make a living out of dealing with the general public. The new ‘collectors’ were not interested in reading. Books had become elegant accessories adding panache to a rich man’s room and designers bought them by the truckload. The talk was of quantity, size and richness of hue. Orders placed by the linear yard, fifty books to a six foot shelf. He might as well be in haberdashery.

Yet he loved his books. They were the best thing in George Edward Duncan’s otherwise disappointing life. He had lived alone since his wife left him and his daughter, Elizabeth, an art student in Bournemouth, only looked him up when she was short of cash. As for his Army career, the least said the better, although paradoxically he still used his rank; being a major went down well at book fairs and among the corps of interior decorators. It inspired confidence in the commercial world.

A tinkling bell interrupted the bookseller’s thoughts. He couldn’t see anyone in the shop. Perhaps the customer had disappeared behind a bookcase. Hurrying down the wrought iron steps from the second-hand section he felt something thump into his back. As he staggered, he caught a glimpse of a grey balaclava before something heavy hit his head and he collapsed into total darkness.

*

The wind was howling, tearing against the roof tiles, while somewhere in the street below a piece of wood was banging against a wall. Inside Bookmark a swinging light shone intermittently on the mahogany wall clock as it ticked away. The light came from the second-hand book section and was accompanied by muffled cries of pain.

Major Duncan had long since lost track of time. He had woken with a sickening headache to find he was suspended in mid air, hanging naked from the wooden pegs in one of the old crossbeams. His arms and shoulder joints had to carry his entire weight. The pain was excruciating but all he could do was scream into his gag. A rough hand grabbed his hair and yanked his head back.

“How are ye?” The voice was muffled by the balaclava but the thick Irish accent was unmistakable. “Pain has no language. Pain simply is. It eats its way into the mind. But as they say, Major, God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest of wires.”

Duncan knew he was lost. He was at the mercy of an Irish madman. “If you think I’m off my head, you could be right,” the torturer read his thoughts. “Not that it’ll bring you any comfort.”

Gazing at the terrified bulging eyes and the blood and saliva seeping through the ripped piece of shirt knotted around the victim’s mouth, the hooded man betrayed no regret. The old soldier was in obvious agony. His arms had dislocated causing ligament and tendon damage, his right eye socket was fractured and there were burn marks on his chest.

“I guess you’re familiar with my interrogation technique, Major.” The man now spoke with an upper-class Oxford accent and sounded younger. “Suspects were strung up like this during the Salem Witch Trials and the British Army used
strappado
to get confessions out of the Mau Mau in Kenya. Mind you, I like to improvise.”

The hooded man took the cigarette he had been smoking and drove it sharply into Duncan’s left testicle causing a convulsion and an acrid smell of burning flesh.

“Normally, I’d prefer electric paddles. Pinochet’s people believed in giving the genitals regular electric shocks. It’s a precise torture which delivers high voltage with low current, causing excruciating torment without killing you.”

An intense pain seared through Duncan’s body, jerking it taut, as the cigarette end was once more rammed into his abdomen. He no longer heard what was being said. He was merely an object stripped of everything but his physical agony holding onto a muddled belief that he could somehow end his suffering by confessing to his crimes, if only he knew what they were. He didn’t want to die this way – strung up like a piece of meat. When he died it should be in his sleep, without pain. Please God, no more pain. A hand raised his sagging head. To his horror, Duncan saw a small flick-knife in front of his eyes. Something warm began to run down his leg. He was pissing himself.

As if from a place far away he heard his tormentor crooning in a soft, almost caressing voice. “Torture is the perversion of intimacy. You are exposed to me and all you can feel is shame and terror. And you should be afraid, Major, afraid of what I might do next. I might cut off a finger or a toe. You haven’t seen my pocket pliers. Neat little buggers for a spot of dentistry. We haven’t started on your teeth, have we, Major?  How about your intestines and your balls? Castration doesn’t kill you but it produces a lot of blood. A great deal of blood, I would have to say.”

Duncan began to whimper. He had never lacked courage but the psychological pressure was too much for him to bear in late middle-age.

“I could take off a testicle or open you up for inspection. All that’s needed is a small incision in the skin. Like so.” The knife ran across Duncan’s flaccid belly leaving a thin red line of sweating blood on his skin. His body jerked, his weight pulling against the rope.

“Don’t flinch,” the torturer said soothingly. “That can’t have hurt much.”

The victim retched in his gag. With a deft movement the hooded man untied the cloth and whispered in his ear. “I think you are ready to talk, Major. Everyone does eventually. So listen carefully to what I say.”

The soft fibre of the balaclava rubbed against Duncan’s cheek in what was almost a homoerotic gesture. The Major recoiled in disgust. “What do you want?” he croaked through parched lips.