Bestselling Conspiracy Thriller Trilogy: Sanctus, The Key, The Tower

‘The cuts to the victim’s hands and feet, though recent, show signs of significant blood coagulation, suggesting the injuries were sustained a good few hours ante-mortem. There’s scar tissue forming on some of the smaller cuts, in some cases grafting over the fragments of rock. I’d say, going purely on the extent of healing, that he’d been up there a few days before he jumped.’

He lowered the hand on to the cold ceramic table and examined the exposed arm.

‘The length of rope attached to the victim’s right wrist has also rubbed extensively on the skin, removing the epidermis. The rope is a rough, hemp-like weave, tough, and abrasive.’

‘It’s his belt,’ Arkadian said. Reis looked up and frowned. ‘Look at the cassock, around his waist.’

Reis switched his gaze to the middle of the dark, stained garment and spotted a thick leather loop stitched roughly to the cloth on one side and a tear on the other where its twin should have been. He’d noted other rips in the cassock, two above the hem and two by the wrists, but he’d missed this one.

‘The rope may be the victim’s belt,’ Reis stated for the record. ‘There are some leather loops round the middle of his cloak, though one appears to be missing. Again I will bag everything and send it across the hall for analysis.’

Arkadian reached behind Reis and pressed the flashing red square to pause the recording.

‘In other words,’ he said, ‘our guy climbed up the mountain using his belt as a makeshift rope, cut his hands and feet on the rocks in the process, hung around on the summit long enough for them to start healing, then threw himself off as soon as there was a big enough crowd to ruin my morning. Case closed.

‘Now, much as I’d love to hang around, I’ve got some less glamorous but nevertheless deserving cases to pursue. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll just borrow that phone over by the coffee pot and try to get on with some real police work.’ He turned and disappeared beyond the harsh white light of the examination table. ‘Just holler if you find any clues.’

‘Oh, I will.’ Reis reached for a pair of heavy-duty shears. ‘You sure you don’t want to watch? I’m about to cut his cloak off. Not every day you get to see a naked monk.’

‘You’re a sick man, Reis.’ Arkadian picked up the phone and wondered which of his six active cases he should catch up on first.

Reis looked down at the corpse and smiled. ‘Sick!’ he muttered to himself. ‘You try doing this every day and staying normal.’

He opened the shears, slipped them over the collar of the monk’s cassock and started to cut.

24

Athanasius followed the filament of light in the floor round the corner and into the long dark corridor where the forbidden vault lay waiting. If there was anyone there ahead of him he couldn’t see them. The blood-red light in the chamber was not designed to carry far. He hated the darkness, but he hated the fact that you couldn’t hear anything even more. He’d heard Thomas explaining it to Samuel once – something to do with a constant low-frequency signal, inaudible to the human ear, which disrupted all sound waves and prevented them from carrying further than the circle of light that surrounded you. It meant you could be ten feet from someone and still have no idea what they were saying. It ensured that all forty-two chambers, even when full of scholars passionately arguing theological points, remained in a permanent state of librarian silence. It also meant that, despite his rapid and purposeful march through the Bible-black corridors, Athanasius could not even draw comfort from the sound of his own footfalls.

He was halfway down the corridor when he saw it. Briefly, at the edge of his light. A white spectral flash in the dark.

Athanasius sprang backwards, scanning the blackness. Trying to glimpse again what he thought he had seen. Something smacked into his back and he whirled around. Saw the stone upright of a bookcase. Whipped his head back to try and penetrate the ominous darkness.

He saw it again.

At first, just the faintest of outlines, like a web drifting in the dark. Then, as the thing advanced, it began to solidify into the gaunt and shuffling shape of a man. His body was thin and bony, barely looking strong enough to support the cassock that hung around him like partially discarded skin, and his long, sparse hair hung down in front of sightless eyes. Despite the ghastly appearance of the slowly advancing monk Athanasius felt his whole body relax.

‘Brother Ponti,’ he breathed. ‘You gave me quite a start.’

