Secrets of the Dead (2 page)

She heard a bang behind her; something flew past her face, almost touching her cheek. For that instant, she was back in Freetown, or Mogadishu or Kinshasa. She gave a low scream and spun around, almost losing her balance on the unprotected cliff edge. She grabbed on to the nearest column, hugging it for dear life.

‘Are you OK?’

Michael was standing beside the pool with two champagne flutes in one hand, an uncorked bottle of Pol Roger in the other.

‘Didn’t mean to scare you. I thought we could celebrate.’

Celebrate what?
Abby leaned back against the column and clung on, her heart still pounding. The night breeze blew the gold necklace against her throat and a mad thought struck her.
Was he going to propose?

Michael poured the champagne and pressed a glass into
her
trembling hand. It slopped over the rim and dribbled down her fingers. He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her to him. Abby sipped her drink; Michael stared out to sea as if looking for something. The last crack of sunlight made a rim on the horizon, then vanished.

‘I’m hungry.’

Michael fetched a cool-bag from the car, and soon the house was filled with the smells of frying garlic, prawns and herbs. Abby drank and watched him cook. The champagne didn’t last long. A bottle of Sancerre appeared from the cool-bag, and that quickly went down, too. Abby found a switch to turn on the terrace heaters, and they ate outside by the pool. She dangled her bare legs in the water, while light rippled off the colonnades and stars pricked the sky.

The food and drink began to unwind her. When the evening cooled, Michael lit the fire in the living room, and they sat on the sofa watching the stars over the bay. Abby curled up like a kitten with her head on his lap, eyes half-closed as he stroked her hair.
You’re thirty-two
, a small voice chided her,
not seventeen
. She didn’t care; she liked it. With Michael, she had no responsibilities. He made life easy.

Much later – after the second bottle of wine had emptied, after the town across the bay had gone dark and the fire had died to embers – Abby pulled herself off the sofa. She swayed; Michael rose and held her, surprisingly steady considering how much he’d drunk.

She wrapped her arms around him and kissed his neck.

‘Shall we go to bed?’ She was drunk, she knew, and it felt good. She wanted him. She began fumbling with the buttons on his shirt, but he ducked out from under her embrace and spun her around.

‘You’re insatiable,’ he scolded her.

He steered her to the bedroom and unclasped the necklace, then eased her down on to the bed. Abby tried to pull him on top of her, but he stepped back.

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m not tired.’

‘I’m not tired either,’ she protested. But it was a lie. By the time he’d kissed her goodnight and closed the door, she was asleep.

The cold woke her. Lying on top of the sheets, still in her sundress, she could feel an air-conditioned chill blowing across her skin. She rolled over, looking for Michael’s warmth, but didn’t feel him. She groped her way across the wide bed until she touched the far bedside table.

The bed was empty.

She lay there a moment, trying to get her bearings in the unfamiliar room. She looked for light, but saw nothing. All she could hear was the hum of the air conditioner and the tick of the bedside clock. Its luminous hands showed 3.45 a.m.

And then something else – a murmuring voice. She listened, trying to grasp the sounds of a strange house. Was it two voices – some kind of conversation? Or maybe it was just the waves breaking on the rocks.

It’s the television
. Michael must have fallen asleep watching it. Now that her eyes had adjusted, she could see a dim blue light flickering in from the hallway.

Still sluggish from sleep and alcohol, she wondered what to do. Part of her said she should leave him there, let him wake up stiff and alone. But the bed was cold.

She got up. Barefoot, she padded down the hall to the living room. The enormous television played on the wall, filling the
room
with its diode-blue glow; half a dozen cigarette butts lay stubbed out in a silver ashtray. The leather sofa bore a deep impression where Michael must have been lying.

He wasn’t there now. And the television was muted.

So what did I hear?

A gust of air blew in the smell of the night: jasmine and fig and chlorine. Out in the courtyard, the lights were still on. The door stood open. Through it, she could see Michael standing by the pool smoking another cigarette. The briefcase that had been in the car sat on a metal table beside him, the lid raised. A man in a white shirt and black trousers was examining the contents.

