Bestselling Conspiracy Thriller Trilogy: Sanctus, The Key, The Tower. Simon Toyne

      ‘Sorry about losing my brother’s body?’ Liv suggested.

      ‘Yeah … I guess …’ he said. ‘First time it’s ever happened.’

      ‘Well, that’s reassuring.’

      Reis blushed, ruining his well-cultivated pallor, and dropped his gaze. ‘No, I suppose … er … no …’ He shut up before he could dig himself deeper.

      Arkadian pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Miss Adamsen …’ He fixed her with what he hoped was a look of suitable authority. ‘I know you’re angry, and you have a right to be, but I’ve got every uniform out there looking for that ambulance. We’ll get your brother back. I shouldn’t have let you down here in the first place, and now it’s a crime scene you can’t be here. I need you to go back up to reception and wait until we’ve secured this area.’

      Liv held his gaze. ‘No.’

      ‘It wasn’t a request.’

      Very deliberately, Liv stepped into the office and sat down opposite Reis. ‘Let me explain why I’m staying. In the last twenty-four hours I’ve discovered that my brother, who I thought was already dead, has died, for real. I’ve flown thousands of miles on uncomfortable planes to come and identify him. I’ve been kidnapped, shot at, and then – just when I thought I would finally be re-united with him – you lost him.’

      She let the words sink in.

      ‘I know how to behave at a crime scene. I can’t contaminate this one further because I’ve already been in it. So you might as well keep me here and keep me happy. Because,’ she held up the crumpled newspaper, ‘if you try and pack me off, the first thing I’ll do is call my editor. Think he might hold the front page?’

      Reis flicked between Arkadian and the girl as they stared each other out, until Arkadian finally blinked.

      ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Stay. But if anything does leak to the press, anything at all, I’m going to assume it came from you and charge you with obstruction of an ongoing investigation. Are we clear?’

      ‘Perfectly.’ She turned, the ice in her green eyes instantly thawing. ‘So – Reis, isn’t it …?’

      The pathologist nodded. Feisty women frightened him at the best of times. He also found them incredibly attractive. This one was off the scale.

      ‘You were saying something about a lab report?’

      Reis glanced at Arkadian, who just shrugged.

      ‘OK. Er … lab reports are a normal part of the clinical procedure … as you probably know. Here we always run a standard batch of tissue tests and tox routines to establish certain things and rule out others, such as whether the subject may have taken, or been given, something that could have contributed to their death. One of these measures the extent of necrosis in the liver, which often helps establish time of death. We didn’t really need to in this case because of all the witnesses, but procedure is procedure. These are the results –’ He gestured at a red note stapled to the top sheet.

      ‘It came back with a contamination query. They think the sample must have been incorrectly labelled. There was no sign of any necrosis; in fact, quite the opposite. The cells appear to be … regenerating. Liver cells do regenerate, of course, but only if the host is alive …’

      Arkadian wondered – too late – if it had been the smartest move to let Liv hear this.

      ‘I checked it out thoroughly. The sample they got was definitely from the monk. So going purely on these results, and ignoring the fact that I performed the post-mortem myself …’ He hesitated. ‘I’d say he was on the mend …’

      67

      A third of the way along Hallelujah Crescent, in a tall, elegant building that had been hollowed out, reinforced and turned into an extortionately expensive car park, a metal screen rolled up and a plain white transit van edged its way into the traffic.

      Gabriel watched from across the street, his face obscured by his visor. He glanced down at a handheld PDA device, like a motorcycle courier checking the details of a delivery. Towards the top of the screen a small white dot pulsed gently while a street map scrolled up around it. The movement of the dot corresponded exactly with that of the van, or, more precisely, the movement of Samuel’s body as the transponder he’d inserted in his throat transmitted his location.

      He slipped the PDA into his jacket pocket and kick-started the bike. The van reached the end of the crescent and turned left towards the heart of the old town. Gabriel followed a few cars back.

      Just short of the northern boulevard the van peeled off down a slip road past a large sign welcoming visitors to the Umbrasian Quarter.

      For as long as Ruin had existed, the Umbrasian or Shadow Quarter had been the least popular and therefore least populated part of the city. Tucked below the northern side of the Citadel, the streets here remained permanently shrouded in the shadow of the mountain, even at the height of summer. In the modern era its cheap land prices made it the perfect location for the vast car parks needed to cater for the armies of tourists swarming to the city. It was into this valley of cold, grey concrete that the van now drove.

      Once they left the anonymity of the ring road, Gabriel dropped further back and slid in behind a shuttle bus. The van turned sharp right, down a narrow alleyway between two huge multi-storey monstrosities.

      Gabriel continued on past, pulled a fast U-turn, mounted the pavement, killed the engine and tilted the bike against its foot-rest. He slid off the detachable side-mirror and sprinted to the corner of the building, flipping up his visor as he went. He squatted against the wall, held the mirror low to the ground, angled down the alley, which ended at a sheer rock face that rose to the old town wall. He watched as the van came to a standstill. A man with long dark hair and a beard leaned out of the driver’s window and swiped a card through an entry machine then glanced back in his direction.

      Gabriel froze.

      With no sunlight to reflect off the mirror the only thing that would give him away was movement.

      He studied the driver. The man looked more like a rock star or a movie actor than a hired thug. After a few moments the van eased forward and disappeared into the side of the building.

      Gabriel pulled the PDA from his pocket. The pulsing white dot moved across the top of the screen, where the rear of the garage met the side of the mountain. He stuffed the mirror in his pocket and stood up. Hundreds of pairs of headlights peeped over a low wall that stretched away to his left, like convicts contemplating freedom. Gabriel vaulted the wall and hurried inside.

      The place was cold and damp and smelt of oil and petrol fumes and urine. Aware that he was probably on CCTV he moved towards a distant Audi, made like he was about to get in it, then knelt as if for a fumbled key and stole another long look at the PDA.

      The white dot was no longer within the confines of the car park, but passing through the bedrock beyond. He watched it cut across the streets and buildings of the old city, aiming straight for the Citadel. When it was two-thirds of the way there, it froze, blinked and disappeared.

      Gabriel moved over to the cold concrete of the back wall and held the PDA directly against it to boost the signal. The dot flashed on again, closer still to the Citadel.

      Almost at the boundary of the old moat, it flickered out completely.

      68

      Kutlar sat up front, staring into the jagged darkness of the tunnel. The rumble of tyres across the uneven floor and the hammering of the diesel engine combined to produce a singularly mournful sound. The vibrations rattled the plastic dashboard and plucked at the stitches in Kutlar’s leg. He relished the pain – it kept him focused and proved he was still alive.

      His head was fuzzy from the pills he’d