It was the caretaker, an old monk specifically chosen for the task of cleaning and maintaining the great library because his blindness meant he needed no illumination to work by. He twitched his head in the direction of the voice, staring straight through Athanasius with his milky gaze. ‘I’m sorry,’ he rasped, his voice parched by the arid air. ‘I do try and keep to the walls so as not to bump into folk, but this section’s a bit on the narrow side, Brother …?’

‘Athanasius.’

‘Ah yes,’ Ponti nodded. ‘Athanasius. I remember you. You’ve been in there before, haven’t you?’ He waved in the direction of the vault.

‘Once,’ Athanasius replied.

‘That’s right.’ Brother Ponti nodded slowly, as if agreeing with himself. ‘Well,’ he said, turning stiffly towards the exit, ‘don’t let me keep you. You’ll find it’s already occupied. And if I were you, Brother, I wouldn’t keep him waiting.’

Then he turned once more and melted into the blackness.

25

It took Reis several minutes to slice through the saturated material of the monk’s cassock. He cut from collar to hem, then down each arm, careful not to disturb the body beneath. Rolling the corpse slightly, he then removed the garment and placed it in a steel tray ready for separate analysis.

The guy was in pretty good shape.

At least he would have been before he fell a thousand feet on to solid rock.

Reis tapped the red square on the computer screen with his knuckle and restarted the recording.

‘First impressions of the subject’s body match what one would expect to see following a fall from a great height: massive trauma to the torso, shards of fractured rib jutting out through several places on both sides of the thorax, totally in keeping with the types of compression fracture caused by the extraordinary deceleration of a body in freefall coming into contact with the ground.

‘The body is covered in thick, dark, coagulated blood from numerous puncture wounds. Both clavicles are fractured in several places, and the right one protrudes through the skin at the base of the neck. There also appears to be …’

He looked more closely.

‘… some kind of historical, uniform incision running horizontally across the neck from shoulder to shoulder.’

He took hold of the retractable hose arching over the examination table and squeezed the handle, directing a jet of water on to the neck and chest of the corpse. The sticky, dark film began to wash away.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Reis muttered.

He moved the spray across the rest of the body: first the chest, then the arms, then the legs. He paused the recording once more.

‘Hey, Arkadian,’ he called over his shoulder, still transfixed by the livid body on the slab. ‘You said you wanted a clue. How does this grab you?’

26

Athanasius stopped at the door, aware that he did not possess the right to enter the restricted room, and more than slightly fearful of what might happen if he did.

He looked inside.

The Abbot stood imposingly in the confined space, the red light seeming to radiate from him as if he were a demon glowing in the darkness. His back was to the door, so he could not see Athanasius. His eyes were fixed on a grid of fifteen apertures carved into the far wall, each containing a receptacle made from the same material as aircraft black box data recorders. Athanasius recalled Father Malachi telling him how they were strong enough to protect their precious contents even if the whole mountain fell upon them; that did little to comfort him now.

He glanced down at the invisible line on the floor and contemplated stepping boldly into the room, but the phrase ‘See no evil, hear no evil’ rose unbidden into his thoughts and he remained where he stood until the Abbot, either sensing his presence or wondering at the lack of it, turned and looked straight at him. Athanasius noted with relief that his master’s face, despite its unsettling crimson pall, did not display the glower of a man on the warpath but the thoughtfulness of one with a problem to solve.

‘Come in.’ The Abbot removed one of the boxes from its recess and carried it to the lectern in the centre of the room. Sensing Athanasius’s continued reluctance to step inside, he said, ‘I spoke to Malachi on my way through. You may enter the vault – for an hour at least.’

As Athanasius obeyed, a second red glow accompanied him across the vault, confirming that – for the time being – his presence was legitimate.

The lectern stood in the centre of the room, facing the entrance but with the reading surface angled away from it. Anyone standing at it would be warned of an approach by the tell-tale sign of the advancing light, and any book placed there could not be seen from outside.

‘I summoned you here,’ the Abbot said, ‘because I wish to show you something.’

He unlatched the box and gently opened it.

‘Do you have any idea what this might be?’