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

‘Where are you?’ Kathryn said.

‘Following the body snatchers. They took the monk back to the Citadel. Now two of them are in some kind of dive on the edge of the Lost Quarter. The other one’s minding their van.’

‘What are they doing?’

‘No idea, but I thought I should stick with them. I figure the girl’s safe enough – so long as she’s with Arkadian.’

‘That’s just it,’ Kathryn said. ‘She’s not safe. She’s not safe at all.’

Kutlar sat in the backroom of the junk-filled shop. Cornelius was to his left. Another man sat opposite, behind a desk cluttered with the guts of computers and mobile phones. Zilli was the ‘go to’ guy for under-the-counter technology. His chair squeaked every time he fed a bundle of money from a red plastic box into his counting machine. Long black hair spilled from a baseball cap advertising a tractor firm that no longer existed. Kutlar knew it hid a bald spot that no one was supposed to notice.

Zilli’s Hawaiian shirt was the brightest thing in what looked like any junk-and-repair joint in any down-at-heel neighbourhood, but also served as a front for everything from fencing stolen property to running guns, drugs and sometimes even people. It was Zilli who had recommended the Bitch Clinic to Kutlar as a good place for gunshot wounds.

Zilli watched the last of the notes clatter through the counter with the same gimlet gaze as an addict cooking up a shot. Then he reached under the desk, his eyes never leaving Cornelius. A small fan whirred in the silence, cooling the motherboard of an eviscerated computer.

Kutlar felt pain lance through his leg as Zilli pulled something dull and metallic into view and pointed it at Cornelius. Cornelius didn’t flinch.

‘Pleasure doing business,’ Zilli said, his face cracking into a lopsided smile that revealed surprisingly perfect teeth. ‘Any friend of Kutlar …’

He pushed the stacks of cash to one side, placed what looked like an electronic notebook in the centre of the desk and folded it open. The screen flashed into life, showing a map of the world with a blank column to its right beneath two search windows.

‘Chinese technology,’ Zilli said, as though he was selling them a watch. ‘Hacks seamlessly into any telecom network in the world. Just tap in a number and it’ll give you chapter and verse on all calls in and out: time, duration, even billing details and registered addresses.’

Cornelius regarded Zilli impassively for a moment then took out a piece of paper that had been tucked inside the Abbot’s envelope. There were two names and numbers on it. Liv’s was the first. He copied it into the search box and hit return. An hourglass icon appeared on the screen and the app started trawling for a match. After a few seconds a new number appeared in the column below the search window.

‘It’s found the network,’ Zilli said. ‘That’s the only call logged in or out in the last twelve hours. Twelve is the default setting. You can change it in the preference menu, if you want, but I wouldn’t recommend it. You just wind up with every pizza delivery outfit on the planet and all sorts of other shit. But here – watch this …’

He parked the cursor over the new number. A dialog box popped up next to it listing a voicemail service. It also gave a postal address in Palo Alto, California.

‘That’ll be the service provider. If the number had belonged to a person, you’d now know where they live.’

Cornelius continued to watch it chattering through the mobile phone networks trying to lock on to Liv’s phone. Kutlar glanced at Zilli, willing him to look in his direction. But he didn’t. He just kept looking at the screen. A new dialog box finally appeared: NUMBER NOT DETECTED.

Cornelius looked at Zilli.

‘OK … now the thing is …’ Zilli’s chair screeched as he sat back. ‘It only works when the device you’re looking for is switched on. Mobiles send a signal every few minutes to check in with the nearest phone mast. No power, no signal, no trace. Type in a number you know is active. You’ll see what I mean.’

The pain in Kutlar’s leg flared again as the fan moved up a gear.

Cornelius typed his own number into the second search window and hit return. Zilli folded his hands behind his head, tilting the brim of his cap low over his eyes. His face was a mask.

It took about ten seconds. The map which filled the main window was becoming more detailed, zooming in like a camera freefalling from space directly to the centre of Ruin. It slowed as the outline of buildings began to appear then stopped abruptly over a latticework of streets. An arrow pointed halfway along one called Trinity.

‘See!’ Zilli said, confident enough of the technology not to check the screen. ‘It has sat-nav capabilities too; it can triangulate an active signal to within five feet. It can also trace two numbers at a time and show you how far apart they are. Means you can track someone else’s phone relative to your own and the software will plot you a route straight to it. You just need them to switch their mobile on.’

