The Camelot Code (23 page)

Twenty-one-year-old Zachra Korshidi hears them laughing at her as she struggles out of the grocery store.

‘Excuse me, miss. May I speak with you?’

She ignores the smartly dressed man and walks on. All she can think about is how much she hates the burqa and niqab that
her parents make her wear. The long sexless cloak and veil are swelteringly hot as she carries the heavy plastic bags along the sidewalk.

‘Just one minute, miss.’ The man walks behind her.

She remembers a time when they let her wear jeans and a T-shirt. When she could cover her hair with a multi-coloured scarf, a nice
roosari
– but all that’s changed since ‘the boy’.

That’s what her parents called him. Not Javid, or her boyfriend.

The boy
.

They said the words like he was a demon. All because they didn’t choose him. Because he was an orphan, with no traditional family, raised in America and full of all the modern values and opinions that they hate.

It’s little wonder she adored him. Loved him with all of her mind, soul and body. And wasn’t afraid to admit it. Privately or publicly.

That was the problem – the final straw.

Admitting to having sex before marriage won’t draw a second glance in New York, but back in Iran, it gets you publicly flogged and possibly executed. And these days, her parents spend most of the time behaving as though they are back in the old country.

She’d have left home and run away with Javid if his younger brother Sadeq hadn’t been in the final stages of leukaemia. Instead, she stayed and her father beat her so badly that for days she was unable to walk.

It was at the same time that Javid disappeared.

He didn’t call or text. He just vanished. He’d either been scared to death or put to death. Either way, she hadn’t heard from him again.

Not seeing him was like the end of her life. She overdosed on her mother’s sleeping pills. After having her stomach pumped at hospital and being told she’d brought even more shame on her family, she was brought home and locked in her bedroom.

Imprisoned.

Then came the chance to redeem herself. To make amends and bring honour back to her family and herself. A glorious suicide instead of a pointless one. That’s how her father put it.

Not surprisingly, when the day came she was frightened. Sick with fear, remorse, regret and rage. Disgusted with the fact that innocent people were going to die along with her. People she had more in common with than her own flesh and blood.

It was a miracle someone else had volunteered.

‘Miss!’

The insistent man is in front of her now. Blocking her way.

He peers into her dark eyes. ‘I’m a friend of the man who saved your life. The man who wore the vest.’

She feels her pulse race and pushes past him.

‘How long will it be, Zachra? How long before they come to you and ask you again? How long, Zachra?’

The email on Vicky Cantrell’s computer is from Professor Quinn at the Smithsonian.

Vicky prepares an email for Mitzi and attaches Quinn’s findings. Eleonora Fracci is downtown with the cops on the witchcraft case, so she’s got time to do a bit more digging into the history of Owain Gwyn, his family and company.

She starts with Caledfwlch Ethical Investments and finds the company pre-dates the start of official public records. It’s a generous contributor to more than a dozen British charities, including Natural England, a group that helps the British government manage nature reserves and areas designated as being of special scientific interest.

There are also a number of intriguing connections to the Arthurian legend. Caledfwlch, the company name, turns out to be Welsh for Excalibur and the Gwyn family has large ancestral homes in Wales and Glastonbury, one of the spots where King Arthur and his wife Guinevere were allegedly laid to rest. Glastonbury is the place that Joseph of Arimathea, a central figure in the stories of the Holy Grail, was reputed to have fled to after Jesus had risen from the dead.

Owain’s home in Wales, Caergwyn Castle, is close to the Preseli Mountains and a landmark called
Cerrig Marchogion
– The Knight’s Stones – another location named as the final resting place of Arthur. The mountains are known for their geology, especially a distinctive bluestone that, according to legend, Arthur’s magician Merlin used to create Stonehenge. Additionally, the ambassador has an extensive personal property portfolio that includes numerous cottages in Tintagel, a south-western town where Arthur is alleged to have been born.

From financial records, Vicky learns that Gwyn has been purchasing sizeable amounts of property and land in Cadbury in Somerset. All the acquisitions are close to the ruins of an ancient Iron Age fort, a place widely reputed to have been the site of Camelot.

Further digging into CEI reveals a span of subsidiaries, including one called ‘CEIDP’, which is run solely by Jennifer Gwyn. At first the researcher believes it’s purely a shell company, but then finds it also has extensive property, land and rights, including ‘water access, research and usage’ at Dozmary Pool in Cornwall. Back in the fifties, the area was declared a site of special scientific interest and access became limited. CEIDP records show it funded extensive research into fish projects and explorations of the pool’s Stone Age history.

