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

‘So why didn’t you call me? I told the girl at the office to get you to call me.’

‘Must’ve slipped her mind. She seemed a little ditzy.’

‘So tell me what’s going on.’

This was exactly the conversation she’d hoped to avoid. ‘I’m just trying to find out what happened to my brother,’ she said. ‘I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.’

‘You sound out of breath.’

‘I am out of breath. I’m walking quickly up a really steep hill.’

‘Oh right. Well you still shouldn’t be wheezing that way. You need to look after yourself. You should quit smoking.’

Liv realized that, despite the high-stress situation she found herself in, she hadn’t craved a cigarette in hours. ‘I think I have,’ she said.

‘Good. That’s good. Listen, I need you to do one thing for me.’ Here it was. She’d known he couldn’t be calling out of overwhelming concern for her wellbeing. ‘Write down this number,’ he said.

‘Hold on.’ She grabbed her pen and scribbled the number on her hand.

‘Who’s this?’ she asked.

‘It’s that traffic cop you watched give birth to twins the other night.’

‘Bonnie?’

‘Yeah, Bonnie. Listen I know this is a real bad time, but I need that story to run this weekend. I still got a hole in the Lifestyle section, so I need you to call her up and smooth the way for someone else to pick up the story, OK?’

‘I’ll call her right now. Anything else?’

‘No, that’s it. Just you be careful – and take lots of notes.’ Liv smiled.

‘I’m always careful,’ she said. Then she hung up.

Rawls snapped his phone shut and closed his front door. He was late for a fundraiser over at City Hall and wanted to meet the guy everyone was tipping as the next mayor. It always paid to get close to the incoming king.

He slid behind the wheel of his Mustang, absolutely nothing to do with his midlife crisis, and was about to turn the key in the ignition when he heard the tap on the window. He turned and saw the wide muzzle of a gun pointing at him. The man who held it motioned for him to wind the window down. He was wearing some kind of red windcheater and had a beard that looked wrong on his young, thin face.

Rawls held his hands up and did as he was told. When the window was halfway down a large bottle of mineral water was pushed through the gap. ‘Hold this,’ the gunman said. Rawls took it. ‘What do you want?’ He noticed the fumy smell clinging to the plastic bottle and realized it didn’t contain water at all.

‘I want your silence,’ the man replied, and fired a piece of burning magnesium from the flare gun, through the bottle of turpentine and into Rawls Baker’s chest.

91

Bonnie’s answer-phone kicked in just as Liv passed through the large stone arch leading to the square by the public church. Listening to the small-town voice politely asking her to leave a message whilst being confronted with the massive Gothic splendour of the church was a surreal experience.

‘Hey, Bonnie,’ she said, drifting across the square along with the hordes of tourists. ‘This is Liv Adamsen – from the New Jersey Inquirer. Listen, I hope everything’s going great with you and Myron and the twins, and I’m really, really sorry to spring this on you, but I’ve had to leave town for a few days. We love your story, though, so someone else will be calling you real soon to pick right up where I left off. I know they still want to get you into the weekend edition, if that’s OK. Listen, I’ll call you when I’m back in town. Take care.’ She hung up and passed through the second archway.

She emerged from the shadow, squinted up into the brightness – and stopped. There in front of her, rising up like a wall of darkness, was the Citadel. Seeing it this close was both terrifying and awe inspiring. Liv’s eyes lifted to the summit then dropped slowly down, following the path of her brother’s fall. As her gaze reached the bottom she saw a large crowd of people gathered next to a low stone wall. One of them, a woman with long blonde hair and a long dress, was holding her arms out by her sides. The sight sent ice spiders scuttling across Liv’s skin. For one awful moment she thought the ghost of her brother was standing there. The crowds of tourists bumped her as they pushed past, nudging her closer to the group, until she began to see a blaze of colour at the centre of the crowd. It was a sea of flowers, laid there by strangers and looking now as if they had seeped up through the broken flagstones and bloomed in silent tribute to the man who had cracked them. Liv’s eyes moved across them, reading hidden meanings in their colours and forms: yellow daffodils for respect, dark crimson roses for mourning, rosemary for remembrance, and snowdrops for hope. Cards stuck out here and there like the sails of boats half-sunk in a shallow sea. Liv picked one up and felt a cold finger run down her spine when she saw what was on it. There were two words ‘Mala Martyr’, and above them, filling the uppermost part of the card, was a large ‘T’.

