S.O.S (12 page)

The other end of the line went quiet.

“Sophie?!” Jake suddenly snapped.

“Mummy is talking to Chris,” Sophie said in a small voice.

Jake was about to reprimand her again when he caught the wobble in her voice.

“Where is Mummy?” he asked.

“She's in Chris's room,” Sophie said.

Jake didn't hesitate any longer. He stood up and dug in his pockets for his car keys. Something was wrong with Jenny; crying in the car and now talking to their dead son.

“Sophie I'm going to hang up now,” Jake said, “but I'm coming over, OK? I'll see you in about...” He calculated how long it would take him in the traffic. “Twenty minutes, OK?”

“OK Dad,” Sophie said. She sounded quite unperturbed by the idea of her Mum talking to herself.

Jake was relieved; kids were so resilient. He hung up and made his way to the front door. He opened it and went outside to the car. He didn't know what he was going to do when he got home, but he did know that he had to do something.

*

The receptionist watched the young man as he strode up to the front desk. Her colleague was busy on the phone so she smiled, ready to deal with him. He did not smile back. Checking his details and taking his passport number and credit card, she noticed how cold and calculating his stare was. It looked as if he were summarising the lay out of the hotel lobby, mapping it in his mind. It unnerved her. She put his data into the computer and took out a card key, processing it for his room number.

“So that's a junior suite on the first floor,” she said, smiling as she handed the key over, in the way she'd been trained to do. “If there's anything else you might want, don't hesitate to contact us here at the reception desk.”

The young man took the card key and picked up his bag. He said nothing. He walked across to the lift, called it and when it arrived, he stepped inside without a backward glance. The young girl on reception had never, in all the time she'd worked there, ever come across someone quite so rude.

The assassin made his way to the second floor. The junior suite was large and spacious, simple and elegant. It was important to stay somewhere refined; it set the right tone for the job. Opening his bags, he wasted no time in setting up his equipment. First he scanned the room for any hidden cameras or recording devices and next he set up the table as a work station. He had several laptops that were all plugged in to specialist pieces of apparatus and meticulously programmed. He withdrew a world map from his briefcase and tacked it to the wall opposite the table, marking out specific areas with colour coded pins. Although most of his work was electronic, he liked to use a map when he was on a job; it helped him define where it was in the world he needed to focus his attention. Once it was up, he stood back and scrutinised the map, his mind working before placing another pin carefully on it.

There was a knock on the door that broke his intense concentration. He reluctantly walked over to it, opening it just a fraction. A bell boy in his smart uniform stood before him, beaming an official smile.

“Room service,” he said, indicating a tray balanced on his right hand.

“I didn't order any,” the assassin said sharply.

“It's complimentary sir,” the bell boy said. He smiled again. “It's just a basket of fruit and a bottle of Prosecco. Shall I come in and leave it on the side for you, sir?”

The assassin considered for a moment. “No,” he said. There was a moment of silence while the bell boy adjusted his expression. He was shocked; most people liked the free fruit and wine. In fact, he'd never been told ‘no' before.

“I'll take it,” the assassin said. “Here.” The boy's arm trembled slightly as he handed over the tray. “I don't want any interference in my room,” he added. “Leave anything that's for me outside.”

“Of course sir,” the boy said. Wait till he told them about this down in the staff room. This guy was a weirdo.

“Good.” The assassin shut the door and returned to his work, instantly forgetting about the food as he set it down. He switched on one of the lap tops and brought up one of the files he had been working on. He pressed print and alongside the lap top, the printer spewed out a copy of a news article in the Metro newspaper several days ago about an attempted mugging in Camberwell.

*

Molly sat on her bed and scrolled through her phone, looking up the latest news stories, stalking people on Facebook who were no longer friends. Dev didn't do Facebook. More's the pity she thought; she'd have liked to flick through pictures of him. Stop it, she told herself, you have to stop this. She put the phone down and rolled onto her back, looking up at the familiar posters that lined the ceiling. Trying not to think about Dev she cast around for a subject that might keep her mind busy. Her brain drew a blank. She cursed under her breath, willing it to find something that could alleviate some of her boredom.