Out of curiosity, Vicky searches for legends associated with Dozmary. She finds two. The first is that of Jan Tregeagle, a local lawyer/magistrate who gained money and power by making a pact with the Devil. Inevitably, the Prince of Darkness took his soul and cast his body to the bottom of the lake, from which it came back to haunt villagers.

The second legend is more interesting. Dozmary Pool is claimed to be the home of the Lady of the Lake, the place where King Arthur rowed out and received Excalibur. It’s also the spot where the knight Bedivere returned the sword, after the battle of Camlann where Arthur lay dying.

Head spinning with history and legends, she takes a break and heads to the canteen for lunch. She’s also hoping a certain young man called James Watkins will happen to be there.

A little older than her and built like a linebacker, he’s new to the bureau and drives a desk in IT. Yesterday, they ate side by side and she got goose bumps and hot flushes all at the same time.

She orders tuna salad and takes an eternity eating it, hoping with every mouthful that he might show.

He doesn’t.

After another soda, she’s still sat alone. Dejectedly, she packs her tray in the rack by the door and returns to her work.

Her mood brightens as she searches the background of Lady Gwyn. Boy, does the woman know how to look good. Vicky savours the shots of her in sumptuous ball gowns at charity dinners, sparkling cocktail dresses at VIP parties and even in waterproofs and life vest on a racing yacht.

Her ladyship seems quite the fashionista. A celebrity in her own right. Daughter of Leo Degrance, a rich and influential business tycoon, she went to all the right public schools, became part of the British Equestrian Team, a medal-winning horsewoman and patron of almost a dozen charities.

For fun, Vicky Googles the name Jennifer and is amused to find that it has Cornish and Welsh connections – Jenny the Fair, Gwenhwyfar and Guinevere.

She does the same with the name Owain and, given that’s another roll of the dice in the game of coincidences that she’s playing, expects it to come up as Arthur or King.

It doesn’t.

But in Welsh, the name Owain does mean Young Warrior, which is rewarding enough for her to continue tapping in his name and trawling the net.

Her perseverance is rewarded with a couple of news reports and legal articles that disclose that the British Knight is highly litigious and has taken legal action against innumerable companies and individuals who in his mind have threatened his privacy.

Top of the list is a notoriously eccentric Welsh historian called Rhys Mallory, who had written an unauthorized biography about him. Gwyn also obtained a series of injunctions to prevent Mallory from ‘…
in any way conveying any information about the Gwyn family that is not already in the public domain to any individual, group of individuals or data distribution system that can be privately or publicly read, seen, heard or in the instance of braille, felt
.’

While Vicky is no detective, she’s smart enough to realize the historian has some sensitive story to tell that the ambassador
really
doesn’t want anyone to hear. She finds contact details and adds them to the summary paper that she types up and sends to Mitzi and Bronty.

Job done, she decides her hard work is worth a small bar of peppermint cream chocolate. She’s just about to claim her prize when her desk phone rings. ‘Cantrell.’

‘Vicky?’ The voice is the linebacker’s.

Her heart misses a beat. ‘Hello.’

‘Hi, it’s James. How you doing?’

She thinks of his easy smile and soft brown eyes and instantly makes herself nervous. ‘I’m… I’m… good.’

‘Listen, I’m sorry I missed lunch. I’m out in the field, helping rig a computer surveillance system. How are you fixed for dinner tonight?’

‘Dinner?’ She really hadn’t been expecting this. ‘You mean as in dinner date dinner, or just dinner as in food?’ She can’t believe she said all that. ‘Oh God, I sound stupid now, don’t I?’

‘No, you don’t. Yes, I mean dinner as in dinner date dinner.’

‘Then yes. I like you very much – I mean, I’d like
to
very much.’

He laughs. ‘That’s good, because I like you very much too. Say eight?’

Behind the privacy of the limo’s tinted windows, Zachra Korshidi removes the niqab from her face
.
She straightens her hair and stares at the driver and the man she’s sat in the back with. ‘Who are you? Police? CIA?’

‘Neither,’ replies Gareth Madoc. ‘Though I can get both here within minutes if you’d prefer to talk to them?’

‘No.’ Her voice is sharp with tension. She’s taken enormous risks getting into the vehicle. Her father has friends everywhere in the neighbourhood. ‘Who, then?’

‘Let’s say I work for a philanthropically minded organization that would like to help you.’