‘Miss Adamsen?’

Liv whipped her head round, instinctively leaning away from the voice as her eyes sought the source of it.

Standing over her was a stylish woman in her fifties wearing a charcoal grey pinstripe suit a few shades darker than her precisely cut hair. She switched her gaze from Liv to the flowers stretching out on the ground behind her, then back again.

‘Dr Anata?’ Liv asked, rising up to greet her. The woman smiled and held out her hand. Liv shook it. ‘But how did you know it was me?’

‘I’ve just come from a television news studio,’ the woman said, leaning in conspiratorially. ‘And you, my dear, are very much breaking news.’

Liv glanced nervously across at the crowd. Their attention was currently split between the mountain and the spectacle of the silent woman holding her arms out. No one was looking at her.

‘Shall we go somewhere a little quieter?’ Dr Anata suggested, gesturing further along the embankment to where a small army of plastic tables spilled out from several cafés.

Liv looked back at the shrine marking the place where her brother had died, then nodded, and followed Miriam as she led her away.

The van pulled up by the wall of the old town close to the southern gate. Cornelius glanced at the screen. The arrow remained steady, pointing to a spot by the dry moat on the old embankment. The girl hadn’t moved for the last few minutes.

He slipped out of the passenger seat and held the door open. Kutlar closed the electronic notebook, handed it to Cornelius and slid stiffly across the seat to join him on the pavement. The drop down to the ground was not high but the moment his foot connected with the street it felt as if someone had shot him in the leg again. He gritted his teeth against the pain, determined not to appear weak; felt the sweat beading up beneath his shirt. He held on to the door to steady himself, his head drooping forward as he forced his leg to straighten. In his peripheral vision he could see Cornelius’s boots pointing in his direction. Waiting. There was no way he could do this on his own.

Kutlar reached into his pocket and pulled out the bottle of pills he had been denying himself for the last few hours, unscrewed the top and tipped a few gel capsules into his damp palm. The label said he was supposed to take one every four hours. He threw two into his mouth, nearly gagging as he dry swallowed them down.

He looked up and past Cornelius towards the Southern gate. She was somewhere in the old town. And as he was the only one who knew what she looked like, and bikes were the only things allowed up the steep, ancient streets, they were going to have to walk. He stuffed the pills back in his pocket, let go of the van and started limping towards the ticket booths by the entrance. His leg was already numb by the time he was halfway there.

92

The café was heaving, even though it was set back from the embankment and away from the main drag. It was slightly less popular than the other cafés as it had no clear view of the Citadel, but Liv could still feel its presence all the way through the stone building that blocked it out. It was like a shadow made solid, or a storm coming. She sat opposite the Ruinologist, away from the crowds and facing the wall, while a brisk young waiter in a white apron and black waistcoat took their orders. He tore off the order chit and trapped it beneath the ashtray.

‘So,’ Miriam said as soon as he was out of earshot, ‘how can I help?’

Liv placed her notebook on the table. The card she’d picked up was still in her hand. She turned it over and re-read the words:

T

MALA

MARTYR

‘How about telling me what this means,’ she said, sliding it across the table.

‘All right,’ Miriam said. ‘But first you must tell me something.’ She pointed at the T. ‘You said you’d seen marks on your brother’s body. Was this one of them?’

Liv flipped to the first page of her notebook and turned the pad round to reveal the rough drawing she’d made of Samuel’s body. ‘It was branded on his arm,’ she said.

Miriam stared down at the network of scars, transfixed by their savage beauty. She quickly closed the notebook as the waiter reappeared and placed their drinks on the paper tablecloth. ‘It’s called the Tau,’ she said, the moment he scurried off again. ‘It’s a very powerful and ancient symbol, as old as this land which took its name.’

Liv frowned, not following how the word ‘Tau’ could become ‘Turkey’.

‘I’m talking about the land upon which the Citadel stands,’ Dr Anata said, sensing her confusion. She nodded towards the distant peaks, just visible between the buildings, their jagged outlines like teeth against the sky. ‘The kingdom of the Tau.’