Nothing; there wasn't anything she could think of, except Dev. She let her thoughts drift over the events of the previous day. Then she sat up suddenly, shaking her head in an effort to get rid of the unwanted images inside her mind's eye, still vivid and painful. Just another catastrophe in a whole year of them she thought; in a year when everything seemed to be going wrong.

The beep of her phone startled her out of her melancholy. Rubbing her eyes to focus them, she looked at the screen. She didn't recognise the number and immediately thought to delete it. Sometimes she got prank texts from people she used to be at school with – their idea of a joke. She looked at it for a few moments, but her curiosity got the better of her. She opened the image.

Molly stood up, all thoughts of Dev and her unhappiness forgotten. How odd was that? There on the screen, small yet wholly visible was an image of some markings similar to those that Father Tom had shown them on his sheet of paper. She enlarged the image with the tip of her finger. Yup, it was almost identical. She shook her head. Where did this come from and who sent it? She rang the number but it went straight to voice mail. Molly shook her head. Whoever it was knew something that she didn't. She scrolled through her contacts until she came to Dev. She looked at it for quite some time, but she was still too angry with him to call. She had thought he was different, that he looked past what anyone else thought, but last night he'd been ashamed of her and had hurried her away from his parents, embarrassed by her. Her face burned with indignation. What happened with him yesterday wasn't something that Molly could easily get past. She ignored his number and decided that she would go it alone. Something odd was going on and Molly herself was going to find out what it was.

Dev's parents weren't speaking to him, or at least that was how it felt. They gave him a curt ‘good morning' but that was as much as he'd got since he'd run off with Molly last night. They were acting as if he had done something terrible he thought, when the reality was that he had escaped their disapproval, nothing more and actually, it was they who were in the wrong; Molly might not be Indian, but she was lovely. Breakfast was going to be awful he realised as he sat down, with no-one speaking and a heavy silence around the table; the mood was rotten.

Whilst they ate, his dad buried himself in the morning paper and his mum studied a recipe for dinner that evening in an effort to ignore him. He had to applaud their determination he thought, usually he couldn't shut them up with questions about where he'd been, who he was with, what he was working on at the moment. So Dev ate in silence and since his father held onto all the sections of the paper with a mind to teach him a lesson or something to that effect, Dev made do with reading the back of the paper. Fortunately his father held it upright in order to block his son from view so his task wasn't as difficult as it could have been. Mind you, his glasses needed a bit of a clean. After wiping them on his shirt Dev peered at the back of the paper. His father had folded back the page to page 5, the page with all the human interest stories, errant vicars and celebrities caught out. Dev skimmed it and then a particular story grabbed his attention.

He read it and read it again. Two police officers caught in the middle of a gang face-off had survived unscathed, inside a battered police car because – and here Dev's mind began to somersault – there had been a freak electric storm, bright white lightening that had scared the youths off. Both officers attested to having seen a light, described as white and dazzlingly vivid. Dev sat back in his chair and thought hard. That light was familiar; eerily familiar.

“Dev, why are you not eating your breakfast? Look, it's gone cold!”

Dev glanced at his mum. She had looked up from her book and was glaring at his plate. She wouldn't confront him about seeing an English girl, but if he left his dhal and chapatti he was in big trouble. Talking of English girls, he had to see Molly – she needed to know about this. He jumped up from the table and kissed his mum quickly on the cheek.

“Sorry Mum, not hungry...” he said.

And without a second glance, he rushed to the door, pausing briefly to collect his jacket from the coat rack, and was out and on his way to Molly's house before his father had even put down the paper.