She looks at him cynically. ‘Why?’

‘Because in stopping young women like you becoming suicide bombers it saves American lives.’

Now she feels so ashamed that she can’t look at him. ‘You said you could help me.’

‘Yes.’

‘Does that mean if I wanted to get far away from here and never be found, you could do that?’

‘If you cooperate with me, I can fix for you to live anywhere you like, with a new identity, a little money, maybe a job and somewhere to live.’

She stares at the black robe on her lap and knows all it stands for. But what the man with the English accent wants is for her to betray her family and everything they stand for.

Gareth dips inside the jacket of his blue suit and pulls out a pack of small photographs. ‘You need to see these. They’re not pleasant, but you should look.’

Hesitantly, she takes them from him. The first picture is a wide shot of a big, round dumpster on thick, black roller wheels. It’s at the back of a fried-chicken joint and the kitchen door is open, a fryer and long grill are visible. The second is of a pile of semi-tied, semi-ripped black garbage bags dumped in the yard. In the third, the bags are being opened by uniformed cops. The fourth shows the contents. Severed limbs. Hands. Feet. Arms.

Zachra’s heart makes the connection before she sees the fifth.

Javid’s head.

The face of her lover stares up at her. His skull has been severed from his body and his eyes are milky-white and pitted with flies. The hair she once loved to hold as she kissed him is matted in blood and food slops.

It takes almost a minute for her to get her breath back. For her to survive a hurricane of emotions. Finally, she finds her voice. And the words that she knows will change her life. ‘I can help you. There are things that I know.’

Kirstin Collins runs nail-bitten fingers through her spiky hair and stares at the painting in front of her.

The small, crappy old oil was recovered from Bradley Deagan’s small, crappy old apartment. She’s really not sure it’s going to be of any interest to Mitzi but she promised to keep her up to speed on developments, so that’s what she’s doing.

The young detective puts it face down on the big scanner in the squad room, makes a JPEG, attaches it to an email and calls Mitzi’s number.

‘Fallon.’

‘Lieutenant, it’s Kirstin Collins. You near a computer?’

‘Too near. I’m going stir-crazy in an office smaller than my kids’ bathroom. What’ve you got?’

She hits send. ‘I just mailed you a copy of a painting uniforms recovered from Deagan’s apartment. It was wrapped in cloth and hidden beneath boards.’

Mitzi checks her mailbox. ‘Not here yet. Any sign of Deagan – dead or alive?’

‘Nope. He and his vehicle have just vanished. Mail was stacked up at his place. No one has seen or heard of him since he was at the Dupont diner.’

‘This painting, is it the one he tried to stage the con with?’

Kirstin stares as it. ‘I don’t know. I’ve not had time to check. There was no picture on the case papers.’

‘Does it look religious?’

‘Not really. But it’s very old and seems the right shape and size. Way I figure it, if it was a fraud the court would have let him keep it, right?’

‘Sure. It’d be his property. Your mail’s just come. Hang on while I open it.’

Kirstin doodles and waits. She draws flowers. Big sprays of them. It’s the only thing she can sketch.

Mitzi watches the image shutter its way from top to bottom of the frame. ‘How’re things, Kirstin? How you holding up?’

She finishes the head of a rose. ‘
Okay,
I miss Irish and can’t believe he’s not about to walk through the door. The funeral’s in a couple of days. Probably won’t be many people there. Hell, it might just be me and the priest. Will you come?’

Mitzi squirms. ‘Like to, but to be honest, I can’t afford the flights or the time. I’ve got two kids waiting for me back in California, my sister’s breaking up with her husband and my ass is stuck in London. I’m sorry. Why don’t you mail me the details and I’ll send flowers.’

Kirstin scrubs over the roses she’s drawn. ‘You know what – he’s got no use for flowers. Send me a bottle of whisky and I’ll drink it in his memory and have one for you too.’

‘You got it.’ The full painting is now on her screen. ‘Download is okay, Kirstin – I got it now.’

‘Is it the one you mentioned?’

‘Don’t know, but I know a man who will. Thanks for thinking of me.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘Hey, you need something – you need to talk about anything – you call me, right?’

‘Thanks.’

Kirstin Collins hangs up. She puts the painting back in the cloth it was wrapped in and ties string back around it.

Then she goes to Irish’s desk and sits there. Just squats in his tatty old chair and swings it left and right, left and right. And she keeps on swinging until she feels a tiny bit better.