Abby stepped out into the courtyard, still unsteady from the alcohol in her system. Just over the threshold, her bare foot kicked against something unseen in the shadows. She yelped with pain and surprise. The empty champagne bottle rolled across the paving and dropped in the pool with a splash.

Two heads snapped up and stared at her.

‘Am I interrupting something?’

‘Go back inside!’ Michael shouted.

He sounded desperate, but she still didn’t get it. She took two steps forward, into the glow of the pool light. Offering herself up. The man in the white shirt reached behind his back. When his hand reappeared, a black pistol gleamed in his grip.

That was the last thing she remembered clearly. Everything afterwards was blurred and fragmented. Michael knocking the man backwards, so that the shot went wild; the table toppling over; the briefcase spilling its contents across the tiles. If she saw what was inside, it didn’t register. She sprang away, slipped on the smooth tiles and fell.

The water hit her hard. She flailed and went under; she tasted chlorine at the back of her throat and gagged. The sundress wrapped her like a shroud.

She broke the surface and kicked to the side. From the floor of the pool, soft-lit sea nymphs beckoned her to join them. She put her bare arms on the side and hauled herself out.

Sprawled on the poolside, she saw it all from ground level. The scattered briefcase and overturned table; the marble gods looking down on her. And at the far end of the terrace, two men locked in a struggle over the abyss. Michael threw a punch that didn’t connect; his opponent grabbed his arm and jerked it back, spinning him around to face the cliff. They stood there for a second like two lovers staring at a sunset. Then, with a brusque motion, the man kicked out Michael’s feet and pushed him forward. Michael flailed and stumbled. He tried to regain his balance and almost succeeded, teetering on the edge like a broken-winged bird. His impatient assailant moved in for the kill, but it wasn’t necessary. Without a sound, as if the life had already left him, Michael flopped over the edge and vanished.

Abby screamed; she couldn’t help it. The man heard her and turned. All his movements were precise, unhurried. He’d dropped the gun in his struggle with Michael – now he picked it up. He checked the slide and the magazine. He ejected the cartridge in the chamber and reloaded.

Abby pulled herself off the ground The wet dress clung to her body, dragging her down. She had to escape – but where? To the car? She didn’t know where Michael had left the keys. She didn’t even have time to get back to the house. The intruder was walking along the side of the pool, gun raised. She hurled herself into the colonnade as the next shot went off. Stone cracked; something shattered.

She crouched low and ran down the back of the colonnade, ducking between the columns and the statue plinths. It was like being in a shooting gallery – except the man wasn’t shooting. Had he run out of bullets?

She reached the end of the colonnade and paused. A marble Jupiter towered over her, a lightning bolt clenched in his fist. Measured footsteps approached.

With a sickening shock, she realised why he hadn’t bothered shooting. She was trapped in a corner with nowhere to go. She cowered behind the base of the statue. The footsteps stopped.

The silence was worst of all.

‘What do you want?’ she called.

No answer. Water dripped off her sodden dress and pooled around her feet.
What was he waiting for?

She had thought she knew what it was like to face death. She’d heard the stories a thousand times and recorded them diligently. But the people who’d lived to bear witness had been survivors. Some had run when the killers came; others lay rigid in the killing fields and played dead, sometimes for hours, while their families and neighbours died around them. They never gave up.

She had one chance. She pushed off on the plinth, jack-knifed up and spun around, throwing her entire weight against the statue. It wobbled, tottered and fell. The god crashed down and smashed into pieces. The gunman leapt back, losing his balance.

Abby was already running. She crossed the last few yards of the terrace and dived back inside the house. On the wall, the giant TV screen played its rote images of war and revenge, oblivious to the real horror in front of it.

Where now?

But the gunman had recovered too fast. The first bullet shattered the window behind her. The second tore into her shoulder, spinning her around. She saw him stepping through the broken window, gun raised.

‘
Please
,’ she begged. She wanted to run, but her body had failed her. ‘Why are you doing this?’

