The Excalibur Codex (4 page)

He stopped abruptly as they approached the gate, frozen by the flicker of dozens of camera flashes that had Abbie’s distraught family trapped in their bright embrace. As he watched, Michael hustled his mother and father away from the pack of press photographers into the car that had carried Jamie to the funeral and it drove off.

‘Vultures,’ Steele muttered. Sensing Jamie’s anger, he took him by the arm and steered him away. ‘Why don’t we take a walk? I like cemeteries. People are at peace here.’
The gravel path led them to the older part of the graveyard, where the moss-covered stones didn’t hold the same threat to mortality as the gleaming marble they’d passed. Here there were no carefully tended plots, or mini gardens with plastic flowers and gnomes, no children’s toys or gold embossed epitaphs, only time-worn inscriptions to men and women long gone, and well on the way to being forgotten.

‘She liked to take me dancing.’ Jamie gave a short, bitter laugh when he saw the startled look on Adam Steele’s well-fed features at the unlikely suggestion. Quite suddenly he felt the need to unburden himself in a way that hadn’t seemed possible in the past few days and the words poured out. ‘Nightclubs. Up the West End. Three in the morning and still going strong. She didn’t even drink. Could go all night on two glasses of tonic water.’ He shook his head at the memory. ‘Liberating, she called it. “Here,” she said, “we can be whoever we want to be.” At first I didn’t want to be there, all thumping base and techno-whatever, but gradually she got me to relax and I enjoyed it. Not exactly what I’d call music, but it was hypnotic.’

‘You’ve never struck me as someone who needed to
search
for himself, Jamie,’ Steele murmured. ‘I’d say you always knew exactly who you were.’

‘Actually, I was just happy to be with her,’ Jamie continued, as if the other man hadn’t spoken. ‘She was so full of life, you see. Bursting with it. I can still see her now, tall and beautiful, waving her hands in the
air, and so elegant; like one of those graceful African antelopes you see on safari. Aloof, you might have said – life seemed to flow around her – but I’ve never met anyone who
cared
more.’

‘And the bastards killed her.’

Jamie’s head whipped round and Adam Steele recoiled from the violence in his eyes. He’d heard stories, just whispers, about certain events surrounding the discovery of a Raphael painting, the provenance of which was still being verified. And more recently something concerning an art-loving Russian billionaire who’d become the victim of a now-deceased serial killer. For the first time he saw a hardness, verging on savagery, in Jamie Saintclair, that convinced him those whispers might be true. As quickly as it appeared, the flame died, leaving just the glowing embers. ‘Yes, they killed her.’

‘Al-Qaida.’

‘Or one of their spin-offs.’ Jamie’s voice held an almost visceral loathing. ‘According to the news they used the correct code word when they
claimed responsibility.
’

‘Gloated, you mean.’

The eyes flared again, and the tone matched them.

‘They butchered her in cold blood. Stood over her and pumped three bullets into …’ Jamie shook his head as if he was fighting a knife deep in his guts, ‘… into her face. She was so beautiful. Why would they do that?’

‘Because they despise beauty,’ Adam Steele said. ‘Because they’re savages.’

‘Abbie wouldn’t have believed that, even if she’d known what they did to her. She wasn’t like that. She always thought the best of people.’

‘And you, Jamie?’

‘Me?’ Now the green eyes went as cold as an Arctic ice field. ‘If it was up to me I’d kill every last one of the bastards and consign their rotten souls to Hell.’

They continued on for a while and Jamie was surprised to find they were back at the gate. The photographers and the funeral cars were gone, and the only vehicle in sight was a sleek black Aston Martin sports car.

‘Looks like they’ve abandoned you.’ Adam glanced at his watch, ‘Can I give you a lift to the hotel?’

‘No thanks, I’ve made my excuses. It will be mostly Abbie’s relatives and her workmates. Warm tea, cold sausage rolls and copious amounts of sympathy. I’m not quite ready for that.’

‘Home? Office?’ Steele persisted. ‘Sure?’

Jamie shook his head. ‘I need a bit of time to myself. I’ll walk to the station, it’s not far.’

The older man held out his hand and Jamie took it. ‘Look, old son,’ Steele said, ‘take this for what it’s worth. I’m no psychiatrist, just someone who does a little business, enjoys life and collects baubles with sharp edges. Sometimes, though, it’s better to get straight back into the saddle. Give the mind something else to dwell on. When you feel up to it, come round to the flat. I might have something for you. Something that will definitely interest you, I promise.’

