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

wore no uniform. They were the sort she always cosied up to when working a story, because they liked to talk.

      His brow creased. ‘You OK?’

      ‘Yeah. Just … having a moment …’

      He nodded uncertainly. Tried a smile. Gave up and pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘Only, I got a squad car out back when you’re ready. I’m going to sneak you out and take you over to Central. We got a gym over there where you can grab a hot shower and a change of clothes.’

      Liv blotted her eyes with the sleeve of her blouse. ‘Sure,’ she said, shooting him a smile that was even weaker than his. ‘What’s your name …?’

      ‘I’m Sulleiman,’ he said, lifting his photo ID. ‘Sulley, if you want to be friendly.’ She caught a glint of what looked like a chrome-plated .38 sticking out of his pancake holster as she looked at the picture. The flash of the camera had bleached out his face a little and he looked more serious in the picture than in real life, but it was definitely him: Sub-Inspector Sulleiman Mantus, RPF.

      ‘OK,’ she said, satisfied that she wasn’t about to be kidnapped again. ‘Let’s go, Sulley.’ She swept the newspaper from the table and followed him out.

      The reception area was humming as they made their way through it. Two uniformed officers were standing guard by the entrance, checking everyone in and out. Beyond them, Liv saw a news crew, lights on, camera rolling, the reporter standing with her back to the building as she taped her report; or maybe it was live. Liv drifted behind the Sub-Inspector into a hushed hallway leading to the rear of the building. Another uniformed officer stood by a pair of overlapping plastic doors. He nodded as they approached.

      ‘After you …’ Sulley stood aside.

      The plastic buckled slightly before delivering Liv into what she momentarily mistook for the blinding sunshine.

      Then a woman shouted: ‘Are you connected with the disappearance of the monk?’

      Liv spun round to head back into the safety of the building but the Sub-Inspector grabbed her arm and hustled her towards an unmarked police car a little way down the alley. She dropped her head so her hair fell over her face.

      ‘Are you under arrest?’ the reporter yelled.

      A flashgun exploded to her right and a man’s voice joined the questioning.

      ‘What is your connection with the missing man?’

      ‘Was the theft an inside job?’

      The Sub-Inspector pulled open the rear door of the car, pushed Liv firmly into the back seat and slammed it behind her.

      Liv glanced up just as the interior flooded with light from a camera pressed against the window. She wrenched her head away.

      The car bounced on its springs as Sulley dropped into the driver’s seat.

      ‘Sorry about that.’ He caught her eye in the rear-view mirror as he fired up the engine. ‘It’s amazing how quickly the press catch on to these things.’

      He popped the handbrake and eased away from the pack. The last thing Liv saw as she glanced out of the rear window was the dead-eyed stare of a camera lens looking right back at her.

      72

      Kathryn Mann pointed to a spot on the dusty concrete floor of the warehouse and the forklift pirouetted gracefully and lowered one of the master pallets from the C-123 right on to it. She was trying to arrange things so that the next shipment due out, an agricultural supplies drop to one of their projects in Uganda, didn’t end up buried somewhere in the stack. Each master pallet had a thin aluminium skin round it and was the size of two large refrigerators. It was like a massive three-dimensional puzzle, but it beat sitting in the office watching the news with Oscar and waiting for Gabriel to call.

      The truck eased its forks from beneath the pallet and peeled back out to the transport plane. Most of the fertilizer would be flying straight back out again in a few days, with a bit of luck.

      A loud rapping caused Kathryn to look up. Through the narrow avenue of crates she could see Oscar standing at the window, gesturing for her to come over. His expression was grim.

      Kathryn handed Becky her list. ‘Could you make sure these ones stay at the front?’

      ‘Look,’ Oscar said, the moment she walked into the office. He pointed the remote at the TV on the wall and edged up the volume.

      ‘The investigation into the death of the monk,’ the newsreader announced in a tone usually reserved for massacres and declarations of war, ‘has taken a turn for the macabre this morning. Sources close to the investigation believe that his body has disappeared from the city morgue …’

      The picture cut to an unsteady image of a bedraggled woman being led to a car.

      ‘Are you connected with the disappearance of the monk?’ the reporter’s voice shouted. ‘Are you under arrest?’

      The woman looked up briefly, staring directly into the lens before dropping her head and disappearing behind a curtain of dirty-looking hair.

      ‘That must be the girl,’ Oscar said.

      But Kathryn didn’t hear him. She was transfixed by the sight of the plainclothes police officer at Liv’s side. She watched him bundle her roughly into the back seat. Saw the camera tilt up towards his face. Saw him hold up his freckled hand to push it away.

      Then he got in the car and drove her away.

      73

      Athanasius was in a daze as he walked to the private chapel for prayers. He was still sweating from the exertion of dragging each inert body through the complex series of tunnels leading to the medieval caverns in the eastern section. He was back in the main part of the Citadel now, but the ordeal still clung to him, along with the faint chemical tang of the body-bags. No matter how hard he had scrubbed his hands in the rainwater sinks of the laundry, he couldn’t seem to get rid of that smell.

      The old dungeons held potent reminders of the church’s violent past: rusted shackles and fearsome-looking pincers the colour of dried blood. He’d known the Citadel’s history, of course, the crusades and persecutions of more brutal times when a strong belief in God and the teachings of the Church had been forged through fear; but he’d thought those times were gone. Now the spectre of that violent past was clawing at the present, like the smell of ancient death that had risen from the oubliette as he’d tipped the bodies into it, one by one. When he heard the brittle crack of them landing on a bed of forgotten bones, he felt something break inside him, too, as if his actions and his beliefs had been pulled so far apart they had finally snapped. As he shivered alone in the cold mountain, the two phrases he’d glimpsed in the Heretic Bible shone in his mind like fresh truths through the darkness.

      He paused outside the private chapel, afraid to enter because of the shame he carried with him. He rubbed his hand distractedly over his scalp and smelt again the antiseptic taint of the body-bag on his sleeve.

      He needed to pray. What other hope did he have? He took a deep breath and ducked through the entrance.

      The chapel was lit by small votive candles flickering around the T-shaped cross on the far wall. There were no seats, only mats and thin cushions to protect bony old knees from the stone floor. He hadn’t noticed a candle burning outside the chapel, but as he entered now he saw it already contained a worshipper. He nearly wept in relief when he saw who it was.

      ‘Dear brother …’ Father Thomas stood and put an arm around the trembling figure of his friend. ‘What troubles you so?’

      Athanasius took deep breaths, fighting to regain control of himself. It took a few minutes before his heart rate and breathing steadied. He glanced back at the doorway, then into the concerned face of his friend. In his mind, Athanasius debated whether to confide in him