*

Dev arrived at Molly's house and rang the bell. He waited nervously, peering in through the glass on the front door for any signs of movement. A few minutes later Molly's mum came to the door.

“Hi, is Molly in?” he asked.

Sandra shook her head. She was still in her dressing gown.

“She left about half an hour ago,” Sandra said.

“Do you know...”

“No.” she snapped. “Why would I know where she is or what she's doing?! She never tells me anything!”

And with that, she closed the door in Dev's face. He stood there for a moment then he decided he had better get on with it himself. He really wanted to make it up with Molly, but he also had an awful feeling that lights and weird happenings were connected to his own theory and that was something he had to investigate first.

*

The quiet after the mass was something that Father Tom had always enjoyed. There was a peacefulness to be savoured as he sat alone in the vast space. Today however the silence did not produce its usual calming effect, he had too many things on his mind. He reached down into his pocket and withdrew the silver enamel badge that he had discovered on that strangest of nights. Looking at it closely, he turned it over in his hands as he so often did, knowing every tiny scratch as he traced them with a long forefinger. He got up and walked swiftly down to the back of the church, pausing at the strange markings on the wall. Like the badge he knew the shape well, having often come to view it. He opened the church doors to let in some winter sunshine and encourage people to stop by and pray – as if they ever did – and made his way back to the sacristy.

“Excuse me? Hello?”

Tom stopped and turned. He looked back at the figure in the doorway, young and slim, bathed in pale sunlight.

“Yes?” Father Tom began walking towards the figure. “Can I help you?”

As he approached he saw it was a girl and as he got closer still he recognised the girl he had met on his trip to the Observatory. She stood there nervously, clutching a phone tightly in her hand. Father Tom racked his brains furiously for her name. He had an excellent memory for faces, rarely forgot them, but names... ah, that was a different matter.

“Hello, do you remember me? I'm Molly. We met at the...”

“The Royal Observatory at Greenwich! Molly! Of course I remember you!” He smiled, surprised, but pleased to see her. He had no idea what she might want, but that was the nature of his life as a priest – people turning up at all sorts of times for all sorts of reasons.

“What can I do for you Molly?” he asked.

Molly was still trying to catch her breath from the run to the church. She had seen some people leaving when she got off the bus and reckoned that Father Tom would be shutting the place up if she didn't hurry. She wished she hadn't bothered – the church was open and the run had taken a lot out of her. No breath came so she held up her phone and showed him the photo on the screen, practically thrusting it in front of his face, her arm rising and falling with her pants for air.

Father Tom peered at the careen. “May I?” he took the phone. “How do I make this bigger so that I can see it properly?”

Molly enlarged the screen and Tom looked at the picture on the phone, frowning as he realised the significance of it. He turned his gaze back to the girl in front of him who was beginning to recover.

“Where did this come from?”

“I don't know.” Molly had finally found the power of speech again. Goodness, she was so unfit!

“We should talk about this. Why don't we go for a coffee?” He dug in the pockets of his cassock for his keys. “Hang on, let me take this off and we'll go up the road.”

“OK.”

Tom hurried away to the sacristy to take off his garments while Molly wandered round the church, looking for the markings.

“They're over here,” Father Tom said, as he walked across to join her. He pointed to a place at the end of the wall where she was standing. “Come and have a look.”

Molly followed him and they both bent down to see the markings on the wall. “They look almost identical to the ones on your phone, don't they?”

Molly looked at the picture still on the screen of her phone. She nodded.

“And you've no idea who sent you the picture on your phone?”

Molly shook her head. She was thinking about Dev and how he would have known what this meant.

“Come on, let's go and have a coffee and a chat.”

Father Tom led the way out of the church and turned to lock the doors before they headed up to the High Street and to a café where he was known and given coffees half price. On the way in Tom took a copy of The Metro from the dispenser on the corner of the street and he passed it to Molly as a little gesture. She accepted it gratefully, skimming through the pages as she walked.