The man shrugged. He had a black moustache and a mole on his right cheek, sprouting hairs. His eyes were dark and hard.

Her last thought was of a witness she’d interviewed years ago, a grey-haired Hutu woman grinding meal in a jungle camp somewhere between Congo and Rwanda. ‘You never gave up,’ Abby had told her in admiration, and the woman had shaken her head.

‘I was lucky. The others were not. That was the only difference.’

The man raised the gun and fired.

Roman Province of Moesia – August 337

IT’S STILL AUGUST,
but autumn has already arrived. Like every old man, I fear this season. Shadows fall, nights lengthen and the knives come out. On evenings like these, when the chill in the air makes my old wounds squirm, I retire to the bathhouse and order my slaves to stoke the fire. The pool’s empty, but I sit on the rim and tip water over the scalding stones. The steam goes up my nose and softens my flesh. Perhaps that will make it easier for my murderers, when they come.

I’m ready to die – it holds no terrors for me. I’ve lived longer than I deserved. I’ve been a soldier, a courtier and a politician: none of them professions noted for their longevity. When my murderers come – and they are coming – I know they won’t linger. They’re busy men these days. I’m not the last person they have to kill. They won’t torture me: they don’t know the questions to ask.

They’ve no idea what I could tell them.

A shiver goes down my back. I haven’t undressed – I’m not going to die naked – and my clothes are sodden. I throw more
water
into the pool and lean forward into the steam, peering through the mist at the black-and-white sea gods picked out in the floor tiles. They stare back and reproach me. Dying gods from a dying world. Do they know the part I’ve played in their oblivion?

Another shiver. I’m ready to die: it’s death that terrifies me. The afterwards. Gods who die in springtime occasionally come back to life; old men murdered in autumn never do. But where they go …

The steam thickens.

All my life I’ve contended with gods – a god who became a man, and a man who became a god. Now, at the end of it, peering into the steaming abyss, I have no more idea what the gods intend for me than I did when I first peered over the edge of my cradle all those years ago. Or even four months ago, on a dusty April afternoon in Constantinople, hearing about a dead man who would change my life. As much as remains of it.

Memories cloud about me and bead on my skin. The mind is a strange land with many walls but no distance. I’m no longer in the bathhouse, but another place and time, and my oldest friend is saying …

‘… I need you.’

We’re in an audience hall at the palace, though there’s no audience. None except me. We’re both old men with the years scored into us, but it’s been this way since I can remember. He performs, I applaud.

Except now I’m not applauding. I’m listening to him tell me about a death and wondering if I look right. After so many years at court, I can pull out my emotions like masks from a well-oiled drawer, but I’m not sure what the occasion demands.
I
want to seem respectful to the dead man. But not too much – I won’t invest in his death, as I’m being invited to do. Does that make me callous?

‘They found him two hours ago in the library by the Academy. As soon as they realised who he was, they sent straight to the palace.’

He’s trying to draw me in to the story, pique my curiosity. I stay silent. There aren’t many men alive who can stay silent when he wants them to speak – I might be the only one left. We grew up like brothers, inseparable sons of officers in the same legion. His mother was an innkeeper, mine a laundress. Now titles adorn him like the gems sewn into his heavy robe. Flavius Valerius Constantine – Emperor, Caesar and Augustus, Consul and Proconsul, High Priest. Constantine the Pious, the Faithful, the Blessed and Benevolent. Constantine the Victorious, Triumphant and Unconquered. Constantine – succinctly – the Great.

And even now, a grandfather in his declining years, the greatness radiates from him. I still feel it. His round face, puppyish and seductive when he was young, may have fattened out and sagged; the muscles that wrestled together an empire may have gone soft. But the greatness remains. The artists who paint him with a golden nimbus are only colouring in what every man knows. Power inhabits his body – the unconquerable confidence that only the gods can give.

‘The dead man’s name was Alexander. He was a bishop – important in the Christian community. He also tutored one of my sons, apparently.’

One of my sons, apparently
. Something wraps around me like a cold current in the sea, though I don’t flinch. My face betrays nothing. Neither does his.