Jamie gave him a look, and Steele laughed as he opened the Aston’s door. ‘Don’t tell me you’re too bloody busy?’

Jamie watched the big car roar away, the powerful engine kicking through the gears. No, he wasn’t too busy. Saintclair Fine Arts was walking its usual perilous tightrope between solvency and the other thing. Truth was, he needed either a change or a rest, but something told him a rest would only invite the ghosts of the past back into his life. There had been something in the way Steele made his suggestion, a certain electric charge in his voice, that made Jamie Saintclair think he might well take up that offer.

But not now. Now, he needed a bottle of malt to numb the pain, some music to remember her by, and a lonely bed where he could dream of vengeance.

Bang. Bang. Bang. His mind threatened to explode as he smashed his fists against the coffin lid. Bang. Bang. Bang. It wouldn’t budge, not even the tiniest fraction, and he knew that even if it did he would still be buried beneath six feet of damp, black earth that would pour into his mouth and suffocate him. His throat constricted at the thought and the level of panic rose, so he would have screamed if he had been able. Bang. Bang. Bang. Jamie Saintclair came bolt upright in the bed, the breath wheezing in his throat and cold sweat running down his back. The coffin had been a nightmare, but the banging was real. He rolled over and stood up on shaking legs, dragging on the black silk robe Abbie had given to him on his last birthday. The sound came from the front door of the Kensington High Street flat and he staggered through, wishing to Christ he hadn’t had the last of the Macallan and with half a dozen horrible scenarios fighting a nuclear war in his aching head.

Bang. He ripped back the bolt and opened the door.

‘Mr Saintclair.’

‘Ugh?’

‘Perhaps there might be a better time, sir?’

Through a half-opened eye the blur became a uniformed sergeant of Her Majesty’s Metropolitan Police. He shook his head. ‘Wha’ can I do f’r you?’ God, something had made a nest in his mouth and he sounded as if it was still in residence on his tongue. He licked his cracked lips. ‘No, um, time like the present, Officer.’

‘I just wondered if I might ask you a few questions, sir, and return this.’ The policeman held out a clear plastic evidence bag containing a mobile phone that Jamie vaguely recognized as his own. ‘And perhaps I might make you a cup of coffee to apologize again for the bad timing of my visit. Though I’m sure you, more than anyone, understand the urgency of the situation?’

Five minutes later they were seated at the kitchen table. Jamie had thrown on a few clothes and he sucked at the life-giving nectar that was milky Nescafé with three sugars, though he usually took neither sugar nor milk. ‘Good.’ He raised the cup in salute.

The grey-haired sergeant gave the tight smile of a man who’d administered many such life-giving revivers and took out his notebook to signal that the interview had entered its more formal phase. He placed the evidence bag on the table in front of Jamie.

‘You volunteered your mobile phone as evidence on,’ he checked his notebook, ‘the twelfth of February, three
days after the unfortunate events out by Gerard’s Cross. Can you just confirm that this is the evidence in question?’ Jamie nodded, but made no attempt to pick up the phone. ‘Good. Then I formally return this evidence to your possession. If you could just sign here, sir.’ He produced a form and Jamie accepted a cheap plastic ballpoint and signed with a shaking hand. The sergeant smiled, relieved to have the difficult part of the proceedings out of the way. He picked up the bag and carefully dropped the phone into his palm. ‘Now, sir,’ he handed Jamie the slim oblong of black plastic, ‘if I could ask you to switch it on – I think the battery should still be charged – and, er,’ his face twisted in a way that said he wasn’t entirely comfortable, ‘bring up the final message you received from the, ah, late Miss Trelawney. I hope this isn’t too painful for you, sir. As I say, I can come back another time.’

‘No, that’s all right. If it’s important?’

‘The latest count is four hundred and forty-five dead, sir. Everything is important.’

Jamie grimaced. ‘Yes, sorry. It says. “Caught in traffic, going to be late. I’m OK.” Then a space, then: “febluis”.’ He shook his head. ‘She … Abbie … was obviously trying to reassure me that everything was all right. It must have been sent before the attack.’

‘Well, that’s the thing that’s slightly bothering our people, sir. According to the timings on the phone, and the data from the service providers, this message was transmitted in the latter stages of the assault on the
motorway traffic. In fact, it was sent only two minutes before our surveillance helicopter was shot down, at a time the cameras we recovered from the chopper show the first terrorists already making their escape.’