Cornelius snapped the notebook shut. ‘Thank you for your help.’

‘Any time.’

Cornelius glanced at Kutlar, who got up and limped gratefully out of the door. Cornelius turned and followed him.

‘You need to take your lunchbox?’ Zilli called after him, nodding at the red plastic container on the desk.

‘Keep it,’ Cornelius said, without looking back.

75

Liv stood under the fierce jet of the shower and turned it up as hot as she could bear. The pain was good. It felt cleansing. She watched the water turn from grey to clear as it sluiced off her body and spiralled down the drain, carrying away the grime of the night.

She ran her hand down her side, finding her cruciform scar, tracing its outline with the tips of her fingers, favouring the part of her that had once been physically connected to her brother. Her hand continued up her side and down her arm to where a cross-hatch of smaller scars corrugated her skin, scores of thin lines scratched during a childhood troubled by the lack of a mother and a sense she was a stranger in her own family.

The pain she felt now under the scalding water brought back the hot bite of the razor, which had focused her teenage mind somewhere other than the numbing chaos of her emotions. If only her father had told her back then what she had discovered for herself on that shady porch in Paradise, West Virginia. She understood now that when he had looked at her with sadness in his eyes it was not through disappointment in her. It was because he saw the woman whose name she carried. He saw the love he had lost.

The hot water continued to beat down and her thoughts drifted now to her own losses: her mother, then her father, now her brother. She turned the tap all the way over until scalding rods of water drilled into her flesh and carried away the tears that leaked from her eyes. Feeling pain was better than feeling nothing at all.

Sub-Inspector Sulleiman Mantus paced the hallway. He had too much nervous energy to sit. But it was a good feeling: the sort an athlete feels in the middle of a game; the sort a hunter enjoys when he’s closing on his quarry.

Tipping the press off about the theft from the morgue was just the tip of the iceberg. He knew how these things worked. The division would try and play it down, because whichever way you looked at it they came out of it stinking worse than a jailhouse toilet; and the more they tried to lock it down, the more desperate the press would be for information. No one paid better than journos, and this story was front-page international and syndicated, so he was now pulling down big payments from a major news network as well as both original parties, neither of whose interest in the case appeared to be waning.

He glanced up the hallway. A couple of uniforms were standing by the doors, bitching about something or other. He could hear the murmur of their conversation but couldn’t make out what they were saying. He took out his phone, scrolled through the menu and dialled a number. ‘I have something you might be interested in,’ he said.

76

Cornelius stood by the van watching Kutlar move painfully down the street towards him. If he got much worse they might have to reconsider his usefulness. Johann sat in the driver’s seat talking to the informant on the phone. He wrote down an address then hung up.

‘The girl’s here,’ he said.

Cornelius took the slip of paper and looked back down the street. Kutlar was the only one among them who had seen her, but he had his own image in his mind, and had done ever since the Abbot had outlined their mission. He stroked the puckered skin on his cheek where his beard wouldn’t grow, remembering a street on the outskirts of Kabul and the plaintive figure in the blue burkha holding out the bundle of rags that could have been a child, slowing their vehicle just long enough for the rocket propelled grenade to lock on to it.

It was good to picture your enemy.

It helped you focus.

So to him the girl was the woman who had helped wipe out his whole platoon, the destroyer of the only family he had ever known – until the Church embraced him. He imagined her threatening this new family and it gave him strength and purpose. This time he would stop her.

Johann slipped from behind the wheel and went to the rear of the van as Kutlar finally limped to a standstill beside them.

‘Get in,’ Cornelius said.

Kutlar did as he was told, like a dog blindly obeying the master who beat him.

Johann reappeared in his red windcheater and walked past without a word, heading in the direction Kutlar had just come from.

Cornelius climbed into the driver’s seat and handed the address to Kutlar. ‘Take us there,’ he said.

Kutlar felt the vibrations tear through his ruined leg as the van bumped over cheap municipal tarmac poured straight on to the ancient cobbles. He considered the pills in his pocket, but knew he couldn’t afford to take one. They killed the pain sure enough, but they also made him feel like everything was fine, and he couldn’t afford to feel that way.

Not if he wanted to live.