Jamie tried to force his drink-fuzzed mind to analyse the significance of the information. ‘I …’

‘That’s right, sir. It appears that Miss Abeba Trelawney survived the first phase of the attack and was killed while the terrorists were making their withdrawal.’

‘Shit.’ The breath turned to mud in Jamie’s lungs and he struggled to breathe. ‘She …’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Saintclair, but there’s no easy way to say it. Your young lady was among the last, if not
the
last, to die on that day. Which makes this text enormously significant. The main part of the message seems perfectly normal. What I need to know is if “febluis” means anything special to you. Is it some kind of special shorthand between you? A coded message only Miss Trelawney and you would understand?’

‘It doesn’t mean anything. I mean …
febluis
… what could it mean?’

‘That’s what we’re … I’m, asking you, sir. Our best people have turned it upside down and inside out. She’d have been frightened and confused.’ Jamie flinched at the image of Abbie terrified amongst the burning cars and trucks, trying to send her last message, the petrol smoke thick in her nostrils and her murderers prowling all around, and that final moment … ‘They’ve checked
out all the ways she might have missed the keys she was aiming for, but they haven’t been able to come up with anything. We’re looking at whether it could be a name, or a word in a foreign language. I’m told Miss Trelawney is part-Eritrean? To be honest, you’re our last resort.’

‘I’m sorry, Sergeant.’ Jamie shook his head. ‘I can’t help you. How … how are the investigations going? Are you any closer to catching these animals?’

‘I couldn’t say, sir. You’ll understand that this is far and away this country’s biggest murder inquiry. I’m just a superannuated delivery boy, really, and with bad knees at that. I read in the papers that several suspects are being held and we are “following a number of lines of inquiry”. You know what, sir?’

‘Yes?’

‘You’ll have seen
Casablanca,
with Bogey and Claude Raines?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, strictly between you and me, from what I hear, this is a case of: Round up the usual suspects.’

‘What do we have?’

The Director General of the Security Service chewed his lip. ‘Well, Minister, we are using all our resources and we’re following a number of lines of inquiry—’

‘Don’t give me that bullshit,’ the Home Secretary exploded. ‘Keep it for the bloody newspapers. I want facts. The Prime Minister is breathing down my neck and the papers are talking as if I’m already fucking history.’
The refined Home Counties accent made the profanity all the more shocking. An aide whispered something to her and she took a deep breath and visibly calmed. ‘I apologize. Please, strike that from the record.’ She took a sip of water from the glass in front of her. ‘Mosques are burning in Leeds and Bradford and there have been race riots on the streets of the capital. Parliament is demanding to know why we had no forewarning of an attack that has cost the lives of at least four hundred and fifty men, women and children and thus far I have not been able to give them any answers. Hundreds more are injured or still missing. This is why you exist, gentlemen. A failure on this scale means that unless we apprehend these murderers very quickly there will be a root-and-branch reform of the security services of this country. That decision will come later, but for the moment I prefer to concentrate on what we are achieving.’

The MI5 chief had been thinking about his rose garden, and that dealing with politicians who had no sense of scale or perspective, and no idea how the real world worked, was one of the great burdens of his job. He could have trotted out the old chestnut about the terrorists only having to get it right once, which was entirely true, but he doubted the minister would appreciate that. The words
root-and-branch reform
sent a worrying chill through him.

‘Nick.’ He nodded to one of his assistants.

The young man in the dark suit and heavy-rimmed spectacles looked up from his notes. ‘We are going
through the process of putting every intelligence asset, agent in place and informant on our books through the proverbial wringer for any information about the attack, unusual movement of people or provisions, odd changes in behaviour or large financial transactions. We’re also talking to the Islamic community’s religious leaders. Many of the radicals have been shocked by the scale of this atrocity and we’re assured they’ll do anything they can to avoid the inevitable backlash against their people. Acting on our instructions, Special Branch have pulled in every name on the Black List known or suspected to have visited militant training camps in Pakistan or the Horn of Africa over the past decade.’ He removed his glasses for a moment, focusing his thoughts as his eyes drifted towards the window and the restricted view through the security grilles to the red-brick buildings on the other side of Marsham Street. ‘This was a highly skilled, well-disciplined operation; whoever carried it out had undergone intensive training and had knowledge of weapons, logistics and tactics. Given our past experience, it’s likely the attack was planned and coordinated from Pakistan. We have our own sources there, but obviously the Pakistanis have more and better. We’ve asked for priority access to their intelligence, but the ISI is being its usual cooperative self: all smiles and assurances and weasel words. We might have to ask the Cousins to pull some strings, but that will take time.’